Day 15: Dragonbjorn's destiny

My heartiest congratulations to the caption competition winner, Wayne.  As the only entrant it was a win by default but it was still thoroughly enjoyable.  With the entry "Having sex with a dragon isn't normal. But on skooma it is. Skooma. Not even once", Dragonbjorn will now forever wield the Bow of the Hunt(ington)sman.

So, down to business.  Big day, today!  I totally saved the world and everything!

 The guy with the strange speech patterns decided to open the Stargate and surprisingly, while he couldn't construct a normal sentence he was able to operate a horrendously complicated mechanism built by a long-dead race with a fetish for pointlessly complicated mechanisms.

I guess he's one of those eccentric genius types.  That's cool.

 And now he's dead.  Easy come, easy go.  I didn't want to kill him but the game seemed to be offering this sweet book to me and I wasn't able to pick it up, so I thought a little killing would help.  Turns out I was right.  I'm always right.  Killing is always the answer.  Always.

Dragonbjorn will never become a father.

 'kay, now I know Dragonbjorn is illiterate.  This has to be a magic book, there's no way he could have learned anything by reading a blank page.  I still like to believe he slams the books into his face.  It's just as well the Internet doesn't exist in Tamriel or he'd be slamming monitors into his face.  And glass is just about the strongest substance in the world apparently, so he'll concuss himself.

 God, she must be so high right now.  Sat next to her partner at dinner, I shot him in the back, he screamed and died.  She just kept eating.  Maybe it's a coping mechanism or something.  I like to eat when I'm dealing with difficult emotions too, it's a valid response to grief.

 I figured I could put an end to this whole "dead lady speaking to me in a voice only I can hear" business by shutting my wife in the coffin with her.  She's a dry, dusty corpse, this can't go more than a few ways.

It does occur that if we ever do get married, I'm not going to be able to consumate the relationship without sustaining severe genital burns.  And she only exists for 60 seconds at a time, so that's a problem.  And I'm not actually sure if it's the same woman every time, so maybe I'm cheating on her.  I mean I could improve my summoning skill or whatever to make her last longer or to summon two of her ('cept that's just perverted), but I'm not prepared to take on that kind of imaginary committment to my imaginary fire bride.

 I found a tea party in a magical forest in my dreams.  Look, I wish I was making that up too, but I'm not.  Seemed like a really dull kind of party, too, nobody was talking, eating, drinking or even acknowledging the existence of the other people there.  The guy at the end of the table seemed like a crackpot.  I was desperately hoping he'd scream "CHANGE PLACES" and that the entire party would fold in on itself 'cause that would have been cool, but he gave me a magic stick that summoned devils.  I'll take what I can get.

 Well, on the plus side, I haven't caused a diplomatic incident between the humans and the poncy elves by killing all their politicians.  I have, however, attracted the attentions and anger of an entire race.

OH WELL!

 OH YEAH!

 And here we have a magic altar to a demon lord that will only talk to you when you put its supernaturally sharp dagger on there as an offering to it. I had to kill all kinds of people to get the parts of this dagger.

In any other game, this kind of thing would be the final step towards a life of vice, evil and general immorality but this is Skyrim.  Seems perfectly normal to me.

 Sure thing, voice in my head, I'll take your magic floating sword which has the ability to slay any man at the slightest touch.  You'll have to speak up though because I have the voices of at least 3 daedric deamon princes screaming constantly in my head, as well as the croaking voice of the night mother, the thing that the nightingales worship, probably a couple of dragons and any other personalities that Dragonbjorn might be in possession of.  At least he'll never be lonely.

At this point, things went very, very wrong indeed.

I decided to join the imperials properly.  Commit myself and such.  I wandered to their fort, did a little work for them finding a special hat, I made a name for myself.  They asked me to swear an oath to the Emperor.  I was fine with this, even maybe a little proud to be serving an organisation that I believed in so strongly.  This were looking up.

I went to the dark brotherhood to see what was going on.

They insisted that I killed the emperor, right after (RIGHT after) I swore an oath to him.

 

 Kill the lady, the dark brotherhood said.  Do it on her wedding day, they said.  Do it as she addresses her family and friends, thanking them for attending on this happy day, they said.

Forget Dragonbjorn, I think I'm getting closer to being destined for Hell myself.  And I try to be a good boy and everything.

 Hell, we've come this far, we may as well go all the way and loot the body.  Can't get much more morally repulsive, no?

 And sure, let's just strip her body and throw it into the crowd of horrified onlookers.  Maybe I'll set her on fire a little bit, too!

 See what you're going to want to do when your country is being torn apart by dragons is to create a huge piece of architecture to honour your oppressors and constantly remind the people of your town that every waking moment, they must fear and respect those who, on a whim, choose whether they will live or die that day.

That's why swastikas were so popular in London in world war 2.  Except for how they weren't.

 Ugh, this guy.

I had a contract on him so fine, wait until he can't see me, sneak around a corner, shoot him and call it a day.  Fine.  Easy.  I've done it lots of times.  I shoot him, the arrow passes through his head and he... stands up and walks over to me.

So very many things went wrong with this kill.  A lot of them being the guards that, although asleep, were able to see me through their closed eyelids.  I tried all kinds of things.  Eventually I realised that if I summoned a flame demon, they'd fight among themselves without bothering me or even noticing me.  Great!  And then I realised that if they struck the death blow, he magically healed himself.

This one guy took like 15 minutes.  I hated him so much.

 OH GOD, IT'S THAT TAR THING THAT KILLED TASHA YAR.

 Oh.  No,. never mind, it's a horsie.  That's...

That's...

 Please go back into the tar.  You are genuinely the most terrifying this in this game.

Yep.  This makes all the sense in the world.  A many just half buried in the floor.

I also found out that if you close in our their feet, everyone in Tamriel has stumpy webbed toes.  I think we might be in Dunwich here, kids.  Dragonborn or DAGONborn?  Eh?  Eh?  Sorry, did I just blow your minds?

Oh, Cicero.  Poor, poor Cicero.  You couldn't hear the night mother and now you won't hear anyone ever again.  But really, when it comes down to it, it's a choice between you as a partner or your equipment.

Dragonbjorn works alone, Cicero.

Neat trick though, if you kill Cicero with a beheading, his head pops off like anybody else's but the hat doesn't.  It remains in place as if there were an invisible head there.  The head is bald.  Cicero isn't bald.  So I looted him, as is the usual procedure:

If you remove the hat, he grows hair.  It's a little thing, but I found it quite interesting to see that hats aren't actually always attached to heads.

I went to see about this emperor killing thing.  Someone told me I should kill the Gourmet and pretend to be him.  I wanted to remove his skin and wear it as a foolproof disguise, but I haven't found the key binding for flaying an orc yet.  You probably need some heavy armour perks.  I put on his fancy hat though.

I think I am the Gourmet now.  I figured I should cook something so I burned a salmon.  The game gave me an achievement.  I think this is a good sign.

Whether nobleman or pauper, no man is safe from Dragonbjorn.  As Hepaestus is my witness, no pair of trousers will go unfilched, no shirt will avoid his snatching fingers.

So yeah, that's the emperor dead.  Seemed rather easy really.

Weeeell shit.  So that's the end of the dark brotherhood.  It was nice while it lasted I suppose.  Lucrative, certainly.  I guess all that's left is to pop back into the burning wreckage, take what's still intact, maybe make sure that the night mother has been cremated...

Mother of God.  She's still talking?  I've got to admit, this actually really upset me.  I knew she was going to ask me to put her out of her misery.  I couldn't wait.

Welp, guess I'd better do this, then.  Although it's the first time that a contract has ever said "yo, look, I'm cool with this.  Maybe you should just go ahead with it.  I've been expecting you, I'm ready for this, just be a professional about it."

Frankly I didn't know how to react to that.  That gave me a lot to think about as I went back to retrieve the bounty and stab the guy who gave me the contract, even though I didn't really have any reason to kill the guy except that the emperor asked me to do so very nicely.

I think if a child came up to me on the streets of Winterhold and said "I'll give you an apple if you stab Mr Winterbottom.  He's my teacher and he gives us too much homework", I'd immediately trot off to kill some kindly old man.  It's questing.  You have to do these things because they're quests.

MADRE DE DIOS!

Bow down, peasants, 'cause I'mma buy me a country!

Oh.  Oh good, you survived.  And you're still talking to me.

Yeah, guys?  Time for a secret assassin's club meeting.  From now on, new house rule, 'kay?  We do not open the corpse box.  Not even if the corpse tells you to.  Not even if it's a dark brotherhood anniversary or whatever.  Not even if you manage to get this secret clubhouse set on fire (by the way, good job on that.  It's not like a group of trained assasins could kill some inept and weak soldiers.  No, I sympathise.  Oh, and FYI?  Yeah, I've killed 30 of them.  On my own.  Crybabies) and you need somewhere to hide from the flames.

Oh super, and it has a torture room!  So now whenever I come here to tend to my herb garden or to get some more work, I'm greeted by the moans of people who want me to end their suffering and who don't know why I'm imprisoning them!

I HATE THIS NEW CLUBHOUSE

I'm going back to the old sanctuary and I'm going to start a new group of assassins.  It's not going to have devil horses or tortuture victims or freaky corpses or anything, just KILLING AND PROFESSIONALISM.

Some of us still believe in this noble vocation.

Yep.  Let's just slap dragons all over everything.  Let them really know that we're terrified of them and will do everything we can to appease them.  That's sure to end their oppressing ways.

I went into a nice garden.  I shot all the people in there.  On a hunch, I reloaded my save and it turns out that they wanted a friendly chat and I needn't have killed them.  My first clue was that they were carrying apples and no gold.  Bad men don't carry apples.

They warned me not to stab the tree with my bad witch knife.  I stabbed the tree.

The tree summoned a demon from the elemental plane of bees.  Imagine if this savage beast came up to you in a cave!  It's a horrifying concept!  It's literally MADE OF BEES, how can that not be everyone's worst fear?!

When you get up close to a dragon, it's like it has a second smaller face.  The snout is the eyes.  I wish you guys luck with being able to unsee that 'cause I sure can't.  Doesn't help that they like to poke their snouts in your face when they talk to you instead of giving you some personal space like a normal person.

Panthermax gave me all kind of stuff.  He also didn't sound like Mario even though he's voiced by Mario.  I was praying that during the Alduin fight he'd start screaming "Let's-a go!" but he so totally didn't.  God, it's like that guy doesn't wanna be typecast or something.

Dragonbjorn can travel through time now.  Once all this is over, I'm using the elder scroll to go to the beginning of time and impregnate the first developed humanoid I see.  All peoples in Tamriel will have Dragonbjorn DNA.  I will be their king.

Ah, here we go, it's the final boss.

Aaand it's gone.

That was a bit disappointing.  It's as if powerlevelling through 100 hours of side quests has made me more powerful than I should be for this area or something.

I went back to Winterhelm or wherever.  Whiterun?  White... hold...

They told me to stop the people at the gate who were trying to break in and hurt people.  Seemed easy enough, just kill the people who don't look like me.  That's the basic rule of every war ever.  I went to the battlefield and fought a bit, killed lots of people but I slowly realised that I kept mistaking who was friend and who was foe 'cause all these beardy fighters look the same to me and in the thick of things, I may have become a bit disoriented and confused and...

Well...

Dragonbjorn, for the love of God you have ONE JOB.

ONE.

I guess that's Breezehome burned down.  Whatever.  Good thing was that this damage wasn't considered canon so when I came back the next time everything was basically okay.  I don't know if Lydia went out to fight but I hope so because she needs to learn some more independance and she needs to stop mooching off of me.   We've never even spoken.  That's just weird and a bit antisocial, living in someone else's home if you don't know them and weren't invited, then never speaking to them.  I don't care if she does clean up.  Unless she's going to have sex with me and give me that "Lover's Comfort" buff, I don't know what I need to keep her around for because it's certainly not the sparkling wit, the companionship or even that she's a good drinking buddy because she never gets her arse our of that chair in my bedroom.

I've never slept in that house.  I think she'd watch me in my sleep.  Possibly while crying softly in the darkness.

Oh, here's a great idea.  Two factions, opposed for years, gather around a table to discuss politics and try to find a way to declare a truce until this whole... "dragon" thing has been sorted out.

There's a tense, socially volatile peace talk.  We need someone with tact, skill and intellect to handle it before full-scale civil war breaks out.  Who you gonna call?

That's right, the mute nord who's personally at war with an entire race of elves.  An entire race.  He has upset an entire race of peoples so much that they are ALL trying to kill him with hired assassins and are now shooting him ON SIGHT.

I mostly got through this long, long discussion by looking at the decorations.  When the conversation stopped, I chose the option that looked like it was the easiest to understand.  Now the stormcloaks are very, very cross with me but that's nothing new and I'm going to murder them all anyway, so whatevs.

That actually all went super well!

Haha, another tiny dragon face.  SO CUTE.

'kay, independance day lasers... yep, this...

THIS SURE LOOKS LIKE SOMETHING I SHOULD BE WALKING INTO, GUYS

Certainly nothing can go wrong with walking into unexplainable sources of crackling energy that were guarded by the most powerful dragon worshippers in the world!

Oh look, there's a surprise.  Dragonbjorn walks into a death ray test site, blacks out and wakes up in viking heaven.  Guess I'm dead now or whatever.  No, that's cool.  Seriously.

I didn't die here which I realise now is a waste because this is the only place where dying then continuing from your last save makes sense.  I'm pretty sure that you reincarnate infinitely in Valhalla Sovnguard.

For viking heaven, there's sure a lot of nice architecture and not much endless fighting, feasting, drinking and vomiting.  I did like how I had to fight the guard at the gate to get in.  I've now punched my way into heaven so I suppose Dragonbjorn might not go to viking hell, no matter how many orphans he impoverishes.  He can just chop his way back to the celestial mead hall.

Oh, look who's back.  'kay Alduin, strap on your big boy dragonpants 'cause today I make a man out of you.

Uh... you... you okay there, buddy?

Aldy?

CHRIST, WHY DID HE EXPLODE?!

Aaand we went to see the BFG.  True story.

I went back to where the dragons were chilling out.  They decided to make Panthertax their king or something and promised not to be naughty ever again which I personally think is a lie.  I'm sure not going to stop stabbing them.  I was going to stab them right there and see if the game let me kill 6 dragons at once but we never got on to that and I thought it might make the Greybeards quite cross if dragon blood started gushing through their ceiling, so best not.  I don't think they were happy about that diplomacy thing.

And so with that, I think this blog must bid goodbye to the fair nation of Tamriel.  We've had some good times for sure but I think my work is done now.  I've seen some amazing things, learned a lot and have probably halved the country's population along the way.  Anything else will just be sidequests but really, I think I've screencapped or commented on most of the ridiculous things in this game.  I checked my folder last night, I've over 400 screenshots of tomfoolery, confusion and fine hats.  You guys have only seen the highlights.

So farewell Dragonbjorn.  Farewell, Tamriel.  May you live on forever, secure in the knowledge that the hero who saved you from draconic tyranny is probably far more dangerous than the thing he saved you from and is quite likely to sneak into your house and kill you in your sleep because he couldn't read the name you'd had carved into the door.

Our Hero, our Hero, steals other men's hearts
I tell you, I tell you, the Dragonbjorn comes
With a sword of dread power, he'll beak you apart
Be afeared, be afeared, the Dragonbjorn comes

He will aid the evil of all Skyrim's foes
Beware, beware, the Dragonbjorn comes
With the stench of brimstone, death and giant toes
You'll know, you'll know, the Dragonbjorn's come


Thought for the day
Oh sweet!  I got so good at using swords that I forgot how to use swords!

WHAT THE ACTUAL FU-