Zu'u Meyz Mey

- because I couldn't find the Draconic translation of "d'oh!"

 

After a few years' on-again, off-again casual visits, I've been trying to polish off my playthrough of Skyrim, a game I've loved to hate in the past. On one hand, I love just wandering around those beautifully immersive landscapes which have elevated The Elder Scrolls to escapist paragons. On the other hand, I'm outright insulted by the console-tailored interface, simplistic skill system and "action" focus and especially the endless quest markers ordering me to and fro instead of letting me schedule my own looting campaigns a la Mount&Blade. What do you get after five years of randomly exploring, crafting and homesteading and little interest in following the idiot-friendly quest chains?

level 175

1.5 million gold pieces

several thousand potions

enough dragon scales to pave a highway

a basement full of skulls, bloody rags, torture / embalming tools and writing implements

... but I've only now witnessed a dragon being resurrected and the civil war... must be doing fine without me, I guess??

 

No more! -quoth the duvet-kink.

I shall finish this game to my satisfaction once and for all, starting with guild storylines, then all this vampire and dragon cultist nonsense, then finally the oversized cliff racers and crushing the rebel scum in the name of nonhuman supremacy. Of course, after all this time, I don't actually remember where anything is. My quest log informs me two of my outstanding tasks had been plucking some weeds in the gigantic cavern of Blackreach, and finding one of the the titular Elder Scrolls. After a couple of weeks of wandering about on other errands, unable to locate the scroll's quest location and having forgotten where all the unicorn-fart-powered elevators to the cavern were located, I consulted the cheat-sheet.

Aha!

The scroll can be found in a "Tower of Mzark" which also functions as one of Blackreach's elevators. Time to kill two birds with one stone, thinks I, clearing my inventory of ingredients and reloading it with enchanted crafts for sale, strapping on my finest equipment and pumping myself up for another lengthy thrust into Tamriel's nether regions.

Then I looked up Mzark's location.

Then I looked out the window of my house, Heljarchen Hall.

Ooohh, you meant THAT tower of mzark...

 

I've been back here a hundred times over the past years. Ever get the impression that virtual worlds serve only to provide new and exciting ways to ask ourselves: "crap, where did I leave my keys?"