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SPOILER INFO
This story follows closely my actions in an actual game, so it's inevitably a spoiler.
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Because of those unnatural cheekbone spikes I told you about, I decided to create a new character from scratch – then I would be able to choose which one of the two I liked better.
When creating my current character, I had just played around, moving every slider back and forth and leaving it where I liked it most. This time, I was very cautious. I started with the default Breton and adjusted only the sliders that I was specifically unhappy with. I kept playing close attention to the cheekbones, making sure there were no spikes.
At one point I suddenly realized I had created a woman who looked like Vladimir Putin:
Evidently this was not my day. I admitted failure and reverted to my current character.
I decided to go to Morpork after all, albeit through Karthwasten which seemed to be more or less on my path. They seemed to be having some kind of a troubleconcerning the mines, but I ignored it. I merely spent the night at the inn and stole some stuff from houses, in order to test my new lock difficulty setting. I was a little wary about lock sweet spots reduced 10 times from their vanilla values, but I found it was perfectly all right.
Stenvar and I killed a couple of forns on the road. It was reasonably challenging, but not really dangerous.
The city of Morpork was completely screwed. Almost no one would talk to me. Abut half of the traders wouldn't sell to me, although it was obviously business hours. Neither the jarl nor the steward were there. Even that fanatic crusader who is supposed to hang around outside Abandoned House wasn't there. Can it be the work of the mod New Markarth Adventures ? At any rate, it doesn't seem to be doing anything useful. I haven't been able to see anything that it influences, apart from those added market stalls. Not a slightest sign of anything like a new adventure. So I'll switch that mod off in my main game.
We spent the night at the inn. In the morning, I hired another follower from the same. More precisely, I had woken up in the middle of the night. Having hired that sellsword, I thought I would do some nighttime city exploration. To my dismay, the inn door was locked!! I had to wait for fucking 6 hours to get out of the goddamned inn without being arrested for lockpicking.
A Web search failed to turn out any hint as to the possible cause of all that nonsense. Whatever. I'll turn New Markarth Adventures off like I said I would, and should Morpork be still buggy, I'll just put up with it. It's a crap city anyway and if I never go back there after my first visit, I won't miss anything.
This is what rain looks like on river surface.
I headed for Falkert with my boys. As I mentioned to you briefly, I had decided I will pay my bounty, lose some stolen stuff if it can't be avoided, and use the last hours of this test game to explore Falkreath Hold.
Along the way, we paid a brief visit to Granite Halls, spent a night in Northkeep and arrived in Falkert in the early morning hours. We had a couple of nice battles during the trip. Without my two followers, I would have probably gotten killed.
I don't think we'll stay in Falkert. Maybe I'll do some crafting, though. Then we'll head southwest.
Oh... to my utter surprise, my 15-septim bounty had disappeared. The guards I talked to showed no interest in arresting me. Weird.
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