Board Thread:Skyrim/@comment-11296535-20131117173125/@comment-24902649-20141218084708

Theseus, you may want to look into [http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/9557/? Live Another Life], as it'll allow you to just start the game already as a member of the Guild. Good mod for RPing. I did a really fun Companions run with it once, where I started out as just a low-ranking member. Slowly but surely I gained the trust of the Circle, until I was taking my orders from the Harbinger himself, his most trusted advisor. When dragons attacked Whiterun, I saved his life with a well-timed Ash Rune. He never really got over it, said that the fall had still banged him up well enough, but seemed in one piece. He moved slower after that, though. I suppose being protected from dragonfire has its own costs. Eventually, he sent me out to perform one final task. When I returned, I was too late. I had failed. My mentor, my Harbinger lie dead at my feet. I hadn't been able to save him. Hell, who knows--maybe if I hadn't struck him with that rune, maybe if I had been more careful, maybe if I had moved faster I could have saved him. But I didn't.

I left the Companions behind me that day. Kodlak was not the only one I had failed. For a few years, I wandered Skyrim, in search of nothing but more mead, and the occasional bounty on some bandit to keep said mead in good supply. It was a pitiful existence, and I could not count the number of times some wealthy advisor to a Jarl mistook me for some kind of homeless stray. If I was lucky, they'd throw me a Septim. Usually they didn't.

As I hid beneath my small tent in a rainstorm one particularly nasty day in the Reach, a Khajiit thief, clearly on the Sugar, decided that my purse was large enough to warrant killing me for. I didn't see the attack coming, and I never would again on my left side. That bastard cat managed to savage half my face before I was able to grab my sword and put a foot of steel through his guts.

As I lay bleeding in the mud, filthy, tired, and in need of a good ale that I did not have, I looked back at the mess that had become of my life. And I laughed. I laughed at my own foul fortunes, and my fouler incompetence. I asked what I should do with myself. I wasn't sure who would answer. Ysmir didn't, but the Khajiit, corpse though he was, did. A scrap of parchment, with a crude map drawn upon it, fluttered out of the bandit's pocket. Slowly pushing my battered form out of the mud, I picked up the map and began to read.

Perhaps that was the day my luck turned. Perhaps Ysmir did hear my angry prayer, after all. For the spot on the map was one I knew well- an old abandoned prison the Empire had left behind when they ran from whatever the latest threat was. It took me about a week to make it to the camp, but I was rewarded for the travel. For hidden beneath a hollow rock on the mountainside was a chest filled to bursting with all manner of stolen jewelery, gold, and even a few blades bearing enchantments. I hauled the load, slowly but surely, to Riften, where I knew of a gentleman whose interest in the purchase of items was somewhat less than what most would consider moral. Well over eight score septims I was rewarded for my troubles.

I had not had such money available to me for years. I spent a few nights in a bunkhouse in Riften (and nothing compares to the perfection of a warm bed after spending your nights sleeping on cold, wet ground). I left the city, purchasing a horse as I went. The beast was slow, but it held its share of my posessions, so I traveled north. Looking back, I couldn't say I knew why I did, but it felt right, and I had nowhere else to be. Eventually I came upon a small, frozen town that called itself Winterhold--and rightfully so, for even my Nord blood ran chill beneath my skin when the winds blew. For a time, I stayed there, until I heard word of a College a short ways north of the town. I was intrigued, having never been any further north than the lower tips of Winterhold, for the mountains were steep and the snow fell hard.

Again, I can state no other reason for my being in such a place than simple wanderlust, that most assuredly deadly disease that strikes all of Nord blood. But I went north. It was not as far as I thought it might be, but far enough I was glad to see torchlight through the snowfall enveloping my mount. It was an entrance of sorts, and one guarded by an Altmer of nasty-seeming disposition. She asked my reason for coming, and I told her truthfully that I had no true purpose to be there beyond simple curiosity. She laughed, perhaps thinking me a jester, but said that she would permit me entry to the so-called College of Winterhold should I pass a simple test: to cast a spell striking fear into the granite heart of a carving on the floor. I had not a single idea why she wished this, but I was willing to try. However I knew no such spell, for Nords generally have little care for the mystic arts. She obliged me by offering a book detailing the techniques for a modest sum, and I took it from her.

I quickly picked up the basic tenets of casting the spell--far more so than most Nords, said she, but I place little stock in the word of an Altmer whose employment involves getting people to pay her employer for tutelage. My efforts culminated in an attempt to cast the spell, but it was to my sight, unsuccessful, due to the book catching light and burning to a cinder within seconds. In retrospect, perhaps a better, more inert object would have served me better, but I knew enough to return to the Elf (Fareelda, I believe her name was) and demonstrate my ability. She praised my efforts, and bade me enter the College.

Within days I was a member, though my purse considerably lighter for it. In any event I quickly adapted to and mastered the artifice of defensive magicks, creating shielding spells and wards about my person that would withstand the blow of a Giant's club. One "lesson" involved becoming trapped in an ancient, crumbling ruin infested with all manner of ghastly reanimated dead, whose sole purpose appeared to be to lash at me feebly with their dull swords. My newfound abilities dispatched them with little effort, though I was in need of a long rest following my trip.

As time has passed, I grow more and more skilled at the art, and have surpassed many of my own instructors in skill. There are whispers that the Archmagus of the Colege has named me his successor, but I have my doubts regarding this. In any event, I have come far from humble beginnings. But with more and more foul lizards raining death from the sky, and the clouds of war brewing on the horizon, it's only a matter of time before battle comes to me once more.

And that's how you RP.