Hour 35: Starbearer

I track one of the vampire hunters down to the fields outside Skingrad, and burn him to a crisp. Before he dies, he tells me I should take up my grievance with their leader, Eridur. Under the veil of darkness I travel to the inn where Eridor slumbers, and break into his room. However, rather than killing him straight away, I engage him in conversation, and by mentioning the fact that I've already killed the vampires at Bloodcrust Cavern (I show him the vampire dust I've collected as proof), he agrees to leave and take his band of merry men with him (minus the unfortunate fool whom I have incinerated, but Eridur doesn't know that, and if you don't tell him neither will I). What a nice little extra, having the option to persuade them to leave, rather than being forced to fight them.

I report back to the Count who agrees to reveal his information now that I've helped him. A powerful Necromancer called 'Mannimarco' (not a very dread-inducing name...) has returned, and is trying to take over Cyrodiil. I rush back to Traven and inform him. He must consult with the Council (bloody red tape...) so in the meantime I must occupy myself.

I feel it's high time that I acquire Azura's Star, as it will allow me to gather limitless souls to recharge my staves, which otherwise would cost me a lot of gold. I travel to Azura's shrine:

She requires me to clear out a cave of... vampires... before she will gift me with the star. Vampires seem to be coming up an awful lot, and I'm getting rather sick of them, not least because they're usually quite powerful. As it happens, there are only five vampires in the cave, but for the first time in a long time, I die (twice!) to them, having to reload from the start of the cave both times. Eventually I just start saving the game every time I kill one. I use fire against them, as I know they're weak to it, and it doesn't take that many fireballs to bring them down, but they're fast, and one of them, for example, Silences me (meaning I can't cast any magic) and then rushes at me and chops me down in about three hits. 

Eventually through careful use of my Flame Atronach, and focusing down the vampires ones at a time, I get the better of them. They drop some good loot (some expensive armour, and a glass war-hammer worth 1600 gold (although I won't get that much for it). Altogether there's too much for me to carry, though. Looks like I need to create a Feather spell for situations such as this. What's more, due to all the battling I've done over the last couple of hours, I've advanced to level 12, and am also an Expert in Destruction magic. Time to improve my arsenal of spells, it seems...

Hour 34: More Bloodsuckers

After returning to the Arcane University, I am instructed to speak to the Archmage himself, Hannibal Traven. It appears they forgot to edit his 'rumours' speech, for when I ask him about rumours, he gives me a similar speech to the rest of the Mages, and so references himself in the third person:

It's possible to view this as an eccentricity of his speech, but I think it's far more likely to just be an oversight.
He asks me to find a mage who infiltrated the Necromancer cult and is now believed to be in peril. I head to an Ayelid ruin to find him. So far, despite the limited number of types and designs of cave, I haven't really minded the caves/ruins much. There's certainly too much focus on delving underground into caves, as most missions seem to require this, but on the whole, I think I actually prefer these caves to Skyrim's. Sure, Skyrim's are better designed, mostly all unique, and graphically far superior, but a lot of them were a bit too long. The one thing they did better, though, was including a shortcut at the end of the cave so you can get out quickly. Oblivion offers few of those and you must usually, therefore, traipse back through the cave (stepping over the mutilated bodies of your enemies) to get out.

Whilst on my way to the ruin, a wild Flame Atronach attacks me in the woods. I summon mine to engage it, then continue onwards, thinking that even if mine does (can they even hurt each other though?) by that time I'll be so far away that I will have escaped. Surprisingly, once I'm inside the ruin the Atronach enters a short time after too - it must have followed me for quite a way. After I kill it I realise I haven't seen a dead one before, since mine disappears when it dies. Their bodies still glow even after death:

The ruin is fairly easily navigated and I eventually find the Mage, who has now been turned into a zombie. He looks exactly like every other zombie so it's anyone's guess as to how I know it's him, but the game tells me it is, so there you are.

I report my finding to Traven, who is most upset. He advises me that the Count of Skingrad (my secret vampire friend, unbeknownst to the guild) has more information about the necromancers. I go to see him, but he won't tell me anything until I've destroyed a nearby cave of vampires (they're attracting vampire hunters, which could compromise his identity) and slain the vampire hunters as well.

It's a hard slog to clear the vampire cave (Bloodcrust Cavern. Eww.), as these vampires just love to heal themselves up all the time, and are also adept at dodging my fireballs, meaning I often have to wade in closer to use my Cold Touch spell, exposing myself to their brutal close combat attacks. Plus, they summon a lot, and at times I have to fight two or three vampires as well as two summons (usually ghosts or skeletons). I manage to slay them all eventually without dying, though. Next to feel my wrath will be the vampire hunters...

Hour 33: The Dark Fissure

The Mages at the University now trust me more and decide it's time I helped them investigate the insidious Necromancer cult which has sprung up since Traven, the Archmage, decided to ban necromancy. This mission starts as a pleasant 'research' diversion which involves me speaking to several people and finding information in a book. I never mind doing these sort of missions in Oblivion, because the dialogue is all so engrossing.

I learn that I must travel to the ominous-sounding Dark Fissure, in the mountains to the east, to learn more. It is, of course, overrun with foul necromancers. They give me a run for my money, especially when I come across more than one at a time. My Flame Atronach really shines here, able to blast the necromancers from afar and also damage the ghosts which are frequently summoned to aid them.

I get what I need (a note) after killing the first poor sap, but I decide to explore the cave system. A blood-stained stairway leads into the depths:

The cave has three levels and is quite sprawling. It has some unique features, such as these scary-looking grates:

Killing all of the necromancers is a challenge, but do-able. I find I'm having to rely more and more on potions, especially when there are multiple necromancers. Fortunately, they drop a lot of potions when they die. After some time, I emerge victorious. Here's the view from the mouth of the Dark Fissure, looking out across the forest of the lowlands, with the Imperial City visible in the faint distance:

Hour 32: Pillar of Wisdom

With the vampire business out of the way, for now at least, I continue on with the Mages guild. They send me to an ancient ruin which is being excavated. Once there, I fire spells a a magical pillar in the centre of the ruin, which unlocks a secret staircase. This actually takes a while since I did not have all of the necessary spells, so I had to travel to Skingrad to buy one of them (how did I know to go the Skingrad?! I looked it up on one of the incredibly useful online guides. I consult these guides from time to time in situations such as this; there's no point wandering round every city looking for the right spell).
I descend into the bowels of the ruins and battle some ghosts, retrieving an ancient Elvish helmet at the end:

It looks awesome. I haven't worn armour in a while so I'm not sure if it's unique; I have a feeling all Elvish helmets look like that. However it is encrusted with verdigris, showing its age, which I don't think is normally on helmets.

I take the helmet back to the Arcane University where they thank me and relieve me of it. A little disappointing - I leant nothing about it and I assume it will not be mentioned again.

Hours 29 - 31 - Daybreaker part 2

Yes, this blog entry covers thee hours. I don't know how it took so long, but it did. First, I travelled to see the witch. Take a look at the map:

The red marker is her location. The marker near the lake is a Daedric Shrine which I haven't been to yet, only been told about, so I can't fast-travel there. There is nothing to the south for miles - you can't see that from the map of course. So the nearest location I can travel to is Fort Magia, then it's on foot from there onwards. It's not all that far, of course - part of the wonder of Oblivion is that it makes the continent feel absolutely vast, when in reality you can walk most places in a matter of minutes - but it's still a fair old way, especially considering I am assailed at several points along the way by wolves and bears. In any case, it's a long way for Woodley, so although it only takes a few minutes it feels like an epic journey.

At one point I am attacked by goblins. I summon my skeleton to battle. Look how huge this goblin is:

That's a human skeleton it's fighting, so that makes the goblin at least six feet tall, if not more. I feel it's a bit silly - the larger greenskins should be 'hobgoblins' or something. 

When I reach the witch's cabin, she give me a veritable shopping list of ingredients to find for her to make the 'cure vampirism' potion. Blood of an Argonian, ashes of a powerful vampire, and several plants and herbs. I decide to get the vampire ashes first - I must head to an abandoned, sunken fortress far to the east. The distance from the witch's cabin to this fortress makes the distance pictured on the earlier map look tiny. It's easily twice as far, and there are literally no waypoints to fast-travel to on the way. I must never have been to this region of the country before. 

Along the way to the fortress I fight several imps. I actually love coming across imps now - I treat them like a mini-game. They always engage from a distance with ranged spells (often fireballs), so 

I do likewise and we play a game of 'dodge the fireball' - it's fun to try to land a direct hit on them whilst also strafing to avoid their spells and trying to factor in the imps strafing as well.

On the way to the fortress I see a Daedric Shrine map symbol, so diced to have a look. It's a shrine to Peyrite and the worshippers are stood in a circle in a trance:

What's that,man Argonian? Don't mind if I cut you with this enchanted dagger to collect a blood sample, do you? No? Fortunately neither the Argonian nor any of the other worshippers noticed me stab him, so deep was their trance.

The fortress is a pushover, with just a couple of relatively weak vampires within and a boss vampire at the end. The strangest thing is, once I enter the room with the boss in, he doesn't attack me, but instead runs throughout the whole dungeon back the way I've come. I gave chase, pelting fireballs after him. Eventually he reached a corpse and picked up a dagger from it, and began to attack me. How odd.

The fortress seems to be unique in that it's partially sunken, and it also has some nice vampiric touches like the above candle-lit coffin.

Well, the first two ingredients are done; now for the easy ones right? As it happens, most of the next two hours is taken up with searching for the other ingredients. In the end I resorted to the internet for help, but even then it was still time-consuming. The garlic was easy enough - there are a couple of houses you can break into which have numerous cloves lying around. I also needed nightshade. And blood grass (which is a Daedric plant I suppose). Likewise I bought all the nightshade I needed at The  Main Ingredient in the Imperial City. But that shop only had 1 clump of blood grass, and I needed two. As I haven't opened the Oblivion gates yet, I had to rely on vendors. I travelled round many cities looking for blood grass. Sometimes I was simply unable to find an ingredients vendor (even after scouring the Mages Guild), and the rest of the time I found one but they had no blood grass 

Bear in mind that all of the aforementioned travelling and faffing was made much more tedious as I frequently could not fast travel due to my vampirism being too advanced - I would then have to wait until nightfall, or break on somewhere and feed on then to rejuvenate myself.

In desperation, I returned to The Main Ingredient, only to find he had restocked on blood grass. Damn you! With all the ingredients gathered, the potion was created and I was cured at last!

The Count also gave some to his wife:

He also rewarded me with 1000 gold for my efforts. I can't believe that lifting the vampire curse has taken four hours. Along the way I also picked up a couple of side quests which I'll pursue at a later date, but for now I'm disease-free and ready to continue with the Mages guild.

Hour 28: Daybreaker part 1

I did a bit of reading of some of the dusty tomes gathered online and learned that as part of the quest I'll need five empty grand soul gems. I find two whilst poking round the Arcane University, and manage to procure three more from the merchants at various Mages Guilds across Cyrodiil. In the course of my travels I get to thinking about my lacklustre repertoire of spells, and blow a good amount of gold upon acquiring some more. I upgrade my Turn Undead spell to Repulse Undead (or is it the other way around) which will now work on Undead up to level 15. I buy some Fear and Frenzy spells, as I've never used them before. Lastly, I go for some new Summons: Flame Atronach, Dremora, and Skeleton Guardian. Here's the Atronach:

Sweet! I'm guessing it shoots fireballs rather than melees, as that's what the ones in Skyrim do, so I hotkey it in the place of my Scamp (which I never used much anyway, as the zombie was more useful for tanking melee opponents). Speaking of which, it's probably time to say goodbye to the zombie too, since the Skeleton Guardian not only looks cooler and lasts 10 seconds longer, but I'm willing to 

bet it's tougher too. I shall miss the zombie, though. Perhaps I'll raise him from time to time to look at some views with me.

As an aside, I do think it's a bit silly that zombies and skeletons are created from nothing as part of a summon spell. You should be able to raise dead enemies as zombies or skeletons, and only summon spirits and Daedra out of nothing.

I should really get a more powerful damage spell, but the only ones on offer seemed to require a Destruction Magic skill of 75, whereas mine is 73.

Traipsing around looking for the soul gems and messing around with spells takes the best part of an hour. I head to Castle Skingrad, where the new retainer keeps me waiting around for a bit for the Count. Here's the impressive main entrance hall:

I've thought of something which I think would greatly improve the game-playing experience for me: Tightening up restricted areas. As it is, the castles and palaces are ornately designed and often quite sprawling, but ultimately empty shells. You can break into the living areas of them (or in some cases simply walk right in) with relative ease, and if you're caught, you are simply warned 'you shouldn't be in here', giving you a chance to leave before the guards are called. In this entrance hall, for example, I can run around and run up the stairs, go right up to the doors, jump off the balcony, etc. If the castles had their own full-time guards, preventing any tom-dick-or-harry from prancing round like a ninny, if feel it would create a much more immersive experience. Sneaking past them could then be a genuine challenge, and getting caught in a restricted area should trigger a full-scale alarm/man-hunt. Perhaps have some valuables scattered throughout the castles to provide an incentive to break into them, should you so desire. Incidentally, this immersion-destroying 'empty sandbox' phenomenon affects Skyrim's castles, too. There's obviously only so much they can put in the world, but creating the illusion of reality by enforcing restricted areas would go a long way to making the world feel more huge, I feel.

Anyway, I meet the Count eventually, and he sends me off on my quest, to find a witch by a river. It turns out I'll be helping him too, because he wants to cure his wife of vampirism. Onwards, for honour and glory (?!)

Hour 27: Darkness Rising

The goblins turn out to be Sharp Tooth tribe, and they are Skirmishers. What this means, as far as I can tell, is that they are huge. No longer the little runts I used to terrorise with impunity, these goblins are actually much larger than me. In fact, they can't be that much smaller than a troll, and they attack with almost as much ferocity. A passing Imperial Soldier helps me slay the two guarding the entrance, and I head in alone with some trepidation.

The cave (well, it's the Derelict Mine, actually - I think I've been here before, but it must have been repopulated since then) is crawling with the blighters, and what's worse is that they seem keen to hang around in pairs. It's a hard slog but I manage to kill them all and escape without using too many potions.

I then head into Skingrad under the veil of darkness and check into the Two Sisters Lodge to get some rest and level up. Little did I know that the darkness not only veiled the land but also dwelt within me... As I settled down in my bed to rest, expecting to see the familiar 'level up' screen, I was instead greeted by this:

I read it with increasing alarm. This cannot be! What have I done? I have to check myself, and sure enough I see my eyes are now red and my face twisted.

I am a vampire, a foul foul vampire! It's then I remember that whilst battling Seridur's cursed cronies a while back, I was scratched by one of them and infected with the disease. I forgot to cure myself, and now it's too late! I consider reloading, but the nearest save will set me back quite a while, so I decide to press on. Whether I will regret this decision remains to be seen...

I continue with the quest at hand - I must speak to Count Skingrad. However, his advisor makes me wait a day before I can see him. Waiting causes me to progress to the next stage of vampirism - where I take damage from being out in the sunlight! It damages me slow enough that I can keep my health topped up by healing, but it's clearly no good! I take shelter in a guard tower until nightfall, then creep out and sneak into the Mages Guild, whereupon I slake my unholy thirst upon an unsuspecting Argonian Mage.

I then meet with the Count's advisor again, but he had tricked me and didn't want the Mages Guild interfering in Skingrad, as he was in league with the necromancers. He and two Necromancer goons attempt to slay me, but the Count comes to my rescue.

I speak with the Count, then return to the Arcane University to report my findings. I've already resolved that I must cure my vampirism, as taking rapid damage in daylight is too much of a hindrance for me - fortunately, Raminus Polinus has dialogue about curing vampirism, so I start that quest - which entails me heading all the way back to Skingrad to speak with the Count again!