A Career Opportunity

18th Of Last Seed, 4E 201

Alvor, the blacksmith of Riverwood, had been training me in smithing. He even said that he should hire me as his assistant, which I took to mean that, if I proved myself, he'd give me a job helping him. I figured that I could impress him by mining some ore, making some ingots and crafting some armor and weapons. First, I would need to mine some ore, though. I knew there was a mine near Riverwood, so I headed to Embershard Mine, which I had passed on my way to Riverwood from Helgen.

I approached the mine and encountered a Nord just outside of it. I was going to ask him if I could make some sort of arrangement to mine some ore from the mine. Before I could even ask, he told me to turn around. I know that some Nords in Skyrim can be a little gruff with other races, but, all I wanted to do was mine some ore. Surely we could come to an agreement. I approached slowly, without any weapons drawn, but he attacked me without provocation. Divines, I swear to you that I went in with the purest of intentions. My life was in danger, so I had to kill him. His face collapsed against my mace as I struck the final blow, sending him to face Shor's justice.

I went in to search his body, hoping that I might be able to identify him and send word to his kin. That's when I discovered that he was a bandit. No doubt, he was guarding Embershard Mine for his bandit friends inside. I could have just walked away, but I started to worry that the bandit had friends who would come to Riverwood asking questions. As a Breton, I have no doubt that some of the Nords there would not hesitate to give me up. No, the only solution was to go in there and kill them before they could kill me. There weren't many of them, and they were dumb enough to attack in pairs rather than all at once. I sent them all to their deaths.

I guess the Whiterun Hold guards hadn't bothered to investigate Embershard Mine due to being occupied with the Stormcloak Rebellion. As distressing as that is, it ended up working out for me because it resulted in a half-dozen dead bandits who wouldn't be needing their gear anymore. After looting all of the bandit corpses, I set about mining as much iron ore as I could carry. When I got back to Riverwood, though, I discovered that Alvor didn't have a smelter. How could I make iron ingots without a smelter? And how could I smith without material? Alvor was willing to sell me iron ingots, though. What a scam. I had no choice, so I took the gear I had looted to Lucan Valerius, owner of The Riverwood Trader so that I could get some money to buy some iron ingots from Alvor. It turns out that I made more money from the gold I had looted from the bandits than I did from selling the gear to Lucan.

I ran out of The Riverwood Trader to find Alvor speaking with his young daughter, Dorthe. She was talking Alvor about smithing. I was just about to buy some ingots from Alvor when Dorthe interrupted me.

"My father is Alvor, the blacksmith.  I'm his assistant. I mean, apprentice", she said.

That little snot. She KNEW that I was hoping to get hired on as Alvor's assistant and she was mocking me. I'd have slipped her a dose of weak fear poison if Alvor hadn't been right there.

Maybe this is a sign from The Divines that I need to strike out on my own, build my own smith, create my own gear and sell it to the citizens of Skyrim.