The Premise

Skyrim is a vast sprawling game, you can pretty much do anything you want, so I decided to live in Skyrim, to see how an old man coped with the harsh environment and bizarre folk that inhabit this land. This is my tale!

The Rules

80 year old man in Skyrim.

Only doing what an average 80 year old can do.

No constantly running, using shouts (special powerful magics), magic or fast travel.

No murder or stealing or anything unethical, should always try to run away from a fight.

Read part one here – https://radiothax.com/2013/09/03/old-man-in-skyrim-1/

Day 2

Sitting in the open air next to a giant fire is not doing my buttocks any good at all, I need sleep, so if the bards college want me to spend days hiking across the countryside to find a poem for them, they can damn well let me have a kip in one of their beds. So I walk through the college and find the dorms. Not only are all the beds being slept in but when a man gets up in the night to go for a wee I try and sleep in his bed only to be told its owned by him and I’m forbidden from slumbering in it. I hope their songs are better than their hospitality!

In the end I resign myself to spending the night sitting on one of their benches. This wouldn’t be too bad if not for the fact that every conscious bard in the building is singing at the top of their voice. And then a bard guy comes, joins me on my sleeping bench and sings right at me. I hate musicians!

I ‘wake’ up at six (or rather stand up from the bench, I didn’t get a moments sleep in this damn place) then I notice there is a terrifying rumbling sound, like an angry bear or some kind of ferocious otter. I contemplate it for a second and realise it’s my own tummy rumbling, things aren’t going my way. There is food on many of the tables here but I would literally rather die than steal someones food, which the way things are going may very well happen!

I leave the bards college and walk through the town, the fresh morning air smells sweet and warm, I notice there are wild flowers growing out of every nook and cranny here, they are free for any wily old man to harvest, so I take everything that is in the public domain with the hopes of making a delicious broth or soup.

After an hour of gathering I find out the names of the plants I’ve picked, ‘Deathbell’ and ‘Nightshade’. Not exactly healthy sounding herbs. I forget any notion of eating these and happen upon a shop willing to buy them from me, for an impressive 184 gold, for a day’s work of picking flowers, I consider it a good return.

I spend my gold on some bread and roast chicken boobies. I save some money because my feet are bloody freezing thus shoes or some fashionable clogs are required, so I walk over to a different shop, look around, it’s full of weapons, so I leave quite scared and find a haberdasher. I buy myself some fetching shoes and gloves, and with some money left I treat myself to a very handsome belted tunic.

As the children say these days ‘I look radical, dude’, if by that they mean I still look like a hobo but now a hobo with warm hands and feet. I have some money left so I head back to the weapon shop and buy myself a little dagger, it’s the only thing I can lift in the shop, my wrists are so weak when I tried to lift a broadsword I fall over and hurt my bum.

I take a mid-morning repose on a bench to think about things, life, the universe and how comfy my bum is. I should probably head out to find this damn poem, so I check my map.

Bastard, it’s half a world away. I take another look through my things, somehow I’ve acquired a human hip bone. How the hell did that get in there? Is it mine? Did it fall out of me when that  broadsword fell over on me? I check my journal. Apparently I’m to return it to the Blue Palace for some reason. The blue palace? That sounds like a sexy and rude palace to me, so quick as my newly shoed feet can carry me, I walk there.

As it turns out I’m meant to return this bone to a sealed off wing in the Palace, to a ghost. So as is now my custom, I turn and walk away, refusing such a ridiculous and terrifying request. My old ticker wouldn’t handle the stress of meeting a ghost.

On the way back into town I collect some plants that I missed and funnel the money I make into buying the very finest hat my money can buy. Then as if nature is mocking me, the heavens open, literally tons of freezing cold water begins pouring down on my head and the environs. A thunder storm, is this a bad omen for my poem quest? But surely my hat will protect me.

I decide walking so far in the pouring rain will be the death of me, so with the last few coins I buy some food and a room at the local drinking establishment with the hopes of getting a good night’s sleep. So of course as I make my payment for the room a bloody bard starts beating a drum and singing, what is it with trying to sleep and these bards?!

I get to my room, it’s lovely, there is food and wine laid out for me, I didn’t expect hospitality of this calibre for only ten gold. And as it turns out I don’t get hospitality of this calibre, the food does not belong to me and if I took it, it would be classed as stealing, it must just be display food. What kind of bastard leaves out display carrots?

Day 3

I sleep till 6 am and just because I’ve woken up in a bad mood and because that bloody bard is still playing her drum I wreck the room. It’s still raining! I am not a happy fellow!

There’s no way I can walk all the way to this Dead Men’s Respite in the pouring rain, I’d die from exposure. So I have two choices, either walk in the day and hopefully find inns on the way or buy/make a tent and camp on a night. I then look at my money situation. Much as I’d love to slowly walk the wilderness all day and curl up with a mug of ale and a wedge of cheese in a nice bed at night, my funds dictate that I spend my nights in a cold tent, probably lying on a soggy bedroll while spiders nest in my shoes.

So I need to buy enough leather to make a tent, I spend some of the morning picking the remaining public flowers that I missed, but don’t harvest anywhere near enough to buy even one lump of leather. So I ask some of the residents of solitude if they have any odd jobs they need doing. Almost everyone asks me to break the law for them, no wonder this place is called solitude, no one want’s to come here, it’s full of criminals.

I finally find a lady who just wants me to pop down to the docks for her and ask for her shipment of wine to be released from the port. A simple messaging service, I can do that. Though it does mean a walk up and down those very steep hills, but it’s got to be easier than trying to give a ghost its hip bone back.

It takes me 40 minutes to get down the hill, but at least the weathers nice, I actually quite enjoy the walk, it gives me time to think, I try writing a song about my time in solitude but can’t think of anything positive to say about bards, so it probably wouldn’t go down very well at the their college.

When I get to the docks I meet Vittoria Vici and she has the nerve to charge me 2000 gold coins as a tariff to release the wine from the port. Do I look like I carry that kind of money on me? I know my hat is fancy, but it’s not that fancy.

I try to persuade her, I give her my best puppy dog eyes, this falls flat, in fact so flat she stops talking to me and walks away. The only other option I have is to bribe her with my last 62 gold. This she accepts, the nasty cow, I was going to spend that on food, clothing and erotic parchments, she’s just going to spend it on her wedding apparently. I hope it doesn’t last. I snort in derision and leave her to her precious docks.

The stall holder better reimburse me for my gold,or I’ll throw the mother of all hissy fits, though thinking about it I didn’t get a receipt, Damn!

I start the long walk up the steep hills back to solitude, it takes me an hour and 45 minutes. When I get back into town, everyone’s gone to bed! Having had all my money taken I can’t afford another night in the soft warm bed of the inn so I do what any self-respecting homeless penniless 80 year old would do and spend the entire night sitting on a bench in the pub passed out, while yet another bard continually plays throughout the night, I’m used to it now, I don’t think I could sleep without people singing about a dragon born. Can I make a request? Yes, insert that drum in yourself and sod off!

Next time – Great vengeance and furious anger