DAY 4


We went to hunt a dragon.  I thought Stephanie would relish the opportunity, but sadly she wasn't able to strike, my team wounded it and I shot it in the face with frost 'cause, y'know, dragon.  Ice always kills dragons.  That's what pokémon taught me.  Then the dragon melted and filled my head with more light and noises.

I think this is going to keep happening.

Some guy kept calling me the dragonborn and asking me to shout.  I obliged.  I said FUS and everyone starting freaking the hell out.

GOD this is baffling!

I went back to see President Sven and he made a big fuss about it and gave me an axe or something.  I don't want to anger Stephanie, so that'll be going in the vendor trash pile along with all those books and pots and things.  He then gave me a woman, Ulrika.  Or Lydia.  Whatever.  What he doesn't realise is the Dragonbjorn is a lone wolf, an untamed stallion, the kind of man who doesn't let himself get tied down to any one woman.  He's free, like the wind.  Ulrika baby, I'm sorry, you're going to have to stay here with the president.  I'm already married, you see.

To destiny.

 I found a new friend.  He was very excited about a god or something.  I listened politely for a while, but he clearly wasn't going to stop any time soon and I wasn't allowed to kill him either, so I walked away.  I think he's still talking.  He posed for a photo, though, so I think we're BFFs now.

 
I gave some money to a drunk  man.  He told me to steal some things, but Dragonbjorn doesn't take orders from drunkards because drunkards do not give you exp.  I then went to a few houses and got shouted at by all kinds of people, because the people in Whiterun are generally insufferable pricks.

A lady in a house talked to me about me being her only hope, so I figured this was some kind of Princess Leia scenario.  Best case, I would bring balance to the force, worst case I might get laid or something.  So there's a profit.  Turned out she wanted to kill me, then wanted me to kill someone else, then... well, I think the poor thing was confused so I left her to it.

I went to talk to the president for a while.  It turns out that these conversations are far more interesting if you stand on the face of the person who's talking to you.  They look so bewildered.

Now he was distracted, it was time to see what he wore under his...

 Okay, he has no legs.  Well, it's not as if that's the worst thing I've seen today.  The game did win points for immediately having his lackey say "Hey, keep your hands to yourself".

So me and Stephanie went outside to wait for the shops to open.  Apparently we're in freaking Midgar or something.

 That went pretty well.  Got some more lockpicks.  Turns out that people get pretty mad at you for trying to pick a lock in front of them, but if they're going to leave treasure in glass cases around their homes, it's their own fault.  Lock your door or something, Jesus.

I stepped outside of Whiterun, ready for adventure.  Suddenly, a stirring in my hand.  A hunger grew in Stephanie, a bloodlust which needed to be sated.  I was powerless to stop her.

Stephanie.

STEPHANIE, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!

We walked up a mountain.  Turns out the Skyrim's quite pretty when it isn't trying to kill you.  Then we pulled the wings off some butterflies, but we didn't kill the butterflies.  They can go back to being caterpillars, I guess.

At this point, we decided to go find the man that was trying to kill Ulrika back in the bar.  Plus, it sounded like he was in a dungeon and it'd been at least 2 play sessions since we'd been dungeon delving.  I was getting tired of all these politics, so we went into a cave and killed basically everyone in it.  It was satisfying!

I met this guy.  I guess you could say he was... dying for a drink.

Yyyep...

 Then a nice man told me that Ulrika had been lying to me and that she was wanted by nobles and blah blah political unrest blah blah pay you for her capture blah blah lies and half truths.

I stabbed this plot point over and over and over and dear GOD it felt good to shut this game up and just solve a problem by killing things.


Thought for the day
I'm finding the lockpick mechanic more engaging than pretty much everything else in the game.  I hope the elder scrolls 6 is just a series of increasingly complex locks 'cause I'd buy that in a New York minute. 

DAY 3

In true Nordic fashion, I have elected to get drunk before heading out to battle.  Having achieved this, the game then presented me with no combat whatsoever.

I started in... y'know, the starting village.  Not that one that burned down, the other one.  I continued on my quest to find Ord or whatever his name was.  The lumber guy.  Forget it, from now on all male NPCs will be Sven and all female NPCs will be Ulrika.  So I'm hunting for the guy when I find my old friend, Elf-Sven just chilling out after I revealed the bard's betrayal to him (you may recall the poison pen letter from last time?).

Clearly the poor boy was suffering from some elven brain malady.  I toyed with the idea of putting him out of his misery, but there were too many witnesses and besides, I don't do that any more.  Dragonbjorn's Fork of Truth will show him the way.

As I left this peaceful town in search of the inevitable tedium of Whiterun, a tooltip told me that I was meant to be slaying a dragon.  Alduin or something.  So that's good, now I know what I'm meant to be doing.  I became distracted from this noble quest once I noticed that upon killing a wolf, its body was full of gold.

Now this bothers me.  I can appreciate that a wolf would kill and eat an adventurer, they do that, but what troubles me was why the gold was in its carcass.  Maybe it had an eating disorder.  None of the other wolves were full of gold and I've killed a few today.

I plodded along slowly until I reached a farm.  And by slowly, I mean "within 45 seconds" because apparently the towns in Skyrim are at most 2 minutes walk apart which rather does bring up the question of why anyone needs to buy a horse.  I've been to America, sometimes they have several miles between their homes and the supermarket, so I'm sure Skyrim's residents can cope.  I saw some people attack a giant, so I drew my bow and hoped to cash in on some easy exp.  They killed it before I'd even let off a shot, then their leader told me off for not fighting it and told me to join their guild.  I don't remember the name of the group, but I'm going to refer to them as the Coalition of Barbarian Arseholes because I didn't much care for her tone.

I hope to join them soon.

I reached Whiterun and entered some houses looking for quests.  I found a book about an elegant dinner party and it taught me how to better shoot a bow.  So there's that.  I then went to someone's house, had a look around and after a few minutes was told to leave or they'd summon the guards.  Well, that was fair, it was kind of late and all but they shouldn't have left their door unlocked.  Within 5 seconds, they called for the guards.  I thought this was rather unfair.

I arrived at the home of Sven, the... Jarl?  Jarg?  The president of Whiterun.  A guard accosted me, saying I looked familiar, then allowed me to pay my own bounty.   I felt good about this.  I was walking away, feelings of guilt washed clean from my soul when he spoke some terrible, terrible words.  He was to confiscate my stolen goods.

THE FORK OF TRUTH HAS BEEN DESTROYED

Upon entering Sven's palatial house and without a moral compass in my inventory, I proceeded to loot anything that wasn't nailed down.  The Fork of Truth has now been replaced with the Lute of Avarice.  It will remind me to never, ever trust another human being in this terrible world.  Sven was nice.  He talked about dragons and gave me some armour.  Thanks!  He then took me to talk to a magician that was very interested in some meaningless rock I'd picked up in Dragonclaw Temple.  This man gave me nothing.  I will com for him later.  We talked about killing a dragon, which I apparently was some kind of authority on since I'd run from one once.  I then jumped off the roof and committed suicide.  On respawning, I stole some things from a child's bedroom while he watched.

Dragonbjorn, fate has dark plans for you.

 I finished by entering a temple or something and picked up a quest to save a tree.  I'm not sure why I'd be a good candidate for this, I don't think I've even heard of whatever tree-god they worship, but people are very nice when you offer to help them out here so why not?  I went to the smith, picked up a new sword, sharpened it and went out with a spring in my step.  My new blade will be named Stephanie (or Manbane.  Either or).

After walking for about 15 minutes, trying to jump up mountains, it became clear that I wasn't going to find this mother tree or whatever it was that I was to seek and I became disillusioned.  At this point, several ghosts appeared and started throwing frost at me.  I couldn't even hurt them with Stephanie, so they froze me to death and I ragequitted.

All in all, a rich, full day.

Thought for the day
Sprint is ALT?!  Who the hell even uses alt any more?!

Introductions and days 1 and 2

Skyrim recently came down in price on Steam.  Being easily influenced, I thought I'd jump on the bandwagon and head to this magical land for some high adventure.  I quickly realised that I had little to no idea of what was happening, what I was doing or indeed what the actual poing of any of this was.

Now, before we start, let me please ask that you don't attempt to help me in any way.  I'm enjoying this confusion, it's refreshing and a very pure, innocent experience.  Plus, it'll be more amusing this way.  Thanks!


This is the ongoing tale of Dragonbjorn Ulrikson.  Son of Ulrik Larson, son of Lars Anvilsmith.  For the best results of reading this blog, imagine that he constantly has his mouth open, never focuses his gaze and never, ever speaks.  Like a dim-witted Gordon Freeman.

Here he comes now!

Note the majestic beard and manly helmet.

DAY 1

We started on a cart.  Some guy talks about political movement and general dissatisfaction but I'm more interested in seeing how good the stereo sound is and if I can move.  Throughout the conversation, my head swings around like an that of an owl on a turntable.  Despite my short attention span, he simply will not shut up but that's okay because we're apparently sentenced to be murdered now.

I still don't know what I did.

I lay my head on a block and a dragon lands and sets fire to things.  Alright.  Like, this might be a common thing around these parts, I don't know, but the militia sure seem well prepared for this kind of stuff so I'm not sure why it's presenting such a problem.  I'm asked to choose a companion, either some vigilante "down with the man!" type or a man in military garb who isn't panicking, is wearing armour and looks like he might know how to use his sword.

I'm not sure why this was even a choice.  I would have happily killed the rebel guy and taken his stuff 'cause that what you do to rebels.  Unless it's Star Wars.  Even then, that's what you do if you're playing Tie Fighter, which you should 'cause it's kind of amazing even if it's a bit dated.

I think we went down into a cave, me and my companion.  I've forgotten his name, so we'll call him Steve.  Steve talks me through the basics of hitting bears and how to stealth. I quickly forget the button for stealth and continue to hit things.  He sometimes tries to tell me more about the turmoil upstairs, but I've now realised that I can carry any item in the game and am now deciding to carry enough pots that I'm exceeding my encumberance limit.

We kill some humans.  I realise I can take their clothes off and am immediately delighted.  I eventually plan to carry a wide variety of clothing and dress the corpses of my foes in all kinds of finery so that they may be better accepted into valhalla.  Or whatever.  In all honesty, this clothing thing keeps me occupied for about half an hour.

I travel to the nearest town after activating some kind of magic rock that makes me learn how to steal people's things better.  I have no idea how this works and Steve seems quite upset that I've chosen to become a thief.  Steve should mind his own business before I kill him and steal his trousers, I think.  I talk to someone who tells me more about the area's history.  I feign interest, politely listening to the conversation tree as I try to push cheese off his table with the power of my invisible hands.  I succeed.  Dragonbjorn may have telekinesis.  I travel to a shop and get told off for taking out my sword.  This has never been a problem in any video game ever and I'm honestly a little afraid of what will happen.  He asks me to collect some golden dragon's claw or something, so I decide to go right ahead and do that, because Dragonbjorn is an adventurer and adventurers go on quests.  Besides, I don't know what this whiterun place is but it sounds kind of boring.  I suspect more people will talk to me if I go there.

The barrow... place... y'know what?  We're calling it Mount Dragonclaw.  I scaled Mount Dragonclaw and took some more trousers.  I then entered some kind of temple and saved for the night.

Thought for the day
 I can basically commit any crimes I want now, I reckon, because I'm already due to be executed.  I mean, how could it get any worse?

DAY 2

I have been told at work that I cannot, in fact, take the trousers off a bandit and put them on a dead dragon because the dragon corpses go away.  I'm quite upset about this.

People were talking inside this building so I attacked them until they stopped.  I then proceeded further into the temple (Dragonclaw Temple) and killed some more people.  I realised that if I was going to make a profit, I would have to prioritse my loot gathering and proceeded to vomit out my collection of pottery.  I found a few doors, I think, but I mostly remember the stealing.  Moving further in, I noticed bodies all over the place.  Most of them had coins, so I took those.  Dragonbjorn knows you can't take it with you when you go.  What need has a corpse for money?

I found a man who was in a spot of bother, having been captured by a spider.  I killed it pretty easily, so that guy must have been pretty pathetic because I'm a level 1 adventurer wearing nothing but things I've stolen from impoverished bandits.  I may as well be wearing a saucepan for a helmet.  I let him down and he started shouting and me and running away, so I chased after him and stabbed him in the spine.  He dropped that claw thing, so that was good.  I then got killed by a zombie.

Deciding that this was a little too much, I reloaded, took the claw again and went back to the shop.  I figured the guy would be all like "Hey, there's my thing!  Thanks!  Here, have some swords and gold!".  The guy was actually more like "Buy some stuff.  Have you seen my claw?".

Well, I was baffled by this I don't mind telling you!  "Please risk life and limb, sir, that I may be reunited with my worthless trinket!".  So I do just that, I kill many people and bring back his stupid crap.  And then he just blanks me.

Gee, guess I'd better go back to the temple and work out what this claw does because you can't be bothered to and you're certainly not going to give me any more hints!

Back to the temple, I killed some zombies and stole more things from the corpses of beloved Skyriminians.  I'm not sure that morality has any place in the career of an adventurer.  I then attacked a pot that was hanging from the ceiling to see if I could and was set on fire and killed.

Moving onward again.  This time I find a door with symbols on it, get it open and proceed to a room with a big altar in it.  Well, this looks significant.  I step up and then someone starts chanting which is kind of strange.  Maybe that just happens here.  I take some things and a bigger zombie pops out of his box and kills me.

I worked out how to level up at this point, which helped quite a lot.

I return to the room and use my ability to stop time while I drink like 10 potions in the middle of combat.  Thankfully the zombieman can't do the same.  He falls over, I take his things and walk over to a wall full of words which proceed to melt off the wall and shoot into my eyes.

You know what?  I'm just going to ignore that.  It sure as all hell doesn't make any sense, so I guess I just have magic words in my head now.  That might mean something in a while.  I think it might help me shout at things, but I can't work out how to use my war cry right now so I suspect that I shan't be shouting at things any time soon.

I leave and manage to work my way back to town.  Along the way, I find a man who wants to talk to me about "the gourmet".  He asks if I've heard of him.  Unfortunately the dialogue tree doesn't have an option for "I don't know what you're talking about, I'm lost and I need to find a pawn shop, could you please just give me a quest or go away?".  I decide that I should take this opportunity, alone as we are, to try to pick his pocket.  He catches me, predictably, since I have hands like a couple of glazed hams and the cold weather probably isn't helping, so he draws his sword.  I figure that the only way I can resolve this tense social situation is to stab him in the spine.  I have accrued some bounty at this point, though I'm nore sure how because unless this gentleman had a bluetooth headset, he surely didn't have time to warn the authorities and I know for a fact that there wasn't anyone within earshot.  Perhaps Dragonbjorn reported himself in a fit of guilt.  I'm concerned about that.

I looked through the man's belongings and realised I had killed another human being for a fork and a cookbook.  I intend to carry this fork at all times to remind me of the terrible deed I have done this day.  It will be dubbed the Fork of Truth and will remind me always of how precious all life is.

I'm now trying to find a man who's going to give me a job at the lumber mill.  I've already cut a log, but I think I won't get paid for it.  I've also helped a elf by telling him a man was writing poison pen letters in his name, but I don't feel very good about doing that.  I think I'm actually part of the problem there.

Thought for the day
Why does all this food exist?  I may as well just carry healing potions because they're more efficient.  Why doesn't Dragonbjorn need to eat?  I suppose it keeps him from needing to use the bathroom or whatever.  Also, this stamina stat intruiges me but I can't work out what it's for at all.