Skyrim VR... Day 32

I forgot to write in my journal for a while, so my memory of events may be a little bit shot… it was well into the next day when we emerged from the castle and back into the ashy wasteland, massively overburdened by loot. Luckily my cheaty modded NPC Sofia doesn’t have a carrying capacity, so I handed all those ingots and heavy armors to her to look after until we get back to a vendor.

Continued exploring further along the island, and met a strange fellow with an even stranger pet. It’s like some kind of giant hippopotamus with super long spindly legs. Apparently they were used as some form of public transport back in the olden days. This one must have had a lot of miles on it, because it didn’t sound like it was going to make it to the next destination.

Just nearby, there was a forest of giant mushrooms, some of which had been turned into a small settlement.

I was half expecting there to be some kind of gnome or fae folk living in it, but apparently it was just a boring old enchanter and his retinue.

He was a master staff maker and pretty full of himself, and had some tasks so far beneath him that he commanded me to do because it seems like his followers do their best to shirk their duty. He even wanted me to go tell one of these minions to go make him tea.

Of course I said yes, and then headed in the complete opposite direction and found some dwarven ruins that had almost sunk into the sea.

They contained traces of dead bandits when I was finished with them, but I couldn’t figure out how to open the door.

R Grip did not activate any control switch.

So I wandered off again, and found another one of those holy sites full of sleep-walking craftspeople chiselling the rocks surrounding it.

I’m still pretty unsettled about this whole nightmare temple stuff, so I leave ‘em alone and head toward some shiny glowy rocks.

Mining in VR can be fun, you swing your pickaxe a couple times and a bit of rock drops onto the ground, then you bend down and pick it up. Apparently the enchanter was after some of this stuff too, so that’s handy. He also wanted me to go to some ‘source’ which sounded like a spring that a river flows from, so I started following the river up the hill and found the hill was covered in dragon bones.

I suppose they had trouble with the volcano too? There was a treasure chest nearby that I looted too. I didn’t think dead dragons kept treasure in treasure chests, but I wasn’t complaining about the free loot.

Of course, it turns out the treasure chest wasn’t anything to do with dead dragons.

So we had a heated discussion (even though it was a frost dragon, it still seemed to breathe fire), and then the treasure chest made a little more sense.

After that, we lost track of the river and so I consulted the map, and apparently the spring is up the total other end of the island, so we’ll get there in due time.

I turned back around and headed into another set of dwarven ruins.

We were greeted by a large group of people who had made a home of the ruins. They weren’t happy with trespassers and thought to send us packing. I’m afraid to report that they were permanently evicted from life instead.

We started exploring, and quickly found a control panel in the middle of a large room with holes for 9 gems in it. On top of each of the doors there was a pattern displayed. It didn’t seem like a well guarded secret, so I don’t know why the bandits hadn’t figured their way further into the ruins, but perhaps they didn’t have enough gems.

I, on the other hand, did.

So I put them in the pattern of the first door, and oh my god.

I was not prepared for a half dozen ballista robots, spider bots, and more dwarven contraptions to suddenly surround us and open fire.

It was a brutal fight, and I thought I’d be loading my save game, but we did (only just) pull through.

I’m not quite sure how Lucien survived, given the size of that bolt sticking out of his forehead, but we shall not question the gods about this blessing.

Some of the dwarven contraptions appear to have caught that weird armour bug from Sofia.

We explored further into the ruins but didn’t get far, as we needed more gems to open another door.

We headed back out of the ruins in search of more gems (the enchanter had one that I didn’t buy earlier), and to turn in some quests, so we returned to town and did just that.