Life After Questing: Day 453

It's day 453 of my life in Skyrim and questing is a side note, a thing I do when I get bored or nostalgic about 'the good old days'.  Today I am in Whiterun (I swear I never leave this town), and I am having an easy day. I'm going to help the locals where I can and see what there is in a town that, if I'm honest, I've only ever run through on quests.

It's a fairly grime day in Whiterun with rain clouds overhead so there is only one thing for it; a trip to the Bannered Mare for a spot of breakfast.  As I'm not going to be doing much today I start with something light and a nice piece of Bread and a Sweetroll.  After an unfruitful attempt at seeing if Hulda has any gossip, I decided to mingle with the drunks who are always in here day and night.  There are all pretty boring so I figure that I'll explore the markets outside and what they have to sell before I get in trouble for punching Mikael out cold.

After clearing the gold out of two of the vendors I come to Carlotta Valentia who has something for sale that I have never found in Skyrim before: Milk.  For over a year now my diet has consisted of just alcohol and it's a surprise that I can walk straight let alone fight a Dragon and win.  Now however I have something normal to drink and for some strange reason this makes me happy.

On my way to Dragonsreach I pass Heimskr and wonder to myself how the Thalmor haven't killed him yet, or at least a citizen of Whiterun for his generally annoying never-ending rants.  After getting moaned at by the old crow of a cleaner upon entering and raiding the kitchen of all the good food I realise that there is nothing else here that I've not already seen and head out to explore the rest of the town in the hope of something interesting.

The trip to the Dungeon leads to looking at empty cells (clearly no crime happening at the moment), so I head back to the market, past Belethor's General Goods store and I stop at a house.  This is a special house for it is the house of my ex-wife Ysolda.  I start to feel my love for her return which is quickly overtaken with an overwhelming sense of guilt.  I can't bring myself to enter the house even though I still carry the key around with me.  You see I didn't break off the marriage, but in a moment of rage and stupidity I took her life.  Now I see that it was a terrible thing to do and wish I could go back and change it but I can't (and there is only so much necromancy can do).

Filled with regret and sadness I decide that there is only one thing left to do with the rest of my day; return to the Bannered Mare, buy loads of alcohol and get smashed at home with my companion Gregor.

For a day that was meant to be a good easy one, it turned out to be a pretty crappy one.  The only way it could get worse is if Gregor takes advantage of me while drunk.  But I suppose if it's been this long since she died then I shouldn't complain about a little action wherever it comes from.

Life After Questing: Day 445

A few days have past since you were last here and in that time I have added a North wing to Lakeview manor and added a load of furniture inside the house.  However in that time I felt a little lost, I felt that silent call to quest and so today I've decided to finish a quest I've been meaning to for over a year now: collecting all the Dragon Priest masks.  You see the thing is you can't just give up questing for good, it's like a Nord giving up alcohol and we all know that will never happen.

So you join me at 8.30am on Fredas the 7th of Sun's Dusk and I'm am currently outside High Gate Ruins after receiving a tip off ages ago about there being a source of power here and maybe even a Dragon Priest. I am fully kitted out in my Ancient Falmer armour and attempting to fight off any enemies with a Dragonbone Greatsword; a two-handed weapon that I am not great at using.

As soon as I enter the ruins I find a dead Draugr on the floor which makes me wonder if I may have fleetingly visited these ruins before but as I continue through to the next room I meet a woman called Anska. She's just stood there doing nothing as if she has been waiting for me.  We talk and I discover that the ruins are the home of the tomb of the long dead priest Vokun (jackpot), and that she needs my help retrieving a scroll from within the tomb.  This essentially means that she's too chicken to go it alone and wants me to kill everything and get attacked by everything instead of her.  However I am a nice guy (only been to prison once and that was a stray fireball during a Dragon attack), so I offer to help.

We head into the next area and get attacked by three Draugr that I dispatch of quickly and we continue deeper into the ruin.  As we delve further it becomes apparent that I'm a little rusty at ruin exploration as I set off a trap and get a face full of wooden spikes but Anska actually killed a few Draugr.  However rusty my exploration is, my puzzle solving skills are as sharp as ever and after taking less than a minute to solve a lever puzzle we are on our way again and into the catacombs.

After dispatching a load of Draugr Deathlords, a generic Dragon Priest and saving Anska's ass countless times we arrived in Vokun's Throne Room.  Vokun attacked us but it would seem he is not as big as he was made out to be as he went down like a sack of potatoes.  In the chamber behind I found a word wall and learnt a new word for the Storm Call shout.  I explored the room some more for more loot before I realised that Anska was still following me, waiting for me to pick up the scroll she came here for off the table next to her and personally hand it to her.  Why are all the citizens of Skyrim so lazy and useless?

With that part of the quest completed in just a mere 10 hours I left Anska to her own devices inside the ruins and headed outside, where I had an Ale and some vegetable soup and headed off home, up the road my second build Winstad Manor.  Only to get there to find a Giant attacking my house, so had to kill him before I could properly rest for the night.


It's been a long day and quite a proportion of me doesn't actually miss questing after today.  I think I might just have to stick to being a normal man about the house kind of guy.  Today has made me realise one other thing actually: it's a good job that potions don't have a use by date.

Life After Questing: Day 442

Good day everyone, you join my story not at the beginning or even the middle but at the end of it's tale.  At a point where I am master of all the guilds, the civil war has ended (the imperials won), the Dawnguard were victorious and Alduin has been defeated.  A stage in my life where meaningful quests are hard to come by and I am attempting to live a normal life in Skyrim.  This is my tale of that life and the occurrences that happen on a day to day basis.

So my story begins on day 442; Tirdas on the 3rd of Sun's Dusk. I awaken at 6.35am in Breezehome in Whiterun, with the view to having a productive day.  You see since my questing days have all but finished I have become something of a property developer and I'm currently working on the construction of my third house.  Unfortunately though during the building I ran out of some materials which I picked yesterday, the only item I haven't got yet is lumber.  So that is my plan for the day; taking a trip to the Half-Moon Mill on my way back to my new construction 'Lakeview Manor'.

With all that in mind I head downstairs to have some breakfast, a nice simple bread and cheese combo and I'm on my way.  I leave the house at seven to find that the weather looks pretty good today; it's not bright and sunny but there are few clouds in the sky.  I already begin to feel that this is going to be a good day.  On my way out of Whiterun I stop off at the Stables to be amazed to see my horse there, I was convinced that I saw it die at the hands of some Forsworn ages ago but here he is.  Southwest is my heading and as I pass the Western Watchtower a novice from the Dawnguard starts running alongside me. After awhile I stopped to see what he wanted only to find that he was fleeing from some kind of danger.  I looked around but could see no dangerous creatures or Bandits so just assumed he'd lost his marbles and let him carry on running away from his invisible foe.

Apart from a Sabrecat trying his luck the rest of the journey was pretty uneventful and I arrived at Half-Moon Mill at 9.40 and sought out Hert to purchase my lumber.  Now I've done my time with the Dawnguard so I know a Vampire when I see one, and Hert is most definitely a vampire (the red eyes and pasty face give it away).  But I'm not here on Dawnguard business so I purchase plenty of lumber and have a little chat only to find that Hert seems like a really nice woman.  Anyway it is time to press on before I have wasted the day away and once again my horse has disappeared on me again (wish it had died now), so I head off on foot.

After finding my horse 10 minutes up the road I reached Lakeview at just after eleven and began work on the main house building straight away.  I managed to build the main house and some furniture inside to at least make it a place that I can sleep/live in whilst I build the rest.  After feeling a bit hungry & fatigued I stopped to realise that it was almost 6:30 in the evening, so I stopped for a dinner consisting of Rabbit Haunch & Potato Soup.  There was little else to do so I indulged in a few drinks of wine (is alcohol all we drink in Skyrim??), and settled down for the evening.

I'm starting to feel that Lakeview may just become my new favourite house, so what if my neighbour is a necromancer practicing her works at the bottom of the hill my house sits on.  You can't pick your neighbours they say, but you can't argue with that view.

Introduction to...Simon

The above picture is of my main character in Skyrim; named Simon obviously.  Now over the past year I have seen many blogs solely detailing various ways of playing the game, people's day to day lives and adventures in the land of Skyrim.  I thought I would do posts every now and again detailing my life in Skyrim, but with a twist.

You see these posts will be detailing what happens after questing, when all the side quest-lines and the main story is completed.  They will be showing just what the Dovahkiin does to pass the time when almost everything is done and work is sparse.

I can't guarentee this will be overly interesting or at all exciting, instead an account of the 'Dragonborn' attempting to adjust to a normal life.