AKA Eddie The Rat

Re-re-replaying Morrowind, I’ve realized that it gives Fast Eddie a very different context depending on whether you finish the House Telvanni questline BEFORE contracting corpus, versus after contracting corpus.

In the past, I did it after contracting corpus, so it went like so:

I’m some random loser doing quests for Caius, and I am not (yet) a member of House Telvanni. Caius mentions Eddie as being one of his informants, and an (unreliable) contact for the inside-scoop on Telvanni affairs. I eventually join House Telvanni, and I choose Eddie as my Mouth, because we both have a history together of working as informants for Caius and the Blades, so there’s less chance of him blackmailing me because if he outs me I’d out him. Mutually Assured Career Destruction. Eddie is ambitious with where he wants to go in House Telvanni, so he probably wouldn’t risk his own career by outing Steen.

This latest play-through, though:

I barely delivered the package to Caius, and then ran off and became Archmagister of House Telvanni, and screwed around with a bunch of other stuff (Twin Lamps, Thieves Guild, etc). I pick Fast Eddie as my Mouth on Aryon’s recommendation. Eddie serves me as my Mouth for about a year or so, and I have no knowledge of his involvement with the Blades. Eventually I get bored and come back to Caius and start doing his quests again. Eventually Caius tells me that Eddie is one of his informants. BETRAYAL!!! Now it seems like Caius didn’t trust me, so he bought off my close protege to keep tabs on me and report back periodically! And all the while Eddie never mentions a word about this! Hey, I give Aryon *my* undying loyalty (even above loyalty to House Telvanni or anybody else), so I expect no less from my own protege!

This, combined with the fact that Eddie always asks for me to help him with his chores (the chores he’s supposed to be doing *for* me), makes me think my relationship with my Mouth isn’t as great as it could be. Aryon thought he had it bad, with a protege that left her junk all over his tower, well at least he didn’t have disrespectful traitorous Eddie.

I (the player) actually do like Fast Eddie and the things he fetches for me are pretty spectacular, but the order of events in this play-through means that he is not in good standing in this Nerevarine’s eyes, alas.

Also, you guys, I like all those comics and drawings of the Telvanni Masters bickering as much as the next person. I LOVE them. They’re my weakness. But let’s face it: council meetings would just be all the Mouths bickering on BEHALF of their Masters. The Telvanni Masters are never all together by design. Partly because they DGAF about doing politician work so they’d rather their representatives handle everything, and also partly because some Master would likely slay some other Master every other meeting, and the Masters don’t want to get slain. Hence, I’ve only drawn the Mouths. So there.

Also, I’d imagine this might not be the first time one of the Masters attacked their Mouth in the middle of a Council session. I don’t think that would be *common*, all I’m saying is, I’m sure it’s happened at least once before this.

Rat Cafe

Yesterday, Doc and I went to the “Rat Cafe” in the San Francisco Dungeon (over at Fisherman’s Wharf). I love rats, so I was pretty excited about it.

Meeting rats at the rat cafe

When I mentioned it to my brother, he actually was very curious as to how it would be accomplished, since (he explained) rats are not nearly as trainable as cats (in reference to the cat cafes). I told him I did not know how, but I’d find out!

Well, the way they did it was they had loads of volunteers and they held the rats and would let you pet them. The volunteers from Rattie Ratz were super sweet and I could tell they super loved rats! If a rat even seemed slightly scared from all the people, they would put the rat away so it could chill out. I really respected that. They were also excited about sharing their rat knowledge with us.

I got to pet lots of rats, but I didn’t get to hold any or really play with any. I understand why, but that was still a bit disappointing.

We also had to buy tickets to “The Dungeon” in order to buy tickets to see the rats, but I kind of wanted to just see the rats and then go home. But Doc insisted that we do the dungeon because we technically paid for it. Well, it was kind of funny because it was very obvious that everybody was in the same boat. I could tell that everybody there was just super into rats, and didn’t give a toss about the dungeon. I think a lot of locals. Probably a very different crowd from what the dungeon performers were used to, also.

The dungeon was not what I was expecting, I thought it would be a self-guided museum thing, but it was actually an hour-long interactive performance piece with loads of actors, costumes, makeup, etc. I had no idea!

The actors were very good and professional, but I do kind of wish that we didn’t *have* to buy the tickets to the performance in order to see the rats. I wish it was an option.

Also, since it was the first day it was open there was loads of media there, all wanting to do their cutesy local news stories on the rat cafe. It was kind of obnoxious to vie for rat attentions with some aggressive cameraman trying to get The Shot with their massive rig. But hey, it’s a job, I don’t hold it against them. I just wish we went on a day when there wasn’t also a ton of media there.

Enchanted Pants

Steen usually ends up taking all her clothes off right in front of the enchanter

Enchanting in Morrowind is totally obnoxious and takes forever to get any good at it. And I never feel like making any enchantments except for the super awesome ultra the-professionals-will-charge-you-100,000-drakes-to-do-it sorts of enchantments. Sooooo I just go to the professionals. I’m also the sort of person that only ever captures Golden Saint souls (or better), because everything else I consider “not worth my time.’

Usually I visit Galar Rothan for my enchanting services, because I spend a lot of time in Sadrith Mora and also because it is a shitton of money so I need that Telvanni discount.

So any time I visit an enchanter, I usually end up taking off all my clothes and don’t even notice that I’m naked until hours later. It makes sense in a way, you got to give your item over to the enchanter for them to enchant it, so if you’re wearing it you have to remove it. But I wish there was more of an indication that you’re actually taking your clothes off when putting them on the enchanting screen – even if you just want to see how many charges your shirt can carry or want to get a quote, off it goes!

He charged me 50,000 drakes for those pants, by-the-way. This makes me wonder a lot about the economics of enchanters.

I mean, 50,000 drakes! You could buy, like, 10 houses for that on Vvardenfell! That is many orders of magnitude more money than anybody else gets paid for anything.

Do they usually not get any commissions for years, but then some wealthy eccentric Telvanni noble (like Steen) comes by and pays some astronomical fee for a super powerful enchantment? And then the enchanter lives on that for a few years until another wealthy noble comes by?

Or, like, are enchanters all super filthy rich? Like, do they just rake it in? In which case, I feel like if I lived in Morrowind, I’d be an enchanter. Because it is a low-risk occupation (no fighting monsters or bandits or anything), and the client has to provide all the materials and reagents for the enchantment themselves, so really the enchanter has no investment either. It is all pure profit. Of course it probably takes years to master enchanting, but once you do, you just rake in the dough.

OOORRR maybe enchanters mostly just live off of much simpler enchantments, commissioned by poorer folk, and it is enough to get by on, and since Steen is so filthy rich she doesn’t really have a grasp on reality, so she just thinks up the most extravagant and difficult enchantment possible and pays for it no matter the price, but this event is super rare (as there is only one Steen), and therefore this event is kind of like winning the lottery for an enchanter?

Yep, I think about the economics of enchanters a lot. And I still think that would be my occupation if I for-real lived in Morrowind. I would not be a travelling adventurer, I tell you, that is a very high-risk, high-mortality occupation. I mean, yea, it is the one way to rake in even more cash than enchanting, but adventurers also die allll the time. So, not worth it.