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Content Consumer

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  1. Content Consumer
    DIARY OF A WATER PURIFIER: EP4, THE CITY OF RIVETS

    Recent events have made me question my previous stance on things like capital punishment. I'm warming to the idea that pissing me off is a major crime, and that justice should come swiftly to anyone who does so. And that justice should involve pieces of lead expelled from a steel tube at high velocity by the force of expanding gas emitted by a chemical reaction created by setting fire to a swiftly burning powder. In other words, I'm gonna shoot the next person who gets in my way. Killing Three Dog was... liberating. I feel like a new woman.

    Unfortunately, this new woman has no idea where to go next. Dad's off somewhere, and Three Dog didn't actually tell me anything useful before I aerated his internal organs for him. I guess I'm off to Rivet City, it's the closest town. Hopefully it won't be anything like Megaton, all full of sharp bits of rusty metal and people who are either extremely friendly or extremely unfriendly.

    About an hour later, I've seen more subway tunnels than ever wanted to, or even ever believed might exist in a sane world. Really, I'm getting sick of crawling through tubes filled with rubble. Judging by the sheer number of destroyed subway cars, I'd say that the population of Washington DC before the war was somewhere in the double-digit billions. Either that, or ostentatious displays of wealth got the better of everyone, and everyone had to have their own personal subway car. Whatever, I don't care, and from now on I'm staying OUT of the ghoul-and-bandit infested subways.

    When I finally reach Rivet City, I realize that my hope for decent, or at least normal, people was a vain one. The city is a busted-ass aircraft carrier floating in the radioactive water, rusty and gunky in every way. It's protected by (1) a rusty bridge that some moron thought was a good idea to swing in and out for every person who approaches the ship, and (2) one asshole with a plasma rifle. Dude, a single super mutant could rip right through this place, and your little pew-pew gun would only make him angry. The bridge guard directs me to the local doctor in the belly of the ship.

    Whaddya know? It turns out that this Doctor Li was a colleague of dad's, and he came to see her before he took off again! I'm honestly getting fed up with this asshole, he can't stay in one place for more than five minutes before running off. Sure, go and see your old Irish drinking buddy, an idiotic radio DJ, and then an old colleague, but don't bother to tell your only daughter you were leaving home. I'm seriously considering dropping my quest to go find him, but what the fuck else is there to do in this godsforsaken wasteland? Scavenging the rusted hulks of prewar office buildings? Professional ghoul-killing? Mirelurk hunting for fun and profit?

    No, I'm a lone wanderer, and I'm off to seek my father. My goal hasn't changed, even if my reasons for pursuing it have. Before, I wanted to find dad because I missed him and felt lost without him. Now I just want to punch the guy in the face for being such a dick. Not just to me, but to everyone he meets.

    So, it's off to some old vault, apparently good ol' number 101 just wasn't good enough for him. I'm sure it's going to be a safe journey. Ha! Nah, not really, I just said that for comedic effect - I'm actually pretty sure I'm going to die.

    NEXT: TEENAGE WASTELAND
    That is, it's possible there might be a next chapter, but... probably not for a while, if at all.
    And Mace Raiden's saved game got fucked up all the way back to the Dark Brotherhood shack in the swamps, so it'll be a while before I do anything with him either.
    Basically, this is the last thing I'm posting here... until I get up the desire to re-do everything I've already done with Mace and get back on track.
  2. Content Consumer
    DIARY OF A WATER PURIFIER:
    EP3, WE GET SIGNAL

    So I'm off to GNR. It's a radio station. I've heard the dude talking, and he's okay, his news is okay, and his music is pretty good, for the most part. Moriarty tells me, or more accurately his computer tells me, that dad's gone off to the station to get the skinny on the haps. I set off into the city, killing raiders, cockroaches, ants, and ROUS's as I go.

    As I'm passing a grocery store, this kid runs up to me and tells me the monsters are gonna get him, and asks if I'll help him. Sure, kid. I'll follow you. Let me just get my gear together... you go run and hide, I'll be right behind you! As the kid runs off, I snicker to myself. Sucker. There are no real monsters in the world. What, am I gonna hide under the bed from some, like, I dunno, a giant scorpion, or a huge green guy wielding a fire hydrant? Get real, kid. Strength to weight ratios would clearly prohibit such a creature from existing. Not to mention that as you increase mass, you increase the strain on the internal calcareous structure, or even a chitinous exoskeleton, to the point that the creature would collapse on itself. Galileo wrote about this in the 16th century, for god's sake! I laugh with scorn. Huge monstrosities don't exist, kid, and never will. Grow a backbone.

    Through the wilderness, into the city, down through subway tunnels, and I wonder, if dad just came through here, why is it still full of bad guys? He must be the sneakiest sonofabitch ever in the history of the world. I thought he was just a doctor. I've killed more raiders and feral ghouls than... uh, something else that killed a lot of things. Look, I've killed a lot, okay? Enough with the metaphors and similes. They're like... these things... that are metaphorical. And simililical? Enough.

    Up the other side, and there are some big green guys. I... uh, Bruce Banner? Hello? No? They're carrying sledgehammers and rifles, and they are mad at me for some reason. Lucky for me there are these big robots here with bigger guns. After a moment of examination, they turn out not to be robots, but instead people in suits of powered armor. I want one! This metal-encrusted vault suit suddenly seems so goddamn inadequate! With a suit of power armor, I could survive a point-blank nuclear blast, I'm sure! These guys are called the Brotherhood of Steel, and they're lead by a woman, which means that they should probably be called the Siblinghood of Steel, but I'm not complaining. Don't complain to people covered in three inches of tool steel and wielding big guns, that's my motto.

    There's a dead Brotherhood guy lying on the ground here, and next to him, on the ground, not being guarded by anyone, in plain sight, ready for the taking, just let me sidle on over here and grab it, is... a free suit of power armor. Yay! I'm just gonna slip this on and huh? Training? Crap. Will... will you guys train me? No? I can't even ask for that right now? Okay, I'll just... hold on to this. For a while.

    So these Brotherhood guys help me wipe out the green monster guys, apparently called Super Mutants, as opposed to Regular Mutants, who use their powers to guard a world that hates and fears them... or something. Anyway, these Super Mutants die pretty easy when they're up against power armor and big guns, and we make it through an abandoned elementary school to Galaxy News Radio. Everything seems quiet, nothing's wrong. Just a few more mutants to kill, and I can go inside.

    Hmm. That super mutant seems to be a tad larger than normal.
    ...
    ...
    ...
    Holy fucking shit, batman.

    That's a big mutant. If the others are super mutants, this one is a mega-mondo-hulk-mutant. Galileo was full of shit, the evidence is right before my eyes. I'm thinking I'm going to head back in the school building and take potshots at him with my trusty BB gun from a distance. The only other option is to go stand our ground, go full-bore, toe to toe, throw all the lead we got... and maybe we'll get a lucky hit. A brain shot. I think I'm gonna let the brotherhood handle this one. I certainly can't do it. It would take a direct nuclear strike to scratch his hide. No, actually, considering that he just BLEW UP TWO BUSSES WITH HIS FIST and it didn't even faze him, I'm pretty sure a tactical nuke wouldn't do the job.

    After a few minutes, the guys in power armor finish off the big green dude, and I can head on inside. The DJ, Three Dog, is a friendly sort of guy, who wants only to help out the poor and unfortunate people of the wasteland, of which I am ostensibly one. He is sympathetic to my quest, and offers straight away to tell me where my dad went. All I have to do for him is repair his radio equipment by finding a satellite dish in a super-mutant infested museum clear across town, then take the dish to the Washington Monument and install it on the roof. Simple, right.

    One question nags at me, Three Dog. How come you didn't get my dad to go after the dish? Or, you know, anyone else in the entire world? Or did you, and did they die? Is that why you won't tell me where dad went, did you send him after your precious bauble and he's now lying in a shallow grave? Even if no, do I look like I belong to a courier service? Is "rube" written on my forehead? Go fuck yourself, I'm not doing your dirty work. You want it so bad, YOU go get it. What's that? Can't leave the radio station because people wouldn't hear your voice? Dude, I've listened to your broadcast. You just keep playing music, and your "news" consists of the same six stories, over and over. I'm not falling for that one, try again. What do you MEAN, it's too dangerous for you to go? Is that argument supposed to convince me? Gee whillikers, Mr. Dog, if you, the guy who has a vested interest in getting the dish and saving his own livelihood won't go, I guess I'll head right on out there! No. I'm not playing fetch for you. I'll make you a deal - you tell me where Dad is, and later on I'll come back here and get your dish. No? NO?!?!?

    Look, doggy. I'm short on time, I'm angry, and I'm armed. Tell. Me. Where. My. Dad. Went.

    He didn't tell me where my dad went.

    Standing outside GNR, wondering where Dad went, I turn on my radio for a while. The music still plays, but now there's a new DJ on the station! Fancy that, Three Dog must have retired or something. She doesn't give any news, just the music. The calm, soothing music. For some reason, it reminds me of the staccato burst of fully automatic weapon, and the feeling of happiness as an entire clip of bullets ends a source of frustration. I smile, at peace with myself and the world. Maybe I'd be happier if I had actually blown up Megaton.

    Well, I guess I'll head on to the next big town around here. Rivet City. I'd judge that I'm catching up to my dad, now. Unless he took up Three Dog on his quest to get the satellite dish, in which case I may find his corpse somewhere. Still, it'll at least bring some closure to the whole deal. Rivet City, here I come.

    NEXT EPISODE: THE CITY OF RIVETS
  3. Content Consumer
    DIARY OF A WATER PURIFIER:
    EP2, SOMEONE SET UP US THE BOMB

    First thing out of the vault, and I receive a radio message. It's from someone named John Henry Eden, who calls himself the President of the United States. He says that he's working tirelessly around the clock to rebuild this great nation, and if we all pull together we can bring back the good times. I look to my left and see a rocky, dusty wasteland apparently populated by giant cockroaches. I look to my right and see a ragged road extending into the distance, but I can't see too far because a cloud of radiation so thick it's visibly blocking the light lies over the land. Ahead of me is the burnt-out husk of a town where the wind blows forlornly over the corpses of old cars. Ol' Eden has his work cut out for him.

    So, where to go? The overseer's computer mentioned something about a town nearby, but I've got no idea which way to travel to get there. Maybe the dead town in front of me is the thriving metropolis mentioned, but it seems to be populated only by a single floating spherical robot that, by the way, makes a satisfying explosion when hit with a 10mm bullet. I like explosions. Which is good, because a few of my stray bullets enter a car, which emits a little explosion of its own and gets lit on fire. I wander over to see what's happening and FUCK ME I guess I'm glad reincarnation is a thing.

    Get born, hi dad, pick name, pick appearance, bye mom, bible quote, birthday party, shoot roach, take test, kill guards, kill bugs, escape vault, and do NOT shoot at the robot. Use a baseball bat instead. Jeez, let's hope something like that doesn't happen again. I understand that I just went through sixteen years of life and all, but it seems like a lot longer. If only there was some way to rewind time to a previous point where I hadn't done something stupid. Like, saving my game life periodically so I can go back if I fuck up. Oh well.

    Anyway, over there I can see a sign saying Megaton, and that's the name of the closest town. I'm pretty sure dad went there. It's the only place around here with people. That is, people who don't want to kill you on sight. The local elementary school off to my left is full of that kind of person. It's also full of raiders (rim shot), so I head off to Megaton.

    Megaton is a trash heap made up of corrugated tin and steel posts. There are also parts of an airplane in there. If this is someone's idea of a bustling metropolis, I'll pass. Especially considering that the whole town is built on top of an unexploded nuclear bomb. Apparently the bomb leaks brain-damaging radiation, because the few people who do live in this sty exhibit signs of long-term neural degradation. For example, the first person I meet thinks he's a cowboy, and has appointed himself sheriff. He doesn't know anything about dad, asks me to disarm the bomb, suddenly remembers dad, and then tells me that I should stay away from the bomb. Aside from the slight bipolar problem and the aforementioned cowboy issue, he's a nice enough guy. The next guy I meet is worshipping the bomb as a god. He's entertaining to listen to for a while, in a sort of "this is your brain on drugs" way.

    The next person I stop and see is a lady named Moira Brown. She's kooky. I mean, real kooky. She wants to write a survival guide about living in the wasteland, and she thinks I'm the best person to help her out. Because I've been in the wasteland for so long. Dude, I've been here for ten minutes. Fifteen, if you count the time I went and exploded a nuclear-powered car (who the hell thought up that gem of an idea?) and got resurrected. But whatever, she promises rich rewards, and it's not like the book will ever be published, considering that there are no printers, publishing companies, bookbinders, and the like. She does give me one interesting piece of news, though. Apparently dad wasn't the first person to escape the vault. In addition to the overseer's scouting mission, dad left, I left, and several other people have escaped the vault at various times, one of them leaving behind a vault suit that Moira whimsically decided to put armor plating on. It's better than what I'm wearing now, so I exchange it for some vault security armor. I also am beginning to wonder about my dad - he wasn't the only person to escape, but apparently he was the only person to invite radroaches in first and cause mass hysteria in his absence. I always liked him, but the more I think about it, the more I realize that he's a royal asshole. Leaving me in the lurch, creating an insect infestation, and causing peaceful citizens to murder each other. Way to go, dad.

    I head to the local saloon, and the barman is an older gentleman with a wrinkled face. Really old. Really wrinkled. Like, holy shit, this guy needs some skin cream FAST. And a wig. And some cologne. And a makeover. Maybe the famous "Mary's Makeover" that includes standing next to a flaming automobile and waiting for resurrection. Not that I wish him dead, because as far as I can tell he already is dead. He really can't get any worse. I assiduously avoid eye contact.

    The owner of the bar is an Irish expatriate, and kind of a dick too. He offers to tell me where my dad went if I go kill one of his old hookers. I decline, opting instead to sneak into his back room and hack his computer terminal and get the information from there. On my way out the door, I notice a guy waving at me from the back room. I wander over there to tell him that the hooker is the redhead over by the toilet, not me, but he actually has a proposition for me. Business proposition, not sexual proposition. Just thought I should make that clear.

    He represents certain people who think of the town as a blight on the landscape. I can't agree more, dude. Through the conversation, it becomes apparent that he wants me to detonate the bomb in the middle of town. I can't warn people, I can't evacuate the town, he wants everyone to die as well. I just have to press the button that goes boom. Because it's a blight on the landscape. Essentially, he wants me to blow up a city of people because it's not pretty enough.

    Megaton is apparently one of the largest, most cosmopolitan towns in the wasteland. There are dozens of people living here, in a relatively organized fashion. Burke doesn't want to conquer the town, steal from it, or enslave the people. He wants it gone because it's ugly. It's a town in the middle of a place called the capital wasteland, dude. Everything here is ugly. Ugly is this whole area's stock in trade. So you want to blow it up, replacing it with a smoking crater that will, somehow, be prettier? Not to mention that nuking your neighbors seems counterproductive to survival. Burke wants to create a radioactive hole where was once a peaceful, thriving (relatively) metropolis. Because he doesn't like the way it looks. I can't even give him the honor of saying he's evil. He's just stupid.

    I'm about to get up and run out to tell the sheriff that there's a crazy guy here, but then I remember that the "sheriff" is also a crazy guy, so no hope there. The only thing left to do is disarm the bomb. I have to, it's a moral imperative. I'd just leave well enough alone, but given the intellect of the average Megaton citizen, one of them is bound to take up Burke on his offer some day, and I just can't have that on my conscience.

    I quickly disarm the bomb, and then head on out of town. I've got to get to a radio station, where dad was last headed. All of these delays mean I've fallen a little behind him, it might take me a couple of hours to catch up.

    NEXT EPISODE: WE GET SIGNAL
  4. Content Consumer
    Okay...
    I didn't update last week. Or the previous week.
    I was sick for a while there, and didn't even play Mace Raiden... well, that's not entirely true. I had a high-ish fever and was somewhat delerious, I played Mace Raiden, went to Solstheim, and didn't figure out that Dawnguard != Solstheim for several hours of play. So that was one day wasted.
    Then... I just haven't written anything. I've been sort of concentrating on making a mod, not playing the game.
    Then I skipped playing Skyrim for a while and went to Starcraft, XCom, and Fallout 3.
    Then I kept on playing Fallout 3.

    So... no Mace Raiden.
    But I wrote up a little bit about Fallout 3, so... for the next four weeks, this is what you'll be getting.
    Then back to Mace Raiden.



    DIARY OF A WATER PURIFIER:
    EP1, TRIPPY BIRTH DAY

    So here I am, shoved out of my mother's vagina in a sterile medical room. My first view is the nurse, my second is a dark blur with insanely bright piercing high-beam style eyes. There he is, my father, right in front of me. And I can see him pretty well, actually... my vision clears up and everything in the room comes in crystal clear. I'm pretty advanced for a newborn baby. Apparently my daddy knows it too, because after a few seconds when he starts talking to me, and expecting answers.

    He starts out by asking if I am a boy or a girl. At least, I think he's asking me - with the way his head is bobbing around, he could be asking the nurse, or possibly my mother, but I should hope he's at least somewhat familiar with her gender. He then goes on to ask what my name is, which I thought was HIS job, and what I'm going to look like when I grow up. This is kind of a lot to demand of a newborn, but I throw out some quick answers (I'm a boy, my name is Roberto, and I'm going to look like a mohawk-wearing mexican badass with a big muttonchop moustache). He's about to ask me what I want to do with my life when my mother starts, I don't know, having a heart attack or something. I sympathize, lady. Judging by his questions, this dude jumps the gun a bit, doesn't he? One wonders how the wedding went. Was he cutting the cake five minutes after the proposal? I'll bet sex was nice. "Hey baby foreplay BAM goodnight honey" all within a four-second timespan.

    So mom's over there dying, dad starts chest compressions, and the nurse wheels me out. Everything goes dark, and the next thing I remember is dad motioning me toward him, demanding that his newborn son walk. But wait, I'm not newborn any more... apparently we entered a time warp, and now I'm in a nursery. I'm a year old and I can crawl, walk, handle various objects, jump on top of chairs and tables, read with complete comprehension, operate heavy machinery, and apparently pick locks like a pro. Dad puts me in a playpen, but I can organize prison breaks, buddy. I rattle a few toys around, clamber around on the furniture, and read a scintillating, stimulating novel. The plot is gripping, the characters are deep and complex, and it's a book called S.P.E.C.I.A.L. with a grand total of eight cardboard pages, guaranteed waterproof and chewable. Apparently the book is also a magic spellbook, because by poking my finger at it I get stronger, smarter, more agile, etcetera.

    As soon as I'm done reading the book, dad comes back into the room and starts reading bible quotes at me. Apparently it was my mother's favorite book and, judging from how he acts about it, only book. Not a big reader, I guess. He finishes his spiel, and we walk out the door together, and apparently he knocks me on the head, because everything goes white and...

    Suddenly I'm ten years old, and it's my birthday party! There's dad, and all my friends I've known for years, except I don't know any of them. The overseer (which is apparently an important position around here) comes over and clamps a wrist computer on my arm, surgically bonding to the bone, judging by the way I can't get the damn thing off. Bathing may be a problem. Masturbation should be okay. My only real problem with it is that it doesn't play pong.

    So I walk around and talk to people, all of whom are wearing glazed expressions, and some of whom are real assholes. The girl Amata is apparently my best friend, and she gives me a comic book. Stanley the mechanic gives me a hat, old lady Palmer gives me a sweetroll, and a kind named Butch smarms at me. That's a good name, there. Your parents said to themselves "we want our son to be a bully when he grows up. Should his name be Alan? No, Marvin? No, what about Butch?" and it stuck. With a name like Butch, you're bound for prison.

    So the robot with a buzzsaw mertilizes my birthday cake, and Butch comes over and demands my sweetroll. I refuse, and he starts to hit me. I try to hit back, but apparently I'm suffering from a chronic case of arms-with-no-strength-disease, because I can't raise my hands above my waist. Or maybe it's the goddamn wrist computer, weighing me down. Anyway, I take a few licks, and then a security guard comes over and stops the "fight." The intercom beeps, and dad tells me that my other good friend Jonas has a surprise for me in the reactor. I head out the door, and a lady named Beatrice gives me a birthday poem full of light and happiness (not really). I head down the stairs into the dark and scary reactor, and a pedophile jumps out at me, but I'm rescued in the nick of time by dad, who gives me a gun. I'm not allowed to head back up and shoot Butch, so I settle for shooting Jonas, but he doesn't care. So I have to do some target practice, then kill a giant cockroach, and Jonas takes out a camera and snaps a picture. Apparently something really traumatic happens next, because I black out and when I wake up I'm in a medical clinic.

    Dad's giving me an eye exam, and tells me I have to go eat a goat or something. I'm kind of operating on autopilot, now, wondering when the next time warp is going to happen, so I don't really pay attention to his words. I head out the door and there's Amata, Butch, and my other childhood friends and playmates, all grown up. I walk into a classroom, and the teacher says it's time to take a test, the final exam. He's either the nicest teacher in the world or the dumbest, because he lets me off without taking the test, saying I can just give myself a grade. I do, specializing in peaceful skills like Big Guns, Explosives, and Lockpicking, walk out of the room, and goddamn I must have a brain tumor or something, because all of these blackouts and lost time are getting commonplace. I can understand losing some time before I even turn one year old, but to lose nine years? Then another six? Then, I dunno, a few more? It's as if my life has been a few short episodes stitched together with blackouts.

    I wake up in bed, with Amata shouting at me and an alarm blaring. Dad's gone and the vault is infested with giant cockroaches. I suddenly realize that the best thing for me to do is not aid in defense of the vault, or talk to people, or find out what happened to dad, no... apparently I NEED TO FLEE THE VAULT BECAUSE REASONS. So I grab my baseball bat, a gun, a few changes of clothes, and I skedaddle on out of there. A security guard tries to stop me, but I whomp him a few times with my bat and steal his clothes. Thus begins my life of crime. Honestly, I'm given no option here - some people choose crime, some are driven to it by circumstances, and some are given a linear corridor to go down with only one possible option. It was him or me, so here I am starting my adventure with a murder and theft.

    As I wander the corridors, looking for the exit to leave everything I've ever known and everyone I've ever cared about to venture into a radioactive hellhole to find my dad who apparently cares jack shit about any other human beings, his son included, what was I talking about? Oh yeah, there's Butch. He wants help, his mother is being eaten alive by cockroaches. Dude, you are like the king asshole here, and apparently a really tough guy, so just go step on the damn things. They aren't that hard to kill. He curses at me and runs off, but fuck him. The security guards on the front door have orders to shoot to kill, and they do kill two innocent civilians who were running for the front door for god-only-knows-why. It's like everyone in the entire vault was just waiting for dad to leave so they could go either homicidal or suicidal. "Hey, James is gone! Party time! You swallow this live hand grenade and I'll shoot that guy in the face!"

    I wander the corridors some more, whomping roaches and the occasional security guard, and there's the overseer and another guard, smacking Amata around. So I head in, Amata runs out, and I murder yet another security guard. The overseer smarms at me for a bit and then starts yelling for help, so I run to his office (stepping over the corpse of the pedophile, good riddance I suppose), hack his computer, get the vault door password, and open up the secret exit tunnel. Down the tunnel and through a hole in the wall, and I press a control panel and suddenly the vault starts to open. Amata teleports in, somehow, and seems very surprised that this has happened, despite the fact that dad apparently just did it. She refuses to come with me, choosing to stay here and be beaten by her father's mooks instead. She heads out the door, a couple more security guards come in, and I've got some more security guard uniforms off their corpses.

    As I head up the tunnel, the vault door closes behind me, forever sealing me out of the vault, and I honestly can't say I'm sad about that. Those people are nutcases, all of them. I'm sure everyone in the wide outer world will be a lot more sane and sensible.

    The outer door is a magical portal, because as soon as I touch it I am transformed from a tough mexican hombre into a petite black woman named Mary with a completely different personality, but I'm sure dad will still recognize me. Because that's why I'm out here, and that's where I'm going, to track him down. He left about ten minutes ago, but due to all the delays it'll probably take me about an hour to find him, and that's my goal in life, because fuck if I know, I just don't have anything better to do.

    NEXT EPISODE: SOMEONE SET US UP THE BOMB
  5. Content Consumer
    Previous: Chapter 27, I'll Take Option D
     
    POLL:



     

     
    DIARY OF A DRAGONBORN: INTERMISSION 3
     
    Hey, uh... I actually don't have a journal entry written yet. I haven't actually played Mace Raiden's game for a couple of weeks now. I'm sort of half-assed working on a mod, and I've got some vague, disconnected ideas about how I'm going to keep writing Mace Raiden, but... as it stands, I gots nothin' fer ya'll.
    So... I suppose I'll just post this crap. I wrote it up just after finishing writing Chapter 19 as sort of a method of venting to myself, but never actually intended to post it at all, because there's nothing funny in it... it's just one big wall of text, filled to the brim with petty grievances.
    I guess it kind of makes sense to put it here actually, because the first intermission was just after Chapter 9, and the second was just after Chapter 18, so putting the third after Chapter 27... hey, wait a minute... I can say that I'm maintaining continuity! Yeah, this was all planned out, people! Please ignore anything said previously about not having stuff to post here, because this is what I always intended to put here.

    Yeah.
     

     

     

     

     


    !!!WARNING WARNING WARNING!!!



    WALL OF RAMBLING, VAGUELY-CONNECTED BITS OF TEXT WITH AN EMPHASIS ON SNARK VERGING INTO ASSHOLE TERRITORY INCOMING!



    !!!WARNING WARNING WARNING!!!

    I will now post about something near and dear to my heart, or maybe near my spleen, or colon. Some random internal organ, anyway. Probably not a splanch, though. Bonus points to anyone who gets the reference.
     
    One last note before I get to what I originally wrote - this was originally written in a single sitting, and then shoved into a directory and semi-forgotten. I just reread it now, before posting, and added a few additions, differently colored, but I didn't bother to actually correct anything, so there are probably spelling and grammar mistakes in here.
    EDIT: Shit. Somehow the entire thing turned green, I lost all my edits, and all the links disappeared. Then it truncated halfway through.
    I don't know why... but I just ran out of steam. You guys are getting a poor version. I'll see if I can go through and redo that stuff later.
     
    EDIT: Okay, fuck it all... seems that this blog doesn't support 13,000 words for some reason. Hell if I know why.
    So here. Microsoft Word should open it up fine.
    a.rtf
     
    NB: 8 (10)
     
    Next: Chapter 28, Heard They're Reforming the Dawnguard
     
    Some helpful links:
    College of Winterhold Entry Requirements
    Example of Other Critiques
    College Days: Winterhold
    Cutting Room Floor
    Vaarsuvius
  6. Content Consumer
    Some kinda bug or something.
    Previous: Chapter 26, This Place has Really Gone to the Dogs
     

    Just checking my inventory...

     

    Everything seems to be in order.

     

    Nap time!

     

    Something feels different...

     

    What... where is it? WHERE IS IT?

     

    Whoever took my wicker basket... shall burn.

     

    Hey, Brenuin, have you seen...

     

    ...

     

    Start. Running.

     

    Have you learned your lesson?

     

    Safe and sound...

     

    And everything is right with the world once again.

     
    Next: Chapter 27, I'll Take Option D
    Start at Chapter 1
  7. Content Consumer
    Previous: Chapter 38, Assault on Vampire Central
     
    POLL:



     
    In the meantime, here are some pics just for fun.
     
    1. I was going to post this as the entirety of Chapter 37, just to be a troll. But I figured that Supercow would probably kick my ass if I tried.

     
    2.These are Mace's two main weapons.
    An Ebony Battleaxe with my second favorite enchantment of all time: Chaos. I gotta say, if you want some good DPS, it's worth buying the Dragonborn DLC JUST for that enchantment. It also has my FIRST favorite enchantment of all time: Fire Damage Lingering. Go pick up the Wintermyst mod right now, I beg you!
    And a Dawnguard Warhammer. It has Chaos, which is very nice, but this one is primarily a one-shot vampire killer. Pretty good against Dragon Priests and Draugr Death Overlords.
    Hopefully I'll be able to put the hammer aside now that we're done with Vampires. For the most part.

     
    3. I've seen other people post screenshots like this, but this was the first time it ever happened to me.
    When I saw this, I thought for sure that if that wolf could speak he'd be one of those annoyingly chipper small children. "Hey, whatcha doing? What's that? That looks interesting! Do you have a favorite spoon? I like cats! Is that Daedric armor? I have a pet bug! Did you ever see a brown bunny? I saw a brown bunny once. It was cute!" This is reinforced by his very prominent buck front teeth.
    Either that or I forgot to put on my clothes that morning and he's just shocked at what he sees. "Whoa... what are THOSE called? I want some!"
    EDIT: That's what he reminds me of - the Curiosity Core from Portal.

     
    4. And a somewhat unfortunate turn of phrase by a spectral prelate. Dude, you keep away from my vessel. I already have someone to fill it, I don't need no ghostly ectoplasm on me.

     
    5. These four pics are from Fallout 3. I took these during the first few minutes of the game, when you're a child. I grabbed a bear from my toybox and just held it out in front of me, not moving at all. The bear proceeded to act like Superman on amphetamenes, zooming endlessly around in a circle at high speed.
    This has nothing to do with Skyrim, except to note how much better the physics is. I wish I'd captured video of it... it was actually kind of funny.




     
    Next: CSI: Skyrim
  8. Content Consumer
    Previous: Intermission 4
     
    There's a Cops: Skyrim series, why not CSI: Skyrim?
     
    10:54, Loredas, 29th of Sun's Dusk.
    Call came in about a "suspicious noise" at the home of Nepos the Nose, a local resident on the upper tier.
    Caller reported something that sounded like "some kinda dragon sneezin' or somethin' an' hootin' an' hollerin' an' makin' a ruckus."
     
    When we arrived on-scene, everything appeared normal.

     
    No signs of any struggle. These people live like pigs, but that's down to them.

     
    One unfortunate fellow was sleeping on the floor! Aside from what looks like a botched facial piercing job, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. We decided to let him sleep.

     
    Another resident appeared to be practicing his yoga. Numerous attempts to rouse him from his meditation were unsuccessful. The Medical Examiner said it was the deepest trance he'd ever seen anyone in before.

     
    An elderly fellow apparently has some trouble keeping warm, as the elderly so often do, and had cuddled up close to the fire before falling asleep. Rather than disturb the poor old man, we let him stay asleep.

     
    The only remaining resident appeared to be nearly unconscious after a night of debauchery. There were no signs of foul play, so we left her draped over her chest. Probably guarding some sentimental knicknacks or something.

     
    After a thorough search of the house, we determined that no crime had taken place. All of the residents valuables were still in the house, nothing had been stolen.

     
    We put it down to another prank call. If Ogmund keeps making these things up, we'll contact the Thalmor division and have him arrested for wasting police time.
     
    Next: Chapter 39, Tentacle Monsters Ahoy!
  9. Content Consumer
    DIARY OF A DRAGONBORN - INTERMISSION 2: MEET THE PROTAGONIST
    In which our hero sits down with an interviewer and answers some of your most pressing questions about himself, Skyrim, and his life.
    Previous: Chapter 18, It Was An Accident
     
    Q: Welcome to the show, Mace. Can I call you Mace?
    A: Sure, and glad to be here, anonymous interviewer. Can I call you Anonymous?
     
    Q: Uh... sure.
    A: Nanny for short.
     
    Q: ...Why not. First question. What's it like to be the Dragonborn, savior of mankind?
    A: Well, Nanny, it's really, really, really annoying.
     
    Q: Annoying? Why?
    A: Because whenever I walk through town, any town, anywhere, anytime, townsfolk keep coming up to me and asking me to do shit. Like, every person in the world looks at me and sees, not a person, but a thing... an object, a device that can solve their problems. I'm nothing to them, just someone who can deliver their letters and fetch them ingredients and solve local bandit infestations, as if there is no city watch, courier service, or army about.
     
    Q: I never thought about it that way.
    A: It's really quite awful. Sure, I get respect, and I'm rich, but what can money and love get you, really? It's quite depressing. I try not to dwell on it.
     
    Q: Well, let's move on to something else then. What do you think of the wildlife in Skyrim?
    A: I love it. And I loathe it. I can't walk five steps without getting attacked by wolves, you'd think they'd learn better than to randomly attack humans covered in metal holding big swords... but on the other hand, I love some of the other native life, like mammoths and the giants who herd them.
     
    Q: Speaking of mammoths, how is mammoth cheese actually made?
    A: I'd rather not speculate. The giants make it, and it apparently comes from mammoths... we can only hope it has something to do with milk. The alternative is too nasty to contemplate.
     
    Q: Yeah, let's not go there. You once mentioned that you could never be an alchemist. Why is that?
    A: Well, really, I could be an alchemist. I just couldn't be a harvester. The first time I tried to catch a butterfly, I ended up tearing its wings off, because the gods have decreed that butterflies are ingredients. Now, I'm okay with killing, really - dragons, bandits, bears, trolls, etcetera... but I draw the line at butterflies and foxes. And I usually avoid killing deer too. Basically, I'll cheerfully slaughter anything that attacks me first; I just don't like attacking innocents. And for the record, I do not consider humans or elves innocent.
     
    Q: Speaking of killing things, how does it feel to kill a dragon?
    A: Not much different from killing anything else. Really, there's no real difference between fighting a dragon and fighting any other big creature, like a mammoth or giant. You poke at it with a piece of metal on a stick for a while and try to avoid getting squashed. It's what happens afterwards that's the kicker.
     
    Q: Yes, you absorb dragon souls. Let's talk about that for a minute.
    A: It's the most skeezy feeling ever. It's like this greasy electricity that invades every pore of my skin. As the power passes into me, I can feel the soul of the dragon... sometimes they kind of mutter at me, but most of the time they're just resigned to the situation. Like, they're just going to sit... somewhere... inside me... until the day I die, when they can be free again. Being Dragonborn is NOT a barrel of laughs, let me tell you.
     
    Q: We know that you're the Dragonborn, the one destined to contend with Alduin the World-Eater at the End of Time, but what besides that do you feel is your greatest claim to fame?
    A: Well, I'd have to say it's my ability to eat seventy cheese wheels, sixteen apples, four tomatoes, three pies, twelve flowers, nine bottles of wine including the glass bottle apparently, five bowls of mammoth "cheese," eighty-seven eggs, and a vial of dwemer oil all at once without vomiting. I may be able to absorb dragon souls, but my real talent is winning eating contests.
     
    Q: On the subject of food, what is your favorite?
    A: Most things that are not animal byproducts. No, I'm not a vegetarian, but the thought of chowing down on another raw giant's toe or hacked-off skeever tail makes me nauseous. I've been subsisting on a garlic-and-onion diet for some time now, which may explain why nobody likes to get close to me anymore. Some nice spiced wine on cold winter nights goes down well too.
     
    Q: No mead?
    A: No.
     
    Q: What is your problem with mead, anyway?
    A: Well, honestly I don't have a problem with mead, per se. It's the Nords who keep on swilling the damn stuff that get to me. They're obsessed with fermented honey. I just think that without mead, Skyrim would probably be a lot better off. More civilized, at any rate. Stupid Nords... they're obsessed with the shit.
     
    Q: But... you're a Nord!
    A: Yeah, but remember, I was raised in a Redguard family. I don't identify with the Nords. Olfred Battle-Born has it right - they're all a bunch of pelt-wearing axe-dragging backward imbeciles. I mean, here's a good example, take a look at their so-called "architecture." Most of their cities are falling apart, and I'm not just talking about Winterhold here. Whiterun itself, the self-styled "jewel" of Skyrim... even before the city got bombarded during the siege, it was falling apart. The stone outer walls were crumbling, reinforced with shoddy wooden fences, and nobody actually seemed interested in doing anything about it. Now consider Stros M'kai , a real jewel of civilization. Beautiful towers surmount a well-kept city, even the outer defensive walls are works of art, lovingly crafted and maintained by skilled artisans.
     
    Q: Uh, okay. Related to architecture, what is your favorite city, or town, in Skyrim?
    A: Probably some place beginning with a W, R, or M. There can't be too many of those, can there?
    Really, if I had to pick, it'd probably be Markarth. I know I made a big deal out of it being all stone and metal, but it's actually quite well maintained, as long as you stay out of Understone Keep. It's a beautiful piece of engineering and artwork rolled into one, well designed for defense while at the same time being a place you can really see yourself settling down in. And I just love the Reach, its misty crags and towering spires of living rock. If there were no people there, Nords or Forsworn criminals or whatever, it'd be perfect.
     
    Q: Speaking of criminals, you were recently arrested. Tell us about that.
    A: The guards in Skyrim are arseholes, man. I mean, here I am, savior of mankind, I just killed a dragon that was freezing people solid, eating guards, landing on houses and causing structural damage and just generally ruining everyone's day... and this dude runs up to me and says I've committed crimes against Skyrim. Because I shouted at the dragon and a guy who had the bad judgment to be standing in the way got hit. It didn't even do any damage to him! But apparently "saving the world" is classified as "assault" in Skyrim's ass-backwards legal system, so I had to do a night in jail. That's all there was to it. It had nothing to do with the other fifty murders on my rap sheet, despite what the court documents say. And if you want to avoid being number fifty-one, I'd suggest we move along here.
     
    Q: Aah... okay. We're about out of time, so one last question. If you could re-do any one thing you've done since crossing the border into Skyrim, what would you do differently?
    A: ...Not crossing the border would probably top my list.
     
    Q: And that's a wrap, folks! Stay tuned next week for another edition of "Meet the Protagonist," we'll be talking with Gordon Freeman, and undoubtedly answering our own questions, since he doesn't actually speak. Thank you, Mace Raiden, for being on the show today.
    A: You're welcome, Nanny. It's been a pleasure. Honest. Now where's my payment your people promised?
     
    Q: Goodnight everyone!
     

     
    Next: Chapter 19, Back To Winterhold
    Start at Chapter 1
  10. Content Consumer
    DIARY OF A DRAGONBORN - INTERMISSION 1
    Previous: Chapter 9, I Am Dragonborn
     
    I guess I should stop and explain a few things about this particular Skyrim playthrough.
     
    The reader may have noticed that I'm skipping around a bunch. I've yet to follow through on any of my "professions." This is partly because, to be honest, most "professions," such as miner, or farmer, or even dragonslayer, are part-time at best. Honestly, I'm not expecting Sims-level diversity here, but when you try to be a miner and you clean out the mine after five minutes of pickaxe-whirling, there's not much incentive to stick around. The most consistent job in Skyrim is Courier, because the most consistent quest in Skyrim is Fetch.
     
    The other major reason for my constant seeking of new professions is that most of the extant ones are really stupid. And not stupid in a good way, as in "this is so stupid I've got to see it through to poke fun at it" but more like... well, consider the mage guild quests. The entire setup was gormless, the quests themselves mostly milquetoast, and the only real reaction I can work myself up to is "meh." The rewards aren't spectacular, and especially not worth the actual game time it takes to get them. The major questlines, and here I'm particularly thinking about the civil war questlines, are cookie-cutter blah stuff. I get that Elder Scrolls roots are in the traditional tabletop RPG, and that involved almost entirely dungeon raiding and monster killing, but in an open-world CRPG that ostensibly tries to be all things to all people, there is a distressing lack of depth. Most of the time that's fine - the game mechanics are solid enough that you'll enjoy playing no matter what you do - but I can't really write about nothingness. I stopped being a mage not because I stopped having fun as a mage, or because it was too hard, or because I particularly wanted to play something else, but because I got bored writing about it. Trust me, I can play the game to absolute death - Steam logs my playtime as over 1,700 hours, and I've played and become archmage several times, but I can only rehash it in text form for so long before I come to the realization that it's all very samey.
     
    I never played Arena, my start in the series began at Daggerfall. Morrowind got more depth and narrower focus, Oblivion sacrificed some of that in favor of (admittedly much improved) mechanics, physics, and graphics, and Skyrim improves them even more... but I'm seeing a departure from Morrowind's depth and strength of story back to Daggerfall-like shallowness. Most of the quests in the game are hand-made, carefully scripted and built, but they end up feeling like quests made by a random number generator. I'm not talking about the "kill bandit" quests you get in taverns, or the guild-approved sidequests you get by joining the major factions - I'm talking about main questlines. Every last one is a prettily dressed-up fetch or kill quest. I grant you, there's not a lot you can do with scripted quests when you give the player so much freedom and agency, but to then deliberately design quests to limit that agency seems counterproductive. I get the feeling that Skyrim was built simultaneously by two different groups of designers - one group who tried to experiment with new and interesting things, and the other group with a severely specific background in traditional RPG tropes that tried to shoehorn every last one of them in. There are many places in the game, both mechanically, graphically, and within the context of the story, where you can honestly say to yourself "Aha, I see that designer X had a hand in this part." So I'll hop around the job boards, picking and choosing that which seems the most fun at that particular time. It's inconsistent, but I'd rather be random than burn myself out and stop writing altogether. Which actually did happen once, right around chapter 5, and I had to take a break for a few months.
     
    Anyway, that's my problem. Your problem is that you don't see things that are going on behind the scenes. Frequently I'll complete quests I won't write about, specifically because of the aforementioned banality of those quests. I cannot adequately describe the beautiful scenery or level design, so mostly I just skip it entirely. I also cannot adequately describe most of the quests, story, NPC interaction, and general non-graphical environment, because there really isn't that much TO describe. So I never mentioned how I killed a mammoth and brought its tusk to Ysolda, or went through with stealing the ale for the town drunk, or stole a magic staff for the steward in Winterhold, or killed ice wraiths and brought their teeth to that dunmer food-vendor lady whose name escapes me at the moment. These things are so irrelevant that I couldn't force myself to chug out even a sentence or two about them. Even longer fetch quests like (for example) finding Noster's helmet in Steepfall Barrow I couldn't do anything with - it's an interesting little tidbit of lore, talking about the legion and how it's merely the military arm of a faceless and uncaring bureaucracy, and how well designed and pretty Steepfall Barrow is, but what could I say about it that I haven't already said before? Or someone else has said, and done a better job of it?
     
    Which brings me to my next point, and this one is something of a problem. I've borrowed concepts quite liberally from other sources, particularly Adam DeCamp (chocolatehammer.org) and the whole group at Twenty Sided's Skyrim playthroughs (shamusyoung.com, look for Let's Play Skyrim), so the language of my writing may at times seem derivative. That's because it is. There are just so many things that other, more professional people can say about the game and its wacky hijinks that I can't do justice to, and so I try to mimic as much as possible from people who have a better sense of humor than I do. I've never committed exact theft, and my most egregious and flagrant lift I believe is in Chapter 6, Dropout. Please forgive me for borrowing the thoughts of others when my own are inadequate.
     
    Anyway, the last piece of this intermission deals with the mods I'm running. I am not running vanilla Skyrim, because vanilla Skyrim is just as shallow and banal as modded Skyrim, but less pretty. So I run a lot of mods. So if I end up mentioning something in my playthrough that doesn't exist in the vanilla game, or not mentioning something obvious that does, that's why. I was going to include my load order, but I really can't be arsed, so just know that I'm running a lot of mods. But no sexlab mods for this playthrough. Maybe next time.
     
    Next: Chapter 10, A Strange Dress Code
    Start at Chapter 1
  11. Content Consumer
    CHAPTER 9: I AM A DRAGONBORN
    Wherein our hero dies and then is reborn! (quicksave is our friend)
    Previous: Chapter 8, Mace Raiden, Statue Fondler
     
    Finally at the greybeard temple, I'm here for mental help, I need a therapist, will someone psychoanalyze me please? Magical walls and white rocks are talking to me, dragons are scaring the jeepers out of me on a fairly regular basis, it seems as though everyone in the entire world is dumber than I am, my wife is a goat, and I have come to you, sane and sensible psychiatrists, to help me through my problems. The greybeard in charge tells me that my mother was a dragon and he wants to taste my voice.
     
    After staring dumbly at him for a few minutes, debating whether to draw my axe and proceed a-thwacking or just sit down and weep, I take the middle ground and scream at him with all my force.
     
    Well, that was new. I've shouted a lot before, but never had my voice actually physically make people stumble away from me. Is my breath really that bad?
     
    The guy reiterates his previous statement about my flying reptilian parentage and tells me that he's going to train me to use my voice. To make a long story short (too late), after quite a bit of dialog, exposition, and apparent training in the Voice, it turns out that I am a Dragonborn, someone who can kill Dragons and steal their souls and shout really loud and my voice is a gift from the gods that isn't just like a different sort of magic at all, no sir, it's not magic, it's a gift from god. Arngeir (one of the fake psychiatrists) tells me that I've got to go to a nordic ruin and retrieve a magical maguffin. I ask him if there may be bandits and draugr at this ancient nord ruin, and he tells me that I may expect a generous helping of draugr with a sprinkle of bandits on the side. I decide then and there that I'm never going to any more nordic ruins ever again, no matter what.
     
    On the way out, I decide to pick a couple of the flowers that are just lying around. I quickly discover that the greybeards may be an ancient order of religious monks dedicated to peaceful contemplation of the sky and maintaining the harmonious balance of nature and the universe, but they REALLY don't like it when you knick their stuff. One of them punts me across the room by shouting at me, another one turns me into an ice sculpture, and the other two proceed to beat the living shit out of me. Message received guys. Don't touch the plants.
     
    I had previously wondered about how the greybeards still existed. They obviously don't allow women (no beards to be grey), accept no new members, and have absolutely no interaction with the rest of the world. Now I get it, though - people join them who want to become seriously badass in the vocal department, and they keep getting supplied by other people because if they don't get their daily bread they'll huff and puff and blow the entire goddamn world apart. They are bullies and extortionists, and I reaffirm my vow to never get their maguffin. I am NOT going to be like these assholes. And I think I'm done with being a courier too - on my way out, I grab the bag of food I previously delivered. Let the fuckers starve. Maybe I'll try Solitude next, I hear the Imperial Legion is hiring.
     
    Next: Intermission 1
    Start at Chapter 1
  12. Content Consumer
    CHAPTER 8: MACE RAIDEN, STATUE FONDLER
    In which our hero gets drunk. A lot drunk.
    Previous: Chapter 7, Yes, I am a Dragon Slayer
     
    So... I stopped in at the tavern last night, to steady my nerves. Got to talking with this guy named Sam. He's a swell dude, you know? Very sympathetic to my plight. We got to drinking, and then drinking a little more. Then we started imbibing alcohol. We downed some brews, drank a few bottles of beer, pounded some brewskies, and then drank some more. We tried Argonian Ale, Cliff Racer, Velvet LeChance, Ale, and Alto Wine. We then washed that down with Argonian Bloodwine, some Colovian Brandy, Firebrand Wine, a couple bottles of Spiced Wine apiece, some regular old Wine, and we shared a bottle of Surilie Brothers Wine. We then went on to a mead-tasting binge with Mead, Black-Briar Mead, Black-Briar Reserve, Dragon's Breath Mead, Honningbrew Mead, and Mead with Juniper Berry. We went on a round-the-world trip with Ashfire Mead, Cyrodilic Brandy, Emberbrand Wine, Sujamma, Shein, Stros M'Kai Rum, Flin, Matze, and White-Gold Tower. We then topped it off with a little Balmora Blue and a chaser of Sleeping Tree Sap.
     
    After that, we started to get a little carried away with the drinking. I don't remember much about the rest of the night, but I do remember it was eventful.
     
    When I wake up, the first thing I see is a big pair of breasts pointed straight at me.
     
    On the entirely reasonable assumption that I am under attack, I whip out my axe and take a mighty swing, only to spin around and fall down. On the entirely reasonable assumption that the floor needs to be scrubbed anyway, I decide to vomit for a while, and then on the entirely reasonable assumption that all wakefulness and no sleep makes Mace a dull boy, I black out again.
     
    And now I'm awake again. There's a woman in priestess robes standing over me, scowling. On the entirely reasonable assumption that it was her breasts I took a swing at, I proceed to crawl away slowly, but she follows me, chastising me about making a mess and fondling the statuary OH THANK GODS IT WAS JUST A STATUE. Where the hell am I? What is this place? Is this heaven? Or hell? Either would fit the decor, it looks like someone built an uncomfortable stone room with uncomfortable stone benches and uncomfortable stone floors and uncomfortable stone statuary, then covered every remaining smooth edge with jagged metal.
     
    Wait, what did you just say, lady? I got married to a goat? And, in addition to fondling the statuary, I fondled some guy's staff? Why do I have a feather and a giant's toe stuffed in my pants?
     
    She won't tell me anything until I clean up my mess, so I proceed to do so, despite my splitting headache. Apparently, I'm in Markarth, and I stumbled in here last night with Sam, rambling about getting married to a goat and a magical staff, fondled the statuary, I KEEP coming back to that one, and passed out. I apologize to her about the mess and the statue fondling, really I'm wanting to be a courier, not a professional fondler, and get the fuck out of there. I'd really like to put this night behind me as far as possible.
     
    Markarth is not a pretty place. Even without occasional recurring bouts of double vision, the place is just nasty to look at. And how the hell did I get here in one night? It's half a province away, did I teleport again? I decide that I need to get back on track. Before I went to get a drink with my new bestest buddy Sam, who apparently left me in the lurch, he's not my bestest buddy any more, I was trying to get to the greybeards for some psychiatric help. I need it even more now, having apparently just married a goat. I head for the city gate, keeping my eyes down and face averted from passers-by, just in case I did something on my way in that I don't want to know about. I am interrupted on my way out the gate only twice - the first time, by a guy who apparently thinks he's very vigilant, and who wants me to help him in a B&E into this abandoned house because he thinks it's infested with daedra. Right, dude. I'll help you fight some daedra! That doesn't seem like a bad idea at all! You go in first, I'm right behind you. The second time I'm interrupted on my way out the gates is by a guy who stabs a woman in the middle of the marketplace. Yep, this place is REAL nice. I'm getting out of here.
     
    Outside the main gate, I find a carriage driver who is willing to take me back to Whiterun for a mere 20 gold, the bargain of a lifetime. I want to go to Whiterun because it's the closest town to Ivarstead, which is the jumping-off place for the trip up the mountain to see the grey-bearded therapists. After arriving at Whiterun, I head immediately up the path, stopping only to let a line of Imperial guardsmen escorting a nord prisoner go by. The nord tells me to join the fight to free Skyrim and head to Windhelm. Yeah, buddy, it's obviously gone SWIMMINGLY well for you so far, hasn't it? That's right at the top of my to-do list, sure. Bye-bye now, have fun in the dungeons.
     
    I decide to take the north road around the mountain rather than the south road, more because the south road heads through Riverwood and then through Helgen, two places with bad memories for me. The north road passes another bandit-infested tower, and these guys are actually sensible about things, just demanding money and then letting me go past. The rest of the trip is fairly uneventful, a peaceful walking journey through a beautiful landscape marred only by the occasional bear attack. It does seem that there are more bears, deer, rabbits, foxes, wolves, birds, snakes, butterflies, and what-have-you along the roads than anywhere else. Either the nords who build these roads put them through the most densely-populated regions they could find, or there's something about the roads that attract hostile animals. Bandits and wanderers I get, but why the fuck does every living thing in the world want to make an ostensibly well-traveled route their home?
     
    Eventually I arrive at Ivarstead. The people here are friendly, and there's even a guy who gives me a job as a courier. I'm to take a bag of food up to the greybeards! This is a pretty good gig - I'm going that way anyway, and making a delivery of necessaries to the greybeards will undoubtedly put them in a good mood, amenable to helping me! I head up the mountain, passing the occasional stone pillar with writing on it and the occasional pilgrim out for a stroll. I stop to read the pillars and talk to the pilgrims, but not for too long. Maybe 0.003 seconds per pillar or pilgrim. See, I'm running as fast as I possibly can, because somehow this road is infested with a dozen trolls. I'm tough enough to take on the occasional troll and win after a few minutes, but not three at once. How the hell did the pilgrims get up here without being attacked? Are you guys in league with the trolls?
     
    Next: Chapter 9, I Am A Dragonborn
    Start at Chapter 1
  13. Content Consumer
    CHAPTER 7: YES, I AM A DRAGONSLAYER
    In which our hero is truly, truly brave.
    Previous: Chapter 6, Dropout
     
    As I enter the town of Whiterun yet again, the commander of the guard tells me that he is the commander of the guard yet again, a guard tells me about his knee problems yet again, a rich bastard smarms at me yet again, a beggar asks me for money yet again... aah, nostalgia. The good things never change, do they? The only new thing that happened on my path through town was a little girl bullying a little boy, and a pair of nords taunting an old woman because her son died. I'm no friend of the stormcloaks, you know, racist sexist assholes that they are, but these Battle-Born guys aren't exactly increasing my estimation for those that support the empire, either. The old woman takes me aside and tells me to meet her in her house later. Normally I'd make some sort of sexual innuendo joke at this point, but she honestly seems upset about her missing and presumed dead son, so I go ahead and pencil her in on my to-do list. I'd help out now, lady, but my job isn't People-Finder, it's Courier. I'll just get this rock to Farengar and be right back, okay?
     
    Farengar seems excited to see the stone. He's arrogant, like a lot of nords here, but not as bad as some... he's actually coming off as a guy who's trying hard to convince the world that he's smarter than he is. It's not so much an arrogance as it is a crippling lack of self esteem, finger-based electricity notwithstanding. Anyway, before he can pay me, the homicidal dunmer comes running in and tells him that there's a dragon attacking the city. I'm about to make my excuses and slip out to find a good hole to crawl into... after all, the last time I was involved in a dragon attack it overran a fully-equipped Imperial citadel full of mages and archers and warriors of all kinds.
     
    Before I can leg it, though, the dark elf tells me to follow her, and she gives me a look that says if I don't I'll be chopped up into small pieces. So I head upstairs to dick around while people talk at great length with each other about how a dragon is attacking and how we need to do something about it now, so why don't we form a committee to investigate the feasibility of perhaps looking into coming up with a five-point action plan outlining our efforts at maybe fighting back or something? By Diagna, these nords do tend to talk an issue to death before doing anything. Anyway, it turns out the dragon isn't attacking the city, it's attacking a watchtower down the road. The Jarl tells us that we need to go kill the dragon and that information is more important than killing the dragon, and that we are not to risk our lives, but to go out there and kill the dragon anyway... I'm not sure if I'm the one who is confused, or if it's the Jarl. He sends me with the guards and the crazy dark elf, because I've got experience fighting dragons... no, actually, I don't, I've got experience running away from dragons and hiding in caves. Anyway, I'm sure that I'll be fine in the company of one dunmer and her half-dozen guardsmen, even if the Jarl is holding back magical assistance in the form of the court wizard.
     
    Still, it's not like I'm given a choice in the matter. I'll make a big show of following the dark elf until I actually see a dragon, and then I'll scamper. We leave the city, head down the road, and get to the watchtower, which is on fire, because of course stone burns, why wouldn't stone burn? There are some corpses around, but NO DRAGON. Phew! Yeah, fellows, it's lucky for that dragon it ran off. Why, I would have REALLY let it have it, you know? We all start congratulating ourselves on a job well done, when the dragon, which has a really fucked-up sense of humor, comes flying back from behind a mountain.
     
    It's an ice-breathing dragon, this one, so I have no idea how it set the tower on fire. I rushed out with all the other guardsmen to join the fight, swinging my hammer, grabbed a bow off a dead guy and shot arrows into the dragon over and over, committing many daring acts of heroism and valor, and the dragon dropped at my feet, killed stone dead through my battle prowess. Irileth and the guards hoisted me onto their shoulders and headed back to town, where the grateful populace gathered around me, tossing flowers and offering to name their children after me. I was named the high king of Skyrim and lived the rest of my days in peace and plenty, dying at a ripe old age, surrounded by my loving great grandchildren, and never again did I have to fight a dragon.
     
    At this point, someone shakes me by the arm. A guard looks down at me where I am cowering in the remains of the tower, eyes closed and ears covered, and tells me that it's over, they killed the dragon, I can come out now and find a clean pair of trews. Everyone's gathered around the corpse of the dragon, staring silently in awe at the great flying lizard. I step up, and apparently somebody sets the corpse on fire, because it burns RIGHT up, leaving only bones. At the same time, I feel invaded by a magical force I cannot describe, that enters my inner mind and very soul, flooding my being with power. A short while later, a guardsman comes BACK into the ruined tower and pulls me out of my hiding place yet again, chastising me for sucking my thumb like a small child. Whatever, dude, you didn't just get magically infested with dragon leftovers. The guard tells me to shout, and that DOES sound like a good idea. Scream therapy, you know? I'll just let out all my frustration, fear, and surprise. After screaming at the sky for a few minutes, I really do feel a little better. Irileth tells me to get back to Whiterun and report to the Jarl, so I unsteadily wobble my way back there, flinching at every rabbit that crosses my path, drawing my sword whenever I see a butterfly, and cowering in terror as birds fly by overhead, their shadows on the ground far too reminiscent of recent events. I'm also hallucinating, because when I get to the gates of Whiterun, the ground itself starts to shake and I hear voices. I need a therapist.
     
    The Jarl asks me what happened, and I state, full of conviction, that I killed a dragon and deserve a reward. Yep, that's me, a dragonslayer. Nobody else helped. Irilith and the other guards aren't here to contradict my version of events, so... gimme a reward and let me get the FUCK out of Dodge, okay? The Jarl rewards me generously with a handsome helping of exposition, this guy LOVES to talk. He jumps into a long-winded monologue about some group of monks that live up on a mountain somewhere and how I need to go see them. If this is about my need for therapy, dude, I hear you. I'll head right over there if they can help me forget about the recent past. After about half an hour listening to this dude ramble, he gives me an enchanted great axe and names me Thane of Whiterun. The axe is even better than my warhammer, so I swap it out. On my way out the door, I run into a nord woman who apparently was so impressed with my story about my dragonslaying prowess that she has dedicated her life to serving me. Sure, lady, sure. That's nice. I pat her on the head and tell her to run along. My next stop is High Hrothgar, where the Grey-bearded Psychatrists live.
     
    Actually, come to think about it, my next stop is a tavern where I will get absolutely shitfaced, hopefully my heartrate will wind down a bit with some alcohol fuzzing my nerves.
     
    Next: Chapter 8, Mace Raiden, Statue Fondler
    Start at Chapter 1
  14. Content Consumer
    CHAPTER 6: DROPOUT
    Wherein our hero decides that college just isn't for him.
    Previous: Chapter 5, Winner of the Smartest Mage in the World Contest
     
    Okay, Ancano the Thalmor is being a generic badguy. I never would have expected a high elf to be evil. Who would have thought? Everyone else in the college is a two-dimensional caricature of a real person. You've got the "overworked administrator," the "leader with a heart of gold but a dark past," the "evil traitor who will OBVIOUSLY inevitably betray everyone but when it happens everyone still finds it a surprise," the "absent-minded scholar," the "bumbling researcher," the "subservient middle management toady," the "guy with connections to the underworld," the list goes on and on. None of these people have anything interesting to say, except to say that things are interesting. I mean that quite literally. The big glowing blue ball that hovers? "It's very interesting" and "It's fascinating" and the like. Interesting, fascinating things happen ALL THE FUCKING TIME around here if you go by the way they talk to each other. I've the feeling they're all suffering from mass concussion. The only actually interesting person here is an old orc who stays in the library all day. I believe I could have gotten through my entire college career so far without firing off a single Destruction spell (my hammer solves all my problems for me), not to mention the fact that I can't really see much point in any of the other schools of magic beyond Restoration.
     
    And the story so far? Has not been completely enthralling, if you catch my drift. A vague maguffin that is responsible for something vague or is a harbinger of some vague catastrophe appears, and a vague secret order with vague goals wants to protect it from a vague villain with vague goals who wants to do something vague with it. A vague prophecy says that I will stop this villain somehow, and I'm vaguely fed up.
     
    This is quickly becoming a chore. The whole Community College scene is getting on my nerves. The only person who isn't a stereotype here is an old Orc librarian, and he's the guy who apparently wants to burn down his own library. So...
     
    I quit.
     
    That's right. I'm dropping out. Mom, Dad, I've decided to drop out of school. Sorry about that wasted tuition, but I'm just not cut out for college life. I'm going to work in the private sector for a while instead. Get some life experience before coming back here. I'm sure that Ancano and everyone else will be in the same damn position they are now, no matter how long I take. I've learned a total of four spells, and none of them are as good as my heavy iron armor and hammer. Speaking of hammer, my current score is Hammer 8, Magic 7, and that's where it's STAYING.
     
    So... what to do? I've tried being a hunter and furrier, a miner, lumberjack, student mage, and archaeologist-slash-tomb raider. None of them was a good fit. You know, that whole Sarthaal thing was pretty easy. Maybe I'll head back to Riverwood and head on up to that barrow on the hill to get the magic stone for the court wizard. My new profession: Mace Raiden, Courier. One teleporting fast-travel later, and...
     
    Here I am, back in Riverwood. It's the most aptly named town in history: it has a river, it has wood, what more do we want? Way back when the town was first established, the original settlers asked themselves what they should name it. "Dirttrees" was hard to say, "Bunnyrock" was taken, and "Cantthinkofanameville" was way too ironic for individuals of limited intellect.
     
    Anyway, I decide to discharge some of the other items in my to-do list. I've got a letter here for someone named Camilla from Faendal. On my way there, this nord guy named Sven stops me in the street. Sven is apparently in competition with Faendal for Camilla's affections. He takes Faendal's letter that was written from Sven, and writes Camilla one of his own, from Faendal... see, Faendal gave me a letter full of absolute shit and signed it Sven, and now Sven is doing the same to Faendal. So I'm supposed to go to Camilla and hand her this letter.
     
    Camilla takes one look at the letter, disregards the possibility that it was written by anyone other than Sven, and vows to never speak to Faendal again. I'd be a little bowled over by her stupidity, but really she's nothing special here. She tells me to go tell Sven the good news. Sven thanks me and offers to travel with me from now on. So... I fix up his love life, setting up his happy future from now until the end of his days, and the best way he can thank me is by becoming my personal servant, carrying my burdens and fighting my battles for me until he ends up dead at the claws of some troll. Really, Camilla, I'm doing you a favor by taking this nutbar off your hands. Off we will go, adventuring together into the deepest darkest recesses of Skyrim, doing quests together, living with one another, getting to know each other intimately, and oh god it just occurred to me that Sven is actually a closet homosexual and he's coming on to me. Look, dude, I'm flattered. The only other person who's come onto me so far is a necrophiliac pervert, though, so your affections just aren't saying much. Go settle down. It's apparent that you and Faendal have some issues to work out and you should probably stop lying to one another and yourselves. Just sit down and talk to each other about your feelings, and I'm sure you'll be happier without that Camilla getting between you.
     
    The other thing on my to-do list here is recovering an ornament for the local shopkeeper. This one I feel obligated to do. I've just sold him several sets of worthless fur armor, some ruined, unreadable books, a kitchen's worth of tin pots and wooden bowls, and there's NO WAY he'll be able to find anyone to pawn this junk off on. I feel bad. I've taken advantage of his trusting nature. And the kicker is, the thieves are hiding out in... BLEAK FALLS BARROW. The place I'm heading up to anyway! What are the odds!
     
    The trip up the mountain was pleasant enough. A wolf, a troll, three idiots in fur... and I do mean idiots. The bandits at Fort Kastav were in the right place. A well-defended fortress on a major road, able to ambush travelers and demand spare change. The fact that they attack on sight in no way diminishes their apparent intelligence at setting up where they did. These guys, though, set up in a rickety tower that looks like it's about to fall apart, and the only people they can prey on are... well, honestly, nobody. Who's going to walk up here? Nobody's that stupid... oh. Yeah. I'm here, aren't I? Then again, considering that they all went down with no more than two or three hits tells me that this may be something more like a territorial thing where one group of predators pushes another, weaker group aside... the bandits were pushed into this inhospitable place by other bandits who are better equipped.
     
    Anyway, what with the freezing cold temperatures and blinding, stinging crystals of ice blowing off the sharp rocks, why the fuck would anyone build anything up here? Did the ancient nords just go around and find the absolute most inhospitable place they could to build their cities? This wasn't just the actions of a few crazed guys with picks and shovels, either. The amount of manpower it would have taken to build this architectural wonder is staggering. This was the effort of perhaps hundreds of people working for years to achieve. And nobody in all that time thought it might be a better idea to head on down to the warm plain where there's abundant game and temperatures that occasionally rise into the positive numbers?
     
    And they're still at it! Bandits are living here! Why? What possible reason could they have for setting up camp here? There are rats, and where there aren't rats there are giant spiders, and where the spiders don't fit there are zombies, and where the zombies fear to tread there are trolls. There's no food (unless you count the aforementioned zombies, rats, trolls, and spiders) and the ambient temperature sits somewhere between damn cold and permanent frostbite.
     
    I take down the bandits outside, head on inside, and take down a few more. I come across my first real test here in Skyrim. This will be my hardest challenge yet, a test of my intellect rather than my muscles. Truly, the ancient nords who designed these barrows were masters of the mind, cunning and shrewd adversaries who built in only the most devious of traps and puzzles. There are three pillars that rotate, each showing three different animals. There are three pictures of animals on the wall. There's a lever. This is truly the ultimate test of my abilities.
     
    Approximately 1.6 seconds later, I'm through the door and moving on. I find a bunch of spiderwebs. I'm sure there won't be any spiders here. After killing the spiderwebs, I free a spider's victim from yet more webs. Why the spider put the victim just there, in the doorway, beats me. Maybe the spider was using the dark elf as a draugr early warning device - if they wanted to attack him, they'd have to go through the elf first, and he'd be bound to make some noise. Clearly this spider was more intelligent than anyone else here, bandits, ancient nords, and the whole population of Skyrim included. As if to prove this hypothesis, once I cut the elf down he proceeds to run off through the dungeon, cackling to himself at how he put one over on me. This idiot wants to betray the guy who saved his life, fine, but I just killed a giant spider you couldn't even touch, dude. Pick a better guy to betray. And running through the corridors? You're bound to hit a trap or run into draugr. As it happens, he does both.
     
    And here again I see yet more evidence of the ancient nord's ingenuity and trap-building skills. Just like in the last barrow I was in, there's a raised plate on the floor that looks nothing like the rest of the floor, is in fact PAINTED with a design so that it's easily avoidable. And just in case you didn't get the hint, there's a wall of sharp spikes over here. At least in Sarthaal, the trigger was obvious but the trap itself was not - little holes that shoot poisoned darts - but here it's like they aren't even trying any more. What's next, a lever with a sign on it saying "pull me" that is directly connected to an axe that swings down and beheads the puller? After that, a table with a sword on it, and a sign that says "please pick up this sword and stab yourself?" Is this an honor system trap?
     
    Bypassing the so-called "trap," killing draugr, dodging some swinging blades and little round buckets full of fire that never goes out that drop onto slicks of oil that never dries up, etcetera etcetera. I come to a door with three rings on it that can be rotated, three pictures of animals on each ring, and a claw-shaped indention. I'm sure it has NOTHING to do with the golden claw in my pack. I'll just sit here, stumped, for a couple of hours before I speak "friend" and enter and oh wow do I need to stop talking about the stupidity of the ancient nords, or I'll never get ANYTHING done.
     
    Through the door, past some bats, and here's ANOTHER of those chanting walls. I'm thinking I'm not going to mention this one to anybody. It didn't go so well the last time. And again, my mind is invaded by some scratches on the wall, and OUT pops a draugr from a chest on the floor. He's mean, this one - a real tough nut to crack, not like the other draugr here. More like he's been taking lessons from the local trolls. After about twenty minutes of alternately slamming my hammer at his head and rushing off to heal, he goes down, and I loot his treasure box. I find a big white stone in there, and it starts speaking to me. I'm starting to get a little irritated at all the inanimate objects that talk to me. Chanting walls, and now a big white gemstone-looking thing that wants me to cleanse its temple, because if you're a big white gemstone, of COURSE you have your own temple.
     
    Out the back door, down the mountainside, around the bend, and off to Riverwood again. I drop the golden claw at the shopkeeper's feet and he gives me some gold that is probably worth a LOT less than the actual price of the claw. I should have kept it, melted it down, and then used the gold to buy his shop from him. But I don't want to be a shopkeeper, I'm sticking with my fairly successful profession of Courier for now. I've delivered some books to a librarian, a golden claw to the shopkeeper, a fake letter to an inbred imperial chick, and now I'm off to Whiterun to deliver a magic stone to a court mage.
     
    Next: Chapter 7, Yes, I Am A Dragonslayer
    Start at Chapter 1
  15. Content Consumer
    CHAPTER 5: WINNER OF THE SMARTEST MAGE IN THE WORLD CONTEST
    In which our hero finds a glowing orb of light truly irritating.
    Previous: Chapter 4, How Did They Move That Big Blue Ball?
     
    There's a trap door in the Hall of Countenance that leads to the midden. By the name, I'm assuming it's a dumping ground for magical trash - half-finished sub-critical spells, flesh golems that didn't quite work out right, defective staves, and the like. It isn't, though. It appears to be a bunch of mage's workrooms tied together in a dungeon-like atmosphere. There's something called an Atronach Forge which, by the books left behind by the previous owner seems like it creates magical staves and summons atronachs that attack you on sight. Why you'd want to summon a hostile fire elemental that attacks on sight is a mystery to me. Practice, maybe. Still, I found that there are actually three (or possibly more?) kinds of atronachs - Flame, Frost, and Storm. I'm guessing that these mimic the three forms of destruction magic. I lack the appropriate stuff to summon atronachs, but I'm coming back here, you can believe it.
     
    The midden also contains other things. In addition to the atronach forge that summons atronachs that want to eat my flesh, there are several necromancer summoning areas (if the bones on the walls are any indication) that contain live skeletons that want to eat my flesh, a daedric gauntlet that apparently can summon a hostile daedra that wants to eat my flesh, some ghostly ice-wraith that wants to eat my flesh, a couple of spiders that want to eat my flesh, and so on. Why the HELL is this here? Why haven't the mages come down here and cleaned it out? Probably didn't want to get their flesh eaten. What idiots are these guys, anyway? All they seem to do is complain about college politics and summon creatures that want to eat flesh, and at least one of them apparently wants to burn down his own library. I should go back to the renegade wizards in the renegade wizard hideout - at least their experimentation seems to be dedicated to finding better ways to kill vampires.
     
    Anyway, I finally get to the Augur of Dunlain. He is... a big glowing ball. Seriously, not a person at all. "He" smarms at me for a bit, talking about how I know nothing and what I am seeking will lead to my doom and other people have been seeking other things that will lead to everyone's doom or something. I really wasn't paying that much attention, because I just KNEW he was going to summon some creatures that wanted to eat my flesh, and I was readying my ward and firebolt spell. He tells me that to properly use the Eye of Magnus, I need the Staff of Magnus, and probably the Mask of Zorro or the Back Scratcher of Uncle Clyde or some other Thing of Person. After smarming at me for a little more, about disasters that cannot be averted and knowledge that cannot be unknown and seeing with no eyes and hearing through my nostrils and urinating without a bladder or something, I don't care, I'm not listening, just hurry up and summon the flesh-eating monstrosities, bring 'em on, fucker, I'm ready this time!
     
    But no, he just sends me back upstairs to talk to Savos Aren and tell him that we need a macguffin. Aren gives me a Mage's Circlet, actually a pretty nice doodad. I was expecting another staff of light balls style reward. He then tells me to talk to Mirabelle, who directs me to a Dwemer ruin and then proceeds to tell me that a bunch of OTHER renegade wizards calling themselves the Synod are there. I'm beginning to get the impression that all of this is just a big facade, that the mages just need someone to go off and kill their enemies. They wanted someone with iron armor and a warhammer because their magic isn't up to the task, but didn't want to actually hire anyone, you know, spend money, so they cooked up this "student wizard" gig. I'll bet there was a guy hidden somewhere near the Augur's room, an illusionist-ventriloquist who made up the whole thing. It's all an elaborate charade designed to fool the new student. I'm on to you people!
     
    After taking several deep breaths, I set off for Mzulft. It's a little southeast of Windhelm, so it looks like my best bet is to head there and THEN to Mzulft. So here I go, wandering ALL THE WAY SOUTH to Windhelm, through ice and snow and frost and trolls and the wind and the rain and the bright blue sky and lions and tigers and bears, oh my! I carefully skirt Windhelm, cross the river, head through a little mining town called Kynesgrove, and in the front door of the dwarven ruin.
     
    There's a guy sitting here, stoned out of his mind on some kind of hallucinogen. He tells me: "Crystal gone, find paratu's oculory" which I take to mean that his drugs, called "paratu's eyes," have run out and he needs more. He promptly falls asleep, and I need to get me some of that shit. I rifle through his clothes and find a key, but no more drugs. Probably deeper in the ruin. He isn't asleep, of course, or it would be pickpocketing. See, if someone is alive, it's stealing, but if they're dead, it's finder's-keepers. And I'm no thief. Wandering through the ruins, I find several more dead guys in blue robes, so they all must have overdosed at once. I mean, it's not as if they were killed by anything. These were professional wizards, at the top of their game, full of magical destructive power. What, am I supposed to believe that they were killed by blind, ugly goblin-looking dudes with no magic? Give me a break, shit like that doesn't exist in a rational world.
     
    So, after killing several dozen blind goblin-looking dudes with no magic, not to mention a couple of poison-spitting giant earwigs and a few mechanical spiders and roller-balls that shoot arrows, I finally get to a door I cannot unlock. I spend a good three days wandering through this big room, searching every nook and cranny, rummaging through every container and looking at every corpse I can find, MULTIPLE TIMES, and there's no key anywhere. Fuck this shit, I'm outta here. I head back out the exit tunnel, take out my warhammer, and slam it into my head a few times for being such an idiot, because this isn't the exit tunnel, it's probably the way forward. Here's an amphitheater, and here's another one of those dwarven constructs that are apparently immune to fire, so we tussle a bit and I finally take it out with my warhammer and about seven thousand healing potions. At this point, I notice that my diary is beginning to bulge with all the hyperbole, so I decide to tone it down a bit, loot a key from the construct, and head back to the locked door. Speaking of tussling, warhammers, and magic, it's time for another status update:
     
    HAMMER: 8 (+1 for all the dozens of rats, wolves, bears, tigers, falmer, spiders, dwarven spiders, and so on I've killed in the last few days)
    MAGIC: 4 (+1 for using my ward when facing a single magic-wielding falmer)
     
    It turns out, the guy up front wasn't asking for paratu's eyes, he was asking me to gouge out Paratus's eyes. I guess. I really can't remember what he said, but it had something to do with a crystal. After looking in my backpack, I find out that somewhere along the way I did manage to pick up some sort of focusing crystal. Paratus is a real sharp dude, smart as a whip. Probably the winner of the Official Annual Smartest Mage In The World Contest. The guy opens his locked door, that he was using to protect himself against the falmer, to the first guy who comes along, then seems surprised that I'm not his friend. Did I sound like your friend, dude? He proceeds to tell me about his plans, his friend's plans, his story, his friend's story, his future, hopes, dreams, and fears, shows me pictures of his children, gets to become good buddies with me, we're the best of friends, let's never be apart, you're my hetero life partner, let's move in together and open up a little coffee shop just like we always wanted, and by the way he's still really suspicious of me and won't trust me a bit with any information including the volume he's STILL pumping into my ears, which are, by the way, bleeding from the overload. He takes the crystal, tells me to cast fire and frost magic at it a bit, smarms at me, insults me, compliments me, tells me to flip some switches, exults at me for solving his problem, damns me for not solving his problem, and then yells at me to get out, he's discovered my nefarious plot. No jury in the land will convict me for what I'm about to do to you, Paratus. One more dead Synod researcher will only improve the overall intelligence quotient of the world.
     
    HAMMER: 8
    MAGIC: 6 (Yay! +1 for killing the Synod guy with magic, +1 for using flames and frostbite on the focusing crystal!)
     
    On my way out the door, I'm interrupted YET AGAIN by that goddamn Psijic guy who stops time and smarms at me. I'm REALLY GETTING TIRED of being SMARMED AT by ASSHOLES all the time. He tells me that, sur-FUCKING-prise, I will face difficulties ahead. HOLY SHIT WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT? Is smarming all you people do? DON'T YOU HAVE LIVES? A few minutes later, out of breath and hoarse from screaming obscenities at the walls, I leave the ruin and head back to the college, veins visibly throbbing in my face.
     
    Back at the college, everyone is panicking, running around in fear, and trying to get their shit together. At least, that's what SHOULD be happening. What's actually happening is that everyone except Aren and Mirabelle are just going about their daily lives, and Aren and Mirabelle are standing outside the lecture hall and the Eye of Magnus, calmly talking about how Ancano has warded them out and, by the by, shouldn't we consider making an action plan to formulate a committee to discuss the long-term benefits and negatives of possibly considering doing something about the insane guy with the key to the world, if it's not too much trouble, whenever you're ready, on your own time, let's do lunch and talk about it? They tell me to attack the ward, and I proceed to do so for a while before I realize they meant with MAGIC. Oh, yeah. I forgot I had that. So far, it's been useful about 42% of the time, if you really stretch your definition of "useful."
     
    So we blast at the ward for a while, it goes away, we go in, Ancano smarms at us, and then Aren walks up to Ancano and he... apparently... explodes? I dunno, the next thing I know there's another ward up, Mirabelle is nursing a broken ankle, and Aren was apparently blown right outside the building. Ancano is still there, shooting lightning bolts at the Eye of Magnus.
     
    HAMMER: 8
    MAGIC: 7
     
    Next: Chapter 6, Dropout
    Start at Chapter 1
  16. Content Consumer
    CHAPTER 41: X MARKS THE SPOT
    In which our hero goes on a treasure hunt!
    Previous: Chapter 40: Mushrooms... again?
     

    Heading east, the first place I find is a bandit camp. Like the "reavers," these guys decided that "bandit" was a bad name for their little group, and decided to re-brand. Also like the reavers, they got some really bad advice, and picked "pirate" instead. As we approach, they're arguing, something about a map and a curse. I didn't catch much after that, because we were instantly attacked, and they didn't seem to want to discuss the situation further, no matter how much I interrogated their corpses. Ah, well. One of the pirates had a map of sorts on his body, and in the chest nearby there's an utterly ridiculous looking helm with an utterly pathetic enchantment. On the other hand, said enchantment does look like the armor must come straight out of the Diablo franchise, because it appears to be a multipart one - apparently there is more to this suit of armor. I just hope the rest of it isn't quite so dumb looking. Intrigued, I notice that according to the map the three remaining pieces are on the edges of the island, which is perfect, considering that that's where I'm going.
     
    There's not much else to the island's outer edge, though. A couple of caves I deliberately avoid, a bunch of blue goblinoids I slaughter unmercifully, and another pillar being constructed by workforce so dedicated to their task that they refuse to engage in conversation with random wanderers. On the one hand, I'm not used to being completely ignored like that - most people I talk to seem obsessed with introducing themselves and giving me little biographical summaries when I first meet them, and on all subsequent encounters, whether or not I want to talk to them or even when I pass within ten feet of them, turn to me as if I am the most important thing in the world. Having a bunch of NPCs just completely ignore me is a new and, to be honest, quite refreshing experience. On the other hand, they may be dedicated to building these... whatever they are, but they're not really competent at it. I've been gone for two days and when we arrive back at the Earth Stone it doesn't look like any progress has been made. So maybe they're just dedicated to getting a steady paycheck. I'm down with that.
     
    Anyway, once again we circumnavigate the island a bit, in order to find the other pieces of this Deathbrand armor. After retrieving the last piece, I find a key and my quest journal magically updates itself, pointing me to Gyldenhul Barrow. Inside I find a pretty impressive treasure room, though honestly I haven't seen any gold piles look like that. Mostly gold seems to be found in little leather pouches, not lying on the ground in suspiciously smooth piles. Deeper in the ruin a whole bunch of angry ghosts pop out. It isn't a particularly difficult fight, but it is annoying, because the ghosts seem to spawn as far from me as possible, necessitating a whole bunch of running back and forth putting them down. In the end, I recover the chief ghost's two swords. All told, the Deathbrand armor and swords aren't bad. I could honestly see giving this bunch to a light-armored dual-wielding warrior, someone like Jenassa. I'd do it too, except I hate her and I never want to see her face again. So into the hock it'll go.
     
    Well, island circumnavigation complete. I guess it's time to get on with things. Why the hell did I come to Solstheim again? Oh, yeah, the cultists. Well, the only tip I've got so far is the temple in the middle of the island, so I guess that's where we're heading.
     
    Once at the temple, we find a bunch more of the brain-damaged builders standing around, idly whacking on things with hammers, and it occurs to me that maybe they're not trying to build whatever this stuff is, but destroy it. I mean, hey, when I whack on things with my hammer they usually die, so obviously these folks want to be just like their dear ol' Mace Raiden. Bless their little, stunted minds. They're pretty good at using those hammers too, judging by the field of dragon skeletons lying about. These guys are actually pretty fucking dangerous in combat, and I'm glad they've decided to stick to hammering on rocks. Nervously edging around them so as not to give offense, Stenvar and I move on into the ruin, and we're immediately attacked by a bunch of cultists. I get it, I really do - you've got the builders, who stand there mindlessly whacking on rocks, and the guards, who attack by launching themselves at our weapons face-first. Remember what I said about incompetent masterminds? Yeah, this guy, whoever he is, put his badass warriors on construction duty and his chambermaids on guard duty. Go team!
     
    Oh, and one non-team member, a Nord woman in heavy armor. At last, we meet someone who isn't either obsessed with hammering stones or obsessed with killing me! Happy day! She seems intent on getting the attention of the oblivious builders, and is meeting with little success. She tells me that the mastermind's name is Miraak, which makes sense considering that this temple is dedicated to him. She offers to lead us through the temple and kill him. Wow, really? That is... a very short main questline, all right. But whatever, let's do this.
     
    Inside is some pretty nifty architecture done in the standard Nord "ancient-ruin" style that was popular way back when. We fight a whole bunch of cultists on the way down, followed up by some Draugr. Frea seems slightly more intelligent than the average Nord, in that she refuses to charge headlong into swinging blades or other traps, preferring to let me solve the problem. A chanting word wall, a dragon trophy, and a boss Draugr called a "gatekeeper" who was apparently supposed to be a tough fight but went down crying like a little girl as the three of us tear him limb from limb, and that's about it for the temple. No Miraak. Some different kinds of architecture that I haven't seen since Saarthaal, kind of neat. And a big, black book. Fool that I am, I decline to actually think before opening it up and reading it, and whoosh I'm teleported to a magical realm full of fauns and talking animals and an evil white queen and... wait, wrong story. I'm actually teleported to a profoundly ugly place, complete with a dragon, a guy dressed in a darker version of the cultist gear, and a quartet of truly odd-looking... tentacle... things. Along with the Netch, this Solstheim place is starting to look like a Japanese schoolgirl's worst nightmare.
     
    Anyway, the dude is (duh) Miraak, and he smarms at me for a bit... wait, check that. He actually doesn't smarm. Huh, a mastermind who doesn't insult me. Go figure. He commends me for killing a whole bunch of dragons, and says that he is in the process of conquering the world by enslaving the minds of its inhabitants.
     
    Really, dude? This is your evil plan? You want to conquer the world with mind control? Have you talked to these people? In order to control someone's mind, they have to have a mind in the first place. Sheesh. And conquering the world? Yeah, I've been down that road before. So sorry to burst your bubble, but you don't have what it takes. Ulfric Stormcloak has a rebel army, and you've got... no army. Alduin has dozens of dragons, and you have... what, two? Three? And judging by the skeletons surrounding your temple, you keep killing them off. You don't have a macguffin like Ancano, and although you're trying your very best to meet the so-ugly-you're-scary qualification with that outfit and squid mask, you can't really beat out Harkon with his "Behold the Power" transformation into a mutant man-slash-plucked-turkey thing. You can't say you've got an edge on magic, because, let's face it, impressive as shouting can sometimes be, even the strongest shout doesn't hold a candle to a series of rapidly-launched Fireball spells.
     
    So... who do you think you are kidding, Mr. Miraak, if you think old Solstheim's done? Stenvar and I, we are the boys who will stop your little game. We are the boys who will make you think. Not think again, mind you, just think. You know, once. Look, dude, I'm honestly okay with you taking over the world. I mean, you can't have fucked it up any more than anyone else. You do use mind control powers to force people to do your bidding, but after watching them work for a bit, you're not forcing them to work themselves to the bone. And they do seem somewhat happy doing it. Your stated goal is to bring peace to the world under your rule, and that's a damn sight better than the "kill everyone including myself" goal that every other would-be ruler has. And when you had me at your mercy, you decided to... be merciful. You're the best supervillain I've ever encountered, bar none. So you wanna rule the world? Fine. Go to it, my boy, and gods bless you. But you could at least come up with a better plan than mind control.
     
    Anyway, Miraak's tentacled freaks send me back to Solstheim. Frea insists that I go with her to her home and talk to her father, and I insist that I'm already happily married and do not need to go home with her to meet her parents. But whatever, I guess that's the next quest hook, so off we go.
     
    NEXT: Chapter 42, The Fate Of The Skaal
    Start at Chapter 1
  17. Content Consumer
    CHAPTER 40: MUSHROOMS... AGAIN?
    In which our hero visits a giant magic mushroom.
    Previous: Chapter 39: Tentacle Monsters Ahoy!
     
    The first thing I see out of the gate is a guard fighting a couple more of these ash monsters. After quickly dispatching the beasts, the dude introduces himself as Veleth, the guard captain at Raven Rock. He is either a real dumbass who decided to investigate the attacks on the town personally, OR there is so little for him to do back in Raven Rock that he was bored out of his gourd and decided to investigate the attacks on the town personally, OR he's just that cocky and confident in his abilities that he decided to investigate the attacks on the town personally, OR he's just a wandering brigand who decided to help himself to a dead guard's armor and call himself "captain" and who's going to be the wiser? Actually, scratch that last one, because I know for a fact he's a guard captain and not just a normal guard who got accelerated promotion due to the death of his predecessor or something, because he has a unique voice.
     
    Mr. Unique-with-actually-pretty-damn-good-VA tells me to search for clues, because he can't be arsed to take a few steps thataway and find a convenient note on the cone-shaped stationary ash pile that was once a human-shaped mobile ash pile. He asks me to investigate further, and I agree that this is really something that should be taken care of by someone competent, i.e. someone with an actual military force backing him up and not just an itinerant Dragonborn. But since his idea of "proper military force" includes just himself and one mook, I guess it's up to me after all. But later, eh? I'm still circumnavigating the island.
     
    The local wildlife is interesting. There are some insects that hide under the dirt and jump out, but they're not much more of a threat than your average frostbite spider. I found a Spriggan who apparently tried to emulate John Allerdyce with semi-disastrous consequences, and a bunch of bandits who are trying to shrug off the negative connotations of the word "bandit" and get some positive PR by calling themselves "reavers" instead. As a plan to increase their rep, it's about on par with pretty much every other plan of any kind that the average Skyrim inhabitant makes. I approach them, and we engage in a brisk debate about their choice of identification term. They argue that the word "reaver" implies the personality of an individual who roams around looking for a bit of fun, and not someone who, for example, attacks innocent travelers on sight. My argument is primarily etymological in nature, with references to various dictionaries. After hearing my persuasive speech, they are so overcome with the rightness of my reasoning that they remain lying down on the ground, some of them headless. Let's continue on, shall we?
     
    A whole bunch of dirt, some burned trees, and a... meteor? I guess? Maybe something volcanic? I have been under the impression that the eruption of Red Mountain happened quite some time ago, but apparently it's still going on? That would explain the ashy ground and burned trees, I suppose. And the volcanic bomb, if that's what it is. Normally tephra like this cools before it hits the ground, but I'm willing to cut the devs gods some slack. Anyway, for the most part the southern coastline isn't much to look at, or wander through either. There's a fort, but I decided to keep away from it because I'm just sure it's full of bandits reavers too.
     
    Eventually we reach a big-ass mushroom. Big enough that people are actually living inside. I hunt high and low in vain searching for Smurfs, but all I found were some Dunmer. Some dev god who made the world really had a hard-on for big mushrooms, I tell you. The master of this place is called, appropriately enough, Master Neloth, and aside from him there are a couple of other folks living here, including the arguing couple outside. Rather than get involved in a family squabble, I head on inside. The inside of the main mushroom consists of a vertical shaft that blows you up to the top (insert your own blow-job joke here), which is pretty damn nifty, I can tell you. I'd like some of this magic back in Skyrim so I don't have to walk around mountains. Neloth himself is a bit of a burke, but he's also so self-absorbed and supercilious that he's easy to just blow off (insert another blow-job joke here too). Back down the tower and out the door, and apparently the one guy's summon spell actually worked. Kinda. It's a Storm Atronach, and it's pissed off because he let it get all muddy. Talvas inveigles me to help him, and then buggers off back into the tower. After dispatching the thing, I head back inside and he gives me his staff (insert yet another blow-job joke here), and Stenvar and I decide to get out of this place before this giant Psilocybin affects us the same way it's apparently been affecting everyone else.
     
    Heading north now, we encounter a Sun Stone, around which some more people appear to be either building something or possibly just randomly moving rocks about and whacking things with hammers. Just like the last batch, they seem disinclined to talk to me, and even the bandits reavers among them aren't hostile, just completely disinterested. So we keep moving. There's a dwemer ruin here, but apparently it is quest locked inaccessible. Further on up the coast we run into a group of Nords doing what Nords do best - camping out in the freezing wastes and drinking a bunch of booze. I briefly entertain a sense of superiority, but then Stenvar reminds me that I too am a Nord, I'm in the frozen wastes, and have I looked at my inventory lately? 30 stone of alcohol? Sheepishly, I trudge on.
     
    We find a cave called Frossel, which must be a portmanteau of "frozen" and "fossil" and fits the name perfectly. It's full of little blue goblin dudes, some of whom are riding wild pigs. I turn to Stenvar and say that the place is very boar-ing, hoping to get a chuckle, but all he does is look at me sadly and shake his head. Chastened, I decide to explore the place, and Stenvar and I rip through it like a hot sharp thing through a soft melty thing. Aside from interrupting what appears to be a religious ceremony worshipping a horse and wagon (insert your own "cargo cult" reference here), the place is mostly filled with the mother fuckload of junk. I mean, it looks like these little guys bought out the entire stock of a dozen pawnshops back on the mainland and decided to accessorize their frozen caves with the lot. All in all, the picture painted of these Reiklings is that of a group of giggling lunatics who worship clutter. So, pretty much like everyone else, I suppose.
     
    Back outside, we breathe the fresh air and I vow to never enter another one of these damn caves again. It wasn't a hard fight or anything, but for heaven's sake, I just slaughtered a bunch of otherwise innocent trash venerators! I can't even give the excuse that they attacked me first, like bandits and reavers and spriggans and wolves and rats and every fucking thing in the entire world outside of cities do - I invaded their home and proceeded to wipe them all out!
     
    Suddenly very depressed, I trudge onward. East this time, since we've moved up to the top of the island now.
     
    NEXT: Chapter 41, X Marks The Spot
    Start at Chapter 1
  18. Content Consumer
    CHAPTER 4: HOW DID THEY MOVE THAT BIG BLUE BALL?
    In which our hero meets the one person in Skyrim he actually likes
    Previous: Chapter 3, College Guys Gone Wild
     
    I get back to the college, and Arch-Mage Aren seems less than fascinated with my news. Look, dude, there's a big glowing blue ball thing, and an undead wizard dude, and magic walls tied to magic necklaces, time warp spells... and... uh... chanting walls. Really, it wasn't my imagination. The walls were chanting at me. I'm sure if you go listen they'll chant at you too.
     
    Aren doesn't believe me about the chanting walls, and sends me to talk to Urag. Get me out of his hair, really. Maybe Urag will believe me about the chanting walls. He doesn't though. He's more concerned with completing his book collection. Look, dude, I'll get around to it, okay? He doesn't care about my lack of interest in his books, and sends me off after some dude named Orthorn who apparently stole some books. So... he didn't have Orthorn torn apart by atronachs, and instead just decides to send some random freshman after this renegade wizard who joined other renegade wizards and are now holed up in a renegade wizard fortress, plotting renegade wizard plots and scheming renegade wizard schemes, and nightly dreaming renegade wizard dreams. By day they play renegade wizard games and I'm spiraling down into a hole here, need to get back to the story at hand. Off to the renegade wizard hangout to raid it for books. Maybe I can mix the professions of Mage and Tomb Raider. Mace Raiden, Tomb-Raiding Wizard Extraordinaire!
     
    Fellglow Keep is nestled high in the mountains of Whiterun, or possibly Windhelm. It's hard to tell with these W-places. I head to Whiterun, then walk the long way around to Fellglow Keep. I would have taken the short way, but there IS no short way. There are several long ways, though, so I pick one at random and start walking.
     
    When I finally reach the renegade wizard fort, I am immediately attacked by two renegade wizards and a human-shaped mobile fire. I've finally found out what an atronach is! It's a wall of mobile fire that shoots fireballs, and when it dies, explodes in fire! So when Urag threatened me with atronachs, he was basically saying that if I damaged one of his books, he would personally set in motion events that would lead to his entire library burning to the ground. I'm glad I didn't insult his mother; he'd have summoned an army of daedra to wipe out the countryside. He should have a sign on the library door that reads "disproportionate response." The wizards go down easy enough with a quick application of warhammer to sternum, and I actually get some use out of my wards when facing the atronach!
     
    Anyway, the main doors are locked, so through a side door I go. First I'm attacked by a bunch of renegade wizard's giant spider pets, then the renegade wizard himself. Then I find out the renegade wizards have been keeping some young women prisoner, probably to aid in their renegade wizard plots. I kill the renegade wizard jailer, let the prisoners free, and they immediately sprint for their freedom out the back door... at least, that's what happened in Sane World. In this world, they sprinted into the next room and proceeded to start flinging magic spells at other renegade wizards. Guys, if you could use magic yourselves, how did you end up being taken prisoner? And, once taken prisoner, why not just shoot the jailer yourselves? And if you didn't want to do that, or were too afraid, why are you engaging them now? Why not just slip out the back door?
    So it turns out those nice young women are actually vampires. Seems legit - the only thing that could possibly be WEAKER than a mage is a VAMPIRE MAGE boosted by unholy power. The renegade wizards dispatch them, but not without losses, and now it's my turn. I continue wandering through the complex, killing renegade wizards and the occasional vampire prisoner. Eventually I find the one renegade wizard I was sent here to find - Orthorn the Altmer. He's a little coward, and he doesn't have the books Urag wants. I tell him to stick with me, we'll make it out together. I figure I can always feed him to some spiders if I need to.
     
    The two of us continue through the dungeon, killing renegade wizards and renegade wizard pets. We pass through the renegade wizard library, but none of these are the books Urag wants. We head up some renegade stairs and through some more renegade doors, along some renegade tunnels, and I find a Renegade Unusual Gem. It floats! It must be magic! And now I can't get rid of it! We eventually come to the top of the dungeon complex/fort/keep/tower, and we meet... The Caller.
     
    Orthorn made her sound like some real monstrous renegade bitch, but she's actually the only person I've met here (besides Orthorn) who doesn't attack me on sight. She is actually quite open-minded about my disrupting her renegade experiments and killing her renegade followers. She'll let me go, and with the books, if I leave Orthorn here. You got it, dude! It's a deal! Suck it up, Orthorn, you brought this on yourself. I grab the books and head out the way I came.
     
    Back at the college, I walk in the main building, going to head upstairs to deliver the books and WHAT THE HELL IS THAT DOING HERE? The great big glowy blue ball thing? How did you get it out of that chamber in Saarthal? The doors out of there were barely big enough for a person to walk through! Don't tell me you guys can shrink things down and then expand them back up again? I WANT TO LEARN THAT SPELL! Seething with envy, I head upstairs and give the books to Urag, who promptly gives one of them right back to me. And some other books. Look, dude, if all you're interested in is trading books back and forth, just say so. Don't send me across the country... ah, who the hell am I kidding? You're going to do that anyway, aren't you?
     
    So I head back to talk to Tolfdir and maybe learn the secrets of the magic shrinking-expanding spell. Tolfdir is unhelpful on that regard, more interested in the big blue ball that he has dubbed the Eye of Magnus. He talks about the ball for a while and then Ancano comes in and demands that I follow him. No way, dude, you're probably just wanting to get me alone to kill me quietly. I know your type. But somehow, following him ended up in my journal/date book, in ink again, so I've got no choice. Upstairs to the Arch-Mage's quarters. If this ends up being something sexual between you guys and you need a third partner, I'm outta here.
     
    Hey, it's that time-stopping, teleporting wizard dude from Saarthal! Look, Arch-Mage, I told you! He's real, not a figment of my imagination! He can stop time! Ah, crap, you did it again, didn't you, you bastard? Look, are you just fucking with me? What is this, tease-the-freshman day? Gonna spout some more cryptic bullshit my way then teleport out of here again? Yep, looks like it. He tells me that I have to stop people from using the Eye of Magnus. Well, hell, dude, couldn't you have done that yourself? I mean, you can obviously teleport around and stop time, why couldn't you teleport the goddamn eye out of Saarthal? Or shrink it down? By the way, can you teach me that shrink-expand spell?
     
    It is not to be. The elf tells me to seek out the Augur of Dunlain, whatever/whoever the hell that is, and then unfreezes time. Ancano gets pissed and tells the elf that he can't leave. I've got to say, I'm with Ancano on this one. This dude shows up out of nowhere, demands to see the college's latest recruit, stops time, resumes time, and then says it's all a mistake and he should not be here? Fuck off, dude. Either tell me what you know or hit the road. He hits the road.
     
    Well, hell. I guess I might as well go find out about this Augur of Dunlain thing. the Arch-Mage tells me to talk to Mirabelle, who tells me to talk to Tolfdir, who tells me to jump in the sewer. Or head into the midden. Something like that. I get the impression that Tolfdir's brain may have been damaged sometime recently.
     
    So I'm off to the midden. It's under the college and I'm sure it won't be full of magical creatures that want to eat my flesh. Time for a status update:
    HAMMER: 7
    MAGIC: 3
     
    Next: Chapter 5, Winner Of The Smartest Mage In The World Contest
    Start at Chapter 1
  19. Content Consumer
    CHAPTER 39: TENTACLE MONSTERS AHOY
    Wherein our hero begins exploring a new land.
    Previous: CSI: Skyrim
     
    Recent events have made me really wish for a real villain, a foe worthy of my caliber. Holmes had his Moriarty, Xavier had his Magneto, Toothpaste had Mr. Tooth Decay... and what do I have? A vampire who wants to kill himself off by blotting out the sun, an Elf who wants to conquer the world by playing with a big blue ball, and a master thief who goes about stealing stuff in the most ludicrous way possible. Not to say that the good guys are any great minds either, but really... where have all the bad men gone, and where are all the demons?
     
    Not around here, I can tell you that. Take, for instance, these Cultists. They've been popping up every so often, under a contract to kill me. Because I am Dragonborn. See what I mean? They've targeted me for assassination because I'm as powerful as a mighty fire-breathing lizard. That's like refusing to walk out your front door unless you're forced to do a fifty-mile hike, or starting a drinking game where you have to down a pint of 181-proof rum every time someone says a word with a vowel in it. You're setting yourself up for failure, heartbreak, and possibly death by alcohol poisoning. Some idiot decided that his master would be pleased by my demise, and has been sending these three-man hit squads after me from time to time. This is what I'm talking about, with the stupidity of villains. I can just see the guy sending these hit squads saying to himself: "The last dozen attempts failed, but I'm sure that this time it'll work!" This mastermind is a dude who seriously needs to rethink his strategy, and his minions are no better, because they're saying "I know that the last thirty assassins died, but I'm going to win! Derpy derpy derp!"
     
    Additionally, I'm sick of fighting people who work without any fleshed-out plan. These are folks who, when they take a step forward with their right foot, have no clear idea what the left foot is supposed to do next. Just... send assassins out after me? That's it? Why not try to make up an ambush, maybe? More than three assassins at a time, perhaps? Train them in some decent magic or arm them with good weapons and armor? And speaking of attire, these cultist assassins are topheavy. I mean that literally. Boots and robes of cloth, gloves of leather, and a heavy facemask apparently made of... bone? Resin? Unusually sturdy whitewashed dead squid? Your guess is as good as mine. They can't even coordinate their outfits. I'm not complaining because I want to wear this ugly crap - the "helmet" looks as though somebody strapped a bucket of plaster to his forehead and rammed his face into a wall - I'm just complaining because it's either that or go mad.
     
    But, in the absence of a good villain, or even a mediocre one, I might as well take a shot at the third string, eh? Let's go. To Windhelm, apparently. Yippee skippy, I get to go to the frozen ass-end of nowhere again.
     
    There's a ship captain here who initially refuses to take me to Solstheim, which if I'm not mistaken means "home of the sun." I point out the raging blizzard, snow-covered stone, and freezing water full of ice floes, and he has a change of heart. Off we go to someplace that, if you believe the nomenclature, must be warmer. Please, Gods, let it be so.
     
    And apparently it is, if a bit dusty. Not since Point Lookout has there been a look-upon-ye-landmass-and-despair boatride cinematic of such quality. The initial overview doesn't make the place look attractive, I can tell you that. It looks like somebody took the Clochán na bhFomhórach and covered it in dirt, then dug a hole and plopped down a couple of rickety houses. Not, if you get my drift, particularly inviting. Warmer than Windhelm, though, so I guess I'll take what I can get.
     
    Once we arrive at the dock, the ship captain and the dockmaster engage in some witty banter about how prices have gone up and supplies are missing or something. I honestly didn't catch much of it, because I was off the pier like a shot and exploring this new place. My inspection does not prove encouraging. This town, although it looks more like a desert tossed over a bucket of gravel, reminds me a lot of Riften. Poor, destitute people being bullied by rich bastards, Thieves Guild members masquerading as merchants, corrupt guards, venal priests... The only difference is in the racial demographic, which has been reversed - instead of mostly Nords and a few Dunmer, it's mostly Dunmer and a few Nords. With an Orc thrown in for good measure, just in case that stereotype had been running a little thin. I am tempted to beat a little sense into this asshole's head, but I don't particularly want to examine the local gulag from the inside, so I restrain myself. Later, Mr. Green-And-Toothy.
     
    Let' see, what else is here? A temple of sorts, worshipping Daedra of all things. I get it, it's your religion and all, and we're not supposed to be disdainful of other people's beliefs, but... really? You worship the Daedra? A group of extraplanar entities who delight in tormenting those who worship them? Why not Sithrak, the God who Hates You Unconditionally? The head priest tells me that "dangers lurk beyond the light" and "They [the Daedra] will not abandon us again" which seems overly optimistic, if you ask me. His choirboy seems to be even worse, a real asshole who may be involved in a plot to do... something... with the tombs. I'm not sure what, to be honest, it's all very confusing. A quick quest to kill a bunch of ash ghouls later, and this house is clear.
     
    Anyway, other services in town include an underground (literally) bar that sells some nifty new alcoholic drinks that, upon closer inspection, turn out to be identical to all other alcoholic drinks back in Skyrim, so you wonder why the hell they bother putting them in different jars and labeling them with different names. Just call them all "booze" and get on with your day, okay? The local blacksmith is a thief, the local food vendors sell food that is apparently grown in the ashes of the dead, and the local mine is all mined out, except for one old guy who wants me to steal someone's pickaxe. Yep, this is sure a better place to live than anywhere else. The Dunmer in the Gray Quarter of Windhelm at least have decently constructed houses to live in! Sheesh, sell your place and take the next boat to the mainland, invest in a farm, and pay some wandering schlubs to do your produce harvesting for you!
     
    But it is not for me to tell these people how to get along. I mean, look at me, I came here to this crap heap voluntarily because I wanted to fight some people who got their fashion ideas out of "Cephalopod Monthly" magazine. In other words, I am not the go-to guy for advice on how to live your life.
     
    After enriching the local economy substantially by buying up every bit of booze the local barkeep would sell, I decide to check out other nearby attractions. Like that phallic symbol over there with people all 'round it. Stenvar seems intimidated, but I reassure him that he's the only "Earth Stone" for me. The workers consist of local guardsmen and a couple of civilians. They are disinclined to engage in speech with me, content instead to mumble broken phrases periodically. I stand around for a bit, twiddling my thumbs, whistling a few tuneless bars of something or other, and then I toddle off, with a couple of backward glances. They seem like nice folk, I guess, if a bit single-minded.
     
    That's about it for the town. What else is around here? Let's take a look at the map. Hmm... it appears that I can easily circumnavigate the entire island in, say, two days? Three, tops, if I take my time and explore carefully. Might as well get to it. I'm sure a quest or two will just drop into my lap. And by "quest" I don't mean stealing someone's pickaxe... I'm actually hoping I'll sort of trip over the main plotline if I wander about a bit. It's as good a guess as any. I think I'll start my search traveling counterclockwise.
     
    NEXT: Chapter 40, Mushrooms... again?
    Start at Chapter 1
  20. Content Consumer
    CHAPTER 38: ASSAULT ON VAMPIRE CENTRAL
    In which our hero just kind of sits back and lets stuff happen.
    Previous: Chapter 37, Something Interesting on the Other Side
     

    We return to the Bastille-inspired architectural wonder known as Fort Dawnguard to enlist the aid of the Vampire Hunters Local in the coming struggle against the forces of apathy. Darkness, I mean. Forces of darkness. Yeah.
     
    Back wayyyyy across the province, back south of Riften, to Fort Dawnguard. Isran seems pleased that we have Auriel's Bow... wait, scratch that. I mean to say that Isran should be pleased that we have the bow. He seems more... stoic. I get the vague feeling that he's somewhat disappointed that he wasn't the one to recover it. Dude's got some issues with needing to be the center of attention. He proves this by gathering all the Dawnguard together and making a boring, but blessedly short, speech about how we're going to kill all the vampires. Then it's off to Castle Volkihar to massacre a bunch of vampires. I'm down with that. They deserve it.
     
    Hmm... I have, in the past, repeatedly considered the best way to assault Fort Dawnguard. Mostly because I feel somewhat insulted that the Dawnguard's idea of a good front-line defense is a short wooden palisade, just in front of the great big stone walls, and I am always itching to prove to them just how ineffective that is. But now I am forced to consider how best to assault Volkihar Keep.
     
    Volkihar Keep stands on an isolated island in the middle of the water with the occasional rock poking up through the surface, like some remote star, orbited by a few lonely planets, which it greatly resembles. Except for the fact that stars are very hot, and this area is cold. And planets are usually bigger. And space isn't full of water like the ocean. Come to think of it, it doesn't resemble a solar system at all. Forget the whole thing.
     
    The point is it's a tough nut to crack. There are any number of potential assault points, each of which has pros and cons. We could perform the assault perhaps two or three ways in order to achieve the maximum of surprise and suffer the minimum of casualties. There's only one major problem with each of them - Isran's in charge, not me. Which means he gets to make up the battle plan. The rest of the Dawnguard agree - an obsessive megalomaniac bent on proving just how tough and strong and mean he is to everyone around him is the absolute best person to come up with a battle plan. I mean, if you can't trust someone who is suffering from a massive inferiority complex combined with a near-crippling lack of self-awareness, who can you trust?
     
    So Isran comes up with a fiendishly diabolical and complicated plan for assault. We will attack the castle...
     
    Through the front door.
     
    It's a crazy notion, but it just might work! The ol' hit-them-where-they're-strongest ploy. We'll show them we mean business by slamming up against their defenses headfirst! Genius! We'll only lose, what, 80% of our army that way? Suits me! I mean, all Isran really needs is maybe one or two people around him when this is all over so they can see him covered in glory. Then he will truly, truly know, beyond the shadow of a doubt, who has the biggest penis.
     
    Serana and I take a vote, and the two of us unanimously decide to hang back and watch the Dawnguard beat themselves to ribbons against the Vampires. Because sure enough, we're attacking at midnight, when the bloodsuckers are strongest. I blame myself, here... I thought for sure that you'd have to be a complete idiot to do that. I figured, we'd arrive at the island and wait for daylight. But I failed to remember one very important point - Isran is, in fact, a complete idiot.
     
    Serana and I mount the steps of the little watchtower that stands just outside the castle bridge, and watch as the Dawnguard... huh. Actually, they do pretty good, considering their many disadvantages. I gotta hand it to Isran... he may be a real moron, but he's got a couple brain cells up on Harkon, who failed to do the most obvious thing - lower the castle gate. We'd have been stuck out there banging on the walls with our axes and hammers, and the vampires inside could have just sat there, laughing and hurling insults (and possibly a giant wooden rabbit for good measure).
     
    But no, Harkon once heard the aphorism "the best defense is a good offense" and took it a bit too much to heart, so instead of remaining in his nigh-impregnable fortress, he decided to send his minions outside to do battle. You know... why did we wait so long to do this? I grant you, nobody could have predicted the stupid insanity on the part of the Dawnguard, much less the even stupider insanity on the part of the vampires, but... it strikes me that this assault could have been launched at any time in the last couple of weeks. I get that everyone thinks we need to have Auriel's Bow to defeat Harkon, but by all accounts his daughter is just about as strong as he, and she goes down from spiders. The memory still makes me nauseous.
     
    Anyway, we rampage through the castle, killing vampires left and right. They really suck at fighting. And they suck. Blood. They suck blood. And they suck. Like, are not nice. See? I can make jokes too! Sometimes I cry myself to sleep at night.
     
    Anyway... once all the vampires inside are dead, Serana and I head in to the Inner Sanctum. Isran inexplicably fails to follow us. As we pass through the door, I could swear I hear him say "solidarity, brother" which is just sad.
     
    ANYWAY... Once inside, Harkon proceeds to smarm at us for a bit, which I completely expected. I mean, really now. If he didn't smarm and tell us how foolish we were and how our defeat was inevitable, I'd probably have a heart attack on the spot. He just wouldn't be a proper villain. After insulting me and then insulting Serana, then telling us that he was going to kill us both, he turns to me and asks me to give him the bow.
     
    Yep. You read that right. He demanded the bow from me. As I write this now, looking back on the moment, I honestly don't know how long I just sat there, staring at him, flabbergasted, before saying no. I mean, really now. I know he's the dumbest fuck this side of anywhere in the world, but... really? Really? Not even your stereotypical villain who fails to follow every recommendation in "if I were an evil overlord" and fits every line from TV Tropes to the letter would be that dumb, would he?
     
    As I moodily shoot sunhallowed arrows at him over and over again, seemingly to no effect, while he continually summons gargoyles and skeletons and what-have-you to attack me and Serana, the whole time I'm just sort of mentally stunned. I haven't felt like this since becoming Archmage. Only this time, it's not anger at the stupidity of the world, it's sheer dumbfoundedness. I honestly am having some serious trouble coming to grips with what was supposed to go on here. I get the feeling like I must have missed a good ten minutes of dialogue somewhere.
     
    Eventually the dude goes down, apparently dissolving into a pile of red... blood... ash... stuff. Isran magically appears (well after the fight is over, I must point out), and commiserates with Serana about killing her father. At least, that's what I guess it's supposed to sound like. It actually sounds more like he is having trouble coming to terms with the concept of "emotion" and doesn't honestly know whether someone killing their father would be an emotional event or not. I honestly don't give a fat flying fuck, though. I immediately divest myself of Serana, Isran, the Dawnguard, and the whole fucking mess. I just can't give a good goddamn any more. I'm gonna get tanked and sleep for a week.
     

    Next: Intermission 4
    Start at Chapter 1
  21. Content Consumer
    CHAPTER 37: SOMETHING INTERESTING ON THE OTHER SIDE
    In which our hero bitterly, and probably ignorantly, complains about blindness.
    Previous: Chapter 36, Dimfall or Darkhollow or Something Like That
     

    Spoiler alert: Serana and I walk through the portal together.
     
    It's an interesting portal, too - the static image behind it is slightly larger than the aperture, so it actually looks like a real magical gateway rather than a flat pic. Pretty nifty. It also tells me that we're safe for a minute or two, no ambushes on the other side, because you can't animate NPCs in one of those things. Through the magic door we go!
     
    And... everything is glowing. I mean that, seriously. I've been to Blackreach, so I'm no stranger to glowing mushrooms and crap, but freaking everything is glowing through here. You barely walk five feet without encountering a rock so bright it hurts to look at it, and the place is filled with glowing flowers of all descriptions. I'd complain that any race such as the Falmer evolving in these conditions wouldn't lose their eyesight because there's plenty to see, but then I remember that we're supposed to be accepting the admittedly better excuse that they were magicked this way. Fine. Nice for me, though, since I don't need to use a torch or those annoying light spells just to see in here. Pretty, too - I really like the purple flowers that cover some spots. I want to plant a garden with something like that.
     
    The place may be full of glowing stuff, but it's also full of Falmer and Chaurus. Some mod I've downloaded recently seems to have made the Chaurus spit paralytic, and I'm a melee character, meaning I can't just keep well back and dodge whilst firing off arrows. Good thing I'm full of vim and vigor and covered in thick armor, or this might actually be irritating. As it is, I keep getting knocked over, but summoned Wrathmen and Serana do help out, and we make it deeper into the caves, past the totems, and... totems? Why would the Falmer, a race of blind creatures, pose a skeleton in the middle of a room? For what possible reason? Do they wander by every now and then to feel up the skeleton? I mean, if you can see, then you have a reason to put up a fenced-off statue in the middle of a room, but if you're blind, then why do it?
     
    Anyway, eventually we make it outside, and it's actually pretty cool out here. Looks like what Riften would look like if winter ever hit the place. I'm a big fan of new architecture and vegetation, and this place has it in abundance. Plus Falmer and giant spiders, of course, because we can't have it all good, nope. Serana and I travel the place, dipping ewers in water and popping up wayshrine teleporters here and there. Other nice sights to see include frost giants that are apparently the result of a disastrous troll-giant crossbreeding program, each one having something called a Paragon in its possession, though a paragon of what I am at a loss to understand. I'm tempted to put the word "paragon" into the box containing the word "nightingale" and slap a label on it that says "words the devs liked the sound of without knowing their actual meaning." There are some books written in strange writings that I fully intend to decipher later, maybe take them to Calcelmo because he's the apparent expert on Falmer language. A bit later on we encounter a pair of dragons that insist on playing hide-and-seek underwater, which is also pretty damn cool. I'm used to dragon fights where they circle a while, then land, presenting themselves to my axe, then take off and circle again, rinse and repeat until dead... but these guys like to dive through the ice and come up in random spots, and it's actually a pretty intense fight. I really like this place, this Forgotten Vale. Of course, the way things have gone for my whole time here in Skyrim, if I really like a place there's bound to be something coming up that is absolutely awful. I am not disappointed.
     
    These bridges, that the Falmer put up. Goddamn it. Serana and I get separated multiple times, and I keep. Falling. Off. Oops, I fell off the bridge. TGM before hitting the ground, TCL back up. Onward... and I fall off the cliff, TGM before hitting the ground, TCL back up. Kill a couple of Falmer, and I fall off the bridge again. How did these goddamn Falmer build these bridges when they can't freaking SEE? For that matter, WHY would they build these bridges? They don't connect anything to anything else important! There is no reason for these damned blind elf-degenerates to WANT to engage in an engineering nightmare of this magnitude! STICK TO YOUR CAVES, ASSHOLES! Backing up in mortal combat with a Falmer, I fell off a damn bridge again. TGM before I hit the ground, TCL back up, yeah yeah. Honestly, I'm not normally this clumsy, it's just this place is getting to me. And why the totem or shrine here again? This troll skull on top of a big rock with gemstones all round it? Returning to my question about why a blind race would put up statues like this, I must say that putting garnets and rubies around a troll skull on a makeshift altar is pretty dumb. You can't give me the argument that they knew the gems were shiny rocks, because they're blind. Don't tell me they liked the feel of the gemstones, because I'm pretty sure there are plenty of just plain rocks hanging about too with that same feel. Now I'm not saying a blind race can't make shrines or anything, but it makes no sense for a blind race to build shrines that are primarily visual in nature. If you're deaf, you don't care about the vocals, tone, pitch, and so on... you care primarily about the rhythm and volume, right? If you don't have legs you don't build stairs, if you're anosmic you don't give a damn about bad smells, and if you're blind then you don't build neat-looking but impossible-to-feel shrines. While I'm complaining to myself, Serana disappears again and I fall off a bridge again. Fuck this place, the prettiness and dragons of the past aren't worth it.
     
    Quick question to anyone who wants to listen: why does Serana get lost so often in this place?
    I have been around the world, looking for that woman girl, who knows exasperation can endure, and you know it will. I just have to make the assumption that she's off fighting something, and hopefully not getting raped by said something. Of course, knowing her AI, she's probably just stuck running against a rock or tree, or she fell over a waterfall, or got fed up and decided to head back into Skyrim and take up flower arranging as a hobby. Gods know I want to.
     
    But no, I've got to finish this damn quest. Over the bridges, through an underground ice chasm, back up onto the surface and yet more Falmer bridges. Ooh, I've about had it. Luckily for me, we reach the last wayshrine and dip the ewer to get the last bit of water, and once across one final bridge, there's the Temple of Auri-El. The phantom priest said it was a difficult climb to the inner sanctum. Gelebor said that initiates would haul the ewer of water around as a symbol of their dedication to the cause. I gotta say, it's not that hard. I've been hauling this jug about with me, while fighting off dragons, sprinting across rickety bridges, and shouting Falmer off the cliffs, and I haven't spilled a damn drop. Once we solve the painfully pathetic "puzzle" lock (at least, I am assuming it's an attempt at a puzzle, because it's very similar to other nordic and dwemer "puzzles" in Skyrim), we're in the temple.
     
    The walls are caving in, and there are fallen bits of masonry everywhere. My guess is, it looked like that before the place was overrun - the requirement of hauling water from shrine to shrine across a whole valley, pouring the water into the basin, emitting a beam of light, and a drawn-out rotating door lock just to get inside the door were too much for the average janitor or stonemason, so they let the place fall to pieces rather than go through that whole rigmarole every time the floor needed to be swept or a piece of cracked wall needed to be fixed. Note to future temple-building architects: if your doorway is too complicated for the custodial staff to get through, you should re-think your security measures.
     
    Serana and I whip through the place, killing frozen Falmer, which is actually kind of neat - they're all statues, you see, but some of them come to life if you try to steal the items they're holding out. So we kill a load of Frozen Falmer and Chilled Chaurus, all the while looking for the head honcho Vyrthur, to kill him and hopefully we'll be able to grab Auri-El's Bow so we can proceed to Castle Volkihar to kill Serana's father to stop the prophecy that says that either Serana or her mother will bring about eternal night. Got all that? Good.
     
    And there's a dude on the throne. Vyrthur, in the flesh. He asks us if we came here expecting to claim Auri-El's Bow, and I shout "yes" back at him, which seems to stump him for a bit. Direct answers do tend to confuse these people, you see. He rallies 'round and then says that I've done as he predicted and brought my companion to him, then says my usefulness is at an end. Then the ice statues of Falmer vampires begin to explode once again and attack, along with some frozen Chaurus, which does fuck-all to reduce my health, although Serana takes a knee. Vyrthur shouts out to us "An impressive display, but a wasted effort." I want to console him and say that he can do better next time, but apparently he was talking to me, not just talking to himself out loud. Oh. "You delay nothing but your own deaths!" Well, yeah, that's what living is, dude. Way to go, you figured out the secret. After a bit more fighting, he says that it's gone on long enough, to which I can only respond in the affirmative, but then he proceeds to summon yet more things for me to crunch into ice cubes suitable for putting in your drink, should your evening plans include drinking liquids cooled with Frosty Falmer Flesh (tm). Vyrthur refuses to surrender, instead choosing to shoot icicles at me and Serana and then collapse his temple on us. Although I am, obviously, way WAY tougher than Serana, it's me that gets knocked on my ass, because reasons. Serana hauls me to my feet and we run out after Vyrthur, who is sitting on the upper balcony outside, his hand to his stomach in the universal gesture of "NPC in pain" made popular by the Resident Evil games.
     
    She tells him to give her the bow, and he goes a bit off topic, saying that he had the ears of a god. I'm not sure if he was bragging about his collection of deific body parts or talking about the pair on the sides of his head, but either way this is a creepy dude I don't particularly want to socialize with. I try to fus-ro-dah him off the balcony, but the devs Gods are set on my hearing their oh-so-clever dialogue and have locked my combat abilities, because, like always, gods forbid I skip any of this brilliant, scintillating conversation.
     
    Vyrthur then asks her to "look into my eyes, Serana, you tell me what I am." A prat? I could have told you that without looking in your eyes, dude.
    But no, she seems surprised to notice that he's a vampire, as if the "feral falmer" and vampiric frozen falmer with vestigial or cutoff wings sticking out their backs, fangs prominent, and blood dripping down their faces, wasn't a clue. There are vampires here? Outrageous! Who would have ever considered that? This whole damn thing, from start to finish, has revolved around vampires, and she's surprised that he is one too? I knew he was a vampire as soon as I saw the bastard sitting indolently on his throne.
     
    I have to admit, though, I was surprised at the race of one individual in this whole mess - Gelebor. I thought for sure that he was a vampire as soon as I saw him. Pale skin, stays out of the sunlight in his underground lair, lived for a very long time apparently without eating, and his face is a bit reminiscent of the bifurcated look common to the uglier specimens. Whatever.
     
    Anyway, Vyrthur proceeds to weave a threadbare web of barely-connected bits of what could laughably be called 'logic' after a three-day bender, and wraps it all up in a neat little package called a "prophecy." Apparently he was the one who created the prophecy. You know what a prophecy is? If you answered "a prediction, forecast, or divination predicting unique or special events such as war, death, birth, or other major events" you would be completely wrong. A prophecy, according to the makers of this stupid damn game Gods, is apparently "whatever I say it is." Vyrthur got vexed at Auri-El and decided to make a "prophecy" all on his own that predicted that someday a vampire would come and try to take Auri-El's bow and dip arrows in vampiric blood to blot out the sun. As vague, revenge-motivated wishing goes, it's fine, if a bit clichéd and thin, but as a prophecy it is utterly ridiculous. A wish does not a prophecy make. A daydream is not a prediction, and just wanting something to happen doesn't make it so. I guess the word "prophecy" goes into my new box along with "paragon" and "nightingale."
     
    While we're on the subject... how the heck did this "prophecy" make it to Harkon? If Vyrthur made it up while he was ensconced on his throne, and his influence is and has been for thousands of years limited to the confines of the Forgotten Vale, how the fuck did it get to Skyrim? Message in a bottle? Or is this another of those "wish upon a star and it will be so?" I resolve to try my hand at it too. When I get back to Skyrim, I'm going to wish really hard that Alduin just drops dead and the civil war ends and they name me High King of Skyrim so I can institute a stupidity tax. Then again, such a tax would immediately bankrupt the entire population, so maybe I'd better just wish for a fast horse out of the province.
     
    Hell, it doesn't matter anyway. Serana and I proceed to wipe the ground with Vyrthur, and then the shrine pops up and out strolls Gelebor, the ass, who apparently could have done this at any time he wished just by popping through a teleporter, but no, he had to send us to do it. Fuck you, dude. If I didn't need you to make a bunch of arrows to shoot at Harkon, I'd throw you over the balcony. Seething with barely suppressed rage leavened with a generous helping of disgust, I turn all the elven arrows I'm carrying into Sunhallowed arrows, and Serana and I skedaddle out of there. Next stop - somewhere warmer, please.
     
    Next: Chapter 38, Assault on Vampire Central
    Start at Chapter 1
     



  22. Content Consumer
    CHAPTER 36: DIMFALL OR DARKHOLLOW OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT
    Wherein our hero pads out the length with pictures, because he can't be arsed to do any writing.
    Previous: Chapter 35, Some Old Parchment
     

    Well, it turns out I have some talent at prediction. Darkfall Cave is, indeed, a dark cave that you can fall down in. It's pretty obvious what's going to happen, judging by this rickety, falling-apart bridge.

    Who would cross the Bridge of Death must answer me these questions three, ere the other side he see.
    1. Assuming this was built by the ancient Falmer, why the hell wouldn't they, you know, build a set of steps down? Or at least a ladder? Hell, even a sign that says "enlightenment found down this pit" would be better than absolutely nothing.
    2. Assuming this was not built by the ancient Falmer, and instead by some intrepid miner who was looking to get at the Moonstone on the other side, it does seem to be a hell of a lot of work for very little return. Three pieces of moonstone ore probably wouldn't pay for the wood, rope, and casually discarded tools that are scattered about. This is the work of a miner or group of miners who have no idea how economics work, i.e. you're supposed to get more money out than you put in.
    3. Can I just turn around and leave, go back to Elinhir, maybe open up a little coffee shop and forget that I was ever an adventurer?
     
    Serana, in her continuing efforts to make me despair at her intellect, seems to be of the same mindset as the aforementioned theoretical miners. After telling me that something doesn't seem right here, and that we should be very careful because there's trouble nearby, she sprints across the obviously-broken bridge and starts whacking on the rocks. Yep, that's my girl.

     
    No matter. Serana and I fall down the hole (surprise!) and drop into a swiftly moving river. Actually kind of interesting, this river. The fastest whitewater river in Skyrim has a pace best described as "meandering" but this, I can't even make headway against the current. Serana and I, and a couple of spiders, pop out the other side and commence a-fighting. The cave is actually pretty heavily populated with giant spiders, you wonder what the hell they've been eating down here considering that there appear to be no prey for the predators to live on. I start gearing up for a rant about the stupidity of devs who populate their remote caves with bloodthirsty beasts who never actually manage to find any food, but I then remember that I just jumped down the goddamn hole, so who's the idiot now? Sheepishly, I rein it in, and we keep walking. At least, for a little while, until we run into a fresh batch of spiders. I easily dispatch most of them, and Serana spectacularly fails in her battle against another. Gods know why, she's killed plenty of spiders since we've been wandering around together, they're not exactly the toughest beasts around, but this one she can't deal with? I just sit back and watch as she proceeds to get the stuffing knocked out of her by a big arthropod.
     
    Um, and then the stuffing is put right back in, thanks to Defeat.

    Ewww... not just Defeat, but SD+ is on the case, and she's full of... full of yuck. Spider eggs up the jacksie. I don't even want to touch that. Put your armor back on, woman, let's keep moving.
     
    Attempting to stay a minimum of three meters away from Serana at all times, I sprint through the caverns, and find another victim down here. This one died of Trolls, apparently. I guess this place really must be a main thoroughfare or something. I mean, just how many people end up wandering in accidentally? How many times do people break the bridge, fall down the hole, then other people come in and rebuild the damn bridge again? Sheesh.
     
    Anyway, I slaughter a couple of trolls, all by myself, deliberately Unrelenting Force-ing Serana away just in case she comes down with another attack of the "Can't-Kill-Shit" disease. I mean, I don't love the woman, but I don't exactly want to see her raped by every damn creature in the world, either.
     
    We eventually come across a shrine to Auri-El, apparently Falmer in construction, but damned if it doesn't look Aylied to me. If you ever get to Cyrodiil, stop in at any one of the dozens of Aylied ruins, and you'll see what I mean. At the shrine, we also encounter a Snow Elf guy.

    His name is Gelebor, a name that comes from two words of the ancient Snow Elf language, Gele and Bor - Gele, which means "Man," and Bor, meaning "who apparently cannot be pickpocketed." He proceeds to toss a bit of exposition my way, which is fielded by Serana, and the two then continue to bat exposition back and forth for a while. Gelebor does seem to be smarter than the average Skyrim inhabitant, I'll give him that... he is well aware that he's not powerful enough to waltz through the coming areas without dying, so he's found a couple of catspaws (and apparently we aren't the first sacrificial lambs he's shoved through the door either) to do his dirty work - killing his brother. Family squabbles are so tiresome, aren't they?
     
    He also seems to be one of the few people who recognize that they are characters in a game. He is fully aware that NPCs are just that - NPCs - and not fully fleshed out people. His description of the Spectral Prelates fits the bill of a "scripted actor" completely. Well done, Gelebor, for seeing through the ruse.

     
    Impressed, I ask him if I can leave Serana here and take him with me instead, but he insists that he must keep watch over the shrine, ostensibly because it's his sworn duty but actually because he, as I have said, is aware that shit gets dangerous up ahead and he'd rather stay here with the murderous trolls and rapist spiders. Gee, I feel really confident about my future chances now.
     
    Anyway, I've got to lug this ewer of water around with me, filling it periodically, in order to end up dumping it out again. Which perfectly sums up the state of Skyrim's Radiant AI quests - innkeeper gives you a quest to clear out a bandit hole, wait a couple of days, bandits move back in, innkeeper gives you a quest to clear it out again. I can't complain too much, though... it is good job security. Let's pop through this portal, shall we? Hopefully there's something interesting on the other side.

     
    NEXT: Chapter 37, Something Interesting On The Other Side
    Start at Chapter 1
  23. Content Consumer
    CHAPTER 35: SOME OLD PARCHMENT
    Wherein our hero gets a headache.
    Previous: Chapter 34, The Seventh Sign and the Implied Tentacle Rape
     

    Over the river (at least, I'm almost certain there was a river somewhere between Winterhold and Riverwood) and through the woods (there's bound to be a tree or two twixt the twain) to Fort Dawnguard we go. Has a certain ring to it, yes? We (and by "we" I mean "me, followed by a puppy-dog in human form named Serana") arrive back at the Fort, scrolls in tow, so as to have Dexion perform a reading of same. Unfortunately for us, Dexion, silly ass that he is, forgot to prepare himself properly before his last reading, and has gone blind. To emphasize this fact, he's now wearing a blindfold, because if you're blind you obviously must wear a blindfold. I briefly consider the possibility that he didn't actually go blind at all, he's just senile and put his underwear on his head this morning and it slipped down, but I figure this is pretty damn dumb even for the average Skyrim inhabitant, so I forget about it.
     
    Well, hell. What am I supposed to do now, I ask him? He gives me some story about how I can read the scrolls if I go to a magical place (not T.A.H.I.T.I. if you're curious) and get myself covered in moth dust first. I suppose I can understand Dexion's not preparing himself if this is what it entails. Blindness may well be sheer joy in comparison. Still, a job is a job, and I never turn down a job, except when I do, which is rarely. Mace Raiden, Job Taker, is my new profession. Has a certain ring to it, no?
     
    So we're off to Ancestor Glade, an aptly-named place, considering that it does loosely fit the definition of a Glade and contains moths called Ancestor Moths. I must admit, the place does make me want to keep practicing my alchemy, if only to find out what all the new ingredients do. Scarfing down yellow flowers and whole, winged insects gives me a hint, but the best way to train the skill is to mash everything to a pulp and gulp it down, you see. I pick every piece of vegetation and animal life I can find and shove them into my pack for later.
     
    But that's not my purpose here. I have to find a Draw Knife - which I'm sure will come in handy later and not just be the equivalent of a key under the doormat - and use it to gather bark, which apparently is a moth aphrodisiacal pheromone emitter, judging by the way they start flocking around me. Once I have the requisite minimum number of bugs flapping about my head trying to mate with each other, I am to stand in a beam of light and read the scrolls. Which I proceed to do. I unroll the scroll, and a powerful magic force beams a message right into my head: "This man's transformation will shock you! Make $$$ in your spare time with this one simple trick! Doctors hate her! Tax secrets the government doesn't want you to know!"
     
    Ah, wait, wrong paper. Here's the right one. Reading the three scrolls emits a loud, piercing noise and my vision simultaneously darkens and brightens with a picture of some sort. Gods know what it is, looks like a spider web stretched over a piece of granite or something. There may be symbols on it, or it may just be the blood beating in my temples making me see things. After a couple of agonizing seconds staring at this apparition, it fades away and I am left with a pounding headache.
     
    Serana tells me I looked funny, which may be her brain-damaged idea of a sympathy pat for all I know. She then asks me where we can find Auriel's Bow. I tell her it's in Darkfall cave. Don't ask me how I know that. When I read the damn scrolls, all I saw was a bunch of vague lines that, when looked at in a certain light, may have been a valley of sorts, but don't quote me on that. Darkfall cave? I could swear to Tuwhacca I didn't read that anywhere. So how the hell did I come to learn the name? I must've heard it instead. Maybe the scroll told me, I do picture them having a voice of sorts. I unrolled it, and it clearly said to me: "Here, old chap, what you'll need to do is nip up Markarth way, pop 'round Darkfall Cave, and Bob's your uncle, or any other member of your immediate family, should you desire to pad out the old stable, what!" For some reason, Elder Scrolls have a decidedly HRP accent. Maybe they're all from Chelsea.
     
    On our way out the cave, we're attacked by vampires. What the hell are vampires doing here, now? There is absolutely no reason for them to be here! They don't have the scrolls, so they don't need a moth priest, who may happen to be blind, so they don't need a draw knife and moths and the beam of light to read said scrolls, so why the hell are they here? Don't tell me it's just because they spotted me entering, gathered up a band, and came in to kill me. They should've sent more guys. A lot more. But I wonder if they even have more guys to send at all. I know that Castle Volkihar is fairly large and all, possibly holding dozens of the blighters, but considering the sheer number of vampires I've killed since I started this bloody (hah!) questline, they've got to be getting a little thin on the ground, eh?
     
    After wiping vampiric blood off my clothes and cleaning my hammer in the water, I down a couple of bottles of ale just to help me drown out the memory of the goddamn scroll reading, and then we're off to Darkfall Cave. By past experience, I can tell right away that with a name like that, it'll probably be dark, and there will be a hole in the ground you can fall in. Because that's the idea of a good naming scheme to the inhabitants of Skyrim. Got a gloomy cave? Call it Gloomreach. Got a town next to a big dragon bridge? Call it Dragon Bridge. Got a hold permanently locked in wintry conditions? Call it Winterhold. I'm sure I don't need to go on, but I will continue to do so in the privacy of my own head, for that is my occupation. Mace Raiden, Permanently Unenthralled Explorer. Has a certain ring to it, what?
     

    NEXT: Chapter 36, Dimfall or Darkhollow or Something Like That
    Start at Chapter 1
  24. Content Consumer
    CHAPTER 34: THE SEVENTH SIGN AND THE IMPLIED TENTACLE RAPE
    In which our hero gets uncomfortably close to Hermaeus Mora, the Daedric Prince of Greenish Ooze.
    Previous: Chapter 33, Lost and Found
     

    So I've noticed that I often begin these journal entries with the word "so," and I've decided not to do that this time. Wait... crap.
     
    Anyway (another favorite paragraph starter), after my recent sojourn in the Soul Cairn, I feel that I may actually be skilled enough at killing undead to join the Ash'abah someday. I've got to say, the clatter-and-tinkle of a skeleton falling to bits is actually kind of fun. Too bad we don't have any of that for a while. Right now I've got to go find the next Elder Scroll, to complete a set so I can send it in for a prize. Or something like that. As is my custom here in Skyrim, I'm just kind of running on autopilot right now, waiting for the next NPC to give me instructions, which will invariably include killing monsters and delving dungeons, with the occasional fetch quest thrown in for variety's sake. My life is pretty damn bleak, yeah.
     
    Serana mentions that maybe the people at the College of Winterhold might know where to find an Elder Scroll. I'm not sanguine about that - as Archmage, I am well placed to have certain inside information about the IQ of the average college wizard, and there's nothing that leads me to believe they'll be of any use. I mean, hell, when I was looking for a magical monk it was a bartender who led me in the right direction. Sadly, the local barkeeps have no info for me, so I am forced to return to the magic castle with the implausible bridge.
     
    As it turns out, the curmudgeonly Orc who runs the library actually does have some decent information. After deliberately misleading me into thinking that the only person who knows about these scrolls is dead, he finally breaks down and admits that he's holed up in a... well, holed up in a hole, actually, a bit north of here. Serana and I trudge up there, if you take a fairly liberal meaning of the word "trudge" that includes "hopping like a madman across ice patches" and "occasionally falling into frigid water." At last we arrive at the outpost of Septimus Signus.
     
    He's an odd bird, this guy. He's locked himself into an ice cave with a dwemer box, and he's determined to bust his way in. He tells me that the best way to do it is to go to a different dwemer ruin, conveniently located in Skyrim, and hands me a metal ball and a metal cube. Says they'll help me get the information he needs. Yep, that's right, a ball and a cube. I did say he's a kooky one.
     
    Ding ding ding! "Congratulations!" says a disembodied voice, "You've reached Level 7 of a Nested Problem!" To kill Harkon to stop endless night we've had to hunt down three elder scrolls without our local monk scroll 'expert' having any useful information, and find Serana's mommy and get her scroll, which required us to travel to an extremely boring and drab afterlife, and subsequently find a different expert, and which meant tracking down Septimus at the ass-end of nowhere via the College of Winterhold, and now we must take a metal ball and a metal cube to a different dwemer ruin to uncover the secret of how to open the big box in the hopes that Septimus will then tell us how to find the third scroll so we can read it and learn how to stop Harkon from enacting his evil plan... ugh. Hang on.
     
    Sorry, but I'm a tad confused... can't we just go stab Harkon in the face? Why all the running about? I'm the Dragonborn, a man out of legend, the Archmage of the College of Winterhold, and my powers of vampire-killing just aren't enough yet? Why the hell not? I'm backed up by his daughter, who is no slouch in the murder-department either, and I'm part of a group of people who are well motivated, and well equipped with vampire-slaying weapons, who would gladly JUMP at the chance to slaughter a bunch of vampires. Why can't we just go do that, I whine at Serana, but she just tosses a blank look my way and starts talking about the weather again. Why can't I just go kill Harkon myself? I'm tough enough! What, in short, is wrong with me?
     
    Breathe deeply, Mace. You made a pact with yourself to take whatever job comes along, and this is, in fact, a job that has come along. So what if it's a completely snarled ball of yarn? So what if the story doesn't make any goddamn sense? It's still a job!
     
    Okay... fine. Once at Alftand, we wind our way through the ruin, killing a poor, drugged-up Khajiit on the way, not to mention about ten thousand Falmer and dwemer constructs. The previous expedition to come through here met with an unfortunate fate, and that happened to be at the end of my hammer, because the last two surviving members proceeded to attack me for getting involved in their little internal dispute. Hey, guys, I just wanted to use this metal ball on that metal... revolving... thing over there. You shouldn't have attacked me. Nice shield, though... I could mount it on my wall if I ever want a bunch of spikes sticking out of my wall. I can use it as a coat hook!
     
    So I use the metal ball on the metal revolving thing, and it turns into a staircase. Pretty cool, one nifty thing in this whole place, I'm sure the rest of this quest is going to be bland again. Down the stairs we go, and through a door into...
     
    Holy cow.
     
    Okay, this Blackreach place is pretty damn cool. It's full of falmer and dwemer and chaurus, but there's also a giant walking along, and some trolls, lots of waterfalls, an old laboratory with a dead elf inside who was studying a new type of plant, a big ball of light that erupts in dragons when shouted at, and there's a lot of nifty places and cool architecture. The whole spot is lit by an otherworldly light, there are pretty, giant mushrooms scattered about, and all in all I'm really glad I came down here. A whole new world exists under Skyrim. This just about made my day.
     
    I could actually go on about Blackreach for pages, but no words of mine can do the place justice. If ever, gentle reader, you get the chance to visit (preferably well armed, armored, and backed up by a squadron of soldiers), you should definitely do so. I've spent days exploring the spot, and I'm not totally certain I've seen it all. I gotta say, I don't really miss the sun at all, so if Harkon wants to bring endless night down on the surface world, he can go right ahead, and more power to him. I'm staying right here.
     
    But no, it is not to be, because of that damnable journal full of quests. Such as the one I am, ostensibly, on. So Serana and I make our way to the Tower of Mzark, which is an old Oculory, which has something to do with randomly pressing buttons until random beams of light randomly converge in a random fashion on the center crystal, which opens up, and... hey, there's an Elder Scroll. It wasn't in the dwemer box after all! Don't I feel a silly goose! Yoink!
     
    I sort of feel bad for Septimus, though. He's going to all that trouble to open the big box to find a scroll, and it's not in there. Normally I'd just say "screw him" and wander off to do the next thing on my list, but I feel I need to go tell him he's barking up the wrong tree, or rather prodding at the wrong metal box. So I take the his newly transformed cube and toddle my way back out of there.
     
    Back at the outpost, Septimus is still trying to figure out how to get into the box. I show him the lexicon and he gets all excited, saying something about how the dwemer box will only open for a dwemer. At this point, I would recommend hiring a couple of peons and grabbing a largish drill and just boring my way in, but he's decided to trick the box into thinking he's a dwemer, instead, because of course the dwemer, a race who barely managed to invent steam-powered machinery before disappearing, were also capable of advanced biometric scanners that read a person's DNA. I've got to get a sample of elf blood from all the elven races present in the world today, and somehow mixing them all up and injecting them into his own bloodstream will somehow fool the box into thinking he's a dwemer. I turn to my wicker basket and start enumerating the sheer number of problems with this whole damnable scenario, but it interrupts me and mentions the "archmage" thing and says that if you can make a magic-powered staff of wood that can steal a person's soul, reading genetic markers accurately enough to determine a person's ancestry but still being fooled by mixing blood should be easy-peasy. Didn't I say I was running on autopilot, just doing what people tell me to? Yes, yes I did. So off we go.
     
    Or, at least, we try... the way is blocked by a giant cloud of mucous. With writhing tentacles. That speaks to me. You know, I'm getting pretty blasé about the whole weird-things-talking-to-me bit... stone walls, magical rocks, and now what appears to be a festering compost heap. Sure, why not. The heap tells me that he is Hermaeus Mora, the Daedric Prince of Interrupting Quest Progress, and he wants me to kill Septimus as soon as I've gotten the required blood. Normally I'd say no, but it looks like the bugger won't get out of the way until I agree, so... sure, you old pile of green goop! I'd just like to say that on behalf of all sane people everywhere, I'm only too happy to do the bidding of random tentacled sludge monsters!
     
    Onward. We find and kill a bunch of elves, which would make the Stormcloaks proud of me, which only serves to depress me further. Some of the elves were easy enough to track down and slaughter, others less so. An Altmer patrol, a Falmer ruin, an Old Orc wandering the roads and killing sabrecats, looking for a good end... it all added up, eventually. Finally we finish slaughtering elves, and we make it back to Septimus. He takes the blood and injects himself with it I PROMISED MYSELF I WOULDN'T NITPICK DAMMIT and the box opens into a nifty-looking tunnel. Once inside, Septimus gets all weepy, and I have to put him down... partly out of pity, but mostly because the Daedric Prince of Tentacle Rape told me to. The ball of oozing glop appears again and thanks me, and now I've got a strange book bound in human skin cluttering up my inventory.
     
    Okay, moving on. Now we've got all three scrolls... and it's time to get back to Dexion and have him read them.
     
    NEXT: Chapter 35, Some Old Parchment
    Start at Chapter 1
  25. Content Consumer
    CHAPTER 33: LOST AND FOUND
    Wherein our hero explores the long-neglected attic of the Gods.
    Previous: Chapter 32, Chasing Reflected Soundwaves
     
    So here we are, in the Soul Cairn. First impressions: not impressive. It seems to be a ruined wreck of a place populated by ghosts, spirits, and inexplicably ghostly-and-spiritlike effects. The color scheme, while spooky and otherworldly at first, begins to pall after about twelve seconds. Somewhat reminiscent of playing a CGA game on a VGA monitor, actually. A normal color palette translated all wrong.
     
    Our journey through the place is enlivened by constant surprise attacks, with black skeletons popping up from the ground at regular intervals. An astute reader will contrast the word "surprise" with the word "regular" and come to the conclusion that one of those words is wrong. The astute reader is correct - the first word is wrong. Ho-hum, another ambush. Haven't had one of those since about three minutes ago. At least the enemies here aren't anything problematic. I'd have thought that the whole "weakened because of being partially soultrapped" thing would have reduced my combat prowess somewhat, but these skeletons all seem to go down with just a couple of hits. Hardly needed to heal myself at all. Who knows - maybe I am weaker, and these are just really that pathetic.
     
    So Serana and I jog on up the path, whacking bones and talking to dead people. Not that they're much of conversationalists... the dead are pretty boring, in point of fact. Stiff, if you will. (see what I did there?) And apparently confused as well, because one guy who was apparently a ship captain who died at sea turned out to be a warrior who died in battle. Of course, it could be me who is confused, as these spirits are all pretty identical in appearance and it's tough to tell one from the other. I looked around the whole place for Estormo, but he never showed. Probably embarrassed at his performance the last time we met.
     
    Other than that, the place is endeadened (see what I did there?) by a couple of actual NPCs. Exhibit A is a dead merchant who offers to sell me things for bits of the vegetation (at least, I assume those are plants) that inexplicably grows around here. I don't know why he wants them, and actually neither does he... he's essentially being an ass just to be an ass. "I cannot use, have no way to store, and have no reason to desire these things you're bringing to me, but I'll be damned if I give you any of my trinkets I'm somehow able to hand over despite my ethereal nature without you giving me something in exchange." My guess is, after I leave his immediate area, he takes the plants and scurries about placing them back into the landscape, giggling to himself. I can't bear to fault him for this - it's got to be pretty boring just sitting around all day waiting for random adventurers to show up. His soul entertainment (see what I did there?) consists of a treasure hunt he makes random people do, and I feel sorry for the poor guy, so every time I pass I go ahead and trade in some plants for a book or something.
     
    Let's see... what else is here? There's Jiub, a guy who sends me out to collect a bunch of pages that are scattered about... hmm, you know, I'm beginning to see a pattern. The longer I stay here the more depressing it gets, mostly because of the color scheme but partly because the only sentient folks around here get their jollies by asking me to engage in pointless egg hunts. Oh, Gods no. Is this to be my new profession? Mace Raiden, Professional Lost-And-Found Artist? No! I refuse to get involved any more in this drab and dreary place! I walk away from Jiub, shaking my head slowly.
     
    The only other deadforms (see what I did there?) around are ghostly people, ghostly cows for some damn reason (probably some poor sap back in the world accidentally used a bunch of black soul gems on cows instead of people), and big floating gemstones that may or may not be the sentient godlike beings that rule the plane or possibly merely antennae for said beings. Serana is a little vague on that. What else do we have here? Bonemen, Mistmen, Wrathmen. Given the asexual nature of the creatures - it's hard to discern skeletal dimorphic traits when the skeleton in question is trying to eat you - it's an easy solution to stick with the "man" appendix. Aside from what I assume is a minor spelling error (Wrathman could mean a man of wrath, or it could be a misspelling of Wraithman), they fit the bog-standard roles of Rogue, Mage, and Fighter pretty well. And of course they continue the extant color scheme of depressing black highlighted with depressing violet, always a plus.
     
    Oh, and a dead horse, regarding which I struggle manfully to try not to make a joke about purple horse boners, but fail. Serana looks at me in blank incomprehension, and my depression deepens. After chasing the damn thing around a bit, I finally find his skull, kill the enemies who pop up to dispute my claim on said skull, and then Arvak's previous owner comes around to congratulate me and ask me to take care of his pony. Got it, dude. I'm just sure it can't do my reputation any harm to be seen riding around Skyrim on a demonic black skeleton horse surrounded in an unholy nimbus of violet flame. I think Arvak will just remain in my spellbook where he belongs.
     
    So that's the Soul Cairn. I wouldn't be caught dead here (see what I did there?), but unfortunately we've got to slog through, because Serana's mommy is in here somewhere. Or at least, I really hope she is... it would actually make more much sense for her to have come up with this whole elaborate ruse to lure Harkon in here to trap him, and to hide out somewhere else, like, say, somewhere south, maybe Thras. Too bad her scheme was foiled by Harkon being too damn stupid to explore his own house to find her.
     
    But alas, Valerica isn't any smarter either, because sure enough here she is. Trapped, apparently. Apparently when you make a deal with entities that have a well-earned reputation for exercising their abilities with fine print, you should really read the fine print. Who would have thought? Not her. After Serana's talking about how stupid necromancers are stupid because they stupidly go and make deals with the Ideal Masters, you'd think she'd have something to say to her stupid mother about stupidly going and doing the same stupid thing. But no. I actually blame Valerica's hair. I suppose the devs wanted it to be reminiscent of something Bram Stoker would dream up because VAMPIRE, but it looks more like a cranial parasite, so I blame it for draining her intellect to the point where she's even dumber than her husband, which is actually kind of an impressive feat, when you think about it.
     
    A conversation ensues between the two vampire women about how they hate Harkon. You'd think that after thousands of years of separation, the newly reunited mother and daughter would have something to talk about other than the husband/father, but I guess not. Bechdel Test: Failed. Serana does berate her mother for being all selfish and stuff, which is pretty ripe coming from a woman who can't shut up about herself and her past. Valerica proceeds to show just a glimmer of intelligence when she questions my allegiance, which is quickly quashed by Serana, who knows a good man when she sees one, she's known me for all of five minutes and apparently I'm the bee's knees to her. But whatever, I really don't care anymore. I just want out of this damned place. Let's get Valerica loose so she can give me the Elder Scroll I came here for, shall we?
     
    The two quickly reconcile, which given their apparent mutual mistrust, mild animosity, and lack of any sort of interpersonal dynamic seems a little odd, but there you go. Valerica says that she's trapped by three Keepers, and we must kill them to let her loose. Defeat the three boss monsters to open the barrier? What's next, find the blue keycard to get past the blue gate? Red barrels go boom? Sorry Mace, your Elder Scroll is in another plane of Oblivion? This may well represent the nadir of originality for this particular game. At least, I hope to Gods it does, because if it gets any lower I may well have to commit myself to an asylum. If I don't get OUT of this place soon, I'm gonna go spare.
     
    After whacking the keepers, we return to Valerica, who lets us in to her sanctuary, wherein we fight a dragon who takes two hits and goes down like a sack of potatoes. The battle took about twelve hours. See, the dragon is a weakling, but he persists on summoning all these damn bonemen all the time, so I keep getting distracted fighting off his minions. I honestly don't know what Serana and Valerica are doing, but it doesn't seem to involve helping me kill anything, so fuck 'em.
     
    After the dragon dies and I don't absorb its soul, because SOUL CAIRN DRAGONS HAVE NO SOULS apparently, Valerica s.l.o.w.l.y. walks over to the case and unlocks it, presenting me with the Elder Scroll. She then tells me how to get my soul back (I actually forgot it was missing), and Serana and I skeedaddle.
     
    Just outside, the dragon - who is called Dur-neh-viir, which in the dragon language translates as "Ugly-Goddamn-Dragon," or so I am led to believe by his physical appearance, of which the main feature appears to be dissolving skin - tells me that I can summon him by calling his name, and asks me to do so as soon as I get back to the real world. Sh'yeah, right, buddy. I'm sure there's nothing sinister about this whatsoever. I learned my lesson about trusting people way back when I trusted Mercer Fray to wait until we were out of the dungeon before stabbing me in the back, and look where it got me - stabbed in the front instead. But hey, I'm a sucker for punishment, so I guess if I ever need a dragon who appears to be slowly melting to come to my aid, I'll give you a ring, shall I?
     
    On our way out the staircase and up through the wormhole, I cannot help but reflect back on my time spent here. Fortunately for me, there may be medication for that.
     
    NEXT: Chapter 34, The Seventh Sign, and the Implied Tentacle Rape
    Start at Chapter 1
     

    To be fair, Serana's isn't that bad. But Valerica looks like she's trying to cosplay Princess Leia, without the benefit of a mirror, or having ever seen Star Wars for that matter.
     
    Also, here's a reference:
    Here's a game in VGA on the left, CGA on the right. The Soul Cairn looks like a darker version of the one on the right.