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Argh!

It’s too hard to stop playing!

You want to do A, but to do that you need to do B, but on the way you get distracted by C, which leads to D, so then you go back and do B, but after that you find yourself doing E instead of A and then…

Another gate closed, using the “sneak, sneak… leg it!” approach.

Did a quest where I had to kill some spies. Got told they turned up at a certain spot, so I lay in wait, saw one of them, let fly with an explosive arrow, one dead spy. She was the only one there and I got a nice message saying she was dead and I should go to talk someone about the rest of the spies. Riding my horse back to town I got a message saying another spy had died. Must have caught by a guard or a lion or something. Radiant AI doing me a favour, I guess. Odd. Also turned out he was the last spy, despite only being the second one, so the quest turned out to be a bit easy. Not that I’m complaining. There are enough hard fights in the game, I don’t mind things going my way now and again.

I wasn’t going to play tonight, but I couldn’t resist a quick hour.

Read the gravestones of some of my victims, closed an Oblivion gate I came across (sneak, sneak, sneak, RUN LIKE FUCK, job done), fed on blood for the first time. Smooth.

I’m going to try and remember everything that happened this evening. So there WILL BE SPOILERS. Nothing major and I’ll fudge around anything that would be major, but there will be minor spoilers. So be warned. I’ll say it again, in bold caps -

HERE BE (FAIRLY MINOR BY MY RECKONING) SPOILERS

I don’t think any of this will be in any order, just random memories from this evening.

I had to go and fetch a book from the count in Skingrad. But I was betrayed by someone working for him and I had to kill some people, with some Legion help. Then the count wandered up and acted like he’d saved me. Bloody aristocrats. He’s also a vampire, as it happens. And so might I be soon. I’ve contracted the disease. A quick drink of a cure disease potion would sort it out, but I might quite like to be a vampire. It seems to annoy most people, though, so maybe it’s a bad idea. I’ve got a while yet to decide.

See, I caught the disease fighting vampires. I found a book in the Arcane University that talked about a shrine up in the mountains to someone called Azura. Said I needed to go there and offer her some glow dust. So I popped into the alchemy shop in the Market District, bought some glow dust and wandered over there. Big statue at the shrine speaking with the voice of Azura said I should go kill five vampires in a mine to put their souls to rest. So I did. Mostly stealth kills, but one of them fought me properly and infected me. Anyway, I went back to the statue after dispatching them and she gave me something called Azura’s Star. Seems to be a soul gem of some sort. It’s not big enough to contain human souls though, as I thought it might be. I was really hoping that was the point.

Now I’ve got another murder on my conscience for no gain. I waited outside my house in Anvil until four in the morning and then broke into the house opposite. Found a guy and his wife in bed. Killed the wife, but was informed I didn’t have a soul gem big enough for her soul. Then I got arrested. No point resisting arrest as I only had to pay an 80G fine. That was the fine for attacking the guy and his wife, but there was obviously no fine for killing her. Maybe her husband landed the final blow in the confusion, or something. Anyway, after being arrested and processed and set free I went and stole my confiscated stolen goods back again from the evidence chest, as I always do. A minor annoyance, that.

Anyway, then I went back to the Imperial City to go and shove some Endurance-enhancing magic on a shield I’d nicked off one of the vamps I’d dusted. Sorry, vampires I’d killed. Came over all Buffy. (Not literally, that would be… um… moving on…) Corpses of two guards were still lying in the middle of the university. They’d been killed by irate mages a day or two earlier, game time. An hour or so earlier, real time. See, I’d forgotten to take my special disguise off before travelling to the university. So the Legion guards saw me and, well, that identity of mine has a bit of a reputation, so they attacked me. So I ran, right into the university, taking off my disguise and changing into my normal clothes on the way. So the mages just saw the Legion attacking a fellow mage. Police brutality! The mages attacked the Legion, summoning scamps and skeletons, shooting off fireballs and, in many cases, just laying in to them with their fists. Poor Legion blokes didn’t stand a chance.

I probably should have felt guilty.

(Also, and I’m not sure why, but a lot of the apprentice mages lost their tops during the fight and so were wandering around aftwerwards topless.)

Anyway, I’m slightly lost for stuff to do now. I was doing Mages Guild quests, as I said, but the one I’m on now involves firing spells at a pillar. Unfotunately, I don’t have one of the necessary spells and I seem to need a Restoration skill of 50 to use it. Or I could get a scroll, but I don’t know where from. So I’ll probably just have to play other stuff for a while until I raise my skill up another 13 points. I suppose I could go and get some training, if I can afford it.

I could go and look for Ayelid (Ayleid?) (Ayelied?) statues. I met a bloke earlier who asked me to do that. On about my first day of playing I found one and sold it in a shop. A while later a man approached me and told me that he’d heard I’d sold a statue and that his employer would be interested in meeting me. It’s taken me until now to get round to going. And our meeting ended on bad terms when I picked up an apple while fumbling for the “stand up” button on the controller. Taking an apple is stealing and I was arrested. A whole 1G fine that time. And, again, a quick trip to recover my stolen goods from the evidence chest.

I could go and try to close some Oblivion gates, I guess. A lot of them are sprining up around the place and they get in the way. Some big blue bastard even knocked my horse unconscious today. He also killed one of the worshippers at Azura’s Shrine. A bit of a rampage. I killed him in the end. Unlike that ogre a little later. I was killing him, but slowly. My horse obviously got bored and ran up to the ogre and planted two feet right into its back. It was a big impact and the poor ogre went straight down, face first. Excellent, that was. I mean, my horse always tries to attack enemies, but normally doesn’t manage too well.

What else happened this evening?

Well, I found an estate. It was a big house with a hut for servants quarters. But there were no servants. And the orcs living in the big house weren’t happy to see me. I’d have killed them – this was just after I got Azura’s Star and wanted to test it out – but they both had the crown of invincibility over them, so they must be important for a quest. Maybe I’ll see them later.

Much earlier than that I’d finally found someone who wants Shadowbanish wine. Or whatever it’s called. But they want six bottles and I’ve only got two.

A little up the road from her I found a ruined fort. Snuck in and was an unseen shadow in the dark… until I tried to pickpocket someone. Then all hell broke loose. I ran. Right up to the entrance I’d come in by. But I didn’t leave. I waited for someone to find me. But nobody did. So I snuck back in and killed the first person I came across. Then I saw someone else who, weirdly, was on low health. So they died easily. I tiptoed further into the fort and found everyone else dead. Corpses on the stairs, in the passeways, two even floating in a pool. Obviously at least one person had become confused and attacked one of their friends instead of me as ran. Which must have led to everybody getting involved. Lots of fighting, lots of death. All my fault and awfully helpful. I looted all I ndeeded and left.

Which reminds me of something that happened back in Anvil, where I got the Legion and random townspeople to do my dirsty work again. I broke into a pirate ship. The captain saw me, attacked, I ran. People saw him attacking me, laid into him, killed him. Repeat this for all the pirates on the ship. (Including one who I caught slaughtering sheep in the hold. It was weird. I climbed down through a trapdoor and there he was, killing sheep.) Well, all the pirates except one. One of them fell into the sea and so the townspeople couldn’t get to him to kill him. So I jumped in and finished him off. Climbing out of the sea a guard who’d been watching tried to arrest me. I guess the pirate must have surrended or something. I didn’t think he’d put up much of a fight. That was the full 1000G fine, so I resisted arrest and ran. Travelled all the way to the Imperial City waterfront, found a Thieves Guild Doyen and paid 500G to make the arrest warrant go away.

Apart from the usual picking up of ingredients for potions that was about it this evening. Well, apart from breaking into some houses to steal jewellery. I’d forgotten about that. Pick the locks, straight up to the bedrooms, rings and amulets and gold taken, maybe a bit of food now and again. In and out unseen. It’s the best way.

So, that was about three or four hours of play, I think. That’s Oblivion.