Five Game Challenge Day 10: Ain’t no Mountain High Enough
Or at least, that is certainly the belief. I haven’t tried the ascent yet. Maybe the title should be, “He’ll be comin’ around the mountain” instead. Because that I did do.
I took a different route from normal too. Usually I would strike out east from Whiterun and come around the Northern edge of the range. The range rather pompously (in my opinion) known as the ‘Throne of the World’ if the cloth map is to be believed.
This time, led on a bit of a detour to recover Nettlebane, I headed South past Helgen. Good times, Helgen. Head (literally) on the block one moment, dragon attack sowing chaos and new friendships the next.
The Hagraven who possessed the blade was terrifying though. I’m unsure whether this is her natural vanilla game power or something I unleashed on the world of Skyrim with the magic mods I added — but she was casting around real D&D style fireballs.
Guerilla tactics were order of the day for the Hagraven. That — and plenty of running away emitting high pitched panicy noises with arms-a-flailing. But for all that… Definitely first try. *cough*
Anywho, questions of number of reloads required aside, it was soon time to move on. Ivarstead is the town that sits at the foot of the mountain on the Eastern side, and also where the grand ‘7,000 steps’ up to see the Greybeards perched right up there safely protected from all but the most dedicated of door-to-door salespeople.
On my way there, I passed those Eagle(?) Guardian(?) statues and a number of caves. One of them had a spattering of blood outside and simply screamed out to be left alone.
The other was a bit more nondescript with a simple Bandit encounter outside. Since I have mods in play that add travelers to the roads during the day I did my civic duty and made the world a little safer. (Hmm. Maybe that’s all that happened at the first cave too? I mean… Guards do roam around as well.)
Either way, it wasn’t too much longer before I had made my way around and approached the town of Ivarstead from the South.
The flow of town and location of the steps makes me wonder if this is actually intended way to approach.
Crossing the first bridge into the village soon leads to another, on which I overheard a conversation between locals. The man who had been providing food and supplies to the Greybeards above was in no condition to make the journey.
Since I was going there anyway, and since I like people liking me — I offered to take the current load of supplies myself.
Looking out across the bridge, I can see the first twenty or so of the 7,000 steps. It’s time to go learn more about my destiny and power as the Dovahkiin.
