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chameleonspell · 10 months ago

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HTDC commentary - 7: choice & 8: simple

[Looking back at HTDC after nearly ten years: comments on lore, character notes, influences, art, whatever. May contain spoilers for later chapters.]

chapter text: 7: choice & 8: simple

Time to get Iriel out of Vivec! Addhiranirr gets a cameo, because she's right there in the Underworks, and she can tell Iriel about Tsiya in Balmora, which is where I actually want him to end up. This caused me a different problem, later, when Iriel was supposed to locate her as part of the main quest, and I realised I was going to have to do something drastic to avoid having the exact same Underworks scene happen twice.

Addhiranirr would hate to cheat you.

Iriel's Sugar Period meant that I ended up writing a multitude of different Khajiit characters, in these early chapters. Based on ingame dialogue, Khajiiti speech patterns vary, with some using regular first person "I/me/my/etc" for themselves. Others use third person, but also with variation as to whether they referred to themselves with their names, or as "this one". It also varies whether they say "you", or use third person in place of second, as well.

For now, I was mostly trying to imitate the ingame dialogue of whichever character I was writing, but later I speculated more about what the different uses of grammar implied, in Khajiiti culture.

Addhiranirr is a quest NPC, so she has a fair amount of canon dialogue, where her personality really comes across - I can't take credit for her! She's very dry and funny, and I tried to write her in keeping with that.

He found the long-dead corpse of an elf, lying half-submerged in filth.

The quest to find Moroni Uvelas' husband actually has him as a live corprus stalker that the player has to kill, but I let Iriel off easy, for once...

“I did kill her, don’t you believe me? She… she attacked me, and I couldn’t get away, I… I… pushed fire into her… until she… she…”

..because I wanted killing the Sixth House Cultist to be the traumatic bit, instead. Because it gives Iriel a stronger reason to flee Vivec.

Please judge me for the thing I'm doing here of skipping over a fight scene, and moving right to a conversation about it, instead. This is incredibly lazy of me, but I wasn't trying to do hard things, yet. Later, I would read writing advice about how fight scenes worked, and make more effort in that direction, but not for a while, yet.

I'm with Iriel, here, by the way: the random canalworks house with the Sixth House cultists in it is fucking horrifying, and I would not want to stay anywhere near it. You think it's gonna be just another of the endless little slum-dwellings you're churning through for valuables, but the second you go in, it's just RED and WRONG and UGH and it only makes it worse that nobody else around seems to know or care! I hate it so much, it's so good.

(x)

He had two choices, as he saw them. He could stay in Vivec, take Dro'Zaymar’s advice and kick moon sugar.

Is Iriel right that he had a choice, here? Would he really have fixed his life up and quit drugs, if only he hadn't been startled by a cultist? No, of course not. Even if sheer lack of sugar access forced him clean for a while, it wouldn't have lasted, and might in itself have pushed him towards Balmora, soon enough. He'd still have gone via the Mages Guild, since guild teleportation is the easiest way. Maybe he'd tell himself he was joining the Mages Guild and transferring to the Balmora branch for career reasons, when really, he just knew he could get a supply there.

“This one knows. He just wishes for Iriel to take care of himself.” The Khajiiti man leaned forwards, and licked Ire’s cheek gently.

Later, Iriel says of Dro'Zaymar: "I wanted to thank him for being the first person I encountered in Morrowind who was simply, unselfishly, kind to me. He had no reason to be, and I did nothing but disappoint him, but he was."

Iriel isn't much used to people being kind to him without some ulterior motive, so it takes a while for him to recognise Dro'Zaymar's behaviour for what it was. Ire knows that leveraging pathetic expressions might sometimes work to gain a specific favour, but in his experience, it doesn't result in long-term benefits. Usually, what happens is people find his weakness distasteful, and use it against him. If they speak softly to him, then, like Socucius in the Census Office, it's only because they're trying to manipulate him into agreeing to something against his interests.

For the record, despite the Khajiiti equivalent of a kiss on the cheek, I don't think Dro'Zaymar's intentions towards Ire were ever anything but platonic, which was part of what Iriel found so confusing. Perhaps his awkward pass was an attempt to drag the Khajiit's otherwise unfathomable toleration of him into an intelligible framework.

Ire's not very good with kindness, either giving or receiving. It's so bound up with vulnerability, weakness, pity... shame, again. This obviously has terrible consequences for his relationships with other people, and his struggle to navigate these issues takes up a lot of the fic. If Dro'Zaymar is Ire's first experience of an interpersonal relationship since leaving jail, then the most salient thing about it is that he doesn't even understand what it was, until months afterwards. The idea that you might see someone in pain, and want to help them without simultaneously despising them for needing it? This does not, at the time, compute.

On to Chapter 8, and the Mages Guild.

A grey-haired Dunmeri woman sized Iriel up critically

Altmeri privilege at work! Because nothing else explains how Iriel still manages to come across as someone who might be good at magic, despite his current... everything else about him.

While any Morrowind player character can practice spells and quickly improve their magical skills, we have to assume for our narrative sanity that magical power is not something most people have access to without great natural skill, and/or years of dedicated training. Altmer, being innately sensitive to it, and more easily able to store magical power, have it easier than most.

“Hello, my dear,” she said brightly. “If you don’t mind my saying so, you strike me as someone with magical interests.

The Vvardenfell Mages Guild is kind of a scam, right? A protection racket - sign up and pay them guild dues, in return for... not being killed by the Mages Guild for unsanctioned magery? Hard to say how much of it is just Ranis Athrys being a homicidal maniac, though. @ansu-gurleht wrote a summary of their bullshit, and I find it all a bit suspicious. Certainly, Iriel shouldn't be flattered by their approach, though he's desperate enough for scholarly validation to fall for it a little. Even through the haze of multifaceted terror and panic he's currently struggling through.

Iriel remembers magical academia, with all its bluffing and power-plays, he's just in no state to succeed at it, and shouldn't be trying. A real Dwemeri scholar would eat him alive. Fortunately, Trebonius knows no more about anything than he does. But let me be clear - Iriel knows barely anything about the Dwemer, or much of anything beyond certain specific, mostly magical, topics. He's desperate for intellectual validation, so he's trying to drag his academic vocabulary out of storage to pretend he can hold a conversation, but at this point, it's a paper-thin act. It's not just the drugs, either. Technically, Iriel is a drop-out, who has never actually completed the first year of any university course. He doesn't even know anything about mushrooms, except they look cool and he likes them.

Six forms and declarations later

You can sign up, but you can never leave! You have to pay guild dues for the rest of your life, or suffer Ranis sending assassin apprentices after you! Getting expelled might actually be the only escape option.

Please don't let him want to do that awful hand shaking thing Imperials do

I cannot imagine it's normal in Altmeri society to just TOUCH people. With your ACTUAL SKIN.

try to look normal

Iriel looking normal.

“Enthusiasm! Wonderful. Well, let’s see. Hmm… Find out about the disappearance of the Dwarves. There’s a fine job for a young Associate, eh?”

ansu-gerlecht speculates that Trebonius may not actually be as stupid as he seems, which is a fun idea, but if so, it's a very good act. Giving his underlings hilariously impossible tasks would be fantastic way to troll them, though. It's not just the player - if you talk to other mages, they'll tell you he has them learning the language of the silt striders, attaching an army of dreugh to the Foreign Quarter, digging tunnels to the mainland or building a new Anumidium.

It's possible to complete Trebonius' task, and find out what happened to the Dwemer. Iriel doesn't care one way or the other, just yet. He only wants to get out of Vivec and find a skooma connection. He's not a scholar of the Dwemer, but that's soon going to change. Something about it will end up hooking him. Because it's a personal question, for him - how does a whole race just vanish?

Iriel knows how to make himself vanish, but it's a temporary state, and at the end of the day, it's an illusion. He's still there. How do you disappear completely?

next: 9: sanctuary & 10: outside previous: 5: slide & 6: trap

#htdc-comment

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changelingsandothernonsense · 3 months ago

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Hello :D

Diary entry from the wips? 👀 (i always love those sections)

Hiii This journal entry corresponds to chapter eleven. Josh writes to try and figure out what he saw down in the Redoran Canton, whilst also realising he's gone and developed a minor crush on one of Cosades' informants that he's been sleeping with. He decides to ask her out for dinner. Poor Josh, if you know how most of these liaisons go for him. ( I do write the entries right before I post, so you may have already read it.)

6th of Frostfall, 3E 427

I still don’t know what the fuck happened back there, but it’s been keeping me awake thinking about it. Fuck! All I see when I close my eyes are grotesque, rotting faces whispering my name. How is it that only I heard that thing? It was speaking clear as day! Then there’s these fucking dreams I keep having! That golden-masked fuck taunting me constantly. It’s all so damn real feeling too. Like I’m actually there in that cave with that fuck and all his faceless… what even are they meant to be? I…I hadn’t really gotten a good look at them outside the ones that I think are meant to be some twisted version of myself. I keep waking up wondering if it's all meant to mean something or if my mind’s just replaying every horrible thing that’s happened to me and then mixing it with everything I fear in a maddening slurry. I feel like I’m losing it from lack of sleep alone…

What I do know is that I’ve seen enough of this Sixth House Cult guarshit to last me a lifetime. Fuck I think I’ve seen enough of Vivec City to last me as well. I got myself even more banged up after that last encounter down in the Redoran Canton Underworks. Sure, follow Addhiranirr down into another sewer so she can show me this ‘Sixth House’ thing. Gods damn place was crawling with undead! At least that’s what they looked like. Rotting where they stood. Only thing is that these ones had weird growths all over them…

And there I go freaking myself the fuck out again!

I managed to down them all, I think I can better conserve my magicka if I use the surroundings to my advantage. That sewer had enough gas to blow that damn canton out of the water, I only used what I had to my advantage. Blast was so powerful it yanked my right arm out. Not happy with that, managed to rebreak my arm too. Still, I guess it's better than having one of those fucks sneaking up on me whilst I recorded their weird little shrine thing for Cosades.

And now I just feel sick thinking about it. It’s all so fucked up, like was that skooma-guzzling fuck expecting this? Is this what the Emperor was talking about? I want no part in any of this insanity! Besides, I’m beginning to suspect this is all gonna end with someone getting strung up on the gallows and it’s not going to be Caius Cosades I can fucking assure you!

I guess it’s not all bad. That shrine had a damn fine dagger lying next to it which is mine now and Cosades’ informant was a nice bonus.

Is this a really fucking stupid thing to do? Yes. Do I care? No. What I do in my free time is my own fucking business. Got nothing to do with Blades crap! It seems that Addhiranirr feels the same about that sort of thing. I mean she came onto me after the explosion after all!

I um… I kinda like her. I have my mind swimming hoping that she at least likes me a little bit too. She’s been here for the last few nights.

Might ask her out for something to eat. I’m fucking starving and I’m a bit over being cooped up in this suite. Raril Giral’s cooking is fucking awful and I long for something that’s seasoned.

#ask games #danger!josh #teldryn sero #nerevarine

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