CHAPTER 31: VAMPIRES AND DEATH HOUNDS AND GARGOYLES, OH MY!
In which our hero gets back into the swing of things.
Previous: Chapter 30, A Prophetable Venture (skipped Diary of a Water Purifier episodes 1-4)

Whew! That trip to Whiterun sure took a long damn time.

Anyway, I've decided that I've been spending too much time traveling from shop to shop, selling stuff off. I'm sitting on a pile of gold larger than... larger than... larger than something very large, and I can buy almost anything that I want, like... like... like anything interesting I might want to buy. Sorry, my imagination seems to be broken right now, please call again later. My point is, too many trips to the shops. I've dumped enough cheap weapons and bloodied armor pulled off the still-warm corpses of bandits and vampires into the local economy to sink a battleship, and enough is enough. I grab all the rest of my stashed stuff, excluding the few bits of pretty I want to keep forever, and sell them all off right now for the low-low price of zero gold, to the local food vendor. Poor Carlotta staggers off home under a load of loot, beaming a great big smile at her good fortune, only to inevitably find out that it's all priceless (in the sense of being utterly without value) because of the aforementioned market flooding. I feel sort of bad for her, now she has to rent a large storage locker to hold several tons of animal hides and scrap iron she can't possibly hope to sell to anyone else, but I don't feel bad enough to actually do anything about it. I'm off.

But off to where, exactly? What the hell was I doing, anyway? Lemme take a look at my previous journal entry... hmm, hmm, yes, yes... aha. Serana, Dawnguard, Dexion, Elder Scroll, yadda yadda yadda. Right, I'm off to Fort Dawnguard.

Back at the fort, safely tucked away behind the impenetrable wooden picket fence, Dexion and Isran are waiting for me, just like everyone else in the entire world always waits for me, because I'm the protagonist of this story a very important figure in their lives. Dexion complains about the hospitality - which is understandable, there aren't even any decent beds here, just cots - and tells me that my man Isran has "seen to his needs" which is an unfortunate turn of phrase. I want to make some comment about religious sex scandals, but I resist the urge, and instead just tell him that Isran isn't my man, Stenvar is my man. And he sees to my needs well enough.

Anyway, Dexion whips out the scroll and starts reading. Turns out, darkness will mingle with light, which is another unfortunate turn of phrase, and the night and day will be as one, which is yet another yadda yadda yadda. So I need to find Auriel's Bow. Cool. Too bad I don't actually use bows much. If it was Auriel's Greataxe, that would be a different story.

Apparently, though, the all-powerful repository of great knowledge that details the intricacies of an ancient prophecy is... incomplete. This particular scroll is only the first part of a series. Sorry, Dragonborn, your prophecy is in another scroll. I need a scroll about dragons, and a scroll about blood to complete the trilogy. And guess what? He doesn't have the other two scrolls. Because that would be too damn easy.

Dude, your entire organization is dedicated to finding and protecting these bits of paper, and you tell me that now there's not one, or even two, but THREE of the fuckers hanging around Skyrim? You've been scouring the world for the last two hundred years, since the scrolls disappeared mysteriously, and you're still missing three of the world-altering maguffins?

Now I don't mean to tell you your business, but maybe you should consider instructing your initiates NOT to read the scrolls they have and go blind. Blindness seems to be interfering with your new-scroll-detection powers. Weird how that works, huh? Like, you need to be able to see in order to look for things. Amazing how the world works sometimes.

Actually, it might not be their fault... it could be the same nefarious band of tricksters that stole the Jewels of Barenziah's Crown and scattered them around Skyrim like some demented Easter Bunny gone mad.

Anyway, we (Serana and I) need the other two scrolls before we can continue. Serana thinks that one of them is in the hands of her mother, who is probably hidden away somewhere. And since the designers didn't want to add in too many new worldspaces for such a small DLC her mother is a crafty one, she hid herself in the last place that Harkon would look - in his own castle. Now I don't know about anyone else, but when I lose something, like my keys or money pouch or something, the first place I look is at home. I scour the whole damn house if necessary. But no, apparently Harkon just derps around, not looking in the most obvious spot in the entire damn world.

Since we can't actually talk to Harkon about this, because little-miss-daddy-issues doesn't like him (which, I am forced to admit, is completely understandable), we must sneak around through the side entrance to the castle. Because of course there's an unguarded side entrance. If Harkon can't be bothered to look in his backyard for his missing wife and a powerful artifact of ancient knowledge that contains the keys to ruling the world, why should he bother to guard the goddamn side door? Shaking my head in combined wonderment and bafflement, I gesture onward to Serana and we head on out the door.

NEXT: Chasing Reflected Soundwaves
Start at Chapter 1