The Unedited Adventures of Brockwell in Skyrim

[brockwellinskyrim]

That's me, totally slaying a dragon. How cool am I? Also, I might be 'Dragonborn'. Whatever *that* means. Pretty sure my Mum wasn't a dragon. Like, 90% sure.

[brockwellinskyrim]

Well, I know it's been awhile. But so much has happened. The bewilderment that is the wild and terrifying land of Skyrim continues to ... well, bewilder and terrify. I'll sum things up:

- Ran into a chick in a bar who claims to be my long lost ... something. Lover? Sister? Chicken feeder? Not sure. Anyway, never seen her in my life, but she's got a strong back, and hits like a ballista. I feed her delusions, she carries stuff and kills them. It *may* have been a mistake to let her have the magic demon-summoning flower. She summons them at the drop of a hat. Even to kill random deer. It gets quite out of hand.

- Joined the Thieves Guild. Yeah, I said that. 'Thieves Guild'. What a perfectly normal thing to have. I figured since this land had already turned me into a merciless killing machine, I may as well nick stuff while I'm at it. In for a penny, eh? They seem to have some internal strife and are under the delusion that *I* can fix it somehow. Like, they have no older members to take care of these things. I hope that doesn't bite me in the rump.

- Ran across a frigging enourmous statue of a woman in the mountains (I was hunting goats. I hunt goats now. Hunting goats is cool). Guess what? Another freaking daedric entity wants me to go find her lost pet rock or something. Fan-bloody-tastic.

- The head of the thieves guild stabbed me. Twice.

- You'll never guess who I ran into in a little village. Yeah, Gigantor the Viking. His Mum (or aunt, or sister ... they all look alike to me) asks me to go tell the local Jarl about the attack on Helgen. I was all like 'Uh ... wasn't that a few months ago? Shouldn't someone have taken care of this by now?', but since I was on my way in that general direction anyway, thought I may as well. Though it was probably much too late for anything to be done about it. But whatever.

- Turns out the Jarl *hadn't* heard from anyone else about a freaking DRAGON attack on one of his towns in the last month or so, and immediately put me to work for his court wizard. I wasn't really clear as to why his own employees couldn't take care of things, but, hey, I go with the flow. Apparently. These days.

- While searching an ancient tomb full of zombies for a stone dragon, or something, I pick up a talking rock. Guess what? More bloody Daedra! What. The. Hell. Skyrim. Why is this happening to *me*? I guess I'd  better deliver this dragon stone to the wizard so I can leave some of this insanity behind me ...

- Did that wall just, like, chant at me?

- If anyone out there can hear this, please send help.

[brockwellinskyrim]

Me and a Solitude Guard outside the Blue Palace. I teased her cause I heard they're not allowed to move, and she punched me in the face. Stupid locals playing pranks on tourists.

[brockwellinskyrim]

What the hell?

Do I have a sign on my back saying "Daedric gods, come get some"?!

I decided to get hammered with a random dude in a bar. Yeah, I know, didn't learn my lesson last time.

It was in ... Riften? Pretty sure it was Riften. Someone bought an Imp, cause the Imp knocked over the salad bar.

Anyway, so I wake up in a temple in Markarth with a killer hangover, and the damn priestess, talking, like a * thousand* decibels too loud tells me to clean up, or she won't tell me what I did last night. Tell ya what, was pretty sorely tempted to just walk out, but you know what they say about curiosity and cats. Although, in hindsight, maybe living by that credo is a terrible idea for me ...

Long story short, I save a goat from a giant, beat the crap outta a bird-lady (that I *may* have proposed to in a drunken haze) to get an engagement ring back off her, and then slaughter a tower full of mages (in my defense, they did attack me first) to get to some portal that leads to the garden of too much green, or some such, where my drinking buddy is having a party with a bunch of fairly vacant-looking minions.

He explains that he's a grade-one arsehole, and by way of saying sorry gives me a giant flower. I'm all like, 'woah, buddy, this cat (get it?) don't swing that way', and in response he turns into some sorta demon thing, and sends me back to the bar in Riften! The giant flower is actually a magic stick that summons demons, or something, which I guess is kinda cool.

So now, I've gotten weapons of mass destruction (although one of them is * technically* armour, but work with me here) from *four* of these crazy daedric nut-jobs. I think they might be stalking me. First one I see wearing a Brockwell costume, and I'm opening an alembic of whoop-ass on them, phenomenal cosmic powers or not.

[brockwellinskyrim]

Met a lovely old bird-lady today. Scary-looking beyond all belief, but we don't all age well do we? She very politely asked me to let her out of a cage so that she could make a staff out of her friends eyes, or something. Bit hostile, I guess, but that's Skyrim for you.

And what do you know? She helped me around all the traps in the tower, and then *gave* me the staff. How sweet is that? Will have to visit her again soon, and maybe bring some herbs to help her with that asthma.

[brockwellinskyrim]

Yeah ... that can't be good ...

[brockwellinskyrim]

So, turns out you can swim from the Cow Cultists cave to the capital of this crazy land. I know this, 'cause that's what I did. Admittedly, not intentionally. It was just fun falling down all those little waterfalls.

When I get there, the Imperials are busy celebrating what appears to be their national pastime - beheading people. I had some sort of post-trauma flashback involving flying lizards and racist bears, and moved on pretty quick. A random bum hit me up for some cash, and then asked if I could convince his boss to come back from vacation.

Somewhat depressing in its predictability  I ended up solving riddles with a magic stick for some drunken Irishman. Plus-side: I got to keep the stick. As far as I can tell, it turns trolls into rabbits, and bandits into chickens. I feel that more tests are needed to confirm this hypothesis.

Later that day, I was looting ... I mean, *exploring* ... an abandoned house, and found some creepy kid worshiping a skeleton and some human body parts. Now, I admit that I'm not one hundred percent up to scratch on my human cultural studies, but I'm pretty sure that shit's not cool? Anyway, he tells me some sob story I didn't listen to, and that he wants me to kill his old school teacher, or something. I had nothing better to do, and haven't turned anyone down in this place yet, so I figured, 'what the hey'.

I'm reasonably certain that won't come back to haunt me.

[brockwellinskyrim]

Me and one of my new cultist buddies.

[brockwellinskyrim]

Well ... that was another ... period of time ...

So, Wundermutt wondered off somewhere. I yelled his name in all the places we'd been, and waited in them for days, but he refused to come back.

I go to this old stone city where I'm told some guy is selling new dogs. But he tells me I can't have a new one til I've finished my old one. So apparently Wundermutt left me with an aura of dog-ownerness? What the hell is with that?

While in town, I got roped into exploring some creepy house. Long story short, the voices in my head got me a new mace. And that's the story I'm sticking to.

Oh, and then some moonstone-foil-hat wearing conspiracy theorist got me chasing round town looking for 'clues'. Someone obviously didn't think he was a crackpot, cause I ended up in jail. This guy with Mutton-chops claimed to be king of the moose cultists, or something, and signed me up for a prison break for the low price of shiving some fellow-prisoner bystander. When in Skyrim ...

After getting my own holy cow armour and a vaguely ominous warning from Mutton-chops, I decided to follow them home. They live in a cave, and don't say much other than 'The Reach will be ours again!" I started yelling it cheerfully back at them, and this seemed to met with vague approval.

I think I'm starting to get the hang of this place.

[brockwellinskyrim]

Sooo ...

Uh ... this talking ghost deer told me to skin a guy.

I'm wearing his skin now.

Um ... yeah ...

[brockwellinskyrim]

Me and Wundermutt, stalwart companions. Or something.

[brockwellinskyrim]

This place is freaking crazy! Everything wants to KILL you. Except, like, the rabbits, and I ain't so keen on the way some of them have been looking at me.

So I'm wondering down the road, looking for somewhere to hock this giant bundle of useless crap I can't bring myself to throw away, and I get attacked by a pack of wolves. I thought they were meant to be harmless to people or something? So, after I'm done beating the crap outta them, I wander on my way, and *another* pack attacks me. And then some sort of bloody huge crabs. What's with this place?

Then I run across this stray dog, and it decides to follow me. Hello? Cat here. Stupid mutt. Turns out it's okay, though, cause in another five steps I run into a mob of bandits who don't even bother to ask for my money - they just start swinging axes at me. Then, get this, the stray dog leaps in and tears one of their throats out. Good thing he was on my side, eh?

Well, me and Wondermutt beat them up, take their stuff and tromp on down to some gloomy town obsessed with death or something. Folkwreath or some such. I try to tell the local cops about the bandits, but this guy starts teasing me about losing my sweetroll, or something. So I throw a punch at him. I'm usually not that violent, but I've had a stressful day. So he and his buddy pull out *swords* and start laying into me! Excessive force guys! They fine *me* 40 gold, and send me on my way. Damn, I need a lawyer, like, yesterday.

I find a blacksmith who buys the sackful of armour and weapons off me, no questions asked, like it's an everyday occurrence. Then I head over to the Inn for some well deserved rest. Except it's open mic night or something outside, and the guy singing seems to know only two damn songs. As you can imagine, I barely get any sleep. And then when I wake up, the next morning, the barmaid who showed me to my room is still there, just, like, looking at me. Creepy or what?

Think I'll check out the local sights, maybe buy an armoured cart with a ballista attached before I try going anywhere else.

[brockwellinskyrim]

So, there I am, unconscious in a ditch. Not glamourous, but let he who has never woken up in a ditch be the first to, etc. etc. Some Nord behemoth decides it'll be a great idea to jump on top of me, which let me tell you is a terrible way to wake up. Next thing I know, I'm jumped by a bunch of Imperials, yelling to see my identification, asking if I've seen two steam powered centurions, and generally making my hangover even worse. I decide that the best course of action is to pass out again. It's never failed me as a policy before.

Round two starts with that same damn clumsy Nord in my face, asking me a bunch of questions. But the bugger won't shut up for two seconds to let me get a word in edgewise, and then moves on to harassing the other passengers. I figure, this is all okay, there's a perfectly rational explanation for all this, we can get this sorted, and kinda tune out until the cart pulls up in some quaint little stone fort.

Some racist quill pusher asks me my name, and then if I'm in a caravan ... what? Do all Khajiit have to travel in caravans now? He's not all bad, 'cause he works out I'm not one of the escaped convicts, or rebels, or whatever it is I'm with, but then his boss tells him to execute me anyway ... um ... hello? Lawyer ... a courier pigeon ... due process ... any of this a-ringin' any bells for you guys?

Turns out ok though, cause some sorta giant freakin' flying lizard shows up and starts blowing things up. I keep my cool, and run like bejeezus for the nearest exit. Then this Imperial guy and the Nord that won't shut up start yelling 'come with me if you want to live', and I'm all like ... I choose the clumsy git who *wasn't* trying to kill me a second ago.

Then he proceeds to order me around like he can't do nothing for himself, and I end up killing a bunch of guys, a small hoard of bloody giant spiders and a freaking *bear* on the way out of the fort, looting left right and center as I go, while the whole place is shaking around me like it's gonna fall down. When we get out, sir-talks-alot says we should split up, but I should totally visit his family in Riverwood - wherever *that* is - and I'm all kthxbai.

And that's my first morning in Skyrim.

[brockwellinskyrim]

This is me, Brockwell. What follows is an accounting of when ... well, let's just say, never get drunk and decide to walk to Skyrim.