Silgrad Tower: A Deal for a Hammer

[TheImperialDragon]

Somewhere in a not-so-public part of downtown, there is a shabby old pawnshop. It's owner asks a favour of the player. The player is to sneak into the permanent home of a traveling merchant and "obtain" a special hammer. The pawnbroker doesn't say what the hammer is for, but in exchange, offers to give deals on "rare and powerful goods obtained from anonymous suppliers", and also the chance for the player to keep anything else he/she [strike]steals[/strike] finds.

It seems pretty simple. The pawnbroker knows for a fact that the hammer is in a specific basement room, but there's a catch - many of the doors in this merchant's house have special magical locks - they only answer to the hand of the real owner of the key. There is, however, another way into the room where the hammer is supposedly kept.

Long ago, before the merchant bought his home, it belonged to an Indoril dissident refugee. This refugee always had an escape plan - and had placed one in that very room the player is to enter - a secret passageway leading into the sewer. There are levers on either side which will open the hidden door. All the player needs to do is find the door, activate the lever, enter, grab the hammer, and return.

When the player returns, the pawnbroker will have a new topic open - "Deal". For those familiar with Mournhold in TES3, this will be similar to the pawnbroker there who would offer scrolls through dialogue for relatively cheap prices. Our pawnbroker will offer one item each day during business hours, which could be a scroll, a weapon, armor, soul gem, etc... which all come from his "anonymous suppliers" and have static cheap prices.

As for the hammer, it could be a good quest seed for another sequel quest, but I haven't thought that far ahead yet. For now, it is merely just an item that this pawnbroker wants... maybe it has some legendary lost powers that no one realized, and he only found out through his sources.