Tamriel Rebuilt:A Khajiit's Calling

Host an interview with a slave. Quest Giver: Llaalsa Vathras Location(s): Vathras Plantation Reward: 100-500 gold ID: TR_m4_wil_Ahnaissa

Commercially-minded Llaalsa Vathras wants a peek at Ahnaissa's job history

Quick Walkthrough

1. Speak to Llaalsa Vathras in Vathras Plantation. You will be given 100 Gold & Scroll of Charming to start off with.
2. Convince Ahnaissa in Slave Shack 3 to be forthcoming about her background (req. Disposition +70).
3. Decide how to deal with the information. Either:
   • Claim Ahnaissa wouldn't talk - no reward.
   • Tell Llaalsa exactly what was said for 400 gold.
   • Lie, and claim Ahnaissa was a thief, for 400 gold.
   • Lie, and claim Ahnaissa has no special skills, for 100 gold.

Detailed Walkthrough

Go to the Vathras Plantation and you will see the litany of slaves tilling the fields and standing ready to serve their masters. If the player seeks out the plantation’s owner, Llaalsa Vathras, she will prompt the player with the offer of work in the form of assisting her with her “servant” Ahnaissa. Pressing her, she will explain her “philosophy” regarding her slaves and how she treats and uses them, assigning them stations or selling them to others based on their particular skillset. Ahnaissa is posing a problem as Llaalsa cannot identify what exactly her skillset is, and Ahnaissa is less than forthcoming, though she is aware that Ahnaissa has a unique Pelletinian accent.

The player can ask various questions of Vathras regarding whether she truly serves Ahnaissa’s best interest (she thinks so, shockingly), whether she’s intending to sell Ahnaissa off (likely yes), and whether Ahnaissa was enslaved legally (no). If the player refuses the task, she will bemoan the player’s ignorance of how positive slavery is for the economy and the slaves themselves. If they accept, she will direct the player to Ahnaissa’s shack (slave shack 3), instruct the player to use ingratiation (through persuasion or bribery) and serpentine methods of questioning to get Ahnaissa to open up, and give the player a 100 drake advance and a Scroll of Charming in case they fail in the aforementioned plan of bribery/persuasion.

Going to the shack and speaking to Ahnaissa, she will have the unique dialogue option “Pelletinian accent.” Selecting this prompt with a disposition below 70 will result in Ahnaissa stating she is indeed from Elsweyr, but now languishes as a “useless household slave.” Raising her disposition above the threshold and prompting her again, she will remark on the player’s keen ear and reveal that she formerly worked as a dancer in the “nightly dens” of Senchal. She states she was quite good and was showered with coins, which have less meaning to her now that she’s enslaved. The player can then let Ahnaissa continue, in which case she will state that she appreciates the player’s sympathy and has kept her past secret in fear of Llaalsa (who she calls “the fat Hlaalu”) selling her to a brothel, or the player can ask her whether she was an erotic dancer, to which she will respond no and draw a distinction between her line of work and that of a common whore. In either case, she will ask that the player keep her secret.

Returning to Llaalsa and talking about Ahnaissa, the player is prompted with four options:

1) To lie and say Ahnaissa would not tell the player her skillset, in which case Llaalsa will stiff the player and say it was her mistake in hiring someone so un-persuasive.

2) To tell the truth (along with an addendum about erotic dance), in which case she will get excited, saying “It is a good thing she is now with us, to teach her the proper place such… teachings… have in our society” before getting lost in thought, drooling over the coin she will make, and listing a couple possible places (Suran and Narsis) she might sell Ahnaissa. She will then regain her train of thought, rewarding the player with 400 coins. Ahnaissa will then disappear from the game.

3) To lie and say you believe she was trained as a thief, in which case the player will be rewarded 400 coins and Llaalsa will reveal her plans to sell Ahnaissa to a client in Stonefalls on the “lean side of the law” (likely someone in the Camonna Tong, considering their close affiliation with House Hlaalu, ideological attachment to slavery, and presence in Andothren). Ahnaissa will then disappear from the game.

4) To lie and say while she acts mysterious, she truly has no skills, in which case Llaalsa, though skeptical, will pay the player 100 drakes for their time and say she’ll have another pair of eyes look into her at a later date.

This quest touches on a number of different issues, including the savior complex of slave-owning Dunmeri nobles, the tenuous legality of the slave trade, the commodification of slaves as products while simultaneously recognising their individuality and personhood, and the two-faced nature of the slave owning class. While the slaves on Vathras plantation do remark that Llaalsa does not beat or kill her slaves, Llaalsa will herself state that such barbaric practices are anathema to her, all mainland slaveowners (barring the Dres and Telvanni), and particularly to House Hlaalu (despite the fact that just over the hill exists the Savrethi Distillery, another Hlaalu operation in which you can find the skulls of slaves in the master’s own chambers, kept like trophies). The quest prompts the player to make choices consistent with their character’s moral values and views on slavery, as well as to learn more about the Dunmer nobility’s justification and ideology regarding a custom that is highly illegal in all other parts of the Empire and indeed in our own world, for good reason.

It should be noted that freeing Ahnaissa mid-quest will not affect the outcome, as Llaalsa presumably does not yet realise she’s escaped. Freeing her and leaving the cell before going through the dialogue on her accent will however hard block the quest. The slave key, for those interested in liberating the Vathras slave population or Ahnaissa alone, is located in a level 75 chest behind a level 80 door on the main floor of Vathras Manor.

Quest Stages

The following Quest_ID and Index codes can be used with the Journal Console command to manually update the quest to a certain point.

A Khajiit's Calling (TR_m4_wil_Ahnaissa)
Index	Finishes Quest	Journal Entry
10		Llaalsa Vathras, the leader of Vathras Plantation, asked me to give her slave Ahnaissa an interview about her past, which she suspects to hold some secret that could help find the right employment for her. Rather than directly confronting her about this, I should build rapport first -- for example, I could ask her about her Pelletinian accent.
20		I learned that Ahnaissa used to work as a nightly dancer in Elsweyr, possibly in a moonsugar den. She is worried that Llaalsa would sell her to a brothel, which is why she has been less than forthcoming with her backstory. She asked me not to tell on her to Llaalsa.
100	Finishes quest	I kept Ahnaissa's secret, but Llaalsa was not pleased with my answer.
101	Finishes quest	I let Llaalsa know about Ahnaissa's past. As Ahnaissa had feared, she is likely going to be sold to a brothel.
102	Finishes quest	I lied to Llaalsa about Ahnaissa's past, claiming that Ahnaissa is a skilled thief. Llaalsa thanked me; she intends to sell Ahnaissa to a "colleague in Andothren" who she believes could profit from such skills.
103	Finishes quest	I lied to Llaalsa about Ahnaissa's backstory, claiming there is nothing behind her mysterious posturing. Llaalsa has rewarded me, but wasn't quite convinced that I really got to the bottom of things.

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