Return to Morrowind: The Fall of the Nerevarine

I finished Morrowind quite a while ago although I never wrote a followup to my First Impressions article, mainly because I couldn't think of something insightful to say that hadn't already been said my the people who already love that game over all other games in The Elder Scrolls series.  I will simply say that I love Morrowind too for what it was back in 2002 and for what it is here in 2014.  

Just as a warning, there will be SPOILERS in the following section that cannot be avoided as they pertain to events that happen to the main character in the game relating to the main storyline.  You have been warned.

What I'm here to talk about is the evolution of my character, Valgrin of Markarth, whom I briefly covered in my first post about Morrowind.  In that post, I said that Valgrin was born somewhere in the province of Skyrim, probably sometime around 3E-400 (27 years before the beginning of Morrowind).  Stuff happens around the city of Markarth that lands him in prison, possibly Cidhna Mines and as there is little known history as to how long Cidhna Mines have been in operation as a prison, we'll still go with that story.  Eventually he is shipped off to Morrowind by decree of Emperor Uriel Septim VII as is told at the beginning of the game.

The story events happen in Morrowind including Valgrin contracting Corpus Disease although the symptoms are nullified through events in the game.  Additionally, Valgrin receives the Wraithguard gauntlet from Vivec in the later stages of the game.  I decided that Wraithguard, upon equipping it, has fused to Valgrin's arm.  I haven't decided if this has to do with the Corpus Disease or if it is simply something that just made sense in my head.  I also based the following events on what is known to have happened to the Nerevarine from various sources of information.

So Valgrin of Markarth, now known as the Nerevarine has a disease that affects the mind and body as well as a gauntlet that has fused to his arm.  

The main reason for all of this is that I wanted to increase the stats of the skills that I did not focus on during the main campaign and do side quests in both the main game and expansions that I did not have a chance to do the first time around.  My Light and Medium Armor skills were very low, so I began equipping bits of armor I found, replacing the Nordic Mail I had been wearing since starting the Bloodmoon expansion.  So I have decided that Valgrin was becoming slowly crazy, as an explanation for wearing non-matching pieces of armor.  It made sense in my head.

If you recall from my initial post, when I started the main storyline in Morrowind, Valgrin looked like this:

By the end of the game, roughly 120 hours later, he had developed into an ass kicking Nordic tank sporting primarily Ebony and Daedric armor; I apparently did not care about wearing the heaviest armor in the game.

Although his outward appearance has started to become erratic, I have not changed his overall behavior towards the other NPCs and I am continuing to complete quests as they come in.  He still acts the same as he did before the effects of the Corpus Disease and Wraithguard, but he is not outwardly carrying himself as he did before.  During one of the quests in the Bloodmoon expansion, I came across a creature that used a severed Nord leg as a club that I have held onto.  I figure that along with Valgrin's conglomeration of armor from various sources, that he will end up only equipped with this semi grotesque clubbed weapon (not depicted here however).

Yes, a bug helmet.

I think my endgame is that eventually he will act erratically enough that he might start killing people just because (although that might be pretty extreme), although I am sure that most of us have gone on killing sprees right after saving knowing that we would not be saving after.  After I have decided that I am done playing Valrin, he will be lost from Vvardenfell, possibly becoming a hermit, with history only remembering that an Outlander was found to be the Nerevarine and was never heard from again after a certain amount of time.



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
And Everything Needs A Reason To Be

"More like a toy than a game."

I have a confession. I am 24 years old and I still play with dolls.  I build them elaborate houses, spend hours on their hairstyles and outfits, and keep track of their family tree. They have spouses, jobs, skill sets, and pets.
That's right guys, I'm talking about The Sims.
While reading the wikipedia article (because what else am I going to do tonight?) I came across a quote that says that The Sims has been described as "more like a toy than a game," and a light bulb went off. Growing up, I was all about playing with Barbies. I loved making them outfits out of scraps, and I somehow always seemed to come up with an elaborate backstory (I think my Barbie became the manager for the Beatles once. Yeah). It was around the time that I was getting "too old" for dolls that a friend introduced me to the Sims. Suddenly it was okay for me to keep making up silly stories and although the outfits were limited I couldn't complain.

Yes, she will do just fine.

From there, it was just... man. I bought every. single. expansion. for that game. At like $20 each, it meant that almost all birthday and Christmas money went straight to Maxis. I had Livin' Large, House Party, Hot Date, Vacation, Unleashed (you could get pets! come on!), Superstar, and the slightly lame Makin' Magic.  I even downloaded custom content. And then, The Sims 2 came out. My reaction :

Initial excitement, followed by "Wait, what. NO."

 Because guess what? It was definitely not backwards compatible. Which means all the money I had spent on The Sims 1 was essentially wasted if I bought the newer, much cooler looking Sims 2. I vowed that although I would buy the basic game, I would limit myself to one, maybe two expansion packs. You can guess how that went.

...Actually pretty well. 

I purchased the University expansion pack, since in The Sims 1, sims did not age at all; and in The Sims 2 the aging process went like this : infant->toddler->teen->adult->elder. Note the conspicuous gap between teen and adult. Having a sim go to college and go through a "young adult" phase was interesting and novel to me. Aside from being given the Seasons expansion pack by a friend, I only had the University expansion for The Sims 2. Sure enough, The Sims 3 came out a few years ago and is, in my opinion, much more interesting than The Sims 2. 

Which brings me to today. Now that I have more of a disposable income (or at least I did, until I went back to school), $20 doesn't seem like the astronomical sum it used to. However, I have become pickier about which expansions I buy. The most recent one, Showtime, seems like a rehashed version of a previous expansion but with Katy Perry weirdly tacked on, so I didn't buy it. World Adventures, on the other hand, takes the game from being a passive sandbox-style game to a sort of RPG-lite, with puzzles, quests, and mini-games. Definitely worth the money.

So on that note, I'm signing out. I got Sims to create!

-Conklederp