Skyrim Phails 02 – The Whiterun Bounty

Now obviously, with Riverwood being part of Whiterun’s jurisdiction, I stocked quite a bounty for a few assaults and killings. Mostly the assaults though. Riverwood took some time, but eventually accepted me enough more me to complete two quests. The first being the who Faenald and Sven love dispute over Camilia who honestly doesn’t seem interested in either one of them in that may. It’s not really like she lead them on or anything, Sven and Faenald honestly got jealous over one another for no good reason. I’m pretty sure that I sold one of them out and killed the other one. I’m not sure which fell under which, but that really doesn’t matter. The other Quest involved the golden claw. I do eventually want to still do the main story line again even though I don’t actually know for certain whether or not they would allow me after killing the blacksmith who was meant to tell me to go see the Jorl of Whiterun. So the golden claw was a way to get a hold of keystone so that the Jorl’s wizard could translate.

Now, in order to get myself into going to Whiterun, I figured that I would try taking a bounty. I figure that I could manage to convince that stingy steward to hand over the money or otherwise turn it into a hostage situation. I’m not sure how I would manage that in this game, but I will. So after killing the bandit chief and having to take down a few Whiterun guards along the way… Yea, something about that doesn’t bode well already. A bounty hunter walks up to me for my bounty. What? Just how many innocents did I kill since I last got off. Whiterun sent a bounty hunter after me, not just some thugs for some minimal crime. Clearly, It’s going to take a little more convincing for me to get my money for taking care of that bounty. Even Imperial guards on the land have taken to launch all out war on me upon sight.

So, when I try the front door of Whiterun, the guard really weren’t open to any other dialogue than asking if I could consider some time behind bars. I’m assured that it’s rent free, but I don’t really care for forfeiting all my stuff. Suffice to say, I was not ready to take 5 guards at once yet. My equipment is still only the steal stuff and maybe some stolen elven stuff. My smithing is also very sad to look at being still under level 20. Smithing just having reached 20 not too long ago. Thankfully, I could always count on luring them away then returning with maybe only one or two able to actually keep up. I’m not going to bore you with the details of a full hour battle, but at some point, I looked at a guard’s stuff to see that he had a key and laughed figuring that I could use the practice by picking the lock myself. That was a bad move on my part, because that was the key to the front door. See, I didn’t get the amiable response to persuade them into unlocking the door this round, and it turns out the door unless you’re an NPC requires that key. I cannot say for sure if the NPCs did or didn’t have it since for whatever reason there was a glitch that kept me from picking pockets for a while. That really doesn’t make for a happy Khajiit. I kept trying to troubleshoot how I could get in there and short from killing someone, I couldn’t come up with may solutions. Surely, I have a problem, aside from the homicidal mania.

After taking a break from the game a while, I determined my best course of action was to turn myself in. That’s my only way inside Whiterun which meant finding a live guard that’s not set to automatically kill me. Staring at the piles of Whiterun guard bodies decorating the walkway, I knew that wasn’t exactly going to happen so easily. So I circled around, helped out a jester gain refuge and bump into a few Companions offering me a place along their ranks. Maybe killing the guards all the time wasn’t such a good idea. Oh, but wait. We have a live one! Thankfully, my plan went off without a hitch more or less. See, I didn’t actually know for certain that it would work, or if they would just take me to a jail in some other town. However, I had to break out multiple times. The guards kept on finding me with my rags as I attempted to get some supplies. None of the vendor had a problem with it, until it came to closing. Scratch that, I actually did run into a few issues with some of the townspeople. When I went to the drunken huntsman, the shopkeeper started shooting arrows into me after doing a transaction. Too, when I went to the Banor Mare the one women, War-Maiden I think it is, starts at me. I really didn’t want to end up killer her, but there was no escaping it.

A few times, I tried seeing if I could grab whatever weapon’s near and take out a guard with that. However, a wooden sword really doesn’t work out so well. I’m fairly certain that that items part of the Hearthfire extension, but I seriously want to know who’s going to be wondering around with a wooden sword where people are pointing real swords at you. Yea, I’m sure most of them don’t pick fights with the law enforcement. In all fairness, wooden swords can still be used to disarm and possibly kill, but obviously, I really don’t want to see how that fight turns up. Fortunately, the guard didn’t take my stealthy assault with the wooden sword too seriously and gave me the same offer to go to jail. I honestly don’t know any better response than a slight mew and to ask if I get to pass go.

Eventually I had it as far up as I could stand and just roamed around and just let them try to get their dialogue with me. Turns out, they don’t really care about having any dialogue with me. They really didn’t care if they took me in alive. So I scrammed for anywhere that I could steal or grab a weapon without getting into trouble with the local and I turned to that companion’s place. I know how to say it, but I’m blanking on how exactly to spell it. Well, I found a fix to the glitch by sneaking through a door and trying to pick Rio’s pocket, but it wasn’t Rio’s pockets I was looking at. That’s the key! So, the fix to the glitch I was dealing with was apparently going through a door and try to pick someone’s pocket right away. Now that I had the key, I needed to be sure that it worked. Looking for weapons can wait.

So, I high-tailed to the front door and saw for myself that I can get in and out of the front door now. However, I’m dealing with 5 guards again and this time with only my hands, novice destruction magic and light rags. So yea, I kid myself a little by wailing on one of the guard then desperately running away as I heal. There was just no way I could keep at it like that for long seeing how I could only do so much damage by hand, significant damage is dealt per swing and I really have to move it as I heal. Well, I think back to those two Imperial guys that I took down near by the area since the mounds of guards have vanished on me. All I could find was an imperial broadsword and an imperial shield. That had to be good enough. So, I return taking each down one by one. Now, my first notion was to upgrade my garbs by striping the first guy of his armor. So I leveled Whiterun guard after Whiterun guard while wearing their armor. I have to say, the armor also looked lovely on my female Khajiit’s body. The cuirrass complimented the curves by not exaggerating them, but allowing for definite form. I don’t know about the helmet though. I actually love to see my character’s face.  The earrings actually match the yellow cloth layered over the chain mail.

Back to business, I needed my shit back. I don’t care how many more guards I had to go through which turned out to be a shit ton for as well as a captain who kept getting back up. No more sneaking about. This is full on frontal attack with the exception of a few attempts at running away.  After taking the prison key, and getting my stuff back. I moved onto getting my bounty. Oh, yes, I will make that steward pay me, even if it means using him as a human punching bag a few times. For those who are not familiar with the steward of Whiterun, he’s the one guy who would only pay you 200 gold to kill a giant where others would pay 500 gold. This guy skids 20% behind the acceptable pay, and that’s the sort of guy I expect to actually pay up. I, however, capture the court at an interesting moment. Essentially things really didn’t go my way. I ended up having to knock down the Jorl, that captain, some shirtless guy that wears a fur cape, and the steward all the way down the road to another bandit sight. I trailed them along until I could start dropping people. Ah, not bodies. I didn’t kill anyone else who’s essential. But I did manage to get a one on one talk with the Jorl to start on that keystone retrieval Quest. After that, I didn’t care too much about getting that bounty. I’ll make that steward empty his pockets eventually. I’ll return with more content on where I decide to go on from here.

Skyrim Phails 01 – Failed the First Quest

Now the following is based off of, scratch that, is a memoir of my personal game play experience. To be clear, I’m not referring to when you’re still tied up waiting for a dragon to save you. Nor am I talking about when you have to cut through the caves. My story starts once I made it through the cave and am assigned to find Alvar the blacksmith. For the record, the intention of failure was not a set was not in my mind. I created a dark furred female Khajiit with a set of three piercings on each ear. She’s quite a lovely sight with her slender features and narrow face all dressed in those apprentice’s robe with the exception of boot, gloves and a shield. I am of course excluding my broadsword as apparel. Well, I exited the tunnels with the Imperial guy and I don’t really know how, but something about him urged me to kill him. Oh, I knew I couldn’t kill him,, but continually bashing the shit in the face felt like a close second. I even threw some taunts at the game expecting the Imperial would just take it without a fuss so long as I didn’t accidentally swing my sword at him. Oops, it turns out bashing him with a shield oh so many time will eventually ignite his urge to kill me. It’s really only fair when I do it. The difference in his urge is hat he’s all set to kill me. I thought nothing of it, since I was really milking the whole thing for exp, and leveled up significantly from that.

After getting somewhere in the teens and laughing about it all the while, the imperial completely changed tactics by running away. Figuring that I could still kick his ass around a few times, I followed him toward Riverwood. I guess he ran force some reinforcement, because at that moment of standing under the lookout, the whole town gathered to take me on. Now hold on that doesn’t seem fair. Now obviously, I don’t exactly want to kill everyone in Riverwood or at least not quite yet. Too many of them are essential for quests and I’m not sure that the game lists them as such. So, Run Away! That was a stellar plan until I notice Alvar and the imperial still on my tail, figuratively. I managed to keep the imperial out cold long enough for me to be out of his sight, but Alvar kept at me. Obviously, I mistook him for an essential character and wailed on him as such and at first, it seemed to work that way. Yet, after a while Alvar died on me. So I cannot except full open arms from Riverwood. With that, I failed the quest with this character. This seemed like an interesting twist to a game I’ve played so often so I decided to keep going to see how things might turn out.