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SPOILER INFO
This fanfic novel is largely based on the events that occurred in an actual game of Skyrim I played. Therefore, it's inevitably a spoiler.
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previous day
4-201-09-30 09:57
somewhere, Ravenrock, Solstheim, Morrowind
I open my eyes and find myself not in my bed at The Retching Netch. Rather bafflingly, I'm standing with a hammer in my hand working on some kind of a pillar:
I quickly realize it's Earth Stone, that construction site I saw yesterday.
I put the hammer away and look around. My followers are not here. The curse that enslaves people's minds and brings them here seems to work selectively – otherwise there wouldn't be anyone left in the town by now.
At least I'm able to break free of this and walk away. And all my inventory is intact. But of course we'll have to put an end to this affront as quickly as possible. I can't afford to be sleepwalked out of my bed like this.
I dash back to the town where I find my followers running around looking for me. Yes, don't worry, I'm all right. We return to the inn to bathe. Then I find a trader to sell a few things to. I'm glad to see that the two lunatics we met last night are in their right minds at daytime. One is a blacksmith and the other one is a shopkeeper's daughter. She says she doesn't like it here and I can hardly blame her. I further meet a nice alchemist Milore and a wealthy-looking woman Cindiri who asks me to find a certain shipwreck and retrieve a precious heirloom of hers. I ask her if she can help me get a map of Solsteheim, and she says of course she can. She's the wife of Adril Arano, the same man whom we met at the harbor yesterday. He's the Second Councilor, which means the second-most important man in Ravenrock.
We go together to the residence of the First Concilor Lleril Morvayn where I get a map.
It's past noon already. Time to hurry to the northeast to find the temple ruins and hopefully decrease the number of those Pigmasks who play games with innocent people's minds.
Solstheim turns out to be a really gloomy place in daylight as well. Where one would expect grass, the ground is covered with ash. Even trees are gray-brownish.
Closer to our destination, we see a Dwemer ruin called Kagrumez, as well as a tent with a dead man in it. There's some actual grass around the place, but my thoughts are far away from sightseeing. We move on. Soon we hear familiar clinking and see zombie-like people busy with building something. Behind the construction site is a larger amphitheater-like structure. There we see a woman who actually responds when we talk to her. When we arrived, she was calling some workers by their names, urging them to leave this place. Her own name is Frea. She's from a village called Skaal. Apparently a number of Skaal people have been turned into sleepwalking workslaves, and she is determined to either save or avenge them. I ask her what she knows about Miraak, but before she can reply, we are attacked by Pigmasks and hit real bad during the couple of seconds we need to get our weapons out. We kill the attackers all right, but I'm so angry with myself. Can I never keep my chatting addiction under control?
We enter that big structure which, as you may have guessed, is the Temple of Miraak. A passage leads to an area with a few small rooms and another long passage. Although Frea hasn't been here before, she seems to have excellent instincts as to what to do and how safe or dangerous one or another place is. In these first rooms, she feels relatively relaxed and stops to give me some background information on all this. I learn that Miraak served the dragons in the distant past and fell out with them, and now it would seem he has reawoken.
We should now proceed further into the temple, but I have a premonition that the next hours are going to be very horrible and disgusting. I'd hate to come across as whingy, but I do feel so repulsed that I have to ask Bardslayer for reassurance. Even that won't keep me from trembling most of the time during our journey through this very large temple.
The orientation is really simple for a change, especially since Frea gives us excellent tips on those few occasions when I feel a little lost. We also learn quickly to watch out for rune traps. A rune trap is where you see a certain disctinctive pattern painted on a floor slab, and when you step on it, something very heavy or hot or sharp hits you. It can be devastating, but is relatively easy to avoid when you just get into the habit of looking onto the floor in front of your feet while walking. What is significantly worse is the great number of very strong draugrs, as well as small groups of Pigmasks appearing as if out of thin air. Fortunately they tend to focus on attacking me which keeps my girls safe. And, mind you, the girls have – to my immensest relief – become really efficient with those outstanding elven bows and magic staffs I've equipped them with. It's their merciless volleys of shock arrows and movement-slowing ice spikes that kill the cultists while my shaking hands fumble with my technically superb bow.
There is one place where I suddenly get an extremely strong warning of danger. It's as if an invisible wall appeared in front of me for a second. I somehow know I will have to proceed with utmost caution, not one step but half-step at at time.
I quickly run my eyes over everything in front of me. I notice a rune trap a couple of meters ahead of me. Scanning the walls of the wide corridor going into distance, I notice a heavy grating with spikes that moves on hinges like a door. Apparently it would hit you with great force, should you heedlessly step onto that rune plate.
Near-paralyzed by my recent fright impulse, I remain standing for a few seconds. The girls have sensed a change in me and freeze somewhere behind me – very much alert and ready, as I hope. Now I can see two or three vague silhouettes approaching from the darkness of the tunnel. Our arrows hit them a second before a magic shockwave cast by them makes us stumble.
Seconds pass much too quickly. We are now in fierce melee combat. I can't understand why my Sense of Smell power keeps failing me at this temple. It's exactly this kind of situation when I need it most, and now I'm dismayed almost to tears by my inability to contribute my full share to our combat effort. I use my Ritual Stone power to revive a few dead draugrs to fight with us, and I'd like to think it's somewhat helpful.
I didn't have much chance to take pictures in the subsequent battles, but here are a couple:
[series of 2 pictures you can click through; click on the first picture to make it big, then click again to see the next picture etc.; press Esc to return to the text]
After (thank gods!) surviving all those scary encounters, we end up near a platform surrounded by fire and a book in the middle. I'm having a very strong intuition that we need that book, but I can see no way to turn the fire off. So after some hesitation, I just shrug and step onto the platform, into the fire. Fire is nasty, but not really dangerous when you go in and out quickly. It's spells that set your body on fire that can kill you. Anyway, as I have stepped out of the fire again and begin to read the book, I am teleported into some dream realm where a man with a very ugly mask and surrounded by black floating tentacle monsters speaks to me with a resounding voice. That's Miraak himself. He says he can feel I'm dragonborn, but since I have no idea what kind of power a dragonborn can wield, I shall have no chance against him, and he is going to be the master of Solstheim. Then he tells me to get lost, and turns away. Two of those abominations float towards me and begin to whip me with their tentacles. It's... I'd rather not talk about it. When the pain becomes really completely unbearable (it doesn't happen very soon), everything goes black and I come to in the real world, next to that fire platform.
I'm all in tears and shaking, but I have no physical injuries. Frea says I became see-through for maybe 10 minutes. I tell her what I saw (omitting the whipping) and she says we must hurry to her village to tell about it to her father, the shaman. I'm only too eager to do that. Anything to get away from this awful place and put that unspeakable abuse out of my mind as quickly as possible. I don't want to be reminded of it ever again.
The Skaal village is not far. On our way there, Frea shows us yet another building site like the two we've already seen. It's called Wind Stone.
Just short of Skaal, we get attacked by some weird midgets whom we defeat easily. Frea says they're called Rieklings and they're a constant threat to humans.
The village is almost abandoned. In front of the biggest house, there are three people kneeling in meditation, evidently upholding some kind of a forcefield whose faint glow I can observe in the air above them.
Frea excitedly adresses one of the three, his father Storn. She tells him about the temple and then he questions me about my, as it were, book trip. I'll spare you the mythology, but the gist of Storn's following speech is that he knows a location called Saering's Watch in the northern part of the island where I can learn a dragon shout that will enable me to free the enslaved workers. Storn can't do it himself, because he's not a dragonborn and therefore can't do dragon shouts.
He also informs me the place is best approached from the south across the hills rather than from the east along the path.
Only now do I become aware that it's past 7 o'clock in the morning! We have spent the whole evening and night getting through Miraak's temple. I don't feel too tired, though. So I decide I'll first process our loot, after which we'll go and get that shout (the place is not far), and return to Ravenrock for shopping and sleep.
There are excellent crafting facilities in the village, but no traders, since they've all been taken by Miraak. In fact, the only villager present, apart from the ones upholding the anti-Miraak protective field, is a little girl Aeta. She talks to us about everything that's on her mind, apparently having lacked a conversation partner for many days. At least she's wearing warm clothes and seems to have enough sense not to venture out of the village.
Halfway to that word wall, running ahead of my followers as usual, I meet a spriggan. I try to avoid killing her and end up half-dead myself. I'm a real mess today. I make a decision – from now on, there shall be no mercy; I'll keep away from spriggans if I can, but when there's one in my way, I shall kill her as quickly as possible.
I much prefer hares over spriggans and dragons. I hope I'm not scaring them too much.
Following Storn's advice, we approach Saering's Watch from the south. Yes, the overview is great, but the descent is too dangerous for the girls, especially considering we have a night without sleep behind us. So I go alone, instructing the girls to circumvent the hills from the east and find the path that's supposed to be there, and be extremely careful.
I descend carefully and find an ideal position where I can actually see a dragon just sitting there blissfully oblivious of me, like the one at Shearpoint. I start shooting. What else is there to do? Heavily wounded, the dragon finally manages to rise up in the air. After some confusion, it disappears in the southwest, almost dead. Not quite sure what to do, I maneuver on the rocky slope, trying to get him into my view, but then he's just gone. A few seconds later, I hear an ethereal voice informing me that this dragon's soul belongs to him. It must be Miraak having stolen my kill. Evidently Miraak is also a dragonborn.
Now I begin a slow descent, watching out for any movement.
As I get close to the highest of the platforms, I can see a draugr ready to be released, but I suppose I have to tell you what this means. Imagine a cupboard just big enough for a human to stand upright comfortably. And imagine that it has a door with hinges so rotten that if you gave it a slight push from the inside, it would fall down onto the floor. Many draugrs reside in such "cupboards" that are a little like upright coffins. They won't come out unless you walk past real close, and the lid protects them from your arrows, so it's really difficult to kill them without taking damage yourself.
With this draugr, I try something new. You remember the Aetherial Staff I crafted at the Aetherium Forge? It's supposed to project a Dwemer automaton. I've tried it two or three times so far, but nothing happened. I must have done something wrong. I want to try again. I'm in a perfect shooting position on a rock slightly higher and somewhat away from the draugr's cupboard, and I'm very reluctant to jump onto that platform where I would have little room to maneuver as well as be totally vulnerable to attacks by other draugrs who may be hiding further below us. My followers are still out of my sight and I don't want to teleport them to me, because getting materialized on a slope can be dangerous to them.
So, I take the staff. I point it very carefully at what I believe to be a suitable spot, and release its charge. Something ethereal flies there and a bubble of magical energy pulsates for several seconds, during which time I put the staff away and equip my bow. I don't know if the presence of the ghost machine will be enough irritation for the slumbering draugr to come out, but even if I'll have to jump down to the platform, I shall at least have the automaton to give me a helping hand.
Now the magical machine has materialized. It looks exactly like a Dwarven Sphere. Yes, the draugr comes out and attacks it fiercely. I realize something very important now! Guess why this staff can be extremely useful? Not because of the fighting strength of the conjured automaton – which may be significant or not. The main benefit is that the draugr saw it before he saw me. Meaning, the draugr is ferociously attacking the Dwarven Sphere which is nothing but a magical projection, while I can just stand there and shoot arrows into him without any danger to myself!!!! This is so amazing. I'd like to hug and kiss Katria. Of course, the uses of this technique are somewhat limited, but it's still a very valuable addition to my arsenal.
While this draugr is getting killed, another one becomes restless down on the ground. I can barely see it, but then I succeed in killing it. After that, I learn the dragon shout from the word wall that is right there. I descend to join my followers who have arrived by the path, and we kill, I think, two more draugrs. And that's it.
It's 2 in the afternoon now, I feel exhausted, the girls are in hardly a better shape and Ravenrock is so far away behind unknown terrain and heaven knows how many bloodthirsty ghosts or savages. I decide we'll return to Skaal and sleep there. It didn't seem to have an inn, but with most of the villagers away there's bound to be plenty of room for sleeping. Surely they won't deny the use of some unoccupied beds to us, their potential saviors, and even if they wanted to, I can't see how they could prevent us.
The map indicates that Wind Stone is conveniently on our route. I decide we'll try to liberate the workers there like Storn's instructions seem to suggest I now can.
There is nothing like a road, just endless white hills, valleys and plateaus overlooking a gray-bluish ocean. Apart from an occasional hare crossing our path and birds flying in the distance, there's no life to be seen here. However, spruce trees covered with shining white snow give the landscape a certain harsh beauty:
The Wind Stone is exactly the same kind of arched structure as we saw on the outskirts of Ravenrock, with people walking around doing things and talking philosophical gibberish. I'm not entirely sure what it is I'm supposed to do, so I just stand a few meters from the center of the thing with as few people in my line of fire as possible, and use my new Bend Will shout.
There's a moderate rumbling sound. I quickly run backwards about ten meters. The structure crumbles, people leap in various directions, and something big appears from the water. A black humanoid shape, much taller than humans. Hostile. My girls and I begin to shoot at it and a part of the liberated workers join the combat. The monster is tough but slow. Thanks to our unified efforts it's eventually dead. So is, unfortunately, a man named Baldor Iron-Shaper who, according to the other people, was a blacksmith in Skaal. It would seem the majority of the people whom we liberated are from Skaal. Some will need some time to recover their senses, the others recover sooner and thank us profusely.
The monster, by the way, was called a lurker .
In the Skaal village, we are greeted as heroes. The shaman Storn asks us to go and free the slaves at four more such sites. I promise we will, but my main interest is still to destroy Miraak who set it all up.
Storn wants to tell me one more thing in connection with my adventure with the Black Book. He says that some time ago, the village was visited by an elven wizard Neloth who was interested in Black Books. This means he may know something useful about them. He lives in a place called Tel Mithryn in the southeastern part of Solstheim. Must be the same Neloth we met in Ravenrock the other day.
But most importantly, me and my followers decidedly need to get some sleep. I know it's afternoon and if we go to sleep now we'll have to return to Ravenrock at night. We'll manage somehow. Making the trip in our current state would be more dangerous.
With the villagers having returned to their homes, I decide we'll sleep in the Greathall which is a sort of a government building. Its only resident is the village chief Fanari and she certainly doesn't need so much space.
next awakening
