Upon my return to Daggerfall I enquire about Stuga and discover that the tenacious Orc has relocated to the city of Shornhelm in Rivenspire. Perhaps she did indeed pursue the wrong person and was forced to move on, or maybe she just felt she needed a fresh furrow to plough for recruits. Either way I was to find her outside the city stables where once more she greets me as if she had been expecting me.

She hands me a letter addressed to me personally from a Forge-Mother Alga, the mother of the King of Wrothgar himself. I am certain however that this is but some clever illusion spell for I have witnessed her hand these letters out to many an adventurer, and am pretty sure we each read our own names. A harmless confidence trick often employed by Baandari Pedlars, yet a trick nonetheless, and one that makes me instantly wary of this Forge-Mother’s probity. I’ve oft heard it said of Orsimer tribes that the ones that truly rule are not the kings who sits upon their thrones, but the matriarchs who stand behind them.

Rather annoyingly I am directed back to Daggerfall for transportation to the Merchants gate in Bangkorai. I’d much prefer to take the shorter route to Wrothgar through the Friendship Gate in Stormhaven, but am told I am to meet with a caravan of vital supplies being driven directly to Orsinium. Apparently the insidious Winterborn from the Reach have been ransacking caravans full of supplies in the mountain passes for several months now. These Winterborn are said to have held rule over Wrothgar during the reign of the Longhouse Emperors but were pushed back to the mountains when Emeric granted the Orcs full control of the region in return for their aid against Ranser.

And yet Orsinium wilt not petition Wayrest or Sentinal for direct aid against this ongoing Reachman threat. Such distrust of their Covenant allies, whether or not hued by history, gives little hope that this brittle Covenant will hold till the end of the thrice-damned Banners War. The alliance between Breton and Redguard alone is a fragile one, as I was to witness myself at the Alcaire Castle, whilst I was to discover during my journey across the desert that the Redguard appeared to be on the brink of their own civil war. And I cannot ever imagine a Breton noble willing to take a bride or groom from Wrothgar to their bedchamber for the sake of a stalwart concord.

S.K