I finish my business in Morthal and make my way back to Solitude, where I check in with General Tullius...a bit overdue, I must admit, considering Ulfric's army was beaten several weeks ago.
I also check in with the jarl's advisor, Falk Firebeard, about the message his courier gave me about two weeks ago. I'm glad to see it wasn't as urgent as its wording made it sound--Solitude's still standing, after all.
But it turns out they have something in their sewers, so I, the inveterate plumber of all things dark and nasty, decide it can't hurt to go check it out.
Like all things in Skyrim, evil seems to go hand-in-hand with ancient history.
But evil things are not terribly difficult to deal with. It's orcs and dragons that usually give me second thoughts about something. And mammoths.
The sewers are filled with a varied mix of enemies, live and dead. I do my best to bring them all down to the same level.
And then Potema--the undead ghost lady I believe I'm hunting--ruins everything by undoing all my hard work.
So when I find glowy lady deep inside the sewers, I'm irritated enough to shrug off her magical attacks and and show her--and her undead seneschals--exactly what I think of them.
So I kill Potema, get paid, and get out. Tullius sends me east, to Dawnstar. Now, I know Dawnstar and I have something of a rough past, but I suppose liberating them from the Stormcloaks should be appropriate recompense for all past wrongs.
I also see a boat and decide to check it out.
It's full of crabs, so I keep on toward the Imperial camp to meet with Rikke.
She tells me there's a Stormcloak courier in desperate need of rescue from the heavy burden of carrying strategic orders, so I continue ever eastward in search of that poor soul. Seeing Dawnstar at the base of the hills, I suppose it can't hurt to stop in and see how they've been getting on ever since I lured a dragon in and got everyone killed.
Well, things are looking pretty splen--
--wait a minute.
This is my chance for redemption, I realize. Having unwittingly brought in a dragon (again), I suppose I can kill it (again), and hopefully, this time, at minimal loss of life (rather not again).
Things aren't getting on so well, though. It's almost like the dragon knows what I'm up to and is determined to kill as many of Dawnstar's new residents (seriously, why are people and giant magical lizards attracted to the Pale in equal numbers?) before I can stop it.
Finally, though, after a local mage--whom I recognize; he must have escaped annihilation last time--manages to distract the thing long enough for me to get in a few well-placed shots.
It's a long ways from killing it, but the dragon's attention is focused on me long enough for me to lure it out of the town and into the plains out west, where I introduce it to some old friends of mine. Well, more like mutual enemies, but I'm hated by enough people that I've learned not to be picky.
From there, things get pretty crazy in short order. The dragon brings in some of his atronach friends from Oblivion; the giant answers with a mammoth.
For my part, I just stand in the back and poke away at the dragon with my arrows. And then a small group of bandits show up, turning the battle into four-way free-for-all.
Until one of the mammoths goes berserk and brings it back down to three.
The battle quickly turns against me. Once again, I find myself running into Dawnstar to use its population as a meatshield.
But then I realize one thing I have going for me that I didn't last time--the atronachs may be as dangerous to the Dawnstarians as the draugr the last dragon brought in, even more, but the dragon isn't the same. This one is too wounded to fly. As it happens, he can't even get into Dawnstar.
So I double back on some rocks and get the drop on him.
This one's for you, Dawnstar. Now don't squirm too much when the Legion comes calling.
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