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Red Mountain, Red Mountain, Red Mountain, Red-
The litany is incessant. Ever since Glum had an unfortunate run in with a certain orc, the refrain of ‘Red Mountain’ has been running through her fuzzy khajiit head as embers and blighted ash wafts over her fuzzy khajiit head, while grey ash slides beneath her feet, at least where it is not packed tight and riven by deep cracks. The sky glares down at her, an inflamed and baleful red, and the blight infected wind attempts to tear her pretty silver skin off. She trudges on while ash zombies stare. Corprus stalkers and corprus beasts, unholy bloated man-monsters who unfortunately represent the least ugly of their kin, attempt to ruin her day every few minutes, shambling around the jagged edges of the corpses of stricken trees, mouths gaping wide, eyes dead and witless yet full of the devilry and madness of their master, maggoty pale flesh distended.
It's a bad scene.
Behind her her noble nord companions, Hlormar Wine-Sot, Botrir, and Hisin Deep-Raed, struggle manfully against the nigh-vertical slope they are ascending, as well as the inclement weather, their nearly naked bodies displaying the hardiness of their race.
Put on clothes, Glum said. They refused.
This one will conjure you clothes, Glum said. Her magics failed to work.
Nords are a, um, special people, with many lesser powers unknown to modern science. No wonder the dwemer euthanized themselves.
“A foul witch! A foul, a foul, a foul witch! Ensorceled me!”
“Hisin Deep-Raed shall have his revenge!”
“Filthy, festering witch! I'll bathe in her tears!...How much do you think they cost?”
Why oh why did she listen to that half yellow, half grey floating elf? Well, she didn't listen to him while he blathered on and on, floating obnoxiously as if every Imago, Faydra, or Ranyu can't float whenever they like, but she was present within his musk cloud while he spoke about this and that, portentously and pompously switching words around. Who even is he? A literal who, that's who. Before entering the chamber, Daddy warned her that the elf and Bal had unsavoury interactions that would not be elaborated on by Jyggalag, and she can believe it.
The multicolour chimer seemed to take issue with her presence, but still felt the need to explain over and over again, in lofty, riddling terms, that he did not murder that one guy, Nerevar, or something. Okay.
“Sunder and Keening will likely not deal you a mortal wound, or the wound will not take, persist. You will return, but perhaps too late. Taking the time factor into account, I will teach you how to use Wraithguard.”
He transported them both to a misty training ground beyond space and time, where he taught her how to utilise the dwemer items, but where he found that his handsy tendencies are not without consequence. No dimension is safe from the Greymarch, and big daddy Jyg took umbrage with certain suggestions made by Vivec that Glum did not understand, or which she chose not to understand. Crystal obelisks surged out of the mist. Leaving the pair of pseudo divinities to what promised to be a momentous and cataclysmic battle, in that order, Glum returned to Nirn.
The map she received at the Ghostgate is fairly helpful, all the main locations are thoughtfully circled in red on red, leading Glum to jog up to every ominous dwemer fortress and daedric ruin and apply her big hammer to the head of everything inside, greatly helped by her burly and nude companions, two of which wield battle axes they are inordinately proud of.
“A FOUL WITCH!!! I'll have your head for a wagon ornament!” screeches one or all of them as a flurry of steel, ebony, and steel goes crashing down on the squamous heads of ash vampire and ascended sleeper alike.
“A FESTERING-”
Bonk, bonk, bonk, all throughout Red Mountain. Blight creatures, dwemer automatons, dwemer boxes, dwemer ghosts, cliff racers, scribs, they all fall to extended bludgeoning. Hammers and axes, they may not possess the allure of knightly heroism, but what knight ever put up a shelf?
“AIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!”
Verdigris and rust have corrupted the once shining splendours of the blasphemous dwarves, and twisted monsters roam their warrenous halls, now decked with the crimson and black banners of the Sixth House (unmourned because shit), grey and wasted, grey and corpulent. Steam continues to hiss from pipes, the orderly operation of the citadels breaking down more and more through several millennia worth of a lack of maintenance, and explosions which sear the flesh off the bones of foolish adventurers, aren't uncommon, to judge from the numerous burnt corpses which Glum hops over, her tail curled up so as not to touch anything icky. It's too bad she hates ugly things, because the urge to collect ash statues is strong.
The many dremora patrolling the bleak brass halls of the dwarve’s long dead cities are not best pleased by the four wretched clowns breaking into their holiday homes. The number of dead heroes, wizards, and merchants who litter the halls speak to the lack of peace these oft-summoned daedra experience.
“You FIEND! You CURRRRR!” demonic daedric weapons of every sort slice into red and black chunks the air near Glum’s precious kitty torso, tar black dremora faces twisted into furious mockeries of the human visage, pointed teeth gnashing, curved horns seeking soft flesh to gore. Their hollow voices echo, seeming to travel all the way to Nirn from Oblivion itself.
At first Glum worries they discern the truth and true nature hiding underneath her outwardly feline form, but then she recalls that dremora are perpetually angry.
“AAAAAAAAARRRRGGGHHHH!!!!!!”
🐾
Levitation, as always, is the answer. Red Mountain is a mountain, and the dwarves dotted their strongholds all over its slopes, decorated it like a crusty black cupcake dusted with gold sprinkles. The nords resent being magically wafted through the hot and violent air after Glum, floated so many hundreds of feet over an active volcano bristling with abominations that rival the output of hell itself, but she cares little to nothing for the opinions or grumbling of mortals. In that way she is as lordly as any of her kin.
After a quick nap on Vemynal's doorstep, she and pasty entourage descend into the unfathomable and unfortunately not yet abandoned depths of yet another dwemer ruin. For all the dwarve’s alleged creativity, their cities are all very similar. Wide corridors, high ceilings, huge busts of cruel faces with curly beards, annoying automatons made in their master's image, brass galore, deathly traps. Constant clanking and banging, not a quiet corner to be found for a spot of conspiracy. Paranoid and vain = Dwemer. Glum can't say she regrets that they had their little oopsie with the Heart of Lorkhan, and besides, she can always time travel and visit them in all their sadistic glory.
Speaking of the Heart, she's not too keen on messing with it, but sometimes it falls to you to help a guy out, and Lorkhan is pretty cool, not one of the Nine Disappointments, as Clavicus would, and does, say.
🐾
Naked and garish men. Swanky beards, swanky hair accessories, fairly polite, free with the ancient and poisonous brandy. That's who she discovers in Vemynal and the other citadels, sheltering amongst the usual storm of monsters and daedra. Grey and withered, heads too large for their bodies, fingers like claws, they appear to be an unholy mish-mash of dwemer, dunmer, and human. Ash vampires. Dagoths. They want to know who does she think she is?
Not having paid much attention to the situation here in Morrowind, Glum enters every citadel, picks up the fancy dwemer mace and short sword from two freshly created dagoth corpses, along with various pretty pieces of jewellery, then turns and forgets such monstrosities ever existed. And mortals say Oblivion is confusing and chaotic? How do they live on this plane of reality when everyday there is a fresh ugly and disorganised catastrophe?
Kagrenac's journal, which she loots from a dwemer desk that certainly weighs more than the sun, is a nerd-simp paradise, and although it's written in dwemer, Kagrenac for some reason shakily wrote on the inside cover ‘Kagrenac's Journals’, in Aldmeris. Long ago Glum's father taught her the knowledge of all languages, mortal and immortal, and so she can see that the great Tonal Architect's diary is predominantly filled with embarrassing whining concerning his wife, and feverish plans to alternatively impress, and get back at her. The Anumidium was meant for the former purpose. Naturally, Mrs Kagrenac was not impressed.
🐾
Dagoth Ur, a crater citadel which Dagoth Ur named after Dagoth Ur, doesn't waste the busy hero's time. The long stairway that extends from the mouth of the entrance like the black and swollen tongue of a hanged man, takes the would-be saviour of Morrowind straight down into the blight devil's arms. There he stands, Dagoth Ur, as naked as a nord, as fragile looking as a scrib, gyrating and swaying back and forth, laughing to himself, his horned golden disc of a mask catching what light there is. He claims that Lorkhan's heart has made him divine, but he and his ash vampire brothers look the very opposite of divine, but of course, that's because Lorkhan is a daedra, and daedra aren't known for beauty, hence why Ms Azura tries so hard to falsify it. They do not add to the world, but detract. They do not create, they corrupt. Even Glum, at second and especially third glance, is not beautiful, but disturbing, wrong.
The villain monologue he has given to every person who has managed to approach him in the long aeons before her, has been the same, no matter how strange a figure Nerevar had chosen to cut, but this time his thunderous and intimidating ravings are drowned out by the more thunderous ravings of three nords.
“QUIVERING WORM!! LET US EXTRACT ITS ENTRAILS TOGETHER!!”
“I WILL CLEAVE YOU IN TWAIN, COWARD!!”
“A FESTERING WITCH!! I'LL WEAR ITS MASK AS A BELT BUCKLE!!”
Under the barrage of nord poetry, Dagoth Ur pauses in enumerating his one-sided feud, and even fails to offer any further false courtesy. He strikes, but has been made weak by the sheer amount of head bonking Glum has been doing to his underlings. He flees, disappearing in a cloud of foul smoke.
“ONWARDS!!”
🐾
The great chamber at the centre of the volcano houses a great thing - Akulakhan, Numidium resurrected by blasphemous necromancy. A shameful thing, an ugly shadow of the Brass God, very slowly reforming in Dagoth Ur's mad image. Apparently one can't get good help these days, because the monstrous golem is still only about half completed after thousands of years.
Down on the narrow stone bridge which extends from the side of the magma chamber to the gargantuan golem, Dagoth prattles on again, like someone who is extremely anxious. It's loud, but also blistering hot, the flame flecked air choking while it burns, so that may be the reason.
Glum mutters to herself, a little bit weary of this adventure. She's a side quest girly, not one for involving herself in major affairs, and wouldn't have done so here were it not for the unfortunate affair with the orc and the bunny. “You know, Dagoth, you protest too much.”
“HahahahahahahahahahahahahAHAHAH-”
Levitation. Leaving her companions to distract Lord Dagoth on the bridge, Glum glides over their heads towards its cavernous and hollow stomach, where the Heart of Lorkhan sits, just below the exposed ribs, beating. It's nothing but a daedric heart the size of a small boulder, floating in place. Would make the world's finest piece of armour or weapon. There's no time for daydreaming though, only for making unreal this incongruous thing.
Wack! Once with the mace. Behind her, Dagoth ceases hahahahahahahaing at the nords, in order to turn and scream at Glum. His voice survived the desiccation that afflicted the rest of him, and the bellow disturbs Glum enough for her to momentarily slip from the ‘mere mortal’ act she puts on while wandering Mundus.
“FOOL! WHAT ARE YOU DOING!”
“Oops.” When the corpse grey monstrosity with the flat gold head begins charging at her on legs like twigs, ancient loincloth slapping wetly, Glum reacts instinctively, dropping Sunder, hugging the Heart, and teleporting away. Whatshisface said no Recall or Intervention, he didn't say no Shenanigan.
🐾
Glum reappears in her favourite place on Vvardenfell, a pastel mushroom forest far from mortal habitation. Not alone either, as a gigantic red organ sits beside her, floating a couple inches off the ground.
“...Oops.” now that the thing is away from the machine it was to power, it looks far less terrible. Does it need to be freed? Maybe it could be prettied up?
While Glum's pondering a makeover, Azura manifests, cradling a big green bunny in her blue arms. Her expression is the carefully crafted, PR friendly one she always uses, but shaded with deep aggravation she dare not show. Were Glum mortal, the teeth grinding the Prince is doing would shatter her eardrums.
“Glum. Why did you turn your cousin into a bunny?”