Spies Like Us - a 3rd Age Farce

There I was sitting in my favorite Foreign Quarter tavern when a big Dunmer came in wearing nothing but a pair of furry underpants! Funniest sight I ever saw. Maybe he had been smoking skooma and thought he was a Nord? I cracked up and started snorting my drink up my nose which then began blowing buggles - so I guess that drew his attention, and too, I had a huge grin on my face.

He walks up to me where I had been quietly enjoying my solitary drink and says: "Excuse me, but I am looking for a witch, she has stolen all my clothes and my favorite, notorious and very powerful Warhammer named CallFarter - which has the powerful enchantment summon AllFather the formidable killer wind of Skyrim in it, and has been handed down in the family for generations ... have you seen the witch, her name is Sophie Botamoureuse?"

So I ask him his name. He responds: "I am Arnulf Magnutssonn the famous Warrior-Meteorologist Nord!

"Well blow me down I says," and dodges just in case, as you can never be too sure with these Nord Warrior-Meteorologists ... yup, he was a Nord alright - he told me so. Who else but a Nord would be wearing nothing but a pair of furry underpants looking for a foreign witch called Sophie Botamoureuse, who has stolen all his clothes and his notorious and very powerful Warhammer named CallFarter - which has the powerful enchantment summon AllFather the formidable killer wind of Skyrim in it, and has been handed down in the family for generations ... ? I guess I was mistaken about his colouring (a bit gloomy in here) and I can't see his ears for all that long blond hair. Must remember to ask him who his wigmaker is.

So I jump up, surreptitiously adjusting my own wig and furry underpants, and hurriedly puffing out my chest a few more inches to give that butch effect that drives all the Bosmer women into fits of burning passion and deepening my voice by about 3 octaves I introduce myself: "Greetings fellow Nord, I am Forslung Hofnung the famous Nord Warrior, I am looking for the foreign witch Marie Desputins who has cast a spell upon me and stolen all my clothes and my incredibly powerful magic leg-warmers that contain a heal 100 HP per second, permalev Lev 400 with summon Hofalongforelegge the Ancient Sorcerer King enchantment!"

I look up with shining conviction (surreptitiously crossing my fingers and praying that he has bought it!) and find that I can just about see the red glow of his eyes past the bulge of his chest if I crick my neck back 90 degrees.

"My long lost cousin!" he and the 30 other Nords in the Tavern all exclaim! Well, I can't tell you how relieved I am that my disguise is working so well! Pretty soon I am learning all about the doings at the Nord Consulate in Ebonheart from a Nord with the most spectacularly fluffy and bewitching white tail ... and working very hard to keep myself from salivating too much.

As I sit there surrounded by my new family, contentedly supping my specially imported fermented bulls' blood, I wonder what is happening back at the Bosmer Legation? Things have been hopping there recently - never met so many keen and willing Bosmer girls. Apparently our counter espionage ploy is working.

lol. Nice one!

Hehe I like this one mate. I noticed that you changed a few things inside this story shortly after posting it, I'm just wondering why.

Yo Kiln ... what to say ...

Well I had realised that the other story - McBosmer was well received and understood by the friends I was working on the mod with because we were so immersed in what we were doing that all the stuff in it was the stuff we daily agonised over - but for other folks it would be snippets that they might have read casually once and may have forgotten. And in trying to make things clearer I also realised that it would work better with a time sequence, and this exposed other weaknesses so I re-wrote a fair bit of that story.

That put me in crypto-critical mood and energised me to consider what might be missing in this spies story too. And there were what I felt to be two obvious weaknesses. The first that I had felt from the start is that Nord Weapons should have names, and the second that in the absence of visuals I needed to tie the initial picture into a more Nord-oriented thought-setting generally. It is very easy to have a 'vision' of what you are doing, but to neglect to share all of it, and to assume that all the necessary is there even when you re-read all your own work = the value of a good editor and friends.

It's my belief that if Skyrim is ever done properly then Nord Culture may turn out to be far more subtle and precise in its ramification and expression than many of the of the other Provinces when it is experienced from the inside.

An important part of Nordic sagas is the subtle variation of repeated themes, and one of the most important aspects of the Nord culture is the Wind Singing - as for example Hammerfell has its lost Sword-dancers, etc ...

So I wanted to emphasise that and wind it into the reader's general awareness (lest it be forgot) in a humorous way - but remembering that this is from the viewpoint of a member of another race, like Orc humour in the view of other races it had to be fairly direct and obvious - is what you have got on the surface.

Then when I examined the wording I realised that I had sunken into unplanned repetition in several instances - repetition being a powerful tool, but a poor master. ... and so I had to rewrite other bits, and that led me to re-examine the conclusion too.

There I had the feeling that the Bosmer viewpoint is not generally understood/experienced as it is very weird, but along with what other cultures consider to be disgusting practices and abominations they have this great sense of living life and taking joy in the small everyday things - and from their point of view certain of their 'cultural reflexes' would be mere asides to them. [This may be why outside their own lands they appear so obnoxious as other cultures do not have this kind of light-heartedness so the poor Bosmer get depressed.]

And so I wanted to be sure that I was able to get their 'hobbitlike' sense of fun and irreverence, along with the lascivious warmth of their quest for more into the picture without swamping the whole thing.

Hopefully I hit it this time.

But also if I get the urge to 'adjust' a piece further that someimes enables me to start new stuff too - so I don't feel the need to hold back. One thing leads to another as they say.