Okay. So I'm like, twenty years behind here. But I'm just playing Oblivion for the first time, and I gotta say, the A Rat Problem quest, despite its seemingly mundane nature, is one of the most unhinged quests I've played in an RPG.
Like, it starts with the typical RPG idea that this lady has a rat problem in her basement. And there are in fact several giant rats chilling in there. Then I talk to her, and she's like, "Those are my beloved children. But something is killing them. That's the real problem." So I go down there, and there's just a mountain lion casually strolling around. (Also, at the time, I hadn't met any other mountain lions in the wilds. I was like, "There's mountain lions in Oblivion?) I kill it and also notice the GIANT HOLE IN THE WALL through which it obviously snuck. And I'm thinking, "Well, we probably have to tell her to fix the hole and that's the end of this quest." Boy was I wrong.
Instead of trying to repair her crumbling infrastructure, this chick jumps to the next most logical solution: hire a hunter to conduct a mass slaughter of the local mountain lions. And at first I was like, "Mountain lions are usually pretty solitary. So there can't be too many nearby. But this a video game, so I'll accept that there might be a few roaming around."
I go to the hunter. We set off. We get to the area he decided would house mountain lions. And he's like, "I can't imagine there's more than four here. Let's go." And I was like, "That's oddly specific, but okay."
Now, just for some background, I did an earlier quest where you had to hunt bears. And they were scattered individually across a large area, so you mostly found and fought them one at a time. I assumed that would be the case again. I saw a couple of plants I wanted to pick, figured this dude could hold his own for one minute, then I hear a scuffle and turn around, and this dude is being attacked by EXACTLY FOUR MOUNTAIN LIONS all at once from every direction. A veritable gang of mountain lions. I go over to help. We kill the improbable four mountain lions. Now I understand why he's considered a famous local hunter. He immediately found and estimated the size of the mountain lion pack in this exact spot without any obvious evidence to lead him to that conclusion.
So I go back to tell Rat Lady the news. And she's like, "Oh, you got them all, huh? Too bad there's one in my basement killing my precious rats even as we speak!" Which, I'm gonna be honest, I don't have giant pet rats, but I do have a dog, and if I knew he was currently being slaughtered by a mountain lion I like to think I would at least do SOMETHING to ATTEMPT to drive it away, but whatever. So I go down there, and sure enough, there's a SIXTH mountain lion. I kill it and assume that's it. (Also, this all could have been prevented with some cement and stone. For real.) Once more I was wrong.
Rat Lady goes, "I know what the problem is. The Argonian next door is sabotaging me!" And, like, this woman's logical leaps are insane to me. How could your neighbor be causing a mass outbreak of mountain lions? Is she capturing them and lobbing them through your giant hole in the wall? So I go talk to the Argonian next door, and she's super defensive. Which is fair. If I was accused of sabotaging my neighbor's giant rat population via mountain lion, I too would probably be pissed off. So, I follow her. And doesn't she go to the giant hole in Rat Lady's wall and dump a pile of meat there. I confront her and she's like, "Mountain lions? My bad. I was only trying to lure the rats outside so the guards would slaughter them indiscriminately. Now I feel bad. Please don't tell Rat Lady."
I immediately tell Rat Lady, even though I'm pretty sure this will lead to future violence. Afterall, if someone was trying to lure my dog out of my yard so it would be killed, I would want to know about it. I get rewarded. No one seems surprised by this unlikely series of events. I do eventually go back to the Argonian next door, just to see what she has to say, and she has the gall to call ME a rat.
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