Skyrim: Orebane

All of that to say I was less than interested in the idea. I stood up from the stone seat and watched as the stone walls and door turned into various colored butterflies and fluttered away. With the walls gone the scenery was changed and even after mentally preparing myself for it couldn't help but gasp. I was set on top of a tall hill of stone and could see the entire enclosed area that consisted of the Fringe. Giant orange mushrooms with green gills dotted the area along with other pant species native to the isles.-

Each and every one was a veritable alchemical treasure. Colors swirled all around the Fringe though an overarching theme seemed to be dark green and brown. The air was also incredibly heavy with moisture but that made sense considering the isles weren't named so randomly. Rather because the realm was in fact mostly ocean with scattered islands across it that hosted the majority of life. The sea surrounding the isles was thought to be bottomless and named the "Sea of madness". As if that weren't bad enough the main isle, which is the one most people end up on, moved.-

That's right the landmass actually wandered the sea at random with no one knowing how. Then again the Sea of madness was aptly named as anyone who tried to thoroughly explore it vanished or came back out of their minds. Anyways the Fringe had a small not very deep pond that the only town was built next to. The town was known as Passwall because it was a temporary stopping point for those coming to the realm before they passed through the walls gates. On the path to the town I spotted a few ugly short, fat bipedal creatures with amphibious features and greenish-yellow skin in crude clothes.-

'Grummites.' I thought with a gleam in my eye.

These creatures were possessed of a crude tribalistic society and weird life cycle. They were born from eggs but after that no one knew if they became Bollywags that were mostly quadrupedal lizard/frog things or if they just went straight to being Grummites. What I DID know however was that the things absolutely LOVED collecting Madness ore. They couldn't use it but it was very well recorded that wherever they were there was probably Madness ore as well.-

I wasted no time at all crouching down and leaping off the hill towards the Grummite squad of four. They saw my shadow and tilted their head in confusion at it before their dull minds figured out that there was a problem. It was far too late by then as I threw a dense white burning ball of flame into the center of the group. An adept level destruction spell of my own design named [flash burn]. What it did was brutally simple, it created a fireball of the highest temperature I could manage that detonated on impact.-

Assuming you survived this initial explosion of hellish heat then flames also worked like napalm and stuck to whatever they hit. The Grummites weren't even able to scream before the white flames cooked them into charcoal. I landed heavily with a "THUD!" on the damp earth a moment later. My ankles ached a bit at the pressure they absorbed but my monstrous vitality quickly dulled that pain and then erased it. I quickly began to check the corpses and besides the crude weapons on them and a few dirty bottles of poison only two of them had a chunk of ore.-

I crouched down and shook these spikes of ore in the water of the nearby puddle to clean them before looking them over. The first of them was about an inch thick and three long and conical with an uneven surface that was gleaming black with yellow veins throughout it. The second was smaller by about a third but roughly appeared the same. The conical spike like shape was because the stuff grew like that. Any deposits of the stuff had a red "sheath" that depicted screaming faces and grasping hands around small spikes of the actual ore.-

Unlike ebony that it was considered the equivalent of Madness ore grew back over time once harvested. It took years but this property made the stuff a staple of the isles assuming you could convince these madmen to collect it. I checked the poisons the Grummites had on them but sneered in disgust before tossing the bottles away. My disgust was because the fuckers didn't use actual recipes for their poisons. Rather they just threw random stuff into a pot and boiled it down before calling that sludge good enough. As an alchemist myself this was a disgusting idea as it wasted so many ingredients for a shitty result.-

The crude chitin weapons that the Grummites had were a bit better though as they were ugly but sturdy. I fed them to my sword anyways despite not being made of metal because nothing said my blade had to exclusively be made of metal. It was interesting watching the blades color and even texture shift visibly with the introduction of the chitin weapons. If before it only had the color of a plastic toy now it plain looked like one as it was unnaturally shiny and slick just like plastic.-

The change was incomplete of course since obviously a couple small cudgels, daggers and shields wouldn't be nearly enough. Once that was done I followed the crude path towards a set of positively ancient ruins that the Grummites had been returning to. I must have seemed mad as I stopped every few feet to collect another sample from the plants I came across. I couldn't help it. As both an alchemist and chef these were all fresh, new ingredients that I'd never gotten the chance to work with before.-

"Having fun picking flowers are we?" a slow bland voice said from behind me while I was harvesting a strange fungus that looked like a purple sea star.

I whiped around warily only to breath a sigh of relief when I saw it was merely Haskill again.

"Goodness, man! You should really announce your presence when you come up behind a man like that! I almost punched you!" I chastised seriously.

"I will endeavor to consider that in the future." he said blandly.

"Right. Anyways why are you here? I wasn't expecting to see you again until I got through the gate." I said confused.

"His lordship has sent me to inquire as to the recipe of something he called "pizza". He claimed it an absolute must for the party he is throwing in your honor." he said with a tired sigh.