Dragon's Dogma: Aught to Kill You

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

Deciding that it is time to confront the dragon, I return to the Dragonforged who is nice enough to tell me where to find him. He also mentions that when he tried, he lost and is now just a ghost. That does explain why only I can see him! The beasts lair is beyond the Great Wall, guarded by hell hounds, succubi harpies, and gorechimera. It is also strangely familiar in that it is the same place I dreamt of at the start of all this... only Savan and his team were the ones hunting the wyrm.

More awesome than Zhaitan.

We eventually reach it and I am surprised that the tavern keeper Inez is a prisoner here, and the dragon offers me a choice: fight him and potentially end the world, or kill Inez (who represents my love interest I guess?) and live forever... which is what the mad Duke did. Obviously I fight the dragon - and what a glorious fight it is, covering a huge distance as we run through and a top of ruins, shoot at it with ballista, ride on it's back, and ultimately face it in a big arena!

Heat seeking magic arrows are very handy in this fight, but in the end the dragon goes down due to my learning how to double jump and grab onto its chest - followed by daggering its heart ad nauseum. After a long battle, the dragon falls and I eat its soul (Dovahkiin)! Well, not really - but he is nice enough to magically return my missing heart before disintegrating. Afterwards we take Inez back to Cassardis afterwards where she shows her appreciation, by giving free drinks and snacks all around! :P

Dragon's Dogma: There's your god

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

On the road we encounter Ser Maximillian and some guards who are hurrying to the Great Wall to stop some massive Salvation invasion taking place. Since they don't know what I was up to in the last entry, we join the ranks and reach the citadel to find it already overrun by cultists, undead, harpies and armored cyclopsi. There's even a chimera upstairs! At the top of the fort we finally catch up with the leader of Salvation who throws two final liches at us but they are easily destroyed.

Even combined they weren't as tough as the bich.

He then runs to a higher vantage point and begins giving his spiel about the dragon being the god of the new age and is cut short by having the very same dragon (the heart eater), crush him unceremoniously under foot. The beast proclaims he has no love for the Salvation idiots, and renews his challenge for me to face it since I am now stronger. With that he flies off because I suppose he likes playing hard to get.

I take the time to return to Gran Soren where I am surprised to find Madeline back in town, apparently being hunted by the guards for being allied with Salvation! I'm not sure how she escaped from the goblins and while I try to help the guardsmen arrest her, they are idiots and go the wrong way. Madeline thanks me for diverting them with that very unclear quest option and asks for 20k gold to restart her shop elsewhere. Sure why not - I've got gold spilling out my ears at this point anyway.

Dragon's Dogma: Rescuing the Girl

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

With the rebellion ended the team makes a stop at the catacombs where we attempt to slay two living armours. The problem with these things is that apart from the wide arcs of their seriously damaging sword swings, they are also immune to magic for the first stage and immune to physical damage in the second. Also, unlike the one we fought on Bitterblack Isle which was in a large arena - these two were in a more claustrophobic room. We (and I mean Margel and Fedel) simply couldn't get them to the second phase, and when they killed Fedel I knew we just had to cut our losses and retreat.

My first guess was the dragon.

Just as well too since Gran Soren was under attack - some Salvation infiltrators had resurrected the dead cockatrice Mercedes' troops brought back as tribute to the Duke. We killed the cultists and hurt the beast enough that it flew away, but it did manage to petrify some of the locals. We didn't stay long though as we learned that the Duchess Aelinore had been exiled to another of the Duke's estates where she now awaited execution for her unfaithfulness.

Jasper, the peasant whose home loan I paid off earlier, comes along to help out - carrying a nice disguise for me which makes infiltrating really easy and I reach Aelinore in no time. After a (not so) short interlude to test the bed, I then have to fight out against all the guards I snuck past, as well as more in the tunnels beneath. Fortunately Rose, Cedric, Margel and Jasper meet me half way and the Duchess is whisked off to safety. I'm noticing a theme of vanishing NPCs in this game...

Dragon's Dogma: Now You See Me

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

After the disastrous events last time, it was a good change of pace to have a simple quest in Cassardis in the form of helping the moronic Valmiro pack a boat for his "great" adventure, but once he had set sail it was back to the capital for some serious business! After switching to the "Magic Archer" class (because shooting heat seeking mana arrows is fun!) Ser Fedel and his aides Margel the warrior and Cedric the mage joined the party to hunt down a thieving ex-court mage and his band of hired thugs.

The wizard played a bit of whack-a-mole with all his teleporting around, but too bad for him he kept going to where my Port Crystals were and was put down very easily. We are then also tasked to aid Captain Mercedes handle a rebellion in that Northern Fort much to her disdain, asking me to stay out of her way. I oblige, deciding to take a back seat in the proceedings. Her forces do pretty well, taking down a Cockatrice en route to the fort and hold their own against the renegade soldiers. Not that I let them, because I'm bloodthirsty like that.

This band is led by Ser Julien who Captain Mercedes challenges to a duel. Julien prefers to fight me but Mercedes insists that I sit out of it so... fine. The silly Captain ends up losing to Julien's mace, and is only spared so that she can be whored to the rest of his forces. Lucky for her, he the "rest of his forces" are all dead. Content he has weakened this continent enough (which is why he helped Salvation in the first place), he withdraws back to his own country, and Captain Mercedes shamefully does the same. I suppose I could go chase them but via game magic all of them just vanish from the fort. Guess they all had port crystals too?

Or maybe Julien just *really* likes goats.

Dragon's Dogma: Fool's Errand

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

After what happened last time I decide it's best to adventure outside the capital for awhile, and Madeline the busty merchant decides to tag along. She is unlucky as we run into night-time drake with an army of goblins encounter again, and since last time going for the goblins let the drake breath fire on our charge this time I went for the flying wyrm. It was a faster victory, but not fast enough as by the time I turned around Madeline was gone, abducted by the goblins.

Frustrated I decided to head back to Bitterblack Isle and hunt Death, because I found I had a "god arrow" in my pack. It was tough going fighting or running past the stronger foes such as greater goblins, hell hounds, giant saurians, and a dragon with a heart on it's back this time around. We did find the spirit though and the god arrow hurt it bad (and killed everything else in the area) but it wasn't enough to destroy it.

Well, this was a bad idea.

I was foolish enough to pursue the reaper into the sewers where I thought a run and gun tactic would probably work given enough time. A randomly spawning elder ogre ended that idea mid-chase and while managed to kill it, Rose, Lily and Ingvald were all caught by Death's "sleep AoE" lantern. All I could do was grab Rose and sprint out of the way as Death's scythe cleaved the other two in half with a single swing. After getting away I teleported out of there and back to Cassardis.

Dragon's Dogma: A Punishable Offense

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

While assisting with Fournival's trial I also do some recon for Ser Fedel on the Northern fortress and discover that the troops there might not be so loyal to the Duke. After passing the information on to him I am invited by Aelinore's handmaiden to sneak into the Duchess' tower at night to keep her company? Of course, I have to sneak in because that's an offense punishable by execution. Not 10 seconds pass after entering her chamber that the Duke knocks on her door.

I quickly hide as the crazed and drooling Duke enters, throws Aelinore on the bed and proceeds to ... strangle her. Hmm I guess they like it kinky? Waiiiit a minute, he's actually killing her! I jump out of hiding which startles the Duke out of his murderous stupor, saving Aelinore's life. In thanks, she quickly calls the guards and has me thrown into the dungeon for a good whipping. That guard doesn't go easy! Aelinore comes afterwards apologizing that it was the only way to save my life. I think she just liked watching.

Why yes. Yes I do.

After she leaves I break out of the cell (because, hey - it's me), and while I'm at it free the gardener imprisoned on false accusations in the cell next to me. It turns out that he overheard damning evidence for the Fournival case so I urge him to testify at the trial, taking him personally back into the castle where the guards don't seem to care about the two escaped convicts wandering about. Lol. Guess the Duke is crazy! Anyway, Fournival is found guilty and is sentenced to life imprisonment.

Dragon's Dogma: Audience Gathering

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

I've finally gained enough fame to get an audience with the Duke it seems, who invites me to his castle where I meet all the other Wyrm hunt knights which include Ser Fedel the investigator, Ser Julien the "you have no proof I am a traitor" and the now recovered Captain Mercedes. The Duke himself seems a bit crazy, and I suspect it is his dwarf jester that driving him insane. Highlight of the evening is meeting the Duchess Aelinore though who seems to fall in love with me at first sight? That can't end well.

The duke's steward gives me more things to do such as hunt a Griffon, slay another Salvation necromancer in the catacombs, and aid in the trial of rich, bald-guy Fournival. Supposedly he's doing shady stuff so we go about finding proof of his innocence and or guilt which is as easy as talking to people in town, or more challenging - escorting eye witnesses from other forts as suggested by Ingvard.

Griffons look awesome by the way.

I am disappointed that the wandering merchant Reynard who I had saved so long ago from goblins actually sells falsified testimonies of all sorts, as he feels it should be allowed to manipulate the law into how one sees fit. Someone like that who only is after profit is a person who doesn't deserve to exist in the world, so I joyously finish what I interrupted those goblins from doing long ago, and kill the bastard.