Preparing for the End

Adventures in Skyrim - spoilers ahead! You can follow the whole story here!

Back at the Dark Brotherhood HQ (sounds like a racist group huh), the little jester guy I helped previously is here with the coffin of his mother. The Night Mother. I find it quite funny that this bunch of killers have the most personality among the dozens of other NPCs in the world. Distubingly, the dead lady in the coffin decides to talk to me. The Jester Cicero claims I am the new "listener". The current leader is unsure and instead sends me to off a couple of vampires and the orc coward in Morthal, both of which I have no problems with. While I'm out, I decide to have another try at getting the Elder Scroll at Blackreach as well as another collection quest down in its depths. While my expedition this time is successful, Borgath is slain by the falmer "king" at Silent City and his servants. I decide to bring her kinsman Ogol with me next (seems most of that village is willing to follow me after their chief was killed).

Turns out the contract for the Brotherhood is the Emperor himself! This is excellent news, because he's the one who bent the entire empire over to the Thalmor's whims in the first place. There will be things to setup first though, and step one is the bait. Murdering his cousin on her wedding day. I did feel guilty for this one as she was trying to unite the Empire and Stormcloaks, but when it comes down to it - why would I want to ally with a nation full of losers? Caused quite a commotion when I crushed her with that statue, and now the guards in Solitude are after my hide too. Fortunately both Ogol and I got out in one piece and decided to lay low at the top of the world.

It's a pretty good hiding place actually.
While up there I decided to read that Elder Scroll and after a nifty blinding flashback, Alduin himself appears for battle! Optimus Pri... I mean Paarthumax and Ogol the orc help me out too and we defeat him! But in traditional main bad guy fashion, he laughs at us as he runs away. Ermmm ok. Apparently he powers up by eating people in the world, then going to the afterlife and eating them again. Did that make sense? Yeah it sounded a bit wierd to me too. To chase him I needed to catch another dragon first, and needed the already built facilities at Whiterun to do so. Jarl Bossman there wasn't stupid enough to let a dragon in while he was playing the neutral card between two armies though so with the Grey Beards help I called a truce meeting between Ulfric Stormcloak and general stupid skirt, the representative leader of the empire.

How much fun I had when they decided I could call the terms of the treaty. Naturally I sided with Ulfric with everything, and most importantly gave Markarth from the imperials to the stormcloaks in exchange for the measly small port of Dawnstar, already weakening their hold in my land. I mean... this land. *Cough cough*. Also, this switches all the guards in the city of stone to Stormcloak soldiers who don't attack me everytime I visit! Woohoo! :)

Master Thief

Adventures in Skyrim - spoilers ahead! You can follow the whole story here!

Decided to try go after the Elder Scroll I needed to defeat the main bad dragon today. Hired the merc Stenvar to provide support and while he did help kill a Frost Dragon on the way to the dwemer ruins and a bunch of falmer bastards inside he didn't last very long to a group led by a falmer shadowmaster, who turned his insides into ice. I just backstab those and kill them in one hit. Proceeded down, down, down to goblin town until I came upon... Blackreach. WHAT THE HELL. This place is HUGE, and crawling with nasties. It also connects to other large dwemer dungeons. I tried to map the alien landscape as much as I could until the damn glowy shrooms started to give me a headache so I took the nearest grand elevator out of there to do something else first. Picked up the orc warrioress Borgath too, since I was running out of followers to choose from elsewhere. :P

The Dark Brotherhood had tasked me with three kills, two of which were eliminating people who non-productive to society so I had no problem with that. The last one, a hardworking miner gal in Dawnstar, I had moral issues killing. Turns out the problem solved itself as we arrived because the city was under attack from an Elder Dragon and he happened to turn my target into crispy pata before I could save her. Also visited Solitude to shadow a contact of an enemy to the thieves guild. Borgath didn't do much shadowing though, she just tried to fight her way through guard after guard to no avail. Stupid orc. Saved her life a bajillion times in that warehouse. We also cleared out a dwemer ruin and encountered a named dragon when we exited... sounded like... Vin Diesel?

Anyway, Mercer - the leader of the Thieves guild has finally tracked this nemesis of theirs and wants me to help him take them down. Sure thing. Borgath is too afraid to come with us so she stays behind. For good reason too. Mercer is an absolute kickass when it comes to dustman dusting. Better still, at the end of that it turns out HE is the bad guy and manages to "kill" me. Fortunately Athis showed me his trick of coming back to life and it seems Borgath and the nemesis person who is actually good (to an extent) help me regain my health. We head back to Riften to clear the she-nemesis' name with the guild and slay a dragon attacking the town while doing so. After all things are settled (and after she gives me a really cool set of armor) the obvious quest to hunt down Mercer begins and I am more than happy to do so. Borgath again chooses to stay out of it knowing she'd just get in the way. For the record, the final fight against Mercer is perhaps the best one I've had in the game so far (for my build anyway, Juris who did this as a mage just let his dremora do all the work :P).

What a battle between real master thieves looks like:

Can't see anything? That's the point.
After defeating him I have been elected as guild master for the thieves guild. Really? Well that's just great. They request I help them rebuild their group by doing criminal acts across the land. I have a better idea. I turn them all in. Alas that option doesn't exist, so instead I let them rot in their squallor living in the sewers like the turds they are.