I could hang up my travel gear, put Snowberry out to graze in the Falkreath Hold hills, and stay for the indefinite future in my beautiful new house, where I have just about everything I need—only an alchemy table is lacking, but I can find those in Riverwood and Falkreath, not far away. I’ve already been puttering around here for four days, and my vegetables are starting to come up. I took a little walk before going to bed last night and found luna moths fluttering around just outside the front door, which added to my ever-growing sense of satisfaction in the place. But I’m determined to build that alchemy table eventually, and it’s better done sooner than later. For one thing, there’s the matter of Vorstag’s wages, or lack of them; he asked for 500 septims when I hired him, but I have to assume that he intended that as a payment to be made periodically, and not as his price for selling himself into indentured servitude. There’s a chance that we’ll have a future together as something more than Ms. Timid Alchemist and her Hired Bodyguard, but until that question is resolved, I decide that I’ll pay him 500 septims a week; that means that his next payment will be due tomorrow, on the 8th of Frostfall. To Dawnstar, then. I have augmented my alchemical knowledge by adding the Poisoner perk—I still feel a bit weird about using poisons, but they’re becoming necessary, and so I may as well learn to make stronger ones. There aren’t many preparations to make apart from that, so after eating a breakfast of bread and cheese while sitting at my own dining table, I put on my armor and head out. (I’m also starting to think seriously about changing my armor: I could replace the Elven armor with Bosmer armor, which I would normally avoid because it exists only owing to a mod that I installed for use with characters other than Nona, but the two are about equivalent in terms of protectiveness and it would be nice to look like something other than a tubby Thalmor agent.) I stay on horseback until I’m past Riverwood—I’ve been back and forth so many times that the plants in between Lakeview and Riverwood have been uniformly stripped of any blooms, pods, and fungal growths that could possibly be of interest to anyone—and then continue on foot. On the descent towards Whiterun I’m attacked by a determined high elf who bathes me in a heady mixture of flames and ice while I stumble about blindly, wondering why Vorstag isn’t around to help. I have barely enough presence of mind to drink a potion that offers some protection against both fire and frost magic and then crouch behind a rock. Still no Vorstag, and the elf has decided to wait patiently on the other side of the rock rather than follow me around. I start to get panicky, because my protector is missing and I’m afraid that my potion will wear off, so I come out from behind the rock with sword in hand and slash hysterically at my attacker while hoping that she won’t get too many spells off before she dies. She barely manages to cast anything after I start swinging, but it takes about a dozen sword cuts to kill her, which isn’t very reassuring. (I should have used poison!) I manage to retrieve my bodyguard and my horse, who have gotten stuck a few turns up the road behind me, and continue north. As I reach the crossroads east of Whiterun, it starts to rain heavily, and the thrill of traveling by a new road lined with as-yet unpicked flowers is tempered by my inability to distinguish one color of bloom from another in the dismal grey light. As I pass the farms near Whiterun, I come across a lonely figure standing on the road, lamenting the fact that one of the wheels of his cart has broken and left him stranded. He’s transporting his mother, he tells me—his dead mother, in her coffin—and so he simply cannot go on until his wheel is repaired, and the owner of the nearby farm has refused to help, despite his offering to pay most generously. The man, Cicero, is a curious fellow, and not merely because he talks about himself in third person, has chosen a threadbare jester’s outfit as his traveling costume, and claims to be transporting a deceased relative around; he’s, well, creepy. And no, I don’t think that transporting a corpse is inherently creepy—it’s just that it’s not entirely clear to me that he believes his mother is actually dead. He says she’s dead, but he doesn’t seem entirely convinced—his manner conveys either mild amusement at his mother’s death or a lack of awareness of what that means; I can’t decide which. I pity him, though, waiting alone in the rain (I hope he’s actually alone), so I decide to trudge up to the farmhouse and see whether I can’t convince the owner to help him. In response to my inquiry, the farmer, Loreius, musters his very best arguments against helping Cicero, which are as follows: he’s weird. And he might be carrying anything in that box. But mostly, he’s weird. I can’t disagree, although I suspect that a real smuggler would pose as something less absurd than a mad jester carting his dead (?) mother around. Or maybe not--I’ve never tried to smuggle anything, so no doubt there are tricks of the trade, nuances to the work, that would surprise me. But when I ask Loreius what he thinks should be done, his best suggestion is that I make a false report to a guard, accusing Cicero of committing a crime. Suddenly, Loreius seems like a much bigger creep than Cicero. I’m outraged at his suggestion. I shame him into agreeing to help despite his worst instincts, and tromp back down the hill practically glowing with righteous self-satisfaction to give Cicero the good news. He is ecstatic, and presses 400 septims into my hands as a reward for my intervention—a sum I would find suspicious in itself if other people hadn’t paid me similar amounts on previous occasions for doing even less. I hear shouts of alarm as I continue north—a guard tower is under attack by a ragtag group of bandits. The guards don’t seem to need assistance, which is lucky, because I’m not about to offer any. Vorstag, oddly enough, doesn’t rush to join the fight either: he stands around calling for help until the attackers are dead. Apparently he doesn’t feel any need to intervene personally unless I’m being attacked, which, while a perfectly logical attitude for him to have, nevertheless takes me a little by surprise—people so routinely expect me to take an interest in their problems that I’ve come to assume that a general willingness to interfere is part of Skyrim’s culture. I could have the Nords entirely wrong, I guess: perhaps they only expect Imperials to solve their problems for them. Whatever the truth of the matter, I’ve wasted so much time today that I’ll not be able to reach Dawnstar without hiking well into the night, and the prospect of running into a snowy sabre cat while having to hold a lantern in one hand is not enticing. I turn off the road to the right, therefore, to stay at the Nightgate Inn, where Callen and Moris are sniping at each other in a manner that suggests that they have been doing so without interruption since my last visit. (Moris, speaking past Callen to the innkeeper: “Tell your tavern wench to bring some more ale.” Callen, speaking past Moris in a similar vein: “Tell your dog to do his business outside.”) (As an aside, I have to say that this is the worst day I’ve ever had while playing Nona: to begin with, I had my first-ever crash to desktop—crashes aren’t exactly a rare phenomenon while playing Skyrim, but I am very careful with my Nona saves, and up until now have never had a crash while playing this character—which forced me to replay the first part of the journey. I tried to do everything identically: I took a shot at wolf that I had killed during my previous session, but I missed, and it ran into the river and vanished. When I fought the high elf a little while later—she surprised me, not having been there the first time—and Vorstag didn’t show up, I backtracked to look for him, and found him staring at the spot in the river where the wolf had disappeared. It must have been alive in there somewhere, but I couldn’t see it, so I just took random shots at the water until Vorstag decided it was dead and stopped obsessing over it. Then, during the attack on Whitewatch Tower, he got stuck in sneak mode, which happens to followers sometimes; this was the real reason I couldn’t continue to Dawnstar—it would have been horribly slow and dangerous with Vorstag sneaking everywhere. I’ve been taking a break from Skyrim for some months now, and it really seemed as though the game was making a special effort to parade some of its choicest bugs in front of me just in case I’d forgotten about them.) The following morning is the 8th, so I pay Vorstag 500 septims for the upcoming week. The rest of the journey to Dawnstar goes easily enough; I pass Fort Dunstad by riding around it as fast as possible and hoping that Vorstag doesn’t get into a messy fight. (He doesn’t.) Later, I am attacked by giant spiders, and an Argonian fellow who happens to be loitering nearby decides to help me out. After they’re dead, though, the idiot attempts to rob me at sword-point: I tell him that I won’t hand over anything and watch with mixed emotions as Vorstag beats him to a bloody pulp. I have lunch in Dawnstar—fish soup, to help relieve the case of Rockjoint I’ve gotten from the diseased wolves crowding the roads—and take a walk around the town. There’s no quicksilver for sale at the smithy, but the ingots that I left near the smelter on my previous visit are still there. Strange. I enter the mine and start working, accompanied by Vorstag’s unhappy commentary. “I’ve heard that miners sometimes die from poisonous gases trapped in the ground,” he says pensively. He follows me all around as I attack one vein after another, keeping up a litany of murmuring complaint. I find his gentle dissatisfaction oddly delightful: he would seem a trifle false if he had nothing but admiration for both me and my lifestyle. I return to the open air, much to Vorstag’s relief, and smelt my ore. I leave the new batch of ingots near the smelter and take the ones I left previously—perhaps there’s something wrong with them, and they’re not up to Dawnstar’s exacting standards? They’re good enough for my purposes, I’m sure. At the smithy, I forge a new Elven sword—I’m planning on giving it to Vorstag, but I can’t finish it yet, as there’s no grindstone here—and start work on my Bosmer armor, which is mostly made out of leather. I don’t yet have enough for the full suit, but I make a couple of pieces. Then I pay a visit to the Mortar and Pestle and find it closed. I wait around a bit, wondering whether Frida has gone out for a late lunch, but she doesn’t make an appearance. I walk around town again, looking for her, and check Windpeak Inn. She isn’t there, but the proprietor gives me this charming note: I make several more visits to the Mortar and Pestle, but it remains stubbornly shut, and there’s no sign of Frida, so I waste the rest of the day in aimless, unproductive wandering. I’m starting to run low on funds—by “low,” I mean that I’m down to just over a thousand septims, which sounds like plenty, but doesn’t actually count for much when I can’t buy ingredients and do my work. By nightfall, I’m feeling thoroughly dispirited and lost, as though I’ve been abandoned. Dawnstar is a cold, dark wasteland, and I truly have nothing to do here. I hope I’ll never need any more quicksilver; this place just isn’t worth it.
8 Comments
3/15/2014 03:43:51 am
Poor Nona! Surely things will look better in tyr morning...
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Cousin Vacua
3/25/2014 01:47:24 am
Dearest Nona,
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Mewness
7/7/2014 01:37:59 am
Dear Vacua, please be careful. Remember never to trust strangers bearing quests!
Reply
Leina
4/12/2014 04:28:36 pm
Hey darlin', just droppin' a line to say I found this lovely little gem the other day and it honestly made a crappy day much more bearable. Looking forward to reading about her further non-adventures.
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Mewness
4/13/2014 02:11:07 pm
Glad you enjoyed it, and here's to fewer crappy days in the future! Thanks for reading.
Reply
Rei
4/15/2014 10:52:46 am
Thank you for the update.
Reply
LoneWolf
6/8/2014 09:55:19 pm
This is hilarious. I like how 3dnpc still makes the world interesting without the quests.
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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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