[Skyrim: Dragonborn] Part 7 - Heartbreak and Ash Spawn

Ruthlessly decided to ignore the main quest due to homesickness. I was actually tempted to jump ship back to Skyrim when I decided to run a few side quests around Raven Rock. I ended up undertaking The Final Descent quest-- side note, isn't that a movie title or something? Horror? Or am I just mixing up Final Destination and The Descent? REGARDLESS.

Got a cool blade, a Dragon Priest Mask, and a new shout.

Archery would almost break this game, if it wasn't for the fact that you need to know how to use it. For example, trying to get the chest in the center of the chamber and then frantically spam-shooting at the Ringwraith Dragon Priest caused my death. Hiding around the pillars and sneak-shooting him while Vorstag, Meeko, and Serana distracted him? Caused HIS death. I gave his awesome shock-empowering mask to Vorstag, charged Vorstag's Staff of Sparks up, and now can watch awesome Static Shock-like effects.

I also found a Black Book (Winds of Change) and pwned it, getting an awesome active effect where I can't hurt my companions even if they get in the way of my arrows.

I headed back to Raven Rock and ran several other quests, notably beginning March of the Dead, cleaning out the creepy Dunmer temple, and finding a folio of The Lusty Argonian Maid for someone who is presumably a lady of Raven Rock.

Near the end of this questing streak, I ended up finding a small house belonging to a Nord man named Hrodulf. And at the same time found a love story that breaks my heart. Hrodulf was obsessed with the the noises coming from underneath his house, but he finally figured out what was going on-- they were Dwemer ruins. He was on his way back to his lover Bjornolfr when he died next to his boat, on the shore, presumably killed by a Burnt Spriggan. Next to him is a gold diamond ring and an Amulet of Mara. Or maybe he was killed by a disease from the ruins-- he sounded fairly insane toward the end of it, and did manage to send Bjornolfr one last, bloodstained letter, after all. A letter that brought Bjornolfr all the way from Skyrim, where he was killed by bandits while trying to find his lover.

They're so close, yet so far apart. I want to at least reunite their bodies, but because Bjornolfr is down a flight of stairs, I can't, since the game mechanics don't allow it, and no amount of console commands seem to help. I finally gave Bjornolfr the Amulet of Mara and gold diamond ring, and moved on.

-- 131 hours in

[Skyrim: Dragonborn] Part 6 - Getting Distracted Now

Didn't manage to get much accomplished tonight, considering that I started playing at 1AM. Tomorrow is my day off, so hopefully I'll get in a decent amount of questing.

Traveling down the coast from Skaal Village, I ended up nearly dying from Horkers. Again. Horkers hate me. And found this gorgeous Dwemer ruin. The Dwemer artifacts here are better than the ones at home, I swear. Is there a lore reason, or did Bethesda just work harder? Yes, that IS Red Mountain in the background. <3

Made my way to Tel Mithryn. Tel Mithryn alone makes me want to actually play Morrowind, rather than making me feel homesick for Skyrim.

Oddly enough, the biggest question I have through all of this is: WHAT IS THAT AWESOME SCARY THING IN NELOTH'S LOCKED ROOM?

[Skyrim: Dragonborn] Part 5 - Setting Fire to the Temple of Miraak

Managed to catch an hour before work today. Things I learned: Vorstag is a surprisingly good companion, Frea, of Skaal Village, is also awesome, and these idiots really need to stop getting in the way of my arrows. I kill them and need to reload more than I die and need to reload. The latter almost never happens, but the prior happens a lot.

For example, the battle at the end, right before I found my first Black Book.

I had decided to use Jzargo's Flame Cloak scroll, since I was finally remembering at a time when there were actually the undead about. So I fired it up. Pun intended. The first time, Frea tried to kill me because she got to close to the OBVIOUSLY ON FIRE me. The second time, I killed my dog because he caught on fire and croaked. The third time, Vorstag left my service. The fifth time, I charged ahead to kill everyone, then hid in a corner until the flames wore out, creeping steadily back every time Meeko tried to follow me and hoping I wasn't getting near enough to start the boss-level draugr fight just up the ways a bit.

For the record, Apocrypha is the coolest daedric realm ever. It's like Lovecraft met Borges and they had babies made of AWESOME. The entire realm is a gigantic library with tentacles all over.

After my adventures in the scary library, I went back to Skaal Village with Frea and received my next duty: find a word of power. I did so rather quickly, and now I just have to destroy the temples that Miraak is building around the stones. Easy peasy?

[Skyrim: Dragonborn] Part 4 - Morrowind Sucks. Skyrim is the Life For Me.

You know, there is nothing so unworldly has Morrowind, and anything to do with it. Morrowind feels like another world, and even though Solstheim is arguably the middle ground between Skyrim and Morrowind, I still want to go home.

Some things are still the same, though. After leaving Raven Rock, I found a barrow. What was different, though, was that the local bandits-- Reavers-- managed to clear out the draugr rather than the draugr clearing them out. These bandits are tougher than Skyrim folks, probably because there are more Dunmer amongst them. Hells yeah that was racist supremacy, but I'm a Dunmer so :P

Found a weird thing in a Riekling (goblin) encampment that has to do with the Dwemer? Somewhat confused, but pleased.

And then HOLY WEREBEAR WHAT WHAT?!! These things are terrifying. I WANT TO GO HOME.

Finally, after traveling the coast from Raven Rock to Skaal Village, I managed to make it inland to the Temple of Miraak, somewhat by accident. I stopped before I went inside, largely because of the dragon skeletons. Countless dragon skeletons.

Now, I've killed a dragon or twenty in my day, but nothing like this. It's just a sea of dead dragons, just... devoured. Like they were nothing.

I kill dragons to protect the townspeople of Skyrim. I kill them for the challenge, for a worthy fight. But I don't kill them to eat them. And that's what this feels like. It feels like hunger and death and the bad side of being Dragonborn.

I miss Skyrim. I miss being a hero. I miss my familiar civil war and my familiar friends and enemies. I miss the Thalmor and the Jarls and the Holds. I miss the idea that I can kill a dragon for fun and experience points, not because of greed. There's a difference, right? Right? I want to kill Miraak like whoa, but I also want to go home right now. I may be a Dunmer, but Morrowind, or even the Morrowind Lite that is Solstheim, is not where I belong.

-- 122 hours in

[Skyrim: Dragonborn] Part 3 - Entering Solstheim

After making a few more stops (I.E. clearing out all my ingredients since I rarely use them, dropping of Aela since I want her to watch over the Companions in my absence and picking up a new hire for the journey: Vorstag, due solely to his prettiness), I headed to Windhelm.

Gawd, I hate Windhelm. The city is so depressing and every time I enter it, I realize that I can never support Ulfrik Stormcloak. Despite myself, I ended up talking to the apprentice at Calcemo's alchemy shop and running a quest for Felicia Day's hubby, Scouts-Many-Marshes. Finally, I managed to get on the boat to Solstheim.

It makes me yearn for Morrowind, which is weird, since Morrowind freaked me out after playing Skyrim-- it seems so alien to me.

It was dark when I arrived, so many I wandered a bit and read all of the books-- The Red Year, in case anyone is wondering, has almost exact excerpts from real-life book Hiroshima by John Hersey. Just as I started to head over to the Earth Stone to investigate the cultist goings-on, a dragon, of course attacked.

I killed the sumbitch, investigated the stone, and saved game, since it was getting late.

I logged out, and now, 1PM the next day, hope to start up again!

-- 121 hours in

[Skyrim: Dragonborn] Part 2 - Off to Sky Haven We Go!

Have a rate of a little more than one dragon attack per hour of gameplay so far. Just got two within a couple minutes of one another, one of them an Elder Dragon and the other named (Vuljotnaak). I also learned how easy it is to take on a Forsworn camp when you have six companions with you, once you include Meeko and my horse.

Why, hello, fellow Companions? Want to join my party of six excluding me?

On my way to Sky Haven, I ran into a couple of Companions killing a Saber Tooth. Wonder whether the Saber Tooth was the cause of the dead horse and Khajiit a bit down the road, and also whether there was a trap next to them because my honorable fellows were using the dead bodies as bait for this thing. After a brief exchange ("I killed a bear the other day. What have you killed lately?" "Oh, just two dragons within the last couple minutes, and another about an hour ago." "..." "Their souls were tasty."), I met up with Esbern and Delphine, slaughtered an entire camp of Forworn, and entered Karthspire.

The Sky Haven Temple is absolutely stunning, and the bas-reliefs are just beautiful. Going to have to take some time considering who to give to the Blades. I'm considering Aela, but I don't think she's Imperalist enough. Though she might support an Empress if the Empress just so happened to be Dragonborn.

After a bit, I fast traveled over to High Hrothgar, nearly punched those apathetic jerks in the throat, and then moved on with a few more shouts to meet Paarthurnax.

No, I wasn't terrified out of my mind about the dragon an inch away from my head. Why do you ask?

After that, I finished up Throat of the World and went to Windstad Manor so that I could drop off some things before heading to Solstheim. A courier met met me there to tell me about the alchemist in Windhelm needing more help with his phial, but that sumbitch can live with his pain for a while because I'm done with this-- one more stop in Markarth, then I'm heading to Windhelm to catch me a boat!

-- 119 hours in

[Skyrim: Dragonborn] Part 1 - Starting Off

I haven't played Skyrim in a few weeks. I think about it more than I actually play it, due to Reasons that involve work, etc. Last time I left off, I was finally finishing the Nettlebane quest so that I could get the goddamn thing out of my inventory. I had just gone to Jorrvaskr and picked up a Companion radiant quest involving a family heirloom, exchanging Farkas for Aela in the hopes that she wouldn't get in the way of my arrows less, being a Huntress herself.

Though my reason for starting again today had to do with Dragonborn, I decided to go ahead and finish the quest anyway, since I wasn't sure where I wanted to be in the main questline before I headed on over to Solstheim anyway. Grabbing my trusty steed, Meeko, Serana, and Aela-- and realizing that my party is really too big at this point for a game that isn't even strictly speaking a party-based RPG-- I started riding cross-country to Morvunskar, where the heirloom was tucked away. After a few false starts, which all involved me forgetting that no, my light armor sneak-archer can't get hit more than twice with a two-handed longsword, I ended up near Windhelm. Where I met up with Cultists of Cthulhu ahem sorry Miraak. There was a very brief fight that resulted in me taking all of their armor gleefully, along with a few potions and a note telling me to go to Soltsheim. Deciding to ignore this, because despite how the game is attempting to direct me, I really needed to go to Morvunskar, I continued on my way.

Those bitches known as bandits decided to move back into Morvunskar despite it being cleared already, so I committed some genocide before, much to my surprise, SANGUINE APPEARED. Even though the fella is a Daedric Prince, I of course helped my old drinking buddy kill off the mages attacking him.

We then proceeded to each go on our merry way. A hello would have been nice, Sanguine, or at least a set of your armor, because that's badass. OR IF WE COULD GET MARRIED HEY DON'T JUDGE ME.

At this point, my view of Skyrim is pretty well populated. There isn't much I haven't seen. Probably. I mean, I keep discovering new locations anyway. And then there's Solstheim, and Serana's home (which I am keeping her away from, since she seems a little confused about where it is and I am lying to say I don't know so that I can keep her with me without having to deal with other vampires), and goddamn it I want to finish Alduin's Wall and Throat of the World before I go to Solsheim. I think that's a good place for the storylines to intersect. But that's at least a few more hours of questing, and I'm half-way across the continent from my home in Markarth, which is near where I have to meet Esbern and Delphine to go to Sky Haven. I could fast travel, but where's the fun in that? Oh well-- off to Markarth I go. Then the Throat of the World, which I WILL be fast traveling to, thank you very much, since that was hell the first time, and then, finally, to Solstheim. Right. Right?

--117 hours in