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.
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.
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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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