A New Story Begins:
It's been a while since I've done a story playthrough of a game. Mostly because my attention span has been awful lately and I just can't focus long enough to do anything of consequence... but! @thegoliath's Fallout 4 series has inspired me to do at least something similar. 😅
Skyrim is always a good choice. Especially once you've modded it to hell and back! xD
And thus we introduce Iselia Arisse. Breton. Casual adventurer. Casual sell-swording spell-sword. Wishes she had never stepped foot into Skyrim.
At the mercy of a Divine statue, she fell asleep in what she thought was a warm bed... yet was rudely awoken by a crash! And a thrash! Then freezing water rushed over her!
That's right. She'd been on a boat -- a ship to be exact. Bound for Solitude, capital City of Skyrim. It had been a whim! A flight of fancy! She wanted to go to the city of nobles and fleece them of all their gold. They couldn't have their inevitable machinations and treachery performed by their own perfect hands, of course. That's what women like her were for. Sell-swords. Mercenaries. In it for the coin.
Gasping for breath, she had only seconds to wave her hands and summon some restoration magic about herself, healing herself of the frostbite rapidly settling in.
Stumbling about the wreck, she found corpses here and there of her fellow crewmates. They didn't need their stuff anymore. She grabbed it all.
Dressed in the warmest clothes she could find — a random Redguard's arabian robes. Not really warm. They, after all, dressed for hot deserts and not frigid wastes — she faced the outside world and discovered just how screwed she was.
Icebergs. Snow. A bone-chilling breeze. A freezing ocean between her sinking ship and land. She was likely to die before reaching the shore.
She took a deep breath and braced herself for the ocean's chill.
She swam through freezing water. Clambered atop large chunks of floating ice to relieve herself from the water for a time. Then dove back down to swim just a little bit further.
She was frozen to the bone. Nearly frozen solid. Slaughterfish tried to nip at her icy heels.
Somehow she made it to land. And by some miracle there was an argonian! With a fire! It was just what she needed. FIRE. FOOD. WARM SLEEPING ROLL.
The argonian didn't take kindly to her taking his food without asking, nevermind she had just crawled from the icy ocean, scarcely breathing and starving.
She had no choice but to defend herself. She didn't much care that she had to, but either way; she had no choice. She then took a bunch of jewels littered around the place and a nice statue of Dibella. If she survived this frigid hell-hole, at least she'd get some gold out of it.
There was a map nearby. Having a quick look over it, she discovered that she quite literally was in the middle of no where.
The nearest township was Dawnstar, and she'd have to do some more swimming to get to the mainland, but by the looks of it - significantly less swimming than she had just undertaken.
After an uneventful but chilly journey, Iselia soon made it to Dawnstar!
She hurried as fast as she could to the local inn, ignored all the people talking about strange nightmares, devoured a great load of hot food then went to bed.
After what felt like the best sleep of her life, she waltzed out of the warm inn and embraced the breeze stinging her face.
A sudden thought came over her and she reached into her pack, then pulled out a strange book that she was certain had not been there before. It detailed all sorts of things! It had information in its page on survival, on gathering resources, on using her fiery magic for survival and not just in combat... on making tents and campfires!
It was an in-depth guide on how to survive the harsh Skyrim environment. One of the Divines must be watching over her.
Apparently though, they weren't watching over her as she hunted for an axe with which to chop wood. She'd have to find one on her travels and suffer in the meantime.
Deciding that it would be best if she left these snowy wastes as fast as possible, she perused a map and noted the way to Solitude. That's where she was originally headed before the ship found itself wrecked, and that's where she would go now!
Wolves tried to stop her. Spiders tried to stop her. More freakin' wolves tried to stop her.
This journey was exhausting!
Finally, smoke rose in the distance.
Her toes were numb, her fingers immovable, her head thumped, and her cheeks felt like they were going to shatter if the breeze blew any harder. Somehow she managed to creep through the snow and arrive at a campsite.
There was no one around. She hoped there were no bandits. She would've be able to defend herself in this state! But soon some miners came out of the nearby cave and welcomed her to stay around the fire. Thank the Divines.
Collapsing into a nearby sleeping roll, the warm flames dethawing her toes, she fell asleep, bracing herself to power through the last of her trek tomorrow when she would hopefully arrive alive and well in Solitude.
Until next time! 😊⚔️❄️