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.

Sworn Duty: Final

So, obviously, I was suuuper interested in saving Emperor Uriel Septim VII, and I found the opening quests in Oblivion suuuper compelling.

JUST KIDDING I DIDN’T LIFT A FINGER TO SAVE THE EMPEROR! HAR HAR!

There are actually things I like about Oblivion – a lot of the hotkeys and controls are much better and more intuitive than Morrowind or even Skyrim. And yet… I just never got as into it like I did Morrowind or Skyrim. It wasn’t for lack of trying, though. I think the two main things working against this game are:

  1. I hate the Empire and I haaaaate colonialism, and Oblivion takes place in Cyrodil. Barf.
  2. Everybody is way too uncanny-valley-ugly and I can’t stand it

Ayup.

Sworn Duty

OK so for once I decided not to do a Morrowind comic. I’ve started working on an Oblivion comic instead!

Let’s just say, the tutorial portion of Oblivion left me feeling… unenthusiastic about everything. Not to mention everybody was just so uncanny-valley ugly that I couldn’t even look at the characters without throwing up. So Oblivion-Steen was sassy, rude, bored, and didn’t even lift a finger to try and defend the Emperor.

That couldn’t dampen the emperor’s cheer, however, oh noo. He was still as chipper as ever while he yammered on to Steen about portents and dreams and destiny. Steen told him on several occasions to “can it,” because she didn’t care about gods or fate. The guards snapped at Steen to show more respect to the emperor, and she said she didn’t care because his government put her in prison. Frustratingly, the emperor told his guards to lay off Steen because he liked her because he had a dream about her. Neither the guards nor Steen understood why he put up with her while keeping such a sunny disposition.

When the cultist burst in and killed him, Steen didn’t even look up from cleaning her nails. Unsurprisingly, the guard (correctly) guessed that she was a professional assassin. Welp, I guess we know why she was in prison in the first place.

To be honest, if it wasn’t for that weird horny guy in the cell across the hall always hooting and hollering at her, Steen probably would have asked the guards just to put her back in her cell. Although, I guess her cell now has a gaping hole in the wall, so they probably wouldn’t put her in the same cell.