Hour 15: Madness is Catching

I complete the spying quest for Glathir, choosing not to indulge what appear to be paranoid delusions. All of the people he asks me to spy on appear to be innocent, so I tell him so. He flies into a rage and attacks me. I summon a Scamp and begin striking back, and a guard must have heard the commotion because one comes running round to the back of the Catherdral where we met. To my horror, the Scamp attacks the guard! Suddenly three more guards appear. This is quickly becoming a nightmare. I kill Glathir and turn round to face the guards... only to see that my Scamp is dead and the guards are actually attacking each other! I don't think I've seen this before, even in Skyrim. A stray arrow or blow must have turned them into enemies.

I let the guards duke it out and in the end there are three guard corpses slumped behind the Cathedral - and I'm off scott free. I seize the opportunity and strip all of the guards bare of their weapons and armour, which I cart off to the nearest shop (this takes several trips). The shopkeeper thinks nothing of buying all this undoubtedly blood-stained official guard equipment from me. I then return to Glathir, steal his house key, and have a good rummage around in his home. I find 800 gold in a basket! His scrawled notes documenting the quest are also an entertaining read.

A dead guard lies face down in the rain on the mean streets of Skingrad? This one escaped the fray and must have been struck down afterwards.

The whole Glathir quest, while very simple, was interesting as he had a lot of funny dialogue ("I was sure he was part of the conspiracy! I guess it just goes to show... well... we'll see what it goes to show, won't we!", for example) and I also got to wander around Skingrad following his marks. One of the marks lead me up to Skingrad Castle, giving me this great view over the town and cathedral:

After the quest, I return to the Castle to have a nose around and see if I can find anything out about this reclusive Count. The Castle is huge but empty, and once I pick the locks on a couple of doors I am able to make it all the way to the Count's very chamber. However, he is not pleased to see me, and I have to leave before he calls the guards. I manage to get a few lines of dialogue from him, and he has visible fangs and yellow eyes - he is, as I suspected, quite clearly a vampire. I'm sure this won't be the last I see of him, but I don't know what quest/s he's involved in, and I want to continue getting Recommendations, so I leave Skingrd for the next town along the road - Bravil.