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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
4-202-01-18 07:27
Horndew Lodge, Amber Creek, Falskaar
I open my eyes and smile happily at the sight of Oudin sleeping peacefully next to me. I cuddle up with him and lie there until he wakes up. He gets hard fast and wants me to turn my back on him. "Not in a hurry to get to work in the mornings anymore, are you?" I say mockingly. He tells me to shut up and kisses me. Then I let him have his way down there.
He does it very quickly, but I don't mind. We hug each other goodbye and I hurry into my unusual bathroom to have a shower under that small waterfall.
My followers join me shortly after Oudin has left.
Under the sunny weather, we head for the Watervine Chasm in the southwest. Our mission is to locate a passage to the Dwarven ruin Vizemundsted (or is there a Dwarven ruin between Watervine Chasm and Vizemundsted?) and then find a copy of the book "The Heart Chamber", by the help of which brother Thorlogh hopes to be able to figure out where the Heart of the Gods is and what can be done with it.
Halfway to our destination, we discover a ruin of sorts called Starwatcher Grove where we end up killing two spriggans. From there it's but a short hike to the Watervine Chasm.
The "chasm" begins with creeks in very high and narrow rock passages, followed by caves with bandits and finally an enormous cavern with rock bridges from which you can fall down tens of meters.
As we stand on that bridge which you can see in the picture, we can hear that there are people here and there, but they're all somewhere far away.
On the bridge, something like 50 meters ahead, is a shack. This seems to be the only way for us to go. However, I'm reluctant to leave my ideal sniping position just yet. Indeed, I can now see someone moving down below.
Got to wait for him to come out from behind that tree.
To cut the long story short: thanks to a little patience, we succeed in killing three or four people who are much too far away to be able to endager us, and almost too far for us to hit them, but we get them eventually. Only then do we explore this magnificent cavern step by step, killing half a dozen more bandits.
This place is so awesome, but you must see it, there's little point trying to describe it.
We just killed an ice mage and Jordis got seriously hit.
She's healed now, but it'll take some time for those ice spikes to disappear.
FYI, most of the draugrs in this cavern were dead already when we arrived.
She's healed now, but it'll take some time for those ice spikes to disappear.
FYI, most of the draugrs in this cavern were dead already when we arrived.
When we're finally done with this cavern, we enter wide but profoundly joyless passages that lead to a spider cave. After we've killed one or two without difficulty, Lydia says she has a bad feeling about this. Trusting her instinct, I proceed very slowly and indeed we soon come up against great many more spiders. Lucky we didn't rush headfirst into them. Our current position is really good, because there's no room for them to get to our flanks. Thanks to that, it's not difficult to kill them all, even though it does take considerable time.
Further passages, equipped with wooden walkways this time, lead to a fabulous, even though a tiny bit too dark cavern with an underground stream and adorable waterfalls. There are no enemies here, just those walkways descending slightly towards a stone platform with a metal door.
The waterfalls are behind us.
It leads to a huge burial dungeon. It's even called Halls of the Dead rather than the usual singular Hall . We spend hour after hour fighting our way through draugrs.
With plenty of time to think, an idea occurs to me. I'm beginning to see how the Nord burial system makes sense after all. Remember I've told you about my opinion that they're very incompetent, laying their departed to rest in such a manner that they have a tendency to wake up again. What I didn't realize before is that this system is in fact a very efficient deterrent against grave robbers. The dead don't wake up just to take a leak or play cards. They wake up when a living person gets too close to them. And why would people visit a dungeon with mummies on shelves? Most likely to steal items of value that the dearly beloved have been buried with. By doing so, they are desecrating a place of final rest. Thanks to their unique burial system, the Nords don't have to keep guards on duty in their mummy storages; the dead take care of it themselves.
That said, I still go through all the urns, most of which contain ancient coins or one or another useful item. That is our payment for endangering ourselves and wasting our time and energy on this dismal place. I deserve a reward, because I'm not here because I want to. I have to go through here in order to save Falskaar. In my eyes, the needs of the living always outweigh the "needs" of the dead.
I'm sorry to say that my attempts at using the Aetherial Staff are completely unsuccessful. The Dwemer automatons materialize all right, but none of them ever lures draugrs out of their upright coffins, so they could just as well not be there. Fortunately, most draugrs lie on open shelves where we can shoot them before they have a chance to get up. Like this:
As you know, the ones among the dead who are destined to guard the peace of the others are buried with their weapons and armor – of great weight and little value.
Sometime in the middle of the night, a most tedious one so far, we leave the last mummy shelves behind and arrive in a big hall. I recognize that place from my dreams. This is going to be the scene of a very hard and dangerous battle. Let me first decribe to you the layout.
We enter by a winding passage several meters wide. On both sides of it, at the height of maybe 3 meters, runs a narrow balcony or gallery which can be ascended via wooden staircases in a few places.
At the end of this passage is the aforementioned hall. It has a number of draugr cupboards along the walls. These draugrs have an unusual coordinated way of operating. They don't wake up very easily, but then they all wake up at the same time and you have to be careful not to be surrounded and slaughtered.
At least that's how it was in my dreams.
I place my followers on one of the balconies, the one that hasn't got a staircase on the hall's side, and instruct them to stay there during the entire battle. Then I run around the hall fast. The idea is to stir up the draugrs and quickly run up the staircase onto the balcony on the other side of the passage and start shooting the awoken draugrs, and after four or five of them are dead, use my Ritual Stone power to wake them up again and let them fight the other draugrs while I support them with arrows from the balcony. My followers on the other balcony will, of course, shoot at the enemies as well, and while I am likely to have to fight a draugr or two who'll make it to the staircase, the girls will be as good as completely safe on their balcony.
So, as I said, I quickly run around the hall, but when I've returned to the staircase, I see that nothing is stirring down below. I criss-cross the hall one more time, and now they begin to come to life. I climb up to my balcony, shoot a few enemies, reawaken them, just as planned. Then things begin to go wrong.
Firstly, my Sense of Smell power that is supposed to tell friend from enemy, doesn't. I have to observe the situation and guess who is hostile (such as this draugr who has almost reached the bottom of the staircase and is clearly headed towards me). To add to the confusion, flames begin to burst out of the traps on the floor, and that makes the silhouettes of the friendly and hostile draugrs really impossible to tell apart. I take an occasional shot anyway, after all it's just draugrs. But then I sense Jordis getting hit real bad. What the hell are you doing exposing yourself like this, stupid girl? I scream an order for my followers to retreat. In a reasonably safe distance down the passage, I verify all three are there, and then we slowly return to the main battle where we kill the creature who seems to be a kind of a boss to the draugrs (at the center of the next picture), while my revived undead finish off the last couple of regular draugrs (near the farther wall a little to the left of the center):
You could say we could have run to the passage right in the beginning and let the draugrs come to us. It didn't occur me until after the battle.
All in all, it was scary, but we're all alive. Maneuvering carefully between the floor plates that are still spewing fire, we gather up the loot and I operate the switch in the middle of the hall that opens several spiral walkways going down. We descend one and end up in a maze of passages that connect to other such spiral walkways. Only with the help of the Clairvoyance spell is it possible to find one's way around here. We climb lower all the time. It's already morning when we reach a system of ice caves.
We need sleep urgently, but we haven't seen any suitable sleeping place since we were in that bandit cavern in the early afternoon yesterday.
Fortunately, the ice-covered passages soon end up between Dwemer-style robust stone walls and a door that leads to the Ruins of Vizemundsted. That is a completely Dwemerish structure. And there are sleeping mats which we won't hesitate to make use of.
next awakening
