Well after some fun data issues, the modded Skyrim is up and running

I tried to make sure I had no mods that created an overpowered playstyle, and so far it's working well. In fact, some parts are much harder as I've encountered a greater number of wandering bandits who happen to be of a much higher level. I had quite the lengthy hide and seek battle with two bandit chieftans with my stolen hunting bow and some rapidly depleting iron arrows.

Two of the most fantastic mod additions that I've noticed thus far is that of the ability to craft extra storage in the form of side bags and bandoleer type satchels, and the other mod is one that lets you smelt down items for metals. Now you can collect those random goblets and plates and slowly turn them into Iron or Silver etc. And old weapons and armour too, however you can't smelt down stolen items, which seems counter productive to me. I mean, if you're going to steal items, you want to be able to resell them in a different form if you don't particularly wish to gain access to the one fence in the whole land.

One of the mods is meant to allow me to recruit bandits and create my own bandit camp, but i'm not yet sure how to get the ball rolling on this one. I might read up on it some and find out.

Well, back to the grinding stone, I have blades to sharpen and draugr to kill.

Fallout 4 kind of kicked Skyrim to the curb for a while. But i'm back

So, now that my Fallout Wanderer is somewhere in the 40s, maybe 50s, i don't rightly recall exactly. I took a break from gaming.

I'm back with a foray into Skyrim once more. Only this time, I've just spent the past hour finding mods to add and subscribe to. I haven't yet tested their compatibility so I hope that's not an issue to have to resolve.

To do this properly with all of these new mods, I will be starting a new character. And given that one of the mods happens to be a fresh start mod, and another happens to give me the ability to become a bandit and build up a bandit crew, I shall endeavour in this mod to basically be an asshole to NPCs all round, make as much money as I can, and more or less become the new High Lord of Skyrim (not actually sure if i can, but if there's a mod for it, i'm sure i will).

I have also recently begun a predilection for naming all my rpg characters some variation of Thomas. I have Tommy the firestarting Bard in pathfinder, all round murder hobo and lover of anything that moves, then there was Sir Thomas Lightmagic, on a quest to clear the foul evil of Ravenloft where he fell to his death. Tommy the sorcerer who charmed an entire town and essentially made himself so popular the local constabulary could not arrest him for fear of causing a riot, he also made friends with 2 nearby goblin tribes and convinced them to wipe out the nearby orc menace. The latest incarnation is Sir Thomas of the Lords Alliance, the last scion of a noble house who has fallen on hard times due to the vice of an ancestor and is seeking to make favourable trade alliances whilst also kicking the ass off anything that presents a threat to civilization. A character I initially thought might be dull to play, but is proving to be quite fun.

So, in keeping that with theme, I believe I shall create Tom, a lowlife Nord with no dramatic backstory beyond being poor.

Here goes nothing.

A new direction

So, instead of Skyrim (which belongs to the Nords), I thought I would post about my recent pathfinder session and just how much of a cruel bastard our GM can be.

In calling him that though, our group has been a murderous pack of swine this year. We took on a mission from some malignant spirits to eliminate the ruling houses of the land, and we scored ourselves a dinner invite with some of them, proceeded to slaughter them at dinner and then set the place on fire. After which, my character stumbled out, set up a bucket chain and then bluffed his way into the pants of one of the town guards.

After that, the majority of the family gathered together for a funeral, and with some alchemical trickery and our ranger/slayer guy, we carpet bombed them all, including the children. It was brutal.

Basically, we charged headlong into most encounters and came out on top, barely. So, our GM, knowing our play style, decided to lay out a trap and we walked right into it. And we got owned, beaten like the red headed step children we were.

He proceeded to torture our characters over a period of time, with the only things given to us to eat being a live puppy, a live dove and a small child. Also alive. My character, Tommy, is a halfling and chose not to murder the small child, but he did eat the puppies. Eventually though my body was broken and I collapsed into near death. My mind didn't break though, thankfully.

I won't go into detail about the entire ordeal, suffice to say that it was a well run session and when we finally escaped the hell of that torture chamber, we fled to what we thought was our safe haven, only to discover that it had been attacked in our absence. And not just attacked, but done so by one of our former colleagues. A colleague who is essentially a demon worshipping warrior goddess of blood.

We go through hell, think that we're finally free only to discover it's out of the frying pan and into a fucking furnace.

My character was using the classes of bard and alchemist, but our GM doesn't mind if our class changes here and there, so long as the character stays the same. So, now with that recent bout of torture he's using his tinkering ways to find a way to make sure it will never happen again, he's now going to be using the Tinker class and will find a way to build magic/steampunk style machines that will make him unstoppable, or so he hopes.

Either way, I look forward to the next few games. Tommy will have a burning desire for vengance.

The foolishness of bandits

On the path to meet up with Delphine they saw in the distance an old stone structure of a pair of linked towers that created a narrow foot bridge over the steep valley below. As they neared the building on our side, a rather slovenly looking guard rose from her chair and told the pair to stop. 
 
"This here is a toll road, in order to go pass you'll have to pay us, ah, 200 gold pieces." She claimed as she looked Azgar up and down, clearly attempting to appraise the value of his belongings. 

Azgar narrowed his eyes and climbed off his horse, passing a quick knowing glance to Lydia. Be prepared that glance said. 

"I do believe that if I wish to continue on this road, I will do so without any sort of toll, and if you think otherwise, then I'll tell you again with my blade."

The bandit looked taken aback, clearly much more used to dealing with wandering bards and soft bellied merchants. She whistled out and picked up her mace from the makeshift table near her campfire and slowly advanced.
 
Azgar and Lydia acted as one and drew their weapons, four feet of naked steel was in the orc's hands in an instant while Lydia carefully grabbed the shaft of the mighty Whiterun Axe, its edge glowing blue with the frost enchant. A strange whistle in the air was all the warning the pair had before an arrow buried itself into the flank of Azgar's horse. The horse screamed and half bounced and trotted away. Azgar's face contorted into an expression of pure rage and with a bellowing warcry he charged into the fray. 

With a deft swing the first bandit was wounded as he rushed for the door to the tower, confident in Lydia's ability to finish off what he did not. Azgar charged through the levels of the tower, the red rage controlling his every action as the walls and floor were covered in sprays of arterial blood. Finally he made it to the narrow pass. At the other end a burly man in much finer armour with a wicked axe stepped forward. The remaining bandits quickly stepping out of his way. 

A moment of silence held, the only noise was the wind howling through the valley before the pair charged at each other, those viewing from the sides believing they were witnessing a veritable clash of titans. 

 The bandit chief swung hard and heavy, almost overbalancing himself. Azgar feinted to the right, the chief fell for it and left himself flat footed in recovery. Not willing to let this fight go on any longer and still blind from the rage Azgar swung his blade with all of his might and struck the chief with such force that he flew a handful of body lengths out into the air before tumbling down to the sharp rocks on the valley floor. 

Azgar looked up at the remaining men, one of them had raised his bow and the orc knew that he could not defend himself from this shot. He stood tall and prayed for the arrow to miss when the bow-armed bandit stumbled and fell down, an arrow piercing through his eye. Azgar turned and there was Lydia at the top of the first tower, her bow trained on the remaining bandit, just daring him to make a move.

New character time

So, with the previous character, a few of the mods I had going unfortunately broke the gameplay somewhat. It was the first time i'd actually levelled up enchanting and had a mod for the higher perks which it seemed basically turned me into a god like being and made the thing boring as hell.

So, it's new character time. This time i'll be making an eldritch knight type character. Based loosely on a d&d character i played recently and had a lot of fun with. He'll be rocking out in heavy armour, some minor use of magic, but primarily fights with weapons. He'll also be a smith and will mostly make his own weaponry.

I think he'll become one of the companions, and perhaps join the mage college later in life. He'll also do things like stand for justice and all things right. With a giant hard on for all things rule wise, such as the imperials.

Now, i just need to name him and get going.

The slaying of the dragon

Shortly after returning to the Jarl's magician at Whiterun news came in that the dragon had attacked a nearby outpost and that men were being gathered to go and fight it off.

I quickly volunteered  to join them and help slay the beast, though i noticed with great dismay once i caught sight of it, that it was in fact a different dragon to the one that destroyed Helgen. This did not bode well for my primary mission here in Skyrim.

The battle was long and arduous and at one point the beast latched on to one of the guards and flung him across the moor, his bones audibly snapping even from this distance. Once the dragon had taken enough arrows, it landed, the wings unable to keep it aloft. We rushed it and the whirl of steel brought the creature down.

There was a great shock to us all for as soon as I came close enough the flesh dissolved in a swirl of magic and a vortex of energy flowed from the dragon's corpse into my body. The guards were astounded. After they and I had recovered from the shock, one of them decried that i was something called a dragonborn and that I now had the power of Thu'um. He tried to explain that I could use my voice to perform amazing feats.

After the initial jokes and stunned laughter I remembered the word that had burned itself into my brain, I concentrated and it formed on my lips and a great shout rushed from me. Whatever the word was, the small bush I was facing when I shouted was uprooted with force and blown across the plain, along with loose rocks. The guards were not laughing any more.

Our solemn procession headed back to town, the corpses of several brothers in arms carried on biers, for taking down a dragon was no easy feat.

Just before we reach the town a thunderous cry rang from the nearby mountain, and several of the guardsmen were now completely convinced that I am Dragonborn, something that has not been seen in centuries.

My mind was reeling from this, granted, I was no simple man at arms myself, but a trained covert operative of the remnants of the Blades, but the only power I had before was some basic magical healing and the ability to start my own campfire without a flint. But in just a few days I had gone from a humble servant of the empire to a Dragonborn, someone who can throw objects across a field with the power of his voice.

I knew that the Jarl and anyone nearby would want to talk more and get me involved directly in the local politics, but if I was to have any success in my mission I had to flee Whiterun as soon as it was conveniently possible and make my way to Solitude to enroll in the imperial army, with any luck, nobody there would know that I was this Dragonborn once news reached the capital city that such a person existed.

What the barrow holds

My journey to the ancient barrow was cold and lonely but uneventful. Not suspecting anyone alive I was surprised that the entrance was full of bandits and tomb raiders, they proved to be no match as they, like me, were taken by surprise. After clearing out the riffraff I made my way through the precarious tunnel and cave network.

It was not long before I blundered into a room full of webs and came across the largest spider I had ever seen. It was easily my height and clearly pissed off. I can only imagine the strength of the webbing that was holding it from the ceiling. Evidently my complete lack of stealth tipped it off to my presence. As it lowered down i heard the plaintive cries of someone from the other side of the room, he looked like one of the bandits and had gone and caught himself in the webbing. Once the spider hit the ground it charged at me, the multitude of legs thundering along the smooth stone. Already exhausted that I was I wanted this over quickly. I rushed forward and slid on my knees with my axe held high, slicing the beast's thorax clean through.

The stuck bandit told me that he knew how to get through the locked passage further on and showed me a golden claw with some strange symbols. It turned out to be a key with a strange combination. After I freed him, he ran off with the golden claw, unfortunately for him I had just looted a bow.

I spent the next hour slowly trekking through ancient tunnels and burial crypts, carefully avoiding traps and spilled oil. And i tell you what, my heart almost burst out of my chest when one of the nearby crypts burst open and a dried up old viking fellow climbed out and started attacking me. They were slow cumbersome beasts and easy to put back down, but the sheer number of them had me pushing at my memory of the healing magic I was taught all those years ago.


It was not long after that that i found the location of the dragon tablet, but there was something else there, something indescribable to the human eye. The wall was covered in an ancient script and one section in particular was glowing and seemed to be emanating a chanting sound, it was not a sound though that i could hear but one that seemed to be sent directly to my brain. I stepped forward to inspect closer when everything went dark, my ears began to ring and bright blue letters of fire were pushed through my eyes and imprinted in my mind, i can still feel them in my head, almost as if it is a word that is yearning to be spoken, only i have no idea what it says.

I stepped back from the wall only to hear the ominous grinding sound of stone on stone behind me, another undead nord was rising from his burial place. The previous ones were easy enough to put back down so i gripped my newly found axe and readied myself, only, this one was different. His weapon glowed a cold blue and his eyes seemed to burn with righteous anger at my intrusion. Thinking to myself that this was a true threat i stepped forward with the intent of finishing this fight quickly only to stumble back as the beast spoke some sort of eldritch word that literally made me drop my weapon in a split second of terror, fortunately his previous companions had been well armed and now i was too. Drawing a second weapon i hastily parried his first blow and then felt true fear as it was apparent that his weapon did not just glow, but in fact pulsed with a coldness that numbed my fingers.

His mummified body though had him at a disadvantaged and i quickly and easily outmaneuvered him and went for a crippling blow to the legs. he stumbled down to his knees and i wasted no time in finishing him off.

Finally safe, i gathered the materials the Jarl requested, hefted my new weapon and made my way back to whiterun.