Further travels in the land of Skyrim - The clothes makes the wizard

Please note that some spoilers of Skyrim content may appear in these posts. I will try to avoid delving into the quest stories and plot details, but I may refer to quest outcomes, so if you're picky about avoiding any potential spoilers you will probably want to avoid reading any further.

In my last Skyrim journal post I was still just finding my legs in the cold fantasy winter wonder land of the Nords. Since then I've sunk in another good 10 hours of skyrimming (that sounds downright inappropriate, actually) and I've gotten a much better grasp of the game and world by now.

So come and join me for more tales of Erasmus the daring Breton Mage, hero of a civil war and slayer of many a retarded dragon.

When we last left off I had made my way across half of Skyrim to join up with the mages of the College of Winterhold. I quickly submerged myself into the dusty halls of the college, determined to rise in the ranks and improve my ability to burn things with magical flames.

I won't spoil the storyline of the Winterhold quests, but I will say that I found the quest chain to be a tad on the predictable side, with ancient magical artifacts and an antagonist that could only have been any more obvious if he had been tying a women to a railroad track while twirling his curled mustache.

I made my way through old and peril filled dungeons and proceeded to cleanse my enemies with fire, which was made easier by the presence of my new conjured flame bolt flinging Atronach, unearthing a mysterious device of unknown origin. That said device turned out the be of incredible potency and of interest to the aforementioned obvious antagonist should come as little surprise. Cue a mad dash to prevent the evil misuse of the ancient artifact and a search through yet more old dungeons to find yet another ancient artifact to stop the use of the first artifact (next time you find something immensely old and powerful in a ruin let's just leave it there, alright? These things never turn out well).
I eventually managed to stop the nefarious plans and found myself being hailed as a rather cool guy by the mages of Winterhold, who decided to award me some sweet sweet new robes.

Check out my baller new robe and metal face mask. I'm like a medieval Doctor Doom!

Procrastinating the advancement of the main storyline even further, I decided that I should get involved in the civil war going on in Skyrim. The Imperial forces are fighting for control of Skyrim against the rebellion of Ulfric Stormcloak, who is all about the proud independent traditions of the stoic Nords. Practicing the old religious beliefs and honoring the old warrior ways of his people. Oh, and being mad racist and hating on everyone who is not a Nord.

I was pretty much with the guy until I visited Ulfric's capital city and saw the way that the Dark Elves were being persecuted and forced to live in a filthy slum ghetto. After I saw that I decided to throw my lot in with the Imperials, who may not be without faults of their own, but at least they appreciate the need for all races being able to coexist. Oh, and it also just seems wiser to back the guy with all the thousands of troops and advanced weapons in their back.

The way the civil war plays out, at least for the Imperial side, is that you will be assigned to do a few quests, after the end of which you will be sent to join an attack on a local stronghold, which secures that area and moves you on to the next, where the sequence starts over again.
The attacks on the fortresses are actually really fun. You join up with a group of Imperial troops and crash head on into the awaiting enemy army (there's advanced siege tactics for you). As a mage character I had plenty of opportunity to stand back and assist my fellow Imperials by flinging large balls of fire at the enemy or strategically zapping Stormcloak archers with lightning bolts.

A night attack on a Stormcloak fortress. Notice the fireball that is about to ruin someones day

Unfortunately these attacks can also become a bit chaotic, and it was during one of these attacks that something terrible happened. At the end of a successful slaughter of the enemy I was making my way across the battlefield, prodding bodies and searching the dead for anything useful (waste not want not, as they say. If only there was an in-game implementation for pulling out the gold teeth of dead bodies). Suddenly I came across the body of my faithful companion Lydia. She must have gone down somewhere in the middle of the brawl without me even noticing. Normally your companion will just be incapacitated for a brief moment if they are defeated in combat, but the enemy must have finished her off somehow (or...well...there is the slight chance that I was actually the one that killed her with a wayward fireball or unrelenting force shout, but there is no conclusive proof of that!).
Unfortunately my last save was a good 20 minutes old and the fight for the fortress had been rather difficult, which meant I really had very little desire to reload and do the whole fight again. Thus ended the journey for Lydia, loyal companion to the end. Felled by an unknown foe, killed by my laziness. You will be missed.

Fortunately I was able to pick up another mercenary in Whiterun for 500 gold, so silver lining and such!

After I was done mucking about with getting my trusting servants murdered, I thought it time to return to the main story.
I was sent back to the city of Whiterun for an emergency meeting with the Jarl.
The scene that presented itself as I entered the war room caught me by surprise, I must say...

"Is that a gladius in your pocket or are you just happy to see me, soldier?"

Oh Skyrim, such unintended fun that your loosely scripted events provide us. Anyways, the bromance moment aside, I really enjoyed getting back into the main storyline. I'm currently focusing mostly on that at the moment and it has so far provided both large pitched battles, epic dragon slaying and political intrigue.

On a couple of downer notes I must say that I am still not really feeling the dragon combat. Especially for the random encounter dragons. They are extremely easy to "game" and I don't really feel that I'm in much danger when I'm fighting them. It's a bit of a bummer, but I guess it would have been a bigger problem if Bethesda had made the dragons much too hard and ensured constant frustration whenever a dragon shows up.
I'm also still a little lurk warm to the whole dedicated mage character. Getting some new gear from the Winterhold quest line has definitely helped things a lot. I have a lot more mana and mana regen, so I'm able to blast my enemies with a lot more fire and lightning before I have to hide in a corner, or kite them around the dungeon Benny Hill style. Still, I feel I am heavily reliant on my summoned pet and my mercenary companion and that I am primarily supporting them in killing the enemies rather than the other way around.

But a few sour drops in the sweet mead that is Skyrim cannot ruin all the fun that I am having with it. This weekend I have dedicated all my gaming time to the Old Republic beta test, but I'm looking forward to jumping back into the fur boots of the Dragonborn and seeing more of all the great content that Bethesda has crammed into the game.



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