Morndas, 23rd of Last Seed, 4E 201

Today was quite the profitable little adventure! I can see why so many people are drawn to this sort of work.

Buying a house here in Whiterun is only 5000 gold. I’m almost at 3000 and it’s only been a few days?!

I seriously can’t believe my eyes when I look in my pack. I don’t think I’ve seen this much gold in my entire life, much less all at once!

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

We set out this morning for the cave. According to where Amren marked on my map, it was very close, and he wasn’t exaggerating. It was just up the hillside off the main trail.

Two bandits were hanging out near the entrance of the cave, at a small lookout with a fire. The furniture and such told me it was an outdoor kitchen. I was a bit worried about them, but Lydia bolted in and destroyed them! She needs to be more careful of my arrows and fire, though – I nearly got her a few times.

The inside of the cave wasn’t anything impressive. Mostly it was a series of small connected cavern “rooms” with a bandit or two in each of them. There was some furniture and some bedrolls and such, but it looked pretty dilapidated. There were some exposed ore veins, too, and upon looking around at the parts that seemed carved and built out, I think it was a mine at some point. It would explain the random wardrobes and shelves laying around. I can’t imagine a group of thieves hauling those up the side of the hill.

The cave went up instead of down, and as we went from room to room, level to level, I was getting worried. There was no sign of the sword. Just fairly standard iron and fur armor pieces, and a nice supply of weapons. And there was even a steel sword, but it looked just like every other steel sword I've seen here. Clearly Nordic in style, and Amren’s a Redguard from Hammerfell, so I knew that wasn’t it.

When we got to the top of the cave, there was an opening to the outside, like in Bleak Falls Barrow. But rather than a route down the hill, there was a huge man with nice steel armor out there. He fell on us pretty quickly, but Lydia and I made short work of him. He had a journal on him, and some magic bracers that were of more use to Lydia than myself, so I gave those to her.

His journal said that there was some unrest amongst his men, pickings were slim, blah blah blah. Mostly complaints about how hard it was to be a bandit and how stressful it was to lead a troop. I laughed to myself at first, but then I looked at Lydia, and realized that I might be on my way to that. If I ever have anyone else joining us, how will I handle it? Will they fight, or get along?

I didn’t come up here to see the ghost of a potential future in the form of some bandit chief, but oh, well. I’ll hop that silt-strider when I come to it.

The area out there had a platform built up, arranged as a rest area or maybe just a quiet place he could go to. There was also a chest, and in it was the sword!

It looked old and beat up, but according to Amren, it had seen more than it’s fair share of bloodshed, so that figures.

We took everything we could carry and more on the way out, and slowly made our way back to Whiterun. Lydia was Not Happy about that. She said it wasn’t a good tactical decision, and I agreed with her. Likewise, her refusal to hold anything that might slow her down was an excellent tactical decision. I told her how Dru and I had a rule. One was allowed to be stupid, if the other agreed to be smart. We were not allowed to be idiots at the same time.

Lydia said she couldn't argue with that logic, and she walked leisurely by me while I dragged our haul to Whiterun.

I am so glad that Adrienne is right by the entrance. I was able to get rid of most of what we’d gathered, and I finally had enough to make a fur tent with two bedrolls. Huzzah for not freezing to death! Then we made our way to Belethor’s to get rid of the rest. We found Amren’s house, and his wife was yelling at him for something. She seems awfully snippy. I’ve only seen her in passing, and I’ve never seen her smile.

But I handed over the sword and was rewarded with…

A sword-fighting lesson.

Oh, well. I won’t say it didn’t help! He was able to transfer the lesson easily to my axe. He said that if I ever want more training, he'd be happy to teach me. For a price, of course, but that’s only fair.

Hmm… A free sword-fighting lesson and a ton of loot that put us over 3000 Septims.

Not bad for a day’s work!

Now to drink an incredible amount of bandit camp wine and pass out, because it’s my turn to be stupid.