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• An Interlude From the Puppetmaster: Post the Second May 8, 2012

  Right! So, to pick up where we left off...
  
  My remaining two characters are as follows:
  
  Urgir gra-Shargat: An Orsimer (Orc) woman (womer? merra? merress? lol) warrior and my only character running about in heavy armour. Urgir wields a two-handed battleaxe, and like many of my characters, makes good use of her bow. She was created to experiment with the heavy-armour two-hander barbarian type of character which I don't play. I play her with almost no magic whatsoever - in my headcanon she didn't know any spells starting out (sadly, I can't seem to remove Flames/Healing from her spellbook), and has since only picked up "Detect Life" and "Oakflesh". She's great fun to play, a fact which surprised me greatly, as she is different from my usual playstyle. As with Dreet, I didn't even go to Riverwood with her (head canon is that she happened upon Helgen shortly after the attack, heading towards the Rift Hold where she has since spent the vast majority of her time). I play her as a mercenary, hunting bandits, and at the rate she's going, she'll have all the bandit camps of the Rift cleared at least once each!
  
  Her name was originally Urgir ko-Shan. Like Dreet, who she was created at almost the same time as, I just made up a name that sounded vaguely like what I remembered. I was pleased with it until I learned that the prefix on the surname is only either gra- or gro-, and dependant on gender! I also changed the name of her mother (the Shan/Shargat after the gra-) to something that sounded a little more Orcish. Points to anyone who spots what name Shargat is based off of (and bonus points if you even have read this far, lol)! She is the only one whose first name hasn't changed any. Like Dreet and Skerra, she is somewhere around level 10.
  
  Mevec: A Dunmer woman, my newest character, who I only started on a whim, not even intending to keep her save. But then she grew on me and I decided to keep her. I use 'she/her/hers' because Mevec is made with a base female body, but xe xirself (xe/xir/xirs) is androgynous in gender identification. This was inspired by my delvings into Dunmer mythology and my discovery of the "Good" Daedra Mephala, who in the Imperial Library info is always spoken of using "she/he" and "his/hers", etc. Mevec has the least developed backstory of any of my characters thus far, including the fact that I don't know what xir birth name or family name is - xe renamed xirself after xir gods, Vivec and Mephala, to whom xe is devoted.
  
  I'm intending to play xir as a strongly mage character, especially using Conjuration - Kaelsa almost exclusively uses Destruction magic, but xe will have overtones of the spellsword type of character that I like best. Which is what Kaelsa is. Xe's only level 2 right now, and xe was originally called Valk. It was checking Dunmer names that finally pushed me to see if there was a way to rename characters - and there is! You need to be able to use console commands, but if you can (just hit the tilde key [that's the key with ~ on it]), type in showracemenu, hit enter, and go from there. Warpaint is removed automatically, as far as I can tell, and other painted features (Argonian facial markings, for one), and for goodness sake don't change the race - it messes up (weakens) the stats, even if you switch back. I nearly fluffed up Kaelsa by accident doing that.
  
  It shows the character creation menu just as it does when first creating a character and so you can name your character at the end. Very handy.
  
  And I said you'd get a spriggan story with Mevec, so here it is:
  
  As typical, I created Mevec just intending to go for a bit of a wander through a part of Skyrim I hadn't done a lot of exploring in - Falkreath Hold. I also wanted to try out a mage-base character. So. All was going well, Mevec was toddling happily along, and I spotted a ruined tower. It wasn't showing a map marker so I sauntered over to investigate, expecting maybe a bandit or two. As I got closer, I saw that it was really overgrown and lush, and I got excited - it looked really nice! And no bandits in sight!
  
  So, not thinking, I rushed forward, eager to explore this tower and literally ran into the emerging spriggan. This was the first time I had ever actually tangled with a spriggan - I had previously avoided one up the coast from Windhelm with Skerra, knowing they were supposed to be tough. Well, I figured that maybe a spriggan encountered at level 1 wouldn't be too bad. So I attacked. With flames. It did next to no damage (I play on Apprentice, btw, because I'm a newb and a wimp like that), and then the spriggan hit ME with a blast of something green that sent me staggering backwards. And knocked my health bar down by half. I attempted one more attack while healing, nearly got killed by the next hit, and promptly turned tail and ran. And ran. And ran. And sprinted. And made one more attempt at attacking when I slowed down to see if the spriggan was following. It was.
  
  I nearly died again. So I ran. And ran. And ran. Healing all the while, because we'd hit a road, and while that made running easier, it meant the spriggan had a clear shot of me. And then, lo! Behold! A settlement! Falkreath itself! I thundered past the guard, who made some comment like "Oh this'll be good!" and ran desperately through the streets of Falkreath until I collided with a goat.
  
  Whereupon I realized that I hadn't been hit by spriggan-magic in a good number of seconds AND that three Falkreath guards had run past me the other way. Healing myself up, I trotted back towards the gate... and got there as the guards were calmly heading back to their posts. They had, very handily, killed the spriggan for me.
  
  It was at that moment that I, as puppetmaster, realized with some amusement how great the whole scenario was as a character introduction. Scruffy Dunmer mage/spellsword dressed in dirty furs and a hood comes pelting into the town with an enraged spriggan hot on her tail. It was then that I decided that I just HAD to keep Mevec (then Valk) as a character. Conveniently, the guards killing the spriggan completed a miscellaneous quest I had picked up by lurching into the spriggan's home in the first place. Nice guards. I like you.
  
  - + - + - + -
  
  Now, I should close by perhaps explaining something about how I play. I picked this up around the time that I started Kaelsa's journal on here. Going completely hardcore is beyond my bounds/interest, but I AM very interested in immersion and realism. So, starting with Skerra (I nominally allow myself more freedom from the rules with Kaelsa, as she is both my main character and had been played under no special rules for around 12 levels), I enacted my "no fast travel via map" rule. I do use carts, however. At one point I also attempted to cut down on my carry limit, using the 1/3rd rule, but that's sort of slipped of late. However, it did break me of the habit of hoarding absolutely everything, like I did with Kaelsa.
  
  (This has all bled over into how I play Kaelsa, btw, I haven't used fast travel on her in quite a while - the fact that dragons like to appear after a fast travel helps inspire me to not do it, too, lol. And because I'm not fast travelling up to the College whenever I like, I'm hoarding less and selling more with Kaelsa.)
  
  I also play by the '8 hours of sleep a night' (roughly) rule, which helps pass time in a realistic manner and keeps immersion. After a long dungeon crawl when we emerge at 3 in the morning, the character will sleep for 10 hours, maybe, instead of 8. And I do a rough-and-ready 'eat 3 times a day' thing, as well. All because it makes things a bit more interesting, in a sort of background added-realism flavour type of way.
  
  I am thinking of installing a basic needs mod, and I'm almost certain I will, at some point, install a camping mod (though I wish one of the camping mods, I've found a bunch, allowed for the REALLY simple fur-and-sticks tent of hunters, etc!... or for using JUST a bedroll).
  
  Simple things, for someone who enjoys playing in a style similar to mine - loosely roleplaying, backstories for characters, realism/immersion - can really add to the game, I find. Not having completely Lore-friendly names wasn't a HUGE deal, but finding a way to change that made me very happy and makes it rather enjoyable to know that I have the character names *right*, as it were. I'm not big on using tons of console commands; I've played the Sims enough to know that I don't enjoy gamebreaking. But as with the Sims, there are some simple things that can make playing your character a bit more enjoyable. Like the addspell command. Mevec, who has backstory as being a mage with some training, now has more novice-level spells (+ an apprentice level spell in xir chosen Destruction track) than a standard character with no particular history of being a mage.
  
  So, that's what I have to say. If you read this, thank you for reading my rambling! And here's some tasty links, in case you haven't found them yourself!
  
  The Imperial Library - has information on the TES 'verse that they have collected 'from 1998 to today'. Really great.
  
  UESP Lore Page - the UESP or 'Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages' is a great wiki-type site, and the lore section is delicious. Go under 'Appendices' to find the information on names.
  
  UESP Console Commands - exactly what it sounds like, info console commands and using the console for PC users in Skyrim.
  
  PS. On the matter of goats... I was just in some redoubt or another in the Reach and went into the cave and they had, like, an obnoxious sentry goat. WTF. Forsworn! (Though to be fair I was also once attacked by a series of three wild animals, completely unprompted, one after another, that went fox (!!!!), wolf (not shocking), and a goat. The goat appeared as a red dot, I swear by the Divines!