Skyrim: Cheetahs and Cheese

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

Tombs have door puzzles...

Searching the tombs gave me access to the key I needed, and in a nearby sandstorm valley I collected the amulet of cheetah friendship (which ironically I got by killing a whole bunch of cheetahs), there were still a couple of tombs left to explore so I went and recruited my trusty space marine friend Fawadin to come with me. With a heads up about the crusher traps, he was much more careful not to get squished like Rayya. These tombs had mummies and spiders! Not the giant ones, just lots and lots of little ones!

Off with his head!

Swarms of jumping arachnids were pretty scary!

I took care of the first boss: Imhotep.

Fawadin 1HKO'ed the one in the next place.

With everything explored it was time to head to the main mausoleum, behind a locked gate and another valley of big cats. Thanks to the amulet they weren't hostile though. Fawadin stayed outside to play with them while I entered the massive underground cavern that held... a pyramid!? Here at last was the final resting place of the Champion of Cyrodiil. The pristine interiors featured an awesome gallery of characters from Oblivion.

You can tell a lot of work went into this.

If he was still around I'm guessing the Thalmor would have lost.

The final test was one of archery. I just had to shoot the strange arrow (of extrication) I was given at the start of this into a small target across the large hall. It actually took two attempts before I hit it, and when I did fireworks exploded and cheese began raining down into the chamber. Cheese? A large door also opened to one side leading to the most spectacular view...

Skyrim: Tomb Raider

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

Nice place!

After a decent jog through the desert, we reach the city of Ben Erai where Rayya is waiting for us! She explains that this particular community of Redguards have lived here in isolation for generations waiting for me to arrive, to "help" me with the final tests to reach the Champion of Cyrodiil's mausoleum - his real tomb, which was around here somewhere. At least now I can understand now where Rayya was sending all my decorating funds.

That moment when you think you are in A Tale in the Desert.

I did have to ask how she got here though, and in the back of the Fortress I am shown working teleporter to Falkreath, for those who know the Ancient vision spell. You mean I could have just jumped here directly? That... would have been more convenient you know. Anyway, their version of help simply involves telling me I need a key and an amulet of cheetah friendship from somewhere in the valley to proceed. Of course they have a lot of other tasks such as hunting fire charrus and punching desert wolves.

Wolf punching.

The majority of the Eastern part of the valley was filled with tombs though, and I mean the huge sprawling type such as the one pictured above. They were filled with shades, skeletons, mummies and most problematic - STONE CRUSHER traps. Not really a problem for me since my light step doesn't trigger pressure plates anymore.

Unfortunately Rayya doesn't have that perk. Squish.

Skyrim: An Ancient Quest

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

Since the battlefield was sort of close (not really) to my property at Hjallmarch Hall, I went there and asked Rayya to help me collect the gear of the dead. I didn't even care that she still had not made any progress with the internal decor. The stuff felt heavier than it was. Rayya suggested I go visit the Umbranox family in the Reach to get my mind off that last battle so I did, and discovered that the Champion of Cyrodiil had left me a quest: to find the Cowl of the Gray Fox.

This again?

Given a strange arrow and directions to an old fort high in the mountains, I soon found myself teleported into a test area of sorts all leaning towards thiefly talents such as lock picking, jumping, sneaking past robots and pick pocketing ghosts. Yeah I guess you have to be pretty good to do that last one. My favorite was the room of fire though where you needed to walk upon an invisible path to reach the other side.

And that path is very snakey.

The next portal put me in the Imperial Prisons, where I got to enjoy a reenactment of the opening of Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and learn a very handy "ancient vision" spell which lets me see (and traverse) the past. The prisons were now run by Thalmor (obviously) so I killed as many of the bananas as I could before moving on from this area.

Pretty cool hit of de ja vu!

Skyrim: Disavowed

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

We finally reach the hideout of the Mythic Dawn and by luck, the moron we "saved" is related to the cult leader so we are instantly offered a low level "errand runner" position in the cult. Huzzah, now we can go fetch the troll fat, the illegal weapon supplies, crates of ale, etc. The good part about being in the logistics department is that we can come and go as we please, so obviously my first stop is to retrieve all my OP gear. :P

Bandit is really getting into the whole, pretend to be a cultist thing.

Anyway, the base is huge and crawling with an army of people. They are nice enough, apart from the fact that they're trying to open gates to Oblivion again, and I am soon tasked with eliminating their chief smelter who can turn silver ingots into daedric equipment - most probably because she's hacked. While that's easy enough to do, the rest of the quest unfortunately does not continue due to scripting problems or conflicts I suppose which leaves me only one course of action.

Kill... them... ALL!

You think?

It's not surprising that I am kicked out of the Agents of Stendarr after the massacre, and they don't want anything more to do with my bloodthirsty ways (which is pretty rich coming from them). Anyway, we are on the way to check on Rayya when a strange, and possibly crazy cyborg dunmer approaches us and asks for our help in saving someone. In an interesting twist, he "kills" himself so that we can take him (his core, which can still talk) with us.

"No getting stuck in walls" is a good bonus! :P

Skyrim: Crazy Cats

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

There's no cat like Skullcat!

Turns out the Khajiit's of Elswyr also submitted to the Thalmor after the White Gold Concordat was signed, but this particular group were rebels which made me really happy. After clearing the woods of some mini dinosaurs and huge spiders, Bo, Sofia and I were given an airship whith Khulam the telepath khajiit navigator and Skull Cat the khajiit pirate to stop a small Thalmor incursion (with their Igma, monkey allies) into the jungle which culminates in airborne boarding! Sofia executes their commander in his quarters.

Airship boarding!

After beating up some argonian pirates we also handle their other problem in the form of a fat Sload who wants to eat everything. He's stupid enough to get us to find food for him though which gives an easy opportunity to poison and subsequently kill him while he is weakened. Oh, and he had some sort of viral bomb which we "disarmed" (by killing an infected dinosaur) too.

Fat bastard.

With that done and the rebellion trully underway here it's time to bid farewell to my new crazy cat friends and head back to Skyrim. I'm going to miss them.

Aww... I'm going to miss them a lot!

Our first stop upon getting back was my house where Rayya had made absolutely ZERO progress in decorating it. Where the hell is all my gold going you incompetent steward? Anyway, since that is going nowhere I decide to convert the alchemy lab in my Riften property into some children's bedrooms to adopt two little girls: Sofie the flower seller at Windhelm and Lucia the beggar Whiterun. I think Njada would have liked that. And at least here, they get to play with the other kids at the orphanage.

So strange. So strange.

Skyrim: Curiosity and the Karstaag

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

Since the supplies Rayya had ordered had not yet arrived, Marauder and I manually dug up the stone required after discovering a nearby quarry. With all the necessary materials now, we managed to complete construction of Hjalmarch Hall. The next stage would be interior design which is something I'm not keen on so again I left the steward, Rayya, with bags of gold and instructions to furnish the whole place.

Looking good... on the outside at least!

During the process of loading and unloading supplies Marauder noticed an odd skull in my pack, one labelled "Karstaag" which I picked up from some frozen cave in Solstheim. Realizing there was another location that shared that name ("Castle Karstaag") we decided to check it out again since I had already previously cleared it with Sero awhile back. I noticed the skeleton on the giant throne was missing its head, so doing the logical thing I put the skull there and... BOOM! Magical energies sent me flying!

The spirit of Karstaag, who happens to be a frost giant, had been awakened and it began thrashing both Marauder and myself. I managed to subdue it through force, granting me the ability to summon Karstaag myself, but not fast enough to save Marauder who had been crushed underneath his giant foot. Giant spirit foot? Erm. Anyway, with that done it was time to take the ship back to Windhelm.

She enjoyed it so much that she died.

Skyrim: Minecraft

Adventures in Skyrim - spoilers ahead! can follow the rest of the story here!

Since Rayya has a head for all things housing, and is decent enough in a scrap, I assigned her to be the steward of Hjalmarch Hall - the Dawnstar property, and instructed her to buy a whole bunch of supplies and furnishings. While she did that, I returned to Riverwood to recruit B.T.'s sister in arms, Marauder, to loot my stash of ingots at Whiterun and the stash at Ravensburg castle.

Supplies!

With those we are able to construct the main hall which connects to the small house (now the foyer) and acts as the central hub to which other house "wings" can be attached. I start work on constructing the bedrooms but run out of quarried stone to finish the job. A courier finds me here, telling me that Ralis again wants my help at the dig so I instruct Rayya to put a whole bunch of construction items on the list of things to get too.

Two handy fast travels later and Marauder and I are at Ralis' site. This time -everyone- is dead, and based on his scattered journals, Ralis has been a servant of Azhidal this whole time, "feeding" people to him. Marauder easily clears out the risen draugr only needing my help in the final chamber where Ralis successfully awakens his dragon priest master, killing himself in the process.

Apart from all the draugr and the zombies Azhidal is raising, the dragon priest has an interesting shout that simply removes 25% of your total life. If only he used it more often. Upon his destruction, all the zombies and draugr "died" once more which happened to just save Marauder from being undead chow. After looting the place and collecting the black book at the end I am now at level 75, and it was time to head back and finish that house!

Yeah, house building sounds better than staying here with Shub-Niggurath.

Skyrim: Hearthfire

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

After painting Raven Rock red I returned to Falkreath and recruited Rayya who seemed knowledgable in all things housing. In fact, she advised that there was more land being sold at Morthal and Dawnstar which I did buy for 5,000 gold each. Each property (including the one I previously bought in Falkreath) came with enough supplies to build a small house on site, which I did. It's pretty cool to see it come up piece by piece.

Makes me wonder if Stonehenge was just an incomplete house...

With three unfurnished little houses and a lot of room for expansions and furnishings I decided I'd have to settle on one spot and focus all my efforts there. Since the Morthal property was too close for comfort to ruins and the Falkreath one was a stones throw away from a necromantic altar (and the disturbing cave) I decided on the Dawnstar location, which is actually quite far South of Dawnstar, near the plains of Whiterun was the obvious choice.

Before I'm able to get to work though another message from Ralis arrives, asking for more help. Sigh. We go, find more draugr which Rayya clears out while I donate another 5,000 gold for the "final push" of the excavation. A random high elf mercenary also attacks us along the Solstheim shore but Rayya handles him easily. It's good to have talented side-kicks.

Skyrim: About Jarling Time

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

After but a few days of Jarling Whiterun (Jarling: Sitting on the throne and pretending to be important), a courier came with interesting news of land being sold at Falkreath that I couldn't pass up, because property is always a good investment! One short trip and 5,000 gold later I had the deed to the land in my hand. B.T. and I also met Rayya, a Redguard housecarl gifted to me by Falkreath's Jarl. She was totally jealous of B.T. though and refused to join.

 

How can they even see?

Before we could even step out of town we were set upon by a pair of odd looking cultists, and after suffering a swift end I discovered that they were sent by something named Miraak from someplace called Solstheim. Probably need to think through what you write down on paper, bad guys! I opted to take a look at my new land first though and found... nothing. I'd have to -construct- a house! Whaaaat?

Instead of doing that I decided to visit Riften first, as I'd also received a letter recommending I try adoption. It was immediately clear that I wasn't a suitable candidate. Fortunately my trip wasn't wasted, as the town came under bandit attack just as we were leaving. Rallying almost the entire town into the battle, the bandits (who were led by two imperial soldiers), were cut down to the last man.

To battle!

At that point I decided it was time to see where those cultists came from, and hopped on a boat to Solstheim. Guess I should mention that due to my continued absence, the people of Whiterun elected a new Jarl on their own. :P