» Thu Aug 13, 2009 12:14 pm
Clearly the thieves with the amulet are doing their ambush crimes by the puddle just because they have the amulet. It's the amulet makes that kind of plotting possible. However, neither of those really appears to be the maker of the amulet, which only brings a certain Lord of the Rings-like scenario in my mind. Clearly someone else has done the amulet, but lost it, and those robbers have just found it and thought, well, maybe we could be a team with this find. (Of course the Dunmer lady is constant ~80% Chameleon without the amulet, but story-wise his spell clearly comes from the amulet.) With no mention of this miraculous item on Yagrum's writings, it either isn't old or Yagrum just doesn't know about it. Or he just doesn't count it since it's not an artifact, "only" an Extravagant Amulet with a heck of a good enchantment... Why do I get a feeling it's newer than those artifacts though? Mainly because it isn't unique-looking and as valuable - at least yet. Yes, it seems likely that powerful items like that take time to get name for themselves, myths surrounding them etc. It would become famous - if it circled many hands and people at least got to know about it. At some cases (Nerevarine getting it, for example) this might never happen. If the Nerevarine never loses it, people might think he just has a remarkable ability for near-invisible Chameleon. They don't know that an amulet is causing it.
Or would it simply be so cheap just because it isn't mentioned in Yagrum's writings? Is Tamrielic Lore so influential the merchants are ready to pay very much of the artifacts mentioned there, just because they were mentioned there (or otherwise known to be legendary; BM/TR artifacts)? And Amulet of Shadows, be it new or old, isn't mentioned there, so it doesn't have any value in merchants' minds other than the amulet and the enchantment.