A Brotherhood Betrayed

JULY 16, 2007

LOCATION: BRUMA
QUEST LINE: NONE (SIDE QUEST)

Knowing that the Bruma mage guild was about to meet a bad end, I headed over to buy the Summon Dremora Lord spell from Volanaro, who is the only guy in the game selling it for some reason (I can’t even use it for god knows how long, but oh well). While I was there, I figured I might as well do a side quest or two. Bruma isn’t exactly a hotspot, so I have no idea when I’ll be back there. After a bit of poking around, I discovered A Brotherhood Betrayed, which turned out to be a nice change of pace, as you got to play detective for a bit.

Seems a vampire hunter named Raynil Dralas had just killed some poor schmuck named Bradon Lirrian under suspicion of being a vampire. However, Bradon’s wife is convinced he was just murdered in cold blood, and naturally, Grayland, a man she has never met and just strolled on into her home uninvited, is the man to help her.

After a while, you get as far as searching Dralas’ room at the inn, and you find a diary that proves the woman was right, and Bradon was killed not because he was a vampire, but because he and another dude were partnered with Dralas over a treasure. So now you gotta go retrieve it, from a cave conveniently located a bit west of town. Fine, it was worth the hike for the boost on athletics (one of my majors).

Plus, on the way I discovered an oddity: two Imperials shooting arrows at one another. The “danger” music came up, so I thought they were BOTH shooting at me, but it turns out there was a damn bandit running around. After dispatching him and looting him of his 2 gold (must be some bandit), the music ended, and I just stood and watched these two guys shoot at each other for some reason. I got a good chuckle out of it.

Anyway, after like an hour of amusing myself, I continued on and found the cave. Luckily, Dralas was the only guy in it, and didn’t put up much of a fight (especially after disintegrating his sword: love my enchanted Akaviri Katana). I found the treasure and some other minor loot, and then fast traveled back. The reward? The same goddamn amulet I just retrieved. Except now it fortifies my speed a bit. Big deal. I considered killing the widow Lirrian and stealing her pumpkins, but I opted to sell the worthless trinket (the amulet I already wear fortifies strength, which is much more useful) and call it a night.

It’s times like this I wish we were told in advance what the reward was, like World of Warcraft. Not that it was a bad quest, but it took a while for all the back and forth (not to mention bribery/conversation exercises) and I didn’t really get much out of it other than another quest completed. It was nice to have a detective type scenario, but it was so linear, it wasn’t like it really taxed my brain skills. Plus, now Cyrodiil is short a perfectly good vampire hunter. THE NEXT BLOOD A VAMPIRE SPILLS IS ON YOUR HANDS, WIDOW LIRRIAN!

Shut down console.