The Elder Scrolls Pashoecia Pt1 (Vote)

Deep within an old abandoned Klipotian fort, Seth was sneaking past the bandits that had taken up the fort as their base. Seth, while a seasoned fighter, knew his odds of taking out twenty-plus bandits were low; luckily, his current job wasn't to take them out but to retrieve a certain item.

It was a small gem called the Jewel of Change. Seth had no idea what it did, but that didn’t matter; the wizard it was stolen from was willing to pay him ten thousand gold if he returned it to him, which was enough money to support him for the next few years.

Seth continued to sneak around until he found the room where they stashed all their stolen goods. Seth crouched by the door and pulled out his lockpicks. He began picking the lock, breaking a few lockpicks before he managed to get it open.

Seth slowly opens the door and sneaks inside, then he closes the door gently so as not to alert anyone. He looked around the room and was pretty impressed with the bandit's haul so far. There was a pile of gold with gems mixed throughout it and even valuable weapons and artifacts.

Seth began to loot everything he could. He ended up with a nice two hundred and thirty-one gold, seven ruby gems, a spell book, five health potions, a single cheese slice, and most importantly, a special box containing the Jewel of Change.

After adding everything to his inventory, Seth heads back to the door, opens it, and looks around. No one was coming, which was perfect. It was so easy to steal from these guys; Seth was smirking as he made his way out of the fort.

Seth nearly made it out, but suddenly he heard someone start yelling back where he had come from. They had already figured out they had been robbed. Seth stood up and started running, thinking it was better to get out quickly than try to hide.

That may have been a mistake, as Seth triggered some of the traps built into the fort. The first one was wall spikes that nearly turned him into a kebab. The second was an oil trap, and while Seth avoided it easily, it allowed the bandits to know where to go because of the noise.

Seth made it outside and was met with a small group of bandits. Seth drew his steel axe and charged at the first guy. His axe slammed into the bandit's wooden shield, breaking it in half and chopping the guy's arm off.

He fell to the ground screaming, and Seth moved onto the other two guys. One was wielding a sword, and the other a bow and arrow. Seth dodged several of the archer's arrows as he ran at the bandit with the sword.

Seth’s axe clashed with the man's sword, and they sat there locked for a moment, which nearly gave the archer a chance to shoot Seth with an arrow. Luckily Seth managed to break free and move, which made the arrow pierce the other bandit's chest.

Seth turns toward the archer, who’s now out of arrows. Seth smirks and waves his hand at him as a challenge. The archer gets furious and charges bare-handed at Seth, who responds by pulling out his steel dagger and throwing it into his head.

Seth collects his dagger and runs to the gate. He began to pull it open when she heard someone from the top of the fort shout a command to kill the intruder. Seth turned around and saw several other bandits begin to pour out of the base.

Among them were two orcs, both quite tall and muscular and wearing full Orcish armor. Seth had little chance of beating them in a fight, never mind the remaining bandits coming and joining the fight, which they definitely would.

Seth grabbed his axe and started to hack away at the wooden gate. He managed to break it apart right as a barrage of arrows started to fly at him. Seth ran out of it and made his way into the forest. He ran a couple of miles in and thought he was in the clear.

He leaned against a tree and attempted to catch his breath when he had a sudden bad feeling. He dropped to the ground, and as he did, the tree he was leaning on fell down. Seth turned his head to see something had cut clean through the tree, right at the level his head was at.

He found out what it was when one of the orcs came jumping out of the leaves wielding a battle axe. Seth rolled to avoid the orc slamming down on him with the battleax. Seth rolled and managed to get onto his feet at the end.

He went running again when the other orc came out of nowhere and hit him in the back with his warhammer. Seth was thrown forward and was in a great deal of pain, but thanks to his flame steel armor set, he wasn't badly injured.

Seth rolled onto his back, and the orc came over and prepared to finish him off. Seth, thinking quickly, pulled out a soul gem and used it to restore his mana. Seth then cast Magelight directly into the orc's eyes.

The orc dropped his hammer and took a step backward. Seth jumped to his feet and grabbed the Warhammer. He took it and slammed it right into the body of the orc, which sent the orc stumbling back a few steps.

Seth took that chance to take off again before the other orc processed what was happening and joined in. Seth put the orcish warhammer into his inventory and continued fleeing deep into the forest.

Seth was now running through the forest trying to escape from the pair of orcs that were chasing him. As he was running, he noticed there was a cliff coming up, which was really bad as the orcs were right behind him.

Seth looks down, and it’s a very long way down. He thinks about it for a minute. It looked like there was some sort of lake below, but it was so far down he couldn't be entirely sure. Seth looked behind him; the orcs had caught up, and they had murderous smiles on their faces.

Seth’s options were to try and climb down slowly, which would likely make it easy for the orcs to throw rocks down at him and send him plummeting to his death anyway, and fight them, which Seth was still sure he couldn’t win that fight, or to jump off the cliff and hope to land in the lake.

Seth was far from a coward; he merely liked to choose the best outcome for him, and right now, all his choices seemed to lead to his death; he might as well take all the bandit's loot with him. Seth looked at the orcs, winked, and then waved as he took a step backward.

Seth saw the orcs run over to the cliff looking horrified, perhaps because even for moralless bandits, they thought Seth was crazy, or because they knew they just failed to regain their treasure hoard that Seth had stolen.

Either way, they weren't Seth’s problem anymore; the fall was. Seth spun himself around and stretched his limbs out to slow his fall. As he got closer to the ground, he felt relieved; there was indeed a large lake.

Seth hit the water and was submerged by several feet. Once he stopped going down, he began to swim upwards. As he came out of the water and gasped for air, he felt incredibly lucky he landed where he did.

It was deep in that spot, but a few feet in front of him it was barely knee-deep. Had he landed there, he would have for sure broken some bones or even died. Luck seemed to be on his side. Seth swam in the water until he got to a spot where he could stand.

That made it a lot easier to move around since he was wearing armor. Seth trudged through the water until he made it to land. Once on solid ground, Seth fell to the ground and just lay there. He was exhausted, and all of that was a lot to process mentally; after all, he nearly died.

He was hoping to get time for a break, but the adventure was far from over. Seth suddenly felt a magical presence coming from an item in his inventory. Seth looks inside and finds the source is the Jewel of Change.

Seth pulled the box out and opened it. Sitting inside was a fabulous gem, one Seth had never seen before. It was like nothing he’d ever seen before; its cut was that of a crescent moon, and it was changing colors.

Seth picked it up and looked at it. A sudden look of dread came on his face as he noticed the Jewel of Change was cracked. He had no idea if it was like that when he grabbed it or if it happened after he was hit by the orc.

Seth was about to grieve his massive payday when the gem suddenly got much brighter, and then it shot a blast of magic outward into Seth. The blast covered his entire body and caused him to pass out.