Doc and I had read somewhere that the pilgrims in Plymouth would not have had flour or wheat because they hadn’t been able to grow it yet, and therefore they made do with using a gourd as a “pie shell” instead of a traditional pie shell, and the claim was that this was the earliest pumpkin pie – essentially a custard-filled pumpkin.
Sounds reasonable to me, but I didn’t do much checking on these claims. Mostly I was interested in making a custard-filled pumpkin because that sounded delicious. SO WE DID.
It worked out pretty well, except for when I had the “clever idea” of using the pumpkin “hat” to cover it for presentation’s sake, and I put it on before cooking it and lots of the custard spilled out and that is why the custard isn’t filled to the brim of the pumpkin 🙁
But by golly, that custard filled pumpkin had a hat!
And I think the slices looked really pretty!
But if you try this, maybe consider not putting the hat on until after the custard has set. Or maybe not at all.
It was very yummy, like pumpkin crème brûlée. Doc mentioned that he might enjoy it with some spices on it, like cinnamon/nutmeg/cloves (the usual pumpkin assortment), but of course I countered that we first had to try it the way it ORIGINALLY WAS. As you might recall when I made Sambocade, it didn’t matter how good it tasted so long as it literally was a thing a medieval person ate at least once. Same dealio here. Except in this case, it is… 17th century people instead of medieval people. STILL.
It was a lot of fun, and I’m grateful that we actually went for something closer to an allegro moderato speed, unlike other modern performances of Bach that are… blazingly fast!
Lately, I’ve just wanted to dissolve into Morrowind forever. Over time, my Nerevarine has undergone an interesting transformation. When she started, she was ultra-moralist, and would never (could never) kill a non-hostile NPC. She was also incredibly charming, so almost no NPCs were hostile (and the number of hostiles kept going down as she got more charming).
I attempted to follow the main plot, but pretty much right out of the gate Caius told me to run around doing other things to “establish cover” because, oh yea, I’m an agent for The Blades now. Yeah, right. I hate the Empire, I hate imperialism, and I hate The Blades. So she just said, “Thanks for springing me from prison, suckers!” and ran away to do her own thing.
“She’s establishing her cover quite well, even I am starting to believe she doesn’t really work for The Blades.”
I’m not really sure what kind of a plan this was. Like, “Hey, I know we’re the Empire that had you imprisoned and deported to Morrowind, but we were hoping you could work with us a bit here…”
Along her quest to charm everybody into doing her bidding, she kept meeting people trying to actively recruit her to work for one of the great noble houses of Morrowind, particularly House Hlaalu. Those guys must be really hurting for talent. She mostly ignored all the invitations and did her own thing. Until she traveled to the east coast of Vvardenfell and found the Telvanni.
House Hlaalu were recruiting hard, but they’re Imperial sympathizers and the Telvanni were just so out there that she had to join them. She had heard of the Telvanni here and there on the west coast, but on the east coast where most of the ranking nobles had their towers things were just unreal. The first person she met in a Telvanni tower was some guy who, apparently, created clones of himself to make a bunch of daughters. I mean, come on. Telvanni are just absolutely ridiculous.
Her patron in the house, of course, would be Master Aryon because he was supposedly the cool new young liberal hip Telvanni councilor who would be open to sponsoring an outlander like her.
So she set her Mark spell right in the middle of Master Aryon’s living room for convenience’s sake. Because she had to constantly report to him for various House Telvanni chores, and it turned out to also be a convenient way to access everywhere else in Vvardenfell:
Wherever you are, cast Recall, wind up interrupting Aryon’s dinner or whatever
Cast Divine Intervention, end up in Wolverine Hall
Depending on where you want to go, either Levitate over to Sadrith Mora to get to the Telvanni Council House or go inside Wolverine Hall to the local chapter of the Mages Guild and use their teleportation services to go to whatever major urban center you’re trying to get to
This works great because Recall to Master Aryon’s house fills in the notorious gaps in traveling in and around Telvanni headquarters, and Wolverine Hall connects you to all the other usual fast travel.
Alas, as always happens in any location where you’ve set Mark, Steen (my character) gradually offloaded more and more of her expensive junk onto Master Aryon’s floor.
“Steen, do you really think it is appropriate to teleport into my living room unannounced and proceed to throw all your junk on the floor?”
“But Master Aryon, this Daedric Katana is worth 50,000 golden drakes!”
“Well, sell it, then! Don’t throw it on my floor!”
“But nobody haaaaaas 50,000 golden drakes!”
Sometimes I wonder if Master Aryon didn’t regret taking Steen on as his pupil. But he was always super supportive and complimentary towards her and her achievements, so… who knows? But you have to imagine that Steen must have teleported into his home at all manner of inappropriate times… like if he had a romantic guest over, there’s no way Steen could have known while she was collecting junk in the bowels of a Daedric temple. She’d just be, “Op! Cleared this dungeon, and I’m over-encumbered, so I’d best pop on over to Aryon’s place…”
“STEEN!”
“Heya Master Aryon… and heya Ma’am… don’t mind me, I’m just going to stash some stuff here…”
Steen throws a ton of junk onto the floor and then vanishes.
Arron’s guest tries to make things less awkward.
“Your pupil seems… talented…”
Arron sighs.
“Indeed.”
But I didn’t notice how Master Aryon seemed to be slowly grooming Steen to be more and more willing to outright murder Redoran and Hlaalu nobles. It started off with helping several Telvanni nobles whose towers were under siege by Hlaalu forces simply because they practiced necromancy or other such minor offenses. Well, Steen wasn’t going to stand for that! She doesn’t believe that a dead body is anything but a lump of mass, so who cares what necromancers do?
But then after rescuing several Telvanni-under-siege by Redorans and Hlaalu, Master Aryon started giving Steen quests like, “This Redoran noble is building without a permit! Better murder him!” and Steen was like, “Oh, uuh, yeah! Those Redoran sure are getting out of control!”
Sadly, this a common sight in Redoran manors now-a-days.
And before I knew it, Steen was just levitating down into the centers of Redoran manors, and straight up murdering Redoran nobles in their beds. Because they were building without a permit. Isn’t that something you usually report to… Department of Building Inspection or something? Murder seems a bit extreme. But here we are. Murdering Redorans for increasingly trivial reasons.
Maybe I don’t feel so bad for those Redoran nobles. But I suppose I didn’t quite realize how feudal and how openly-at-war the noble houses of Morrowind were before doing the quests for a noble house.
Master Aryon was supportive of Steen becoming the new Archmagister of The Great House Telvanni, and he felt like they were overdue for a turnover in the Telvanni leadership. Which, of course, would require murdering the current Archmagister, Gothren. Unfortunately, after Steen became Archmagister, Master Aryon became emotionally guarded, distant, cold, and subservient towards her. Which was upsetting because he had previously been the closest character to Steen in the game (and yes this includes Caius). But Steen’s the Archmagister now, and it is lonely at the top.
Steen liked it better when Aryon would tell her just exactly what he thought about her stashing her stuff at his place… as opposed to now where he feels like he has to grovel and go along with it 🙁
She sort of wishes that she never became Archmagister, but what can you do?
Also, I have no idea why the Redoran or Hlaalu would nominate Steen as Hortator at this point unless it was… out of abject terror of her or something.
