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I awoke in Breezehome today. I'd scraped just together just enough gold to buy the deed, but none of the furnishings. So, I awoke in a cold, dark barn filled with cobwebs. Lydia asks me what will we do. The first thoughts in my head are 'kill' and 'get gold'. In that order.

So as such, we run out of the gates of Whiterun and make our way north along the ringing road, looking for some sad clown whose wagon may have broken up a bit.

We don't get so far as the meadery when a dragon shows up. I'm at Level 9. This is the first random dragon sighting for Cassie inside of this turn. I pull out my bow for a few seconds, but I take note that Lydia and every Whiterun guard in sight has done the same. Then I notice the dragon is just flapping around and doing little else than making some scary noises. I switch back to my melee setup of a War Axe and Dagger. Why not? Every farmer and their mum's packin' heat 'round here. Just who? Farmers. Farmers' mums.

Allow me to emphasize: I am metaphorically, figuratively, literally bringing a knife into a gun fight.

What does the dragon do? Run off like a punk.

These scaly schmucks are in for a world of hurt when I create the Dark Spark once more.

I was walking through some cave in Eastmarch, near Kynesgrove. it's one of the mage caves and I'm a warrior. aaanyways, I cut through a couple of easy guys and then come to some Pyromancer with his back turned, but I can also see a Flame Atronach around the corner and I don't want to alert it. so I jump away from this guy so as to get his attention so he'll follow me without knowing exactly where I am, and then....

Every single guy in the cave apparently hears it. while I'm not detected, they all decide to come marching around the corner to check for the noise, and now I'm not given a chance to fight any of them on their own, and they can just one-shot kill me with their mega-unstoppable-cost efficient-super spells. and this happens every other time I try as well. the most annoying part is, the other guys aren't in the same hall, they are around a corner through a wall, and they can STILL hear me.

This is a really stupid problem, and is what is wrong with the stealth In these games. being heard from behind a wall a mile away after making half a footstep forward behind one guy and being spotted by every single guy in a cave at the same time, it's ridiculous, and makes stealth irritating and unbelievable.

Marilyn stopped at Riften to sell some loot and kill an undercover member of the Dawnguard, but the coward seemed to know that their cover had been broken and had locked themselves in in Honeyside - which Marilyn had never seen a need to purchase, as she already has a convenient home base down in the Ragged Flagon; apparently she has never even done the quests to become Thane of Riften, which is a crying shame for the Guild Master and has to be rectified ASAP. Being a bit pressed for time, she decided to let the craven steam for now and took a carriage to Winterhold, where she hoped to find the magic-enhancing gear needed to resurrect Jenassa, but after rummaging through the Arch-Mage's quarters it seems she has either sold or misplaced both the Mage's Circlet and Savos Aren's Amulet (or they might be in the Dawnstar Sanctuary, but I couldn't be bothered to go looking), so she made herself a nifty new ring of Fortify Magicka + Fortify Conjuration instead.

No sooner had she stepped out of the Hall of Elements than Winterhold was attacked by a Wyrm and an Aspect of Alduin, and the dawn was approaching. Fortunately Marilyn had just snacked on several sleeping mages and was thus able to withstand the sunlight and overcome both dragons with the help of her friends Cicero and Serana (not to forget ever faithful CuSith). Then south to Windhelm for some more crafting and selling, and after a few hours of sleep and a few sips of blood further south. Arriving at the Last Vigil, Marilyn was very disappointed to find that her effort had been in vain, for Jenassa's corpse had already decayed (=despawned) beyond redemption; but an assaulting Dwarven Mechadon (presumably from one of the ruins to the north?) recompensed the party by engaging them in a most galvanizing conversation. Then I died and made the mistake of looking at the clock.

That must have been a really big knife!

After marrying Vilkas, purchasing Honeyside, getting a dog, and having a couple kids, Lieth the Bosmer decided it was time to reward her husband with a treat. So she teamed up with her old buddy Marcurio and set off to finish the 'Forbidden Legend' quest. She plans on surprising Vilkas with the amulet...not that he needs +30 magica but whatever.

After finishing off Geirmund's Hall and clearing a cave of bears for Aela, Lieth and Marcurio decided to do some skinnydipping around Ivarstead. They collected some ingredients and then moved on headed towards Winterhold, hunting bears along the way for Temba. Kill 10 cave bears? No problem for this little hunter. She's totally in her element right now in the middle of the Rift forest with a follower that won't attack her should she transform into a beast. It worries her that someday, Vilkas just might kill her if she transforms at home on accident one day in front of the children.

Winterhold is the last stop for this quest, so they have a ways to go since they haven't reached Windhelm yet. Lieth also worries that the College of Winterhold might not let she and Marcurio into Saarthal, since she doesn't use magic and he's only an apprentice wizard. Speaking of which, she wishes he would stop complaining about having to carry his share of stuff when they're out adventuring. The last time he whined, she called him a milk-drinker and promptly reminded him of who steals all his magica potions.

Minsandra did most of Blood on the Ice, and walked back to Whiterun with Uthgerd to get the Bleak Falls Barrow quest while she's waiting for the three days, which took about a day. When she returned the dragon claw to Lucan Valerius, she took a deer hide out of a container and long story short, Uthgerd killed Lucan and they ran like hell towards Falkreath but died on the way. Unfortunately, it autosaved right after he was killed so after running from the guards by going down the river, they got ambushed by hired thugs sent by Camilla. This is the second time she's had a contract taken out on her, this time from Camilla.
Then there was a lot of potion making and a bandit camp was cleared.

I completed Jyr Shadow-Blade and then deleted her. Her purpose had been served. I no longer had any use for her.

Of course, I still didn't feel like starting one of my main characters, so I created a black Khajiit. I can't remember his name.

I also downloaded Moss Rocks and a Dragonborn version of the mod (to fix the ugly green [&@%!] that's on the rocks... Seriously looks like it was drawn in MS Paint by a child) to test that out. Seems to work well, but I reduced the moss texture to 1k from 2k. 2k moss seemed a little unnecessary, especially for my old PC.

Anyway, I had some fun in Whiterun. I was just about to arrive at Breezehome (on my way out of town to fight Mirmulnir) when I saw the Student standing near the gate. I was tired and didn't feel like talking to him (or disabling him with the console like I did the Ebony Warrior/Boethiah Cultist), so I dropped into a crouch, made sure I was hidden, and let loose an arrow into his heart.

Guards all went hostile, but I wasn't actually discovered. As far as the game was concerned, I got away without a bounty.
All the Guards decided that they would try to kill my poor Khajiit. He ran aimlessly around town as the Guards fired arrows into his ass. I must have been more tired than I thought because that was far funnier than it should have been.

Of course, I quickly grew bored of that and decided to go and fight Mirmulnir. The hostile Guards followed me outside of Whiterun and, when Mirmulnir finally attacked, he went after them. This resulted in a massive battle between the Revered Dragon and the Guards. Along with myself and the Khajiit Caravan.

The Dragon was eventually defeated, and when I arrived back in Whiterun to report to the Jarl... The Guards and my Khajiit were suddenly best friends again.
Apparently absorbing the Soul of a Dragon is enough to make them forget that the Khajiit may or may not have just murdered somebody in the middle of the streets.

I tried to explore the off-road areas of Skyrim in detail, then was brutally reminded of how useless the local map is....

Ah well, I can still play the expansions for the first time.

Today I completed the most randomly and pointlessly violent trek I've had in Skyrim. After killing Sahloknir in Kynesgrove, I decided to give the MQ a break and go to Markarth to buy the Gypsy Eyes Caravan (a mod carriage). En route, I killed a dragon, found Arcwind Point quite by accident, killed another dragon and a huge bunch of undead there, then near Ivarstead killed a Nord woman who called me a milk-drinker and wouldn't back off, then not a hundred yards further a troll. Oh, and at one point I lured a bunch of bandits into the Rift imperial camp, where the soldiers eliminated them.

Then I found Bloodlet Throne, where I sniped and gutted a bunch of vampires, including a master vampire who thought I was the newest performer in his makeshift arena when I barged into the room. Also, found Meridia's beacon there which means slaughtering even more undead in the future. Great.

Then I slew wolves, spriggans and a Thalmor patrol on my way through Falkreath hold, then stumbled by accident into a bandit camp and had to snipe all the eight of its [&@%!] off inhabitants. Finally got into the Reach, only to stumble into Lost Valley Redoubt where I witnessed a Briarheart ceremony and promptly killed both the newly made Forsworn pseudo-zombie and two Hagravens. Then I got the brilliant idea to take the Bard's Leap to avoid fighting my way through the whole of the redoubt. Well, I fell in the midst of three very angry Forsworn and massacred them while the ghost bard watched and played his lute, maybe to liven up the fight.

After that I got to run along the road for a bit in peace, but then spotted an Argonian assassin standing in the middle of the road. One dead Argonian and a few hundred meters later a bear decided my character looked like a good snack. Needless to say, Temba will get another bear pelt. Finally, got to Markarth at nighfall and did some business with Khajiit traders, which was the first non-violent encounter during the whole trip.

I bought the caravan and a horse, then slept the night in my new mobile home. Then I entered Markarth, only to see Weylin trying to knife Margret. Well, after that I intimidated (I chose only those kinds of dialogue options since I imagined my character being thoroughly fed up and unwilling to take any [&@%!] at this point), brawled and killed my way through the whole Forsworn Conspiracy. Killed Madanach and emerged to a glorious dawn, resolved to take it easy and peacefully for a while. Then I talked to Lisbet. Big mistake. Before I knew it, I was riding towards a Forsworn camp to retrieve her Dibella statue. More carnage ensued, including another bear en route.

Back in Markarth, I sold my loot and agreed to deliver the steward his "stallion potion". Then got a quest from the Jarl, to massacre some more Forsworn, before calling it a day.

TL;DR: Massacred my way through the three southernmost holds, upgraded my character's social status from a homeless wanderer into trailer trash, killed a guerrilla leader and helped an old dude with his potency problem. In a word, a good day's work.

Marilyn bought Honeyside, done get Thaned and celebrated by killing the Dawnguard agent who had been hiding there, then went on to fulfill a Brotherhood contract at Ivarstead and ended up having to kill all guards and nonessential villagers because she couldn't resist biting Lynly Star-Sung's pretty neck. After crossing the mountains south of the Throat of the World, she travelled through Falkreath hold and the Reach northwards to Haafingar where she has a quest to find a missing Khajiit and some pages of arcane lore for Olivia Meronin (Forgotten Lore quest from Interesting NPCs). She found the cat, but also two dragons within a couple of in-game hours - first another Aspect of Alduin right outside the Thalmor Embassy, later a Revered outside Ravenscar Hollow - and a wandering healer with a troubled past (Valgus, another Interesting NPC) whom she recruited as a follower and has half a mind to turn. Presently she's on her way home to Castle Volkihar for selling and crafting (she lost her precious wakizashi Daedric Kiss while fighting the AoA and needs to replace it), and then it's back to Winterhold to report to Olivia.

Lieth traveled with husband Vilkas to High Hrothgar and met the Greybeards. They stayed there for a few days meditating, praying, resting, and enjoying their time away from civilization.

Lieth seems to be undergoing a spiritual transformation--for the first time since receiving the gift of the wolf blood she feels like giving it up. She hasn't made a final decision to cure herself yet, but she's starting to see herself as a hypocrite for worshipping Kyne in the tainted form of a beast. She has a lot to consider.

After spending time with the Greybeards, she and Vilkas headed towards the marshes to retrieve the horn.

Managed to kill my Dead is Dead character. Again. Oh well. Time for another one.
I'm going through all the races for this challenge. So far I have done Redguard, Breton, Khajiit, Argonian (who made it the farthest) and the last one; a dunmer called Slythe. Named and somewhat modeled after my first failure of a character ever.
Today I created altmer called Kael. Let's see how far he manages to make it. Last time he was seen running away from Bleak Falls Barrow since my game decided to spawn Draugr Wights and Scourges at lvl 4.

I tested a few more mods and fiddled with textures for a while. One of the mods I tried was Skyfalls, but I got rid of it because the animated distant waterfalls/windmills looked too odd with the rest of the lods.
Also, I messed around with my Khajiit. He visited all the Word Walls (some twice) and cleared out Mzinchaleft (while I was testing the Skyrim HD 1k version for Dwemer Ruins).

I also recorded a walkthrough for the Undeath mod, but after spending hours recording it, and another few hours processing the video... I decided against it and just deleted them. Perhaps I'll try again when the mod is fixed and completed. As for now it has a few too many bugs.

My main Orc named Bandos is getting ready to retire, he killed as many people as possible in Windhelm (claims it was to level his Destruction up, pfft)
and found the Deathbrand armour and treasures.

After I can find myself the courage to delete his save (he done most quests and is sooo boring to play as) I will make a Breton Female since I haven't played as a Breton before.

Jarna got a makeover then met Vilja and did some of her questline then went back to Riften just in time to be crowned Guild Master of the Thieves Guild. Then she gathered Karliah and together with Vilja, she's doing alchemy training in Riften. It's too bad that there isn't enough merchants to buy her 3.4 million potions.

Marilyn and company (=Serana, Cicero and Valgus [see above], whom she's turned into a vampire) travelled from Castle Volkihar to Solitude where they took a boat to Dawnstar and carried on to Winterhold, all of which took about thrice as long as it could have because Serana and Valgus insisted on killing every single goddarn horker and mudcrab we met on our way, to the point where I just rode on and left them behind to catch up whenever they were ready. Also I seem to be hunted by dragons lately - our arrival in Dawnstar was heralded by a Wyvern (DD assault), followed by an Ancient within a few in-game hours; no complaints though, the souls are surely appreciated, as are the raw materials for Dragonbone arrows.

In other news I uninstalled RLO and reinstalled ELFX; got a bit tired of the ubiquitous orange lighting indoors, and it's nice to have the smoking candles back.

Lieth showed Talvas around the Falkreath pine forests, stopping inside the occasional cave to show him how she finds treasure. Since they came across several fishing and hunting camps, she had the added luxury of raiding their chests, too.

In every cave or bandit camp they stopped at, Talvas voiced his concerns. She thinks he should wean off the milk.

Even the booty at the end of the day didn't calm his nerves. No, not that kind of booty...I mean the new magica ring, a staff of ice storms, and a fortify health gold necklace. He still complained. Talvas, you're a Wuss Factory. Dohva won't let you die.

Struggled with escorting Vilkas to Driftshade Refuge. apparently extremely small rocks cause him to run around mountains. in the end i just pressed the wait button after crossing over the great mountain of doom and he appeared next to me, but it was still annoying.

Honestly, Followers are ridiculous. i will never be able to use these guys in any Bethesda game.

*clapping*
I was with Astrid in the Abandoned Shack!

Snuck into Honorhall sometime past ten at night and caught Grelod eating at the dinner table.

A little later Astrid made her pitch: "One of these people are part of a contract. The trick is figuring out—"

That's just about the time I wheeled over and killed Fultheim the Fearless a second later. "Are we done here?"

Finished ''Glory of the Dead'', and then ran around trying to get the two Purity quests and the totem quests for two hours (far too much faffing about involved). the whole thing started off with some stupid companions bug that wasn't letting me finish one of Farkas's quests, it was really annoying me, but i eventually found a workaround. these damn companions are too buggy.

I think i'll join the College later. maybe today, maybe tomorrow.

I found the new Sybil for the Temple of Dibella. Thankfully, it was easy since I had cleared most of the fort earlier on orders of Markath's Jarl. While in Karthwasten I also bullied the Silver-Blood mercenaries to hit the road (seriously, for all his tough talk Atar is a complete push-over). For some reason one of the mercenaries remained for a bit standing next to the smelter. I got a good laugh when I approached him and he said in a dejected tone: "Time to find a new job." Yeah, buddy, I think so.

Then I uncovered the cult of cannibals in Markarth, played along until Eola told me to carve Brother Verulus up. I carved her up instead and killed the rest, too. The last one was Lisbet, for whom I got the impaling from behind killcam while she was trying to stab Verulus's back. Got another laugh when she said, just as I ran her through: "You wish to defeat me? Impossible!" Confidence is a good thing, but apparently sometimes you can have too much of it.

Then I had got enough of slaughtering the Forsworn and Markarth's inhabitants. Realizing I still had Jurgen Windcaller's horn in my inventory I decided to go and give it to the Greybeards. So, I hopped on my newly-bought caravan and drove through the Reach, only stopping a few times to eliminate wolves, two spriggans and two Thalmor patrols before the night fell. On the way I found the driving camera rather awful, but otherwise the caravan was easy enough to control.

Somewhere near Rorikstead I was startled by gouts of fire going back and forth in the darkness of the road ahead. A bunch of people ran towards me and I hopped down from the driver's seat to be ready for a fight. Then I realized it was a squad of Imperial soldiers, who had just had a fight with a Stormcloak patrol. The soldier's just jogged past me as I stood on the rside of the road and watched. I drove on, and in the darkness didn't see the Stormcloak bodies before it was too late to avoid driving over some of them. I felt rather bad about it, but it couldn't be helped.

In a nice, open spot I parked the caravan and unpacked my sleeping accommodations. When waking up at 6 am I decided to go and investigate Gjukar's Stone that stood nearby. I was again startled when a ghostly giant mudcrab attacked me out of the blue. I had obtained the quest Kyne's Sacred Trials, you see, but forgotten completely about it. After dispatching the the thing I walked to my caravan, admired the scenery for a minute or two and saved my game.

This is a quest which, for me at least, just begs to be played with a werewolf character. I fondly remember doing it with my spiritual Bosmer who did carve Brother Verulus up (he had to get that ring for roleplaying purposes) but then transformed into beast form and ate the whole dinner party without bothering to carve.

I continued with the Forgotten Lore quest (from Interesting NPCs) which has some nice enemies using more or less our own tactics against us (e.g. hide behind a wall of meat shields and keep healing them while they keep hacking at us), there should've been more of that in the game. Also fought an Ancient dragon on the shores of Lake Ilinalta and lost my left-hand blade again in mid fight because I hit R instead of T meaning to recharge it ; but as that's perfectly realistic when you get ragdolled all the time by the beast landing next to you I rolled with it and made do with a crappy (=unimproved and unenchanted) glass mace I happened to have in my inventory. Now Marilyn will have some more crafting to do next time she has access to the respective facilities and level her enchanting (which I made Legendary), so that's actually a good thing.

^ I haven't once completed the cannibalism quest on a save that I actually kept - the only character I've ever played who was evil enough to kill Verulus was repulsed by the thought of eating someone, and while my werewolf has fed on victims, it was only on people he'd killed for some legitimate reason. I guess it would be kind of interesting to play him as thinking "well, I've eaten people, I guess I can't really judge this woman" and helping clear the cave, only to then realize "wait wait, you murder completely innocent people to eat? NOT COOL NOT COOL" and kill them all, but I think the whole "hanging out in a morgue to eat the dead" would put him off from the start - he's really pretty moralistic despite being a cannibal beast-man. I also think it's problematic that to slay the whole coven you have to risk Verulus' life without his permission - there's no option to tell him the truth but then ask him to play along in the name of flushing out the cannibals.

I've never completed The House of Horrors and then kept the save, either; that was too much even for my evil character.

I actually ended up killing Silus with an ostensibly good character because he glitched and failed to give me the dialogue option to spare him. I even ran away to avoid killing him, but when I returned much, much later he was still trying to kill me so I decided that he'd brought what was about to happen on himself. That jerk.

I messed around with a Dunmer necromancer I created yesterday, then decided to record that Undeath walkthrough anyway. So I did. Sort of.
I've got three or four short videos ready to upload. One has already been uploaded.

I doubt I'll do anything for Skyrim until I've got Undeath recorded. And fixed.
More issues have been found, and so attempts are being made to fix them.

Lieth finally received Kyne's Token. That was a fun little quest. Running around the tundras and forests, hunting spirit guardians with her bow and follower. But the moon caught her and she shifted into wolf form, taking down a necromancer and some bandits. She gorged on fresh meat and howled at the moon, all the while Talvas protecting her from harm with his spells. She wonders what the look on his face is when she rips victims to shred right in front of him, streaking their warm blood all over his chitin armor.

Morning brought her back from the wolf form, and so they headed back to Riften for a long rest while I entertain myself with Felina once more.

Played only 45 mins due to time constraints, but at least I found the near-perfect .ini settings for the cart I've mentioned in my last post. Quadrupled mass and friction from the default, and now the bumpiness is what it should be, even a little bit on the too stable side. In Ivarstead I accidentally drove over a chicken, which promptly squawked and keeled over. I really should learn to drive more carefully in the settlements.

After Ivarstead I drove to Whiterun. On the way I reverse-pickpocketed 500 gold to a homeless farmer couple because I pitied them and killed yet another inept assassin. This steeled my resolve to get these clowns off my back by destroying the Dark Brotherhood. Sorry, Grelod, but you can blame Astrid for your fate.