Interview with a vampire hunter: seeing how the other side unlives.

I'M ALIIIIIIIIIIIIIVE.

I never died, really; sometimes other things have a way of overwhelming folks, and through happenstance a whole bunch of overwhelming done did happened.  Hopefully that's all settled (Probs isn't.) but lets keep on keepin' on.

Where were we?  Let us count the ways!

GRIM DETERMINED GAZE: CHECK

So I'm back at Dawnguard Keep; we had just deciphered an Elder Scroll, and I figure lets go get the next one.  To do so, I should meet up with Serana, who's been off brooding infront of her father's castle like all good emo goth vampire riot grrrrrrrrrrrrls do.

Aww there she is.  Smoldering with barely-checked rage and father issues.  JUST HOW I LIKE'EM!

NO MAKE UP NO FILTER NO PULSE

Going through the front door would be tantamount to suicide says Serana.  While I'm not one to shy away from a fight, that DOES sound like suicide, and I'm not into that at all.  Solution: swing around and knock on the back door.  (Aww yiss.)  This involves swimming in freezing waters and general unpleasantness altogether.

No limit imposed if you catch them bare-handed, because who's gonna stop you.

Come on in!  Water's fine!  Its a long trip around, on account that Castle Volkihar is HUGE.  Disciples of Molag Bal gots mad loot; and as vampires they have the luxury of being timeless and just building and building and building.  Imagine if your dad was immortal.  Better yet, imagine if all dads were immortal.  As soon as the summer time came around, they'd build decks across the entire planet, given enough years.

The pool boy's pretty hardcore 'bout his job.

 Of course a castle has a boathouse and adjourning system of twisting labyrinthine catacombs, why would you think otherwise, silly!  The back door's not guarded too well; on account that the help's decomposing and whatnot.  Hire cheap labor, get what you pay for, s'what I say.

Once inside, I find out I gotta head through this mess to find Serana's mom's garden.  Because a vampire tending to flora that feeds off of sunlight is poetic or art or I don't know.  It's dumb.  I make it a point to tell this to Serana multiple times.  Unfortunately me saying "This is dumb.  You're dumb." to my screen doesn't do much.

ACTIVATE THE LEVERRRRRRRRR!

 A lever?  Dare I?  There's no indication that this wouldn't be a trap or something, so I might as well pu--

RELEASE THE HOUNDS

AAAAAAAARGJLEGRJALAHRELANBFDUBJSKD ND DEATH DOGS NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

They run at you and make no sound, as they are made of inky black nothingness and that shit is nightmare fuel, son.

Vampires + Salts = Bath Salts? (Ugh. Boo me. Boo.)

Seriously; they love the stuff.  There's salt EVERYWHERE down here.  As well as some health potions and stuff, so I get to lootin' because fuck it; I dovhakiin what I want.  Deal with it.

Right about now, suddenly becoming arachnophobic feels like a BAD idea.

 Whichever door I choose, I lose.

It's like he's going "HAAAAAAAAAY!  Party over here!" but the party is him drinking my liquefied innards.

Why's it gotta be spiders.  STILL with the spiders.  I'm level 32; send me something bigger/tougher than spiders already! (I am going to regret this, actually.)

A vampire's garden, containing a sundial.  The irony is thick here.

 Turns out that its a FORMER sundial!  Serana's mother had it converted into a moondial because that's far more practical for vampires.  There's bits missing, and low and behold, when I fit back the missing pieces, this happens:

Dialin' it back, we're goin' deeper underground.

 MORE catacombs.  And they're the inner secret sanctum of a deranged vampire-lady who's groing hysteria and paranoia of her husband's horrible plans caused her to build this place.  Oy.  Maybe it'll be filled with some neat stuff?

Their last supper.

 Bit sad really; sucks when you die during a meal, because all that food goes to waste, and its kind of an insult to the chef; Ugh my food was so horrible they died?!  How dare I even think of cooking again!?

The last supper 2: BACK FOR SECONDS

Oh thank goodness, they're just undead.  Wait.  No that's not good.  Hold on, I gotta deal with this.  Knuckle sandwiches are being served to all those in attendance, I assure you.

Keith David's gotta eat, man.

 Seems like this lady left a few boobytraps.  In the form of undead folk.  Sucks to be them, 'cause I smashed'em to BITS.  In the case of the gargoyle, quite literally.  gargoyle shards er'where on the ground.

So thirsty!  Milk was a bad choice!

 Perks of being the dovahkiin?  Raiding a vampire's wine cellar as part of salvage claim rights.  Well that's what I'm calling it as, anyways.  If they didn't want me drinking all their wine, they wouldn't have left it out to be drank.

Weird virgin mother symbols: CHECK

Of course they're gonna get heavy-handed with the religious symbols; they're vampires attempting to bring about a world-altering prophecy to usher in their race as top dog, since vampire lords are already pretty much Gods amongst mortals.  Whatever.  Dragons were supposed to be Gods amongst mortals too, and not only do I kill them bare-handed, I also consume their souls.

Serana showin' off her Jubilee powers.  *SPARKLE SPARKLE*

 Oh look, a room filled with like four gargoyles.  NO WAY I GOTTA FIGHT'EM ALL RIGHT?  RIGHT?

RIGHT?

Of course not.  one of them was only half-carved, so he didn't come to life only to get smashed to BITS.

Vampire swag, #YOLF

I seem to have punched my way through all the defenses this lady's set up, and as myself and Serana penetrate into the final sanctum of her mother's catacombs, I can't help but wonder: why don't I just murder them all, already.  Oh well.

Cool floor design, bro.

 First things first; while Serana goes about reading her mother's diaries and journals of necromancy, I get to lootin'.  Out of all, this was the best:

YOU GOT: BEE.

 While rummaging about, we find that we need a bunch of soul gem shards, some void salts, and some blood of a 'Daughter of Coldharbour'.  Whatever that is.  I put most of the junk into the bowl.

♫ Alchemixin' like a DJ - Restoration restore my energy ♫

Nothin'.

Hmm, oh yeah, need that blood!  Since Serana's mom used her own blood, we figure her daughter's blood should be close enough, right?

GON' BLEED YOU.  REAL QUIET.  LEAVE YA HERE.

 Well Serana gets to cuttin' herself, and seems pretty at ease/used to it.  Sick.  It does however, produce results!  BEHOLD!  THE SOUL CAIRN!

WELKOM TEW OUTWARLD.

 YAY SOUL CAIRN!  Which until 30 seconds ago, I didn't know existed.  Still don't really know what it is.  Apparently, according to Serana here that is, it is where all the souls who're soultrapped go to when they die.  It is ruled over by these beings called the IDEAL MASTERS who trade in souls with necromancers for powers within the mortal realm.  However, these IDEAL MASTERS are always dicks, and trick people with shifty bargains whenever they can.  Nobody's seen them ever of course, and the fact that they exist is all speculation, since anybody who's come in contact with them or claimed to, is dead and/or insane.

But hey!  We're goin' down there because Serana's mom is down there, and we need to find out WHY she disappeared forever, and locked her daughter away with an Elder Scroll in that temple that stuck my hand with a needle that one time, WTF lady.

Just one problem, though:

Sophie's Choice, updated.

So my choices are: become a vampire, the one thing I've pretty much dedicated my last few days as a dovahkiin to destroy and stuff as a member of the Dawnguard -or- Y'know, have part of my soul offered as tribute to the IDEAL MASTERS, who are in no way going to backstab me and try to get it all for themselves, and dick me over in the afterlife because I don't have a soul anymore.

As much as I regret it, the choice is made painfully clear.  Also vampirism can pretty much be cured really easy in Skyrim.  You pay a guy, there's a few words, BOOM.  Vamp-b-gone.

I CHOSE... WISELY!

Aww yiss.  C'mere girl, lets exchange fluids and stu--

WHATS GOING ON.  HELP.  I NEED AN ADULT.

 Man, painless?  Really?  One bite and my entire screen flashes red like I just died and... oh.  Hmm.  Well then.

I am now a Vampire Dragonborn former-werewolf vampire hunter leader of the Companions, about to enter what is essentially Purgatory.  I bet there's nothing down there that isn't as horrible as I've met so-far in Skyrim or any of the Oblivion shards I've visited already!

I WAS WRONG OH GOD I WAS WROOOOOOOOOONG

OH MYYYYYYYYY

GHOST SMOKE BONE MEN WHAT WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT WHAAAAAAAAAAAT.

WHAT IS THIS SORCERY.  LETS FIND OUT NEXT TIME WHENEVER I GET AROUND TO UPDATIN' AGAIN.  SOON I HOPE?  MAYHAPS UNLESS THE BONEMEN GET ME.

Faulty Code Towers: Bitches get Glitches

It's that time again!  Hold on to your butts ladies and germs, we got a wild one today!

Before we go off on our adventure, I'd like to address the nature of glitches within Skyrim for a few of you.  I'm not insinuating any of you are dumb and don't know what a glitch is, but humor me, for the folks who haven't the foggiest why this nonsense is happening.

See, Bethesda's been doing this for a while now.  And bless'em, they're really good at it.  Except their games pretty much since Oblivion onward (Oblivion, Fallout 3, Fallout New Vegas, Skyrim, etc) all have the same problem; they're very. and I mean very large in scope.  Skyrim's overworld map is roughly 37 square kilometers' of terrain, mostly of it navigable.  There's a few bits here and there like geometry-wise you can't cross because mountainous borders here and there.  This doesn't take into account either the actual dungeon maps, so the place is huge.

Now here's where the problems start to occur.  Take this big map, and put a dungeon there.  The player hasn't gone in yet, so the game has everything set to 'default' within that specific dungeon.  Player's only level 1 anyways, and has the clothes on their back and a rusty dagger.  Not much to their name, but what they lack in swag they make up for in pure gumption.

So our fearless player goes through that there dungeon, kills all the rats, loots all the chests, knocks over all the calipers and cloth bolts and brooms, essentially either picking up / moving everything there is that is in there that can be interacted with.  And then they move on, with a bit more to their name, and level 2.

Now smash cut 28 levels later, when the player has repeated this pattern 75 times to gain the required experience to be level 30.  The game has had to keep track since that very first dungeon a full list of what is there in that dungeon still, where it is, what was taken, where those items are now, etc.  Save files become bigger and bigger and bigger to a point where poor lil'Skyrim's computing engine gets confused.

This is why I love these games on a PC.  Because the Playstation 3 and to a lesser extent the XBox 360 versions suffer from near-fatal memory leaks with every increasing hour played in the game, my computer's built (see: Frankenstein'd) to withstand a good beefy session and then some.  I've logged in roughly 135 hours so-far with Skyrim, across a few playthroughs.  My first character (A Nord mage) I sank in 75 hours alone within the first week.  I'm probably around the 50 hour mark with this run.

This means I've got a ticking timebomb worth 50 hours of random number strings just itching to pop something weird at me.  And today?  I think it begins.

Here comes the weird.

SO.  Florentius asked me a favor because regardless of how awesome Arkay is to him and how Arkay is all-mighty and all-powerful and all-knowing he's also all-talk.  Someone's got to make the donuts 'round here.   Bring home the bacon.  Flo (I'ma call him Flo from now on until I forget somewhere further down this post and/or later on.  whatever.)  Flo see, he's got this buddy.  Buddy 'name of Lucan.  Lucan is a friend of his and needs to be recruited or whatever.  Flo isn't too hands-on as to WHY Lucan is special, only that 

1) Lucan needs a-rescuin'.

2) There's also a vampire there, and hey WHEN IN ROME.

So off I go then!  

New tennants?

 I've been here before!  I even cleared it out of highway bandits!  Seriously!  Like 16 episodes ago!  Also: new armor?  OOOOH.  I'm gonna beat him up tenderly just on principle that I want his threads.  I am a voracious and aggressive fashionista, always looking to meld haute couture with form and functionality.  Why punch people dressed in rags, when you can punch people with style and flare!

Lemme hear ya say: Hunh..nah nah nah nah NAH.

This specific set-piece is pretty cool; its a semi-ruined tower overlooking two cliffs and a raging river below. Before I rescue good ol' Lucan, I decided to have fun.  By dragonshouting the master vampire and a few of his cronies off the bridge to a plummeting doom.  Only the vampire survived!

But I need it for strategic living purposes!

Well 'survived' is a loose term; technically undead, a few seconds later just dead.  I managed to loot his dust after his body kind of drifted away down river.  Well then; time to go get Lucan unkidnapped.

I did.  I'm special like that.  You probably were.  You're welcome.

Whew.  I need me some apple dumplings.  Time to head on to the ol' homestead, see what Lydia's been up to these da--

SONOVABITCH.

Goddamn wolfpack attacking my livestock!  GO HORSE GO!

THERE IS ONE THEY FEAR.  HIS NAME: DOHVACOW.

Even Mr. Macmoo got in on the action!  I mean it.  My cow rammed the crap out of the 2nd wolf after my horse killed the first one.  Why?  Because the wolves dared kill one of my chickens.  Normally these animals flee conflict, like the elks, rabbits, foxes and deer roaming Skyrim's lands.  But the game suddenly decided they'd had ENOUGH.  Glitch #1.

IRON BEAR ARMOR

 So I decide to try out that bandit chief's equipment; not bad!  The accompanying weapons would look good too, but I've my bargain to honor here.  Oh well.  Gonna catch a few Zzz's then head on out to do something for Sorine.  She needs me to fetch some plans agai--

Mannequin 2: On the MoveOH GOD I'M SORRY I DID THAT JOKE.

So y'know.  Mannequin.  Just floating there.  off of its pedestal there in the background.  No reason, just floating.  I swear if the plot of land they sold me is haunted...  Oy.   Glitch #2.

Where did you come from!?

What the; I evicted you!  No seriously, I did! OK Game's just randomly generating dead people back to life.  Fine I'll just kill'em again.  No problem.  Glitch #3.

SURPRISE!

And then this guy materializes out of THIN AIR the second I kill the necromancer AGAIN.  Glitch #4.

Whatever.  Now that the universe has started conspiring against me, and that I've sufficiently stood up to its challenges; time to go get whatever bullshit plans Sorine wants.  The map marker leads me to this cave, despite that the dwemer ruins are further up the mountain range.  Maybe there's a tunnel?  who knows.

Spooky-ooky!

Aaaaand he's floating halfway through the log.   Great.

And Glitch #5.  Corpse is 'floating' as if it were adrift the water, but also half-stuck through the wooden beam.  The area is weird because there's no enemies yet, just that corpse.  Usually quests like these tend to have a few guys around to act as a distraction or whatever.  I press on, down that cloying and moist tunnel.  (Awwww yeah.)

I've been found out!

Swirly; medieval-style!

EXTREME BAPTISM: In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Fist.

It's a dead end.  Well, sort-of.  Tunnel takes me to this giant cavern-like room with a waterfall, and a tunnel above it that leads further down into the mountain.  Except its just a straight vertical wall here.  Nothing to climb.  So the map marker effectively lead me the wrong way.  Glitch #6.

Even worse: I push up against the wall, and start jumping around looking for maybe a pressure switch of sorts; manage to 'climb' the SHEER VERTICAL ROCK WALL COVERED IN WATER 'UP'.  and get into the tunnel.  Glitch #7.  Turns out this is the 'Exit' of the dwemer ruins, and I should've came out this way, rather than enter. How'd I find this out?  The second I opened the door at the end of the waterfall tunnel, a chest was there with the bolt plans, but it clearly extended out into a full on dwemer ruin section.

Screw it, I'm not going out the front door.  'sides I got some mining to do.

YAIE YAIE.  MOON ROCKS.

Can't have enough moonrocks.  I mean just on principle.  So I head back to Fort Dawnguard to tell Flo that his boy Lucan be totes on the rescued.  This is what he had to say to me.

Oh?  I kill dragons with my bare hands for a living.  Tell me how badass you are again?

Whatever.  He says there's another vampire out there (YA DON'T SAY!) who is amassing a band of bandits into a ragtag crew of sellswords, under the promise of great power if they obey.  Essentially an army of dimwitted pawns.  Bravo.  We can't have that, so I head on out there.

Nice scenery, well-lit from sunlight.  PERFECT vampire hideout.

As I approach the tower, my objective suddenly dings "Defeat the master vampire."  I mean ok cool, but I'm not even THERE yet.  Sure enough I find the dude there, dead.

Did he jump off the building to avoid being murdered?

I mean its a legit question; is this groundbreaking AI, or bogged down programming?  Its the latter, unfortunately; (Glitch #8!) as this guy was hanging around for some reason.

Don't mention biting my kneecaps, dude.  they're filled with arrow shrapnel.

This cultist; this RANDOM cultist just so happened to walk by the tower at the same time as I was heading here, and decided to go to town on the bandits.  Crazy.  I kill him though, because he's pretty much attacking me on-sight.  He also is a dark elf!  Hey!  I need his blood for that thing with the crazy giant dwarf cube guy!

He's also the LAST blood sample I need!  Coincidence or not, I'm now super excited to see what's inside that thing.  Back to the glacier we go!

Bloody Marys, Bloody Caesars, Bloody... mixtures.  Eew.

 Septimus is nutso.  So he makes the drink, pours it in the machine, and it opens up like the goddamn Lament Configuration it is, but instead of Pinhead popping out, torn-out nipples and all, the giant cube just VORP!s inside-out and there's a tunnel in there.  Its clearly larger on the inside than the outside.  Ancient dwemer technology... Timelords!?  YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST, FOLKS.

Never judge a book by its cover's smiting-ability.  No wait.  ALWAYS judge a book by that standard.

Anyways.  He tries to take the Oghma Infinium, and prompty gets zapped into dust.  At this point, I don't care.  I'm just going to take the book back to the Moth Priest, alongside the Elder Scroll, and he can pick which one he wants to read.

Euuuugh.  Swirling evil God-poop.

Not this bozo again.  He's glad that Septimus is dead, and wants me to take the crazy-book to one of his followers, so we can get this show on the road.  he even claims that the book itself is his own writings.  Whatever buddy.  I say 'sure' just so he can let me by.  I have no itention of giving up the book, if only so I have another Daedra-cult to slaughter.  Back to the office.

See now you're just straight goofin'.

Oh Dexion.  Go home.  You are drunk.  (Glitch #9!)

DOGGY DOGGY DOGGY DOG DOG

 I can actually recruit these guys!?  WHY DIDN'T GUNMAR TELL ME.  WHAT THE HELL.  This is awesome!  Gonna have me a vampire-huntin' dog named Günther.

I AM SPARTAKIIN.

Well, that's it for now!  I leave you all with the random event that triggers the newest DLC: Dragonborn!  Where we get to revisit Morrowind in some amount, and find out more about the very first Dohvakiin!  Miraak!  Why's it always gotta be cults?  I hate cults!