Melchior part 3, Hometown Terror Plot

We arrived in Markarth in the evening.  Just as we walked in the front gates, a Forsworn terrorist murdered a lady at the market!  I related my eye-witness report to the guards, then felt the need to head in to my family's tavern for a drink after that rude homecoming.  I made friends with a few barflys, and one guy mentioned my family's smelter foreman, Mulush, was overly harsh on the workers.  'Maybe I can have a few words with him,' I thought.  I slept off the wine, picked up some cash from the family coffers, and headed out the next day.  I did get Mulush to lay off, then walked around town enjoying the sights, until this guy Eltrys began chatting me up about the previous night's murder.  He talked me into helping him figure out what was with what, to him, appeared to be a pattern of Forsworn murders... I spent the next few days re-acquainting myself with the streets, and asking around.

My digging into the lives of the assassin and the dead lady revealed a strange conspiratorial web involving m uncle Thronar, and our accountant Nepo the Nose.  But I'd delayed long enough, it was time to pay a visit to Understone Keep.  There, uncle Thongvor embraced me warmly and was glad to see me, but he was in the middle of an argument with an Imperial priest who had just closed down the Halls of the Dead for some reason... his name was Brother Veralus, a monk of Arkay.  He complained of a discovery that some of the dead had been... eaten!  Veralus seemed like a decent sort, and we chatted for a bit.  When he realized Emma and I were Vigilants, he suggested that we might be rewarded if we could stop whatever was going on.  Sure sounded like a job for a pair of wandering acolytes!  Emma and I could barely hide our excitement.  He gave me the key to the Hall of the Dead.
Before embarking on this quest though, I went to meet the Jarl, but a dickish Thalmor bigot named Ondolemar was there lording over everything, manspreading and boasting about how he'd root out all Talos worship.  The Jarl seemed anxious about that, but mainly was concerned about the murders and the Forsworn attacks outside of town on trade caravans, local mining villages, etc.  I began hoping that if I could do something about that, my family would be able to pull some strings with him and get me my own bachelor pad here in town.  So I buttered him up pretty good, and implied that I'd get my Order to look in to helping out with these primitive heathens, who let's be honest, probably worship daedra anyway because they don't know any better.

Then if was off to see about this invasion of the body-snackers.  Emma and I secured our gear and cleaned our weapons at the Jarl's smithy, then headed to the Hall of the Dead.  Inside, we poked around until we found a strange cannibal lady who spoke in an unholy, blasphenously reverberating tone, and could only have been under the influence of a daedric power!  She tried and failed to seduce us with her words because of our indomitable faith, then summoned a fire spirit to chase us off, but we slew them both!  Brother Verelus thanked us profusely, then suggested that if this was our line of work, we might investigate a haunted house on the other side of town.  We agreed, but first we wanted to finish investigating the Forsworn murders.

We went to pay a visit to The Nose - turns out he was Forsworn, and had been secretly working against my family and the Jarl!  He and his house servants attacked us!  Emma and I had no choice but to kill them all.  Emma found an old wood axe, and was covered in blood by the end of all her hacking, and I saw a wild look in her eye.  It made me feel all sorts of funny.

Then we went back to find Eltrys and tell him what we'd learned about Nepo... but he had just been murdered by the Town Guard!  Emma managed to run off, but they arrested me and planned to pin all the recent murders on me!  In their custody I gleaned that they had been playing the Forsworn and the Jarl off against one another, taking payments from both sides.  They and the Nose knew the Forsworn King, Madanach, was imprisoned in Cidhna mine (which belongs to my family) but was secretly still ruling his subjects, sending missives out with his instructions to continue waging a war of terrorism on the Nords.

They threw me in prison, and I resolved to see if I could find this monster.  I spent several weeks infiltrating his trust, subverted his messaging system to get a letter out to Emma to meet me in the Dwemer ruins connected to the mine (that I knew of from my family's blueprints), then I had to execute Madanach and escape out his secret tunnel before the other prisoners knew what happened.  After getting through some spider-infested tunnels, sure enough good old Emma appeared, thank Stendarr, and helped me get past some nasty Dwemer constructs.  When we got out, I found uncle Thronar right away and explained everything.  He was super thankful, and said he'd get the Jarl to pardon me for my arrest and punish the corrupt guardsmen.  Phew!  Now onto the real business of the Vigil.