I'm replaying Enderal, a total conversion for Skyrim. I found it well-made, with a gripping story, great characters, and excellent music. I got a whole bunch of mods for my next playthrough, and one adds in a journal one can write in to record thoughts, events, etc. I'll be keeping this journal up as I play, and I figured it would be fun to share it here.
Heartfire, 14th, 4E 8234
Well, someone’s certainly feeling vengeful. It took me way too long to track down the first of these places marked on a pretty piss-poor interpretation of Ark; it was mainly luck, honestly. I found a drain in the Foreign Quarter big enough for me to fit through pretty easily. It led to a pretty spacious sewer. After a bit of crawling and ignoring the smell of the shit and piss in the water, I found a door.
Behind it was a corpse locked in a cage, surrounded by spoiled food. On the corpse was a note, handwritten, probably under duress, considering how erratic the handwriting is, that talked about the woman’s crimes – she was an assassin, a contract killer who killed indiscriminately for coin. They’re a dime-a-dozen, but this one must have been particularly ruthless to earn herself a fate like this: locked up in a cage to starve to death while surrounded by food. That’s pretty cold.
Apparently someone’s out to wipe out some of the scum of the city. They call themselves the “Bone Judge”. At the end of the note was a bit of a riddle, a sentence with a bunch of letters missing. I haven’t any idea what it says, but I reckon if there are any more letters like this, they’ll have what I’m looking for.
Here’s the big question: what does Jespar have to do with this? The package I picked up was meant for him, so I’m guessing these letters were as well. I expect whatever this phrase at the bottom of the note is will make no sense to me, but perfect sense to him. I guess we’ll find out.
And here I thought the last one was bad. After another two hours of searching (someone really needs to work on drawing fucking landmarks), I stumbled across another body – well, what was left of it. The skin was all melted off, and the bones were submerged in this bubbling liquid. According to the letter left in the same vein as the last victim, this one was a slaver – a real bastard, by the looks of it.
This Bone Judge seems to be pulling an Andrasta. But unless they’ve got a really high body count, it’s not like they’ll do much difference. I’m certainly shedding no tears over slaver scum, but this is just gruesome and it seems more self-indulgent than anything else. There were some more letters at the end of the note, but I still don’t have the whole picture.
There is one thing, though: the bubbling liquid I mentioned was acid. Acid isn’t easy to get a hold of, from my three hours of experience going back and forth through Ark and the Undercity trying to see if there’s anyone with either a stock of, or know-how to create, acid, with no luck. That implies that whoever this is made it themselves, which means they have a lot of alchemical experience; alchemical experience that comes with being one of the Apothecarii. Adila, Jespar’s sister, was one of them. The package was meant for him. It isn’t too difficult to put two and two together.
On a completely unrelated note, however, as I was walking the coast, I crossed paths with Milbert Foxhands. He’s a merchant I did a favor for a day after coming into Ark – he wanted me to get back the key for his bank vault from his addict sister in the Undercity. She ended up kidnapping him and dragging him to the ruins of their old village to kill him, and I had to put her down. I don’t even know how to describe how much I hated myself after that. That whole day was shitty, looking back.
But we walked past one another, which was surprising, because usually he keeps to himself and his little stall in the marketplace. I haven’t ever actually noticed him doing anything else. But the path he was walking leads back to Foamville. I think he’s going to mourn for his sister there. I don’t know how long he’s been going back and forth. It looks like he really did care about her after all.
Anyways, I’ve got one more of these clues to find. It looks like it’s somewhere north of Ark. The sun’s starting to set, but there’s still time in the day. I can’t spend too long dallying, not with the Nehrimese mobilizing. We’ve only got a bit more than a week left before hell breaks loose. I’m not going to waste any of it.
I don’t know why I expected this last clue to be any less gruesome. This one was a child trafficker. Another real bastard. When I found him, he was chained to the floor and nothing but bone, his flesh picked clean off by a pack of rats that Alice and I put down. If I hadn’t seen sights like that before, I probably would have thrown up right there.
But with the body, I found my last clue in the letter. The broken letters altogether form a riddle: “Knock knock, who’s there? Come on in, if only you dare.” I have absolutely no idea what that means, but I have a feeling Jespar might. I need to track him down. Hopefully he’s back at the Dancing Nomad.
Well, he definitely knew what that phrase was. He and Adila would use it when they were little, as a bit of a code. She’s the one behind all this. Jespar doesn’t want to believe it. It’s the first time I’ve actually seen him ignore the evidence and hold on to a conviction he knows isn’t true. But I can understand his doubt.
According to him, his sister is peaceful and wouldn’t hurt a fly. But if she has one of the Black Stones… not only would that give her the power to bring down the criminals she went after, but it would probably drive her to this sort of violence. It all makes sense.
But Jespar doesn’t want to see that. He’s already perturbed enough as it is. When I found him, he asked me an interesting question: say a father beats his daughter constantly, and when he dies, she marries someone who exhibits the same qualities as him. He seems kindhearted at first, but then he starts yelling, and then he starts beating. Jespar asked me who’s responsible for the situation: the father, the husband, or the woman herself for choosing him.
It’s a tough question. Sometimes people hide things deep down and you can’t expect them until they surface. And it always ties back to how someone was raised. If they were beaten and abused, and they never figure out how to get over it, the only thing they know how to do is beat and abuse others in turn. It’s a vicious cycle.
I told Jespar I didn’t have an answer, and I really don’t. He didn’t either. At first he blamed the father for being the first link in the chain, but then he encountered the same quandary I did as to whether it’s just because the father was raised a certain way.
Naturally, it’s all a conceptual question. I think our talk on the Pyrean train about family is what prompted him to think about it. He blames his father for how his stalwart conviction destroyed them all. But when I really think about it, recently Jespar’s surrounded himself with people who have a stalwart conviction of their own; it’s been almost a month since we met and he’s stuck around for reasons he probably doesn’t even understand. Maybe he’s starting to realize that.
I don’t know. I just hope that this all works out. If Adila’s really behind all of this, it’s probably because she’s got one of the Black Stones, and if she does, there’s no telling how dangerous she’ll be. Jespar wants to head to Duneville. He thinks that maybe there’ll be something at their old hideout, based on the hints.
I’m going with him. We’re taking the Myrad after I get my armor from Halda, first thing in the morning. We’ll find Adila, and we’ll bring her back, even if we have to rip the Black Stone from her hands. Jespar’s already got enough weighing him down. The last thing he needs is another loss.
Link to Enderal. It's important to note that the writing above is based almost entirely on the story created by an extraordinarily talented group of modders. Credit is due to them, not to me. I would also be remiss to not credit Arcones for the idea of using a parchment-looking background to add some flavor.
