A new series is starting here on the Red Shirt Crew: the Adventures of a Reluctant Dragonborn! There are a number of Elder Scrolls playthroughs I’ve seen online where the player tries their hardest to avoid anything out of the ordinary. Gates to Oblivion are opening around Tamriel? Best take the long route to Bravil! Dragon attacks Winterhold? I should hide somewhere safe and wait for the city guard to deal with it! I’ve always loved the idea, so I’m going to follow suit. After the jump, I’ll explain what I’m doing to make my player character, Urbal the Orc, play more like an NPC, and give a brief account of Urbal gro-Dushnikh’s first day in Skyrim.
But Holmes! What about Helgen? What about meeting Ulfric and almost being killed and surviving your first dragon and-
SHUT UP! This is my article. Thank you.
Now, first things first, I’m using the Random Alternate Start mod from Syclonix. It allows you to create a character as normal, but then asks you to choose a class. Your class determines your starting inventory, so you aren’t completely without supplies. Which is good, because you could start anywhere (well about 450 different places) and some of them are dangerous.
 |
| Around and around you go, where you start? Nobody knows! |
Other things about this play through: I chose to be an Orc, and my class is knight, because 1) they get armor, smithing and speech bonuses, and 2) I wanted to play a blacksmith. Luck of luck, I started outside Glenmoril Coven with the initial quest to check out Helgen. Already a back story was starting to form: born and raised in the Orc stronghold of Dushnikh Yal, Urbal left to make his own way in the world. (Orcs in Skyrim have a bit of wanderlust and the only way for a male to advance his status in an Orc stronghold is to kill the chief) In line with Orc tradition, he changed his name from Urbal to Urbal gro-Dushnikh (roughly translated: Urbal, son of Dushnikh)
Urbal took a short journey North to the city of Markarth and took up an apprenticeship with Ghorza gra-Bagol, the town blacksmith. For those who have not played Skyrim, Ghorza has an apprentice already, but constantly complains about his incompetence. For the sake of this play through, I plan to use the console command to remove him from play and effectively replace him in the world. In a real world apprenticeship, Ghorza would give me an assignment (nails, daggers, maces, helmets, whatever), and I would work on that assignment until I proved my competence at which point she would teach me something new to make and set me to work on my new task. Ghorza is a smithing skill trainer, so the way I plan to replicate this process is to work on one kind of project until she is willing to pay me enough gold that I can purchase a level of training from her. But where the game loaded, he is on a delivery errand for her (see journal below).
Being an Orc, he’s not a scaredy-cat and won’t completely shy away from an adventure, but he’s not looking to be a hero. I’m not going to go from person to person asking them if they need my help and only taking those quests which seem reasonable for a fairly well trained good Samaritan to do. Dragons, giants and vampires? Probably not; certainly not without good reason. But Wolves or Forsworn attacking farmers (or something He promised to do before realizing how dangerous it was going to be – “They didn’t say anything about a DRAGON PRIEST!”)? Yeah, I’d take that on. Perhaps with a trained combatant by my side.
In the future, these articles will be primarily Urbal’s journal entries, since you now know the background fluff, with some occasional links at the end for those unfamiliar with Skyrim, if I feel it’s really necessary.
Without further ado, allow me to present the first day of Urbal gro-Dushnikh’s adventures in Skyrim:
17th of Last Seed, 201
Today I left Markarth, baring a steel axe meant for Ulfric’s neck. Ghorza says the Imperial Legion has caught him at last and that I am to deliver the axe to them in Helgen to the East. Me, I’m just glad to have a rest from smithing. Ghorza is a good teacher, but she works me hard, and the delivery job is a nice change of pace.
The trip there was largely uneventful. I was met by a couple of bandits and some wolves, but Skyrim will have to send much worse my way if it thinks it can best me. I met some hunters and stopped to rest at their camp. They were friendly, and traded me some food for the wolves’ pelts.
Then, Helgen. Helgen was a ghastly sight. I know something was wrong before I even saw the keep. Black smoke billowed into the air and it’s acrid stench reached my nose before I sprinted around the last turn of the road. The entire place had been raised to the ground, and all that could be set ablaze had been. I could run no more, but moved as though in a daze through the scene, stepping over and around corpses burnt beyond recognition.
I wondered to myself who or what could have possibly done such a thing as a huge dragon roared across the sky as if to answer my question. A dragon! I had always believed they existed, long ago, but I had always assumed they were long since gone. It was headed North.
I write this from the Sleeping Giant Inn in Riverwood, where I have paid for a night. I must warn Whiterun, and find out who to leave this axe with. I will be glad to return home, especially if there are dragons roaming Skyrim once more.
Urbal gro-Dushnikh
The Red Shirt Crew Blog and Podcast Network 