Every city in Skyrim has good points and bad; among the merits of Solitude, for example, are its excellent shops, its beautiful location, and its colorful local personalities, including the instructors and students at the Bards’ College, the sailors that crew the Red Wave, and the Argonian prostitute who can generally be found leaning on a wall in the middle of town and who keeps calling out to me to come see him if I get bored. On the negative side, I have to go all the way to Dragon Bridge whenever I need to refill my waterskins and then invade someone’s home in order to cook. Still, I wake up the next morning with the cheerful prospect of puttering around the city all day, making up for my inability to do any productive work in Dawnstar. First things first, though: I’m running low on arrows and really need to replace them before I forget. Thinking to make some of my own, I walk down to the sawmill to fetch some firewood (my supplies are getting low). The weather turns thoroughly miserable as soon as I’m out of the city gates: a furious storm rises up and rain pelts down so thickly that I could just as well jump into the ocean and swim to my destination. And of course I discover, upon actually reaching the mill, that there’s no axe handy and I haven’t brought one with me. I chat with Hjorunn, a Nord, and Kharag Gro-Shurkul, an orc, who run the place together. Kharag tells me that he likes working with Hjorunn, who treats him much better than the city folks do; the only problem is that Hjorunn is sometimes too drunk to go anywhere, so Kharag has to conduct their business in town. I trudge back up to Solitude—that’s the entire morning wasted—and go through Snowberry’s saddlebags. I could have sworn I had an axe, but I can’t find it; perhaps I left it at Lakeview. I visit the local merchants, including Ma’Dran in the camp outside the gates, but none of them have one for sale. The smith doesn’t have one either, so I consider making one—but it turns out that despite having learned to smith many different weapons and armor pieces from various materials, I somehow haven’t picked up the technique of making a simple woodcutter’s axe. I make some arrows anyway, dipping into my firewood supply—I probably won’t run out if I continue to do my cooking in other people’s houses. I’m very pleased with the new arrows: they’re Bosmer-style, greatly superior to the iron arrows I’ve been using until now. After lunch, I mix potions and sell them to the three merchants who are interested—the apothecary Angeline, Sayma at Bits and Pieces, and Ma’Dran. I’m able to do quite a bit to make up for my recent dry spell. (Sales of Nona’s All-Natural Conjuring-Enhancing Magic-Suppressant continue to be impressive.) The weather clears in the afternoon, and as I go out into the marketplace I see hawks soaring over the rooftops, tracing languid circles against the clear blue sky—a sight so beautiful that I am overcome with the desire to shoot down these magnificent creatures and pluck out their feathers. I head down to the docks—shooting at hawks within city limits seems wildly antisocial, even if I will be firing my arrows into the air—where I discover that I have enough trouble just hitting these small, moving targets, let alone ensuring that they fall in places where I can easily reach them. I use all of my remaining iron arrows and hit only two birds, both of which plummet into the sea. But then they bob to the surface and float there, retrievable after all. Why not? I strip off my armor and jump in to get them. After swallowing a hawk’s beak for educational purposes, I return to the Winking Skeever with my little retinue. Over the noise of the usual crowd I can hear Nythriel, the incorrigible Blue Palace gossip, asking a woman named Veralene how her search for a spouse is going. Curiosity piqued, I chat with Veralene myself—I’m not sure what I want out of this conversation other than a little shared venting about the frustrations of trying to get married in Skyrim—but Veralene is incapable of expressing anything but pity for herself (she used to be rich, but lost everything when the dragon attacked Helgen) and contempt for everyone else. And yet I continue speaking to her even after she tries to drive me away with personal insults: her naked interest in marrying for money (and it appears that, for all her hostility, Veralene would be willing to marry me for that reason alone) amuses me no end. Even I was never that desperate. Neither was I ever so rich, of course; Veralene is clearly accustomed to a certain lifestyle, and considers death to be but a tiny step down from living on an inferior income. I doubt that Nona could afford to keep such an expensive wife, even if she found one worth keeping. I’ll be leaving Solitude tomorrow, and my next destination will be Winterhold. I’ve wavered over this decision for some time; Winterhold, from what I’ve heard, has only two points of interest—its College, a school for wizards, and the Shrine of Azura, which is said to be well worth seeing. The former tempts me not at all, the latter only somewhat, and I’m not entirely sure that the sightseeing is worth the risk—Winterhold is one of the snowiest parts of Skyrim, and snowy areas mean snowy cats, snowy bears, and snowy trolls. And yet I want to make the journey, if only so that I can say that I’ve visited every hold in the province. (And there’s always the possibility of discovering something exciting and new—an alchemical reagent that grows nowhere else, an attractive single gentleman in want of a better place to live, etc.) We head out the next morning, reaching Morthal with a few hours of daylight left; I gather ingredients in the marsh while Vorstag and Meeko fend off the spiders. We go on to Dawnstar the next day and stay only long enough to find out whether Frida’s shop is open—it isn’t—and then take the road south. I once more attempt to bypass Fort Dunstad by riding around it at a full gallop, but this time one of the the local bandits takes an interest in one of my followers, and I turn around to find that both Vorstag and Meeko have become embroiled in a chaotic melee. While I’m hesitating—reminding myself sternly that I am paying Vorstag to protect me, and shouldn’t feel obligated to protect him—Meeko comes running out of the fort, pursued by two bandits. I make a brief and foolish attempt to fight them, but they are far too tough for me to fend off alone. Mustering my inner reserves, I command them with every ounce of authority in my being to leave me be. They cannot resist the Voice of the Emperor, and immediately sheathe their weapons, but the sounds of battle from inside the walls continue—most of the bandits are out of range of the Voice—and I can’t afford to hang around waiting for Vorstag forever, as the two I’ve calmed down will recover eventually. I mount up again and ride away from the fort. Vorstag, to my relief, catches up a few minutes later. We stay at the Nightgate Inn, continuing east in the morning. Not far past the inn, a snowy path splits off from the main road, leading up to some sort of monument. I’m normally a lover of broad, clear, trustworthy roads with reassuring signs endorsing them, and distrustful of unmarked side-paths; but this one looks wide and inviting, and the view promises to be spectacular. I make the climb and find a small Nord burial site which my uncanny instinct for naming things tells me is called Yorgrim Overlook. Peering at one of the coffins is a tall man in College robes; before I can offer any sort of greeting we are surprised by a couple of animated skeletons clattering over with weapons at the ready. The stranger whirls around and shoots one with an arrow fired from a glowing bow; Vorstag smashes the other with his battleaxe. The stranger turns out to be an affable high elf with a few daubs of paint marking his cheeks. Putting away his fantastical weapon, he introduces himself as Rumarin, an “adventurer, bladebinder, and grave-robber,” and invites me to partake of whatever valuables the Nords have carelessly left lying about. I tell him primly that I prefer not to steal from the dead, and his wise response is that I might do better as a priest, and steal from the living. He speaks in a steady flow of almost hysterical good humor, such that I am hardly surprised when he suggests traveling together—no man this entertaining could possibly be happy with only himself for company. As usual, I’m reluctant to accept, for fear of disappointing him with my complete lack of intrepidity, but it occurs to me that if he’s a member of the College of Winterhold, as his outfit suggests, we might visit it together. He is quick to correct my misapprehension, cheerfully explaining that his robes are fake—he knows a crafter with a talent for creating such counterfeits—and that he only wears them to impress people; he doesn’t know any spells other than the ones he uses to conjure weapons from Oblivion. “That would require … ugh … studying,” he explains in a dismal tone. I actually find his conjured weapons more impressive than his robes, but I suppose that’s proof of my ignorance. Letting Rumarin go his own way, we continue our journey into the mountains, only to be confronted with a military fort that takes up almost the entire valley. The road passes so narrowly around its northern side that there is little hope of getting by without attracting attention, and I haven’t recovered enough yet to use the Voice of the Emperor again. I get on my horse and ride very slowly closer, just to get a better look, and someone or something I haven’t yet spotted starts shooting at me; I wheel Snowberry around and ride away in a panic. When nobody emerges to give chase, I dismount and turn back again, only to discover that Vorstag and Meeko have rushed into the fort and are now engaged in a vicious fight with what sounds like wizards—I can hear the crash of magical icicles hitting the walls, the tinkling as they splinter into shards. As I wait, tensely, for the noise to die down, I catch a glimpse of Vorstag running along the battlements in pursuit of an enemy mage, an enormous icicle protruding from his head. Any lingering notions I might have had about the proper relationship between an employer and her hireling are suddenly extinguished, and I gulp down a potion of frost resistance and run into the fort in helpless anxiety for my bodyguard’s safety. My efforts turn out to be entirely unnecessary—the only remaining enemies are skeletons with bows that are easily finished off; Vorstag has slain all of the wizards. He’s also used a couple of the healing potions I made, which brings me some small comfort—I am taking care of him, in my own way. Past Fort Kastav, we run into a couple of Alik’r warriors on their harassment tour of Skyrim. They’ve just finished threatening some random woman as we approach, and as they’re heading towards Winterhold, we walk along with them—I’m always glad for extra company on the road. A few minutes later, a snowy sabre cat charges us; I’ve lagged a little behind by then, distracted by the scenery (the weather is very clear), and before Vorstag can catch up or I can decide which poison to use, both of the Redguards have fallen to a few lazy swipes of the beast’s claws. I’m a little stunned; fortunately, someone else arrives to help Vorstag and Meeko with the sabre cat. He’s dressed like a Vigilant, which is unusual—I’ve never seen a Khajiit Vigilant before. The three of them together dispatch the cat, and the newcomer introduces himself as Qa’Dojo, a simple monk on a pilgrimage to the Shrine of Azura. He’s an interesting fellow, with a religious philosophy that finds an agreeable balance between the stability of the Divines and the change wrought by the Daedra—a philosophy that would most likely be considered heretical by the Vigilants. I ask him about his future plans, and he tells me a parable of a wealthy Count who hired a carpenter to hang a painting in his castle. The painting looked very good in the place that was initially chosen for it, but the Count insisted that the carpenter move about the premises, hanging the painting up and then taking it down. Only after the painting had been seen in every conceivable spot did the Count decide that its first placement had been best after all. He ends the story by asking me to be his carpenter: by following me in my utterly pointless wanderings, Qa’Dojo seems to be saying, he will realize that some place that he has already visited—or some other companion he has previously had—is, by comparison, greatly preferable. I love it! Providing a balancing contrast with more interesting people and places could well be my calling. I’m eager for further conversation with Qa’Dojo, but it feels terribly disrespectful to get acquainted over the bodies of these two unfortunate Redguards, so I invite him to travel with us and we continue on towards Winterhold. Winterhold barely qualifies as a town at all: collapsed and broken-down buildings almost outnumber the functional ones, and of those there are few--an inn called the Frozen Hearth, a large house that most likely belongs to the Jarl, a much smaller house, and what appears to be a general store. There’s no smithy, no mill, no mines, no farms; no signs of productivity other than a few chickens pecking at the frozen earth and a horse that someone has left near one of the ruined buildings. The road leads up to a precarious stone bridge that passes over a dizzying drop and into a massive fortress. A lone Altmer woman named Faralda stops me at the bridge, barring my way; it leads to the College of Winterhold, she tells me, and members of the College don’t care for casual visitors. With nothing more pressing than mild curiosity urging me to enter, I turn back and go into the Frozen Hearth. There’s not much of a crowd, so I settle in near the fire and take the opportunity to get to know Qa’Dojo a little. I’m especially curious about his association with the Vigilants: he explains that he trained as a priest of Stendarr, but his distaste for the more militaristic aspects of the religion led him to contemplate converting to Julianos. As he was packing to leave, he saw a book that he had been searching for, Aedra and Daedra, on top of a high shelf, and imprudently attempted to climb the shelf to retrieve it. The shelf tipped over, causing him to fall and hit his head, and at that moment he had a powerful vision in which he saw all of the Gods—Aedra and Daedra—as integral parts of the same constellation. I’m no expert, but I see no reason to assume that a heavy blow to the head is inferior to any other source of divine inspiration; surely people have received religious visions in many a sillier fashion. I’m actually rather excited to be traveling with this monk, who asks only that I go wherever I feel like going. (I can do that!) Tomorrow, therefore—because I’m just full of surprises—we’ll head for the place that Qa’Dojo was going to visit anyway: the Shrine of Azura. I don’t want to stay in Winterhold for long—the place is a depressing and not-so-scenic ruin, I have not exactly been overwhelmed by the attentions of attractive single gentlemen, and I’m not sure whether I can even fetch water or cook here—so we had best do our sightseeing as soon as possible.
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Frida, the missing proprietor of the Mortar and Pestle, shows up in the Windpeak Inn as I’m getting ready for bed. She and Thordir launch into a discussion of the extreme aggression displayed by the local wolves, who, they observe, are constantly running into town in packs and attacking people indiscriminately. (If they only got out more, they’d know that this unfortunate psychosis afflicts wolves all over Skyrim.) I talk to Frida briefly; she complains that the Jarl Skald is a fool, and tells me that Brina is the one that people really turn to for help. This topic is not without interest—Skald practically accused Brina of treason in public once, for no better reason than that she used to be in the Imperial Legion—but Frida does not tell me what I most wish to hear, which is an explanation for why her shop has been closed all day and a promise to reopen it. I turn in, still determined to leave Dawnstar at first light. I decide to head towards Solitude, with its busy marketplace and multitude of shops. It’s a miserable snowy day, and I can barely see the flowers I’m picking. (They’re blue, as it turns out.) We trudge through the snow without incident until a faint rattling sound reaches my ears, and Vorstag is attacked by an ice wraith. These creatures are quite deadly—they weave about in the air and are translucent, almost invisible. Most of my arrows miss completely, and I can see Vorstag dipping into his supply of health-restoring potions as the creature strikes at him. But he makes steady progress against it until a heart-stopping moment when it breaks away abruptly and lunges at my horse. Snowberry runs into the woods in a panic, and Vorstag and I pursue—an exercise most likely doomed to failure unless the terrified animal randomly decides to change direction and run toward us. She eventually does, to my relief, and Vorstag finishes off the wraith. Later, I am attacked by hooded Khajiit assassin, whom I almost feel sorry for—he or she (it’s hard to tell, with the cat-like face and the very dark clothing) must have waited a long time in the dismal, freezing weather, in clothing that offered neither warmth nor camouflage, to encounter me, only to be unceremoniously hacked to death by Vorstag. I gain a level while fending off the assassin—I’m honestly too surprised to do much more than that—and retrieve a note, identical to the one I found on the assassin who attacked me outside Whiterun. It appears that this mysterious Astrid person still wants me dead. Well, I have no better notion than before of what I might be doing that could induce someone to take out a contract on me, so I can hardly stop doing it. I wonder when—and if—these attacks will finally cease; surely Astrid will run out of assassins to send after me eventually? I mean, if Vorstag slaughters enough of them, they’ll start asking for more money than anyone is willing to pay, right? Right? I mix and sell some potions in Morthal, and taste a few ingredients I haven’t tried yet, including, with some trepidation, the teeth of the ice wraith that Vorstag killed earlier. After recovering from the usual reagent queasiness, I take my mind off the possible long-term health effects of consuming ice wraith teeth by completing both the elven sword I made for Vorstag and my Bosmer armor set. Well, almost: there are a couple of extra pieces that I don’t yet have the materials for, but the basic outfit is done. Then I enter the wizard Falion’s house, right next to Al’Hassan’s smithy, where Falion immediately assumes that I have barged into his home to accuse him of sacrificing children and eating the hearts of the dead. I haven’t, of course: I’ve only barged in to boil water in his cookpot, which appears to be free enough of children’s hearts for my purposes—not that I’m generally inclined to be picky, to be quite honest. In the Moorside Inn, I talk to Gorm, housecarl to Jarl Idgrod Ravencrone. He tells me that he’s very worried about the Jarl and her mysterious visions, and seems to be trying to work up the courage to ask me to do something about it. From his hesitancy, I can gather that the something he would have me do is something that Idgrod might not like, and so I cut the conversation short before he can get to the point. I’m not about to get into the business of undermining Jarls, however lucrative such a business is likely to be in Skyrim. I pay for a bed for the night and go into my room to try on my new armor. I am pleasantly surprised to find Anum-La sitting in there, and we chat about her past. She was in a mercenary company, she tells me, that split up in disgrace after a terrible incident in which they mistook a group of mourners for necromancers and slaughtered them. (Gods be thanked, I tell myself for neither the first nor the last time, that I am not an adventurer.) She came to Skyrim in the company of a child who was present that day and would not leave her, and who may in fact have been a figment of her imagination. This leads her to the subject of the funereal garb she wears, which might be interpreted as mourning for the innocents who died that day: “There’s only one thing in this world I truly mourn,” she declares. “My sanity!” It’s a pity I can’t spend more time with Anum-La; we enjoy each other’s company and she would even be willing to travel with me, but she’s clearly the heroic type—I’m sure she’d find my lifestyle stupefyingly dull. The next morning, I leave Morthal and head west, wearing my new Bosmer outfit. What a difference it makes! In my Thalmor-style armor I always felt sluggish and awkward—as though someone had drugged me at a party and left me dressed that way. Now I feel sprightly and competent: a dangerous sensation, as the most sober self-assessment I can dredge up informs me that I am neither of those things. Fortunately, no truly dangerous enemies appear for me to embarrass myself against, and I have ample time to consider a subject that has been weighing on my mind. We’ll soon be passing the area where I found Meeko, the dog who was living in the shack in which his owner died, and I can’t decide whether I should adopt him. I miss Vigilance terribly, and I’d love to have another dog. But if something similar were to happen to Meeko—Vorstag doesn’t use spells, but he might accidentally shoot Meeko with an arrow—I don’t know what I’d do. I never liked Marcurio to begin with; he was always a smug, irritating man, and in losing what little regard for him I had, I wasn’t truly losing anything. But I like Vorstag: if I were forced to send him away because I could no longer stand the sight of him, it would be a grievous loss indeed. I resolve this inner conflict by trying an experiment: I confiscate Vorstag’s hunting bow. If he can function without it, I decide, then I’ll adopt Meeko, assuming he’s still there. Vorstag doesn’t seem overly concerned by the loss of his bow, and in fact his tendency to close immediately with frost spiders rather than firing a few opening shots at them is, on the whole, a change for the better. We pass Fort Bunny-Killer without incident and find the dog, still hanging around his dead master’s shack, on the other side. He’s overjoyed to leave his ramshackle home and come along with me, and when I shoot and injure an elk, he and Vorstag merrily charge off in pursuit of it and don’t come back for several minutes. We reach Dragon Bridge just after lunch and continue north, having no pressing reason to stop. Past the settlement, we are attacked by an angry troll, and a few unarmed drunkards who are having some sort of party nearby come running over gallantly to assist me. I get very concerned for their safety as they crowd around shouting and punching at the monster, getting in the way of my shots and interfering with Vorstag, but to my great relief we manage to kill it before any of these well-intentioned morons get torn apart. They are so delighted by their victory that they offer me a bottle of Honningbrew mead in celebration. Caught up in the festive mood, I drink it down immediately and chase it with a big, gooey lump of troll fat. And then I … don’t feel so good. I’m not sure whether it’s the alcohol, the troll fat, the combination of the two, or perhaps something else that those nice fellows may have slipped into my drink, but this is even worse than Nona’s Rabbity Reagent Salad. Everything looks very wrong, and I begin to have trouble keeping my balance. I continue to totter vaguely in the direction of Solitude, hoping that nobody, except possibly Vorstag, will take advantage of my impaired condition before I reach the safety of the city’s walls. I’m feeling much better by the time I reach the city gates, where I vow never again to eat or drink anything that has been given to me by a random stranger or that used to be attached to a troll. I realize that only a complete fool would find it necessary to adjust her behavior to include a rule that should be glaringly obvious to everyone, but the first step to recovering from extreme stupidity is to admit you have a problem. I visit Radiant Raiment to buy a new set of fine clothes, then go by the smithy in order to craft some Bosmer arrows and a new hunting knife. At suppertime, I retire to the Winking Skeever, where a hooded and robed orc named Cassock engages me in what at first appears to be a friendly bar conversation but quickly takes a turn for the worse. I tell him I’m just here for a drink, and he rambles on in an increasingly sinister tone about thirst and blood and spilling. Rather than find out to what or whom these insinuations tend, I turn away from him (I’ve become quite adept at cutting people off before they can burden me with quests) and ask Corpulus for news. He hands me one of those helpful notes that I like to carry around to remind me of the many unique and interesting places in Skyrim that I would very much prefer not to visit. I spend the rest of the evening strutting around the Skeever in the hope that Sorex will notice that I’m with Vorstag and, I don’t know, get all stupidly jealous and make a huge scene that ends in his bursting into tears and being knocked out in a fistfight. Or maybe he should get into a fistfight with Vorstag and then burst into tears; I would think less of Vorstag if he hit a man who was already crying. Sadly, Sorex remains completely indifferent, no matter how determinedly I march back and forth through his field of view, and when I finally decide to speak to him, he immediately begins flirting with me even though Vorstag is standing right there. Confound the fellow! He won’t do even the simplest thing to make me happy. I can’t believe that I seriously considered marrying him.
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.
It’s a beautiful day for our journey back to Falkreath, which turns out to be so thoroughly uneventful that even Nona’s a little starved for action. I’ve been going back and forth along this road so frequently that there’s nothing to gather—no plants or mushrooms of any interest at all—and we meet no-one along the way, save for a few hunters and a very rude orc who tries to pick a fight with me by calling me a milk-drinker. Even if I cared about some random idiot’s opinion, I couldn’t effectively prove myself not a milk-drinker by taking the bait and then watching Vorstag beat her to death, so I leave her be. We arrive in Falkreath in the middle of the afternoon, and I go immediately to see the Jarl. (I’m hoping he won’t notice that I’m wearing the same Radiant Raiment outfit I had on the first time we met; it’s still the only nice set of clothes I own.) Siddgeir is delighted to hear of the Embershard bandits’ demise. “Teach them to stop paying me,” he says with an air of grim pleasure. Then he adopts a confiding, friendly tone that sets my teeth on edge. “I like you,” he says. “You’re not afraid to get your hands dirty.” And he decides then and there to grant me permission to purchase property in Falkreath Hold. Here I was, enjoying a little glow of pleasure, even pride, at having accomplished something worthwhile—I mean, bandits are bandits, even if you’re going after them for the wrong reasons—and two minutes with Siddgeir has made me feel as though I’ve just finished wading through a river of slop and that he will be calling upon my vaunted slop-wading talents the next time he wants a priest blackmailed or an orphanage burned. I end the interview before he can ask me to do anything else. Well, I knew I was going against my principles when I agreed to kill those bandits in the first place: no sense in crying about it now. It takes me a while to find the steward—actually, it takes a stupidly long time: I walk all over the Jarl’s longhouse, and then I suddenly wonder whether she might have stepped over to the tavern for a drink, so I walk over there, and then I walk back to the longhouse and search the place from top to bottom again, before she suddenly steps out of a shadow and introduces herself. She’s an Altmer named Nenya, and she’s surprisingly agreeable for someone who has to deal with Siddgeir’s vagaries on a daily basis. This is most likely because she enjoys being the real power in Falkreath: she tells me that Siddgeir is wholly uninterested in actually running his hold, and so leaves everything to her and Helvard, his housecarl. She offers to sell me a plot of land for five thousand septims, and shows no surprise when I hand over the entire sum without hesitation. I now have the deed to a property called Lakeview, just off the road that runs east out of town. With all my expenses—including Vortag’s fee, the cost of materials for his arms and armor, the expensive scroll I bought from Calcelmo—Lakeview has cost me around seven thousand septims, and I don’t even have a house yet. But I am a landowner! I ride out eagerly to see my new property, but I’m delayed by those trapped watchtowers on the road—two more bandits have moved in, and these new ones aren’t quite stupid enough to kill themselves with their own falling rocks. Fortunately some Imperial soldiers just happen to be wandering by, and the bandits don’t last long against a hail of arrows. As Nenya directed, I turn off the road near a house called Pinewatch—my new neighbors, apparently. I stop by the door in the hopes of getting acquainted with them, but it’s locked and there’s nobody about. The path to the side—it’s not really a path, just an area open enough to ride through—is full of angry mudcrabs and wolves. The inhabitants of Pinewatch, if there are any, must not come out much. It’s getting dark by the time I reach Lakeview; a thorough inspection will have to wait until morning. Vorstag and I spend our first night on my new property camped near the spot where my house will likely be. The morning light reveals everything I could have wished for: the view of Lake Ilinalta is spectacular, and I have all the resources I need at the site to begin building—plenty of clay and stone, as well as a pile of sawn logs. In alarmingly short order I have built an unfurnished cottage that will serve as the entryway for a great hall. The size of the finished building will far exceed my former expectations; indeed Nona would have been perfectly content with a very small house, but Vorstag is staying over, so I need somewhere for him to sleep, and the cottage isn’t large enough for a second bed. I head back to town to buy more logs, passing along the way an extremely unpleasant Khajiit warrior named S’vashni, who can’t seem to open her mouth without saying something viciously insulting, and whose only topic of interest is swordsmanship. When I try to bring the conversation to a more civilized level, she tells me that talk is for cowards whose blades say nothing. I wish I could tell her that the message I’m getting from both her words and her blades is “I am a nasty, violent wanker with a dangerous sword fetish,” but I would most likely be both too polite and too interested in self-preservation to say that, even if the option were there. I leave her, then, to whatever senseless murders and/or diplomatic incidents she has planned for the day, and continue into Falkreath, where I find that I must purchase my lumber from that idiot Bolund who can’t believe that “provincials” like me are allowed to wander Skyrim. I also buy iron and corundum from Lod to make nails and fittings and locks, and, upon returning to the building site, use it all to put my main hall together. More wolves attack us while I’m working, so it’s fortunate that Vorstag is standing around wearing all of his armor with nothing to do. Once again, I’ve used up all of my materials in a burst of uncannily speedy construction, but I haven’t built any furniture yet. Another trip to town is in order, and there’s no way I’m handing any more money to Bolund, so I head down the slope towards Riverwood. Near the bottom of the hill I find a curious tableau: four skeletons stand unsupported and motionless, facing a large stone table with a haphazard collection of bones and soul gem fragments arrayed atop and around it. Leaning thoughtfully over the arrangement is a robed woman named Carmella, who asks me whether I have come to watch the dance of bones, to pay homage, or to learn the craft. I answer very cautiously that I’m not sure what she’s teaching, and learn, to my relief, that she isn’t taking on new students anyway. She introduces herself as a master of the necromantic arts—not a practitioner of necromancy, she is careful to explain, but a necromantic artist creating works that serve to illuminate the human condition. I can’t honestly say that I like this particular piece, but that is almost certainly not the point, and I find Carmella friendly enough, if a bit pretentious. The sun is setting as I get back from Riverwood. Carmella has gone elsewhere, leaving her artistic creation to whatever fate that hungry wolves and the elements might have in store. The skeletons stand as before, their eye-sockets eerily aglow, but they make no move to attack, and I decide that, on the whole, I rather like them. They seem lost and naked and vulnerable in the fading light, and—oh dear Gods, I’m actually standing here admiring the monstrous installation that this woman has left sitting practically on my doorstep. What will the neighbors think? Do the neighbors exist? Will they ever emerge from Pinewatch? I do a bit more work before going to bed—“a bit” meaning that I build a fireplace for the main hall, a washbasin, and two beds—and then fuss around at my property for a couple more days, riding to Riverwood now and again to mix potions and buy materials. (I want to have an alchemy table in my home, but it requires quicksilver and I haven’t any left.) I fish in the lake; I make soup; I put in a little garden and plant vegetables and flowers; and I build more furniture—a bench for the entryway, sconces, barrels to store food and water, shelves, endtables near the beds, a dining table. I build a wardrobe for my room, and inside it I place the Radiant Raiment clothes that I wore for my audiences with Siddgeir. I don’t think I’ll ever wear them again. Then it occurs to me that Vorstag has nowhere to put his things, so I build a dresser for Vorstag’s room. Vorstag’s room. How odd it is that I’ve constructed my house as though he lives here already! (That’s what happens, I suppose, when a single individual working alone is able to build and furnish a large house from scratch in two days with no prior planning.) And is it more peculiar that I have unthinkingly arranged things so that he can live here, or that I have unthinkingly arranged for him to live in a separate room? His interest hasn’t faltered: he still tells me from time to time that he’s surprised that I’m not spoken for. So why am I not spoken for? Now that I have no need to marry for property, Vorstag is everything I could want: he’s human and male, and, if I’m going to be especially picky, also strong and brave; he’s a decent enough fellow who hasn’t killed any of my pets, and he’s quite good-looking if you like a man with facial tattoos and a jaw that can crack walnuts. In fact he’s pretty much out of my league, and the only reason I can think of for his liking me so well is that he has entirely mistaken my character. And who could blame him for getting the wrong idea about a woman who makes him a complete new set of armor and weapons before hauling him off to a bandit-infested mine to slaughter all the bandits so as to collect a reward from the Jarl of Falkreath himself? I hate to admit this, but Vorstag may be under the impression that I’m some sort of hero, someone held in high regard, and not merely a timid, all-too-ordinary woman who needs someone to protect her from bears while she picks mushrooms. There’s only one way to resolve this: well, there’s several, but instead of taking the sensible route of thanking Vorstag for his help and sending him back to Markarth so that I can settle into a peaceful but solitary life of gardening, fishing, and alchemy in my new home at Lakeview, I’m going back on the road. With Vorstag. I’ll need him for protection, and once he’s spent enough time with me to disabuse himself of any silly ideas he might have about my courage or social prominence, I’ll know whether he truly likes me for myself. Maybe we’ll go back to Dawnstar; I’ll need some quicksilver if I’m going to make that alchemy table, and none of the nearby smiths are selling it.
Middas, 1st of Frostfall. Falkreath Hold. 7:30 am. Started secret mission diary. Best to keep this entire proceeding under wraps—wouldn’t want word to get around that I, Nona Plaia, might actually be able to solve the stupid problems people are always bothering me with. Took special care with clothes today: chose new Hammerfell-style outfit—loose trousers and shirt, turban, matching boots. Feel suddenly strange and different—like a character, a woman of mystery! Also, like a perfect fool. Suspect this to be the ideal state of mind for starting an adventure. Also possible side benefit: uncharacteristic behavior may be ascribed to mental derangement rather than foolish, misguided attempt at heroics. Goat cheese: not the breakfast of champions, but will have to do. Feel I should be eating proper adventurer food like iron rations or lembas, but can’t find any for sale and am not entirely sure what either of those things are. 8:01 am. Bought all blisterwort, rock warbler eggs, swamp fungal pods, and wheat for sale at Grave Concoctions. Made 22 restore health potions and several combination fortify-and-retore-health potions, using up everything. Actually starting to run low on blue mountain flowers. Horror! 9:08 am. Starting out towards Markarth on horseback. Marcurio has been silent all morning. Still can’t stand the sight of him. 10:31 am. Attacked by sabre cat. Marcurio too far behind to help. Tried to gallop away on horse, but cat is faster. Dismounted and shot it with poisoned arrow, then managed to finish it off with sword and shield. Gained level. Still feeling shaky; lucky to have so many healing potions on hand. 10:47 am. Still riding far ahead of Marcurio. Would rather take life in my hands than spend time anywhere near him, apparently. Weather awful. 1:19 pm. Arrived in Markarth after pushing Snowberry very hard all morning. Had lunch in Silver-Blood Inn. Much relieved to find Vorstag still there: told me straight out that he’ll join me but first I have to let my comrade go. Could hardly kick Marcurio out the door fast enough. Marcurio brought up Amulet of Mara again while I was telling him to take a hike. Suppose I should be grateful to him for being so disagreeable—might otherwise feel guilty for abandoning him so suddenly, so far from Riften. 2:29 pm. Paid Vorstag his 500 septims and conducted brief, candid inquiry into his strengths and weaknesses as a fighter. Learned that he has no training with the armor he’s wearing: only knows how to use heavy armor. Can’t blame him, I guess—that goat-pauldron thing is pretty stylish—but a little frustrated, as equipping him properly will add greatly to the expense. Must also replace low-quality iron axe and shield he’s carrying. Vorstag responding to examination with insinuating comments about Amulet of Mara. Very pleased to discover that he has such fine powers of observation: Amulet is entirely hidden by current outfit. Wish I could get him to talk about something else, though; may be far less offensive coming from him than from Marcurio, but still inappropriate and distracting and not relevant to subject at hand. Unable to think of correct response to Amulet question owing to sudden attack of giddiness; am therefore ending conversation abruptly while giggling like schoolgirl. 4:39 pm. At smithy, putting final touches on shiny new panoply. Had to buy 22 steel ingots and 6 iron ingots from Ghorza; hope result is worth it. Superior-quality steel armor, full suit, complete with sword and shield. Would have liked to make Elven sword, but Ghorza has no quicksilver in stock. Now spending a few minutes checking handiwork for flaws, which requires minute examination of Vorstag. Can’t be too careful. 4:53 pm. Visited Hag’s Cure. Not much in the way of useful ingredients to be had, but mixed a few random things anyway. Force of habit—too easy to fall back into usual activities. So difficult to stay focused on the mission! Wish I could just get it over with; would love to begin the journey back towards Riverwood, but already too late to start. Waiting around starting to make me nervous. Must be something I can do to improve my chances. 6:34 pm. Talked to Calcelmo in Understone Keep. Suddenly occurred to me to bring magical forces to bear on the problem—not forces contributed by idiot Marcurio, of course; but enchanted items could be very useful. Sadly nothing to be had in the way of a Staff Of Hideous Fiery Death From A Safe Distance, but scroll of Conjure Storm Atronach has intriguing possibilities. Not cheap—634 septims for just one scroll. Bought it anyway after taking a moment to remember who and what I am: for the true hero is one who relies ever on superior skill, clever improvisation, and personal grit; but the NPC prefers to throw money at the problem. 7:43 pm. Silver-Blood Inn. Nothing to do but stare at Vorstag and listen to Frabbi and Kleppr snipe at each other. Could be worse. Fellow named Sam Guevenne wants to have a drinking contest with me. Sounds like fun, but mustn’t get distracted. 9:13 pm. Very bored, antsy. Nobody new in here to talk to. Going to bed early. Turdas, 2nd of Frostfall. The Reach. 5:21 am. Still dark, but am setting out anyway. Have a long way to walk—and I am walking; no more riding ahead. Need to look for ingredients, and will be safer close to Vorstag. Also wouldn’t hurt to get to know him a little better. 11:59 am. Ran into party of Forsworn fighting Imperial soldiers. Arrived too late to help the Imperials—all dead. Forsworn came for us immediately. Vorstag acquitted himself very well—kept them all away from me, plus showed good grace when I accidentally shot him. Have been gathering ingredients, but cannot find a single blue mountain flower growing anywhere. Somebody has already picked them all. 6:15 pm. Arrived at Embershard Mine—the front entrance. Vaguely recall finding a back entrance once with Jade, but can’t remember exactly where it was. Will be dark soon; don’t want to spend a lot of time looking. Front entrance will have to do. Final preparations: Vorstag fully armed and armored? Check. Vorstag ludicrously oversupplied with restore health potions? Check. (Am retaining combination restore-and-fortify-health potions for own use on assumption that Vorstag, like Jade, won’t drink them.) Nona armed and armored, with plenty of arrows? Check. Poisons ready? Check. Scroll of Conjure Storm Atronach ready and within easy reach? Check. Snowberry safely out of the way? Check. Voice of the Emperor ready in case of emergency? Perhaps a little drink of water, just to be safe. Check. That’s it. That’s everything I can think of. Do I feel ready? Not really. In we go! 6:48 pm. Interior very dark—torches in sconces barely adequate. Already starting to feel poorly prepared—need better light but must use both hands for bow. Vorstag says he doesn’t like the look of this. Hoped he would say something reassuring; now feeling even worse. Am scrutinizing tunnel very carefully but can’t see anything dangerous yet—just a very obvious tripwire, easy to avoid. Might make fleeing difficult, though. 7:10 pm. Reached a large chamber with a waterfall and what looks to be an underground lake. Found two bandits here. Wooden walkway passes over their campsite—angle is awkward, and with the poor lighting, was unable to get a good shot at them. Told Vorstag to move to other end of walkway; that got their attention. Killed them easily, although fight was a bit noisy. Doesn’t seem to have attracted any other bandits, though. Several clumps of mushrooms growing here; couldn’t hurt to harvest a few. Can’t get further into the mine without lowering a bridge—have to figure out how. 7:41 pm. Found side passage leading to little room with lever. Don’t like the look of this: lever room is better-lit than the tunnels, and noise of bridge coming down is bound to attract attention. Don’t want to get trapped in this tiny room with bandits coming. Decided to pull lever and immediately jump into water below. Ended up being a pointless maneuver, as nobody noticed the bridge coming down after all. Bandits very inattentive indeed. All to the good, I suppose. Looked very foolish clambering out of water, but Vorstag nice enough to forbear comment. Didn’t expect interior of mine to look like this; would be sort of pretty if I could see it better. Vorstag wonders whether it would be altogether foolish to stop for a bit and build a fire, bless him. 8:42 pm. Was spotted by a bandit while getting in position to shoot, but Vorstag killed him before he could hurt me. Dead man was carrying a key that unlocks the door to what appears to be the bandits’ treasure room. Not that much here, actually; perhaps the bandits stopped paying Siddgeir because they weren’t doing so well themselves. Leaving it all here, in any case; no way to know who it actually belongs to. 9:37 pm. Reached a very large chamber with another waterfall. Quite an impressive sight. Could see only two bandits, but in such a space, with visibility so poor, no telling how many more might be lurking out of sight. Determined this situation to be ideal for releasing storm atronach: a large open area containing an unknown number of foes. Retrieved ordnance from scroll casing without further delay; deployed atronach at bottom of chamber, below entrance walkway. Results were well beyond expectations—received quest update reporting bandit leader’s demise within seconds. Atronach has cleared the chamber of bandits. With leader dead, quest is technically complete: could back out now and leave the way we came. Will continue and secure the entire complex, though: Jarl Siddgeir expressly asked that all the bandits be eliminated. Must not give him any reason to be dissatisfied with my performance. 10:41 pm. Reached back entrance without further incident. All bandits dead—and Vorstag still has entire stock of healing potions! Will retrieve Snowberry and head to Riverwood—very close by; can spend the night there. 11:43 pm. Sleeping Giant Inn, Riverwood. So relieved to be able at last to get a drink and climb into bed. Success! Need to contain my elation—remember that the Jarl made no promises; may have to reconcile myself to having done his dirty work for him while gaining nothing to show for it. If so, must not be despondent. Will head to Falkreath in the morning, and, whether Siddgeir chooses to be generous or not, get back to normal life as soon as possible. Tomorrow will tell.
It’s morning in Solitude, and I find Atar, the executioner, standing next to my bed. Before I can get over my natural terror at waking up to see a man hovering over me with an enormous double-handed axe, he starts talking. “You wouldn’t be a sellsword, would you? I have a little problem you could solve.” It’s time to go. But first there’s the matter of poor old Angeline: she’s the local alchemist, and she is desperate for news of her daughter, who joined the Imperial Legion and hasn’t been heard from since being posted to Whiterun. I offer to speak to Captain Aldis for her, and he reluctantly tells me that the daughter was killed on a scouting mission. I feel terrible--not just bad for Angeline, but angry at Captain Aldis for being too much of a coward to inform a mother about the death of her daughter. Angeline is understandably heartbroken at the news, but she warms up to me quite a bit, telling me that my parents must be proud of me. I don’t know about that, but her glowing regard makes me feel better about using her cookpot to boil water. Then there’s Svari, Roggvir’s little niece, who is upset because her mother Greta has become very withdrawn since her brother was executed--she doesn’t even go to temple anymore. I find Greta at home; she tells me that she would feel bad about attending temple without a little religious keepsake from Roggvir--his amulet of Talos. This object proves challenging to acquire--challenging to my beliefs, that is: Roggvir has been placed in a coffin in the Solitude Catacombs, and reaching into that box feels ... ghoulish. (It doesn’t help that the game regards it as stealing.) I hesitate over this for a long time--but I promised Greta, and I promised Svari, and I’m not taking the amulet for myself, so I eventually do it. On the way out of the catacombs I bump into a crazy Breton woman named Gwyvane who talks in rhyming riddles about the end of the world--at least, I think that’s what she’s talking about; I can’t make any sense of it at all--but she doesn’t seem to want anything connected to any reality I’m familiar with, so I leave her be. I make a final round of the shops, visiting Radiant Raiment, where I buy a lot of clothes, including some Hammerfell-style garb (I have no qualms about culturally appropriating something with trousers). At the smithy, I find that my skill has progressed to the point where I can learn Elven smithing, so I take that perk, buy all of the available moonstone, and fashion myself a suit of Elven armor. Three-quarters of one, anyway; there isn’t enough moonstone to make the helmet. I’m immensely proud of my new armor: it’s wonderfully light, even lighter than leather, and I don’t care that it makes me look like a Thalmor agent who left her helmet in a tavern during a night of carousing and is now wearing a cheap hide substitute that she hopes her superiors won’t notice. I spend the rest of the afternoon at Angeline’s, preparing for my journey through the frozen north. I am very much afraid of the wild beasts that are said to inhabit the colder regions of Skyrim--snow bears, snow cats, snow wolves, snow trolls, you get the idea--and, lacking any sort of fighting prowess, I have turned to my one real area of expertise for something to keep me alive. I buy a recipe for paralysis poison from Angeline, but it calls for something called “briar heart,” which I have never yet seen. All is not lost, though: the other ingredient in the recipe, swamp fungal pod, is something I do have, and so I start mixing it with other ingredients at random, hoping to find another way to produce the paralysis effect. The first alternative that works--swamp fungal pod mixed with an imp stool mushroom--gives me a concoction that will not only paralyze my enemy, but heal its injuries; the very last thing I want in a poison. I keep trying, and find yet another combining ingredient: canis root. There are no unwanted side effects here, but there is the problem that canis root seems to be rather uncommon; it doesn’t often show up in shops, and I’ve never encountered it in the wild--or perhaps I have encountered it and failed to recognize it as anything special. I’ll have to keep an eye out. As I begin my journey the next day, I have reached level 12, learned another Alchemy perk, and, I hope, am ready to paralyze and then run away from anything that threatens me. I ride to Dragon Bridge, passing a pair of Redguard warriors harrassing a random woman while M’aiq watches impassively, then dismount and turn east towards Morthal. During the first hour or two I encounter nothing more alarming than a friendly dog that runs off into the woods to a shack in which his owner lies dead. A journal lying nearby informs me of the dog’s name--Meeko. I feel sorry for poor Meeko, living in a cold shack with only his dead master for company, but I can’t have a second dog, and so we go on without him. In the early afternoon the road brings us to one of those semi-ruined fortresses that are so often occupied by bandits; despite the steepness of the terrain, I have some hope of keeping enough distance to avoid provoking the inhabitants--the fort sits a little way off the road--and so we pass by, staying as far from the walls as possible. My caution turns out to be more than justified: the inhabitants aren’t bandits, they’re mages, and as I’m watching, one of them takes the opportunity to express his world view by shooting magic icicles at a bunny. I’m a little shocked by this display, not to mention the animated skeletons that I’m pretty sure I can see milling around in the courtyard, and only too happy to put this place behind me. As we enter Morthal, a little crowd is gathered outside the Jarl’s hall to complain about the Jarl--something about letting mages into their midst. I don’t know about their midst; I think they should be more concerned about those bunny-hating necromancers in the fort to the west, but what do I know? I talk to a Redguard smith named Al’Hassan who’s set up shop here--he claims to be a maker of those nifty curved swords, but he doesn’t have any for sale yet--and then head off to search for ingredients in the marsh. I find swamp fungal pods, deathbells, and giant lichen, and I’m not nearly done exploring by the time the light starts to fail and I feel it necessary to return to town. In the Moorside Inn, a salty tavern wench named Ingarte speaks loudly in support of the detested local bard, an orc named Lurbuk. She acknowledges that he has a terrible voice, but maintains that the harshness of his singing is highly appropriate for certain kinds of material. I don’t mind Lurbuk at all, actually; he’s very friendly, and he doesn’t sing anything for the entire duration of my stay, which puts him ahead of most other Skyrim bards. I ask Ingarte how long she’s worked here, and she tells me it’s been a while. “Ain’t a chair or stool hasn’t felt me bottom. Could say the same for the men,” she tells me merrily. But she is adamant in declaring the rumors about her spending all of her time “on her back” to be scandalous lies, insisting that she much prefers being on top. Also in the inn is an Argonian woman named Anum-La, dressed in black and carrying a sword. She tells me that she always wanted to be a warrior, but only males were ever recruited as soldiers in her Black Marsh village. She taught herself to fight and eventually joined a mercenary company, telling them that she wanted to become a knight. (She says she had no idea at the time what a knight actually was; she had heard the word used respectfully and thought that it sounded very grand.) Her fellows dubbed her “The Swamp Knight,” a nickname that has stuck with her ever since. As much as I’d like to stay a while in Morthal, gathering reagents and getting to know the locals--I like both Ingarte and Anum-La--I don’t want to delay Jade’s return to Riften, and so we set off again the next morning. We haven’t had to do any serious fighting since leaving Solitude--there’s been nothing worse than a few frostbite spiders, easily dispatched by Vigilance--but the road from Morthal to Dawnstar proves to be far more dangerous. Past the Stonehills mine, we run into bandits--only two of them this time, but these are much tougher than any previous bandits we’ve fought: one of them knocks Jade down almost immediately, and after I shoot him with a poisoned arrow, he pursues me relentlessly despite the best efforts of my dog. I eventually resort to calming them both down with the Voice of the Emperor and we all run away before they come to their senses. We get only a brief respite before a creature that I would have given a great deal not to see, a snowy sabre cat, comes charging out of the snow. Tawny sabre cats are bad enough--they’re fast, tough, determined, and their attacks are extremely quick and damaging--but the snowy variety is worse (snowy anything is worse in Skyrim). Jade once again is knocked down within a fraction of a second, and I immediately coat an arrow with my new paralytic poison and fire. The great beast falls over, stiff as a board, and I start fleeing--but I’m already out of breath as it recovers and catches up with me. I coat another arrow, with a slowing poison this time--this effect lasts much longer than the paralysis--but it doesn’t seem to help; even with the cat slowed, I can’t seem to put any real distance between us, despite Vigilance’s efforts to engage its attention. I turn to face it with sword and shield, and it takes off nearly all of my health with a couple of quick swipes. I backpedal, chugging potions, trying frantically to find something else in my inventory that may help--but by this time the creature has been injured heavily by poisons and dog bites and wild sword slashes, so I risk engaging it once more, and it finally goes down. On the move again after we feel calm enough, we chat with a genial fellow bringing a cow to a giants’ camp as a sort of peace offering, return yet another stolen object thrust into my hands by a random stranger to its owner, and finally arrive in Dawnstar, a mining town on the frigid northern coast of Skyrim. My first tour of the place is dispiriting: almost everyone I meet complains of recurring nightmares, and I see the Jarl badgering a pair of ex-Legionnaires with what amounts to accusations of treachery. The one object of interest is Quicksilver Mine: quicksilver is rare, and I’d very much like to acquire some, as it’s useful in Elven smithing. I go in, therefore, and chip away at the veins with a borrowed pick. But I run into a difficulty--I can’t find the person I’m supposed to give the ore to. I end up smelting it all, taking a couple of ingots for myself, and then leaving the rest near the smelter, where the presence of a stationed guard offers me some assurance that it will end up in the right hands. It’s getting late, and I enter the inn, which is mostly occupied by discontented miners. One man, a dreamily poetical fellow named Jaspar Gaerston, tells me all about his efforts at writing fiction. This seems at first to be an interesting change from the endless talk of nightmares, but Jaspar has a slow, whispery way of speaking, without much inflection, that renders his conversation insufferably dull to my ears. I wonder if a general cure for the local people’s restless nights might be found in listening to him; I find a few minutes more than adequate to induce a gently soporific state, and I soon retire to my room to enjoy its effects.
[Aside: Someone recently asked me the name of the mod that adds all of the extra NPCs that Nona meets--Jade, Hjoromir, and so forth. I could have sworn that I’d mentioned this mod, but somehow I neglected to. The name of the mod is Interesting NPCs, and I’ve added a description of it to my mod summary page.] “I wonder if there’s a potion for my curse,” Jade says pensively. I am in mid-stoop, reaching for yet another clump of mountain flowers, as she goes on to speculate that her problem might be curable with drugs, like a disease. I’ve never heard this from her before; I would like to think that it’s an indication of her confidence in my alchemical expertise, or perhaps just a random musing, but I can’t help but suspect that she might be growing a little discontented--not with me, I hope, but with the constant travel and danger. She doesn’t keep me in suspense for long. “Fredas!” she says brightly the next day, as we head down to Solitude’s docks on an errand for Evette San, who makes spiced wine and sells it in the city. “The Bee and Barb will be bustling.” Wistfully, she tells me that we should go back there and see how everyone is doing; I never cared for the Bee and Barb crowd myself, but I know she’s fond of Sapphire, her former Guildmate, and I can’t blame her for being homesick, even if it is for a hole like Riften. I was hoping to find someone to marry while in her company--I still don’t think there’s any substance to this curse she keeps referring to--but I decide then and there that we’ll be returning to Riften after I’ve had a good look around Solitude, whether I’ve become engaged or not. I persuade Vittoria Vici to release Evette’s spice shipment, and return to the city, where Roggvir’s body has been taken away. I’m sorry to say that Solitude did not make a good first impression: the execution happened yesterday, just as we were arriving. Roggvir’s crime was facilitating Ulfric Stormcloak’s escape after killing King Torygg; for that, he publicly lost his head. After that unpleasant spectacle, I was a little afraid to learn what else might be happening around here, for so often it seems in Skyrim that bad only leads to worse. But Corpulus, the owner of the Winking Skeever, had nothing more alarming to divulge than that a fellow from Dragon Bridge had come seeking the Jarl’s aid; that a deranged man was walking about in the streets; that a certain Jaree-Ra was looking to hire someone for an unknown purpose; and that the Bards’ College wanted new trainees. I heard nothing at all in this list to excite me, which was a great relief--exactly the reassurance I had hoped for. Corpulus even threw in a story about how the inn got its name: he used to have a pet skeever, and ... it winked. He’s a surpassingly dull man; I like him tremendously. I spent the rest of that first day just getting my bearings; the city was abuzz with talk of the execution, and after hearing the opinions of numerous inn patrons and passers-by I found a pleasant distraction across the street, in the form of Radiant Raiment, a clothing store. Although the ladies who run it seem to have adopted a business model under which their customers must be disparaged at every opportunity, that didn’t stop me from buying a dress and a hat and a new pair of boots and then vowing to return as soon as possible. Today, though, there’s much to be done in the form of little, innocuous favors for the locals. On my way back to inform Evette San of my success with her spice shipment, I meet Sorex Vinius, who claims to own the Winking Skeever. It turns out that he’s Corpulus’s son; the inn may not technically belong to him at present, but “it’ll be mine when he kicks off,” Sorex informs me with cheerful callousness. Like everyone else, he has an opinion on the execution, but his is personal, not political: “It couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy,” he sneers, explaining that, when they were younger, Roggvir discovered that Sorex had a crush on a girl named Vivienne, and thereafter used that knowledge to torment and humiliate him at every opportunity. Sorex is thoroughly uninterested in the rightness or wrongness of Roggvir’s actions in regard to Ulfric; as far as he’s concerned, Roggvir was an ass in his youth and maturity didn’t do much for him. I have just agreed to help Sorex out by delivering some rum to Falk Firebeard in the palace, when I bump into Taarie, one of the proprietors of Radiant Raiment, who tells me that if I’m going to the palace, I might want to rethink my outfit. She’s probably right; I’m wearing my brown, stained tunic, the one I like to do alchemy in, so I ask her for suggestions. “You’re really going to the Blue Palace?” she asks, pleasantly surprised, and immediately offers me a free new set of clothes if I’ll wear them in front of the Jarl and, if she likes them, tell her that they came from Radiant Raiment. This actually seems like a very silly thing to do, for two reasons: first, I’ve noticed that when I enter a Jarl’s hall, it is often the case that a very large, armed person will loom up in front of me and tell me in a menacing tone to stay away from the Jarl; bothering one of the most important people in Skyrim for the sole purpose of advertising a clothing shop seems like an excellent way to get myself tossed out on my ear. Second, I can’t help but doubt the sanity of anyone who would choose Nona to model their clothes, and I’d have to doubt my own sanity if I were to follow the suggestions of a crazy person. But I agree nevertheless, because: new clothes. My trip to the palace goes better than expected: I’m a little embarrassed by Vigilance’s constant barking--I really should have left him outside--but happily it escapes remark. As I arrive, the fellow from Dragon Bridge is petitioning Jarl Elisif for aid--something about unnatural magic and a cave; he gets less than he hoped for, owing to the skepticism of the court wizard, but Elisif herself seems nice enough--definitely not the sort to throw a stranger in prison for foolishly parading back and forth in front of her in an overly fancy outfit. So, after handing Falk Firebeard his rum, I screw up my courage and ask the Jarl whether she likes my clothes, and she actually responds positively, telling me that Radiant Raiment can expect to receive her order for some dresses in the near future. I chat with Nythriel, the court gossip--that’s not her official title, but it might as well be--who has all of the latest news on such lofty subjects as Thane Erikur’s sex life: she’s seen him leaving the dungeons carrying clanking bags of stuff--shackles and torture equipment, she has no doubt--and tells me conspiratorially that he’s not the one doling out the punishment, if I catch her drift. My desire to hear more is at odds with the feeling that the longer I listen to her, the harder I’ll have to scrub myself clean in the bath afterward. I’m enjoying Solitude, and there’s still a great deal to do here, but over the following days I become increasingly frustrated. My waterskins are empty, and in the morning I ride all the way back to Dragon Bridge to refill them. Seawater won’t do, and although Solitude has a well, Realistic Needs and Diseases won’t allow me to draw water from it. Then I spend the rest of the day searching the city for a cooking pot to boil my water in, and find nothing--not in the inn, not in the Bards’ College or Blue Palace kitchens, not in Castle Dour. (It’s a hazard of realism mods, and one I don’t know quite what to do with, that in their efforts to improve immersion, they create yet more absurdity. Why can’t I draw water from a well? Because having to drink water wasn’t a feature of the original game, and so a mod author who wanted it to be a necessity would have had to think of that specific possibility. There is, I have only now discovered, a mod that specifically allows users of Realistic Needs and Diseases to draw water from wells, but I’m reluctant to install yet another mod every time I come across some minor shortcoming in one of those I have already. Absurdity is a basic condition of Skyrim, and one I’m trying to embrace. And it is very, very trying.) Defeated, I return to the Winking Skeever, where Sorex notices that I’m wearing an Amulet of Mara and asks me quite plainly whether I’d be interested in having a life together. Having just spent several hours searching this stupid city for a cookpot, I am honestly flummoxed--not just by Sorex, whose tone even as he proposes leaves me in doubt as to whether he really likes me all that much, but by Solitude itself. I abandon the conversation with the question still hanging and head grumpily to bed. Tomorrow, I will do what my predecessor Nordrick thought best in these cases: I will stalk Sorex like some odious pervert and find out everything about him. I find out precisely nothing: Sorex spends the whole morning and most of the afternoon in the Skeever, either sweeping the floor, sitting at a table, or listening to Lisette’s singing. He doesn’t speak to anyone, except very briefly to me when I happen to get close to him. At around 4 pm, I follow him out of the inn and into the marketplace, where, for the next few hours, he hovers around the stalls, still without engaging anyone in conversation. Now, my travels through Skyrim have not exactly been a thrill a minute--in fact, I’ve avoided excitement rather assiduously--but I can honestly say that I’ve never had a duller, stupider day than this. Learning nothing new about Sorex, I spend the hours mulling over what I already do know: he’s a gruff, unvarnished fellow, even crass; a man of no invention, the sort who contentedly makes the same lame joke over and over (“The Winking Skeever isn’t just the best inn in Solitude. It’s also the only inn in Solitude!”); a man with no interesting opinions, but honest with himself, aware of his own resentments, as his story about Roggvir shows--a quality I find appealing for its very plainness. In fact, I’m struck by Sorex’s very ordinariness; I could almost believe that we were made for each other. But oh, Solitude, you were not made for me, nor I for you. It’s getting late as I break off my conversation with K’avald, a homeless Redguard whom I started talking to out of sheer boredom (he’s a happily deluded fellow who believes himself to be a wealthy nobleman, though he cheerfully accepts the coins of passers-by as “investments” in business projects which have yet to materialize) in order to follow Sorex back to the inn, where I eat fish soup for dinner as a cure for the mild case of Rattles that I’ve contracted from drinking dirty river water all day. Could I live in the Skeever, where there’s no room large enough to accommodate us both, save for that belonging to Corpulus, who seems unlikely to “kick off,” as his son delicately puts it, any time soon? Living in Solitude would force me to buy all of my food and drink, or light campfires in the street, or else cook in someone else’s home (someone in this city must have a cookpot), which all seems perfectly wretched; certainly I can afford to stop making my own food--alchemy is nothing if not remunerative--but living as a permanent hotel guest isn’t what I want. I just can’t do it. I’ve carelessly allowed myself to hope and dream, and in so doing have perhaps become overly choosy. But I can’t help it, now. I feel a terrible determination starting to take hold: I must have my own place. Somehow, I must become a homeowner--and maybe then I will marry Sorex Vinius, maybe not--but I will never be happy, Sorex or no Sorex, without a house of my own. I don’t like where this is going, what it’s likely to lead me to do. And I know that my friend Jade will likely blame my dissatisfaction on her mysterious curse. But I can look her in the eye and say this with total conviction: it’s not you--it’s Skyrim.
Lake Ilinalta, in Falkreath Hold, must be my favorite place in all of Skyrim: it’s beautiful and interesting and (so far) relatively safe. Following my trip down the mountain, I spend a little time hunting and exploring there; I’ve picked up the Eagle Eye perk (after my lessons with Angi, it seemed appropriate), so now, when I shoot an elk, it appears so much closer as it flees with my arrow sticking out of it. I even go diving and manage to find a sunken boat. There’s nothing left on it except for a steel battleaxe, which I struggle, pointlessly, to bring to the surface. I also find another of those tall, smooth stones, this one carved with an image of a kneeling woman. It looks so utterly harmless that I reach out and touch it, and its magic activates, shooting a ray of blue light into the sky. I now have the blessing of the Lady Stone, which helps me recover more quickly when I’m tired or hurt. Huzzah! So the day passes enjoyably enough, and on the following morning--the 17th of Heartfire, my one-month anniversary in Skyrim--I feel ready to begin my journey to Solitude. The first leg is uneventful and full of impressive sights--in fact there’s so much to see in the region west of Whiterun that I have great difficulty keeping to the road. I find a pool containing an enormous brown crab, or rather the shell of one; the actual animal is dead, but several of its smaller cousins appear to be using it for shelter. I find a tall stone monument (Gjukar’s Monument, my naming instinct informs me) shaped at the top like the head of a predatory bird. Somewhere in the same general area I successfully bring down an elk with two shots and gain another level. After lunch, I climb a hill and see Rorikstead in the distance; the road has long since been forgotten, and we scramble over gentle slopes and outcroppings to the farms lying just outside the town. In Rorikstead, the talk is mostly of war and agriculture; the town has so far been fortunate in the health of its crops, but its leader, Rorik, sees only a bleak future if the fighting continues. The local farmers are proud of their livelihood and serious in their work: they regard any interruptions, including my attempts at conversation, with deep suspicion, so I leave them to it. The most cheerful reception I get comes from a young man named Erik, who says he would become an adventurer if not for his father Mralki, the innkeeper. Erik reminds me slightly of Hjoromir, but he’s much more down-to-earth, and as it’s rapidly becoming obvious to me that Skyrim needs more adventurers, if the frequency with which people ask Nona to attempt dangerous tasks for them is any indication, I decide to intercede with his father. Mralki, as expected, is not at all fond of the idea, but he clearly wants Erik to be happy, and eventually accedes to his son’s wishes: he even agrees to buy some basic adventuring equipment. I stay the night in Rorikstead, walking out the next morning into the worst rainstorm I have yet experienced. The rain is so thick, the sky so dark, that I would be tempted to delay our journey for another day, if there were anything at all to do here. Rorikstead has no shops, no crafting equipment. I can’t see anything of the countryside in this rain, and the inn is almost literally haunted by a shut-in named Sonja, a former Stormcloak who has decided to withdraw permanently from the world rather than face--it isn’t clear what she’s facing, but she claims to have experienced all manner of disturbing visions, which she describes to me at considerable length. She’s a little worried about her ability to continue to pay for her accommodations, and talks with apparent seriousness about the possibility of marrying Erik so as to be allowed to stay for free. (In arranging for him to become an adventurer, I may have done him a far bigger favor than I could have imagined.) So Jade and I press on through the storm; and with the visibility as poor as it is, a party of bandits is practically upon us before I notice them at all. Jade and Vigilance immediately fight back--Jade has gotten more courageous of late, perhaps because of the dog, and that worries me; I’ve given her a couple of healing potions, and I only hope that she has the presence of mind to use them if needed. I can’t shoot effectively, as I’m practically blind without a lantern and I need both hands for my bow, so my companions kill two bandits without my help and rush off into the rain; I can’t tell where they’ve gone, where the sounds of battle are coming from, so I stand around uncertainly, holding my sword ready in case I am suddenly assaulted. But the noises fade, no more enemies show themselves, and my dog and my friend eventually return looking none the worse for wear, having either killed or routed the rest of the bandit party. Our troubles aren’t over, though. North of Rorikstead, the road leads to a bridge. Visible on the other side--even in this driving rain--is a structure not unlike the pair of wooden towers south of Falkreath with the walkway suspended in between, although here the walkway hangs over what looks to be a natural ravine. This place, too, is likely occupied by bandits--quite a few of them, judging by the additional buildings perched on the cliffs--and the name that drifts through my consciousness, Robber’s Gorge, seems to confirm my suspicion. After a few minutes of indecision--during which Jade gets struck by lightning right in front of me (fortunately, the lightning mod is set to produce non-lethal lightning strikes)--I decide to proceed by passing around the structure to the west, following the north bank of the river; this will require us to scramble over some rocky terrain, but I know that the road will, after passing through the gorge itself, bend back towards that bank. There’s only one problem: getting my companions to come with me without making a ruckus. I have little doubt of being able to keep myself inconspicuous in this weather, but neither canine nor human friends can be relied upon to stay calm and quiet. Leaving Snowberry on the south side of the bridge, where I hope she will not get spooked, I creep to the north end and watch the structure carefully. A bandit appears on the walkway; I seize the moment and release an arrow. It’s a perfect shot: the man is already dead as he tumbles onto the road and the storm masks the sound of his fall. My companions stay quiet, and I spend a few brief moments in dizzy elation at the thought that this will be easier than I expected. But, as I am adjusting my position, Vigilance suddenly gets excited about something and charges off into the rain, followed closely by Jade. Nobody has spotted me yet, and, as before, I have no idea where the actual fighting is taking place. I fear for my friends, but I doubt that going after them will be of any help; so I creep along the edge of the river, just as I was planning to do before, and hope for the best. On the west side of Robber’s Gorge I find a barrier of sharpened stakes; near that, a bandit is shooting at one of my companions. I have no trouble taking him out, and Jade and Vigilance manage to find me soon after. No other bandits come to investigate--either they have all been taken out, or those that remain are studiously ignoring the deaths of their comrades. Finding the road again, I leave Jade waiting a safe distance from the Gorge--she hates to be left alone, but she at least has Vigilance for company--and go back for my horse. I have some small difficulty getting Snowberry over the rocks near the bridge, but soon we are all together again and able to continue. In Dragon Bridge, as in Rorikstead, the war is an urgent topic: Horgeir fears that the bridge the town is named for, an important strategic crossing, could be destroyed in the course of the conflict; Azzada Lylvieve tells me angrily that neither the Imperial nor the Stormcloak scouts that have been by recently have shown any consideration for the town whatsoever--both stayed at the inn without paying and one even tried to have his way with Azzada’s daughter. I visit an outpost of the Penitus Oculatus (this is the Emperor’s personal security force) where an agent named Orenius tells me of his obsessive pursuit of an Imperial thief called the Raven of Anvil, who, it turns out, is his own daughter. (She sounds interesting, actually; according to her father, she is a very accomplished bard.) There’s probably enough time to reach Solitude before nightfall--not that daylight has a lot of meaning in this storm--but I’ve had enough slogging through the rain for today. In the Four Shields tavern, a Dunmer woman named Gilsi asks me whether I consider her attractive. I don’t, actually, although I’m too nice to say so, and at any rate her self-regard seems unassailable by the likes of me. The one whose esteem she actually covets is a wizard named Nelos, who apparently has run off with Eldawyn, the wine-obsessed Altmer woman I encountered in Whiterun. Gilsi tells me that their group, the Radiant Dark, is working to bring about a phenomenon called “The Long Night,” her explanation of which is just coherent enough to suggest that it would be a Very Bad Thing. Fortunately, Gilsi appears to have no thought for anything but Nelos and her own pride; I’m no magician, but I would assume that a drunk and an obsessive groupie are unlikely to be capable of whatever feats of concentration are required to bring on the Magical Apocalypse. Nelos’s power must be great indeed if he is to accomplish his sinister purpose while relying on the assistance of such silly allies as these. Before retiring, I chat with Skjarn, the local bard. The conversation is brief, as he is insufferably vain and arrogant, and quite unhampered by conventional notions of decorum. (I cut him off while he is crudely describing a sexual encounter he supposedly had with a woman who accused him of being a werewolf; perhaps I’m being overly nice.) But, after listening to all of his boasting, I can’t resist hearing him sing: against my better judgment, I request a performance of “The Dragonborn Comes,” a song I pretty much despise. Skjarn’s voice is not at all what I was expecting; his singing has a tentative, faltering quality--I would have expected him to be more of a belter--and his arrangement of this simple tune is startlingly good. If I was seeking to confirm my dislike, I failed, and I head to my room with the dissatisfaction of having been charmed by an obvious creep.
I get up the next morning no less determined to leave the Reach than when I went to bed. I march straight over to Bothela’s shop, buy most of her ingredients, sell some mixtures; my Speech skill advances from all of the buying and selling, and I am suddenly level 10. Level 10! If I were a hero, I would feel a sense of arrival, of personal significance. But seeing that nice round number is actually a little unsettling--once again, the world has gotten more dangerous, and I have not. Not much, anyway. At the Markarth stables, I buy a dog from Banning. “A war dog is good company and good protection,” he says, and I believe him. Yes, I know that dogs are a pain; they’re stupidly aggressive, they bark incessantly--but I can’t resist: I feel that I need more protection, that my friend Jade deserves more protection, and 500 septims is a pittance for something that will make us feel even a little bit safer. And Vigilance, the dog I’ve just bought, doesn’t look like a war dog; he’s got the same shaggy fur in his eyes, the same grinning face, the same hopeful, dopey expression as every other dog in Skyrim. In short, he’s completely adorable. My general plan is to head to Solitude, the seat of Elisif the Fair (High King Torygg’s widow) and the base of Imperial power--such as it is--in Skyrim. But there’s more than one way to do that: before yesterday’s fight with the Forsworn, I might have taken the road north past the mining town of Karthwasten, then headed east and then north through Dragon Bridge. But this entails a substantial journey through Forsworn-occupied territory. The other option is to go east, back the way I came with Ri’saad, and turn north toward Rorikstead when I reach the lake. This would be a longer walk, but most likely less dangerous, and it is therefore this route that I choose. The weather is fine as we set off, and not having a party of Khajiit to keep track of allows me to admire the landscape, which is startlingly lovely. I stop to pray at a roadside Dibella shrine, fish in a pool while Vigilance paddles around happily, and then leap hastily out of the water when I see a sabre cat in the distance. Vigilance, belying his name, hasn’t noticed a thing, and I manage to get horse, dog, and companion safely away without alarming anyone. A little later I meet an orange-skinned gentleman who claims some sort of association with the Daedric Prince Peryite; naturally I don’t care to inquire too closely, and the journey continues uneventfully until the weather suddenly turns foul and a complete stranger runs up, hands me a pair of faintly glowing hide bracers, and tells me to hang on to them or else. He then crouches down and attempts to sneak away ... in the same direction I’m already headed, so I just walk along awkwardly pretending not to see him. A little bit later another fellow runs up and asks me whether I’ve seen the first one. I immediately hand him the bracers, saying boldly, “I presume this [sic] Hide Bracers of Major Lockpicking belongs to you?” (Even if I weren’t naturally inclined to return stolen goods, how could I resist the opportunity to say something like that?) Bracers received, the fellow thanks me and informs me that he is going to track down that thief and murder him. The tracking doesn’t take long, as the thief is still crouching near enough to be seen even in this horrible downpour, and I hurry away before I can get caught in the crossfire. We reach the lake without further incident and make camp for the night--it’s not actually night yet, but in this blinding rain it might as well be: even with a lantern lit I can hardly see well enough to find a flat spot on the ground large enough for my tent. (Thank you, Realisitic Lighting Overhaul weather beta!) The very first thing I see when I awake the next morning is another campsite not a dozen steps from my own: despite my fellow camper’s having lit her own fire, I entirely failed to spot it last night. As I pack up my own equipment, taking in the scene--tall trees, buzzing dragonflies, sunlight playing on the surface of the water--I realize that I’m not ready to rejoin civilization just yet; I’m starting to see camping in a new light. Before, it was the self-sufficiency that appealed to me, and having extra time to forage for ingredients--but these advantages turned out to be largely illusory. I have to carry a load of wood around order to light my cooking fires (owing to the limitations of the game, I can’t just collect it from fallen trees), and it’s usually too dark at night to search for ingredients, so in the end I am neither self-sufficient nor productive. But there’s a far greater benefit to camping, one that I hadn’t previously considered: the prospect of getting the hell away from the craziness of Skyrim’s settlements for a while. Now that’s worth a few armloads of firewood! So I turn south instead of north. I spend only a little time in Falkreath itself--enough to put together another tent and camping bed (Jade hasn’t complained about not having her own, but I really feel that she should), buy several bottles of mead (for cooking), and try a few new ingredient combinations. I think there may be some real value in the principle of cosmetic similarity that I applied when concocting my conjuring-enhancing magic-suppressant: I caught some luna moths last night, and I combine their faintly glowing wings with matching faintly glowing chaurus eggs to produce--an invisibility potion! It has an unfortunate side effect (it drains magicka), but I’m not going to cry over losing a little magicka when I’m trying to hide from bandits or necromancers or who knows what. Lod the blacksmith asks me to help him find a dog that’s been hanging around town--he wants it as a pet--and so I walk around near the city gates to look. Almost immediately, a strange dog runs up and tries to persuade me to go on an adventure. (Even Skyrim’s dogs are not to be trusted, I see.) I tell it that I’m busy, and it runs off, but not before asking me to meet it outside a place called Haemar’s Shame. (Not likely.) I tell Lod that the dog didn’t pan out, and he’s grateful for my efforts, despite the extreme vagueness of my explanation. The weather has turned really bad again--I almost get struck by lightning while I’m wandering around--but I nevertheless leave Falkreath and head boldly up into the mountains. I am determined to enjoy the wild outdoors for as many nights of huddling inside an open-ended rain-soaked tent as it takes to achieve my bliss, so help me Divines. Past the towers where, during my previous visit, the bandits ran afoul of their own falling rock trap, I find a winding path climbing steeply to the south. By late afternoon it has brought me face-to-face with another small group of bandits. Vigilance acquits himself well in this sudden, savage fight, keeping two of them occupied while I kill the third, and despite the poor visibility, we are never in serious danger. The bandits have made their camp near a spring that feeds a lovely little stream; the beauty of this spot is marred only by some gruesome evidence of the sort of treatment we could have expected at the bandits’ hands, had they defeated us--a dead woman lying stretched over a fallen tree. Despite this unpleasantness, I set up our own tents nearby--If we go any further, I’m likely to lose the path in this rain--and we spend a miserable evening crouched around a campfire that illuminates nothing beyond our faces, with lightning crashing all around us. The next day is clear, and I’m eager to see where this path leads. As we climb higher and higher, the views get more and more spectacular; my enjoyment of them is interrupted only when I step unexpectedly on a bear trap. More traps are plainly visible on the path--someone living here is not inclined to welcome visitors, or has a serious problem with bears, or both. I hesitate for a moment, but no arrows fly at us from the higher slopes, and I’ve neither seen nor heard any bears; so after carefully setting off the other traps, I decide to continue, and we eventually arrive at a tiny, lonely house, perched almost at the mountain’s peak. The house belongs to a Nord woman named Angi. She wears ordinary clothing but carries a bow, with which she assures me very seriously that she will shoot me if I try anything stupid. Her story is straightforward and brutal: her family was murdered by a pair of Imperials, and she took revenge; afterwards, she moved as far from civilization as she could to avoid repercussions. I express my sympathy for her loss, which only irritates her. Her mood changes, though, when the conversation turns to the subject of archery: she asks me whether I know how to shoot, and in response to my modest assessment of my own abilities, offers to let me use her archery range for practice. We walk down to the range together, and she gives me some practice arrows, telling me to try hitting each of her targets in turn. The task is oddly thrilling--I’m doing simple exercises, and in no danger, but each time I succeed at one of Angi’s tests my skill with Archery improves. It’s a non-adventurer’s dream! The first three targets are easy to hit; the fourth is problematic, because it’s much farther away--distant enough that I can’t see the impact of my arrows, can’t tell a hit from a miss. I do manage to hit it after a few tries--Angi can tell, even if I can’t, and so she gives me a more demanding test: I have to hit each of the three nearest targets in a matter of a few seconds. It takes a few attempts, but I eventually succeed at this, too. The next challenge is harder still: I have to hit all four targets in less than ten seconds. I try. Over and over again, going through one bundle of practice arrows after another, I aim and fire at each target in turn, always going for the farthest one last, unable to tell whether my arrow has flown too high or struck too low. I spend the entire day doing this. Angi doesn’t get impatient, exactly; archery is clearly a passion for her, and she seems dedicated as a teacher. But she clearly doesn’t like me very much: she refers to me as “Imperial,” pronouncing the word in in the same tone that she might use when describing an unpleasant fungal growth, and often responds to my presence with nothing more than a brief, inarticulate noise, like an exasperated sigh somehow combined with a snort of contempt. At last, the light begins to fail, and I can hardly see the distant target at all, let alone tell how near my last shot has come to hitting it. Angi has made a move to walk away after each of my failures, and this time I let her go. I set up our tents near her house and snoop around a little while she stirs her cooking pot. There isn’t much to see. I read a book, The Gold Ribbon of Merit, that I find near her bed. It adheres to a rather obvious formula--a pompous archery expert instructs a stolidly inattentive pupil, who turns out to have been getting the better of the teacher all along--but the ending makes me smile. I wander back down to the archery range, and, idly curious about the actual distance to the farthest target, walk out to examine it close up. It is only then that I see my practice arrows: the target is made of hard, smooth metal, but the post that supports it is wooden, and my arrows have stuck there in a tight line. I’ve been aiming consistently too low. I go to bed in renewed hope, and wake up the next morning impatient to try again. My first attempt is slightly too slow; on my second, I nail it. Angi congratulates me warmly. She tells me that she’s enjoyed my company, that it’s nice to meet someone who isn’t out to rob you. (Which is a pretty low bar for friendship, but I have to agree with her.) And she gives me her bow, called simply “Angi’s Bow,” which appears to be a perfectly ordinary hunting bow, but to me is a marvel, a treasure--a unique item that I didn’t have to kill for, didn’t have to remove from a tomb or a cave or a dead body. Exploration in Skyrim is a slippery slope, fraught with risk; for visiting new places means finding new discoveries, and new discoveries can lead inexorably to adventure. But today I feel vindicated: I’ve struck out into the unknown and found no mysteries, no quests, no heroic deeds to be done--nothing more or less than a good book, a good lesson, a good friend.
I know that I’ve reacted a little hysterically to the obvious failings of the various places I’ve visited--the rampant crime in Riften, the rampant racism and serial murders in Windhelm--but I can’t help saying it: Markarth scares the shit out of me. To begin with, there was that murder that occurred just as I entered the city gates, and the note that some stranger slipped into my hand in the aftermath. I have only just read it (I was so tired last night that I didn’t even remove my armor before falling heavily onto my hard, stone bed) and it says “Meet me in the temple of Talos.” It isn’t even signed. Kleppr, the proprietor of the Silver-Blood Inn, spends most of his time exchanging venomous insults with his wife, Frabbi, but he provides me with the local news when he can spare a moment, and it’s none too reassuring. The Hall of the Dead has been closed for mysterious reasons. A Vigilant of Stendarr is in town, convinced that some sort of daedra worship is going on. A fellow named Degaine got kicked out of the temple of Dibella. I’d love to hear more about that last item, as it sounds like just the thing to take my mind off the first two (and last night’s events), but Kleppr either doesn’t know or is unwilling to divulge any juicy tidbits. The bodies outside have been cleaned up (and put where, I wonder, if the Hall of the Dead is closed? Or is its closure somehow related to last night’s killings?) and the marketplace is open. I meet the Vigilant of Stendarr, who questions me about the house he’s investigating. I’m relieved to be able to say with complete honesty that I haven’t seen anyone enter or leave and I don’t know anything about it. Hastening away before he can ask anything else, I run into Clario Moorsley, a pioneer in the fields of culinary alchemy and magic-enhanced cookery. I’m fascinated by his work, especially the former kind--Nona would love to learn to make potions that are delicious as well as effective--but Moorsley is maddeningly reluctant to dispense any useful details, and in fact his discoveries sound less appealing the more I hear about them: apparently his potions are rather weak, and frequently have undesirable side effects (the price of adding extra ingredients to enhance the flavor). But the idea has promise nonetheless: a master alchemist should be quite capable of eliminating the side effects of extra ingredients--that is, removing harmful effects from medicinal concoctions and beneficial effects from poisons. Clearly Moorsley, for all his self-assurance, has not actually reached this level of skill. In the cavernous Understone Keep, which is so dark that I have to carry a lantern, I hear a heated exchange between Verulus, the priest of Arkay, and Thongvor, a member of the Silver-Blood family that seems to run things around here. Thongvor is expressing his very strong objections to the closure of the Hall of the Dead. Verulus assures him, and then me, that everything is being taken care of and that it will reopen soon. Well, that’s enough for me; the authorities clearly have the problem in hand, and what more need be said? But Thongvor is less than satisfied. I don’t linger for long enough get into it with him, though, for two reasons: first, he seems like an asshole, and second, I happen to notice some Thalmor out of the corner of my eye and suddenly feel as though I’m about to be caught doing something wrong. I almost have to reassure myself that I’m not doing anything wrong; I’m just carrying a note from someone who wants to meet me in the temple of Talos. Of course, going to the temple could easily be mistaken for worshiping at the temple, and carrying a note that mentions a meeting at the temple could be interpreted as.... It doesn’t matter what, frankly, because Ondolemar, the leader of the Thalmor in Markarth (and Jerulith’s former superior) seems little disposed to make fine distinctions. In fact he speaks to me in a tone of such staggering contempt that I pretty much depart the palace immediately. I wasn’t planning on going to the temple of Talos in any case, but now I’m a little afraid of having the note in my possession. But I can’t burn or eat it, and I don’t want to leave it somewhere where it could incriminate someone else. Less than an hour after I’ve left Understone, I’m asked to return--Bothela, the sardonic old woman who owns Markarth’s alchemy shop, wants me to deliver some medicine of a highly personal nature to Raerek, the Jarl’s steward, so I do that and get out of there again quickly as possible. Raerek thanks me and pays me for my help and “discretion.” (Who better to keep a secret than a silent protagonist?) My experiments at Bothela’s shop don’t yield any new breakthroughs, although mixing and selling my regular standbys gets me to level 9. I add another Alchemy perk to my repertoire. With well over five thousand septims jingling in my purse (or whatever container it is in which I contrive to stow thousands of septims conveniently on my person), I decide to practice my smithing, and I have ample time, as I work on this skill, to listen to an Orsimer smith named Ghorza gra-Bagol complain about her apprentice, Tacitus. Despite her harshness, I like Ghorza, partly because she really seems to care about her work, and partly because of her winningly un-orclike conviction that the best way to help Tacitus learn would be to provide him with instructional books. Now, I know that actively searching for the book that she wants will send me into a monster-infested cavern or dungeon or something of the sort, but Ghorza phrases her request so gently--“if you find a book called The Last Scabbard of Akrash, could you bring it to me?”--that I can’t help agreeing to keep an eye out. Why not? I found that Conjuring book lying on a stone table in the wilderness--I might well find this volume somewhere equally unlikely. As much as I enjoy my time at Ghorza’s forge, it doesn’t say much for the social environment of this city that its brightest spark is a hard-voiced, apprentice-bullying smith. The Silver-Bloods are everywhere, and everyone who isn’t actually a part of the clan seems to be either working for them, terrified of them, or both working for and terrified of them. I flee the city the next day, desperate for a few hours in the open, tension-free air. But my outing is an almost unmitigated disaster: I keep jumping into streams to fish and finding the water so swift-flowing that I spend all of my time struggling against it rather than catching anything. In a particularly unfortunate incident, Jade wades in with me and becomes obsessed with killing a slaughterfish that I have somehow antagonized. The strength of the current prevents her from actually making contact with it, but she refuses to abandon the attempt, and I’m unable to help as I can’t see the offending creature at all. (I only know it’s a slaughterfish because its name keeps drifting onto my display, indicating that it is somewhere in the area and it is hostile.) Leaving Jade to her swim-off with the invisible fish, I clamber out of the water and--as if I haven’t already shown enough incompetence for one day--immediately start shouting in my most commanding voice at nobody at all. (I do this because I was actually trying to check how hungry and thirsty I was, but I had accidentally left my Voice of the Emperor power selected as my special ability, rather than the usual Check Needs.) Less than five minutes later, I am attacked by a party of Forsworn, the crazed Breton tribespeople who live in the wilds of the Reach, and, owing to my having used up the only ability I have that would allow me to get safely away from them, am beaten to within an inch of my life during the ensuing fight. Bleeding, bloated with all the healing potions I’ve drunk, I flee back to the relative safety of Markarth’s walls before I can embarrass myself further. Banning, at the stables, asks me to deliver some meat for the dogs in the keep, and I take a moment to catch up with Wander-Lust, the Argonian wanderer I first met in Riften. Jade rejoins me and we spend a dismal afternoon and evening listening to Kleppr and Frabbi snipe at each other while their children pretend not to hear. I eventually join a fellow named Lundvar in toasting his brother, who was slain while defending against a Forsworn attack. Lundvar describes his brother in glowing terms--and if he was even half as brave and diligent as Lundvar believes, he must have been an excellent fellow indeed--but the more I hear about the events surrounding his death, as Lundvar says he heard them from someone named Wuuthmar, the more it appears that he must have been betrayed by one of his fellow guardsmen. The particulars of the story--oddities in the behavior of the Forsworn, a malfunctioning Dwemer arbalest, timing details--are all highly suspect. But Lundvar waves away the merest suggestion that there could have been foul play. I’m starting to feel as though I can’t trust anyone here--not even myself. Murders, daedra worship, Thalmor, Silver-Bloods, corrupt guards, Forsworn, and will these innkeepers never stop fighting? I need to get out of this city, and I’m not entirely sure I’ll survive the departure. A big fellow named Vorstag offers to protect me for the price of 500 septims. It’s highly tempting, and not just because he’s easy on the eyes--but I can’t have more than one companion at once, and stranding Jade here while I run off with this beefcake-for-hire would be an impossibly low thing to do. We’ll just have to chance it without him; I’ll check my potion supplies, and tomorrow we’ll ride. And I might actually ride: I hate to leave an area without making a thorough examination of the ingredients that grow there, but the Reach is just too dangerous.
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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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