It was just another typical day in Skyrim, except on this morning I had to send the Housecarl Lydia back to the kitchen in Dragonsreach. Honestly, her bungling is consistent and it was high time I took up the search for a more able strong-arm to aid my cause. Though, I must admit, my cause is yet, if ever, to be discovered.

I set off immediately for Windhelm, specifically because I had heard rumours that an elite swordsman by the name of Stenvar often frequented one of the taverns there.

Upon arrival it wasn’t hard to find the man I was looking for.

I entered the Candlehearth Inn and drew up a chair as I surveyed the room. As I looked from face to face I considered the rumour I had heard to be wrong. That was until I noticed a maniac sitting at a table in the far corner. He was on his own and I probably would have passed him by if it wasn’t for the size of his sword and the shine off his bald head. He caught my eye and my first instinct was to get the hell out of there. But I stopped myself and made my way over to his table.

Without preamble, Stenvar introduced himself and mentioned that for a piffling five hundred gold he’d come and work for me. Done.

On the road out of Windhelm Stenvar already paid for himself by running wildly at anything that moved within a hundred yards of me, be it animal, vegetable of mineral.

Our travels took us far and wide, but were largely uneventful. That is until we heard of a quest…

I’ll spare you the specifics, but the short of it saw Stenvar and myself travel towards a particularly grim Dungeon in Volunruud.

Needless to say, we summarily slew the guards, looted the chests and barged our way in the front, and only, door.

Our journey was tedious…We were looking for a shady character by the name of Kvenel the Tongue. Apparently he had a good sword or something, but that was enough for me. By all accounts our chances we slim, and once I saw what we faced down there, I realised it was time for Stenvar to take point.

A brief argument about that for five hundred gold I would expect Stenvar to hang himself if I said so saw the brute lead the way into a large chamber with a rather pissed off looking, and I assume, Kvenel the Tongue lounging in a crude throne.

Had I led the way, we may have had the element of surprise, but then again…perhaps not. Anyhow, events unfolded at an alarming rate and before I knew it, not only had Kvenel the got up off his arse to offer up front row tickets to a disembowelling contest for Stenvar and I, but his olde chum, a late and great Draugr Scourge decided to join and invite Mr. Anti-Social the Frost Atronach along for the party.

I’m not sure exactly how much time had passed before Stenvar realised I was half way down the corridor trying to ring the faeces out of my britches, but much to my surprise the bald headed maniac actually gave as good as he got. My brow rose.

As I saw the tables turning I decided it was perhaps a good idea for me to get involved. Casting my trousers aside and rummaged through my pack and found a scroll of fireball conveniently placed at the top. Swheet.

Logic would dictate that fire would melt ice, and seeing as the giant before me dealing out punishment was made of ice, or rather frost, why not throw some heat at it?

Turns out there was a good reason for that…

As luck would have it at the precise moment I loosed the fireball, Stenvar smashed the thing into smithereens. This meant that instead of the fireball hurtling into the Frost Atronach it hit Stenvar square in the chest and sent him into the clawing arms of the waiting Draugr Scourge and ever-cheerful Kvenel the Tongue.

Well its all fun and games until someone looses his temper…and takes a fireball to the chest.

Stenvar went berserk, and I’d like to think that his rage was directed at my enemies, but I think he was perhaps trying to fend them off as much to get to me as to hurt them. Whatever his motive, the greatsword he carried dealt a lot of damage in a shockingly short space of time and had I had a video camera to film the event, I would have.

I saw victory on the horizon and wanted to get in on the glory. I ran down the corridor like a man possessed, dual daggers at the ready and a potion of strength already making its way down my throat. This was it; brothers in arms, warriors side by side, companions… victors!

There was about a minute of hacking, slashing, some further hacking, followed by a little more slashing until eventually I realised the battle had stopped.

I thrust my fist up into the air in triumph and sheathed one of my daggers. The other had been wrung from my grasp at some point during the melee. In the heat of the moment I thought it appropriate to turn and hi-five the warrior Stenvar, to make up for my earlier mistake with the fireball.

“Stenvar!” I cried, joyously. “Stenvar” I said normally. “Stenvar?” I asked quietly. I took a step to see if he was down the corridor and as I moved my foot hit something heavy, a helmet, Stenvar’s helmet to be precise.

I looked down to see the butchered corpse of not only the Draugr Scourge, the Frost Atronach, Kvenel the Tongue, but also that of Stenvar the unlucky. A dagger was sticking out of his back… My dagger.

I looked around to make sure nobody else had witnessed what happened. I searched the area and looted what chests and enemies I could find. Then I looked down at poor Stenvar and looted him too.

As I made my way out of the dungeon back to the fresh air of Skyrim I hefted a large coin purse in my hand. By my best guess it contained a little over five hundred gold pieces.

You just can’t get the staff these days.

~Lordt.

It was just another day in Skyrim. Bow over my shoulder, wench over my knee, and a warm cup of mead (stolen I might add) clasped firmly between my grubby fingers.

Had anyone walked into the Bee and Barb at that time, they might have considered me well-off. The truth of it though, was that I was anything but well-off and had in fact been hanging around like the last turkey in the shoppe waiting to see if a likely hireling presented himself.

After the death of Stenvar I was a little more cautious over the quality of mercenary I recruited this time and had decided that I wanted someone with brains, if not brawn. After all, if I’m honest, I needed someone to even out the scales.

I was six cups gone when in walked an arrogant chap with a rapier wit. His attire seemed fine and his tongue sharp when he ordered at the bar. An educated man perhaps…

In short order I downed my current offering of mead and sent the wench packing.

“Lordt”, I offered the man a handshake. He was outrageously sceptical of me and my first instinct was to slit his throat in broad daylight, but I calmed myself and extended my arm a little further. “Marcurio” he offered, hesitantly.

I smiled. “You look like an educated man. I’m paying good money for just such a man to aid me on my travels”, I said. What he didn’t know was that I was broke, and that my “travels” were more or less suicide missions in search of gold and/or artefacts.

His eyes lit up. “Just what I’m looking for. You need not know fear with me by your side”, he said. I smirked. What an arrogant sack of dung. If he knew what I was going to put him through, he’d change his name AND sex right then and there.

So anyway, pleasantries over with, I hired the man and we set of for the nearest dungeon with inadequate supplies and a series of bad jokes and one-liners in tow.

It wasn’t long before we encountered our first brace of Skeletons and began messing with them. I don’t really know where we were, but I had HEARD that deep within there was gold to be had and at least a chest or two worth of reasonable loot. I had half a mind not to bother and wait for something better to come along. That is, until I saw Marcurio in action. I knew he was educated, but I hadn’t imaged he would be such a pyromaniac. Turned out the well groomed mead connoisseur happened to be an adept spellsmith, hurling fireball after fireball into suspecting animated skeletons.

I couldn’t be bothered to move, so I sat back and watched as Marcurio did the dirty work and cleared the entrance to the dungeon. After which, I mopped up the coin with a slice of bread and hunk of cheese.

Now then, I have to say, I was impressed. Marcurio clearly had talent as a wizard and he wasn’t the worst looking guy I’d seen around lately either. That being said though, when the chance arose I did slam a Dwarven Helmet on his head just for good measure. You can never be quite sure when an errant arrow might catch you in the eye.

We made our way further into the dungeons, brushing aside cobwebs and skeletons alike. My opinion of Marcurio lessened somewhat in the moments that followed as he managed to set off all five bear traps that I had circumnavigated so far on our journey. He then managed to nearly impale himself on a sprung gate and failed miserably at making his way through a narrow tunnel whilst being hampered by swinging axes. So much for a quiet entrance…

By now I was certain that every creature below surface level must have known we were there and were summarily making their way towards us, presumable to rape us and feed on our… Well, presumably to kill us.

It wasn’t so long before we found another congregation of skeletons and Draugr milling about. I turned to Marcurio to tell him to wait a moment and sit still so we could plan our next action, and if possible, sneak our way in. The problem with this was that Marcurio already had lightning playing between the fingers of one hand and smoke rising from the other, presumably from the fireball he had just loosed into the fray.

“Fuck sake!”

I shouldered my bow and drew my sword and dagger. On a side note, anyone who knows me will know how much I hate to have to shoulder my bow and actually venture into the heart of a battle. Thanks Marcurio.

That was the point when I turned back to face the fight and realised that everybody was dead. I glanced to my left as I could hear further crackling from Marcurio’s fingertips. I tried to hide the smile creeping onto my face and I think it was at that point that I lost the battle to try and suggest ever again to Marcurio to shut up and get down.

So, I hired a spellslinger!? All one word.

“And I won’t be needing this” he said, tossing the Dwarven Helmet aside.

Well, you might, I thought… And then moved on.

We continued onward and downward, the usual route for any self respecting loot gatherer. Together we pilfered coins, smashed urns, shared tales, got lost and set off traps.

Until we came to a door.

Well, it wasn’t really a door, more of a side of wall with the appearance of a door.

It was a door.

The funny thing was, that in the centre of it was a keyhole of a claw-like design and a simple puzzle around the edge. I suppose this was meant to be challenging, but I just looked at the design on the claw key I conveniently had in my sack and use the symbols on there to line up the lock properly before opening the door. Done.

Well, it’s not that funny, but the tale of how I got the key is slightly more amusing. I’ll spare the details. But in short, I picked it up during a quest a while back and never really got round to using it. As luck would have it a local merchant in Riverwood was offering good coin for such a key. Who was I to turn down good coin? So I sold it to him. Then, when his back was turned, I stole the key back off him and got the hell out of Riverwood. Thanks very much.

So, there I was, using the key that didn’t belong to me and gaining access to another daunting chamber in which at the end loomed another bloody puzzle door. I’ll admit, at this point in time a frown did furrow my brow, but I in no way lost my cool. Just so you know that before reading the next part of this journal.

I cleared my throat and subtly ushered Marcurio in first. I didn’t want to walk head first into any traps, but if Marcurio wanted to, then fine.

We walked slowly. Along the side of the vault many sarcophagi lined the walls. Call me sceptical, but I had already assumed they would burst open any moment with skeletons and draugr springing out of them like jack in the box..i.

Yup.

Marcurio was in there like a shot. His mistake. The undead had not seen me crouched in the doorway. I took a swig of mead to calm my nerves and nocked an arrow. It was like a shooting gallery. But what to shoot first? The undead we bursting out of their tombs in a manner a little less athletic than I had given them credit for. In fact, it rather looked like they were getting out of bed after a long nap. I decided it was best to shoot the ones just getting up. It turned out that in the process of waking up they were rather vulnerable to arrow fire, and I took them down one by one.

Sadly though, during the commotion Marcurio had been knocked down. It didn’t see it happen, but I suppose his hand to hand combat was not up to scratch. He probably would have been alright if he had stayed down, but I was on a roll and shooting anything that moved, particularly things that were just getting up, including Marcurio.

As the dust settled I must admit I felt a pang of annoyance at my own sharpshooting.

I moved over to the corpse of Marcurio. He looked like a snowman with a giant stick protruding from where his nose used to be, albeit the shaft of an arrow. I winced and left the arrow where it was. I considered if perhaps a local healer might be able to revive him. After all, he wasn’t the worst merc I’d hired to date. I fingered my beard until the lock of the door to the next chamber piqued my interest. What riches lay within?

“Should have stayed down, mate”.

~ Lordt.