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Morrowind - Clothing, Ale and Lute Census
A report by Erris Spires, Wandering Minstrel
I've always wondered what the difference between 'treble' and 'triple' might be. I myself am a firm believer that 'triple' is three of something, such as three shots of whisky in a glass, and 'treble' is three times something, such as the treble 20 on a dartboard. It is a rule in our favourite watering hole, the Foaming Flask Inn in the Imperial City, that anybody managing a treble treble 20, that is, the mythical score of one hundred and eighty, is given a drink on the house. Myself and melodeon maverick Ancius Carro both managed this feat one night - red hot lutist Mercator Paulus, player of the racket Emie Caranne and drum-banger Avalg, who thankfully never indulges in traditional Argonian music, not being so lucky. After sufficient drink we decided, for some reason, that taking our music to Vvardenfell might be a good idea.
I should introduce the tools of our trade to those not familiar with them - the melodeon is a squeezebox, a relative of the accordion and the racket is a very long pipe wrapped around itself in a complex pattern to make it shorter but much wider, and obviously makes a very deep, er, racket. I stick with the fiddle and the humble human voice myself - I cannot make any sort of racket on a racket and I find the keys of the melodeon to feel far too like something from the control booth of a Dwarven forge to be playable. We all met via advertisements placed in the back of the Black Horse Courier - the first advert in that section has been 'A Able Accordionist' for as long as I can remember...
Seyda Neen is where we arrived first, and being a harbour town is the only place where it might be acceptable to play a sea shanty. It is also a town devoid of any proper drinking establishments, the top floor of a shop not counting. So, we set up outside the Tradehouse and started playing (the set did indeed include a sea shanty) and raised enough money to be able to afford the Silt Strider fare to Balmora. The journey to Balmora, particularly on a foggy day, is particularly bleak by Silt Strider, involving a wade up the rather barren Odai river (having crossed a lava flow first, which is supposedly dormant but was full of enough boiling mud to suggest otherwise). Luckily, there is a fiddle tune for all occasions, this one needing a slow air from the wilds of Skyrim, taught to me by a Nord piper in Bruma once. So, if you ever hear traditional Nordic music being played by a Silt Strider skipper in Vvardenfell, you have me to hold responsible for it.
Balmora is an extremely pleasant town, one of the most friendly places in Vvardenfell provided one avoids the more seedy areas (these are anywhere along the south wall - there's obviously something about the prevalence of sunlight there that gets to people). Ancius and Mercator decided to humour a rather shady-looking Dunmer chap, who we later discovered went under the even shadier-sounding moniker of Fast Eddie, and bought a liquor of an indeterminate nature off him that made them slightly less performance-ready than they usually were. Never before have I heard the West Weald Hornpipe, a very simple tune, played so badly. Anyway, after about an hour or so of trawling the town's public houses, we eventually stood in the corner of the Eight Plates for a few hours playing, earning a princely 100 drakes each. Since Balmora is at the heart of the Hlaalu district, and therefore quite open-minded and liberal, the populace (mostly Dunmer natives and Imperial, Nord and Orc fighters from the Legion fort down the road) did seem to enjoy us. One chap asked Avalg where he could hear more music like ours, and was instructed to go to any pub in Cyrodiil on any night of the week... I also managed to use the intoxicating power of a lute ayre to seduce a stunning Bosmer girl from the Mages' Guild. Classy, I know... Mercator managed to get into a fight with two Bretons, snap a string on his lute, lose the money he had been paid for the performance and end up getting chased down Market Street by a local nobleman, a record that even I haven't managed to top after too many bottles of Tamika's West Weald Wine.
Playing mostly in Imperial towns may have seemed a bit of a cop-out, especially as we moved about half a mile to Moonmoth Legion Fort the next evening, but eventually we ended up in Ebonheart, the fishing village of Hla Oad being totally devoid of pretty much everything, apart from for some reason a travelling merchant selling fine silk shirts - Ancius is a trader by trade back in the City and discreetly identified them as stolen very quickly, hinting that we might wish to go out there. Our de facto uniform of checked shirts and breeches for the gents and Colovian frocks for the female element also seemed to serve us well enough. Getting to Hla Oad involved a rather eventful climb over the Odai plateau and through the swamplands but Avalg, being a percussionist, proved adept enough with blunt instruments to fight off any wildlife that fancied an early lunch. The ferry to Ebonheart also managed to liven up the day by having a rudder that seemed to owe quite a lot to Nordic steel mill engineering, meaning we careered across the Sea Of Ghosts in a very ungraceful series of sharp bends.
Ebonheart is Imperial through and through, the Six Fishes Inn being the sort of place we ended up pretty much every night in Cyrodiil. There was a definite class divide in the town, the inn being attended by rich councillors from the Council Chambers and salt-of-the-earth fishermen, who thankfully all seemed to be well-versed enough in Imperial music to sing along to the inevitable sea shanties, turning the standard "Way-ey, haul 'er away!" refrain into a rousing battle cry. I have to say that that night we sounded brilliant - myself and Ancius were tremendously tight, trading tunes off each other, letting each other take the lead, the vocals echoed nicely around the stone-clad tavern and Mercator, Emie and Avalg proved a solid and dependable rhythm section. The freshly gushing Cyrodiilic ale on tap was also a welcome reprise from the liquors available in Balmora, which remain something of an acquired taste. We somehow managed to meet Duke Vedam Dren, the duke (obviously) of Vvardenfell. His quarters were surprisingly accessible and poorly-guarded, and he gave us the customary speech about welcoming us to the great province. It didn't seem that great to me - what I had seen of it was predominantly brown.
For the next three nights we played around Vivec, which was something of a cultural eye-opener. The Imperialised and Hlaalu folk were receptive to our rackets (but never once a racket solo, I promise), the Redoran people were simply glad to have something to do since most of them lived in Ald-Ruhn, the most remote and worst of the four major cities of Vvardenfell. The Telvanni canton's drinking establishments, however, didn't seem to care much for Imperial folk music and at one point we beat a hasty retreat, having stripped down a set of tunes that normally nudges the fifteen-minute mark down to about three. By the time we'd collected our fee and left, a wizened old Dunmer had commenced banging a guarskin drum in some strange polyrhythm - different tastes, I suppose. One spectacularly drunken Nord in this inn (which was unusual in itself - House Telvanni seems to be almost entirely Dunmer) let us know exactly what he thought of us very loudly - "Di yae ken I could sing better in ma wee bath?"
It has to be said, though, that Vivec is a marvellous city. We visited the St. Delyn Canton, with its great Craftsmens' Hall, where we decked ourselves out in new clothes, and Ancius bought himself a concertina, which is yet another squeezebox instrument, and Mercator decided he wanted to take up the mandola and bought one of those as well. Impressively, he had his chops up sufficiently to lead us through a few tunes on it that night, and spent his earnings on what is colloquially known over there as a 'fat lute' - no, I don't know either. On one particularly clear morning, whilst busking outside the Temple, we were offered a simply remarkable view down the grand central canal across all seven of the great city's cantons, lit stunningly by the sun rising behind the Palace. With the sound of the city's ancient waterfalls echoing through the canals, it was an awe-inspiring sight.
The Hole In The Wall in Sadrith Mora should actually be called 'The Clique' - it's the sort of pub where someone will tell you not to stand at that part of the bar because 'that's where Cathnalian stands and he'll be here in a minute', and if you disagree with them (or are not from Sadrith Mora) they will invite you outside for a spot of pugilism. It even seemed to have the Dunmer equivalent of the same man who seems to be in every single Imperial City tavern - the man in the pink linens who regales far-from-interesting stories and refers to his betrothed as 'the wife'. We should have known that the night would not end well. For the first few songs we were treated with nothing but mild indifference, but as the songs went on and the horrible Dunmer liqueurs began to flow more freely, the crowd became a little more rowdy. There were no drunken Nords shouting unintelligibly this time, but when someone threw a pint pot made from very thick glass at us (ably deflected by Avalg and his big drum thing) we decided to flee with our tails firmly between our legs, on the first ship that would get us as close to Cyrodiil as we could manage. It was nice to end up back in Anvil, another town that can appreciate the beauty of a sea shanty.
So, on our adventure we learned one crucial lesson - despite the Septim Dynasty's attempts at colonisation in the Grey Isle, the Dunmer are not ready for Imperial culture quite yet.
A report by Erris Spires, Wandering Minstrel
I've always wondered what the difference between 'treble' and 'triple' might be. I myself am a firm believer that 'triple' is three of something, such as three shots of whisky in a glass, and 'treble' is three times something, such as the treble 20 on a dartboard. It is a rule in our favourite watering hole, the Foaming Flask Inn in the Imperial City, that anybody managing a treble treble 20, that is, the mythical score of one hundred and eighty, is given a drink on the house. Myself and melodeon maverick Ancius Carro both managed this feat one night - red hot lutist Mercator Paulus, player of the racket Emie Caranne and drum-banger Avalg, who thankfully never indulges in traditional Argonian music, not being so lucky. After sufficient drink we decided, for some reason, that taking our music to Vvardenfell might be a good idea.
I should introduce the tools of our trade to those not familiar with them - the melodeon is a squeezebox, a relative of the accordion and the racket is a very long pipe wrapped around itself in a complex pattern to make it shorter but much wider, and obviously makes a very deep, er, racket. I stick with the fiddle and the humble human voice myself - I cannot make any sort of racket on a racket and I find the keys of the melodeon to feel far too like something from the control booth of a Dwarven forge to be playable. We all met via advertisements placed in the back of the Black Horse Courier - the first advert in that section has been 'A Able Accordionist' for as long as I can remember...
Seyda Neen is where we arrived first, and being a harbour town is the only place where it might be acceptable to play a sea shanty. It is also a town devoid of any proper drinking establishments, the top floor of a shop not counting. So, we set up outside the Tradehouse and started playing (the set did indeed include a sea shanty) and raised enough money to be able to afford the Silt Strider fare to Balmora. The journey to Balmora, particularly on a foggy day, is particularly bleak by Silt Strider, involving a wade up the rather barren Odai river (having crossed a lava flow first, which is supposedly dormant but was full of enough boiling mud to suggest otherwise). Luckily, there is a fiddle tune for all occasions, this one needing a slow air from the wilds of Skyrim, taught to me by a Nord piper in Bruma once. So, if you ever hear traditional Nordic music being played by a Silt Strider skipper in Vvardenfell, you have me to hold responsible for it.
Balmora is an extremely pleasant town, one of the most friendly places in Vvardenfell provided one avoids the more seedy areas (these are anywhere along the south wall - there's obviously something about the prevalence of sunlight there that gets to people). Ancius and Mercator decided to humour a rather shady-looking Dunmer chap, who we later discovered went under the even shadier-sounding moniker of Fast Eddie, and bought a liquor of an indeterminate nature off him that made them slightly less performance-ready than they usually were. Never before have I heard the West Weald Hornpipe, a very simple tune, played so badly. Anyway, after about an hour or so of trawling the town's public houses, we eventually stood in the corner of the Eight Plates for a few hours playing, earning a princely 100 drakes each. Since Balmora is at the heart of the Hlaalu district, and therefore quite open-minded and liberal, the populace (mostly Dunmer natives and Imperial, Nord and Orc fighters from the Legion fort down the road) did seem to enjoy us. One chap asked Avalg where he could hear more music like ours, and was instructed to go to any pub in Cyrodiil on any night of the week... I also managed to use the intoxicating power of a lute ayre to seduce a stunning Bosmer girl from the Mages' Guild. Classy, I know... Mercator managed to get into a fight with two Bretons, snap a string on his lute, lose the money he had been paid for the performance and end up getting chased down Market Street by a local nobleman, a record that even I haven't managed to top after too many bottles of Tamika's West Weald Wine.
Playing mostly in Imperial towns may have seemed a bit of a cop-out, especially as we moved about half a mile to Moonmoth Legion Fort the next evening, but eventually we ended up in Ebonheart, the fishing village of Hla Oad being totally devoid of pretty much everything, apart from for some reason a travelling merchant selling fine silk shirts - Ancius is a trader by trade back in the City and discreetly identified them as stolen very quickly, hinting that we might wish to go out there. Our de facto uniform of checked shirts and breeches for the gents and Colovian frocks for the female element also seemed to serve us well enough. Getting to Hla Oad involved a rather eventful climb over the Odai plateau and through the swamplands but Avalg, being a percussionist, proved adept enough with blunt instruments to fight off any wildlife that fancied an early lunch. The ferry to Ebonheart also managed to liven up the day by having a rudder that seemed to owe quite a lot to Nordic steel mill engineering, meaning we careered across the Sea Of Ghosts in a very ungraceful series of sharp bends.
Ebonheart is Imperial through and through, the Six Fishes Inn being the sort of place we ended up pretty much every night in Cyrodiil. There was a definite class divide in the town, the inn being attended by rich councillors from the Council Chambers and salt-of-the-earth fishermen, who thankfully all seemed to be well-versed enough in Imperial music to sing along to the inevitable sea shanties, turning the standard "Way-ey, haul 'er away!" refrain into a rousing battle cry. I have to say that that night we sounded brilliant - myself and Ancius were tremendously tight, trading tunes off each other, letting each other take the lead, the vocals echoed nicely around the stone-clad tavern and Mercator, Emie and Avalg proved a solid and dependable rhythm section. The freshly gushing Cyrodiilic ale on tap was also a welcome reprise from the liquors available in Balmora, which remain something of an acquired taste. We somehow managed to meet Duke Vedam Dren, the duke (obviously) of Vvardenfell. His quarters were surprisingly accessible and poorly-guarded, and he gave us the customary speech about welcoming us to the great province. It didn't seem that great to me - what I had seen of it was predominantly brown.
For the next three nights we played around Vivec, which was something of a cultural eye-opener. The Imperialised and Hlaalu folk were receptive to our rackets (but never once a racket solo, I promise), the Redoran people were simply glad to have something to do since most of them lived in Ald-Ruhn, the most remote and worst of the four major cities of Vvardenfell. The Telvanni canton's drinking establishments, however, didn't seem to care much for Imperial folk music and at one point we beat a hasty retreat, having stripped down a set of tunes that normally nudges the fifteen-minute mark down to about three. By the time we'd collected our fee and left, a wizened old Dunmer had commenced banging a guarskin drum in some strange polyrhythm - different tastes, I suppose. One spectacularly drunken Nord in this inn (which was unusual in itself - House Telvanni seems to be almost entirely Dunmer) let us know exactly what he thought of us very loudly - "Di yae ken I could sing better in ma wee bath?"
It has to be said, though, that Vivec is a marvellous city. We visited the St. Delyn Canton, with its great Craftsmens' Hall, where we decked ourselves out in new clothes, and Ancius bought himself a concertina, which is yet another squeezebox instrument, and Mercator decided he wanted to take up the mandola and bought one of those as well. Impressively, he had his chops up sufficiently to lead us through a few tunes on it that night, and spent his earnings on what is colloquially known over there as a 'fat lute' - no, I don't know either. On one particularly clear morning, whilst busking outside the Temple, we were offered a simply remarkable view down the grand central canal across all seven of the great city's cantons, lit stunningly by the sun rising behind the Palace. With the sound of the city's ancient waterfalls echoing through the canals, it was an awe-inspiring sight.
The Hole In The Wall in Sadrith Mora should actually be called 'The Clique' - it's the sort of pub where someone will tell you not to stand at that part of the bar because 'that's where Cathnalian stands and he'll be here in a minute', and if you disagree with them (or are not from Sadrith Mora) they will invite you outside for a spot of pugilism. It even seemed to have the Dunmer equivalent of the same man who seems to be in every single Imperial City tavern - the man in the pink linens who regales far-from-interesting stories and refers to his betrothed as 'the wife'. We should have known that the night would not end well. For the first few songs we were treated with nothing but mild indifference, but as the songs went on and the horrible Dunmer liqueurs began to flow more freely, the crowd became a little more rowdy. There were no drunken Nords shouting unintelligibly this time, but when someone threw a pint pot made from very thick glass at us (ably deflected by Avalg and his big drum thing) we decided to flee with our tails firmly between our legs, on the first ship that would get us as close to Cyrodiil as we could manage. It was nice to end up back in Anvil, another town that can appreciate the beauty of a sea shanty.
So, on our adventure we learned one crucial lesson - despite the Septim Dynasty's attempts at colonisation in the Grey Isle, the Dunmer are not ready for Imperial culture quite yet.
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Sig-Nyk!!!!(again)
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I use Tom's as my background too btw
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