So I'm working at Lakeview Manor and I run out of Iron. We've all been there, right? So no problem, just a short hike to Falkreath and get some more from Lod.

Only this time, I have the bright idea of going over the top of the mountain and looking for ore outcroppings along the way.  So I do that, do a little mining kill a couple of wolves and before you know it, I'm standing outside Shriekwind Bastion with dead draugr at my feet. OK, fair enough. I've adopted a policy of clearing places I stumble across as I find them to keep the game a bit fresh. So I park the slavegirls outside (three in the entourage at the moment) and go on in.

The trouble with going into Shriekwind from the upper entrance is that you end up in the middle. It's one of the few Skyrim dungeons that isn't purely linear. Which is nice. So I decide to go down, clear a few skeletons and thralls and skeevers and eventually get to the lower entrance with this female vampire guarding the way. And shortly after that she finds herself stripped naked, branded, collared and lit up like a Christmas tree, both literally and figuratively as I decide to use The Body Electric to give her one hundred electroshock orgasms. It's a fairly laid back way to break in a new slave, (although I doubt the slave sees it that way) but when you get to the end your slave is pretty much broken all the way. As it turns out, I only get to ninety-eight.

I close my eyes for a moment and when I look again, I'm being attacked. Another vampire? No, it's Nandi, The Steady Tide, one of the Sinister Seven. Basically The Sinister Seven is a mod that has you hunted by seven tough enemies intent on revenge for something that happened before the game began. The exact nature of the transgression is left to the player to RP. Me, I figure it's got to be woman trouble back in Cyrodiil. None of which helps with the immediate problem, of course, which is that my character is balls deep in a brand new slavegirl while this crazy, masked bint is trying to kick his ass and doing a pretty good job of it.

First rule when fighting one of the Seven is this: Do not try and slug it out with these bozos. You learn that pretty quickly. So I disengage (in more ways than one) and try and make some space.  Problem there is that we were fucking in the doorway, to the storage area by the lower entrance, and now Nandi is blocking the door. So I backpedal into the room, draw her in after me, and then dodge past her with my Amazing Body Swerve and run off into the depths of Shriekwind Bastion shouting "Help! Help! Scary lady trying to kill me!"

The plan at this point, (in so far as I have one), is to put some distance between us, and then to transform and sort her out in Vampire Lord form. The trouble is that the bitch has some sort of Slow effect on her attacks and even sprinting, I'm barely keeping ahead of her. Eventually I end up in the big chamber with the terraced stairs up the side. I run up those and then right off the end and start to parkour my way down the wall. Halfway down I start the transformation. Now we'll see who's scary!

Unsurprisingly, the scary one turns out to be me, and shortly afterwards I have a second new slave kneeling next to the vampire girl. I haven't got the patience at this point for another 100-O electroshock session so, just for shits and giggles, use the Lord form's raise dead spell to reanimate a dead female raider on the stone squisher device, then beat the zombie up and enslave it which brings the bandit all the way back to life. Now I have three slaves and I can split the training between the two new ones, just for some variety.

Once everyone shows green on the Detect Submission spell I go back and clear the upper levels.  Nothing there apart from a master vampire and a restless draugr guarding the wordwall. I gather up the slaves, new and old, and exit via the lower exit.

Of course, the lower exit is on the north side of the mountains. From Shriekwind Overlook I could have jumped off the platform and (in Lord form) flided down into the center of Falkreath. And then I'd have had to murder half the population when they immediately aggo'd the hideous bat-monster-thing that just came out of the vampire ruins ... which is why I didn't do that. Instead I now find myself miles away from Falkreath and the Iron Ingots I originally set out to buy. Of course, I could just go back into the Bastion, up to the south exit and be back on Falkreath's doorstep, but where's the fun in that, right? And anyway, the Lady Stone is just short hike and swim away and I could do with the map marker.

I've got plenty of time to get to Faklkreath and after all, I'm just going to visit a Standing Stone. What could possibly go wrong?

To be continued...