It took less time to get down the mountain than it had taken to climb it – logically enough – though not as little as it had my first time which, as you’ll recall, involved me butt-skiing my way down a steep slope pursued by a variety of deadly creatures directly into a Stormcloak camp.

 

We reached Ivarstead just as the last of the sunlight filtered away behind the mountains and went back to the inn, where Lane was given her own room for free so she could do her day job (or, I guess, night job). I marveled at her energy – it took all I had to give Lazhah his handy (along with a conversation because, for some reason, he had begun to get chatty during our...I don't know what to call them. Sessions, I guess...and every time, he asked more about where I was from and my family and stuff. I didn't think he deserved (or would believe) the truth, so I made up a bunch of shit. I had quite a backstory built up before too long!) before going back to the room I shared with Kellan and collapsing into bed, asleep nearly as soon as my head hit the pillow.

 

The next day, we entered Shroud Hearth Barrow prepared for everything we could think of. I had seen plenty of draugr, of course, as well as those fucking animated skeletons that had shot at me on the road from Winterhold, so I had no reason to disbelieve in incorporeal spirits – clearly this fucked up land was a place where the undead were alive (or whatever) and well.

 

What I didn’t know was how to fight them. Would regular swords do anything or just pass through them? Would my Shouts have any effect?

 

My companions were, for once, just as clueless as I. They had all heard of ghosts and believed them to be real but had never encountered them. It was suggested they could only be killed by weapons made of pure silver, like werewolves (it would also not have surprised me to learn those existed here, along with vampires, goblins, ghouls, and who knows what else. It made me think that all the stories of such beings actually came from others who had been dragged here but managed to get back to Earth, a thought that gave me some modicum of hope). The only such weapon we could find in the dinky town was a paring knife that the owner, once she heard how desperate we were, tried to sell for an insanely exorbitant price.

 

So it with some trepidation and no silver that we descended a rickety-looking but surprisingly solid spiral staircase to the entrance of the barrow, which seemed a ridiculous design. Funerals are generally somber, stately, dignified affairs, and I could think of few things that would break such decorum more completely than trying to maneuver a seven-foot-long box down a three-level narrow circular staircase.

 

My first clue that all was not as it seemed was the bottom of the staircase itself which, upon closer inspection, had clearly been repaired in several places with lumber that, even to my untrained eyes, looked pretty fucking new.

 

The second clue was the ghost’s Dunmer (those are the so-called dark elves, like Rayya from Witnerhold; they all have dark-grey skin, startling pink or red eyes, and speak Common with accents very akin to posh British) voice that floated through the air from an uncertain source. It said, “Leeeeaaave this plaaaace."

 

I slapped by hand to my face, shook my head, and muttered, “Jinkies! You have got to be kidding,” engendering odd looks from my companions.

 

Kellan glanced from me to the walls around us. “What?”

 

I sighed as I lowered my hand and shook my head again. “This is bullshit, is what. There isn’t a ghost. It’s just some idiot pretending to be one. I bet there is some kind of treasure down here he is trying to find so he is trying to keep everyone else away.”

 

“What? How could you know that?”

 

“Because the so-called ghost bothered to tell us to leave. That always struck me as hilarious – as if a ghost wouldn’t just straight out attack or possess someone or start throwing shit around, like in Poltergeist. No, instead the ghost or monster or demon or whatever was always clearly just anxious for the gang to go away; they would wave their arms and make noises from a distance because closer examination would give away the ruse.”

 

Lane cleared her throat. “I thought you said you had no experience with ghosts.”

 

“I haven’t, personally. But I watched a lot of tv shows about them.”

“A lot of what?”

 

“They’re…like plays. Productions with actors telling a story. This particular one was a cheesy kid’s show with the same simple plot in each episode featuring the most ridiculous antagonists ever.”

 

“I…see.” Kellan continued to look around with a sense of unease, his sword at the ready. “Well, it sounded convincing enough to me. I suggest we do not let our guards down.”

“Would it help if I gave you a Scooby snack?" I waved a hand at their inevitable blank expressions. “Yes, keep our guards up - I’m sure he has all manner of regular traps set out. Which would be more proof he is not a ghost – why would a ghost need traps?”

 

But he hadn’t set any traps because Wyndelius Gatharian was a complete idiot, and how his stupid façade worked for as long as it did is just a testament to the equal idiocy of the people of Skyrim.

 

We found him soon after our discussion, a glowing figure behind a securely locked metal grate/door, literally waving his hands and making moaning sounds. I just shook my head and gave him a Force Push, then immediately wished I had gone with a different tactic when his body flew backward and slammed into the stone wall behind him with a heavy thud intermingled with a sound like a coconut being cracked open, which is exactly what happened to the back of the poor idiot’s head.

 

I winced as I hurried forward while calling out, “Oops! Sorry! I didn’t mean for that to happen!” He did not hear me, as much of the part of him that had controlled his hearing (and the other functions of his body) was now splattered on the wall.

 

Not incidentally, this was the moment when I realized I needed to learn to control the strength of my Shouts. After some experimentation over the course of the next few days, it turned out this was as simple as saying only part of the Words. For instance, saying only Fus, the first draconic word in Force Push, emitted only the first level version of it. Unfortunately for Wyndelius, I figured that out much too late.

 

I Ghosted (yes, I am aware of the irony of the name I gave that Shout in this context) my way into the room and pulled the lever to let the others in, then looked around at everything that was not the body of the man I had just accidentally murdered. The room held an assortment of papers that had been scattered by my Shout, but eventually we learned his plot, which was exactly as I had suspected – Wyndelius had concocted a potion to make himself glow so he could pretend to be a ghost to keep others away while he tried to figure out how to open a door further in the catacombs.

 

I don’t want to get bogged down with a bunch of unnecessary details, so suffice to say it turned out the innkeeper had the key (in the form of a dragon’s claw made of a gold-painted metal and sapphire claws) that Wyndelius had been looking for all along. The innkeeper gave it to us as the reward for solving The Case of the Haunted Barrow and we spent the rest of the day exploring the place.

 

Although each of the various tombs/barrows/caves/catacombs we ended up going through in our travels looked, felt, and definitely smelled different, the general particulars were the same, so instead of boring you with detailed play-by-play accounts of each one, I’m going to take this moment to tell you what the general experience was like.

 

First of all: not as dark as you might expect. Other than natural cave systems, which, when inhabited, were usually lit by sputtering torches crammed into cracks in the walls or, when not inhabited, were often filled with bioluminescent fungi, most of the places had ancient sconces imbued with some kind of eternal light magic that lit the passageways and rooms adequately enough to see the horrors that “lived” there. The Energizer bunny has nothing on whatever those used as a power source!

 

Speaking of those horrors, there seemed an endless variety – tall, short, thin…extra thin. Most were withered to darkened skin tightly squeezed over a skeleton, but some had something resembling muscle mass. A fair number could Shout, although their repertoire was limited to underpowered versions of Force Push and Freeze! (a scaled down version of the ice dragons’ breath weapon - and, yes, the ! is part of the name). As it was explained to me, the draugr were former priests (and their acolytes) who served and advocated for the dragons a few millennia ago when the dragons ruled the world. Also, they couldn’t be permanently killed – the reason there were still so many, even after thousands of years, was because they slowly regenerated over time. How fun is that?

 

There were, of course, other undead things, like skeletons and, it turned out, vampires, but also a great number of non-undead things, like giant spiders, giant rats, giant saber-toothed tigers, giant wolves, and, as mentioned previously, Falmer and their disgusting giant centipedes.

 

Oh, and people. There were plenty of people to be found, mostly bandits (and, occasionally, slaves they had captured and whom we, of course, released and escorted back to safety) but also occasional explorers or treasure-hunters. The former were, to a person, gregarious and fun to chat with and almost always gave us the fascinating stories behind whichever temple/crypt/whatever we happened to be in; the latter were always very on edge and nearly as ready to fight as the bandits, since they did not care for competition.

 

We moved through these places with care (and I developed strong thigh muscles from all the crouching), always on the lookout for traps, some cleverly hidden, some so obvious they made me worry they were decoy traps designed to lure us into the real trap. We picked off targets from a distance whenever possible, although that opportunity was rare in the twisting tunnels most of them were fashioned from.

 

I kept a cloth over my nose and mouth (even under the mask I haven’t yet got to, chronologically) while delving because of the thick and inevitable layer of dust that covered everything and tried to block out the occasional flashbacks of the mine from my previous time whenever some little thing would bring up an unexpected moment of déjà vu.

 

Most, but not all, of these places had a word wall. The one we found in Shroud Hearth was kaan drem ov, which means “Kyne’s Peace” in dragon but which I call “Good Boy!” because it calms hostile animals into (temporarily) tame ones. I have scritched the adorably soft ears of wolves, bears, and sabrecats, and even got to play Androcles for a mammoth. Envy me.

 

It also made hunting a lot easier, although I felt really bad about it. Except when I used it on goats. I despise goats.

 

 

Don't feed the bastards. Feed yourself instead.

 

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