I’m up and out of Windhelm just before dawn, leaving several things undone: I haven’t refilled my waterskin or tanned my wolf pelts, and although I’m getting a little short of food, I’m not waiting until the shops are open to replenish my store. I still have some meat and cold soup from yesterday; that should last me until I arrive ... somewhere else. My first thought is to head north to Dawnstar so that I can deliver a message from Aeri to the Jarl. (She asked me to do this yesterday, and I refused.) I therefore make my way to Anga’s Mill, where, because of my early start, I have to wait for more than an hour for Aeri to come out of her house. But when she does emerge, she seems to have forgotten about the letter (or perhaps she somehow found someone else to deliver it during the night). By this time it is snowing so thickly that, with no message to carry, the idea of heading even further north loses the last of its limited appeal and I decide to take the south road instead. Before long, the weather clears, and I dismount to gather ingredients. The plant varieties are similar to what I found on the other side of the valley as I was approaching Windhelm--creep clusters and jazbay spread out over the stones and dragon’s tongue flowers distinctively at the roadside. The road climbs steadily, and at the top of a series of falls I find a beautiful, clear pool that is simply teeming with fish. I wade in eagerly after them, only to find that the water is deeper and the current much stronger than I was expecting--I’m soon swimming rather than wading, and my utmost efforts to regain the shore serve only to keep me from moving anywhere at all. And it suddenly dawns on me that I’ve completely forgotten to let go of my horse. (I can’t actually lead her by hand; what I’ve been doing is putting her in the auto-follow mode allowed by Convenient Horses and pretending that I’m leading her.) My odd position is very confusing to poor Snowberry: she runs distractedly up and down the road until I realize the fruitlessness of swimming against the current and start to drift; then her uncertainty abruptly resolves itself and she charges straight into the water towards me, so that we both end up being tossed over the falls. They aren’t very steep, and I’m not worried about myself--but I go into a momentary panic over Snowberry. (Horses seem to be especially bug-prone in Skyrim, not only having an alarming tendency to fall randomly out of the sky on my head, but to die very suddenly from small amounts of damage.) Fortunately, she survives the tumble without complaint, and we both clamber out of the water looking very foolish. Needless to say, I haven’t caught a single fish. Further along the road I find Mixwater Mill, run by a woman named Gilfre and suffering the usual shortage of workers. Gilfre, like other mill owners I’ve met, would love to have me lend a hand, but I’ve been dawdling today--all that waiting and flower-picking and unintended horse-bathing--and so haven’t come as far as I would like; I decide not to take the time to find out whether a few strokes of the axe here will land me yet another marriage proposal. The road turns around to the west, passing by a number of ruins that I am happy to not to inspect closely. But soon there is one in front of me that is not so easily avoidable: Valtheim Towers, a stone bridge that straddles the river with its namesake structures on either side. I can’t help but feel a little apprehensive as I contemplate this crumbling fortification: the southern tower sits on the road, and the terrain to the south climbs steeply, preventing me from simply circling around. Even from some distance away, I can see people walking back and forth on the bridge preparing to kill me. (Well, I can see red dots on my compass, which is as good as looking inside their hearts and seeing their essential murderous nature.) I don’t have much time to plan, though: a single bandit comes charging out from the base of the southern tower and attacks me without even asking for money. This turns out to be a remarkably foolish maneuver on her part--not only do I cut her down with astonishing ease, having earlier poisoned my sword, but her rush takes her well away from the bridge, beyond bowshot and so out of her allies’ reach. As easy as it was to dispose of a single bandit, I’m in no mood to tangle with the entire group, and so decide to mount Snowberry and simply ride past Valtheim Towers with all possible speed. This seems likely to get us shot at a few times, but with any luck the accuracy will be limited and the damage minimal. As it turns out, not a single arrow strikes either me or my horse--in fact I don’t even hear any being fired; perhaps the bandits are confused. Or maybe they’re shooting at Jade. In any case, we all manage to put the dreadful Valtheim Towers safely behind us. There’s little else to interrupt our journey to Whiterun. I get attacked by three wolves, which is nothing unusual, except that each one of these bears the designation “pit wolf.” If they were bred for fighting, it doesn’t show; they aren’t any tougher than ordinary wolves, and I’m not entirely sure what pit they are supposed to have come out of. One of them turns out to be carrying three septims, which leads me to wonder whether they might have been betting on pit fights rather than participating in them. Sadly, I’m not likely to find out the truth of the matter. We’re almost at the outskirts of the city when I hear signs of battle coming from one of the nearby farms, and a few arrows go whistling over my head. By the time I get close, though, the action has died down, and a small group of people seems to be standing around a dead giant. They all look rather dangerous, so it seems best not to bother them. The guard at the gate stops me; it seems that nobody is allowed in, because of the recent dragon attacks. Fortunately, I manage to persuade him to change his mind. (This is something of a relief--getting into Whiterun the first time is normally part of the main quest in Skyrim, and one of the mods I’m using interferes with that quest; not having used it before, I wasn’t entirely certain that I’d be able to get in at all.) I immediately run into an Imperial guard trying to pressure a smith into filling a huge order of weapons for the army. Except that he’s not an Imperial guard, just a fellow wearing Imperial armor. After I meet the smith, Adrianne Avenicci, and get a few crafting pointers from her, I head to an inn, the Bannered Mare, where I learn a little more about what this is all about--a feud between two prominent local families, one of which supports the Stormcloaks and the other the Imperials. The fellow who explains this to me is Jon Battle-Born, a man from the Imperial-supporting clan who earnestly wishes that the families would work out their differences. I’m sympathetic; Whiterun is easily the most pleasant place I’ve been to so far, an open, airy city with what appears to be a much lower concentration of jerks than Riften, and it’s a shame for it to be marred by this divide. The other fellow I speak to is named Larkspur, and he utterly fails to impress: he rhapsodizes fulsomely on the subject of Nona’s beauty while boasting about his sketchy past, and is entirely unconvincing on both counts, owing to his flat, unengaged tone of voice--a manner that seems more suited for putting a lady to sleep than seducing her. (Which I suppose would count as a form of seduction for a certain type of person, and I’m not sure that Larkspur deserves to be excluded from that class. He’s easily the most disappointing of the characters added by Interesting NPCs that I’ve met so far; clearly meant to be a dashing rogue, but unfortunately just obnoxious and dull.) After I finish this conversation, which happens long before I’ve bothered to find out most of what Larkspur has to say, I feel as though I need a bath. I’m certainly not inclined for further chitchat this evening, so Jade and I simply enjoy a little music before bed. More precisely, we enjoy dancing to some music, even if the music itself is pretty disappointing.
2 Comments
Cousin Vacua
4/30/2013 10:54:03 am
Dear Nona,
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Mewness
5/2/2013 04:28:04 am
Dear Cousin Vacua,
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201 And All That
Nona Plaia may well be the most boring person in Skyrim. Below are links to her "adventures" in chronological order.
A Life More Ordinary Mods An NPC is Born The Lady in the Lake Adrift in the Rift Opportunity Chops Studying Abroad Witches, Wolves Footwear is Not Enough A Modest Proposal Scales of Love Dances with Beers Five Rules to Live By Plain and Pusillanimous Watery Woes How Not to Stage a Murder Hot Heads and Cold Graves Run Nona Run Interlude A Fool Suffers Gladly The Markarth Discomfiture In Search of the Unknown It's Raining Bandits Down and Out No Holds Barred Beyond the Pale The Slippery Slope Mission Implausible The Nord in the Next Room The Only Living Girl Victory is a Gateway Drug Continuity Break Wherever You Go Archives
August 2014
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