Tamriel Data:A Dunce in Morrowind, vol. 7

Book Information A Dunce in Morrowind, vol. 7
Added by	Tamriel Data
ID	T_Bk_DunceInMorrowindTR_V7
	75		3
Skill	Short Blade

A Dunce in Morrowind, vol. 7

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A Dunce in Morrowind, v7
by Frolja Silver-Blood

Now, we were sailing back to the mainland from Port Telvannis, across the boring waters of Morrowind, but the journey was quite long and also boring, and so we both decided to pass out on the deck as a result of all the concussions and alcohol poisoning we'd had over the past few days. When we both came to, we were inside the passengers cabin, with empty sacks thrown over us, and night had fallen.

Remyn stumbled to his feet off the crates of Strider urine, however, I, as a strong and powerful warrior, valiantly fell face first onto the floor to demonstrate my resilience to pain.

"Are you alright?" Remyn said.

"Ha! Never better!" I said as I fell over while trying to come to my feet again.

"No, I was talking to him." Remyn pointed to a mirror on the wall, which was quite silly - it's a mirror, not a window! - but I decided I would let his foolishness pass this time. Then he looked at me. "Actually, you... look fine." And he looked behind me to the crates I'd been dumped on. "Oh, I see."

I looked too - it said "Bug musk". Now, being a well educated man, I had no idea what on earth that was. "Hah! What on earth is bug musk anyway?"

"It's an aphrodisiac."

"Well, that explains the pain downstairs then!"

"Let us not discuss that."

"Say, elf, this has been quite a long trip. Weren't we meant to reach Bal Oyra before sundown?"

"...That's what we were told." Remyn said. "Well, not quite, I think the captain said 'quicker than a Caldera tavern crawl', But that's not possible, not in these conditions. The wind blowing from the south is very weak. Actually... I don't think we're moving at all." And then my companion looked at his hand and froze. I came over to look at his hand as well.

"It is a very nice hand after all." I said.

"Yes." Remyn said. "But more to the point, I'm wearing that enchanted ring that the Archmage bribed me with. It's supposed to glow in the presence of danger."

"Well, it must be broken then." I said confidently. "After all, there's no danger right now!"

"I think the fact that it's glowing says there is, in fact, danger."

"Ha! Being in danger at sea?" I said.

"You're aware that you nearly drowned at Fort Frostmoth because your boat was attacked by dreugh, right?"

"Just like on the Snowhaw-"

"Be quiet!" Remyn hissed. And he cautiously grabbed a chitin dagger from the ground. And so I carefully grabbed Niptickler, and we both exited the cabin onto the main deck. It was as lively as an elf party, meaning that it was totally deserted. There was no wind, only storm clouds above, and also the rest of the crew were floating dead in the water around us. The sails had been burned and frozen as if by magic.

And then we both saw it. A shimmering figure in the distance, who became stark and clear, their silhouette lit by a pale green aura, the calling card of illusion magic. The figure was dressed in darkness itself, and cast upon us both a spell of paralysis. Then the figure, with inhuman speed, threw us to the walls, and bound us against the rails of the boats, so that when his spell of paralysis wore off, we were still both quite helpless. As our vision adjusted to the dark, a new wind started blowing. Our assailant walked slowly towards us, bending down to meet our eye level, and here it became clear, this was a lizard man.

"How have you been enjoying the trip?" He said quietly.

"No," I said. 

"Don't talk back!" Remyn hissed to me, but the lizard man gently put a finger on his mouth, and held it. And held it. And held it.

"No," the lizard man said, "you will talk back. Both of you."

"But you're telling him to be quiet!"

"...You're right," the lizard man said, releasing the finger. "Forgive me for my caution, elf. But I'm wary of the trickery of your kind. Those of the house Hlaalu are so talented with the details of words that you can make the truth as dark as any lie."

"I assure you, sera, I won't say anything that would endanger my life." Remyn said.

"That is already a lie. But it's always so gratifying to hear your kind call me 'sera'." The assailant stood upright now, and took a few steps back. "I must admit... there's a certain poetic justice in this too. Do you like the ropes I bound you with? I got it from the slave market in Port Telvannis. They drain the Magicka and stamina of any who wear them. They were made for my marsh brothers and marsh sisters. Now they bind the master."

"I am of House Hlaalu sera... I do not keep slaves," Remyn said.

"How noble of you. But you are not the interesting one here." And the lizard man squatted down again, and faced me. "Quite the cover story you have."

"Eh?" I said.

"An educated future noble of the College of Winterhold. One who feigns intelligence, who speaks as a scholar but betrays himself to be a fool at every stage. I admire it. It disarms people, and it causes them to underestimate you. They overlook the guileless, you see. Normally, I think... the right way is to blend in, and to be uninteresting. But perhaps being famous for your idiocy works just as well."

"My boy, you just described the others at the College perfectly!" I said, laughing. "Why, they wouldn't be able to-"

"Enough. Dispense with the act."

"The act?" I said. 

"I am not describing the others at your College. It's yourself. Show me the real you."

"Well now, let's wait a moment! You think I'm a fool?" I said.

The lizard grinned, like a predator. "No. I don't. I know the real you... and you are no fool."

We both stared in silence for a moment.

"Sera, I assure you, this is the real him. It is not an act." Remyn said.

"That's because you're the true fool, elf." The lizard said. "Your stereotypes about the men of the north blind you to the true nature of the man of the..." He paused. "... the, right here. But I saw through him. The truth is, I suspected him from the start. I have been paying very close attention. Much closer attention than you realize. When you escaped from Ald'Ruhn, I thought I'd lost you, but it was just my luck that you washed up where you did."

The lizard stood up once more, brandishing his shortsword. "It was I, who fetched you out of the waters and brought you to Port Telvannis. Just like it was I who, using a few well placed Illusion spells, fooled you all in Ald'Ruhn into thinking it was still unsafe to leave the fighters guild building, when the blight storm was long over. When you both escaped me there, it was I who refused to give up the hunt, but... had no way of tracking you after your altercation in Caldera. And so, it was I who threatened every mage in Firewatch and Port Telvannis to shower me in magic to increase my fortune, and hone my luck. And now... here we are."

"Ahhh, I understand what's going on now!" I said. The flames of realization flickered on in my mind, burning away the uncooked meat of ignorance into the steak of knowing what was going on.

"You've always understood." The lizard said. "Now explain it to your ally."

"It's quite simple." I turned my head to Remyn, and lowered my gaze and voice. I took this with the seriousness it needed. "He's threatening us, and means us harm."

We were all silent.

"...Yes. And?" The lizard gestured.

"What do you mean 'and'?." 

And I saw anger rise in the lizard's face, but then it calmed. "...Interesting. I see how you've been able to use your false idiocy to disarm everyone up to now. It will not work with me of course, but I admire your technique."

"I've figured it out." Remyn said. "It was what I was afraid of."

"Tell me then, elf." The lizard man said.

"You're with the Morag Tong. You believe we stole your kill, but I assure you, nothing of the sort happened. It's been a big misunderstanding. Neither of us would ever interfere with official Tong business."

The lizard stared, then smiled. "Why would I join an elf organization to settle your foolish elf concerns? Your politics are your own, Hlaalu. Marsh children need not concern ourselves with them. The real Morag Tong assassin is right next to you."

Well, there was no one next to me, actually. Except Remyn, but as an educated man, I knew that House Hlaalu was not the Morag Tong, because they have different names. These are the little things you learn with higher education!

"As an agent of the Dark Brotherhood, it was my responsibility, this kill. That Telvanni councillor in Ald'Ruhn had already been contracted by another of those wizards. After all, even the Morag Tong tire of Telvanni politics. And now they're hiring truly insane bodyguards - why not let a writ or two slip through the tracks? And yet... Tholas somehow convinced your lot to take this one on, didn't he?" The lizard bent down, staring into my face. "The Telvanni pay their bodyguards to masquerade as guards, and deny writs, and imprison lawful assassins on fake charges, so they can be killed in secret later. Only a madman would cross the Tong like that. How unfortunate that all the Telvanni magisters are. And yet... the Tong took this one on, didn't they?"

"Hah! That's exactly what an elf guild would do, isn't it?" I said.

And he chuckled. "And oh yes, I was there, in Tholas' manor. You don't even recognize me, do you elf? I also suffered through the same insipid Skyrim references as you did. But don't feel too bad, Tholas didn't even recognize I wasn't his usual slave either. But the evidence was quite conclusive. It confirmed my suspicions. My subtle, marsh trained eye sees the details in the shadows that your kind is blind to. This axe..." The lizard picked up Niptickler where I'd dropped it. He turned it over in his hand, admiring the enchanted sheen. "This is the hub of our little wheel smoking gun. You both recognized it. There's no other explanation. You, Morag Tong, took a kill that belonged to the Brotherhood."

"Sera... I understand how easy it is to think this. But we didn't even have this axe before now. This axe had been stolen from the Nord by a witch."

"Hah! Wrong!" I said. Remyn seemed to accept death.

"You surrender the charade?"

"It's pronounced charaday, actually. But my axe was never stolen by a witch!"

"Then the Hlaalu lies."

"It was stolen when I stayed with a comely lass, who camped in a tent full of skulls and potions and studied magic, and was feared by the townsfolk."

The lizard stared at me.

Nobody spoke.

"...What?"

"That's right. She must have been robbed by someone entirely unrelated. Poor girl."

The lizard looked at Remyn, as if for sympathy, but found none.

"It was impossible for us to have committed this killing. The Nord was naked when I found him, and that axe was most certainly not with him. At the time of the assassination, both of us had passed out. When we escaped, he didn't head for a guild hall, he didn't have a writ of execution to present, we accidentally ended up in the Deshaan plains. Nobody would voluntarily go to the Deshaan plains."

"Except an elf!" I joked. The lizard man smiled like Hircine, but if Hircine was visiting his mother-in-law. Or something. I don't know. He gripped my axe tight,still admiring it.

"I observed you entering Ald'Ruhn. You had a pack guar with you. Your companion was clothed. It would be trivial to hide the axe in the guar pack."

"And then how did we get it inside, Sera? We rushed in when the blight storm started."

"I am not the judge. I am the executioner."

"But if you kill us, and your true target lives, your contract will be unfulfilled. Sera, please think. How did the axe get inside the fighter's guild?"

And here, the lizard did think for a moment. "I confess my curiosity. Well, Nord, how did Niptickler arrive in the Fighters Guild?"

"That's a good question!" I said to the lizard, admiring the quality of his question.

Silence.

"Ah, you want an answer?"

"...Yes."

"Well, it's simple. Obviously, whoever stole Niptickler from that woman whose camp I stayed in took it to Old Run."

"He was very naked when I found him, Sera. Very."

And the lizard looked at my axe in frustration, gripping it as if he wanted it to shatter, his face trembling... and finally, calm overcame him. "You're of small imagination, elf."

"Pardon?" 

"It's most simple. You found him naked. Eventually, he got dressed. Obviously at some point your eyes must have been averted, and he would've been able to smuggle the axe into your pack from a hidden location, perhaps behind a rock or something. When the time came to get to Ald'Ruhn, he must have smuggled it while you were distracted out of the pack, disguised it amongst the rest of the fighters guild weapons, and used it once everyone else was asleep. And that's just one of many ways."

"He's got a good point." I said to Remyn, who tried his best, again, to pretend I did not exist. "Say, maybe I could ask you a question now?"

"...You may ask." He said with great reluctance.

"If you knew everyone was asleep, why didn't you take the kill yourself?" I said.

"...To quote a certain future noble of Winterhold, 'that is a good question'." The lizard was mirthless. "But you're not in any position to ask anything of me."

"Why? Are we in Savos Manor?"

The lizard buried his face into his hands, muffling his screams, then brandished Niptickler directly at me. "Enough! I will use the weapon you dishonored me with to destroy you as well. I remember what the mages guild said of this weapon... it paralyzes, poisons, and traps the soul of the one that it strikes, and its wielder's charisma is enhanced!"

"Well, you can never listen to anyone from the bloody Mages Guild!" I scoffed. "You know the Imperial Mages Guild has nothing on the cleverfolk of the College of Winterhold. And after all, I, as an educated future noble of said College, can tell you they made a very simple, easy mistake!"

"...And what mistake is that?"

"It does everything you said. But it does all of it to the wielder."

"...You're lying."

"No I'm not. It just does it very slowly, that's all!"

"But that's impossible! It would be stupid to have a weapon that harms the one who uses it! Nobody would do that, because it's so stupid! Why would anyone use a stupid weapon like that?!" 

Well to tell the truth to you, at this point, I just started laughing at the small mindedness of the assassin. After all, that was when he collapsed to the deck, paralyzed, and unable to let go of Niptickler - so really, it should be obvious why someone would use a weapon like that after all!

• • • • 
        

Publisher's Note

Owing to its origin as a series of tavern skits, the Dunce often references events related to the College of Winterhold, where the tale was written. Niptickler's enchantment has showed up in several tales and songs ever since the axe was first enchanted and tested in the spring months of 419. Its effects are exactly as written, to the great dismay of its creator, one of the great influences for the character of the "Dunce".

A skit elaborating the difference between Morag Tong and Dark Brotherhood has been woven into this chapter. It originally involved a future murder victim and two assassins arguing about political boundaries. It has fallen out of favor recently, for unrelated reasons.