Fredas, 3rd of Heartsfire, 4E 201

I’m so glad I didn’t have a hangover this morning.

Then again, Horgeir was buying cheap ale and mead, so I wasn’t expecting one, but looking at the empty bottles would’ve fooled me!

We woke up early, had breakfast, and made our way over to Olda’s. She was coming out just as we walked up, and was glad for the bottle of Dragon’s Breath mead. She rewarded us with some gold for the trouble, and we hustled over the bridge out of town.

Neither of us wanted to be around when she confronted him about it.

We followed the road, and at the second or third fork we came upon a mostly-empty cart with a dead horse still harnessed to it and the body of a Redguard woman beside it. She had a journal on her, where she wrote about how she was determined to accompany her merchant husband, despite the terrible dangers on the road. Not just bandits, war or dragons, but something else.

There was no sign of her husband anywhere nearby, but there were some arrows around her body unlike any I’d ever seen. They looked - Unreal. Like something from a nightmare. It was as if someone had made arrows without ever having seen one before. I showed them to Lydia and she didn’t know, either. She agreed with me that they looked “off” somehow, and commented that they couldn’t be capable of much damage. That made sense, given their strange shape.

Still, I took them, if only to sell them. Maybe someone would be able to tell me who’d made them.

Luckily, the way to Whiterun was not in the direction of the cart, so we left the area and kept on going.

We were passing a partially-ruined fort when I looked at the map and noticed that Morthal wasn’t that far off. As we were talking about stopping there for some food, some necromancers and a bunch of skeletons burst out of the fort and attacked us!

They were surprisingly difficult to take care of. As soon as Lydia cut one down, they would be raised by one of their comrades to fight us again!

But not if I raised them first! HAH! They weren’t expecting that.

It was exhausting, but by the end of it I had wrested control of at least five of them. Lydia, for once, seemed grateful for the magic zombie assistance. She hates fighting casters.

Once we had the courtyard of the fort cleared, I saw that we could either go through the main keep, or try clearing out the prison.

We decided on the prison, and while it could have gone better (I drank a lot of healing potions) I was able to raise the prisoners they had killed to fight for us! There wasn’t much loot, but there were some alchemical things to be gathered, so that was good.

Once we were through with that, we snuck into the main keep through a side door. I didn’t want to just bust in through the main entrance – Who knew how many people were in there?

Turns out, that was a good decision on my part. There were a bunch of small interior rooms and hallways, so we never had to fight more than three people at once. Usually there was only a necromancer and maybe a skeleton guardian. The great hall, where the main entrance led to, had four people in it, -and- some dead bandits they turned to zombies. That was a bit of a fight, but I had wisely gathered a little army of my own to fight with us.

We soon found a room with a difficult lock. After a few tries, I managed to get it open, and there we found the Head Necromancer. I had raised a zombie in case anything or anyone too dangerous had been behind the door, and I’m glad I did! Lydia and the zombie ran in to fight, and managed to keep her from raising the skeletons on the altar in front of her. I joined in with Sparks, and she was soon reduced to flailing at us with a dagger.

She wasn’t much trouble after that.

Once she was dealt with, we went though the main keep to see what we could loot. While we were looking, I found a letter on a table addressed to “M’Lady” that explained how they had cleared Fort Snowhawk (this place, I assume) of bandits and how good its location was for gathering “test subjects” for… Whatever it is they were up to here.

I want no part of the “experiments” they were doing, and I don’t want to know who this “M’Lady” is.

It’s getting late, so we’re spending the night, but I’m going to use the enchanting table and the alchemy station we found. I don’t have any soul gems to try enchanting anything of my own, but I grabbed an armload of enchanted robes that I can check out to see if I can learn the spells off of them. I’m going to make as many potions as I can before bed, too. We’re nearly out of Health potions, and my magicka potions are totally spent!

There’s a cooking stand outside, and I went out there to make us some supper when I heard barking. I poked my head out of the main gate and saw him on the road! He came right up to me, and now he’s curled up at the foot of the bed I’m using for the night.

I hope he sticks around this time.