Skyrim VR... Day 31

I got a little sidetracked with sidequests, and found myself taking a boat to Raven Rock.

It turns out, if I had played a previous game (Oblivion?) I would have known all about this island, but yeah apparently it got rekt by a volcano, and is no longer a thriving community.

The locals are doing their best to scrape by, but they are plagued by strange nightmares (where have we heard that before?), and rely on outside shipping which seems to be having pirate trouble (and that too?).

Since I was here, I figured I might as well try and find out about the cultists who had attacked me in the mainland, so I started asking around.

Everyone was like ‘oh the name sounds familiar, but I don’t know, maybe it was a dream’. Or ‘I think I heard it in a nightmare’. Or ‘I think it reminds me of a temple.’ Or ‘I think it reminds me of the monument on the beach’.

So it seems the cultists have that little amnesia zapper from men in black, and keep using it on the villagers?

Anyway, I’m guessing that green beacon over yonder might be worth checking out…

But I’ve got local quests in town to deal with first. Quests like clear out the crypt so that we can use it again.

These fellows were a bit of a jump scare the first time I ran into them and they rose out of the ashes on the floor and started getting all rowdy.

Luckily I’m a fast draw with my bow, and the crypt was deemed safe again.

I’ve noticed these dudes drop fairly good treasure most of the time, so I’m pretty happy turning them into piles of dust.

So I went around doing the various local quests until I heard the telltale roar of a dragon.

It caused a bit of a stir with the local militia who rushed out to help, but I had it in hand.

Unfortunately, like my followers often do, a guard got caught in the crossfire and, well, we had a bit of a misunderstanding.

I now have a bounty on my head in the town, but no guards to pay it to, because they’re all corpses lying on the ground. I looted all their arrows too, since I used a fair few to, uhm, defend myself.

Anyway, it was a long day and I headed off to the tavern to get a bed for the night.

This fellow wanted me to distribute some liquor to the villagers, I think he thought they’d get a taste for it and come buy some more… that first free hit to get them all hooked?

So I quickly did that quest too, then ran back to the bed I had purchased and went to sleep.

And woke up somewhere else.

I don’t know how I got there, but maybe it’s related to those nightmares the villagers had told me about. There seemed to be some brainwashed folks chipping away at the structure, talking to themselves.

I can only assume I must have been doing some of that brainwashed chiselling too?

I bailed before they could brainwash me again, but I reckon I have a fairly good idea what the cultists are up to.

Met an archaeologist at a nearby barrow, he was digging it all by himself, because he had no money to hire extra help. Now I didn’t want to do any digging myself, but I did have a bunch of spare cash now and spotted him a grand to expedite the process. Hopefully the artefacts he’s been talking about are worth the expense.

Next I wandered over to a shipwreck, and well, I should have known better but I went in the front door and agro’d a bunch of sea-bandits. I’m not sure if these fellows were responsible for the sinking of the ship, or if they just were being opportunistic.

I killed them all and found a couple of quest items in chests in the hold.

I also found some jellyfish/cow type things which look like they belong in Mass Effect. They weren’t agro and I was able to get up nice and close, though they did turn hostile after the first arrow.

Apparently I needed their jelly for a quest too, so I killed a few more for good measure.

Then it was time to head on over to a castle that sounded like it had been haunted by a long-dead general.

It was full of those ash monsters. I got oodles of ores, ingots and gems by the time I had cleared the place. It seemed like a necromancer had raised the general but couldn’t control him. I’m not quite sure what happened to the necromancer, I shall keep half an eye out.

I also found some letters to a widow on the skeleton of a guard who had perished when the volcano brought the roof down on his head. I’m not sure if the widow would still be alive, it sounded like a number of years had passed, but I took them just in case there were some descendents to give them to.

It’s been a couple of days since I slept, but after the last experience waking up after being brainwashed, I’m going to keep yawning and try not to fall into the next bed I come across.