More Adventures with Alarrah the Dragonborn

Twitter thread from 5/8/2021 in which Alarrah slays a dragon, saves Morthal from vampires, and gets offers of thaneship from both Morthal and Falkreath. And in which Alarrah’s player finally learns how to frigging aim, and also, why it’s a very bad idea to leave the game idling when you’re in a shop that’s about to close.

More Adventures with Alarrah the Dragonborn and Her Long-suffering (and Smartassed) Housecarl Lydia:

1) Discovered that the house I needed to investigate, the one owned by Alva, was of course locked.

8:10 PM · May 8, 2021

Given my last experience with lockpicking I was reluctant to try to do it with guards wandering around right behind me–so I wandered off for a bit, thinking to wait for dark and just harvest and hunt some

8:11 PM · May 8, 2021

2) Got a bead on an elk just southeast of the town, and actually managed to shoot it down–at which point I heard a VERY PROBLEMATIC ROAR overhead, and oh shit dragon!

8:11 PM · May 8, 2021

3) Managed to kill it and absorb its soul, which let me unlock the third Shout I’d picked up earlier, and really Alarrah was kind of a little fruck out about this, I think. 😉 “We… uh… actually killed it? Yay? I just wanted to shoot the elk…?”

8:12 PM · May 8, 2021

4) Paul encouraged me to take a crack at the door anyway, just to make sure I was sneaking. Turned out though that the lockpicking wasn’t anything my Sneak couldn’t handle. Got in even though it was an Adept-level lock…

8:14 PM · May 8, 2021

5) … and promptly got attacked by both Alva and Hroggar. Who were both quickly dispatched

8:20 PM · May 8, 2021

6) Went down into Alva’s cellar and found her coffin, and her journal, which ever so helpfully totally laid out her evil plan–which involved helping her master vampire take over the town

8:20 PM · May 8, 2021

7) Took this journal back to the Jarl, who went “THAT BITCH” (justified), but also “So go kill this master vampire for me”.

8:21 PM · May 8, 2021

To which Alarrah went .oO (Say WHAT NOW), at least up until the point where the Jarl also said “And I’ve gathered some warriors for you to lead to go wipe out the vampire nest”

8:22 PM · May 8, 2021

8) I was pretty on board with leading a group of villagers into battle, but the villagers, not so much. They followed me to the lair, but stayed outside while Lydia and I actually went in there to clear the place

8:22 PM · May 8, 2021

9) Enemy tally: couple of frostbite spiders, a few vampire thralls, and the master vampire himself. Who turned out to be a PROBLEM.

8:23 PM · May 8, 2021

He wiped me out in hand to hand combat multiple times, at which point I fell back to the strategy of “okay can I pick him off from a distance even though my archery is kind of ass?”

8:24 PM · May 8, 2021

10) Right about here was the part where I learned something very, very important. I was telling Paul where I was in the game, and he went “so put your aiming dot on him and hit him with your arrows”.

8:25 PM · May 8, 2021

Me: “I don’t have an aiming dot what aiming dot OH SHIT OKAY THAT AIMING DOT”. I had somehow never managed to register that that symbol right in the middle of the screen is also to help you aim.

8:26 PM · May 8, 2021

This is not a thing I have to give a shit about in casual games, so I feel like I can be forgiven for not figuring this out until now. 😀

8:26 PM · May 8, 2021

11) Also with Paul’s advice, I blew some of my poison potions on my bow, and managed to actually hit the master vampire a few times and do him enough serious damage that Lydia was able to finish him off with her bow. GO LYDS! \0/

8:27 PM · May 8, 2021

12) This strategy bumped my sneak up several points, AND also bumped me to level 9. Tasty!

13) Also finally got to use the Candlelight spell, which made searching the rest of the lair (and taking out a few remaining pissed off thralls) a lot easier

8:28 PM · May 8, 2021

14) On the way out, found the little girl’s ghost, who told me her mother was much happier now and she was ready to go to sleep. Aw. <3

8:28 PM · May 8, 2021

15) Found all the villagers still outside the barrow being all LET’S KILL THE VAMPIRE! Too late, folks, Lyds and I already did it, and frankly you’re all better off, because seriously do none of you people actually have any armor?

8:29 PM · May 8, 2021

16) On the way back to report to the Jarl, got found by a courier who ran up and handed me a letter from an entirely different Jarl, the Jarl of Falkreath–who basically said “you have a rep, you seem pretty badass, wanna come be my thane?”

8:29 PM · May 8, 2021

17) So, went back to the Jarl to tell her “okay yeah so that vampire problem? Sorted”. She then offered to make me her thane, too, but if and only if I helped three people of her town. Which triggered a new quest.

8:30 PM · May 8, 2021

At least the whole vampire thing counted as the first of these, so I only have to help two more of her people

18) Remembering that I really do still have to go get that horn for the Greybeards, decided to follow Paul’s advice and fast travel back to Whiterun

8:32 PM · May 8, 2021

19) And this was the part where I learned another very important thing: do not actually leave the game idling. And if you do, for the love of the Divines DO NOT DO IT WHILE YOU’RE IN A SHOP THAT’S ABOUT TO CLOSE.

8:32 PM · May 8, 2021

Found out this results in the shop staff getting pissed at you for trespassing, and then the guards come running in, and Lydia starts wailing on them with her steel greatsword, and NO NO NO STOP REWIND okay shit I guess I need to go back to my last savepoint

8:33 PM · May 8, 2021

20) Whiterun, take two: went to the inn and slept until the next morning, and THEN sold my stuff; practically wiped out all the gold the general store guy had. Levelled up to level 10 while I was in there, on the boost to my Persuasion perk for selling him stuff

8:33 PM · May 8, 2021

21) Went to the forge as well to sell stuff as well as make new armor out of some of the raw materials I was carrying around; while there, the forge owner asked me if I’d take a sword for her up to the steward in Dragonsreach…

8:34 PM · May 8, 2021

…since he’s her father and would know when to present the sword to the Jarl; was willing to do this, partly because the forge owner is nice, but also because this at least smells like less drama?

8:34 PM · May 8, 2021

Oh who am I kidding of course they’ll be drama. So we’ll just have to see whether or not I can go get the horn first. 😉

8:35 PM · May 8, 2021

Editing to add

1. This post was written on 3/16/2022, but backdated to the time of the tweet thread for organizational purposes.
2. Post updated on 12/28/2022, to reconstruct the Twitter thread in the body of the post, and remove links to Twitter.
3. 9/30/2024: Updated the HTML reconstructing the tweets to use a new CSS class I added under the hood, to make it easier to globally change the styling on posts that use this format.