Fates Ignored (Pt V)

• Posted by Seeker Marik April 1, 2013 - 646 views

  13 Sun's Dusk, 3E 427

  And I thought Sadrith Mora was bad.

  The first thing I heard about as soon as I'd stepped down from the Guild guide platform were the massacres. Over the last week and a half, I've managed to piece together as close to the complete story as I think I am going to, if I can find a way to organize my thoughts.

  First off, the Camonna Tong: A crime syndicate composed of native Dunmer with a history of smuggling, drugs, and brutal violence, especially towards outlanders. Ajira, my instructor in enchanting, claims to know somebody who has a friend that may or may not know a guy in House Hlaalu who claims that the bosses of the Tong and at least one of the Hlaalu Councilors are close allies. The Camonna Tong used to work out of one of Balmorra's cornerclubs, but a few months ago somebody was hired by the local Legion commander and went in and cleaned it out. I heard that it was messy, but that the city was a safer place for it.

  The Camonna Tong hate the Thieves Guild.

  The Fighters Guild on Vvardenfell, Ajira claims, has been in the Camonna Tong's pocket for as long as anybody cares to remember. It's made the Thieves Guild nervous. Now we all find out just how justified they were in their paranoia.

  

  The Thieves Guild here is --- I should say was --- much more open than the one back in Cyrodiil. To my embarrassment, I've learned that Dirty Muriel's was their hangout in Sadrith Mora. Apparently, I was the only one who didn't realize this. It does explain some of the glances they gave me when I would eat there... Either way, the thieves have struggled their hardest to cling to what they can, and Ajira, who claims that one of her cousins is --- was --- a member told her that they'd taken a lot of steps in securing their gathering places. They had just recently, she tells me, bribed several of the Fighters Guild leaders away from the Tong. Apparently, the Tong didn't like this.

  The rest is common knowledge: The day before I left Sadrith Mora, one of the higher-ups in the Fighters Guild, an orc named Gogron gro-Shug, arrived in Balmora on silt strider. His first stop was the South Wall Cornerclub, across the river from the Guild hall that I'm staying at, and well-known as having been the favored tavern for the thieves to meet and drink. People say you could hear the screams from the manors in High Town. Before the guards even knew what was going on (here Ajira and rumor both claim that the guards had been bribed before-hand to be just a little bit slower in showing up), the entire tavern had been slaughtered and Eydis Fire-Eye, the local Fighters Guild boss, was nowhere to be found. Here, Ajira has yet another claim to make: Eydis was one of the bosses the thieves had bribed, and if she wasn't killed that night, then her days left on Nirn are very limited.

  

  Gogron the Butcher, as the people in the taverns call him, vanished before the guards could find him. For a few days, we thought that the silence of the guards meant he had been caught. Then we heard about Ald'ruhn. Just yesterday, the gossip started to include Sadrith Mora as well. Wherever he is now, Gogron appears to have been more than successful: the Thieves Guild is no more, and people are nervous to even openly mourn the friends they'd had in it.

  I made the hike to Fort Moonmoth this afternoon, when we received confirmation that Dirty Muriel's had been hit. The Imperial Cult's shrine there was more full than I had ever seen it (and I made it a point to visit it the last two Sundas's). I stood in line with the people there to pray to Arkay for the souls of the parted, and was certainly not the only one to whisper a line or two to Stendarr, that justice might find the Butcher.

  I had just donated a few coins to the collection going around when I spotted somebody familiar out of the corner of my eye as he walked into the room. He looked a little different in his Imperial Legion armor, and he had definitely filled out some from the last time I saw him in Ebonheart, but I still recognized Dorian. I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have been appropriate for me to smile and call out to him but before I could do something embarrassing, he spotted me.

  

  A brief smile played across his somber face, but he kept his distance until the prayers and sermon were completed. As the crowd thinned, I stayed behind hoping to have a chance to speak with him.

  "Dorian, I can't believe it's you!" I finally exclaimed when the room was less full. "I thought you were in Gnisis, running drills or hunting bandits or... whatever it is you'd be doing."

  He laughed. "I was Gnisis for a while. It turns out that breaking up a cult of would-be regicides is a good way to get promoted around here. It's actually a little funny that we run into each other today- I'll be leaving for Vivec at the end of the week. I'm being transferred to Ebonheart."

  "I remember hearing about that cult," I confessed. "I hadn't even thought it might have been you that... but you're here! I'm glad I got to see you before you left."

  "I wish it could've been under happier circumstances," he lamented. "The commanders in the Legion are pretty angry. We have no leads on where the Butcher could be hiding. For all we know, he's taken refuge with the Telvanni, and Stendarr knows they're never going to help us. But you don't need to hear any more of this sadness, I'm sure. What have you been up to?"

  I told him a little about what I'd been up to in Sadrith Mora, trying to make it sound a little more exciting than it really was. Not wanting to bore him with any of the scholarly details, my story was pretty brief. I did mention that my research had reached the hands-on stage, and casually mentioned that I was hoping I'd be able to meet with and ask a few questions of a priest in the Tribunal Temple (Sadrith Mora having not exactly been the most devout Dunmer settlement) at some point in the near future.

  "Now that," he interjected, "I might actually be able to help you with. Have you heard of Velneryn?"

  I confessed that I had not.

  "Really? He's in your guild, too! If it weren't for the Butcher hogging everybody's attention this last week, it probably would've been him you'd be hearing about."

  A little hesitant at any comparison of somebody with the Butcher, I had to ask, "Do I want to know?"

  "Oh, no, he's nothing like that. He's an adventurer from the Imperial Province, like us. One of the few outlanders I know who actually converted to Temple faith --- despite my best attempts to convert him back, I should say. Does some work for the Mages Guild, too. You might want to keep this bit to yourself, but I hear he's also helped the Morag Tong against the Cult of Mehrunes Dagon, too. The man's got his fingers in more sweetrolls than you'd think possible. Ask around your guild hall, when you go back to town. I'm sure they know him. If you can catch him when he's passing through Balmora, I'm sure he'd be more than glad to answer any questions you might have."

  "Well... thank you. That's actually perfect: an outlander convert. Somebody with a non-native perspective on the rituals and consecrations of ancestral remains... Oh, sorry, I almost got carried away there," I apologized.

  He smiled. "You're forgiven. I've got to head back to my post in a couple minutes, but if you have some free time sometime tomorrow or the day after, I'd love it if we could meet up again before I leave. Catch up a little better?"

  I didn't blush. Let this, my most personal record show, that I did not. Not even a little. Probably.

  "I think I would like that," I told him.