Board Thread:Roleplaying/@comment-17114085-20170524151815/@comment-24696651-20170525210309

''Drip. Drip. Drip.''

Raldbthar was an old ruin, even by Dwemer standards. Most of the furnaces had stopped functioning, and as a result no steam passed through the plumbing - only cold water, slowly seeping out of the many broken joints in the pipes. The city was dark and lifeless, but that suited Edwin Tanet - he was looking for scrap and artifacts, not an adventure.

Or at least, that's what he had told the Steward when explaining his absence. In reality, he was here because Raldbthar was the first ruin he had explored with his now wife. Well, now ex-wife. He doubted there'd be much of value left here - he had come for old times' sake more than anything else.

He had been following a thicker length of pipe that lead down, presumably towards the main boiler, when he noticed a cloud of water vapour coming out of a broken edge of the pipe. The water pressure was clearly too low for any jet of steam to emerge, but he distinctly remembered the ruin being completely devoid of working furnaces on his first visit twenty five years ago. He ambled down the corridor, the characteristic hissing of a dry Dwemer boiler growing louder, and opened the doors into the main boiler room. A couple of tents had been set up around the boiler for the warmth, but no one was awake and on watch, so Edwin merely continued walking further into the centre of the ruin.

After twenty minutes, Edwin reached the ruin's forge - a gargantuan construction, guarded by a Centurion which he had fond memories of deactivating. He sat down, leaning against the edge of the forge for hours, wallowing in his memory, before standing up and shaking his head. He came back the way he came, and was mildly surprised to find out that human inhabitants of this ruin had awoken as he re-entered the main boiler room, greeted by the sight of three bandits.