I get up the next morning no less determined to leave the Reach than when I went to bed. I march straight over to Bothela’s shop, buy most of her ingredients, sell some mixtures; my Speech skill advances from all of the buying and selling, and I am suddenly level 10. Level 10! If I were a hero, I would feel a sense of arrival, of personal significance. But seeing that nice round number is actually a little unsettling--once again, the world has gotten more dangerous, and I have not. Not much, anyway. At the Markarth stables, I buy a dog from Banning. “A war dog is good company and good protection,” he says, and I believe him. Yes, I know that dogs are a pain; they’re stupidly aggressive, they bark incessantly--but I can’t resist: I feel that I need more protection, that my friend Jade deserves more protection, and 500 septims is a pittance for something that will make us feel even a little bit safer. And Vigilance, the dog I’ve just bought, doesn’t look like a war dog; he’s got the same shaggy fur in his eyes, the same grinning face, the same hopeful, dopey expression as every other dog in Skyrim. In short, he’s completely adorable. My general plan is to head to Solitude, the seat of Elisif the Fair (High King Torygg’s widow) and the base of Imperial power--such as it is--in Skyrim. But there’s more than one way to do that: before yesterday’s fight with the Forsworn, I might have taken the road north past the mining town of Karthwasten, then headed east and then north through Dragon Bridge. But this entails a substantial journey through Forsworn-occupied territory. The other option is to go east, back the way I came with Ri’saad, and turn north toward Rorikstead when I reach the lake. This would be a longer walk, but most likely less dangerous, and it is therefore this route that I choose. The weather is fine as we set off, and not having a party of Khajiit to keep track of allows me to admire the landscape, which is startlingly lovely. I stop to pray at a roadside Dibella shrine, fish in a pool while Vigilance paddles around happily, and then leap hastily out of the water when I see a sabre cat in the distance. Vigilance, belying his name, hasn’t noticed a thing, and I manage to get horse, dog, and companion safely away without alarming anyone. A little later I meet an orange-skinned gentleman who claims some sort of association with the Daedric Prince Peryite; naturally I don’t care to inquire too closely, and the journey continues uneventfully until the weather suddenly turns foul and a complete stranger runs up, hands me a pair of faintly glowing hide bracers, and tells me to hang on to them or else. He then crouches down and attempts to sneak away ... in the same direction I’m already headed, so I just walk along awkwardly pretending not to see him. A little bit later another fellow runs up and asks me whether I’ve seen the first one. I immediately hand him the bracers, saying boldly, “I presume this [sic] Hide Bracers of Major Lockpicking belongs to you?” (Even if I weren’t naturally inclined to return stolen goods, how could I resist the opportunity to say something like that?) Bracers received, the fellow thanks me and informs me that he is going to track down that thief and murder him. The tracking doesn’t take long, as the thief is still crouching near enough to be seen even in this horrible downpour, and I hurry away before I can get caught in the crossfire. We reach the lake without further incident and make camp for the night--it’s not actually night yet, but in this blinding rain it might as well be: even with a lantern lit I can hardly see well enough to find a flat spot on the ground large enough for my tent. (Thank you, Realisitic Lighting Overhaul weather beta!) The very first thing I see when I awake the next morning is another campsite not a dozen steps from my own: despite my fellow camper’s having lit her own fire, I entirely failed to spot it last night. As I pack up my own equipment, taking in the scene--tall trees, buzzing dragonflies, sunlight playing on the surface of the water--I realize that I’m not ready to rejoin civilization just yet; I’m starting to see camping in a new light. Before, it was the self-sufficiency that appealed to me, and having extra time to forage for ingredients--but these advantages turned out to be largely illusory. I have to carry a load of wood around order to light my cooking fires (owing to the limitations of the game, I can’t just collect it from fallen trees), and it’s usually too dark at night to search for ingredients, so in the end I am neither self-sufficient nor productive. But there’s a far greater benefit to camping, one that I hadn’t previously considered: the prospect of getting the hell away from the craziness of Skyrim’s settlements for a while. Now that’s worth a few armloads of firewood! So I turn south instead of north. I spend only a little time in Falkreath itself--enough to put together another tent and camping bed (Jade hasn’t complained about not having her own, but I really feel that she should), buy several bottles of mead (for cooking), and try a few new ingredient combinations. I think there may be some real value in the principle of cosmetic similarity that I applied when concocting my conjuring-enhancing magic-suppressant: I caught some luna moths last night, and I combine their faintly glowing wings with matching faintly glowing chaurus eggs to produce--an invisibility potion! It has an unfortunate side effect (it drains magicka), but I’m not going to cry over losing a little magicka when I’m trying to hide from bandits or necromancers or who knows what. Lod the blacksmith asks me to help him find a dog that’s been hanging around town--he wants it as a pet--and so I walk around near the city gates to look. Almost immediately, a strange dog runs up and tries to persuade me to go on an adventure. (Even Skyrim’s dogs are not to be trusted, I see.) I tell it that I’m busy, and it runs off, but not before asking me to meet it outside a place called Haemar’s Shame. (Not likely.) I tell Lod that the dog didn’t pan out, and he’s grateful for my efforts, despite the extreme vagueness of my explanation. The weather has turned really bad again--I almost get struck by lightning while I’m wandering around--but I nevertheless leave Falkreath and head boldly up into the mountains. I am determined to enjoy the wild outdoors for as many nights of huddling inside an open-ended rain-soaked tent as it takes to achieve my bliss, so help me Divines. Past the towers where, during my previous visit, the bandits ran afoul of their own falling rock trap, I find a winding path climbing steeply to the south. By late afternoon it has brought me face-to-face with another small group of bandits. Vigilance acquits himself well in this sudden, savage fight, keeping two of them occupied while I kill the third, and despite the poor visibility, we are never in serious danger. The bandits have made their camp near a spring that feeds a lovely little stream; the beauty of this spot is marred only by some gruesome evidence of the sort of treatment we could have expected at the bandits’ hands, had they defeated us--a dead woman lying stretched over a fallen tree. Despite this unpleasantness, I set up our own tents nearby--If we go any further, I’m likely to lose the path in this rain--and we spend a miserable evening crouched around a campfire that illuminates nothing beyond our faces, with lightning crashing all around us. The next day is clear, and I’m eager to see where this path leads. As we climb higher and higher, the views get more and more spectacular; my enjoyment of them is interrupted only when I step unexpectedly on a bear trap. More traps are plainly visible on the path--someone living here is not inclined to welcome visitors, or has a serious problem with bears, or both. I hesitate for a moment, but no arrows fly at us from the higher slopes, and I’ve neither seen nor heard any bears; so after carefully setting off the other traps, I decide to continue, and we eventually arrive at a tiny, lonely house, perched almost at the mountain’s peak. The house belongs to a Nord woman named Angi. She wears ordinary clothing but carries a bow, with which she assures me very seriously that she will shoot me if I try anything stupid. Her story is straightforward and brutal: her family was murdered by a pair of Imperials, and she took revenge; afterwards, she moved as far from civilization as she could to avoid repercussions. I express my sympathy for her loss, which only irritates her. Her mood changes, though, when the conversation turns to the subject of archery: she asks me whether I know how to shoot, and in response to my modest assessment of my own abilities, offers to let me use her archery range for practice. We walk down to the range together, and she gives me some practice arrows, telling me to try hitting each of her targets in turn. The task is oddly thrilling--I’m doing simple exercises, and in no danger, but each time I succeed at one of Angi’s tests my skill with Archery improves. It’s a non-adventurer’s dream! The first three targets are easy to hit; the fourth is problematic, because it’s much farther away--distant enough that I can’t see the impact of my arrows, can’t tell a hit from a miss. I do manage to hit it after a few tries--Angi can tell, even if I can’t, and so she gives me a more demanding test: I have to hit each of the three nearest targets in a matter of a few seconds. It takes a few attempts, but I eventually succeed at this, too. The next challenge is harder still: I have to hit all four targets in less than ten seconds. I try. Over and over again, going through one bundle of practice arrows after another, I aim and fire at each target in turn, always going for the farthest one last, unable to tell whether my arrow has flown too high or struck too low. I spend the entire day doing this. Angi doesn’t get impatient, exactly; archery is clearly a passion for her, and she seems dedicated as a teacher. But she clearly doesn’t like me very much: she refers to me as “Imperial,” pronouncing the word in in the same tone that she might use when describing an unpleasant fungal growth, and often responds to my presence with nothing more than a brief, inarticulate noise, like an exasperated sigh somehow combined with a snort of contempt. At last, the light begins to fail, and I can hardly see the distant target at all, let alone tell how near my last shot has come to hitting it. Angi has made a move to walk away after each of my failures, and this time I let her go. I set up our tents near her house and snoop around a little while she stirs her cooking pot. There isn’t much to see. I read a book, The Gold Ribbon of Merit, that I find near her bed. It adheres to a rather obvious formula--a pompous archery expert instructs a stolidly inattentive pupil, who turns out to have been getting the better of the teacher all along--but the ending makes me smile. I wander back down to the archery range, and, idly curious about the actual distance to the farthest target, walk out to examine it close up. It is only then that I see my practice arrows: the target is made of hard, smooth metal, but the post that supports it is wooden, and my arrows have stuck there in a tight line. I’ve been aiming consistently too low. I go to bed in renewed hope, and wake up the next morning impatient to try again. My first attempt is slightly too slow; on my second, I nail it. Angi congratulates me warmly. She tells me that she’s enjoyed my company, that it’s nice to meet someone who isn’t out to rob you. (Which is a pretty low bar for friendship, but I have to agree with her.) And she gives me her bow, called simply “Angi’s Bow,” which appears to be a perfectly ordinary hunting bow, but to me is a marvel, a treasure--a unique item that I didn’t have to kill for, didn’t have to remove from a tomb or a cave or a dead body. Exploration in Skyrim is a slippery slope, fraught with risk; for visiting new places means finding new discoveries, and new discoveries can lead inexorably to adventure. But today I feel vindicated: I’ve struck out into the unknown and found no mysteries, no quests, no heroic deeds to be done--nothing more or less than a good book, a good lesson, a good friend.
5 Comments
Cousin Vacua
7/24/2013 03:09:47 pm
Dear Nona,
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Mewness
7/25/2013 02:44:26 am
Dear Cousin Vacua,
Reply
Tjhom
8/4/2013 07:43:04 pm
Why is it you still have Jade following you around anyway? Doesn't she just want you to find someone to marry? Also what are you going to do if she dies during your nonadventures! You will be responsible for her passing and you would not have fulfilled her wish.
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Mewness
8/7/2013 11:00:31 am
Sure you don't mean to suggest that Jade is not a fully autonomous human being who is perfectly capable of deciding for herself whether or not to accompany me!?
Reply
Tjhom
8/7/2013 05:09:32 pm
Heaven Forbid I should suggest anything of the like! Mayhap I mean,...she has grown very fond of you and would never leave your side without...some encouragment Leave a Reply. |
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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