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(A/N: Don't forget to give those power stones to Skyrim everyone!)
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He kept his voice light and casual, deliberately omitting any mention of the towering prehistoric beasts he intended to unleash upon the plains. The time to reveal his mammoth farm to the citizens of Whiterun would come later, once the massive stone walls were built and the ink on the deed was fully dry. For now, he was just a scholar mage, enjoying a warm breakfast with his friends.
Beside him, Jenassa was methodically tearing into a crust of fresh bread, her crimson eyes tracking the few early morning patrons entering the establishment.
Standing behind the counter, leaning forward with her elbows resting on the wood, was Ysolda. Her bright eyes were wide with genuine, unadulterated excitement as Aerion relayed a highly sanitized, carefully edited version of his morning at Dragonsreach.
"So, the Jarl actually approved the loan?" Ysolda asked, her voice hushed in awe. "You are officially purchasing a proeprty here in Whiterun? Aerion, that is absolutely incredible news! Congratulations!"
"Thank you, Ysolda," Aerion replied, offering a smooth, polite smile as he took a sip of his hot cider. "The negotiations were somewhat delicate, given the political climate, but Jarl Balgruuf and Master Proventus were ultimately convinced by the economic merits of my proposal."
Ysolda beamed, clapping her hands together. "A property on the hold... that is a massive step up from renting a room. Though," she added, her tone shifting seamlessly into the pragmatic realm of business, her voice dropping to a low, conspiratorial whisper, "I suppose this means you won't be needing to stay at the inn much longer once the deed is finalized. But until then, you really must let me comp your rooms. We could just deduct the payment for the room you and Jenassa occupy directly from your half of the overall revenue cut. It feels like terrible business practice to make a co owner pay full price for a bed in his own establishment."
Aerion chuckled softly, shaking his head. He appreciated her dedication to the ledgers, but he had entirely different plans.
"There is no need to trouble yourself with the accounting, Ysolda," Aerion assured her gently. "In truth, I will be leaving town again very shortly. Perhaps as early after this meal."
Ysolda blinked, taken aback. "Leaving? But you just returned last night."
"Indeed. However, the Jarl's loan requires a rather substantial upfront down payment to secure the physical deed to the Homestead," Aerion explained, maintaining his fabricated narrative. "I must travel out into the wilds with Jenassa to collect the necessary funds and scavenge valuable items to exchange for the upfront deposit."
Ysolda's brow furrowed in genuine, innocent confusion. She looked around the bustling tavern, then leaned in even closer.
"Scavenge?" Ysolda whispered, her tone laced with surprise. "Aerion, forgive my prying, but... do you not have enough liquid coin remaining to cover a down payment? I know the property you buy must be expensive, but you purchased half of this entire inn just last week without batting an eye."
Aerion looked at the young, ambitious Nord woman. She was sharp, observant, and clearly trying to puzzle out the true depths of his financial reserves.
A sudden, highly uncharacteristic urge to play the rogue seized him. He had spent the entire morning executing flawless, high stakes political manipulation with the Jarl. He was mentally exhausted from being the stoic, perfect Altmer scholar. He wanted to lighten the mood, to gently tease his earnest, hardworking business partner.
Aerion set his cider mug down. He leaned forward slightly, closing the distance between them. He allowed a slow, impossibly charming, highly teasing smirk to spread across his golden features.
"I did indeed possess a remarkably large fortune, Ysolda," Aerion murmured, his melodic voice dropping into a smooth, velvety register. "But I used almost the entirety of my liquid capital to help you purchase this inn. And I assure you, I did not do it simply because you are an excellent, savvy business partner..."
He paused for a fraction of a second, letting his maximized, reality bending Persuasion skill bleed into his words.
"...I also did it because I found myself utterly captivated by your beauty."
To seal the devastatingly smooth, playful flirtation, Aerion delivered a flawless, confident wink.
He expected her to laugh. He expected her to roll her eyes, lightly smack his arm with her cleaning rag, and tell him to stop practicing his bardic lines on her.
That is not what happened.
Ysolda froze. Her bright blue eyes widened to the size of dinner plates. The teasing words, amplified by the sheer, supernatural weight of his perfect Persuasion matrix, hit her like a kinetic blast of Destruction magic.
A violent, impossibly bright shade of crimson instantly flooded her cheeks, racing down her neck and visibly coloring her chest above the collar of her dress. She let out a sharp, highly undignified squeak of pure shock, physically stumbling backward away from the counter as if she had been burned.
To Aerion's immediate right, Jenassa had just taken a large, healthy swig of her Nord mead.
Hearing her normally stoic, terrifyingly calculating, god like Patron casually drop a devastatingly smooth romantic line on a local barmaid caused the hardened assassin's brain to completely short circuit.
Jenassa violently choked. She inhaled the highly fermented mead directly into her lungs.
"PFFFT!!! HACK! COUGH!"
Jenassa slammed her mug down on the wood, mead splashing everywhere. She doubled over on her stool, beating her armored chest with her fist as she fell into a violent, wheezing coughing fit, her crimson eyes watering profusely as she stared at Aerion in absolute, unadulterated disbelief.
Before Aerion could even attempt to mitigate the disaster unfolding before him, a booming, incredibly amused voice erupted from directly behind his shoulder.
"Well, well, well! By the breath of Kyne, would you look at that!"
Aerion stiffened. He slowly turned his head.
Hulda had just walked up behind them to collect the empty breakfast bowls. Because of her close proximity, the veteran innkeeper had heard absolutely every single word of the exchange.
Hulda rested her hands on her wide hips, a massive, delighted grin splitting her weathered face. She looked from the coughing assassin, to the mortified High Elf, and finally to the bright-red, paralyzed young merchant behind the counter.
"I must admit, Aerion, I did not see that coming!" Hulda cackled, her voice lowered down a bdestroit doesn't destroy the ambient noise of the tavern and only them could hear. "I thought you were just a sharp minded investor! It turns out you had an ulterior motive all along! You were interested in our little Ysolda!"
"Hulda, please, it was merely a joke—" Aerion started, raising a hand in a desperate attempt at damage control.
"Oh, don't you try to walk it back now, Elf!" Hulda interrupted, thoroughly enjoying the scandalous drama. "This is the first time in my entire life I have ever witnessed a budding romance between a towering High Elf noble and a sweet Nordic merchant! Truly, you are cut from a different cloth than the rest of those stiff necked snobs from the Summerset Isles!"
Aerion realized with a sinking feeling of horror that his playful, harmless teasing had just violently blown completely out of proportion.
He looked back across the counter, intending to apologize to Ysolda and explain that it was just a terrible, poorly timed joke.
But when he looked at her, the words died in his throat.
Ysolda wasn't angry. She wasn't offended. She was standing pressed against the back shelves of the bar, both of her hands clamped tightly over the lower half of her face to hide her embarrassment. But her bright blue eyes were darting nervously, shyly, toward him, filled with a mixture of overwhelming fluster and... genuine, undeniable something there.
Aerion's highly analytical mind ground to a screeching halt.
'By the Eight,' Aerion realized, a cold sweat breaking out on the back of his neck. 'She actually has feelings for me.'
It was a statistical anomaly. The geopolitical climate of the Fourth Era made such a dynamic almost impossible. High Elves and Nords were sworn, bitter, blood feuding enemies. The Aldmeri Dominion actively tortured Talos worshippers. Such a cross cultural romance should not have been possible, yet the absolute proof of her budding affection was written plainly across her blushing face.
"Ysolda, I—" Aerion tried again, keeping his voice incredibly gentle.
"Y-You do not need to speak any further, Aerion!" Ysolda stammered, her voice muffled slightly by her hands. She couldn't even make eye contact with him. "I... I have to go check on the... the potatoes! In the back! Excuse me!"
Without another word, Ysolda practically fled the main counter, her skirts swishing wildly as she sprinted into the safety of the sweltering kitchen, the heavy wooden door swinging shut behind her.
Aerion sat frozen on his stool, his hand still half-raised in a futile gesture of explanation.
Beside him, Jenassa finally managed to clear the mead from her lungs. She wiped her mouth with the back of her leather gauntlet, her chest heaving as she shot her employer a look of profound, deeply disappointed judgment.
"And that is exactly why you should not have joked, Patron," Jenassa wheezed, her gravelly voice rougher than usual. "High Elves are absolutely not known for possessing a casual sense of humor, nor a casual sense of romance. Everyone across Tamriel, especially here, knows how strict, rigid, and politically calculated the culture of courting and marriage is within your society. When an Altmer declares his intentions... he means it."
Aerion let out a long, heavy, incredibly defeated sigh. He dropped his hand, staring blankly at the polished wood of the counter.
"I have made a severe error of judgement there," Aerion murmured, his flawless composure entirely shattered.
Hulda chuckled warmly, stepping around the counter to take Ysolda's abandoned post. She picked up a rag and began wiping down the spilled mead Jenassa had caused.
"Don't beat yourself up too badly, Aerion," Hulda smiled kindly, leaning over the wood. "Since it was just a joke, I will go back there later, explain the misunderstanding, and console the poor girl. But..."
Hulda paused, her expression turning surprisingly serious and deeply maternal.
"From the reaction she just showed you, you should realize that the girl genuinely has some sort of feeling for you," Hulda advised quietly. "And it isn't hard to see why. You might be an Elf, but you have been incredibly, exceptionally kind to her. No Nord man in this city has ever treated her with such overwhelming respect. You gave her those two priceless mammoth tusks absolutely free of charge just to help her fulfill a contract. And then you turned around and handed her thousands of septims to buy half of this inn, elevating her to a true, respected merchant."
Hulda tapped her chest right over her heart. "To a young, ambitious woman trying to make her way in a harsh world... those are massive, undeniable gestures of affection. You can't be surprised that she interpreted your generosity as something deeper."
Aerion nodded his head slowly, absorbing the wisdom. He had been looking at his actions purely through the lens of maximizing his systemic influence and securing a loyal proxy for his trade empire. He had completely failed to factor in the very real, highly complex human emotions of the NPCs in this reality. They weren't just lines of code anymore. They were real people.
He stood up from the stool, adjusting the heavy fabric of his dark robes. He needed to leave the perimeter immediately before he made the situation any worse.
"We are departing," Aerion announced, his voice snapping back to its usual, commanding cadence. "Jenassa, we have money to collect."
Jenassa immediately stood up, immensely grateful to be leaving the suffocating awkwardness of the tavern behind. "Understood, Patron."
Aerion looked across the counter at the veteran innkeeper. "Hulda... please convey my sincere goodbyes to Ysolda. And thank you for the excellent meal, and the... illuminating perspective."
"Safe travels, Aerion," Hulda chuckled, waving her rag. "I'll make sure the girl doesn't hide in the potato sacks all day."
With his tail metaphorically tucked between his legs, Aerion turned and briskly walked toward the exit. Jenassa followed closely behind, and Lupin, sensing his master's sudden, intense desire to flee, abandoned his sweetroll crumbs and trotted rapidly after them.
They pushed through the heavy wooden doors, stepping out into the bright, bustling mid morning light of the Wind District.
As they descended the stone steps toward the market, Aerion's mind was a swirling vortex of highly conflicting thoughts.
'Romance was never part of the plan,' Aerion thought to himself, his jaw clenching as he navigated through the crowds. 'It was never supposed to factor into the equation.'
Since the moment he had woken up in the carriage bound for Helgen, his singular, overarching focus had been absolute, pragmatic survival and the meticulous consolidation of background power.
He wanted to be the shadow ruler, the untouchable mastermind operating the economic and military levers of Skyrim from the safety of his private estates, while the prophesied Dragonborn took all the arrows, the glory, and the lethal attention of the world.
Getting emotionally entangled with a local merchant created massive, undeniable vulnerabilities. It tied him down. It gave his potentisl future enemies like Ancano, the Thalmor, the Dark Brotherhood who probably hired by someone, and many others coming, a soft, unprotected target to leverage against him.
But as he walked past the vibrant stalls, he couldn't simply dismiss the complication. Ysolda was not just some random NPC to him anymore. She was incredibly smart, highly ambitious, and undeniably charming.
Furthermore, it was impossible to deny her physical appeal, the aesthetic mods he had installed in his past life had seamlessly integrated into this reality, enhancing her features, smoothing her skin, and rendering her genuinely, breathtakingly beautiful.
That was the exact reason he had chosen her to act as his business proxy in the first place. He had sought out a competent, attractive ally. He simply hadn't expected his overwhelming, systemic 'kindness' to act as an emotional boomerang, striking him squarely in the back of the head.
"It is a massive headache," Aerion muttered under his breath, earning a curious glance from a passing guard.
They finally reached the towering, iron-reinforced main gates of Whiterun. The heavy wooden doors were open, allowing a steady stream of merchant caravans and farmers to pass through the archway.
Aerion stopped just before the exit, turning to his Dark Elf bodyguard.
"Jenassa," Aerion commanded, his tone strictly business. "Proceed through the gates and head directly down to the Whiterun Stables. Wake Skulvar if you have to. Have Revan and your mount saddled, packed, and fully prepared for a hard ride. I will join you shortly."
Jenassa didn't ask questions. She simply offered a crisp nod. "It will be done, Patron."
She turned and marched through the archway, her leather armor blending into the crowd of departing travelers.
Once Jenassa was entirely out of sight, Aerion gestured for Lupin to follow him. He turned sharply to his left, stepping off the main cobblestone path and moving into the shadowy, highly overlooked alcove nestled tightly between the massive stone wall of the city gate and the foundation of the guard barracks.
It was an empty, neglected corner of the city, littered with a few broken barrels and overgrown weeds. But in his past life, this specific, unassuming nook was legendary. It was the exact spot where players would drop items on the ground and order their followers to pick them up, exploiting the physics engine to duplicate priceless gear without using mods.
It was the perfect, hidden blind spot.
Aerion ensured the immediate area was clear of patrolling guards. He raised both of his hands, his fingers curling into intricate, highly complex weaves.
He didn't draw upon the school of Illusion, which governed traditional light bending in the game. Instead, he accessed his vast, newly expanded understanding of Alteration, the fundamental manipulation of physical reality.
He channeled his Magicka, forcing the ambient light particles in the immediate vicinity to literally bend and curve around his physical form, wrapping himself and his familiar in a flawless, localized cloaking field.
FWOOSH.
Aerion and Lupin vanished entirely from the visible spectrum.
[Alteration Leveled Up 5 Times! Current Level: 27]
The system instantly recognized the highly advanced, non standard application of reality bending magic.
Completely invisible, Aerion and his unseen fox stepped out of the alcove and rejoined the bustling crowd. They walked silently back up the cobblestone street, seamlessly weaving around the oblivious citizens.
They approached the Warmaiden's forge. Adrianne Avenicci was currently hammering a glowing iron sword on the anvil, her back turned to the street, completely focused on her craft.
Aerion slipped quietly past her, moving into the narrow, weed choked alleyway directly behind the blacksmith's shop. He walked until he reached the very back corner of the building, where the heavy stone foundation met the dirt.
He crouched down, his invisible hand reaching out.
To the naked eye, there was absolutely nothing there but dirt and grass. But to Aerion's system enhanced perception, the faint, shimmering outlines of five massive, iron bound chests were visible, heavily clipped through the environmental meshes and buried half beneath the foundation.
These were his Mod Chests. The infinite repositories of wealth and gear he had installed to bypass the early game grind.
He placed his hand on the lid of the first ethereal chest. He didn't bother opening it physically. He simply interfaced with the container's digital inventory.
With a thought, he authorized the transfer.
Clink. Clink. Clink.
The heavy, incredibly satisfying sound of digital gold transferring echoed perfectly in his mind. He drained exactly 5,000 septims from the first chest, instantly funneling the massive sum directly into his spatial void.
He moved down the line, placing his hand on the second, third, fourth, and fifth chests, repeating the exact same process with flawless, invisible efficiency.
The massive influx of wealth hit his dimensional inventory, significantly increasing the weight he was carrying, but providing him with vastly more than enough capital to cover the Jarl's exorbitant down payment.
His heist complete, Aerion stood up. He walked silently back out of the alleyway, slipping past the sweating blacksmith, and navigated his way back down the crowded street.
He returned to the empty, shadowed alcove beside the main gates. With a subtle release of his Magicka draw, the complex Alteration weave unraveled.
The light snapped back into place. Aerion and Lupin reappeared, looking entirely unbothered and perfectly immaculate. Aerion smoothed the front of his dark robes, stepped out of the blind spot, and walked confidently through the towering gates of Whiterun, joining the flow of traffic heading down the winding, cobblestone path toward the stables.
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[Main Panel]
Name: Aerion Race: High Elf (Altmer)
Health: 350/350 Stamina: 350/350 Magicka: 500/500
Level: 80
Skills: Animal Affinity (MAX LEVEL), Fast Skill Levelling (MAX LEVEL), Fast Magic Mastery (MAX LEVEL), Instant Shout (MAX LEVEL), Destruction (Fire(+1)/Lightning/Frost) (Level 43/92/27), Restoration (Healing/Purify) (Level 63/37), Alteration (Level 27), Alteration (Level 20), Illusion (Level 42), Conjuration (Necromancy/Summoning) (Level 37/46), Persuasion (Level MAX), Smithing (Level 22), Sneak (Level 33), One Handed (Level 67), Two Handed (Level 65), Lockpicking (Level 23), Archery (Level 72), Enchanting (Level 34), Light Armor (Level 53), Block (Level 60), & Pickpocket (Level 8)
Shouts: Fus (Force)
[Inventory Panel]
1x Steel Dagger, Small Sack, Poacher's Axe, Mammoth Tusk, Iron Shield, Steel Mace, Steel Warhammer, the Golden Claw, Calm Spellbook, Arvel's Journal, Inkwell & Quill, Thief Book, Scroll Of Summoning (Wolf), Scroll Of Healing, Steel Dagger of Minor Souls, Weak Potion of Paralysis, Ancient Nord Bow, Dragonstone, Ancient Nord Battleaxe Of Blaze, Potion of Minor Pickpocketing, Golden Staff of Flames, & Parchment Rolls Of Mammoths Farm And Loan
2x Iron Mace, Steel Axe, Steel Greatsword, & Lockpicks
3x Iron Greatsword, Steel Sword, Scroll Of Fireball, Glowing Mushrooms, & Potions of Minor Stamina
4x Potions of Minor Magicka & Spider Eggs
5x Lesser Soul Gem
8x Iron Arrows & Ancient Nord Arrows
9x Potions Of Minor Healing
Weight: 109.07 KG / 475 KG
Septims = 77,930