The Goblin with the Golden Arm - A Tamrielic Thriller

Haven't posted here in a while, so I thought I'd show another piece I wrote for Beyond Skyrim. Quill-Weave was apparently a famed author in Oblivion. Yet, for all her apparent success, you couldn't find a single copy of any of her works in game. So, I dug up [this] (http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:New_%27Doomstones%27_Series!) Black Horse Courier article, and decided to write a short neo-noir crime fiction on it. I thought it'd be the sort of trashy fiction a lot of folk in Cyrodiil might read in their off time.

The Goblin with the Golden Arm

Quill-Weave

200th Anniversary Reprint

First published 3E226

This edition published 4E195

The persons in this book are semi fictional. Any similarities to persons living, dead or undead are probably not a coincidence.

Quill-Weave spins another gripping tale of sex, scandal and Skooma in the second outing of her embittered Private Investigator, Servil Sybane. Widely considered to be one of her finest works, Green Emperor Publishing is reprinting Quill-Weave's novels in full for a special 200th anniversary commemorative event. Why is Sybane being tailed by a band of remorseless assassins? What do they want with the Woman? And where is the Goblin with the Golden Arm?

Chapter 1

It was a dull, grey Frostfall morning when the Woman entered my home, and changed my life forever.

The streets outside were grey, windswept and empty, but there was a charge in the air - something alive, something powerful and energetic. Twenty years in the Watch taught me to trust my instincts, and now every one of them were screaming at me that this was going to be a very different kind of day.

She had clearly wanted to make a grand, sweeping entrance, with the door flung wide open, but it had been a rough month and I'd had to sell it to an unscrupulous Bosmer. It had, after all, been two years since my success with the case of the Red Pit of Anvil, and work was getting increasingly thin on the ground. But despite the disappointment written all over her face, she still managed to stun me. Elegant and graceful, wrapped up tightly in the finest Nibenese fashion. High, elegant cheekbones, jet black hair wrapped tightly in a bun. Legs from here to Aetherius, and a scent that was more sugary than a Khajiiti fart. She was almost as beautiful as my dear Casta of Chorrol, and looked twice as dangerous.

She strode over to my desk, placing neat, well groomed hands on either side. She leaned forward, her lips exotic, enticing. I wondered what it'd be like to kiss her.

"Servil Sybane? The famous inspector?"

"At your service ma'am."

"I have a problem." Her voice was husky, a little deeper than I expected. Somehow, it made her even more attractive.

"A week ago some letters from an old friend went missing from my home. It would be very... Embarrassing, if they came to light."

I followed her gaze out the window. To my surprise, she was staring at the spire of White Gold Tower.

"I already know who took them. And I know what he plans to do with them. He wants things from me that I am not prepared to give up. I need you to track down my documents, and destroy them."

Interesting. "And this mysterious thief is...?"

"A goblin. Razul. Razul Ghaash."

I knew that name. I knew it well. I touched the scar on my neck instinctively.

"The Goblin with the Golden Arm."