The Dockworker 18: Dawnstar of the Dead

• Posted by Clement Bilhorn July 2, 2012 - 560 views

  I work through the night and into the morning, cutting the wood I'll need for my newfound housing project.

  

  It's surprisingly satisfying to just do some manual labor for a change. No one to threaten me with internal organ failure, no one to set me on fire, no one to nag me about joining a cult... It's quite peaceful, even despite the crushing wave of nauseau that spikes again come morning. I must be coming down with something.

  I still need more materials to get started, so I hike up to Windhelm. I don't know of any reputable smiths there, but I can take a carriage down to Riften, take care of some business with the Guild, and get the iron I need. But first I take the carriage up to Dawnstar. My third Brotherhood target is up there.

  This feels very familiar...

  

  I reach Dawnstar around late afternoon. I try to be careful when standing up, very aware that I'm sick with something by now--all this sunlight bouncing off the snow is giving me a headache, so I pull my hood even tighter over my eyes. But as I step down from the carriage, everything falls apart.

  My head seems to explode and red clouds my vision. My pulse thuds in my ears, but not so loudly that I don't hear the roar of a dragon over the hill.

  I panic and run around Dawnstar like a lunatic, staggering around in that blasted sunlight while trying to find Beitild before the dragon kills him too. But I can't ignore the dragon's roars for long; I climb over the ridge to confront and kill it. Shouldn't be too hard, with all my past experience.

  Yeah, sure.

  

  And this dragon has a trick to him that makes him worse than the others. He lands, bellowing at the earth, and, well... It answers. Draugr crawl out of their graves, buried for who knows how long by the ever-sliding glacier, and rush at me, muttering their rude invectives against me.

  

  I back up quickly, keenly aware of how badly it'll go for me to get surrounded by these monsters. This time, though, I'm not too focused on my enemy to not notice the thudding sound of footsteps approaching from behind.

  I jump out of the way. Sadly, it's not a mammoth, but I suppose a giant has to come in handy.

  

  Or not. The draugr tear the giant apart was relentless ferocity, and I'm horrified to discover that these guys take their status as undead very seriously--they get right back up after they go down.

  

  I realize that this fight is too much for me. I flee into Dawnstar, looking for help. Where's an army of trolls or mammoths when you need one?

  

  Bolstered by the assistance of the Pale Guards--so nice to have them fighting with me for a change--I turn and go back into battle. I'm able to do a bit of damage now that the pressure's taken off.

  

  The mages down by the shore get involved, too, to devastating effect.

  

  But the dragon is not so easily undone. He swoops into the town and lets loose on the battle taking place below, freezing draugr and human alike.

  

  The sad fact is that the draugr just keep getting up, while the citizens of Dawnstar aren't nearly so resilient. The battle quickly swings against me.

  

  I break from combat and begin hurriedly searching for Beitild, or at least his body. I need to know that he's dead or I fear my tenure with the Brotherhood will be short indeed. I can imagine the conversation with Nazir now:

  "Did you kill Narfi?"

  "Yeah, no problem."

  "Ennodius?"

  "Um, yeah, a dragon killed him."

  "Beitild?"

  "Yeah, also a dragon."

  

  Despite the steadily growing bodycount, Beitild is nowhere to be seen. I realize that if I'm to leave Dawnstar with anything but a splitting headache--actually, the headache has vanished ever since the sun went down--I need to kill that dragon before it kills just about everybody. 

  I lure it away from the town, up on a small rise where the draugr can't reach me. Once I manage to ground it, it dies rather quickly. 

  

  But it's not an experience I care to repeat. I slide back down the ridge into Dawnstar to assess the damage and find Beitild. I'm relieved to find that while he's dead, he's not so totally dead that Nazir won't be able to confirm it.

  Unsurprisingly, Dawnstar's two surviving members are less than thrilled to see me. I was, after all, the one who brought the dragon into the town anyways, even if I was also the one to kill it. 

  And so, for the second time, I find myself chased out of Dawnstar, wanted for murder.

  I don't think I'm going to be able to bribe my way out of this one.