Back in the Saddle

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

After my much needed R&R, I decided to continue my adventures after feeling a strange shift in the air. Why were Jordis and Brelyna now wearing strange face paint? Why does Njada look more plain than usual? Oh that's right - because I am fooling around with a few of the many, many available mods for the game, the main ones being "Deadly Combat" and "Wars in Skyrim 4". After ditching some excess gear Brelyna and I head out to the city where I immediately notice some evil, pixelated fog. Turns out this was due to a driver update for NVidia rather than my custom mods so I fixed that by turning of FXAA (anti-ailiasing).

Decided to go for a ride out at the Whiterun plains and warmed up my killing skills on a bandit fighting a wolf, followed by battling a peculiarly named ice-breathing dragon who had great difficulty damaging me (I think this was due to "Deadly Dragons Lite" being incompatible with other stuff so I removed it). We then came across a shallow cave and proceeded to empty it of its undead inhabitants, led by a Volhikar master vampire. He put up a good fight but since he refused to follow me into the sunlight he became easy pickings for my bow (which now features more regular "slow mo kill shots"; sweet).

Confident in my abilities I then added the "Intense Difficulty x32" mod and promptly ran into a thief wearing full daedric gear whom I couldn't hurt (with a x16 backstab) and with one swing of her dagger sent me flying across the landscape (yeah that required a reload). Undeterred I then checked my journal and found we had an outstanding quest to find some writings for the mages guild. Brelyna's pointy ears perked up when she heard that. So off to another dank cave we went and the first critter we encounter is a Giant Frost Bear. The fight lasted for 30 minutes and took over 400 arrows. That was so ridiculous that right after, I removed the x32 difficulty mod.

Even the bear found it stupid.
Proceeding deeper we fought past some frost trolls and came upon a chest that just screamed "I'm a trap". As predicted upon touching it, two side doors opened and in came those bastard white elves, the falmer. Brelyna and I were doing a good job hiding in the shadows though as they seemingly patrolled past us. After a little while of patiently waiting and watching one of the scum I managed to slit his throat silently - then noticed Brelyna was gone! Greeeeat. Then I get a message that I've been expelled from the Mages College (magically I suppose)! What the heck is going on?

Continued backstabbing and archering the falmers and their pets to death as I proceeded down what turned out to be a pretty big cave. Further along I eventually did find Brelyna's body, planted face first on a mound of charrus eggs with her blue posterior presented invitingly between her spread legs. Not sure how the she got there (and in that position) but it looks like the falmer and/or the charrus had their way with her. Eventually found the item I came for and managed to exit via the neat little "shortcut" that's been designed into pretty much all the dungeons in the game - a feature I think that is really neat!

Gotta Catch them All

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

With the major crisis(es) averted, my vacation was cut short when I learned that the lich guys (dragon priests) are actually finite. Should have guessed with them all having names and all. Seems I missed something when I was last at Labyrinthian, and with Iona in tow we revisited the cold ruins and I found the wooden mask that when worn transports me to some sort of chapel for these -eight- dudes. I know I've killed a few of them already so it was a small adventure in itself returning to all my houses and storage areas to try find where I left them lying around. This involved thwarting an attack by an ancient dragon on the mage school and killing a pirate dremora (arr?) in its basement. Yeah that was strange. Anyway after much searching I already had five of the masks.

I recalled that I encountered one of these freaks beside a dragon roost previously so I decided to take up the Blades' offer on a wyrm hunt. One gutsy frost dragon decided to attack right at Sky Haven Temple's courtyard while I was there and after dispatching him met the Blade recruits, Mjoll, Vilkas and Athis to take down an elder dragon roosting at the top of some mountain. Alas, no lich guy here. Next stage of the plan was to take a game designer's view on the matter and if I was them I'd scatter them to the four winds (the edges of the map). Keeping an eye out for ancient nordic temples preferably high up in mountains I finally came across Forelhost where a dude pretending to be a Stormcloak officer (I knew he was shifty after pickpocketing his orders) tasked me to get the staff of the resident lich within. Turns out the old temple is home to a veritable army of Deathlords and Deathoverlords. Around midway Iona dies to their onslaught on one of those reverse spike trap pillar things.

Didn't matter as I backstabbed the rest of them and the lich face too. Couldn't kill him outright though, but Meridia's gift was sure handy in taking him out. Outside I find the traitor trying to get an imperial guy to scout the ruins out too and he rightly deduces that mr quest giver is a thalmor scum. After killing them both I picked up Brelyna the apprentice mage as my new escort as she owed me for that time she turned me green, and into a few animals. Turns out she's a very capable wizard, blasting things to hell and atronarch summoning left and right. After a few days of searching for the next target I get quite frustrated and run into Mister Wiki in a tavern who gives me directions on when to find the remaining two priest guys.

The next one we visit is royally screwed as another wizard named Anska joins the team to clear out his lair. I didn't have to do much at all in there, and the last lich didn't fare much better as he had a longer dungeon thus I was more annoyed when I reached him. :P Finally with all eight masks in hand I returned to their temple of masks and put all of theirs up on display... Seems there is a ninth mask as a reward. Slightly disappointed there was no super powerful foe wearing it though. No matter. After reclaiming all of those Brelyna and I headed back to Solitude to chillax for a bit with Jordis and Njada.

Mission complete.
I know that I'm only level 45 and I haven't cleared -all- the areas (haven't even found some either) but these adventures, despite being highly entertaining, have been causing some real life fatigue. With all the major quest lines out of the way I think its time for a break, especially with some big real life adventures coming up for me. Thanks for reading up to this point! Maybe this will be continued with a future DLC? Only time will tell. :)