However, to make it up to you all, I'm gonna essentially make today a HUGEBIGLARGE post! Hooray! Joyous, isn't it? I can hear your hearts all a pitter-patter with excitement; its OK. Today's installment is pretty much the conclusion of the Clavicus Vile arc within the game, and my further adventures as a homeowner. Lakeview Manor's shaping up!
Grand Theft Axe: Vile City
So; when we left off, I had just tore through a gaggle of vampires to get to Clavicus Vile's statue, deep within some forgotten cave. There, accompanied by useless-but-faithful Barbas the Hobo; Vile started on about how Fate's awesome and stuff. Those vampires? His devout followers! The reason they were there? Asking Vile to cure them of their vampirism. Then, as Vile puts it: "You showed up, and provided to be a better solution than I could have ever dreamed of!". Great. So I just helped him out already, by killing his followers, as 'death' is technically a solution to 'vampirism'.
Moving forward, he's not too happy Barbas is there. Mostly because he too knows Barbas is kinda shit. He does offer me a quest though, which he says he will even wave the standard WHAT A TWIST! surprise bad ending for me at the end if I help him out, because hey! He's kinda sick of being stuck here, in this ol' cave by his lonesome, being worshipped by sycophantic vampires. SO: I need to get him an artifact called The Rueful Axe. Full of Rue, or whatever. He gave it to his most devout worshipper, so he could cure his daughter of her delusions of joining a cult. (Coming from a Daedric Prince, this is hilarious.) Thing is the Rueful Axe forces the dude to kill his own daughter (effectively ending her stint in that cult.) And y'know, well; that kinda makes it DUNZO between dude and Vile.
I don't care really; if it gets me rid of Barbas, I'll punch a baby. Straight up punch a kid in its fat cherub-like face. So I head out of Vile's shrine, and figure I'll make a pitstop at my new digs before heading on out to get me some o' DAT AXE.
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| DA BEARS. |
Of course. I forgot! Its never that easy. Whatever, its not like these guys are particularly hard anyways. I clear out the small but well-organized snow bear infestation immediately outside Vile's cave (Possibly drawn to the smell of freshly slain vampires, a Skyrim delicacy?)
Ain't got time for no bearnanigans! I got stuff to do! People to punch! Et cetera. Quick jump home though, and I come to a sad realization:
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| Gotta pay the troll toll. |
The moose was scaring off the troll from hangin' around my house. Moose > Troll. This is maths. I cannot abide anything lolligagging on my land, so of course this new culprit just HAS to go and get git got gone. That taken care-of, Time to head on out to get that axe. Which of course means I'm gonna trek all over Skyrim again; which supposedly is something retarded like 43 square miles of in-game land. Fast travel is a godsend when it can be used. And then you find this:
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| Spider vs Spider ACTION! |
Two large frostbite spiders, just fightin' it out. With a tiny guard 'helping'? out one of the spiders. Who then turned on the guard. This is quite possibly due to those minor glitches in the code where NPC pathing gets too close to another, and their Hostile/Ally flags make it so that when they actually do eventually cross paths, they fight. Even though the spiders don't hang out in the middle of the road at all, they must've been too close when the guard was off the beaten trail, as it were. Imagine it to be like asteroid orbits gettin' too close to one another, and they get into this douchy "COME AT ME BRO!" fight, but in space. with asteroids. But its actually spiders, and a guard. And totally not in space at all. Yeah.
While treking through the mountains to get to the shrine where Axe-Man is at, I found a dragonshrine!
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| Its like Christmas in Skyrim! |
These are the huge stone slabs with dragon words written on them for me to learn and add to my dragonborn shoutin' repertoire. Also; usually guarded by a dragon.
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| DIS IS MAH HOUSE. |
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| DraGOB: "I've made a huuuuuuge mistake." |
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| Cats are immune to this shout, as they are bastards. |
ANIMAAAAAAL. Unfortunately, this does not summon Animal from the Muppets to be my faithful drumming companion. I looked it up, and all it does is make surrounding wildlife be your friend for a bit, and protect you. Essentially you become Ace Ventura, minus the speaking out of your butthole bit. Moving on.
I find the dude's hideout! Its a cave! Caves are cool; infinitely more cave-y than in Oblivion, which kinda used the same 4 cave maps to every cave. Mind you, that might be due to limitations in the game at that time, but these caves feel more 'alive' as it were. Also, I'm starting to stumble onto the more powerful enemies in the game as it starts scaling up to my level. Behold, the fire atronach.
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| Burn baby, burn. |
Its kind of an interesting fight, as the Atronachs have elemental abilities, resistances, and different 'logic' as it were compared to the mortal enemies. Most humanoids will ask to surrender. Its a feint, but still. Atronachs however will stone-cold eat a bitch and never surrender. In fact, Flame Atronachs have a nasty habit of...
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| EXPLOOOOOOOOOOODING! |
That's right. When they die, they go out in a blaze of glory that would make Mr. Torgue weep tears of exploding joy. This cave in particular was a short affair. Just beyond the atronach was dude in question, and the axe. A quick crack on the jaw, and he was done.
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| HAPKIDO! SEGAL-STYLE! |
So, lets head on back to Vile, now that I have his precious bauble that he assures me will in no way cause him to rescind on his deal of not boning me hard on our deal. At all. Ever.
What's that I hear in the distance? Kind of like a flapping sound...
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| Falkreath has a dragon problem. In that it has a dragon. This is a problem for any place, really. |
Dragons are to Skyrim, what Oblivion gates were to Oblivion. Except unlike the gates which can effectively be ignored aside the main quest gates, Dragon can and WILL prevent you from doing shit if you're not actively taking care of them. Also they're fucking DRAGONS. RAWR.
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| Cows runnin' scared 'cause of dragons. Balancing ontop of a fence: check. |
This guy kind of blew my mind; look at that grace and poise; the sheer skill of this cow, to be able to perform this balancing act despite a very dangerous dragon attacking the everlovin' shit out of the village. For you cow, I shall save your tiny hamlet. Never again will you be forced to perform your tricks in fear; but for the joy of all, but mostly the joy found within your large bovine heart!
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| COOL WINTAH CHILL |
C'MERE DRAGON! Ooh Frost dragon, these're new! Sucks for this guy that as a Nord, I'm 50% resistant to Frost damage. He didn't do squat to me other than annoy me. And y'know, annoy this guy too.
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| Yeah, I'm not cleaning that up. Sorry. |
I hope this guy is dead, or doesn't care he now has a giant dragon carcass infront of his house. 'Cause I sure don't care about it. I like to think the guard's more in awe that I'm just leaving it there, rather than seeing a dude kill a dragon bare-handed.
WELL whatever. I'm not going to stick around for the Falkreath Homeowner's association to come yelling at me for not respecting the city code for oversized garbage left out on non-designated large collection days. Clavicus Vile waits for no ma-- well no, he's waited a whole bunch, he can keep waitin'. Gonna take my sweet time. Maybe go back home! chill for a bit, even!
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| Settlin' down in style. |
Progress on my no-longer-so-humble abode: I've turned my initial house into the foyer, built a little pen for livestock, and stables. No sight of any further trolls or moose, so far. Could my troubles have finally ended, at home? Probably not. Started construction on some beehives, hopefully will be able to wickerman some poor sap to get a good crop this year, then its off to Vile again.
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| GUILTY: of trying to look too much like the dude in my blog banner. Also: vampirism. |
Of course more of Vile's followers showed up, and they're all vampires again. I'm unsure if they're vampires because of the quest itself, or this is the game adapting to the installed Dawnguard DLC, and thus populating more areas with vampires. Its still pretty cool though. I of course, go through them like a hot bullet through warm butter. BLAM.
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| ♫ Take my breath awaaaaaaay ♫ |
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| I wonder if a vampire fledgling's soft down sells for a lot on the black market. They're like birds, right? |
So. Vile has his axe, and Barbas is there, not-yapping his head off. I'm now worried. I was right to be worried, because Just like Loki, Vile's offering me to change the parameters of the deal; he says I can keep the Rueful Axe, if I use it to kill Barbas. He really hates Barbas as well, and for good reason, but still; Barbas just wants to get back with his BFF, despite Vile being a belcrico de merde. I also think its fitting that Clavicus Vile be saddled for the rest of eternity with Barbas again, because fuck you Vile, you a dink.
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| Not convincing me you're not gonna backstab me at all there, bro! Sweet dog statue though. |
This is what I like about the game though; small details like that give me a sense of progression as well as affecting change onto the world around me, other than just having random villagers coming up to me and thanking me for killing that dragon that what was attacking their village.
Time to head on home, and get some rest. Maybe stop off in Dawnstar for a pint or two, since its on the way ho--
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| NOPE. |
Screw it. That guy looks like he has it handled. Who am I to interfere? I can't always be the hero every time, and this is like the 4th dragon I've encountered today. I'm literally swimming with dragon souls, and have no shouts left to improve just yet. Its like having multiple personalities, except they just bicker about how you're a dick for killing them. (Note: this is not actually a game mechanic of having multiple unused dragon souls. They don't talk to you. They should though, and they should critisize your outfit and be catty bitches.)
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| Armory expansion'd. |
Home sweet home. Few more additions, notably the armory there, and some lights outside. How they stay lit in the pouring rain? Dunno. But there's a noise a comin' from behind the house. Better not be some sort of Moose/Troll hybrid...
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| And now: BANDITS. |
So the Moose was scaring off the Troll, who was scaring off the Bandits. Damn things were lingering around my beehives like I was just givin' away the honey! Which I wasn't. Ever. Somewhat curious as to what will plague my neighborhood now that I've killed off the bandits. Might as well do an inspection of the whole place, see that they didn't get into the garden or whatever. Bandits are effectively like rascally badgers.
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| ERMAHGERD. PATERDERS. |
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| Che-k'n Kau |
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| A KINGDOM FOR A HOR-- oh. Nevermind. |
Looks like everything's in order! Its good since I've asked Lydia (My Housecarl from Whiterun, remember when I purchased my first home?) to become stewart of Lakeview Manor. Well more like she immediately offered when she came by the place. Probably because her room is way bigger. I don't blame her. I've not fully started decorating yet, but I am glad that I now have space to hang up some of my mementos and keepsakes, now.
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| Its like a nightlight in my bedroom, preventing me from stubbing my toe on any of the 50,000 dressers and chests I have. |
Well that's it for this weekend's double digest edition! Took us a while, but we got through it. Next week, maybe we should go see what Delphine is up to! Or find out about this Dawnguard nonsense and vampires! Only time will tell.
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