This chamber was of course the most dense with loot as the Grummites base encampment in these ruins. Three drums, two green, gassy, moldy stumps and even two polygonal chests with metal lids and locks. In the drums I found some more Madness ore, gold and human skulls, some even with rotten flesh still attached. The stumps were where the REALLY interesting stuff was though. Honestly if I hadn't played Oblivion I probably wouldn't have known these disgusting moldy stumps had stuff in them. In the game it was random level adjacent loot but in reality it could be literally anything.-
'Ugh, used undergarments.' I thought with a grimace as I wisely used [telekinesis] on the stumps to rip them open and spill the contents.
As expected from such a mad hiding place the contents therein were nonsensical and without a shred of order. The first stump for example had the aforementioned undergarments, suspicious stains included. There was also three rubies, a stuffed chicken, four iron arrows, a hounds skull and another sword of order. It was chaos and besides the obvious treasures the rest were unceremoniously tossed.-
The second stump was a little better as it had an enchanted cats paw on a necklace, a fork, a hefty amount of gold and a Madness matrix for a pair of gauntlets. I zeroed in on the matrix right quick as I was highly curious how it worked. Immediately I could see that it was made of Madness metal from it's dark color and faint yellow streaks. Looking closely however I was amazed by what I saw as I quickly figured out how it worked. Honestly it was real work of genius, or madness really. See the way the matrix worked was that it contained the written symbolic representation for an enchantment but with a key difference, an energy siphoning aspect built in. -
This aspect had a twist though, when filled with unenergetic ore of the same type as itself all the energy it absorbed passively got shoved into the new ore during the refinement. The reason this was genius or madness was because it bypassed the need for soul gems entirely at the trade off of the absorption process for the matrix taking years to fill up properly. The incredible thing is that besides the base symbolic enchantment written down there was no upper limit to how powerful the effect could be.-
In other words the longer one of the matrixes sat undisturbed, passively absorbing the isles ambient energies, the more powerful the resulting enchantment with theoretically no upper limit. I was sorely tempted to put the thing back given that understanding but chose not to in the end as there was no telling if someone else would stumble across the matrix and take it even if I did.
Better it serve me than be someone else's spoils.
I moved on to the chests next and found them unusual not just in shape but size as well. They almost looked like fat coffins but shorter and symmetrical and had at least four feet of width, two of depth and three of height. -
Both chests were locked and considering the lack of keys on the Grummites I was fairly certain didn't originally belong to the strange frog people. If I had to guess the Grummites must have moved the things in here as loot without actually caring that it was entirely possible they were empty. Thankfully neither chest was enchanted against magical influence so my lock picking spell still worked a charm on them.-
In the first lay a set of black robes with silver white crystals stitched into the shoulders and sleeves with a pointed masked hood also bearing those crystals.
'Oh shit! A Priest of order outfit!' I thought in horror.
If the knights of order were little more than soulless uninspired robot then the Priests were the people commanding them. The worst part?
Each and every one was once a madman of Sheogorath.
Traitors basically.
Needless to say the Madgod was less than friendly to anyone who even owned one of these outfits, even as mere collectibles.-
"Uncle Sheo!" I called out without hesitation.
"Well this is new! HA! Getting called out in my own realm, why that's madness! Lunacy! Kerfuffle! You really do take after your dear old Ma, lovely woman. Real go getter that one." a loud voice said booming off the walls as a massive floating face appeared mid air.
"Right, well ignoring that blatant attempt at baiting me I found something and wanted to make it clear it's not mine. Consider it an offering if you'd like." I said stepping aside to show the outfit.
The face twisted into an aggressive snarl as those yellow slit pupils looked down on the chest.
"ORDER! Why can I never bloody get rid of these damned remnants! Ah well, guess I'll just go throw some fruit at Jyggalag again, he loves it when I do that!" the Madgod roared and vanished alongside the outfit.
'I'm not questioning it.' I thought wisely.
With that outfit gone I was left with the rest of the stuff in the chest. This was basically, a conjuration spell tome for Hungers, a grand soul gem(filled), an enchanted paintbrush and a mushroom tree seed. A strange combination of things but all technically useful so fitting enough for a chest I suppose.-
The second chest gave me a brutal slap of reality as it was filled with dozens of small skulls.
Child skulls.
A veritable macabre collection that I slammed the lid on again immediately while feeling sick. I didn't know if these skulls belonged to children who were killed for them or if some demented fuck dug up child corpses. Whatever the case this was a sharp reminder that this IS the realm of madness and that state of being is rarely a pleasant one for those who remained sane.-
I can't even say I am all that surprised honestly. Madmen doing heinous stuff for seemingly no good reason is just par for the course here. Not to say the realm was a lawless place as it actually had the same standard law set up as Tamriel. You know the whole no murder, thievery or rape laws. Other than that the only ironclad laws in the realm were not to kill yourself and not to attack the Madgod himself.