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Diary of a Dragonborn Chapter 5: Winner Of The Smartest Mage In The World Contest


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CHAPTER 5: WINNER OF THE SMARTEST MAGE IN THE WORLD CONTEST
In which our hero finds a glowing orb of light truly irritating.
Previous: Chapter 4, How Did They Move That Big Blue Ball?

 

There's a trap door in the Hall of Countenance that leads to the midden. By the name, I'm assuming it's a dumping ground for magical trash - half-finished sub-critical spells, flesh golems that didn't quite work out right, defective staves, and the like. It isn't, though. It appears to be a bunch of mage's workrooms tied together in a dungeon-like atmosphere. There's something called an Atronach Forge which, by the books left behind by the previous owner seems like it creates magical staves and summons atronachs that attack you on sight. Why you'd want to summon a hostile fire elemental that attacks on sight is a mystery to me. Practice, maybe. Still, I found that there are actually three (or possibly more?) kinds of atronachs - Flame, Frost, and Storm. I'm guessing that these mimic the three forms of destruction magic. I lack the appropriate stuff to summon atronachs, but I'm coming back here, you can believe it.

 

The midden also contains other things. In addition to the atronach forge that summons atronachs that want to eat my flesh, there are several necromancer summoning areas (if the bones on the walls are any indication) that contain live skeletons that want to eat my flesh, a daedric gauntlet that apparently can summon a hostile daedra that wants to eat my flesh, some ghostly ice-wraith that wants to eat my flesh, a couple of spiders that want to eat my flesh, and so on. Why the HELL is this here? Why haven't the mages come down here and cleaned it out? Probably didn't want to get their flesh eaten. What idiots are these guys, anyway? All they seem to do is complain about college politics and summon creatures that want to eat flesh, and at least one of them apparently wants to burn down his own library. I should go back to the renegade wizards in the renegade wizard hideout - at least their experimentation seems to be dedicated to finding better ways to kill vampires.

 

Anyway, I finally get to the Augur of Dunlain. He is... a big glowing ball. Seriously, not a person at all. "He" smarms at me for a bit, talking about how I know nothing and what I am seeking will lead to my doom and other people have been seeking other things that will lead to everyone's doom or something. I really wasn't paying that much attention, because I just KNEW he was going to summon some creatures that wanted to eat my flesh, and I was readying my ward and firebolt spell. He tells me that to properly use the Eye of Magnus, I need the Staff of Magnus, and probably the Mask of Zorro or the Back Scratcher of Uncle Clyde or some other Thing of Person. After smarming at me for a little more, about disasters that cannot be averted and knowledge that cannot be unknown and seeing with no eyes and hearing through my nostrils and urinating without a bladder or something, I don't care, I'm not listening, just hurry up and summon the flesh-eating monstrosities, bring 'em on, fucker, I'm ready this time!

 

But no, he just sends me back upstairs to talk to Savos Aren and tell him that we need a macguffin. Aren gives me a Mage's Circlet, actually a pretty nice doodad. I was expecting another staff of light balls style reward. He then tells me to talk to Mirabelle, who directs me to a Dwemer ruin and then proceeds to tell me that a bunch of OTHER renegade wizards calling themselves the Synod are there. I'm beginning to get the impression that all of this is just a big facade, that the mages just need someone to go off and kill their enemies. They wanted someone with iron armor and a warhammer because their magic isn't up to the task, but didn't want to actually hire anyone, you know, spend money, so they cooked up this "student wizard" gig. I'll bet there was a guy hidden somewhere near the Augur's room, an illusionist-ventriloquist who made up the whole thing. It's all an elaborate charade designed to fool the new student. I'm on to you people!

 

After taking several deep breaths, I set off for Mzulft. It's a little southeast of Windhelm, so it looks like my best bet is to head there and THEN to Mzulft. So here I go, wandering ALL THE WAY SOUTH to Windhelm, through ice and snow and frost and trolls and the wind and the rain and the bright blue sky and lions and tigers and bears, oh my! I carefully skirt Windhelm, cross the river, head through a little mining town called Kynesgrove, and in the front door of the dwarven ruin.

 

There's a guy sitting here, stoned out of his mind on some kind of hallucinogen. He tells me: "Crystal gone, find paratu's oculory" which I take to mean that his drugs, called "paratu's eyes," have run out and he needs more. He promptly falls asleep, and I need to get me some of that shit. I rifle through his clothes and find a key, but no more drugs. Probably deeper in the ruin. He isn't asleep, of course, or it would be pickpocketing. See, if someone is alive, it's stealing, but if they're dead, it's finder's-keepers. And I'm no thief. Wandering through the ruins, I find several more dead guys in blue robes, so they all must have overdosed at once. I mean, it's not as if they were killed by anything. These were professional wizards, at the top of their game, full of magical destructive power. What, am I supposed to believe that they were killed by blind, ugly goblin-looking dudes with no magic? Give me a break, shit like that doesn't exist in a rational world.

 

So, after killing several dozen blind goblin-looking dudes with no magic, not to mention a couple of poison-spitting giant earwigs and a few mechanical spiders and roller-balls that shoot arrows, I finally get to a door I cannot unlock. I spend a good three days wandering through this big room, searching every nook and cranny, rummaging through every container and looking at every corpse I can find, MULTIPLE TIMES, and there's no key anywhere. Fuck this shit, I'm outta here. I head back out the exit tunnel, take out my warhammer, and slam it into my head a few times for being such an idiot, because this isn't the exit tunnel, it's probably the way forward. Here's an amphitheater, and here's another one of those dwarven constructs that are apparently immune to fire, so we tussle a bit and I finally take it out with my warhammer and about seven thousand healing potions. At this point, I notice that my diary is beginning to bulge with all the hyperbole, so I decide to tone it down a bit, loot a key from the construct, and head back to the locked door. Speaking of tussling, warhammers, and magic, it's time for another status update:

 

HAMMER: 8 (+1 for all the dozens of rats, wolves, bears, tigers, falmer, spiders, dwarven spiders, and so on I've killed in the last few days)
MAGIC: 4 (+1 for using my ward when facing a single magic-wielding falmer)

 

It turns out, the guy up front wasn't asking for paratu's eyes, he was asking me to gouge out Paratus's eyes. I guess. I really can't remember what he said, but it had something to do with a crystal. After looking in my backpack, I find out that somewhere along the way I did manage to pick up some sort of focusing crystal. Paratus is a real sharp dude, smart as a whip. Probably the winner of the Official Annual Smartest Mage In The World Contest. The guy opens his locked door, that he was using to protect himself against the falmer, to the first guy who comes along, then seems surprised that I'm not his friend. Did I sound like your friend, dude? He proceeds to tell me about his plans, his friend's plans, his story, his friend's story, his future, hopes, dreams, and fears, shows me pictures of his children, gets to become good buddies with me, we're the best of friends, let's never be apart, you're my hetero life partner, let's move in together and open up a little coffee shop just like we always wanted, and by the way he's still really suspicious of me and won't trust me a bit with any information including the volume he's STILL pumping into my ears, which are, by the way, bleeding from the overload. He takes the crystal, tells me to cast fire and frost magic at it a bit, smarms at me, insults me, compliments me, tells me to flip some switches, exults at me for solving his problem, damns me for not solving his problem, and then yells at me to get out, he's discovered my nefarious plot. No jury in the land will convict me for what I'm about to do to you, Paratus. One more dead Synod researcher will only improve the overall intelligence quotient of the world.

 

HAMMER: 8
MAGIC: 6 (Yay! +1 for killing the Synod guy with magic, +1 for using flames and frostbite on the focusing crystal!)

 

On my way out the door, I'm interrupted YET AGAIN by that goddamn Psijic guy who stops time and smarms at me. I'm REALLY GETTING TIRED of being SMARMED AT by ASSHOLES all the time. He tells me that, sur-FUCKING-prise, I will face difficulties ahead. HOLY SHIT WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT? Is smarming all you people do? DON'T YOU HAVE LIVES? A few minutes later, out of breath and hoarse from screaming obscenities at the walls, I leave the ruin and head back to the college, veins visibly throbbing in my face.

 

Back at the college, everyone is panicking, running around in fear, and trying to get their shit together. At least, that's what SHOULD be happening. What's actually happening is that everyone except Aren and Mirabelle are just going about their daily lives, and Aren and Mirabelle are standing outside the lecture hall and the Eye of Magnus, calmly talking about how Ancano has warded them out and, by the by, shouldn't we consider making an action plan to formulate a committee to discuss the long-term benefits and negatives of possibly considering doing something about the insane guy with the key to the world, if it's not too much trouble, whenever you're ready, on your own time, let's do lunch and talk about it? They tell me to attack the ward, and I proceed to do so for a while before I realize they meant with MAGIC. Oh, yeah. I forgot I had that. So far, it's been useful about 42% of the time, if you really stretch your definition of "useful."

 

So we blast at the ward for a while, it goes away, we go in, Ancano smarms at us, and then Aren walks up to Ancano and he... apparently... explodes? I dunno, the next thing I know there's another ward up, Mirabelle is nursing a broken ankle, and Aren was apparently blown right outside the building. Ancano is still there, shooting lightning bolts at the Eye of Magnus.

 

HAMMER: 8
MAGIC: 7

 

Next: Chapter 6, Dropout
Start at Chapter 1

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