#riften

[popcorncoy0te]

hay I found this ruins in the rift and I’m wondering if anyone else have seen it or it has a quest ? it’s just in the middle of the road and I don’t know if it is just cut contact or what.

[thespiffingrat]

CHILDHOOD — THE HONORHALL ORPHANAGE, RIFTEN

4E 174 - 4E 187 :

The True Scale of Riften: Skyrim in UNREAL ENGINE 5! [4K]

Back to the Main-Doc: TES:V - Niemand Timeline - MASTER

CHILDHOOD — THE HONORHALL ORPHANAGE, RIFTEN 4E 174 - 4E 187 

Skyrim:Honorhall Orphanage 

Arriving at Honorhall Orphanage with nothing, the infant carried no name, no family history, no lead to anyone who'd take care of her. There wasn't much anyone could've done; at last, the baby would survive just because a farmer's wife knocked at the door with a bundle of cloth in her hands, and a brief, uncomfortable explanation before she left and didn't look back. The icy rain rattled against the decaying roof, accompanied by the steady plink of leaks dripping into buckets and the desperate attempts of other children feeding tinder to a dying fire just to keep from freezing. 

Begrudgingly, Grelod the Kind accepted the wailing child the way she accepted all of them: as income, and as an inconvenience. To the people of Riften, Grelod was a fixture — the stern but necessary woman who kept the orphanage running, because nobody else would. Her nickname was ironic, and everyone in the city was perfectly aware of it. What they were less eager to examine was what that irony actually implied. The guards knew. The merchants knew. Nobody did anything despite knowing better. No matter the beauty of the area, Riften had a way of looking the other way when it was convenient — and brought coin…  

Behind closed doors, Grelod didn't get up in the night when the infant cried. Instead, she bellowed at the poor thing, locked it in the basement or the closet, and told the other children to keep the piece of shit quiet. "If you don't shut that brat up, none of you eat for a week, you hear me?" Grelod bellowed, slapping small Vex straight across the face when she didn't move fast enough for the hag's liking. "And make sure the thing keeps its quiet, or I'll make sure of it!" Grelod didn't feed her on schedule either, which only made the infant scream and cry harder and worsened the situation. "Gods forbid — what does the thing want now?! Brynjolf! Ranveig! Tova!! Vex!!!! Get a move on, or I'll —" Without finishing the sentence, Grelod took a wooden stick to whichever child was nearest, swinging hard enough to bruise. More than once, the stick came down on the baby as well…

"Shhhh. Shhhh, little one. 'S all right. Look, here — warm milk and a bit of porridge. Ground it real fine. Try it, please?" Murmuring soft under her breath, little Vex rocked the small thing on her hip before passing her on to the next pair of arms when hers gave out. They did their best to keep her quiet enough that she wouldn't be punished again — often using their own bodies to take the hits that would otherwise have landed on an entirely helpless newborn. Grelod didn't offer milk. She didn't offer a blanket. Grelod didn't change her diapers, didn't hold her, didn't speak to her with anything resembling warmth. What she did do was slam doors, bark at the other children to deal with the noise, and make it abundantly clear that a baby wasn't her problem unless it was being loud about it.

So, of course, raising the infant fell to the children — who were the last people in all of Tamriel who should've been raising anything, let alone a baby, and were, naturally, entirely overwhelmed by the whole business. Most of the kids hadn't any idea what to do with a screaming newborn, so the task fell specifically to Vex and Tonilia, who did the best they could given their own age. Tonilia, the older of the two, took charge — decisively, without asking anyone's permission. Vex, a touch younger, followed her lead. Between the two of them they worked out feeding times, improvised warmth, what scraps of affection they could spare, and took shifts through the night when the baby wouldn't settle. They were children raising a child, and they were in over their heads…

After a while, Brynjolf joined in. Five years older than the baby, he was the biggest of the three carers but, all the same, the youngest. Yet it didn't sit right with him to leave his friends to it. The little one had no part in any of it; she didn't even know her crying was what brought Grelod's wrath down on the lot of them. So he took on a brotherly role, hushing and shushing the wee one, rocking her now and again, doing what he could to keep Grelod placated enough that nobody got beaten for the trouble. "Shhh, shhh. There you go, y' tiny screamer! See? Nothing to be afraid of. I'll protect you ~ " he said, more than once, slowly getting accustomed to the role. So, as days passed by, Brynjolf took to watching over the infant with the same quiet, stubborn protectiveness that would come to define him for the rest of his life. No fuss about it. He did it for the friends who felt like family — and despite needing to survive himself, he put the others first.

Because the baby had no name when she arrived, she was simply called "the little one" or "the baby" by the children, which suited her fine — she had no opinions on the matter yet. Grelod called her nothing in particular. Or rather, she called her whatever came to mind, which was rarely flattering and often accompanied by slaps and bellowing. 

The seasons passed. Winter turned to summer and back to winter, and the child slowly grew into a toddler. Frail, a touch underfed, too small for her age — but alive. When she hit the age of three and still hadn't spoken a single word, it became a concern. By that age, any child ought to have been babbling, parroting bits of speech, trying out the shapes of words. So, Brynjolf, Vex and Tonilia did their best to coax something out of her… "Bryn-jolf. Say it slow, eh? Bryn… an' then… jolf." "No. You're doing it wrong, Stupid. Let me try. Mine's shorter. Vex. Say Vex." "Toni? Like Toni-lia. Try, sweetness." Unsurprisingly, the little one looked at them, then opened her mouth and closed it again. No coherent sound came… not any time soon…

Quickly, this turned into a worse problem than not having a name to call her by. Grelod ran the orphanage by command. If she said 'Now', the children answered 'Yes, Grelod' before the word had finished landing — and they moved before they'd finished answering. A child who couldn't respond was a child who couldn't obey and "the Kind" had no patience for that distinction. So, one day, Grelod told the nameless girl to fetch a bucket of water. The little one was already moving towards the door, small hands reaching for the pail — but the silence in place of the 'Yes, Ma'am' hung a half-second too long, and Grelod's patience snapped on that half-second alone. "When I tell you to do a thing, you SAY so. Yes, Ma'am. Out o' your mouth, plain as day. Not this — this nothing. Stop snivellin' or I'll give you somethin' to snivel about! Damn crying gives me a headache!!!" A slap came first. A kick followed after — hard enough to put the small thing through the doorway. Then the bucket of meltwater followed her out, dumped over her head where she'd landed on the stone path — ice-cold, knocking the breath clean out of her. Unfortunately, this day marked the moment her first words ever came: "S-s-sorry. M' s-s-s-sor — " Half a word, a stammer the cold had put in her. Fretful, begging for the witch to stop before she'd worked out what a sentence was….

Vex was the first to break — already on her feet, already moving for the doorway. Tonilia caught her by the arm with the sort of grip no child should've had to learn. Brynjolf was a step behind, putting himself between Grelod and the doorway before he'd thought about it. None of it mattered. Grelod was already past them, out into the wet, hauling the small thing up by a fistful of rosé-coloured hair. "Can't carry a bucket. Can't scrub a floor without ruinin' it. Can't eat without soilin' yourself. Can't speak. Costin' me more coin than you're worth, you know that? Maybe I'll sell you off to the slavers in Morrowind. See if I care." Heartlessly, she dragged the child back inside by the hair, hauled her across the floor like wet washing and shoved her into the closet, before she slammed the door so hard the latch jumped twice in its frame.

From behind the wood, a small broken noise echoed, continuing to try and speak: "P-p-please — s-s-s-sorry — Y-Yes — Ma'am — M' —" Not a second later, the door opened again. Not because the witch had softened — because she'd heard something she could grab onto. Reaching in, she got the child by the throat, choking her. "What was that? WHAT was that?! Was that supposed to be speech?! Before you ever try and talk again, best you learn this: You are useless. You are worthless. You came from nothing, and you ARE nothing. You're trash. A nobody. So worthless your own parents left you for dead in the dirt. You are No One. You hear me? That. Is your name now: NO ONE! Say it! I SAID: SAY IT!!!" — "N…N-o … N-o O-ne… N-N-No One…", cried she, halfway suffocating through the ordeal. Setting her down the way a butcher sets down a bad cut, Grelod stepped back and let the door slam shut a second time. The latch dropped. The whole orphanage went very quiet…. Three days, the child stayed in that dark chamber, chained to the walls. No food. No water. And when Tonilia finally worked up the courage to ask — quiet as she could manage, eyes on the floor — whether she might be allowed to bring a cup of water in, Grelod didn't even look up from her book. "No one gets any water. There is no one to give water to. Get back to work."

After that, the name stuck and became her permanent label. Grelod used it like a verdict. The children used it carefully, gently at first, unsure whether the name was a wound or just a word. They didn't dare to repeat it initially, not wanting to inflict anything more on the poor girl. So they made themselves a small workaround. They called her "N" — just the letter, said the way one'd say "Ann." It was close enough to a proper name that it sat easier on their tongues, far enough from Grelod's word that it didn't feel like joining in. A small kindness, and an entirely deliberate one. But in due time, Grelod pushed them into using it — and punished them when they didn't. So, it became simply hers, normalised — the only name she had ever had, and therefore the only one that mattered. N wouldn't understand it until much, much later — when she was older, when she could put words to the shape of what had been done to her. In future times, the orphanage would remain a memory she'd done her best to bury and No One would feel less like a name and more like a description…

As for the present, No One didn't yet understand that what was being done to her was wrong. She had nothing to compare it to. So, she tried to be good. She tried to follow the rules. She tried to be quiet enough, fast enough, small enough. It never satisfied grim, old Grelod. The beatings came regardless…

It came as no surprise, then, that No One grew into a quiet, timid, enormous-eyed little thing who startled easily and continued to cry often. Around the time she turned four, Brynjolf started calling her "Mouse." It began as a simple observation, because she was one — but it was a bit of both, really: the way a small boy teased a smaller girl, and, quietly, a term of endearment he wouldn't have admitted to under torture. There was something painfully sweet about the way she clung to his sleeve, hid behind his back, asked for help with the bashful look of someone half-expecting to be told off for asking: "B-Bryn-j-jolf? C-can y'… h-help reach the — t-the thingy — t-the top — t-there." "Aye, Mouse. Hold on, eh?" Brynjolf never said any of the soft part of it out loud. Partly because the other lads would've torn strips off him for it — and partly because he could see that speaking wasn't easy for her, and the last thing she needed was an audience for that, too. Truth was, she was sweet about it. Stammering and stumbling over her words, ears going red the moment she heard herself, hiding her face behind her hands….

So, the Mouse of the group was small and skittish and prone to disappearing into corners — and the name became her new nickname. It was, without argument, a hundred times better than No One, and a workaround of the sort that came naturally among children. The others — Tova, Ullr, Sindri and the rest — were not so kind. Crybaby, they called her. Weepy. Snivelface. It annoyed them that she cried at nearly everything: loud noises, harsh words, hunger, cold, the particular cadence of Grelod's footsteps when the witch was in a temper. The bullying was small and constant and quiet enough to slip past adults who weren't looking, but mean enough to leave marks on a child who already had too many. Watching out for one another, just like their idols, the thieves of Riften did, Brynjolf, Vex and Tonilia put a stop to it where they caught it. Vex was the worst of them for it, in the best sense. An eleven-year-old Vex with a face like a killer and a vocabulary she'd learnt entirely from listening to the older boys at the docks could clear a room of teasing children inside of a minute, and frequently did. Tonilia worked subtler — quiet words, a hand on a shoulder, the occasional sharp warning that nobody dared test twice. And sweetest of them all, Brynjolf simply put himself between Mouse and whoever was at her that day. An immovable little wall, fists already balled, jaw already set. He didn't shout but he threatened and stood there until they went away or used his smarts to outwit them— and if they didn't, he hit first, and took whatever Grelod's stick had to say about it later without a sound. Mouse was worth the bruises. That much, he'd already worked out… 

…⁠ᘛ⁠⁐̤⁠ᕐ⁠ᐷ♡ ༘*.ﾟ

[thespiffingrat]

"ɴᴀʜ, ʏ' ᴀɪɴ'ᴛ ʜᴀᴠɪɴ' sᴏᴍᴇ ᴅɪsᴇᴀsᴇ. ʏ' ᴊᴜs' ʟɪᴠɪɴ' ɪɴ ʀɪғᴛᴇɴ." - N

[thespiffingrat]

ℑ𝔱 𝔪𝔞𝔶 𝔟𝔢 𝔡𝔦𝔯𝔱𝔶, 𝔟𝔲𝔱 𝔦𝔱'𝔰 𝔥𝔬𝔪𝔢…

[morethantheycansay]

[knightsofeclipse]

Ran into another apparently commonly bugged quest. Disrupting the skooma trade in Riften. Quest won’t progress after clearing the cave to go back and report to Jarl Laila. Reddit says to wait a week or sleep for 24hrs to see if that pops it. If not console command it forward to clear.

Man, I’m just trying to become Thane

Can’t sleep right now. The Dark Brotherhood is going to take me if I do. And I’d rather not be dropped in Morthal right now

[knightsofeclipse]

More misadventures in Riften

I arrived at night, not something I usually do, so everyone was a bit funky already. I walk in, Shadr is on the bench. Sapphire is not there. I approach, Shadr starts in on his half of the conversation. I try to talk to him cuz Sapphire isn’t there, he’s talking to thin air. He tells me he can’t talk to me right now.

I spend an in game week scouring Riften for Sapphire. Do a few side quests I like to have out of the way before joining the Thieves Guild. Join the Thieves Guild thinking maybe Sapphire got confused and she’s already moved along to be down in the cistern. She’s not there.

Time for console commands. After many failed attempts to summon her using the wrong command and wrong id I finally successfully spawn a new Sapphire.

She goes to sit on the bench next to Shadr. Neither of them will enter dialogue with me or each other.

Ok. Fine. Quicksave. Murder Sapphire. Console command reset the quest. Nothing.

Reload save. Check the wiki. Apparently this interaction is incredibly bugged and I’ve just never encountered the bug before. Guess I don’t get to do this side question. Oh well

[loudgpufan]