As I walk into Ivarstead, it’s still dark, a couple of hours before sunrise on the 17th of Last Seed. I run into a young woman having some sort of argument that I don’t quite catch the gist of. She tells me that it must be very exciting to travel, and disappears into her house before I can respond. A guard tells me that Helgen was destroyed by a dragon, and a quest update invites me to investigate this further (this is the Random Alternate Start mod keeping the main quest alive, should I decide to pursue it). Of course, I won’t be investigating any such thing; Nona’s only interest in dragons is how best to avoid them. Stumbling around in the gloom (maybe I should have supplied Nona with a light source), I manage to find my way to the Vilemyr Inn. Inside, I speak with a pleasant fellow named Hagravi Gray-Wave, who asks me whether I am here to climb the mountain, and then segues into a digression about hagravens. Gamely, I joke that I was once engaged to one (maybe Nona isn’t so unwilling to discuss her past after all), and we part on pleasant terms. I am then accosted by Bassanius Axius, who has almost nothing to say for himself, and yet accuses me of being boring when my attention wanders. The innkeeper informs me that the barrow to the east is haunted, and that he has heard that some kid in Windhelm has been performing the Black Sacrament, the ritual for contacting the Dark Brotherhood. I shudder appreciatively before turning to a robed khajiit named Dar’Rakki, who admonishes me for interrupting him while he was walking the steps in his mind, then complains about the smell of betrayal in the air. This ominous but metaphorical odor turns out to be emanating from Dar’Rakki’s uncertainty about the actual number of steps leading up the mountain to High Hrothgar: do I not find 7000 a suspiciously round number? Dar’Rakki seems to think that if this number is not exact--and he strongly suspects it isn’t--then it is surely an indication that something is very wrong with the world, and nothing is to be trusted. My instinct at this point is to back away carefully, as it appears that Dar’Rakki will only be consoled if I volunteer to count the steps for him, and Nona isn’t about to count anything that might be inhabited by frost trolls. It’s about 8 in the morning by the time I’ve finished chatting, so I venture outside to greet the day. Ivarstead is really quite picturesque, a little lakeshore village at the foot of the Throat of the World (if a throat can be said to have feet). Everyone here seems to detest it, though. Several people tell me in passing that I’d be wise to get out of here as soon as possible. This opinion is echoed by Boti, one of the farmers, and apparently by her daughter Fastred, the young woman I met as I was arriving, who is constantly being admonished by her father for being interested in talking to strangers. I hang around the farm a little bit, hoping that someone will ask me to help out, but they are entirely absorbed in their hoeing and squabbling. At the mill, I meet the owner, Temba Wide-Arm, who tells me directly to grab an axe and chop some wood. I rush down eagerly to the chopping block, but I am immediately presented with a problem: there’s no axe. I search all over the mill. I go back to the farm and hunt around, hoping I’ll be able to borrow one, but there’s none to be had. I walk around the village, investigating woodpiles and other likely spots. I peer into a couple of barrels near the farmhouse, but they contain nothing useful. Is this some sort of local humor? Well, this is unfortunate. I can’t chop wood, and there doesn’t appear to be anything else to do around here. It’s day one, and Nona’s already desperate. I cross the river and head over to the lowest of the 7000--or so--steps, hoping to find some wild herbs. I haven’t seen an alchemy table anywhere, but anything I can sell would be welcome. I don’t find anything, though, except for a living, growling bear. Eeek! I head back across the river before it gets any angrier. It’s lunchtime as I reenter the village, so I eat my apple, the only food I have. The day is fine, and the lake looks very inviting--the surface is practically bubbling with fish. Avoiding the allegedly haunted barrow, I go in for a swim, catching fish on the way, and cross to a little island in the middle, where I find some flowers to pick. There’s also a cave here, which my mysterious naming instinct tells me is called Geirmund’s Hall. There are mushrooms growing outside, so I go in--not far; I just want to see whether there are more pickings near the entrance. I enter cautiously and am immediately rewarded with mushrooms to collect. Despite my efforts at stealth, though, I am spotted and attacked by two skeevers. I fight them off easily enough with my iron dagger, but quickly dismiss all thoughts of going in any deeper. After snicking off the skeevers’ tails, I head out again, pick more plants, catch more fish. My bare elbows are now covered in blood from the skeever fight and it won’t wash off. Why are only my elbows covered in blood? I briefly wonder what the village folk will think I’ve been doing to get such bloody elbows when my hands appear relatively clean. I cross the river again and find a ruined house inhabited by a poor, ragged fellow named Narfi. (When I say poor and ragged, I mean that he and I are dressed pretty much identically.) He babbles incoherently about someone named Reyda. I look around the ruin he inhabits and find that even this miserable derelict has supplies that I can envy--a bedroll, a few bottles of mead, and a stash of food. Depressed, I head back to the village and, to my shame, root through the trash barrels near the farmhouse and retrieve two empty bottles. At least, I think they’re trash barrels; they seem to contain only junk. I’m going to need some way to carry water (Realistic Needs and Diseases requires me to drink as well as eat) and actually buying drinks from the inn is currently beyond my means. Instead, I pay the innkeeper 6 of my precious septims to have my bottles filled with clean water. We have a little chat about Narfi, and he tells me that Reyda is Narfi’s sister, who went off to gather ingredients around the lake some time ago and hasn’t been seen since. Under normal circumstances, there’s no way I’d go looking for a woman who most likely has come to a bad end. But she disappeared in the exact same area that I’ve been wandering around all day, and the place didn’t seem at all unsafe, apart from the cave. There’s still some light out, so why not take a look? I leave the inn and walk to the lake, and sure enough, I find Reyda’s remains so close by that it’s a wonder that nobody yet has just happened to glance into the water and notice them. Her satchel contains a variety of ingredients, a necklace, and 25 septims. I take all of it, save for some “human flesh”--whether that’s something she collected, or even (shudder) a part of her own body, I don’t want to know. I’m not touching it. I give the necklace to Narfi, and tell him his sister is dead, which upsets him, but he’s so grateful for the keepsake that he immediately thrusts two hearts into my as-yet unbloodied hands. Ugh! One of them is human. And the other is.... Never mind. Just ugh, ugh, ugh. What is it with this family? I can’t give his sister’s money to him directly, so I leave the 25 septims in the sack by his bedroll. It’s now getting dark. The people of Ivarstead can say smugly that they told me so: I should have left this village at the first opportunity. Even if there were some way to make money here, there’s nothing to spend it on except food and drinks at the inn. I can’t even replace my ragged clothes. I’ve heard of sleepy towns; this place is comatose. I head back to the inn, mulling over the dispiriting problem of whether to go without food or sleep, as my 11 remaining septims are not enough to purchase both. I decide to get some sleep; after all, without anything to light my way, I can’t accomplish anything at night anyway. As I’m negotiating with the innkeeper, though, I notice that he’s willing to buy the awful daedra heart that Narfi gave me--he’ll pay me over 80 septims for it! Divines only know what he wants it for, but I’m in no position to judge; I’ll just have to make a mental note to distrust his soup if I ever come back here. I spend the night, then refill my bottles and purchase some food. In the morning, I run into Hagravi again. He’s as voluble as ever: he tells me he was raised in an orphanage, and spins an amusing yarn about once being menaced by attractive female warriors. He rambles on so pleasantly that I wonder whether he might actually like me, or whether he’s this nice to every homely, destitute woman that walks in. Best not to get my hopes up.
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There’s one more way in which I’m departing from The Elder Strolls: rather than playing a boring, unadventurous man, I’ll be playing a boring, unadventurous woman. For too long, men have dominated the fields of aimless wandering, casual gossip, and quest avoidance. It’s time for a woman to stand up (before sitting down quietly and folding her hands) and prove that she can be every bit as inadequate as the least remarkable of men; that she, too, can lead an existence free of any noteworthy accomplishment; that her aspirations are not inherently greater than man’s, and indeed need not rise any higher than a life of quotidian domesticity in a home belonging to someone else. Are you with me, sisters?! Here, then, is Nona Plaia, a young Imperial woman with, if all goes well, a very inconsequential career ahead of her. (While a Nord would clearly have been the best choice for sheer blandness, I made her an Imperial because the Imperial racial power seems less heroic to me. Nords can get enemies to flee in terror; Imperials can only calm them down.) I’m also taking the liberty of adjusting her starting skills with the console. I don’t understand why Imperials in Skyrim get all these bonuses to magic and nothing to Speech--in both Morrowind and Oblivion, they got a bonus to Speech and no bonuses to any magical skills. Imperials are supposed to be good with the talking and the questioning and the schmoozing, dammit. I reduce Nona’s Destruction skill by 5 and increase her Speech by the same amount. I decide to start Nona’s career in Ivarstead. It’s not far from Cyrodiil, and she could easily have come over the border before Helgen was destroyed. She doesn’t have much in the way of supplies: she is dressed in rags, and carries only 17 septims, an apple, and a dagger. What dismaying set of circumstances could have reduced this innocent young woman to such a state, alone and friendless in an inhospitable land, with so very few possessions? Whatever the story is, it’s probably much too interesting to be suitable for this blog. Let’s just say that Nona prefers not to discuss it.
Most of the mods I’ll be using are the mods I use when playing actual heroes in Skyrim, and they’re there because I like them, can’t be bothered uninstalling them, and they have little to no impact on actual gameplay. In case you’re curious, here’s a summary. The Essentials: I use SkyUI, Categorized Favorites Menu, the Unofficial Skyrim Patch, A Quality World Map, and a few other things that make the game generally nicer to play without doing anything intrusive. The Purely Cosmetic: I use a bunch of texture replacements to make people and terrain look better. I don’t use anything that changes the actual flavor of the game: if you’re familiar with vanilla Skyrim, then you’ll be able to recognize the people and landscapes that you see in my screenshots. The Mostly Cosmetic: I use Climates of Tamriel and Realistic Lighting Overhaul to make nights darker, weather harsher, and interiors prettier. I use Wearable Lanterns to make it easier to function at night (although my character won’t be taking advantage of the hands-free aspect, as dangling a lit lantern close to one’s intimate areas seems like something only a tough guy would do). Convenient Horses: This mod has many features that I don’t want for this playthrough--it makes horses a little too convenient--but I’m going to refrain from using these features rather than uninstalling the mod altogether. I think it’s pretty sad that Nordrick died because of the nuttiness of his animals; having a horse that isn’t psychotic isn’t too much to ask. (Of course, having an aggressive horse is helpful in fights you can’t avoid. If I die owing to lack of combat support from my horse, then, well, the joke’s on me.) Random Alternate Start: This mod allows you to skip the standard introductory sequence and start the game without the main storyline active. It’s possible to achieve something similar using the console, but you have to avoid areas where the main quest triggers. I haven’t tried this mod before, so I’ll just have to hope that it doesn’t cause any serious problems. Realistic Humanoid Movement Speed: If the comments attached to Chris’s Nondrick/Nordrick blogs were any indication, then the single most astonishing thing about his efforts was his ability to play a character that actually walked everywhere. I admit it: there is absolutely no way I could replicate this feat in vanilla Skyrim. I just don’t have what it takes. I find the player’s walking speed achingly slow--it’s much slower than the NPCs’ walking pace, and every Skryim player is familiar with the infuriating walk-run-walk dance that you have to do when you’re required to actually follow an NPC somewhere. Fortunately, this mod speeds up player walking and makes the player and the NPCs move at the same pace. (It also slows down running, which is why I’m not tempted to use it when I play normally.) Realistic Needs and Diseases: Under ordinary circumstances, I wouldn’t go near a mod like this, but I think that the benefits will be considerable for this playthrough (unless the mod turns out to be horribly glitchy). I could just remember to eat and sleep without having a mod to prompt me, but having it installed will make deprivation more interesting, if it comes to that. Interesting NPCs: In a massive oversight, I forgot to mention this mod when I wrote this summary in March. (As I write this, it’s the 20th of August.) This huge undertaking adds (at last count) about 150 fully-voiced NPCs to Skyrim, the intention being to add richness and color to the world. Interesting NPCs is one of the main reasons that I still play Skyrim at all--not only does it add dozens of new quests, but many of the NPC followers from the mod have things to say about existing locations and plotlines that inject new interest into the same old stuff. I couldn’t have started 201 And All That without it. That’s it for the mods. On to the protagonist!
In the year that the dragons returned, the year that Ulfric Stormcloak killed High King Torygg and plunged Skyrim into civil war, a unprepossessing fellow named Nordrick traveled this harsh and dangerous land in search of the ultimate reward--an ordinary life, free of adventure and heroic deeds. Unfortunately, he failed to realize these modest ambitions, as his life was tragically cut short when his weirdly psychotic pets insisted on dragging him into an overwhelming fight. Nordrick’s travels were chronicled by Chris Livingston in The Elder Strolls. (Chris is also responsible for Living in Oblivion, the tale of the non-adventures of Nordrick’s predecessor, Nondrick. If you’re unfamiliar with these blogs, both are well worth your time.) And this? This is a shameless copycat blog, in which I create my own humble non-player character attempting to pursue an utterly unremarkable existence in Skyrim. The idea is to avoid adventure and feats of derring-do; Skyrim is full of ordinary people doing ordinary things, and my character desires nothing more than to be one of them. I won’t be saving innocents, acquiring powerful artifacts, or slaying dragons. To avoid sliding down (up?) the slippery slope of heroism, I’ll be following some ground rules: • I’m not a hero. I won’t do quests unless they seem utterly innocuous--anything more exciting than feeding someone’s pets while they’re on vacation is probably beyond me. (Sadly, I don’t think there are any pet-feeding quests in Skyrim.) I’ll do my best to avoid danger and find some way to make a living without adventuring. • I’m not a criminal. I won’t steal, and I won’t do anything that seems like stealing, even if the game doesn’t think it’s stealing. That includes taking vegetables from gardens, tools from mines and mills--it includes taking anything that isn’t mine, basically, unless it’s lying around in the wilderness where there’s clearly no possible owner nearby. I won’t even loot bodies, for the most part--taking stuff from dead people is still taking stuff, in my opinion. Plus, it’s icky. The idea of stripping off a dead person’s clothing or armor so I can sell it is just gross, so forget that. I will use animals for meat and pelts, though. That’s something that normal people do. • I’m not an automaton. I need to eat and sleep regularly, and I have to move at a relatively modest pace. (That means that I walk everywhere, as NPCs do, unless I have some pressing reason to run, like a troll tearing off my face.) I won’t use fast travel. • I’m not destined to succeed. I will accept the consequences of my decisions, and, for that matter, the consequences of my own incompetence. That means that I don’t reload a previous saved game when things go wrong. If I die, I die, and it’s over. These are very similar to the rules that Nordrick lived by. Note that they aren’t totally inflexible: I’ll break them if there’s a compelling reason--if I’m starving, I might search a dead body to see whether it’s carrying a freshly made sandwich, for example. And I’ll reload a save if the game screws up for reasons that aren’t my fault (such as obvious bugs). But these will be my guidelines.
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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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