Falkreath has been a little disappointing: I’ve haven’t found any good camping spots or shot any elk, I’ve nearly gotten myself killed (again), and I haven’t received any marriage proposals. Much of this is entirely my own fault, of course, but that doesn’t make me feel any better about it. To top it all off, I have only just noticed the book that’s been lying next to my bed during my entire stay in Dead Man’s Drink: it is Nords Arise!, a frenzied call to all those “true to your blood” to join the Stormcloaks and fight for Skyrim in Ulfric’s name. I can’t say I’m pleased about it. It’s not that I hate the Stormcloaks--I don’t; the actual soldiers I’ve met have seemed like decent, courageous people, earnestly concerned for their future. And while I, true to my own Imperial blood, am inclined to trust that the Emperor is acting for the greater good, I can hardly blame those Nords who feel betrayed by an Empire that allows the Thalmor a free hand to persecute Talos worshipers in Skyrim. But I am neither a soldier nor an admirer of Ulfric, and the placement of this feverish bit of propaganda right by my bed--though it could have been a mere oversight, perhaps a failure to clean up after a previous guest--seems like a personal rebuke. So, despite the ready availability of delicious cheese wheels in this town, I’ve decided to move on again. My confidence in this decision is shaken slightly when I run into Isobel in the tavern, and, shortly after we start to converse, she quite unmistakeably begins flirting with me. “Here I was, trying to come up with the nerve to come and talk to you,” she says. Not entirely trusting my own instincts in this matter, I steer the conversation to the most neutral topic I can think of--her home city of Kvatch. She speaks affectionately of her childhood for a while before returning to her favorite idea, that of smithing arms for true warriors. I tell her that her notions seem very romantic, and she agrees, confessing that she used to dream of being the wife--and personal smith--of a great hero. “Maybe I’ll meet the next great legend right here in Falkreath,” she says. “Maybe that might be you.” I tell her that I prefer quiet times and chat; she seems surprised. But, to my immense relief, she ends the conversation cheerfully and without awkwardness--though also, as far as I can tell, without shedding her alarming notions about my heroism--and I am left free to depart Falkreath unencumbered by the affections of this amiable, talented young artisan. No-one has yet overestimated me quite as flatteringly as she has, and I should find it hard indeed to refuse an offer of marriage from her, if she were to make one, were I not certain of being a cruel disappointment to her as a spouse. Jade and I head north, stopping briefly at Half-Moon Mill to catch fish in the lake. We also find a little lodge named Hunter’s Rest perched on a small, steep hill, and admire the view for a few minutes before moving on. Turning west towards Markarth, we meet some Imperial soldiers--going in the opposite direction, unfortunately--and, further along, we find an overturned wagon. Its driver, a Khajiit merchant, lies face-down in the dirt nearby, and there are large, nasty-looking traps set in the middle of the road. I’ve done well, for once, by dawdling at my usual flower-picking pace: those traps might have done serious damage to my horse, had I been riding. I carefully spring the traps; the Khajiit, sadly, is beyond help. A fortress high on the cliff overlooks this road, and after staring up at it for a few moments, uncertain as to the disposition of the inhabitants, I decide to take the same approach that worked so well with Valtheim Towers--to get on Snowberry’s back, gallop past this fortress as fast as possible, and hope not to be struck by any stray arrows. I have just mounted up in order to put this plan into effect when I am overtaken by a group of Khajiit. Their leader, Ri’saad, is the same fellow I purchased a dress from near Whiterun, and after the usual greetings are exchanged, it seems very natural to dismount once again and walk along with this cheerful company. They are all delighted to see me (they keep telling me that it is an honor to have me with them--which might be nothing more than a buttering-up technique to induce me to buy things, but it’s very pleasant all the same) and awed by Skyrim in general--its high mountains, its spectacular views, its frigid air. Nothing untoward occurs as we pass below the fortress, and Ri’saad and his compatriots deal swiftly with subsequent threats (skeevers mostly) using swords and spells. The company’s easy camaraderie is intoxicating; I find myself weaving in among them, mimicking their movements, searching the landscape for the objects of their chatter. And I feel a strong desire to be useful, to contribute to the group’s safety--so much so that when a chaotic melee builds up around yet another vicious skeever, I ready my bow, take aim, and--to my utter mortification--shoot a Khajiit woman named Atahbah in the leg. She immediately turns around with a snarl and attacks Jade, who responds with a swipe of her own dagger. My sense of happy fellowship collapses almost instantaneously into despair: I put my own weapon away and stand passively, hoping vaguely to end the conflict even as I envision a more likely outcome, in which I am hacked and magicked to death by a justifiably furious merchant company--and all because of a skeever, a skeever, that would have been more easily dispatched without my intervention. But, miraculously, they respond to my gesture in kind: the Khajiit sheathe their weapons. Jade puts away her knife. Atahbah warns me that if provoked, she will use her claws--a pretty mild reaction, considering--but in the next moment all of her ill-feeling seems to vanish, and we continue on our journey. But something is missing, now--if not in the behavior of the Khajiit, which is unfailingly courteous, then in my own head, where my sense of shame will not allow me any peace. I keep pausing to look at the view or harvest the juniper berries that grow in these parts, and the Khajiit get further and further ahead. It’s a long way to Markarth, a much longer walk than I had anticipated, and by the time the light is starting to fail I’ve lost sight of Ri’saad entirely. I plod on through the darkness, lantern in hand, and a figure looms up before me, demanding that I hand over my money. I consider--briefly--giving it to him; it’s been a very long day, I’m still angry and ashamed--I just want this journey to be over and done with, and I really don’t fancy fighting this rude fellow in near-pitch darkness with a lamp in my hand. But being robbed allows me to focus my ire on a new object, and I only get angrier as I stare at his outfit: he’s wearing Imperial Legion armor. He’s robbing me, at swordpoint, in Imperial Legion armor. I feel insulted; I wonder whether this generally works--are the locals are so jaded as to believe that, when they encounter a thief dressed like this, they’re being robbed by an actual legionnaire? Yes, most likely, they are. And who knows, maybe he is a legionnaire. (He’s also a Khajiit; it’s like he’s bringing two sides down at once.) I’m too tired and angry to think about it any longer; I draw my sword and he goes down more quickly than I would have expected. I find Ri’saad’s group setting up camp outside the city, and it’s already so late that I decide to share their campsite. I buy a lot of stuff from Ri’saad--my clumsy attempt at an apology--including some tasty rabbit stew for dinner. But after I’ve set up my tent and camping bed I find myself quite unable to sleep. The reason for this, apparently, is that I can’t sleep while enemies are nearby. I have no idea where these enemies might be--perhaps there’s an irate mudcrab lurking near the river--and so, after issuing a few loud, self-pitying groans in the direction of the sky, I pack it all up again and walk the final stretch into Markarth itself. As I enter the gates, a man pulls out a dagger and stabs a woman in the marketplace, right in front of me. There is some shouting about the Forsworn; the guards draw their weapons and kill the murderer. It happens very quickly. Someone thrusts a note into my hand, saying that I must have dropped it. The nearest guard tells me to leave; the guards will handle everything from here. Whatever. I’m going to the inn.
0 Comments
How beautifully blue the sky, The glass is rising very high, Continue fine I hope it may, And yet it rained but yesterday. To-morrow it may pour again (I hear the country wants some rain), Yet people say, I know not why, That we shall have a warm July. Hello, people who for some unfathomable reason enjoy reading about the life and times of a very boring person in Skyrim! Mewness here. This isn’t a Nona post; I’m just announcing some minor changes that are (possibly) on the way. First, I’m going to remove the Feedburner widget on the right side of the page. As far as I can tell, only one person has subscribed, and I believe that this is someone who signed up because I asked them to test it for me. If anyone is actually deriving some benefit from this thing, please let me know. I am also regarding the column of links to individual posts with an increasingly disapproving eye: I’d love to put tuck these into collapsible lists, but I am too much of an html duffer to do so. Second, I’m a little disenchanted with Climates of Tamriel--this is the mod that produces the weather effects and cloud textures in my game--and I’m thinking of replacing it with the Realistic Lighting Overhaul weather plugin, currently in alpha. This would cause a noticeable difference in my screenshots: the sunny weather would be a bit less bright and washed-out looking, with a bluer sky and more vibrant colors in general; severe rainstorms and snowstorms would have a darker sky (which might lead to problems in getting the screenshots to come out at all). Sadly, CoT’s marvelous cloud textures and sunsets would also go away. Here are some rough comparison shots. (I can’t do exact comparisons, because Climates of Tamriel uses its own weather patterns and takes a while to worm its way into the world, so simply reloading a game with the mod switched on or off doesn’t necessarily show the same weather.) All of these screenshots were taken around noon, game time. This is what sunny days currently look like for Nona. I find the quality of the light in this shot generally pleasing--the contrast is perhaps lower than is entirely realistic, but I don’t actually want to feel as though I have to squint at my monitor as I would squint outside on a sunny day, so that’s fine. But the scene has a slightly washed-out look and the sky is rather flat. Shadows look much darker in screenshots than they do in the game, so if I switch to the RLO weather alpha, there are going to be some pretty strong shadows, like this. But everything looks more vibrant than it does under CoT, and I like the color of the sky. Pity about those clouds, though. Also, the grass on the left side of the screen looks completely different. I honestly have no idea why. This is just bad, in my opinion. It looks more like an explosion of blinding light than a snowstorm. At one point, Nona was considering heading up to Dawnstar. Having to look at weather like this was a strong argument against doing so. Here’s a somewhat snowy day in the RLO weather alpha. Different, eh? And here’s a blizzard in the RLO weather alpha. Yes, this really was taken at noon, and I had to adjust the levels considerably in order to get anything to show up in the shot at all. Nights are also very different--under the RLO weather alpha, clear nights are fairly bright, and cloudy nights are just about pitch-black. Under Climates of Tamriel, the sky stays fairly bright even on a cloudy night. I can’t get nighttime screenshots to look like anything much, though, so I won’t show any comparisons here. Making this change brings with it certain problems--the replacement mod is in alpha, so it’s going to change from time to time, and the quality of the light won’t necessarily be consistent. I also don’t like the way that the clouds look against the more brilliant blue sky. If anyone has an opinion on this, I’m happy to hear it. Finally, if you are a regular reader and haven’t yet posted a comment, liked Nona on Facebook, or breathlessly extolled my brilliance on a web forum, please do something of the sort. (Breathless extolment not actually required.) I can’t tell how many people are actually reading, as opposed to clicking a link, waiting for the page to load, and then promising themselves never to visit this blog again while wishing they could have those two minutes of their life back. Hearing from people who like this really does give me the warm fuzzies and motivate me to keep posting; if, on the other hand, you’d rather I just stopped writing this pointless drivel already, silence is the best method.
The countryside of Falkreath Hold is lovely; it’s a shame the weather is so terrible--it’s almost always grey and thundery, threatening to rain if not actually raining, and with poor visibility owing to the mist. There’s also the problem of a general lack of cooking pots; I’m now equipped to make my own campfire to cook with--which is precisely what I do--but it seems a little uncivilized to do this in town, and it’s difficult to find a good spot outside the town, one that isn’t too far away, but is flat and clear enough that the campfire doesn’t look as though it is perched weirdly on a slope or about to catch on to some nearby trees. Another problem is the lack of streams in the area: there’s no shortage of water in Falkreath itself, of course, but finding water is a problem if I want to camp out (and I do! I will endure the tedium!), so I spend the next couple of days exploring the region until the early hours of the evening, and then, failing to find a good place to camp, I scurry back to a warm bed in Dead Man’s Drink as fast as Snowberry’s legs can carry me. I start my morning with a large slice of goat cheese (it’s tasty, filling stuff--an excellent meal to fuel a day of hiking in the mountains--and Solaf seems to stock cheese wheels regularly in his store; if I didn’t have to boil water I could give up on cooking entirely), and then Jade, Snowberry, and I set off to explore the paths in the highlands south of Falkreath. To the southwest of the city we find a cave not far from the road that I instinctively name Halldir’s Cairn. There is nobody about, but a couple of burial urns sit outside, mostly in pieces, which is not a good sign. The one intact urn contains a few coins and a gem that, having no desire to violate an old Nord burial ground, I leave as they are. But I can’t just walk away from the place; there are too many mushrooms growing there. After harvesting everything within reach, I’m even willing to venture inside. Jade and I enter very quietly and cautiously, and I am rewarded with the finest, most impressive crop of fungus I have ever seen--half a dozen different kinds growing in large clumps everywhere I look. The interior of the cave is otherwise not reassuring: the wide ledge we’re standing on overlooks a spacious chamber with a column of intensely blue light rising from some sort of rock formation--the cairn of the place’s title, no doubt--in the middle. I neither see nor hear any creatures moving about, but there are bedrolls on the floor, I don’t like the look of it at all, and Jade is clearly uncomfortable. She soon expresses her dissatisfaction in an outburst that uncannily echoes my own thoughts: “Did something just touch me?” she says, her voice rising sharply. “I think something just touched me! I really don’t like caves.” I collect as many mushrooms as I can without climbing down from that high ledge; there are even more below, but my daring will only take me so far. Leaving the cave and continuing west, we arrive at an arch that stretches over an otherwise unremarkable section of road. Jade and Snowberry refuse to follow me though it, and I realize that we are very near the Skyrim-Hammerfell-Cyrodiil border. For some reason, I find myself, like my friend and my horse, unable to go further: it is almost as though I am blocked by an invisible wall--but this sensation is surely the work of my own fancy. Might not this “wall” be an obstruction built up entirely in Nona’s mind? She lives in Skyrim now; she has no desire to venture into unknown Hammerfell or return to familiar Cyrodiil--in fact, she has objections to both. Her home is here--somewhere--and she is bound to find it eventually. An orc charges us, sword swinging, as we head back east, and despite my exaggerated caution (I am, as usual, reluctant to strike for fear of hitting Jade as she and our opponent circle each other), we manage to kill him. Another pointless death--what is it that drives these anonymous orcs and high elves and others to forsake their communities and friends and attack random strangers? What would it take to reduce someone like me to a state of such mindless aggression--catastrophic career failure? The tragic, accidental death of my dear friend Jade? The loss of my horse? I have a brief, terrifying vision of a future in which Nona, maddened by grief, clad in weirdly mismatched armor and now known only as “Imperial,” assaults some innocent stranger in a senseless explosion of violence. Southeast of Falkreath, a bridge hangs over the road, suspended between a pair of wooden watchtowers. Seeing no guards in attendance, I crouch suspiciously in a shadow nearby while I scan the area for bandits. Jade’s powers of observation prove superior to mine: she’s already running toward one of the towers by the time I’ve spotted the man that provoked her. He activates a device at one end of the bridge, causing a trapdoor to drop; large black boulders tumble down onto the road, missing both me and Jade--me because I am still a considerable distance away, and Jade because she is already well to the side. But the man who released them seems to lose his balance while aiming his bow; he topples off the bridge, falls to the road, and is crushed by one of his own boulders. Jade and I wait tensely for a few moments, but nobody else appears on the bridge or the towers. Approaching carefully, I find the reason why--directly beneath the bridge lies a second bandit crushed under a rock. Not only was the first fellow stupid enough to die in his own booby-trap, but he had very likely seen the same thing happen to the last guy. It’s getting late, though--having liberated these watchtowers without the ugly necessity of unsheathing our weapons, we’re left with little time to enjoy the view, and head back to town rather than camping out. It’s raining quite hard when I get up the next day, so I spend the morning divided between mushroom experiments at Grave Concoctions and smithing practice at Lod’s forge. But I soon get bored in town; I’m not finding anyone new to talk to, so I sell my potions, browse the general store, and then off I go exploring again, despite the weather. Jade and I find a dilapidated fortress to the west of Falkreath; turning north to avoid it, we discover a shack that my naming instinct tells me belongs to someone named Lorne. This Lorne, an alcoholic judging from the number of mead bottles piled on and near his bed, is nowhere about, and though his place appears to be otherwise well-kept, it is not sufficiently rainproof to tempt me to wait around hoping to meet him. As we leave the shack, a black-robed necromancer and a dead-eyed Imperial woman come running out of the woods to attack us. The battle gives us little trouble--this wizard, like the other spellcasters we have fought so far, favors frost magic, which Jade (being a Nord) is highly resistant to; she has no difficulty keeping him occupied while I dispatch the woman, who turns out to be a reanimated thrall. Her master goes down soon after, and I spend a mournful moment contemplating my nameless former countrywoman, who was wearing a ragged outfit similar to what I had on when I first arrived, and in death has become no more than a faintly-glowing pile of dust. Here, perhaps, is the worst possible fate that might befall someone like me, given sufficiently bad luck: even the mindlessly aggressive, exclusively-race-identified thugs that I’ve encountered near roadsides have more dignity than this poor soul. Not far from where the bodies fell, we find a rough stone bench; it’s covered in gruesome remains, but there’s also a book, 2920, Frostfall, v10, that I make the mistake of reading. In thoroughly uninspired prose, it tells part of the story of a man so bitterly embarrassed by his own failures that he tricks a coven of witches into participating in a (surely ill-advised) plot to kill his former lord, the living god Vivec, who was one of the rulers of Morrowind in the Third Era. (It also improves my Conjuring skill.) I don’t know what, exactly, makes this book dangerous, but its position on this altar tells me that it is, and for a moment I consider removing it as a sort of public service (Nona saves the world from lackluster reading material, one volume at a time!). In the end, though, I decide that I would rather not have the nasty tome in my possession. Further on from the altar is a large, raised mound, and as I am speculating as to its purpose I notice a green, glowing figure in the distance. I’m developing a truly annoying and dangerous habit of continuing to gawk at things even as Jade starts to panic: it turns out that there are two green, glowing figures, neither of them disposed to be friendly. One of them sends a stream of glowing motes toward me that, as I turn and flee, causes my health to drain at an alarming rate. I run as fast as I can, chugging healing potions as I go. Nona is no sprinter--all of her efforts at physical improvement go into bolstering her health, which seems only reasonable, given how many poisonous ingredients she eats experimentally--and in almost no time at all she is utterly exhausted and the spriggan(s) are still chasing her. She gets hit with another draining attack, chugs healing and stamina potions, keeps running. It feels as though I’ve been running forever as I arrive back in Falkreath; I must have consumed a good third of my supply of restoratives. Jade soon catches up, and we stand in the rain, catching our breath.
It’s only my first night camping out, and I’m already bored silly. Unless I can find something to occupy my evenings, I’m not sure how I’ll cope. I suppose I could just sleep for 12 hours at a stretch, but that seems like a waste, and there’s no piece of equipment I can make or buy--no pocket alchemy lab or portable anvil--that could help me fill this time productively. (I know I’m starting to sound like some sort of obnoxious workaholic here, and there’s not a lot to say in my defense, although I did consider bringing some books with me. But even that wouldn’t help, as time in the game freezes when you open one.) The man letting us share his fire--a fisherman I’ve come to know only as “Fisherman”--is friendly enough, but not the most stimulating conversationalist. (His years of fishing in these parts have apparently left him with nothing to say; perhaps he’s been alone for so long that he no longer knows how to entertain a pair of young ladies.) It’s too dark to swim or gather ingredients, and I’ve already heard Jade’s entire life story several times. Not that it’s all bad--it’s a lovely night. The stars are out, the weather is calm, and we’re camped on a little island in the lake west of Riverwood. I could hardly have asked for a more idyllic spot. Unfortunately, it’s hard to lie on the ground so as to stare wistfully up at all those tiny points of light in the infinite expanse of Oblivion when the camera insists on pointing down at me whenever I try it. It wasn’t my intention to go camping at all; Jade and I started out towards Falkreath this morning, and I was intending to stay on horseback at least until we reached Riverwood--I had already denuded the roadside plants growing between the two settlements of their blooms, after all. But the absence of flowers didn’t seem to have reduced the butterfly population, so naturally I climbed down from Snowberry’s back to catch some. As a result, our progress was exceedingly slow, and stymied by further delays--I stopped off at Embershard Mine to chop more wood (I’ll eventually need fuel, and it’s not possible to gather wood from fallen trees), and I also wanted to avoid the road that goes through Helgen (what with the rumors of a dragon in the area), which meant that we would be taking a somewhat longer route. Much to my regret, I made one further detour: I followed a side-path up a hill in search of a cottage that my instincts suggested lay in that direction, and found instead the scene of a horrific crime--four dead people, men and women, all apparently murdered in the act of worshiping at a shrine of Talos. The offerings placed about the statue’s feet seemed undisturbed, and some of the worshipers had coin in their purses--details that argued against the slaughter’s being the work of common bandits, and toward a conclusion that I didn’t much care to contemplate. As much as I’ve been hearing about the atrocities of the Thalmor, I might yet have believed that even they would have qualms about leaving their victims--however objectionable their beliefs--out to rot like this. But it does me little good to turn this appalling scene over and over in my mind; am I shocked? Certainly. Will I investigate this massacre and bring the perpetrator(s) to justice? Hardly. There is nothing that I, Nona, can do to end religious persecution in Skyrim; that is a task for someone made of sterner stuff. I can but content myself with the thought that should I ever meet such a person, I will inform them of these matters; I will, when I find this individual, do exactly as any conscientious, dyed-in-the-wool non-player character should. I will beg. I will plead. And, if necessary, I will hire a player character whom I have just met to handle everything. ... If the conversational option is there. It was clear by the time we had returned to the main road that we would not reach Falkreath before dark. We might have camped easily enough by roadside--I had enough supplies that a fire would not have been absolutely necessary--but a late-afternoon swim in the lake led me to Fisherman and his campfire, and we were able to rest in relative comfort. We don’t have a lot of ground to cover the next day, but the inhabitants of Skyrim do their best to make those last few miles as difficult as possible. Strictly speaking, our first assailants don’t qualify as inhabitants, as they are only animated skeletons: nevertheless they attack fiercely, and, as far as we can tell, independently--I see nobody who might have created or be directing them. One of the skeletons carries a well-made shield, and I pick it up (my first piece of, how you say, loot)--I don’t like to take people’s belongings, even dead people’s belongings, but a skeleton is more like a thing than a person. Even so, it was a person once, a person whose remains have been subjected to.... The shield falls from my hands. Hasn’t this body been violated enough already? The next person who wishes to express violent opposition to our reaching Falkreath is a high elf. He engulfs Jade in a cloud of magical frost while I shuffle from side to side with my bow drawn and Jade dodges back and forth blocking my shots. To my shame, she ends up killing him almost without assistance. (And here I thought we had an understanding that she was to be an even less capable fighter than I.) Perhaps I should make a better weapon for her. By mid-morning, a thick fog has settled over the region; we reach Falkreath around noon. The very first man I see who is not a guard asks me to deliver some ashes to Runil, the priest of Arkay; apparently, dealing with human remains is so much a part of daily life here that Thadgeir thinks nothing of asking a complete stranger to help. I stop briefly at the general store, where Solaf, an ex-Stormcloak, warns me about his brother, who hates everybody. Solaf’s inventory is practically overflowing with tempting articles: I buy a new pair of boots, some groceries, a tinderbox, and, most extravagantly, an enormous wheel of goat cheese. For some reason my pleasure in making this last purchase exceeds even my elation at obtaining a tinderbox without having to find troll fat. And then Solaf ruins it all by telling me that, if I steal anything from his store, I’ll regret it. (After I’ve bought over a hundred septims worth of stuff from him!) Stepping jauntily out the door in my new boots, I find my way down to the graveyard, where Runil is conducting a rite for a grieving couple’s 9-year-old child. I watch from a respectful distance until he is finished before offering my sympathies to the parents. The father, Mathies, tells me the gruesome details of his daughter’s murder with so little reserve as to provide sure indication that the end of his sorry tale holds a quest. I forbear asking who tore his little girl limb from limb, therefore; my errand gives me a convenient excuse to take my leave. I deliver the ashes to Runil at his home, accepting a generous cash reward and refusing to retrieve the journal he “left in a cave” (dare I ask? NO!), before having a chat with Melea Entius, a woman who has come to pray to Arkay. She is obviously very ill, and relates her sad history to me--how she became afflicted with an incurable and terminal disease, how she lost her husband. She is remarkably stoic, concerned only that her daughter Henrietta, whom Mathies and his wife Indara have agreed to care for when she passes, will forget her. I suggest that she write Henrietta a letter, and she thanks me profusely for this simple idea, asking me whether I wouldn’t mind checking in on the child once in a while. I can hardly refuse such a request. I meet Jerulith, a severely handsome Altmer woman dressed in Thalmor robes, whose coldly hostile manner would be more than enough to dissuade me from further conversation, were my memory of the scene at the Talos shrine not a scab demanding to be picked at. But she assumes, perhaps rightly, that my desire to talk must necessarily result from a wish to vent my hatred--and, her voice dripping with sarcasm, goes on to list so many possible crimes for which I might hold her responsible that I soon find myself hating her very earnestly indeed. I finish my tour of Falkreath at the mill, where Bolund, Salof’s unpleasant brother, declares that he can’t believe that provincials like me are allowed to wander Skyrim. I stare in disbelief. Provincials? Did he just--that I--I’ll give you “provincial,” you illiterate, backward, axe-faced northern goat-turd! Let the Thalmor have your snow-covered, bandit-ridden, pyscho-wolf-infested--aaaah. Deep breath, Nona. Tight smile, brisk nod, back away quietly. Smile, nod, back away.... I manage to calm myself at Grave Concoctions, the local alchemist’s shop, owned by a Redguard named Zaria. At her table I discover an interesting new property or two; I also discover that a single dose of troll fat costs more than my tinderbox. I discover no new formula as profitable as my conjuring-enhancing magic-suppressant (BUY NOW!), but selling my latest batch of mixtures does improve my Speech and get me to level 8. I have time for some smithing before dark, and I chat with Lod, the local smith, and his apprentice Isobel, a fellow Imperial who tells me that she’s on a sort of smithing pilgrimage--apparently her family is famous for its smiths, and her personal quest is to prove herself worthy to inherit the family forge, which is blessed with its own guardian spirit. She’s actually a little ambivalent about the whole thing: back home, she will be making fancy items for nobles, when she would rather make weapons for the use of warriors and heroes. I feel more than a touch of envy: how wonderful it would be if, having mastered the alchemist’s trade in Skyrim, I were able to return to a shop back home, a prestigious shop, complete with its own benevolent haunt. I shouldn’t at all mind working for the nobility; let them use my drugs to hide their disfigurements or poison their enemies or make their offspring fall in love with appropriate marriage candidates--a safe, lucrative business would fulfill all my fondest wishes. For a town in which death seems so close, Falkreath is certainly crowded with the living; the inn, Dead Man’s Drink, is packed. A woman named Narri says that I’m going to have the men here wrapped around my finger in no time. I’m concerned at first that her sight might be failing, but the little girl, Henrietta, tells me that Narri says something of this sort to everyone. A distinguished old man, Dengeir of Stuhn, is so wary of Imperial spies that he tries to get me to spy for him. (So--by complaining about Imperial spies he actually hopes to recruit one. Clever. Very clever.) Finally, knowing I shouldn’t, I talk to Jerulith again, to hear why she is no longer with the Thalmor: she explains that she had a disagreement with Ondolemar, her superior in Markarth, whom she found insufficiently ruthless. She had suggested that an entire Talos-worshiping family be put to death, including the children, though her colleagues thought that children, being malleable, ought to be spared. When the entire family was murdered--nobody knows by whom--Ondolemar decided to blame Jerulith, whose opinion on the matter was well-known, and paint her as a rogue agent. In this manner he disposed of her, appeased the Jarl, and stoked the general fear of the Thalmor, which from his point of view was all to the good. Worse and worse. Even we non-player characters should learn to keep our stupid mouths shut once in a while.
Oddly enough, the farther I get from the roads in Skyrim, the less there is to hunt. At least, that’s the impression I get as I continue to explore the area around Riverwood: Jade and I spend the next morning climbing steadily up a ridge quite a way off the beaten path, finding neither reagents nor elk. (We do see another interesting-looking ruin, which we of course do not approach.) Our explorations yield only a cottage sitting in the middle of nowhere--a small, dilapidated building, but nevertheless significant enough to spur my mysterious naming instinct to inform me that it is Anise’s Cabin. Anise turns out to be an old recluse in a dark hooded robe who claims to be just a poor old woman and nobody worth bothering about. Now, if I were an adventurer, I should be very disappointed indeed after trekking all the way up here and finding nothing but a harmless old woman who doesn’t even have a quest for me. But I am only modest Nona, and my disappointment is likewise modest: when I encounter a harmless old woman (which is definitely the sort of old woman I prefer to encounter), I hope only for some chit-chat, maybe a little gossip. But this one doesn’t even provide that; she has almost nothing to say about herself, let alone anyone else. Passing M’aiq the Liar on the way back down--hello, M’aiq, fancy meeting you here--we cross the river again, only to discover the front entrance to Embershard Mine. It appears deserted, like the back way in--but, a little too late, we spot a Khajiit bandit hanging around outside. He becomes aware of us at almost the same instant, and immediately attacks Jade, who fends him off with a dagger--I’m not sure where she picked it up; she didn’t have it when we set out from Riften--while I shoot him. After he’s dead, we poke around outside the entrance. “I’ve passed a number of caves in my lifetime, but I’ve never had the urge to go in. Now I know why,” remarks Jade. (Amen, sister!) We find nothing of interest save a woodpile and a discarded axe. I chop some wood--I have a project in mind--and although I leave my fallen attacker’s personal belongings alone, as usual, I do decide to take the axe. It looks like nobody wanted it anyway, and I can never find an axe when I want one. This fight levels me up again, and I’m able to take a new Alchemy perk, Benefactor, which will strengthen my beneficial concoctions. (It probably won’t affect my conjuring-enhancing magic-suppressant, since that’s of absolutely no help to anyone, but it’s about time I developed some new product lines anyway.) A little further along the main road, Jade and I find a trio of stone monuments, each carved with a different figure in a threatening pose--a warrior, a thief, and a magician. I contemplate these curious objects for a few moments--I have no idea what they’re for, but the imagery suggests that they are not for me, so I prudently avoid touching them. Below us, near the river, there’s a fisher’s camp with an overturned boat. I can see someone in the camp, but she appears to be alone and not heavily armed, so I risk scrambling down the slope to investigate. The occupant turns out to be friendly enough--“It’s not like my poaching is hurting anyone,” she says cheerfully. (As a person who’s been shooting just about every deer and grabbing just about every fish in her path, I’m glad to hear this; I’m already ridiculously nice and law-abiding by gaming standards--I don’t want to have to worry about hunting rights.) She has a very nice fishing spot near her camp--at least, it’s very nice until I’ve swum noisily about in it grabbing all the fish. I ride back to Whiterun the next day. I’d like to continue hunting and exploring the Riverwood area, but there’s a problem--I can’t find any place to boil water and cook my food, and the daily search is getting a little annoying. I’m starting to want some independence from these towns and their cookpots--in short, I have conceived a desire to try camping out. One of my mods allows for this; I can, given the right materials, build a tent, a camping bed, a campfire, and a pot. Sadly, the plans for these objects seem to have been conceived with adventurers in mind: the tent requires only leather and wood, but the bed requires cow hide (a rare commodity for a woman who isn’t willing to simply slaughter someone’s cows, and I need two of them). And then there’s the most outrageous requirement of all--in order to build a tinderbox I’m going to need either troll fat or dwarven oil! I’m not about to venture into any Dwemer ruins, and troll fat--well. But hope, as they say, springs eternal; there’s always the chance that one of these ingredients will show up in an alchemist’s shop. I’ve already finished the tent, and I’ve also managed to buy a cookpot and one cow’s hide. (But I can’t make use of the cookpot without a campfire, and that will require me to complete the tinderbox.) After depositing Snowberry in the stable once more, Jade and I go hunting west of Whiterun, this time giving the giants a wider berth. We’ve climbed down a steep slope and are cheerfully going after the mudcrabs in the stream at the bottom, when I notice a distant, dark figure crouching near a bridge. It seems unlikely that he will take an interest in us, but he does, creeping purposefully past the bridge and down into the ravine, where he launches a sudden, savage attack on Jade. She tries to fight him off at first, but soon cowers and pleads for mercy. I shoot him a couple of times as he advances on me, but it’s not enough to put him down, so I draw my sword. He attacks with great determination but, happily for me, an indifferent degree of skill; the worst moment in the fight happens as he falls and I realize that the final blow was struck by Jade, who has recovered and come up close behind him. I was still swinging wildly and could easily have hit her. Our dead assailant is an Argonian wearing an ostentatiously sinister outfit--a tight black leather suit with a hood and subtle red trim. I go through his belongings--interested (as usual) not in profiting from them but in finding some explanation for this entirely unprovoked assault. And, for once, I find one. I read through this mysterious note several times in mingled horror and pride at seeing my name in print. “By any means necessary”--“the Black Sacrament”--“this poor fool”--how have I, humble Nona, deserved to be the subject of such a missive as this? And who is Astrid? I ponder the note for several minutes, wondering whom I could have provoked into seeking my death by such means--has the popularity and profitability of my conjuring-enhancing magic-suppressant angered a rival alchemist? Is Torbjorn Shatter-Shield furious over my efforts on behalf of his workers? Could Stands-In-Shallows have performed the Black Sacrament as revenge for my unwillingness to steal skooma for him? Does Vulwulf Snow-Shod have a drunken plan to hire one assassin for each and every Imperial in Skyrim? My mind careens back and forth between the various people I’ve encountered, evaluating one after another as a possible source of this contract, each unlikely scenario succeeded by one even less plausible. Someone is trying to have me killed--someone who, admittedly, was willing to send a highly ineffectual killer. But it would be foolish to bank on the next one’s making such a very conspicuous approach, and gloomy thoughts of being attacked by a stealthy assassin weigh on me heavily as I return to Whiterun. Even finding a silver garnet ring in the possession of a wolf that attacks me on the way fails to lift my mood. (All right, I lied for dramatic purposes. Finding jewelry on animals always cheers me up.) In the Bannered Mare, Carlotta complains loudly about Mikael--who, as she goes on and on about what a jerk he is, is standing no more than two feet behind her. I decide to participate in this bit of comic theater, and tell her just as loudly that I’ll talk to him for her. So I harangue Mikael for a bit, and he offers the appropriate amount of resistance before declaring dramatically that he’ll back off. I wonder how often a scene like this takes place in the Mare; it’s much more entertaining than a typical bard’s recital, but the audience doesn’t seem quite ready for it--they really should be yelling instructions (“He’s behind you!”), but they just watch politely. In any case, by the time we reach the end and are ready to take our bows, Carlotta has gone home. Still, my brilliant acting performance kicks me up to level 7. The following morning, I find an interesting camp to the north of Whiterun, with a horse, a wagon, and an occupant who appears to be busy unloading something. It’s an odd place for a merchant’s stall or a traveler’s rest, but it doesn’t look like a bandit camp. Nevertheless the sole visible inhabitant unsheathes his weapon as soon as he spies me and Jade, even before we’ve gotten close enough to get a decent look at him. We hastily retreat back to town. I’m in the mood for some alchemy and smithing practice anyway. Carlotta gives me 250 septims for talking to Mikael. Perhaps last night’s performance drew a lot of audience tips after all. The shops have restocked their wares, and everything is going well; I’m able to buy a second cow’s hide at Belethor’s to finish my camping bed, and after I’ve sold most of the day’s concoctions, my purse bulges with new wealth. Even after paying for smithing materials I have over 4000 septims. The only thing I need to complete my camping set is the troll fat or dwarven oil for making the tinderbox, but I’d best not hold my breath for either of those. As I eat my dinner I find, as usual, that I’ve forgotten to refill my waterskin, so a nighttime stroll is in order. Outside the city gates a group of Khajiit have set up camp, and I chat with their leader, Ri’saad, about his home before selling him a few potions and buying a third set of clothes. Now there’s something to cheer my evening. Let Astrid send her killers! They can swarm all over Whiterun in their flamboyantly sneaky poses--tomorrow, I’m fleeing the hold.
The next morning I head to Belethor’s and persuade him to buy a case of my brand-new all-natural hand-made certified-effective true-blue micro-nutritive conjuring-enhancing magic-suppressant*. After making the sale, I find that I now have over 2000 septims--even with the food prices being what they are, that’s potentially enough for me to live on for weeks! Perhaps I should work on my smithing. I’ve been neglecting this skill, because it’s expensive to train--unlike with alchemy, the cost of the materials is considerably higher than the returns you get from selling finished equipment, at least at the beginning. And I’m certainly not looking for a second career; real non-player characters don’t have multiple professions. But a certain amount of smithing would be very useful--because a proper alchemist shouldn’t just buy preserved ingredients from apothecaries, I feel; she should travel through the different regions of Skyrim, learning where the various plants grow and how they look in their natural state, and gather them by hand in the wilderness. And wilderness travel means hunting opportunities, and hunting is fun, and if I’m going to be any good at hunting I’ll eventually need better equipment. This seems as good an excuse as any to pour my hard-earned money into a bottomless hole, so I wile away the morning at Warmaiden’s, making daggers out of iron ingots purchased from Adrianne. She watches me work for a while, and eventually asks me to deliver a sword that she made as a gift for the Jarl to her father, Proventus. Ever willing to take on a task that is unlikely to provide me with any undue excitement (even if Adrianne is probably using it as an excuse to get me away from her forge) I make the climb up to Dragonsreach. In the palace I find that little--perhaps even as little as nothing--has changed since yesterday. Which might seem unsurprising if it weren’t for the fact that the Jarl and his advisors are still engaged in their private discussion--in fact, they don’t appear to have moved. This is surely a false impression on my part, I eventually conclude; they can’t possibly have been there all night. I manage to take Proventus aside for a moment so as to hand over the sword. He tips me 20 septims--not much, but it’s not as though I’m hurting for cash at the moment. I stroll back down through the city with Jade, chatting a little here and there. It soon becomes clear that none of the people I’ve done little favors for have fallen madly in love with me; I’ll have to widen my circle of acquaintance once again. I’m also eager to get out of the city for a while: the weather is still fine, and I must have spoken to just about everyone in Whiterun by now (there are, no doubt, a few Battle-Borns and Gray-Manes that I have yet to interact with, but I can’t always tell one from another). I put on my armor, therefore, and head out to the stables to collect Snowberry, who seems to have been looked after well enough. The weather gets grey and thundery as we start along the road to the east and south. The journey is peaceful enough--we run into some Imperial soldiers escorting a prisoner with bound hands, and then some of the usual psychotic wolves, but nothing to give us any trouble. I am frequently distracted from my mushroom-collecting by deer and elk that go running into the river as if to drown themselves rather than be subjected to another mildly painful shot from my bow, which is very frustrating; they often don’t come up again. It doesn’t take us long to reach Riverwood, a small but well-appointed town to the south of Whiterun. (There’s a blacksmith and a general store.) It’s still early, and the woods are lovely, and I’m not about to waste all of that earliness and loveliness by heading inside just yet, so I park Snowberry outside the inn and continue exploring, following the bank of the river. Spotting another large elk, I crouch and shoot; as usual, it runs into the water--but it actually comes up again on the other side, and, amazingly, it hasn’t spotted me. I fire another arrow, and it dies. Two shots! I feel almost competent! But that glow of efficiency doesn’t last long, because getting across the river to claim my quarry proves to be a problem. It’s fast-flowing and deeper than it looks, and whenever I go in I get swept downstream so quickly that I’m afraid of going over the falls before I can reach the opposite bank. (At least Snowberry isn’t with me.) I make it only after several attempts that take an embarrassingly long time. But still--meat and hide, from an animal I killed, by stealth, using only two arrows. I turn around to Jade, internally beaming with pride (Nona’s actual face stays fixed in its permanently stunned expression, of course). She’s not there: perhaps she tried to follow me across the river and got swept away. It takes me a little while to find her. She’s still on the other side, engaged in a peculiar stand-off with a wolf on my side. They’re staring intently at each other from opposite banks, each looking ready to pounce at a moment’s notice if only there weren’t this torrent of water inconveniently in the way. It’s such an amusing sight that I shoot the wolf only with the greatest reluctance. After I’ve rejoined Jade on her side of the river, our wanderings bring us to a cave. My mysterious naming instinct is unusually silent on the subject of this cave, which probably indicates that it’s a back entrance to something. It doesn’t look especially threatening--there are no body parts on spikes or conspicuous magical apparatus outside--so I venture in to see whether there are any mushrooms near the entrance. At this point I’m informed that its name is Embershard Mine, but it doesn’t look as though it’s in use--as a mine, at least. There are little arrangements of bones dangling from the ceiling on strings, like crib mobiles intended to amuse baby necromancers. And there are no mushrooms. Jade and I decide to take the prudent course and get out of there immediately. The sun is going down as we return to Riverwood. An old woman insists that she saw a dragon. Fearing that she might be correct, I don’t ask her about it. I stop by the general store, where the proprietor is arguing with his sister over what sounds suspiciously like an opportunity for adventure--a valuable object was stolen from his shop--so I ignore their conversation and sell him several bottles of my soon-to-be-patented-when-patent-laws-are-invented potion*, and I buy one thing from him: another outfit. Finally, a new dress! Well, new-ish. Why does everything come pre-stained? Is it something to do with why clothes are so much cheaper than food? In the Sleeping Giant Inn, I meet an impressive Redguard warrior named Gorr, who informs me in a deep, ruminative voice that he’s killed more men than there are minutes in a day. When I find out that these kills took place in an Imperial arena, and not, as I might have feared, on the streets of an Imperial city, I’m somewhat reassured. It turns out that his primary interest is in trying new foods, which might have been something we could bond over were it not for the fact that he’s developed a hankering to sample some dragon steak. Mistaking me (as people do) for a person of similar sensibility, he expresses a willingness to join me, but I feel that such a partnership could only end up disappointing him. (And, needless to say, I probably wouldn’t like him when he’s disappointed.) Also in the Sleeping Giant is a young fellow named Hjoromir who offers to buff my shoes, wash my tunic, carry my belongings, deliver my letters, and whatever else I might want done that requires no professional skill. He tells me that he’s held a variety of jobs--as a farmhand, kitchenhand, blacksmith’s assistant, laborer--but his bosses have always been disappointed with his performance. Which is of little concern to him, because his mind is always on the subject of adventuring. He has gone on so many adventures and fought so many battles in his mind that his confidence in his ability to do the real thing is quite unshakeable. I’m impressed despite myself; this young, bright-eyed incompetent might make an even better companion for me than Jade! But I can’t have two companions at once, and it wouldn’t be right to abandon Jade so far from her home--nor would it be entirely appropriate for Nona to travel with a young man. But I do wish I had someone to wash the stains out of my clothes. If only it were possible. *Made with equipment that is also used to process fish, shellfish, eggs, wheat, human remains, and maybe tree nuts if I ever find any.
Farewell, Last Seed! It’s Morndas, the first day of Heartfire, and despite the beautiful clear weather I decide to stay within Whiterun’s walls--I’m still a little shaken after yesterday’s narrow escape. Jade and I walk around the city, therefore, looking for new people to pester. A Redguard couple argues about a lost heirloom that the husband wants to retrieve and the wife would rather he gave up on; a little girl bullies a little boy. The sunlight casts an aura of warm benevolence over everything, and these squabbles seem as slight as the chirping of birds in the background. I find myself noticing instead how many little memorials for fallen warriors there are around Whiterun: each stone attended by candles, with its former owner’s shield leaning upon it. The things you notice when you never move above walking speed. I run into Danica Pure-Spring, priestess of Kynareth, and talk to her about the Gildegreen, a magical tree in the center of Whiterun that apparently used to be rather splendid. It is dry and dying now, and she tells me that restoring it would require securing a drop of sap from the parent tree by piercing its otherwise impenetrable bark with a vile dagger that is guarded by hagravens. Danica says she would have attempted to do this herself, were she not terrified of such monsters. They terrify me no less, I’m sure. (In fact I start laughing--I actually burst into laughter as I try to picture timid, ineffectual Nona attempting this elaborate task.) Unfortunately, a quest update has already wormed its way into my journal, forever to remind me of my inadequacy. And I realize that, limited as Nona’s ambitions are, and no matter how successful she eventually may become in her own small way, there is one small accomplishment that she craves but never will achieve--to be treated by other NPCs as one of their own. No matter how modest, how humble, how ordinary she may be, they will always see her as Other. In the Hall of the Dead--it’s not the obvious place to go to for lively conversation, but the memorials have piqued my curiosity, and talking to Danica has left me feeling sober and pensive--I meet Iria, who speaks in a dispassionate monotone about her extensive researches into the arts of healing and the causes of death. Fortunately she enlivens this dreary disquisition with the occasional joke (delivered with no more affect than her lectures on morbidity). She describes how efforts to study healing led her at one point to experiment on animals, but the distress she was causing them (and especially the noises they made) eventually induced her to give up the practice. (“It’s as if they don’t understand the concept of research,” she tells me impassively. “Another jest.”) She now experiments exclusively on herself, she informs me. But medical research does not consume her attention entirely: she has also developed a lively admiration for Jon Battle-Born, although she refuses to go into detail about her feelings. (And what a shame! I should very much have enjoyed hearing her express her girlish hopes and doubts in that same dull monotone.) I also talk to Andurs, the priest of Arkay, who has left his amulet somewhere in the catacombs and wants me to retrieve it. I tell him with some alarm that I won’t do this, and he declares with an air of stern disappointment that Arkay may forgive me ... eventually. That my refusal should excite the god’s displeasure strikes me as grossly unfair; after all, Andurs is the one who was careless enough to lose his holy amulet, not I. Nevertheless I am made uneasy by the words of this priest, and I make sure to offer a prayer to the god before leaving. Nothing seems amiss, though; Arkay grants me his blessing. My wanderings next bring me to Jorrvaskr, where Jade and I and several of the Companions participate in the traditional Nord pastime of watching two people engage in a vicious fistfight, complete with shouted insults and death threats. After it’s over, I try to talk to the participants and to those who have gathered around to watch, but nobody is especially friendly. (Perhaps I have seriously violated local custom by turning up to an important fistfight without being invited or bringing a gift.) Returning to the marketplace, I find Jon Battle-Born leaning on a post. I’m reminded of Iria, and it occurs to me that Jon could do far worse--she may be a little severe, and somewhat lacking in vocal expression, but she’s not unattractive in her gaunt-faced way, and she seems like a conscientious person. I’m trying to decide how best to drop a few gentle hints when Jon suddenly opines that the problem with Skyrim these days is that everyone is obsessed with death. Poor Iria! This doesn’t bode at all well for her prospects with him. Carlotta Valentia complains that Mikael the bard’s attentions are getting obnoxious, and that men in general won’t leave her alone. For some reason, I don’t envy her, perhaps because I haven’t yet met any man in Whiterun whose attentions would please me (except for Jon Battle-Born, but he doesn’t seem interested in anyone). There is perhaps the possibility of Carlotta herself: I could offer to talk to Mikael for her, not that she really seems to need the help--because you never know when a little favor might be rewarded with a marriage proposal. (This is Skyrim, after all.) Carlotta insists that no man is going to come between her and her daughter. I wonder how she might feel about a woman coming between--well, never mind; let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I don’t feel like going into the Bannered Mare to talk--or listen--to Mikael right now. It’s too nice outside. Continuing generally upward, I explore to Dragonsreach, where I find the Jarl in conference with his advisors; his Dunmer housecarl tells me that he isn’t receiving visitors, and I’m more than happy to go unreceived. I enter a side-chamber to speak with Farengar, the court wizard, who does not seem to be a part of the deliberations. I buy a Healing Hands spellbook from him--now I’ll be able to heal Jade, should I ever have the presence of mind to do so when she really needs it. Farengar asks me to take some frost salts to Arcadia for him, and I cheerfully head down to her shop. Arcadia, upon receiving the salts, says something about a love brew, perhaps to be tested on Farengar; I pretend to be too absorbed in my own potionmaking to hear this. Speaking of which, my Alchemy skill has climbed to 30--it’s really coming along. I emerge from Arcadia’s to find that time has really slipped by--I could have sworn it was not so late in the day, but it sure got dark all of a sudden. There’s so much more to do in and around Whiterun, but it’s time to head back to the Bannered Mare. I see no new faces, but the regulars are all there when I arrive, including Carlotta and Mikael. I stay in the common room for a while, acting on a prurient desire to see some sort of juicy altercation happen between them, but none occurs. Something is in the air in Whiterun: Carlotta and Mikael, Iria and Jon, Arcadia and Farengar, Larkspur and anything female with a pulse--there’s unhealthy or doomed romance everywhere you look. But for me, there is only dinner, bad music, and bed.
1. Be grateful for little things. The next morning I discover something so extraordinary, so thrilling, so wonderful, that I must seriously consider the possibility that my non-adventuring days have come to an early close, because Jade and I have arrived in Sovngarde: the selection of produce at the Bannered Mare is better than that of every shop in Riften and Windhelm combined. (If you were expecting a revelation that was genuinely extraordinary and thrilling and wonderful, then it’s about time you realized that you are reading the wrong blog. Sorry. Tell your friends.) Hulda, the Mare’s proprietor, has everything, even the rare and elusive leeks that I have heard tell of but never yet been able to purchase. I buy cabbage and potatoes. I buy green and red apples. I buy garlic and herbs. I scroll lovingly up and down Hulda’s inventory for several minutes before deciding that would be silly to spend hundreds of septims on food when I can only eat so much. I content myself by making a roast leg of goat and cabbage-apple stew and then head outside into a thunderstorm. (My first thought, oddly enough, is that the weather is sort of nice. Even in the driving rain, Whiterun has a cheerier look than Riften or Windhelm.) I browse Belethor’s shop, hoping to buy some new clothes (I still have only one outfit apart from my armor and the rags I was wearing when I arrived in Ivarstead), but the only thing I can find is a black robe that reminds me of the two wizards who inexplicably attacked me near Riften, and I don’t want to dress like that. I suppose I’ll be wearing the same old thing for a while yet. Admittedly, a stained brownish dress is perhaps the ideal costume for my chosen profession. 2. In marketing, novelty trumps utility. My next stop is Arcadia’s Cauldron, where I can practice said profession. Arcadia turns out to be an Imperial, like me, who develops a little edge in her voice when I ask her whether she’s ever considered returning to Cyrodiil. She tells me defiantly that she’s lived here for over twenty years, and it seems best to let the subject drop. Her ingredient selection is inferior to the White Phial’s, but she’s happy for me to use her lab, and I’ve gathered so much lately that I have no shortage of combinations to try out. I mix a few staples--healing and resistance potions--and then start to experiment. I happily mash butterfly wings and tundra cotton and flowers of various sorts and what must by now be some pretty nasty-smelling fish in the hopes of discovering new alchemical properties. (Despite having played Skyrim with a bunch of different characters, I’ve never paid much attention to alchemy, because (a) I find crafting in general to be rather boring and (b) alchemy in combination with smithing and enchanting can be really overpowered. Nona is therefore the first character I’ve made that makes serious use of this skill, and I’m rather enjoying the whole process--since I’m not looking up alchemical combinations in advance, new discoveries are a genuine pleasure.) My most satisfying innovation is a mixture of blue butterfly wings and blue mountain flowers, which I decided to combine for the highly scientific reason that they are blue. Also, I have a lot of both. The result is a potion, or rather a poison, that both stunts magicka recovery and improves the duration of one’s conjuration spells! Now, you might think that this is easily the most useless concoction ever to be shaken out of a grimy mortar and slapped with a big, flowery “all-natural” label, but Arcadia’s willing to pay me over a hundred septims per dose. Huzzah! 3. Be calm of mind and steady of hand. Despite the rain, I decide to leave the city and go exploring; I’ve made a new hide helmet (it’s actually worse than my previous helmet, but it doesn’t have a nasal protector, so Nona’s a bit more comfortable in it) and a hide shield, and if nothing else, I need to refill my waterskin. (The mod that allows me to carry water doesn’t seem to recognize the waterways inside Whiterun properly.) After walking down to the river, I explore the region to the west, leaving Snowberry behind in the stable. The terrain is relatively open and the weather soon clears, enabling me to see a number of temptingly large elk in the distance. (I don’t know why larger elk are so tempting; you don’t get more meat or bigger hides from them.) I stealthily approach one and take a shot, and of course it bounds away barely harmed. Jade and I run gleefully but unproductively after it until I am suddenly distracted by a nearby pool with insects buzzing near the surface. Ingredients! I pause to catch some dragonflies and fish, but then spot another elk, and take a shot at that one. It, too, runs away, and once again we give chase, still unable to either land a punch or get a second shot off. And I get distracted by another pool. This one is strikingly different: there’s a skeletal arm sticking straight up from the center of it, grasping a sword in its bony fingers. That this sword should be poking up out of a nice little fishing hole like this, and have remained so, undisturbed, for perhaps a very long time, and so near to Whiterun, seems highly unlikely. Could this mean that the blade was placed here by some unknown agency, and intended specially ... for me? That seems even more unlikely. But I can’t help wading in to get a closer look, and perhaps even reaching a little toward--but then all of a sudden something shakes the skeletal limb, or perhaps I bump into it clumsily, I’m not sure, and it collapses into a small heap of bones, and then I can’t find the sword anywhere. The pool is small and crystal clear, and yet the weapon seems to have vanished utterly. For a moment I wonder whether Jade snatched it up quickly (NPCs do sometimes pick weapons up off the ground), but when I check her inventory, she doesn’t have it. Well, I hope there wasn’t some Fated Child of Prophecy who was supposed to wander over this way and take this special sword. It’s just like Nona to ruin a crucial world-changing event by tripping over a skeletal arm while trying to catch fish. 4. It's rude to stare. Turning away from the weird pool, Jade and I continue “hunting” in our own inimitable style (ineffective as it is, we’re enjoying ourselves), until I get distracted by yet another pool and my mysterious naming instinct kicks in, informing me that it is called Bleakwind Basin. There’s a reason that this area has its own name, as I soon realize when I spot the enormous bonfire: I’m next to a giant camp. One giant stands not far away, on the other side of the pool, his mammoth wandering nearby. Jade and I pause to take in this idyllic scene: the giant leads the mammoth with slow deliberation toward the pool. Dragonflies hover at the surface of the water. Fish swim fearlessly near my feet. I’m dimly, regretfully aware that we will have to turn and leave soon, so as not to allow the giant to come too close; their moods are unpredictable. But this one seems unconcerned by our presence, and I stay just where I’m standing, musing over the scene. And then it all goes wrong. I register only vaguely that Jade has moved from my side and is behaving oddly, running to and fro. I’m still gawking as the giant lowers his club, lowers it very suddenly, and then I can’t see Jade anywhere and my vision is clouded with blood. I turn sluggishly--it seems to take altogether too long for such a small movement, because part of me is clinging to the thought that I might do something to help my friend, even as panic sets in. I’m slightly injured. Only slightly? And then I’m running away in desperate fear for my life. I’m too terrified to look back, even for an instant, and my conscience chews on me all the way back to the Whiterun guard towers, where the general unconcern of the guards finally convinces me that there can’t possibly be someone following directly behind swinging a gigantic club. I turn to the west. There’s nothing. Nobody out there. Finally, she appears. She’s alive! 5. Even the people who love you may turn out to be assholes. As soon as we get back into the city I head over to Arcadia’s Cauldron once again. (Mixing potions relaxes me.) And I gain another level. That puts me at level 5, as I also leveled up yesterday from fighting the bandit. I put one perk point into Speech, to improve vendor prices, and the other into Archery. (Now maybe I’ll be able to kill a fox with one shot!) I leave at closing time and return to the Bannered Mare. As I walk in the door, a man tells me not to get mushy or sentimental on him, but he wants to give me something as a token of his esteem, and he insists I take it. “It” turns out to be three bottles of mead, and the man is Olfrid Battle-Born, the fellow I saw yesterday trying to convince Adrianne Avenicci to supply weapons to the Imperials. I’m quite astonished, first because I’ve never yet spoken to Olfrid Battle-Born and have no idea why he should have become so fond of me, and second because three bottles of mead is actually a rather nice gift--I like mead, and it’s an ingredient in some of my favorite cooking recipes. I use it all the time. I ponder the question for a little while--what have I done that Olfrid should like me so much? Are his pro-Imperial feelings so strong that he feels compelled to give me gifts simply because I’m from Cyrodiil? I decide to get to know him a little. He cheerfully tells me a bit about himself and about the quarrel with the Gray-Manes: the feud, according to him, is really all about money--the Battle-Borns have it and the Gray-Manes don’t, and this difference in fortunes has fueled their resentment beyond all bounds. He explains all this with such bluff, good-humored indifference to both the poverty of the rival family and the suffering of those on both sides that wish for an end to the feud that I almost feel complicit in his callousness. He actually seems to find the whole situation sort of funny. Somewhat dispirited by the fact that I seem to have become the favorite of such a tool, I look around for someone else to talk to. The woman I settle on is a mage named Eldawyn. She’s mostly interested in wine, though. And sex, apparently--not with me, although the fact that she admits to having slept with Larkspur suggests that she isn’t too picky. (“He does bathe,” she says indifferently when I express my distaste.) She goes briefly into the subject of the proper way to appreciate fine wine, and then tells me that she’s much more inclined to just drink it. I heartily agree with this, and she seems to take notice of me for the first time. “I like how you agree with the things I say,” she says. “Why aren’t there more of you?” It’s nice, for once, to be appreciated for being just what I am: a complete nonentity.
I’m up and out of Windhelm just before dawn, leaving several things undone: I haven’t refilled my waterskin or tanned my wolf pelts, and although I’m getting a little short of food, I’m not waiting until the shops are open to replenish my store. I still have some meat and cold soup from yesterday; that should last me until I arrive ... somewhere else. My first thought is to head north to Dawnstar so that I can deliver a message from Aeri to the Jarl. (She asked me to do this yesterday, and I refused.) I therefore make my way to Anga’s Mill, where, because of my early start, I have to wait for more than an hour for Aeri to come out of her house. But when she does emerge, she seems to have forgotten about the letter (or perhaps she somehow found someone else to deliver it during the night). By this time it is snowing so thickly that, with no message to carry, the idea of heading even further north loses the last of its limited appeal and I decide to take the south road instead. Before long, the weather clears, and I dismount to gather ingredients. The plant varieties are similar to what I found on the other side of the valley as I was approaching Windhelm--creep clusters and jazbay spread out over the stones and dragon’s tongue flowers distinctively at the roadside. The road climbs steadily, and at the top of a series of falls I find a beautiful, clear pool that is simply teeming with fish. I wade in eagerly after them, only to find that the water is deeper and the current much stronger than I was expecting--I’m soon swimming rather than wading, and my utmost efforts to regain the shore serve only to keep me from moving anywhere at all. And it suddenly dawns on me that I’ve completely forgotten to let go of my horse. (I can’t actually lead her by hand; what I’ve been doing is putting her in the auto-follow mode allowed by Convenient Horses and pretending that I’m leading her.) My odd position is very confusing to poor Snowberry: she runs distractedly up and down the road until I realize the fruitlessness of swimming against the current and start to drift; then her uncertainty abruptly resolves itself and she charges straight into the water towards me, so that we both end up being tossed over the falls. They aren’t very steep, and I’m not worried about myself--but I go into a momentary panic over Snowberry. (Horses seem to be especially bug-prone in Skyrim, not only having an alarming tendency to fall randomly out of the sky on my head, but to die very suddenly from small amounts of damage.) Fortunately, she survives the tumble without complaint, and we both clamber out of the water looking very foolish. Needless to say, I haven’t caught a single fish. Further along the road I find Mixwater Mill, run by a woman named Gilfre and suffering the usual shortage of workers. Gilfre, like other mill owners I’ve met, would love to have me lend a hand, but I’ve been dawdling today--all that waiting and flower-picking and unintended horse-bathing--and so haven’t come as far as I would like; I decide not to take the time to find out whether a few strokes of the axe here will land me yet another marriage proposal. The road turns around to the west, passing by a number of ruins that I am happy to not to inspect closely. But soon there is one in front of me that is not so easily avoidable: Valtheim Towers, a stone bridge that straddles the river with its namesake structures on either side. I can’t help but feel a little apprehensive as I contemplate this crumbling fortification: the southern tower sits on the road, and the terrain to the south climbs steeply, preventing me from simply circling around. Even from some distance away, I can see people walking back and forth on the bridge preparing to kill me. (Well, I can see red dots on my compass, which is as good as looking inside their hearts and seeing their essential murderous nature.) I don’t have much time to plan, though: a single bandit comes charging out from the base of the southern tower and attacks me without even asking for money. This turns out to be a remarkably foolish maneuver on her part--not only do I cut her down with astonishing ease, having earlier poisoned my sword, but her rush takes her well away from the bridge, beyond bowshot and so out of her allies’ reach. As easy as it was to dispose of a single bandit, I’m in no mood to tangle with the entire group, and so decide to mount Snowberry and simply ride past Valtheim Towers with all possible speed. This seems likely to get us shot at a few times, but with any luck the accuracy will be limited and the damage minimal. As it turns out, not a single arrow strikes either me or my horse--in fact I don’t even hear any being fired; perhaps the bandits are confused. Or maybe they’re shooting at Jade. In any case, we all manage to put the dreadful Valtheim Towers safely behind us. There’s little else to interrupt our journey to Whiterun. I get attacked by three wolves, which is nothing unusual, except that each one of these bears the designation “pit wolf.” If they were bred for fighting, it doesn’t show; they aren’t any tougher than ordinary wolves, and I’m not entirely sure what pit they are supposed to have come out of. One of them turns out to be carrying three septims, which leads me to wonder whether they might have been betting on pit fights rather than participating in them. Sadly, I’m not likely to find out the truth of the matter. We’re almost at the outskirts of the city when I hear signs of battle coming from one of the nearby farms, and a few arrows go whistling over my head. By the time I get close, though, the action has died down, and a small group of people seems to be standing around a dead giant. They all look rather dangerous, so it seems best not to bother them. The guard at the gate stops me; it seems that nobody is allowed in, because of the recent dragon attacks. Fortunately, I manage to persuade him to change his mind. (This is something of a relief--getting into Whiterun the first time is normally part of the main quest in Skyrim, and one of the mods I’m using interferes with that quest; not having used it before, I wasn’t entirely certain that I’d be able to get in at all.) I immediately run into an Imperial guard trying to pressure a smith into filling a huge order of weapons for the army. Except that he’s not an Imperial guard, just a fellow wearing Imperial armor. After I meet the smith, Adrianne Avenicci, and get a few crafting pointers from her, I head to an inn, the Bannered Mare, where I learn a little more about what this is all about--a feud between two prominent local families, one of which supports the Stormcloaks and the other the Imperials. The fellow who explains this to me is Jon Battle-Born, a man from the Imperial-supporting clan who earnestly wishes that the families would work out their differences. I’m sympathetic; Whiterun is easily the most pleasant place I’ve been to so far, an open, airy city with what appears to be a much lower concentration of jerks than Riften, and it’s a shame for it to be marred by this divide. The other fellow I speak to is named Larkspur, and he utterly fails to impress: he rhapsodizes fulsomely on the subject of Nona’s beauty while boasting about his sketchy past, and is entirely unconvincing on both counts, owing to his flat, unengaged tone of voice--a manner that seems more suited for putting a lady to sleep than seducing her. (Which I suppose would count as a form of seduction for a certain type of person, and I’m not sure that Larkspur deserves to be excluded from that class. He’s easily the most disappointing of the characters added by Interesting NPCs that I’ve met so far; clearly meant to be a dashing rogue, but unfortunately just obnoxious and dull.) After I finish this conversation, which happens long before I’ve bothered to find out most of what Larkspur has to say, I feel as though I need a bath. I’m certainly not inclined for further chitchat this evening, so Jade and I simply enjoy a little music before bed. More precisely, we enjoy dancing to some music, even if the music itself is pretty disappointing.
There’s little to do in Windhelm the next day--the White Phial hasn’t gotten any new stock in, for some reason--and staying cooped up behind those gray stone walls isn’t helping me decide whether or not to marry Scouts-Many-Marshes. I put on my armor, therefore, and set out on horseback to explore more of the surrounding region. After riding out a little way I dismount and start leading Snowberry so that I can stop to gather, er, snowberries. It seems that I’ve already begun to miss being on the road: walking slowly along with Jade and my horse, gathering reagents, taking potshots at the local wildlife, being mauled by psychotic wolves--it’s somehow very soothing. My wanderings take me west, then over the bridge to the north. Not far beyond this crossing I find another mill--Anga’s Mill, so my mysterious naming instinct informs me. This one is in somewhat better shape than the others: it is equipped with one spare axe and two surly workmen. The latter have little more to say than the former, telling me only that I should speak to Aeri, the owner, if I want a job. I’m only too happy to grab the axe and chop for a while. Ah, it was a good life I had in Riften, wasn’t it? That long, leisurely walk to Heartwood, that lovably ill-tempered Elgrim fellow, the cramped, depressing attic I slept in, the obnoxious regulars at the Bee and Barb, the boring--all right, it was actually pretty unpleasant. I bring a load of wood to Aeri, accept my pay, and she promptly proposes to me. Two proposals in two days?! I’d like to know what Jade thinks of that. Cursed, pshaw! I’d say she’s bringing me good luck. Although, when I look around for her, I can’t find her. She seems to have gotten lost somewhere. Perhaps she ran away from some wolves and hasn’t found her way back yet. It’s an odd feeling, being desired like this, and not one that Nona would ever have predicted being troubled with. I was planning to move on after receiving my pay, but instead I stand there bemused for the rest of the day, watching Aeri work. And she's really something--the way this slip of a woman loads those enormous logs onto the conveyor all by herself is--not something anyone should be doing if they want to retain the use of their limbs and/or spine, frankly. But she does it hour after hour while her big strong male employees go about their tasks with their cute little axes and grindstones. It’s an offer that deserves serious consideration: Aeri owns her mill and seems pretty successful, although she does complain about the Jarl of Dawnstar’s demands. She’s strong, hardworking, capable. She has her own house--a house I could live in, with her, in a very picturesque location that is both convenient to and not actually in Windhelm (a huge plus). On the down side, she seems a bit old for me, and a little too focused on work. And, well, there’s one other problem-- I like Scouts-Many-Marshes a hell of a lot more than I like her. Now, lets be clear: Nona is no romantic. She can’t afford to be. She wants to live in a house, and in Skyrim houses are for player characters--or for people who marry an NPC who somehow already owns one. You cannot get your own house without being willing to wander around in dungeons killing people; it’s just not possible. But presented with these two choices, side by side, it’s hard to imagine Nona’s being happy with Aeri when there’s a guy she likes much better, a guy who wants her, living really close by. It certainly wouldn’t be fair to Aeri. And if Scouts-Many-Marshes is preferable to anyone Nona might choose for more materialistic reasons--anyone she could meet in the Windhelm area and choose for materialistic reasons, at least--then he needs to be evaluated on his own merits, which are considerable: • He seems genuinely nice. Even when he was being paid almost nothing, his hostility was directed at the specific source of the ill-treatment, and not at Nords or humans in general, which puts him ahead of most of the other Argonian dockworkers. • He really seems to like me. And the favor I did for him was actually meaningful, something that feels like a good basis for affection--not something dumb like giving someone a septim or a mammoth tusk. • If I married him I could start calling myself Mrs. Many-Marshes, which would be awesome. • He’s got ties to his community and cares about his people and blah blah. • I’ll say it again: Mrs. Many-Marshes. AWESOME! But as admirable a fellow as he may be, Scouts-Many-Marshes is not without his flaws: • He is an Argonian. He’s got horns and spines and no lips. I don’t want to be crude, so lets just say that there are certain acts of physical affection that might be problematic owing to his anatomical characteristics. Also, Nona would like to have children someday, and I have no idea whether that would even be possible with an Argonian. • If I married him, we’d be living in the Argonian Assemblage, which is a big dormitory. We’d have no privacy as a couple. • Some of the other dockworkers hate me. Stands-In-Shallows hates me because I wouldn’t steal skooma for him. Neetrenaza hates me because I’m human. And I would have to live with these people. • The Argonian Assemblage is in Windhelm. That’s bad enough on its own, but there’s also the problem that, as a human, I would have privileges in Windhelm than my husband lacked, and I think that that would be unpleasant for us both. All in all, I’m inclined to think that we would both be better off with someone else. I have nothing to say against him personally--but it’s entirely possible for two nice people who like each other to be absolutely miserable together, and I feel it’s the probable outcome here. And yet I can’t quite let it go: for how likely is it that I will ever again find anyone so agreeable who actually wants to marry me? It’s getting dark as I return to Windhelm. Jade appears at my side somewhere near the gates, which is a great relief--I should otherwise have been obliged go searching for her in the dark, and hardly have been able to forgive myself if something had befallen her. Activity in the marketplace is starting to die down, but I head vaguely in that direction anyway--I have wolf pelts to tan, so it would be good to get some leatherwork done now that the smiths have gone home. I pass through the graveyard, and there, near the Hall of the Dead, a guard and three other people stand crowded around a pale corpse. Approaching with my lantern, I get a good look at the body, stripped and savagely mutilated--it’s Susanna, a young woman whom I saw only yesterday in Candlehearth. The guard tells me that she isn’t the first--something I already knew, of course, from Viola Giordano. But seeing a murdered woman lying right front of me is another thing altogether. And now that I have seen her, there’s nothing anyone could say that would induce me to stay here a moment longer than I must. Goodbye, Scouts-and-Mrs.-Many-Marshes. Goodbye, Windhelm. I’d run back to the stables and gallop away immediately if that weren’t completely insane--but I do need sleep, and the killer has, I hope--I hope!--killed enough for one evening.
|
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
Categories
All
|