A Traveler's Journal - Colovia

[Much of the journal is faded or burnt, leaving only parts of one entry legible]

… and with that business behind me, my voyage would bring me to the western parts of the Imperial province: Colovia. Called the "breeding pen of Nibenese kings" in jest. Something I knew to keep to myself as I passed through the gates of Chorrol.

[Attached fragment] … while many kings came from the West, they are quickly assimilated by the Nibenese…

Were it not for the temperature and lack of snow, one could be mistaken that one was in a Nordic Hold, rather than a Cyrodilic County. Its people are tall and imposing and every statesman’s uniform consists of some of the finest leather armor Tamriel has to offer(or so they would say). Justice is brutal and swift, barely more civilized than the horrors described in the time of Rislav the Righteus. Duels to first blood, or worse, appear to be common, at least here in the mountain county. I hear them invoke rules for the duels from all the Colovian Counties though. I am glad my companion knows to watch his tongue; I’m not in strict need of another pair of leather boots…

… and at the castle. The heirs to the throne train with the local Legion troops, as if just another soldier in the mix. An officer, clearly annoyed that I dared question him during drills, said all Colovian Counts and Countesses were in the Legion…

[Margin]I don’t think I heard Akatosh’s name uttered once in my visit to Colovia. Shor and Kyne, on the other hand, I swore I could hear all the time.

… as I sat beneath the Great Oak. Y'ffre has surely blessed the city, for His voice can surely be heard by all the faithful who meditate beneath its branches. A local wise(insane?) man said it was nothing like the Gildergreen, once a sapling of…

[Fragmented attachment]… so, behold honorable Olaf One-Eye! For bringing peace to the Land of Man, I gift your city with a sapling! Go forth and tell that I, the Eldest, bless you in Kyne’s name…

The Colovians have a curious relationship to Skyrim, the Fatherland, it seems. There is no secret that they consider themselves the better people, more civilized and the superior soldiers. And perhaps they are right. The Ruby Ranks have long benefited from Colovian discipline and muscle.

But the ways of the Nords, their religion and martial nature, is held in high regard here. More than the Nibenese customs. They see themselves as Children of Skyrim, in a sense. Heirs to the Fatherland. It is only to be expected; Nordic bloods runs deep here, from commoner to the count and his nobles. I wonder if even they can tell the difference, were it not for the accent many Nords have. I’ve noticed they don’t like me much. I think it’s because I am Bosmer…

[Fragmented attachment]… as the Five Year War broke out on the Valenwood/Elseweyr border, the Colovians sealed their own. They did not want refugees flooding into their kingdoms…

… Skingrad is not what it once was. Much of the farmland has been restored since the Great War, but there is an air of unease. Most of the buildings out around the city are temporary, even now, and everyone who can returns in behind the walls of what was once the Jewel of Old Colovia. Only the poorest of the workers live in the provided housing by the fields. The fear of Aldmeri soldiers marching out from the forests of Valenwood to the south is still very real here. The vineyards aren’t what they used to either. Even with the Legion guarding the south…

[Fragmented attachment] To His Honor, Count Adrian Valga, Legate of the West Weald Legion, 4E94.

… the restoration of Kvatch goes well, all things considered, but I fear the city will never be the same…

… seems that there have been many Khajiit coming to this city lately. They are dissatisfied with the Empire. They say the Dominion is slowly pushing its borders into their lands. The cats are afraid they too may be subject to a coup soon and hoped the Empire would do more to protect them…

… hopefully you can spare some men, as we cannot…

… Anvil is strife with fear. Its citizens remember how easy it was for the Dominion to move through their lands and they fear that their city may receive more attention should hostilities break out again. The Count decided to remarry, surely out of a sense of desperation: the daughter of the Count and Countess of Kvatch is fleshy and rumors say she has more hair than a man. But Kvatch is the only city close and the alliance might save…

… and with that, I am glad to see Colovia left behind me. While not as unpleasant as I imagined it would be(as long as I kept to myself. I’ll carry the scar for being too curious for the rest of my life), Colovia is too close to the Dominion to settle down in. It will be on the front lines when the war resumes…

Let's Review: The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind

After a short post about safe spaces, what could possibly be more relevant than a review of a video game? And not just any video game, but one which the 15^th anniversary is next year! Well, okay, with the upcoming release of the Special Edition for Skyrim, I am sure those of us interested in the game will end up discussing the merits of it compared to Morrowind. It happened with Oblivion and it happened the first time Skyrim was released, and will likely happen with every Elder Scroll release until the end of times. So let’s look at this mysterious game from the early 2000s.

As with any Elder Scrolls game, I am at a loss where to even begin pulling strings when attempting to untangle the morbidly obese ball of yarn. Do I start with the story and see where it goes or do I look at the good and bad? I think I just answered my own question there, as the story and world-building is the good. And I rather end it on a low-note. So let’s begin with the story.

Story

Now, if you are one of those people who will be furious about getting a soon-to-be 15 year old game spoiled for you, you should probably skip this part of the review. Don’t worry, I will make a new heading when I begin to talk about the world-building. Consider yourself spoiler-warned.

The basic outline of the main story line in Morrowind is really quite simple. The Emperor has an obsession with a prophecy involving the “Nerevarine”, an ancient Dunmer hero reborn, and has scoured his prisons for someone sort-of matching the role. You are one of these people, so you are sent to Vvardenfell, an island in Morrowind, and you’re sort-of-but-not-really expected to try to fulfil this prophecy. I say “not really” because, despite having his Imperial Legion and a host of spies in most settlements, the Emperor never uses any of that to try to force you, should you (as I usually do) simply ignore this request from the most powerful man on the continent. Thinking back on it, I get this feeling that he never actually expected you to be the Nerevarine and that he might have been in a charitable mood and felt like pardoning someone.

In either case, you have to learn you are the Nerevarine, then are not, then are again before it is all over, all the while a mysterious man from the past of the Tribunal Gods spreads his Divine Disease and the Sixth House Cult to the corners of Vvardenfell. It is a long sightseeing tour of the island, where you will meet a lot of Dunmer with opinions on you and what degree of fraud they are dealing with. And it’s good.

The story is on a pretty slow boil where most of the stuff goes to gathering information for the Emperor’s local, elderly Spymaster and to pass the tests of the Nerevarine for the three Great Houses and the four Ashlander tribes. As a side-note here, they added a neat little detail for this (admittedly tedious on the 3^rd or 4^th play through) part of the main questline. If you are over level 20 and has 50 or higher Reputation, you get to skip the tests. Because being a celebrity apparently means I get to just declare myself the reincarnated Nerevar, no proof necessary.

After you are the Nerevarine (for realsies this time, no takebacks or anything), you have to gather some magical stuff so that you can sever the Main Baddie’s connection to some other magical stuff. You talk to a god who is kinda responsible for why the Main Baddie is so bad and go on to kill the guardians of the magical stuff you need.

Those of you following this will probably have had at least one voice in your head shouting “This is a traditional Hero’s Journey in a pretentious haircut! What can possibly be so good about that overused trope?” and the answer is pretty damn simple.

The Pretentious Haircut

As you will learn later in this review, I can’t stop myself from hating on most of the stuff that is in this game, so why do I hundreds of hours on this game in the last 5 years alone, not to even try to figure out how many hours between 2002 and now?

What Morrowind does best is creating a world with scale and identity and nuance and probably some other buzzwords that probably don’t mean what you think they mean. Most quests, be they in the main story line or otherwise, tell you something about how things are in Vvardenfell. You’ll learn who are friends and enemies, how modern Imperial culture is mixing with the orthodox Dunmer culture, what role the Temple and Great Houses play in the politics and any other thing you could want to know.

Morrowind is really where the Elder Scrolls series as most people know it began. Between Daggerfall and Morrowind, the adventure game Redguard began to add changes to the lore to make Tamriel more of its own thing, but it was first in Morrowind we saw those changes expanded upon.

I know I am going through this aspect of the game really quickly, but I think the world-building is something one has to experience for oneself. Also, I have stuff I want to complain about. But the main thing to take from this review is that, for a lot of us, the world-building will forever excuse the faults Morrowind has as a game. Yes, that was a TL;DR in the middle of the review. Livin’ on the edge, yo! Do people even say “yo” anymore? Fuck…

Gameplay

Holy Blessings of the Triune God of Man! By Hjalti, Zurin and Wulfharth, say it isn’t so!

Ten points if you know who I am talking about above. But, seriously, the gameplay of Morrowind has not exactly aged like fine wine. More like milk. And I wouldn’t confidently say that it wasn’t past its expiration date when it came out on the store shelves in the first place. Your movements are clunky, you get stuck on seemingly everything and combat is a fucking chore. At the beginning of the game you will probably think this is a difficult game, but it is just tricking you. While starting off on a nice uphill struggle, you will soon wonder why it was replaced with slave boys feeding you grapes. Magic, while offering a great deal of spell variety, is clunky as fuck with its cast times and it will take most of your magical energy if you want to kill anything larger than a rat. Stealth is a joke and all three main playstyles has a point of no return, when any challenge to be had has to be sought out in the DLC areas of Bloodmoon and Tribunal, which constitute maybe 15% of the total game content.

Character stuff

So who is the player? Whoever you want them to be. Within certain limits anyway. With 10 races, 2 genders (something for you SJWs to get your panties in a twist about, I’m sure), 13 birthsigns, 21 predefined classes and the option to create your own, there is a lot to choose from. Well, in theory anyway. Most classes with a shared main focus will play largely the same and the classes do not offer anything unique to your character. They just decide which skills start with higher values and determine your level. You can still master any non-class skill.

Between having to upgrade three of your eight attributes every level, bonus points to them depending on skills raised and the low max value compared to their starting point, the “unique” stat distribution you start with will disappear pretty damn quickly. There is also no variety for builds, unless you intentionally pick suboptimal stats.

Strength and endurance, with speed, agility, willpower or intelligence as a side depending on your particular build, will always be the best for a warrior. Willpower, intelligence etc. for a mage. Speed and agility for a rogue.

You might argue “but what if I make a swordsman using speed and agility, eh?” Well, that will probably work, if for no other reason than the general lack of difficulty in the game, but ultimately you’re just playing an inferior version of a strength and endurance swordsman. Attack speed is static and the dice-roll way the combat works in isn’t good with melee based hit’n’run. So you’ll do less damage and can take less of a beating. Nor does it actually change the way you play the character. You either whack people… or whack people doing slightly less damage.

Various weapons have different damage stats depending on how you move when attacking, but they are just damage stats. They are like more tedious, less interesting versions of the “power attacks” that were added in Oblivion. A function you can ignore by turning on the “always use best attack” feature in the options menu. But even if you don’t, it’s easy to use the best attack anyway, if a bit immersion breaking. I have to move forward to thrust? I am pretty sure the human body is capable of performing a thrust standing still or moving sideways, thank you very much.

The birthsigns have some fun ideas, but are about as balanced as a hot pancake to the face is subtle. Ranging from completely fucking you over (see the Lord) to fucking everyone else over (see anything with an attribute bonus) to seemingly balanced (warrior, mage and thief), they will probably have a decent effect on your character. Unless you pick one of the balanced ones, since they fade into obscurity pretty quickly.

The races are about as balanced as the birthigns in this game, with Nord, Redguard and Breton with their useful resistances and racial powers on top and High Elves with their inclusive set of weaknesses on the bottom. Everything else is somewhere else in between.

Exploration

This is something Morrowind is, in my opinion, a mixed bag on. There are numerous treasures and unique items to be found when exploring, be it caves or the insides of wealthy people’s properties, but at the same time most of the caves and such in the game are not unique. You are going to be very familiar with the layout of caves, velothi towers, Dwemer ruins and Dunmer strongholds, even the ones you never visited, before you are done with this game. It is not quite as bad as Oblivion in this aspect, because there is quests and interesting loot to find (at least in some of them), and there are some additional caves with something unique about them, but mostly they are very similar in their layouts and aesthetic.

The landscapes you are exposed to outside of dungeoneering are much better (dated graphics aside), and offer a nice variety of grasslands, ashlands, various settlements with their own styles suited for their environments.

Guilds

Morrowind has lots of Guilds and factions to join. Not quite as many as Daggerfall, but far more than Oblivion and Skyrim. Does that automatically make the Guilds better? Not really.

Something that is important to keep in mind for anyone going back to Morrowind from Oblivion and/or Skyrim, is that the factions do not focus on an overarching story the same way as later games did. They are mostly unrelated quests hoarded into a faction and given a coat of paint to belong there. And there is nothing inherently wrong with this, as it is a nice way to flesh out the world a bit and contextualize random quests. But they aren’t stories.

There is one special mention though, the Fighters Guild. Probably my favorite faction storyline in any TES game. Not my favorite storyline, but faction storyline. It marries proper “guild work” (as opposed to the Mages Guild in Oblivion) with an overarching plot that rewards those who pay attention to detail, while giving the player agency in the story, as opposed to being a “yesman” at the whims of the writers. What is the story about? Go play the damned questline and you’ll see.

Honorable mentions

What else is there to say? Spellcrafting? It works, but the spellsystem is so damn clunky to use regardless. Infinite training per level? I don’t care either way about this, to be honest, though it makes branching out of your “class” ridiculously easy. Since, you know, money is not something you will run short on in Morrowind after the first few levels.

Rating

Your TL;DR is in another paragraph.

Safe Spaces

For those who know me as a person, the fact that I am in favor of “safe spaces” might come as a surprise. As a staunch believer in freedom of speech (so, please, if you wish, do go on and insult me or someone else in a creative fashion. I will not censor you, winkey-face), and that no idea is exempt from criticism, this surely would seem like a contradiction. Well, at least until I explain what I am on about.

At least in the world I live in (and seemingly increasing numbers of people only have a long-distance relationship with), there is such a thing as “property rights”. For those who are slow on the uptake, this means that I can own a piece of land or an apartment or something like it and set certain rules for being there, including who gets to be there. This is, as far as I am concerned, the only place where a “safe space” makes any sense. And it already exists.

The moment you invite someone to your property, turn on the TV or radio, go on the internet or something similar, you have chosen to engage with the world around you. No one are forcing you to go online to read or listen to opposing views. No one are forcing you to listen to that radio station or TV channel that challenges your views. And certainly no one are forcing you to engage in debate on these matters.

Put very simply, you have a right to a safe space in your own home. You do not, however, have the right to exempt ideas from criticism, nor do you have the right to infringe on other people’s freedom of speech. If you don’t want to hear criticisms of your ideas, stay away from the TV, the radio and, most of all, social media where untold numbers of people are free to express themselves.