When we turned in the quest for our usual reward coffer, we were handed a note as well. It told us we'd now met all the requirements, and could purchase Hunding's Palatial Hall. Guess where we headed next?
It was a good thing that we had been doing all those guild quests, because the house wasn't cheap. And that didn't leave us with a lot of gold for buying furniture.
"So we take our time, and make the furnishings ourselves," Izzie reminded me. "There are some things we can't make, like crafting stations, but you don't need to buy those with gold, anyway. You can get them for writ vouchers."
"Good point! I'm wondering whether to tell Clark, so he can contribute, or keep it a secret until we can show him the place complete. Come to think of it, Azura's got him pretty busy, so he's probably not doing any daily crafting. So we tell him when it's all done."
"It's a pity the Undaunted quests aren't giving me anything that helps," Izzie remarked.
"I don't know, the amount of furnishing plans you've discovered in the delves is going to help a lot. We should sort through those, and decide what style this place needs. Maybe sell a few that we're not going to use, and buy others."
"I think we should make more of these Redguard lights, at least. Since you can do them to match what's already here, it means fewer to craft than changing to a new style."
"Good idea, and I can do a couple more types of Redguard light that we haven't already got. Maybe we should do everything Redguard style, so it all matches?" I proposed.
"Well, it won't look wrong if some of the pieces are other styles, as long as the colours are right. And I wouldn't mix the red and the blue, even if we stick to all Redguard."
"There's a yellow, too," I remarked. "But I don't know how to make any of those. In fact, I know so many more red than blue, it's kind of making my mind up for me."
"How about the plain wooden things? They go with any of them."
"I'll be making quite a few of those for the courtyard. Without any fabric, they won't fade in the sun."
"How about blue stuff in the tower?" Izzie suggested. "We'll only get a few things in there, anyway, and you might as well use those plans somewhere."
"I thought you might like that in Breton style, just to make it different from the main house."
"Well, the only blue bed plan is a Breton one, and you can do a blue High Isle chair. Make it all blue, rather than all Breton?"
"I think that will work. Let's get started."
Of course, when you decide to keep to a consistent style, you quickly run out of the style material, and a lot of the plans called for the same wood, and the same dyes. We soon had a trip to the merchants on our agenda. Isobel's family connections helped a lot with that. She knew where to go for the best selections, and she was good at finding the bargain deals.
But some things are only available from specialist suppliers. Especially the crafting stations, and they wanted payment in writ vouchers, rather than gold. Those were going to take a little longer. At least we had enough here now that we could move in, and finish building without having to travel between homes.
We weren't planning on moving any of the furnishings from the St Delyn place, or from Snugpod. The styles didn't match, and there were still good reasons to keep using those. Which reminded me, Clark was going to be dropping back from Summerset tomorrow, and there's no better reason than that.
It's good that Azura reminds me. She has a much better sense of time than I do. I'd forget what day of the week it is. Especially now I have one of those hourglass things that lets you change the time of day in your house.
That was so useful when we put the lights in. We could set it to daytime to do the work of placing them, and then dial up midnight to see how they worked, and if we needed more. You just have to remember to put the time back to normal often enough that you don't completely lose track of how long you've been working.
Since Clark and I had both been working for Azura, it wasn't hard for us each to assume that she'd tell the other about anything they needed to know. So when we talked about anything, it was usually where we wanted to go and eat tonight, or stuff like that. We'd both got into the habit of not talking about what we'd been doing for Azura.
So that meant keeping Hunding's a secret wasn't as hard as it might have been. I don't think I'd even mentioned Isobel to him, yet. I had told him about joining the guilds, so he could assume they were taking up most of my time. Likewise, he'd mentioned Queen Ayrenn, and we knew it was her decree that started all the problems we encountered at Shimmerene, so I was just assuming he'd got tied up in the general unrest there in Summerset. I'd asked if he had any idea when his involvement there would be over, just so I'd know how long we had to do the furnishing. He had no idea, but Azura was quietly assuring me we had enough time.
Isobel and I started to notice that whenever we ran into Gabrielle or Darien, the other was around, too. They did confess to seeing a lot of each other, because their positions in the Mages and Fighters Guilds made that happen. "And with the stress in our jobs with all these conflicts going on, I think we're finding relief in each other's company," Gabrielle admitted. The grin on Darien's face told me it was a bit more than company.
"We're both going off to Coldharbor, as soon as Vanus Galerion and Countess Nakruba get the Alliance leaders to agree to sanction us," he added. "So you won't see us for a while. It's expected to be a quick strike, with a small force, to catch Molag Bal off-guard."
"Vanus hopes to destroy the Great Shackle, and stop the Daedric incursions," Gabrielle added. "He thinks we have a good chance, as there's a new ally with special powers helping us. Mannimarco inadvenrtantly created a Vestige when he failed to completely soul-trap one of his victims, and that makes them immune to a lot of things, especially in Coldharbor."
Isobel and I were familiar with the Dolmens, of course, but not what was on the other end of those chains. Gabrielle tried to explain what they knew, or had surmised from the behaviour of the dark anchors. It was all a bit more than I could grasp. The part about the Vestige wanting the rest of their soul back made complete sense, but the complex plans they had to achieve it made my head spin.
It started spinning again when I asked Azura what a Vestige was. Apparently it had something to do with immortality, which was keeping the mind and body together. Ordinary daedra were immortal, because theirs would get re-united after any interruptions, unlike regular people. Clark and the Tribunal were immortal in a different way, where the separation wouldn't happen in the first place, but that was an artificial situation, which could be undone with enough power. Daedric Princes like herself were "naturally" immortal, in that there just couldn't be enough power to separate them.
A Vestige was an anomaly. Either they were like the Daedric Princes, but less so, meaning their mind could never be completely separated from their body, or else they were created by the incomplete separation attempt. Whichever it was, any subsequent attempt would completely fail, leaving them able to re-unite like a daedra.
"That's why necromancers need mortal victims, because they want to use the body without any mind getting in the way?" I asked.
"Right, so it doesn't work on daedra, even if you try to raise them immediately. Their bodies are expecting the right mind back, when they 'wake up' again," she explained.
"Why is Clark immortal?" I wanted to know.
"Because Nocturnal and I needed an immortal assistant. Working together, we could make sure nobody, even another Daedric Prince, could undo it. As long as the Tribunal work together, they have the same advantage."
Of course, I was thinking about Clavicus Vile when she said that. I wondered if any of the Daedric Princes were involved in what Clark was doing now. Well, if they were, Clark had some on his side, so I shouldn't worry.
