u/DAV3Y

Refresher: The amulet of infectious charm comes from a quest where a nervous mage outside the Ald'Ruhn mage's guild (Louis Beauchamp) tells you about a dwemer airship he re-constructed and and hired a crew to fly to Solstheim to retrieve an amulet from the tomb of the first leader of the Thirsk mead hall (Horthmund). Horthmund was said to be as ugly as a troll, but had a lot of lady friends, which is Beauchamp's motivation for wanting the amulet. The airship crashed on the way there, so the player is contracted to retrieve it instead. The amulet increases personality at the expense of fatigue and weakness to common disease. If you go back to Beauchamp after completing the quest, he'll happily tell you it worked and he's had a lot of dates, all while coughing and running a fever.

So the amulet has the effect of making people like you and wanting to be around you, but also making you tired and sick. Which would also probably spread your sickness to everyone that suddenly wants your company. The main upside of the amulet also amplifies its downsides for everyone you know and come into contact with. Sounds a bit like something Peryite would be involved in. His current artifact is the spellbreaker shield, which doesn't make a lot of sense theme-wise and is also known to be dwemer made. I think it would be cool to bring back the amulet as a new artifact in the next game. Thoughts?

A really fantastic episode that explores the origin of the Lone Gunmen and their relationship to Mulder. A thing that I feel is possibly overlooked here is that Mulder is portrayed in the early episode as a pretty regular FBI agent. Doing normal investigative work and overall pretty trusting of the government he works for. But at some point, in a comic book-like superhero origin story he's doused from head to toe in an experimental chemical that makes people paranoid and he starts seeing aliens everywhere. Obviously his own backstory with the disappearance of his sister is still his main motivation, and his friendship with the Lone Gunmen who just experienced a taste of the depth of government conspiracy brings him further down that road, but on a rewatch, I've started to view the rest of the episodes through the lens of this moment. Suzanne says it in the episode, "No matter how paranoid you are, you aren't paranoid enough." What if this chemical permanently altered Mulder to be "paranoid enough" to notice government conspiracies and the paranormal that everyone else ignores?