Weekly Update: October 30, 2019

Halloween Party

This past weekend I attended my friends Katie and Jerry’s Halloween party. It was my first time attending their party, as well as my first time seeing their new house!

I can’t say I did anything fancy, costuming-wise; I wore my spooky skull leggings and a witch’s hat (which I forgot there, because, well, me).

Unsurprisingly, because I know Katie and Jerry from NPCing Mad3, I saw a lot of people I know from larping — especially the Brown University crowd. There was also an impromptu Vassar reunion, since it turned out that in addition to Matt and me, Caitlin F and Beth F were also there!

I really appreciated how the party had different spaces for different kinds of socializing — the standard couches-in-living-room setup, a dance floor in the basement, a “cuddle room” (in which no actual cuddling happened, but it was very cozy and good for small conversations), and a quiet room.

I spent most of my time in the “cuddle room,” talking about all kinds of topics with all kinds of people. I had a long conversation with Matt M and Santo about Doctor Who, since I had just started watching it, and they were interested in my newbie impressions. I learned that Matt M is a big fan of Nabokov, and somehow we also ended up discussing what a jerk David Foster Wallace was (my impressions formed primarily from reading Mary Karr’s memoir of addiction, Lit, in which she not-so-secretly talks about dating him).

I spent a while talking to Sue B about Shadowvale, of course, and unsuccessfully tried to convince her to run SV for five more years 😉 We also talked about ESO, in particular Elsweyr (apparently her SV NPC Roz is partially inspired by Razum-dar!) and the Witches’ Festival (the Halloween event currently going on, which is great fun). I also was tipsy enough to inform her husband, Eric vR, that my first impression of him was pretty negative. (Which has since been remedied!)

I spoke to Sarah N about what she does in one of her day jobs — she’s a massage therapist! — and I conveyed my appreciation for what hard work that is, and how important it is to me!

This isn’t entirely an Intercon-going crowd, but we did talk about what we were running or wanting to play at Intercon T. Keri G told me about her small, intense larp set in the world of the Vorkosigan novels, and I tried to convince people to play The Drinklings.

And of course, there was much talk of What (Boffer) Larp Next. A few people are planning to play Cottington 2 with me, but many folks agreed that there was a serious lack of fantasy Accelerant larps starting up soon. I did make it clear that when these folks are putting together larp teams, I would very much like to be considered.

Overall, it was a great party, and I didn’t want to leave — I think we finally left at 3am, and got home at 4.

This was pretty close to the ideal of social connection for me — smart people having great nerdy conversations, lightly facilitated by alcohol. I didn’t feel as much of the “outside looking in” that I get at a good number of larp social events, although there is still some. As I wrote in a poem once, I am all “walls of skin and reservation.”

I also spent most of the next day mentally replaying all my interactions in my head, looking for signs of approval or disapproval, and that’s just exhausting. Maybe some day I will actually believe that people like me and want to be around me 😉

Nocturnal’s Labyrinth

In ESO, I have completed (more or less) my Overly Ambitious Housing Project! I transformed Coldharbour Surreal Estate — a house costing 1mil gold, which is basically just a large empty plateau floating above the Hollow City in Coldharbour — into Nocturnal’s Labyrinth, a maze themed around the daedric prince Nocturnal, whose sphere is night and darkness, and is often patrons to thieves in the TES universe.

As my first step in this project, I ran through the two public dungeons/delves that are Nocturnal-themed in the game — Crow’s Wood, in Stonefalls, and the Shadow Cleft, in Clockwork City. This gave me a lot of ideas… many of which I could not really carry out with the time and space I have.

Because, while Coldharbour Surreal Estate is a large home, with 700 item slots, I guarantee that 200+ of those are used on boulders. I wanted to use mossy, natural-looking boulders for the walls of my maze, instead of the large purplish boulders the house comes with, but there are literally no mossy boulders in the game that big. Instead I ended up using three mossy boulders for every one Coldharbour Fan boulder.

Otherwise, the house is full of the glowing thistle plants that are everywhere in Crow’s Wood, though, as well as lots of dead trees. There is a dilapidated tower, crowned with a gargoyle (gargoyles are definitely a thing in both Crow’s Wood/Shadow Cleft), and guarded by a Wraith of Crows target dummy. There’s a garden around it, in the autumnal colors of the Shadow Cleft. There’s the Skeleton Key, floating in a beam of light (i.e. the light from the replica skyshard). There are chests hidden in nooks and crannies everywhere. There are pockets of mushrooms with spooky lights. There’s a Nocturnal banner over the entrance, too, just in case it’s not obvious what I’m trying to do.

I wish I had more time to work on it, and I wish I had a few items that would have made it better — a Nocturnal statue, for example, (but I’m pretty sure that only comes out of loot crates), or the stone path markers with glowing green lights which appear in Shadow Cleft (which I think come from the luxury vendor — and going to larps makes it dang hard to hit the luxury vendor every weekend!)

Just like writing a book, a house is never fully decorated; it’s just abandoned.

Here, enjoy some pictures!

Now, for the part I didn’t budget time for: the judging. There were 36? 38? houses submitted for the contest, and since I am one of the contestants, I feel it’s only appropriate that I actually take the time to judge them. I have to select my top three houses, and let me just say, I’ve only looked at like ten and already the competition is steep!

I’m also not sure I should select my own house — that seems unfair, and I really don’t think mine is one of the best, but at the same time I’m a terrible judge of myself, and I’m also sure some people with less well-designed houses than mine will vote for themselves.

Intercon T Schedule

The Intercon T schedule has been released! (And the first round of signups is Thursday, November 7th).

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I’m running The Drinklings on Thursday evening. I also know my first pick will be Alison and Kristin P’s game Wicked Hearts, aka a semi-historical, semi-fantastical larp very inspired by things I not only have read, but have turned Alison onto. (Seriously, I recommended both the Holly Black and Melissa’s books).

After that? I have no idea what will be open! I’m potentially interested in Persona L, Omega Expedition, Memories of Falkonia, and Tis No Deceit (which I still haven’t played… but have been assured I will like, even if it does involve singing)… but I may also decide I only have the spoons for one deep political game with lots of before-game prep.

But that’s all for now, folks! Enjoy pretty pictures of imaginary worlds, and I’ll see you in a week.

A just review is always found Elsweyr

In which I review ESO’s newest expansion.

Recently I finished Elsweyr, the third and most recent Elder Scrolls Online’s chapter (expansion). This chapter is set, as you might guess, in Elsweyr, the home of the Khajiit, the cat folk of the TES universe. We only get the northern half of the zone in this chapter; southern Elsweyr will be out soon with the Dragonhold DLC.

My general impression of Elsweyr? Favorable, but there were areas that were seriously underdeveloped.

The main quest and core mechanics

I did enjoy the main quest, and I did enjoy the expansion of Cadwell’s history (and more John Cleese voice!) His quest punches you in the gut and then comes right back to jollity, and it’s pitch perfect.

This isn’t even his final form.

I also enjoyed everyone’s favorite grumpy battlemage, Abnur Tharn (and more Alfred Molina voice!), and the rare bits of vulnerability you see from him — about his aging, about his waning magical power, or his relationship with his (half-)sister, and how he feels about [spoiler]. I also like that he is super cagey if you ask him about the Amulet of Kings 😉

I don’t quite understand the Khamira love that everyone else has, but she’s fine, too, and I liked Zamarak and Prefect Calo as additions to the team.

I felt like the final fight against Mulaamnir and Kaalgrontiid was suitably epic.

Likewise, I enjoyed the roaming dragon encounters, which are challenging and require a group. The first time I heard them use the dragon language gave me a little shiver.

I liked the Sunspire trial (raid), and I liked the story behind it. Because of course if dragons start appearing, it’s not long before they start pretending to be Akatosh and demanding to be worshipped like gods.

I know some lorebeards had problems with the whole “dragons released on Elsweyr” aspect of this expansion, arguing that “canonically” there weren’t any dragons in this time period

As for me? Well, you know how I feel about canon in TES. Not only that, we’re sort of in a blind spot in history in the Second Era; it’s implied that much was lost due to the disorder of the Interregnum. So I’m willing to believe that some details about dragons weren’t well recorded.

(And no, we are not in a Dragon Break. Stop spreading that stupid rumor. There’s very little that Bethesda/ZOS word-of-gods, but they got pretty dang close to word-of-god-ing that, when Matt Firor said that interpretation was “too literal”)

Also how freakin’ cool is it that the dragons were released from the Halls of the Colossus? The last time that place was mentioned was in Arena, a.k.a. the first Elder Scrolls game, before we even really knew what the series was about. I love that this series has a history that long to pull from.

I didn’t yet finish the mural (the museum quest for this expansion), but so far nothing has disabused me of the notion that Rahjinn is best referred to as “the Dickster God.”

Side quests

I don’t think I’ve been completely exhaustive in doing the side quests in Elsweyr, but I’ve tried pretty hard!

I like the Mizzik Thunderboots quest out of Riverhold, even though I saw the ending coming a mile away. But still, seeing a Khajiit in a fabulous hat and doublet solving crimes is worth the price of admission.

Or you could just look at this picture.

Of course I adored the “rescue the guar” quest outside Rimmen. Can’t have a new zone without one of those. And he really did look like a Gordon!

I loved the heist you engineer in the Stitches, although the ending feels somewhat… unresolved? (Then again, I’ve only ever chosen one particular option). Sereyne, and the Alfiq in general, are everything I could hope from “magically adept housecat-sized Khajiit,” and yes I bought both the Alfiq banker and merchant, why do you ask?

I liked the Ashen Scar quest, and how it expands the Azura lore — or, I should say, Azurah, the Khajiit’s take on that particular daedric prince. And hey, I remembered Vastarie from doing Grahtwood quests.

In general I liked the theme of “seeing old friends again” to the side quests, though their individual quests varied in quality:

The “Razum-dar on vacation” quest was pretty hilarious. I knew there was a Raz quest in Elsweyr, but even so, I was surprised when I saw that he was the lazy son everyone was talking about. The actual quest itself was kind of unmemorable, though; I can’t even recall what turned out to be plaguing Raz’s family farm.

The Skooma Cat quest — aka Sheogorath, as seen by the Khajiit — was fantastic. I enjoyed the challenges you solve by playing to his feline nature 😉

Who could resist the fluffiest daedric prince of madness?

I absolutely adored the Jakarn quest, which starts with him falling out of a window at your feet! I loved that it tells us in no uncertain terms that he’s bi, moreso than “he flirts with your PC regardless of gender” that we already knew. Thanks for not shying away from that.

Of course there’s no doubt he’s a disaster bisexual.

Oh hey, do you remember those two random Peryite cultists from Shimmerene in Summerset? They’re baaaaack, this time being creepy around the public dungeon of Orcrest, a city depopulated by the Knahaten Flu.

The quest in Hakoshae featuring Ashur, the silken-voiced Morag Tong assassin from the Morrowind expansion, left me with decidedly mixed feelings. On one hand, I love that you’re seeing him again. While I adore Naryu Virian, she often falls into the role of “your local fanservice assassin,” and it would have been easy to put her here, too. But instead they decided to put in a lesser-used character who is fanservice-y to their audience of, well, me, and I for one am grateful.

For you, my sweet-voiced assassin, I would go anywhere.

I also love that his plot involves his grandfather’s potentially incomplete writ of assassination for an Akaviri Potentate. It ties nicely into the lore where the Morag Tong were (allegedly) responsible for the deaths of the Potentates; moreover, the Morag Tong is the sort of organization that ties up loose ends like that. And hey, there’s an Akaviri diaspora in Hakoshae, so where better to track that down?

(I guess this does confirm that the Morag Tong did actually assassinate the Potentate, as much as anything in TES is ever confirmed. Though why they would have done something so foolish as write ‘MORAG TONG’ in blood on the palace walls boggles the mind…)

But everything else about it kind of left me cold. The “Proving Trial” portion of the quest was uninspired; it felt like the other three bajillion “prove yourself with mind, body, and spirit”-type quests that are found everywhere in the game. It also just seemed silly — if an Akaviri is not proved worthy in the trial, their ancestors will haunt them?

The ending also seemed unnecessarily complicated, with secret identities and kidnapping by malevolent spirits, all of which kind of made me say, “what is going onnnnnn?”

But my biggest issue — with this quest, and the expansion — has to do with how they handled the Akaviri diaspora as a whole, and that means it’s time for a lore rant…

Akaviri what?

There was a great deal of content in this expansion about the Akaviri — those mysterious folks from a continent to the east of Tamriel — but it left me puzzled rather than enlightened. I felt like the game just threw a bunch of loosely-labeled Akaviri stuff at you and didn’t make sure it hung together logically.

In concept, I have no problem with an Akaviri diaspora in Northern Elsweyr. The Akaviri Potentates ruled the empire at the beginning of the Second Era (ESO is set in 2E 582, or thereabouts), and it makes sense that after the Akaviri Potentates fell, not all of their people went back to their homeland. And it does seem like the Akaviri Dragonguard was active in Elsweyr at the time, so why not?

But what I don’t get is this: the Akaviri who ruled Tamriel at the beginning of the Second Era were Tsaesci, the “snake men” of Akavir. None of this two-hundred-years-later diaspora looks even a little bit snakey. They look, universally, Imperial. And yeah, yeah, racial phylogeny in TES is weird (in that race seems to be inherited entirely through the maternal line), but you’re telling me that there were NO Tsaesci moms hanging around waiting to pass on their scaley looks to the next generation?

This sort of gets brushed off in the Ashur/Hakoshae quest as “anyway it was a long time ago and there was a lot of interbreeding,” but that feels inadequate. It just seems like they didn’t want to make a new model for a new race.

This incoherence around the Akaviri also came up in the Tomb of the Serpents delve. It was one of the first ones I did in the zone, and it feels unfinished. It seems like there should be more of a quest here than just “sinister talking voice?” All the enemies you face are Akaviri (or minotaurs), and it’s an Akaviri tomb, but it basically raises some questions (Why Akaviri? Why minotaurs? Who’s the sinister voice?) and then resolutely refuses to give you anything more to go on.

There’s also an Akaviri world boss you fight, a swordmistress with the name “Vhysradue.” Is there any significance to the fact that her name sounds like “Versiduie-Shae,” one of the Akaviri Potentates? Who knows! This random cultural tidbit is just hanging in mid-air, unexplored, like an unripe fruit.

Creepy masks: the closest you will get to a Tsaesci in this game. Credit: UESP.

Generally I feel like there was a great opportunity to present the Akaviri in an interesting way, and it was sort of (pardon the metaphor) pissed down the leg. It ended up feeling like the writers couldn’t commit to either revealing info about the Akaviri or keeping them mysterious, and it comes off as wishy-washy and incoherent as a result.

Necromancy!

I nearly forgot to say anything about the necromancer, the new class introduced with this expansion. Possibly because I still haven’t gotten my Breton magicka necromancer past level 30 yet.

Liselle looks like Anne of Green Gables in her brother’s Dark Brotherhood robe, and that’s not unintentional.

What I can say is this:

I have no problem with necromancers from a lore perspective. It’s been in the lore forever, for one thing. Culturally, reactions to necromancy have varied from place to place and time to time, but arguably it’s no more unacceptable than sorcerers running around Tamriel with daedra at their sides.

I do like that there is a justice system penalty for, say, summoning a flesh atronach in the middle of Rawl’kha. And I do like that a few quests in Elsweyr react to you being a necromancer.

As for how it plays? Some of the necro abilities, like the scythe, are suuuuuuper satisfying to use, in the same way the templar’s jabs are. Some were, last I checked, a little buggy/unresponsive (i.e. Blastbones), though those might have been fixed.

As its viability in endgame? I couldn’t say. (Pshh, everyone knows housing is the real endgame, anyway).

The scenery, and other intangibles

Obviously I have a ton of love for the Morrowind expansion; TES3 was my first love, and I imprinted hard on that stark volcanic landscape. The soft light, coral forests, and unearthly beauty of Summerset is also my jam.

By contrast, the “fantasy Arizona” scenery of Elsweyr seems somewhat mundane. Obviously it has its moments, as my numerous screenshots prove! But I’ve since headed off to do the Summerset quests on my main, and I’m still stopping more often for screenshots than I did in Elsweyr — and it’s not my first time through the zone.

This aqueduct saw a lot of screen archery from me. It reminds me so much of the Roman aqueducts in Southern France!

Another intangible thing that bothers me about Elsweyr? I’m a compulsive looter of containers in ESO. Backpacks, urns, desks, barrels, you name it. In many other chapters and DLC, this pays off; this is often how you get rare furnishing patterns in Morrowind and Summerset. But it seems they are just waaaay fewer lootable containers in Elsweyr, and I only rarely get anything specifically Elsweyr-themed out of them — I sometimes got recipes, but they seemed to be pulled from the generic loot table.

It seems the way you’re intended to farm rare furnishing patterns in Elsweyr is by killing dragons, which have a chance to drop a “documents pouch” containing a recipe. Which is fine and all; dragon fights are fun. But sometimes you just want to chill out and loot a hundred closets, and I don’t understand why the game doesn’t support that playstyle, too.

My verdict?

There are many things to like about Elsweyr, but it’s probably my least favorite of the three chapters. If nothing else, I have more emotional memories of Morrowind and Summerset than I do Elsweyr.

(I’d still rate it higher than Orsinium, but I’m not sure that counts as a proper chapter).

But hey, not everything is everyone’s cup of tea. At the end of the day I’m glad we continue to fill out the map of Tamriel and learn more about cultures heretofore unknown. ESO keeps building on the fantastic TES lore, and I can never be unhappy about that.

And, while I’m on the topic, where I’d like to see us go next in ESO? I want to see more of mainland Morrowind — Blacklight! Necrom! — and I would love to see a story based around Almalexia, since the other two Tribunes have gotten their own DLC. Aside from handing you a glowing light in Deshaan, and serving as the motivation for the zone’s villain, she doesn’t do much. And I just listened to the episode of Written in Uncertainty about her, and now I’m eager to see an interpretation of her that isn’t “bitches be crazy.”

And that’s all I have to say about Elsweyr! Play it, if you are so inclined 🙂