The Dockworker 2: The Criminal Element

• Posted by Clement Bilhorn June 17, 2012 - 520 views

  The carriage ride takes all night. I arrive at Dawnstar early in the morning with a sore butt and "Ragnar the Red" playing endlessly in my head. The sight of another dock causes brief, traumatizing flashbacks from my past (abandoned 12 hours ago), but I quickly get over it and begin looking around for my contact: a pirate named Stig Salt-Plank.

  

  The scummy pirate isn't at the ship, so I figure he'll be at a pirate's second-favorite moor: the inn. Sure enough, I enter the inn just in time to see a group of bulky boors harassing one of the barwench--maids--and I feel compelled to make my presence known. I talk to Salt-Plank, but he isn't forthcoming with information. I have to be persuasive.
  
  The guy cracks under a few swipes from my sharp nails--an unfair advantage, as always--and tells me about a place where the pirates meet. With that knowledge in head, I figure I can head back to Orthus.

  Simple, right?

  

  Unfortunately, I'm now very lost, being map-less and compass-less. Also, I'm beginning to feel somewhat impotent, given that I've yet to take the life of a living creature and am armed with nothing more than a puny iron dagger. I take to the heights, hoping to get my bearings. Winterhold beckons from the distance, but I opt instead for the ruins on the hill.

  

  I approach cautiously, looking for a door or some other way in. I find one. I also find some spiders, so we do our salutes, exchange a few insults, and go to battle.
  
  Admittedly, I overdramatized what was effectively a bloodier, less disgusting version of cleaning out a tool shed.
  
  The spiders fall thankfully easily, but it turns out to be a pretty pointless victory, as I discover upon entering the tower.

  

  The freaky idol at the end of what looks like a desecrated temple has to mean something, but all I take away from the room is a sense of disappointment--again--and a few scratches from the two skeevers I find bustling about.
  
  Feeling purposeless, and still very lost, I decide I need an edge. I want a bow, particularly. It seems fitting for a sneaky animal-killer like me. I go back to Dawnstar, but no one's selling anything. So, continuing in the vein of sneakiness, I decide to try lifting a bow off a guard. That doesn't work, and I find myself chased out into the blinding tundra.
  
  Something ensues.
  
  It's a fierce fight. It feels like an hour. I take many a blow, but manage to regenerate my wounds faster than the Pale Guard can inflict them. Finally, my superior biology triumphs over the puny Nose, and the bow is mine.
  
  Having taken my first human life--that of a racist, Windhelm-allied Nose, no less--I feel a rush of exhilaration pass through me. This is something that an experientially-repressed dock slave could get used to.
  
  I don the bow and proceed to try it out, pitting myself against the hordes of wildlife wandering the tundra west of Dawnstar. I take aim, summon a fire in the Void, and let the arrow leave me like a breath from my lungs.
  The shot misses. 
  
  But after a bit of practice, I get the hang of it and soon slay about 10 wolves and a cow. I liberate their bodies of their skins and guts, hoping to put these parts to use at some point. Skinning a dozen animals gives me a taste for more, so I set my sights on a nearby deer. Unfortunately, it takes off running, only wounded, and a very long chase ensues. 

  

  The chase goes on until...well, I'm really not at liberty to say.

  

  Frustrated with my inability to easily bring down a single deer without moral support (provided by a nearby rabbit), I decide to blow off some steam and burn some calories by climbing some nearby stairs. Upon seeing a freaky idol-demon-god-thing, I figure it's time I got back to Orthus, so I go east in search of a good vantage point.
  
  Some bandits set upon me, but I dispatch them quickly, feeling my lust for violence growing. Now eager to get back to Orthus, I climb the highest rock I can find.
  I can see a river about two leagues off--Windhelm is presumably down that way. But first, I suppose, it can't hurt to check out that city to the south. After all, I've heard rumors of dragons in those parts.