Scrolling Through GURPS (The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim)

[the_great_white_north]

Prologue

We'll Skip The Boring Bits

Sarah though she had life figured out by now. Steady job, nice boyfriend, and a decent flat she rented for far too much money. The car thing had to be rethought, as taking the bus took up a good hour and a half of her morning getting to work, but money was tight enough as it was, and spending another twenty a day on parking, on top of gas and maintenance was just too much to ask for.

Getting hit by said bus was unfortunate, but waking up after being hit by a ten ton bus was nice, even if she had no idea where she was when she arrived. Birds chirping, cloudy skies and pine trees every which way, save for the dirt road she was on, she could almost pretend she was somewhere on Vancouver Island, or perhaps further north, in the foothills, if it weren't for the smells.

Pine smelled different from cedar forests, and the cold bog was putting out smells she'd never smelled in her life. It was a new smell for someone who'd never travelled further than a hundred kilometres from the west coast of British Columbia. In fact, everything was a new smell. The river reed, as well as the creatures around her, were something completely alien to her nose, and while her mind was completely oblivious to her Isekai status, her nose wasn't.

Of course, that was hours ago, and she had a good idea where she was now.

A part of her realized that getting put into a world full of monsters and may be on the verge of civil war was probably bad for her squishy self, and that anxiety was getting worse the more she thought about it. She had no talent at anything martial, had no magic to speak of, and for the moment, had no survival skills to fall back on. Still, she appeared by a road, perfectly intact and not in a cart, which for a Skyrim start, was decent.

A consolation prize for never getting to see the Elder Scrolls VI, she had thought a few times.

After an entire morning of walking, the sun was now at it's highest point, and the weather was fine for what appeared to be the end of winter. Snow covered every peak in sight, and there were piles of it on every corner of the road that remained in the shade, yet the temperature felt like it was somewhere in the low tens, and with only a slight breeze and no moisture, it was perfect walking weather for someone who'd left their winter coat in their last life. She had a windbreaker, a polyester long sleeve shirt underneath, and a pair of jeans. She thank whatever deity involved that she'd been wearing proper shoes, as opposed to heels.

She was pretty sure it was Skyrim, as the large, imposing mountain in the east looked like it reached into the sky for kilometres, and the pine forest looked like the starting area around Helgen. It took a few hours to connect the world around her to the video game, because Skyrim on PC was a video game, and this was most definitely not Todd Howard's baby.

She had played Skyrim many times, even a couple of times without mods installed, but she never remembered a giant, flying whale in the sky. It had flown only a few dozen feet above her head from behind, before veering upwards into the clouds and out of sight. She'd never admit it, but she almost shit herself. She thought it was a dragon!

Now, walking down the dirt road that was more a mud trail that carts sometimes used in desperation, she came across her very first feature in this world she recognized, and a clear sign that her guess had been correct.

A clearing with three familiar stones stood in a row, each etched with markings and artwork that depicted something she knew by heart.

Warrior. Mage. Thief.

The three standing stones stood still in their own very large clearing, measuring somewhere around ten metres in diameter, and clear of everything from bushes and tree limbs, to even grass and mud. There were several tracks of carts that had stopped and paid their respects to the old monoliths, and at some point had broken camp here based on the cold fire pit, but currently there was no one here save herself and the wind.

Walking up to the stone, there was a buzz underneath the skin as she approached the first of them. The warrior. She wasn't sure if the stones provided the same bonuses in real life that they did in the game, and she didn't have a handy screen ala Solo Leveling, Arifureta Shokugyou de Sekai Saikyo, or any of the other myriad of Isekai anime she'd watched. Usually, they always had a cheat or golden finger so the protagonist didn't die horribly in the first thirty minute episode.

Usually. Sometimes they got their cheat after their first death.

She shuddered.

She stared at the Stones, hoping for an answer. No popup came.

"So does the Warrior improve hiking?" she asked out loud, hoping for a sign from one of the many gods that she knew existed in this universe. "Could you, like, move a leaf or something for me?"

Very deliberately, the wind stopped moving entirely. She waited, then waited some more. The wind didn't pick back up. Picking up some grass, she flung in up above her head, and the clippings scattered in more or less a uniform pattern. Dropping a leaf, it fell straight down.

"Can I get something from you assholes?"

"Having trouble picking?"

The voice startled her, and she turned towards it. The man before her was normal looking, which in Skyrim should have been a red flag. Sadly, she didn't pick up on that. Instead, she saw the three piece modern bespoke suit the man wore, and latched onto it as something familiar and safe. It might have been the little pin of a dragon that made her trust the man, or the cane the man used that signalled vulnerability.

"I find that a coin toss helps." the stranger said, looking over at the stones with an amused expression.

"There are three picks." she pointed out.

"So there is," he said, almost sounding surprised. "Hmm. Dice? Do dice come in three sides?"

Reaching into one of his pockets, he pulled out a pack of cards, a couple of dice, and even a small chunk of cheese.

"Oh, I knew I left that somewhere," he commented, taking a bite of the cheese. "You eaten yet?"

"No, thank you," she answered, refusing the offered chunk of cheddar coloured cheese. "Did you get Isekaid too?"

"Nah, I came here on purpose." he said casually. "Truck-kun?"

"A bus," Sarah answered, surprised she knew enough fanfiction to know what he was talking about. "My bus, as a matter of fact. It was early for once."

"Ironic," he said with a slight smile. "A shame, though. I miss Truck-kun. He was always a riot of fun."

The two stared at each other, and Sarah realized that this might be her ROB. Random Omnipotent Being. The one who hands out power to the protagonist of the story.

"Not quite correct, on any of that," the being said, looking at her with a thoughtful look. "In fact, you are mostly wrong on everything, which in itself is rather impressive."

"I'm just trying to figure out what to do." she said, feeling somewhat frustrated. "With the future events and all that."

"Live, obviously." he answered. "Well, until you die, at least. Mortal's tend to do that, but here you have so many options! I'm sure you'll figure something out."

"I meant the whole Fate thing. Don't I need to defeat Alduin? Stop Mareek—"

"You aren't the Dragonborn," the man said, breaking her Isekai fantasy. "Akatosh is rather picky with who he picks, and outsiders aren't on his list. Sorry."

That derailed everything she had planned on her walk, but it also calmed her. Facing a dragon, even with superpowers, was something she wasn't really keen on doing. Call her a coward all you want, but she liked living.

That, of course, lead to the next problem. Not having superpowers in Nirn, of all places.

"So, what? I get to live through the Skyrim civil war without any sort of power?" she asked. "I'm an accountant."

"Who says there will even be a civil war?" the man asked, drawing her up short. "As you've already learned, this isn't Todd's baby, or Emile's. Hell, it isn't even Kirkbride's. We are, firmly, in uncharted, and now, with you in the mix, un-destined territories. Alternate Universe, or AU for short. Threads of Prophecy severed. Destiny butterflied out the yin-yang. Fate bent over a barrel and—"

"Thanks," she interrupted. "I got the picture."

"Excellent. Most people get rather queer when I mention their foreknowledge is useless."

"It is...rather scary, you gotta admit. Not knowing what's coming next?"

"It's also more interesting. Being able to predict things is a tad boring." he said, strutting around and kicking at a rock on the ground. The rock didn't move. "Azura can be a right bitch when she wants to be, and Akatosh isn't much better. It wouldn't surprise me if they put a random pack of wolves in your path, just to get you out of the way of their plan."

"But not your plan?"

The man turned and looked at her. "Do I look like a man with a plan?"

Something about the way he said it triggered something in the back of her mind, but she got distracted before she could figure it out. He looked over towards the road, squinted, then smiled, right before flicking his finger in the direction of Riverwood. Nothing seemed to happen.

"Besides, you already lived through one life without foreknowledge, what's another?"

The man walked around, looking at the statues one after another, then focusing on the fire for a brief moment before turning his head to the sky. The man left no footprints, although Sarah failed to notice that. Walking around to look at one of the statues a second time, he came to a stop and gave it a more thorough look.

"But back to the topic at hand. Any preferences?" he asked, staring at the statue of The Thief.

"Hard to tell. I don't know what skills are covered by each." she answered, wondering if she was going to get anything answered. "Do I get a system? Like the Celestial Forge?"

"A System? Oh, if only life were like a game. Rules, stat sheets. Loopholes." he said fondly. "Technically, you do have a, whatchamacallit, a magic finger. You just haven't...what is the word? Stumbled onto it yet."

"Well, do I get anything that will keep me away from packs of wolves? I kinda like not dying."

"Well, sure, you have..."

He startled for a moment, then stared. The man got a smile on his face, then chuckled as if he'd remembered a joke.

"Oh, Azura, you clever girl," he said, looking at something Sarah couldn't see. "Try to take my summoning gift away? Naughty, naughty."

"Don't suppose I get some destiny protection? Some..." she struggled to find the name of the power she was searching for. "Out-of-context protection?"

He scowled briefly, then smiled again. "I suppose there is something we can try."

"Any help would be appreciated."

"Oh, don't call it help." he said with a chuckle. "No, no, no. Definitely don't call it that."

He stood still for a moment, looking at something no one else could see until he straightened, looking towards one of the stone with the best impersonation of a wicked Cheshire grin. Once again, she didn't notice. He played with several dices, some were shapes she'd never seen before, before settling on a simple six sided dice.

"Hmm. I wonder..." he looked up, then smiled. "Ah, that's it!"

He reached somewhere else, and pulled another two dice and added them to the pile.

"Do you mind holding these?" he said, offering three dice. "Just got to make sure Clav isn't going to throw a fit. Or Bal. Or...well, a lot of people are going to be pissed. Might as well not give them a heads up. Saves me some effort. You still got those dice?"

Sarah looked down, only to frown. The dice were gone.

"Excellent." he said, not bothering to look. "This will be awkward for only a moment."

It was now that her brain decided to start working again, and her instincts screamed Danger! at the top of it's lungs, but it was too late. There was a flash, followed by a sharp pain on top of her head as a heavy book crashed into it, sending her tumbling to the ground.

"What the fuck? Could you have given that to me with HITTING ME!" she shouted as she got up, only to realize that the man had disappeared. In his place, the book was opened and ink filled itself on the pages, showing an ink drawing of herself on it getting hit in the head with the book. Beside it, appeared stats and attributes, skills and spells, as well as equipment, holdings, armies and several other categories. Page after page began to fill, most of which was empty, until finally stopping. It closed in on itself, and the front page was a picture of a massive tower.

Looking at it from the side, there was faint, but clearly legible writing in English.

The Character Sheet of one Sarah the Planeswalker, gamer of Nirn, powered by GURPS, and player of the Great Game to destroyer and/or unravel the threads of Fate, Prophecy, and Destiny.

Her eyes went over the wording several times. This was her cheat sheet. What will keep her alive in a province and world that was destined to end. Her eyes glanced over the last sentence, before asking her first question aloud.

"What the fuck is GURPS?"

 

[Dovahkiin]

Tftc. Was this meant to be in Index or was it meant to be in Threadmark?

 

[the_great_white_north]

Tftc. Was this meant to be in Index or was it meant to be in Threadmark?

Click to shrink...

I'm not too sure. First time using this site.

 

[the_great_white_north]

Chapter 1.1

The Obligatory Golden Finger Wall of Text

Sarah rubbed her head as the pain started to subside. She was still angry at the strange man, even though she finally got herself a golden finger, but there was something about the whole situation that was rubbing her the wrong way.

'Suit. Cane.' she thought, listing off the man's qualities and descriptions as her mind fought the magic that was affecting her senses. 'Scottish accent. Seems to like dropping things on people.'

Her mind did the equivalent of a summersault as it went through several stages. Denial, then confusion, then more denial, until finally...

"FUCK!" she screamed, dropping the heavy Tome with a thunk against the soft ground surrounding the stones.

There was a pop as the magic that held her mental faculties from making the logical leap snapped her into focus, and suddenly, the identity of the person she'd been talking to made perfect sense.

"Son of a bitch!" she shouted, aware of how close to the Mad God she'd been. "He gave me an idiot ball!"

Her mind was now perfectly aware that physical idiot balls could be a thing in this reality, but had no solid plan on how to deal with that fact. The man was the god of madness, and it wasn't like Sarah had supernatural defences against supernatural bullshit.

Looking down at the Tome, she was surprised and happy to find it was an ordinary looking book. Slightly ostentatious, and rich for her taste, but not bound in human skin, having a skull on it's cover or teeth on it's bindings. A book, if slightly richer and heavier than she was used to, but just a book.

She kept her distance from the strange thing, despite it now probably being tied to her soul, before steeling herself. Either it would help her survive, or kill her, or make her crazy. There really wasn't anything she could do about it, no matter what the outcome.

Reaching down and picking it up, the book was lighter than something it's size should be, and the cover felt brand spanking new despite being dropped in the soft earth and sand. Opening it up, she was greeted with something that was strangely familiar.

"I have a character sheet?" she said out loud, looking over the sheet. "Oh, of course I have one. Silly me."

It was page one of her character sheet. The first page being what could be considered her 'bio', filled with all the information that munchkins and power gamers just didn't bother filling out. There was a picture of her, small and tucked into the corner, of her face that looked like it had been taken from an awkward angle as she stubbed her toe a few hours back. A few bits of information were below it, but nothing that really screamed Gamer or Protagonist.

Sarah Paige, 24
Title: Planeswalker
BD: March 13th, 2010
DD: April 7th, 2034
PoB: Vancouver, BC
PoD: Richmond, Vancouver, BC
Religion: Atheist/Baptized Catholic
Height: 5'6"
Weight: 132 lbs
Hair: Black
Eyes: Grey
Skin: Freckled
Hand: Right
Species: Baseline Human female
Bio: Second oldest sister among three other sisters, Sarah was born to a middle class family in Vancouver, British Columbia. She chose to not follow in either of her parent's profession, instead going into business school with the plan of becoming a venture capitalist and striking rich. She did not become rich, instead bouncing between seasonal accountant work, and bartending at a local dive bar. She has three sisters, a boyfriend, and a fish she feeds semi-regularly.

It was all the things Sarah knew about herself, and though it was strange to see them in a book that fell out of the sky, in a world of magic it made some sense. Apparently, the magical equivalent of Flock camera's and the surveillance state existed even in Mundus.

She thanked her lucky stars she hadn't been reborn in a child's body, or evicted someone else from their own body. She reached up, and felt one of the pits in her cheek, then down to a scar near her jaw. Her ears were still pierced, and she even had an old appendectomy scar from when she was younger. There were no signs she had ever been in a horrible, one-sided fight with an accordion bus.

The Title was the only thing that stood out as something strange or unknown, yet there was no description, and no tool tip. She tapped the page, only to frown, then giggle.

"Maybe I needed a break from my phone." she thought, before her brow creased. She would probably never hold nor use a cell phone for the rest of her life. 'Of all the things to be upset about...'

She flipped the page, and second page had her attributes, which shifted as soon as she looked at them.

Rolling...
36 Strength, Bonus +3...converting...10
43 Agility, Bonus +4...converting...11
40 Endurance, Bonus +4...converting...11
34 Intelligence, Bonus +3...converting...10
38 Willpower, Bonus +3...converting...10
36 Perception, Bonus +3...converting...10
39 Personality, Bonus +3...converting...10
48 Luck, Bonus +4...converting...?
HP 10/10
FP 11/11
LP 4/4

There were no descriptions, or tool tips, or a helpful clippy to guide her through, but there was a post-it note. An honest to god, magenta post-it note, stuck between the pages with a messy scrawl written on it.

Don't mind me. Just changed a few things to fit the setting. None of that 'Health is an attribute' shit from Todd, even if GURPS has Health as an attribute. Had to demote Speed to a secondary attribute to make room; Perception is much more important, especially for a stealth archer!
PS: Congratulations on that luck roll. You'll need it.
-Sheo

Sarah stared at the note, realizing that her new golden finger was tied to a god of Madness, Insanity and Mania. She ripped the post-it note off the pages, only to realize there was another note stuck underneath it.

You forgot, I'm also the God of Cheese Magic!

She was rather bothered by that note in particular. Either he could read her mind and add notes without her noticing, or he had predicted her thoughts ahead of time and the note was always there.

Putting that aside for now, she went through each of the attributes in her mind, figuring which she could remember and what they did. Her strongest were agility, and endurance. Somehow, that didn't seem correct, but there might have been a re-roll when she'd gotten the system, so she ignored that for now as she tried to remember what each attribute did. Strength? Pretty self-explanatory. Agility? Ditto. Endurance was either stamina or fatigue, depending on the system.

The more social and mental attributes she struggled with.

Intelligence she expected to be higher, and was somewhat surprised by how...average it seemed. She had spent two years in university learning accounting and finance, and she had four years of work experience crunching numbers and filling out paperwork for a multi-million dollar corporation.

'Maybe it doesn't transfer over to a new world?' she thought to herself. 'Or maybe it got randomized when I encountered Sheogorath?'

She moved on to the next attribute.

'Willpower is needed for...magic? Yeah, I think Illusion was definitely Willpower. Maybe Restoration, too.'

Which left Perception and Personality. Luck, in most games, didn't track to a skill besides gambling, and Sarah was uninterested in playing slots or cards to make an earning.

'Perception...' she hesitated, thinking of what sort of useful skills would be upgraded by perception. 'Is archery now a perception skill?'

It wasn't, but Sarah, like most gamers when they first pick up a game without tool tips, was overthinking things. Perception dealt with seeing, hearing and sensing things.

'Personality was social skills. I remember that.'

That was...correct, but a little over-simplistic.

She looked down at the next page, and wondered if there was supposed to be more.

Advantages:
Attractive [4]

Perks:
Honest Face [1]
Pitiable [1]

It felt like she was missing something, like something wasn't being shown to her, but no matter what she tried (including scratching the paper with her nails), nothing revealed itself.

"At least the system thinks I'm attractive," she said out loud. "That's nice to hear."

The disadvantages had her scratching her head trying to figure them out.

Disadvantages:
Cowardice (CR12) [-10]
Pacifist (Reluctant Killer) [-5]
Thalassophobia (CR15) [-5]

"What the hell is Tha-las-so-pho-bia?" she asked out loud, not surprised when no one answered her. "Cowardly? What does...actually, that one I believe."

Even now, she was planning the best way to avoid getting into fights. It was coming down to either stealth archery, or illusion magic to mind control everyone who tried to kill her. Quote all the stealth archer memes you wanted, but Sarah was planning on living to a very healthy age, and sniping her enemies from a safe spot in the dark sounded like a great way to reach that goal.

Below the disadvantages was a smaller, more filled section. Quirks.

Quirks:
Allergic to Cats [-1]
Conceited [-1]
Mild Phobia (Arachnophobia) [-1]
Atheist/Secularist [-1]
Sunburns Easily [-1]

'Conceited? Mild phobia of spiders? Excuse me?'

She stared at the offending lines, before moving on. She filled that little tidbit under incorrect.

There wasn't much to say about the rest. She was definitely not one of those people who pretended they weren't allergic, when it was really obvious that they were. As for the sunburning problem, she inherited the ginger nature of her mother of turning into a lobster with the slightest UV index, but unlike her middle sister, she was born with black hair and a soul.

She looked at the crossed out part of her sheet with a slight amount of confusion, but put it in the probably correct category. As an unbeliever of gods, being told gods are most definitely real wasn't something that was going to completely change her world view. It was more like an 'Oh, well I'm still not worshipping you' sort of situation.

She squinted, then turned her head to the side and counted how many lines there were. For some reason, disadvantage also seemed to be on the low side despite what her eyes were telling her, and there was a part of her that was worried. The system was hiding something from her, and while she had no proof except a gut instinct, she was starting to get anxiety thinking about it.

That anxiety got worse when she turned the page to the skill page.

Skills:
Accounting (M/H) Int [4]-10, Acrobatics (P/H) Ag-2 [1]-9, Brawling (P/E) Ag+1 [2]-12, Dancing (P/A) Ag-1 [1]-10, Economics (M/H) Int-1 [2]-9, Finance (M/H) Int-2 [1]-8, Hiking (P/A) End-1 [1]-10, Housekeeping (P/E) Int [1]-10, Judo (P/H) Ag-1 [2]-10, Mathematics/TL8 (Applied) (M/H) Int [4]-10, Profession (Bartender) (M/A) Int [2]-10, Running (P/E) End-1 [1]-10, Sex Appeal (M/A) Prs-1 [1]-9, Skating (P/H) End-1 [2]-10, Skiing (P/H) End-2 [1]-9, Singing (P/E) Prs [1]-10, Swimming (P/E) End [1]-11

'What in god's unholy creation is this mess?'

"Sheo?" she called out. "What the hell did you do to the skill screen?"

A faint laughter could be heard on the wind, although no actual answer came.

The list definitely looked to have been made by a mad god, and no doubt, Sheogorath had decided to take the functional skills tab of GURPS, and turned them into some sort of monstrosity. It was a good thing she wasn't dyslexic.

Even though there were no tool-tips or explanations, the skills themselves were pretty self-explanatory. There were the skills she expected, such as her work skills, her side jobs, her old jobs and even her high school education. There were also some skills she hadn't expected, like her middle school swimming and acrobatics, or the skating and skiing she only did once a year in gym class, as most kids in Vancouver did. Judo she wasn't expecting at all. After all, having an hour a week when you were ten wasn't usually enough to have any decent skill in something, but the system was either giving out freebies, or her teacher was a little more skilled than she let on.

She focused on each skill, and what she considered her best skills.

"Why are they so low?" she asked herself.

Two years of schooling for a bachelors in economics and business, plus accounting school, should have put her in a higher skill bracket, at least by her understanding. Either she was reading the skills wrong (which she was, but that was a whole other thing), or somehow her degree in economics somehow equalled her skill in skiing, a hobby she hadn't had time for in a little over three years. Her skating skill was higher than skiing and economics, despite not putting on a pair of skates since her thirteenth birthday.

The reason for this was rather simple.

One, a multi-million dollar corporation (which is small for Vancouver) prefers accurate, reliable accounting, as opposed to clever accounting. An intelligent, skilled accountant worked for trillion dollar companies, billionaires themselves, criminal organizations, or multinational intelligence and police agencies. Interpol and FBI agents had high Intelligence scores, not boring accountants that had part-time experience as a bartender.

Two, her skill was a reflection of facing adversity. Having a computer program that auto filled the forms, as well as not having to do all that much that was challenging, creative or novel, didn't lend itself to growth or adaptation.

Put more simply, the answer was that Sarah had found herself in a cushy spot she didn't really feel threatened or in danger of losing, and hadn't felt the need to improve herself in four years. The system accounted for that.

Flipping the page over, there was a list of Techniques that she knew, which was none, as well as familiarities, which there were quite a few. They were somewhat boring, as they pertained to specific equipment, none of which existed here. Every vehicle she ever owned, as well as most of the vehicles she'd driven were in there, as well as specific operating systems and gaming systems for computers. Spells on the next page, which had nothing, then another page with Ritual Magic, which again, had nothing.

Getting towards what felt like the end of the book, she stopped and looked at a section that looked like the skill page, but were much more modern than the previous page.

Area Knowledge (Canada) (M/E) Int [1]-10, Area Knowledge (Earth-2033) (M/E) Int [1]-10, Area Knowledge (Vancouver) (M/E) Int [1]-10, Bicycling (P/E) Ag [1]-11, Computer Operation (M/E) Int+1 [2]-11, Current Affairs (Popular Culture) (M/E) Int [1]-10, Driving/TL8 (Automobile) (P/A) Ag-1 [1]-10, Driving/TL8 (Motorcycle) (P/A) Ag-1 [1]-10, Electronics Repair/TL8 (Computers) (M/A) Int [2]-10

All the things that she'd learned in her last life that were now useless here. She'd never drive a car, or so much as look at another computer screen, not unless she found some sort of portal magic to get back to Earth.

There was another page she turned to, and she started blushing as soon as she saw it. It was a list of what could only be described as embarrassing skills.

Gaming (RTS) (M/E) Int+2 [4]-12, Gaming (FPS) (M/E) Int+1 [2]-11, Gaming (RPG) Int [1]-10 Specialized: Gaming (Marvel Rivals) (M/E) Int+4 [12]-14, Gaming (TESV: Skyrim) (M/E) Int+3 [8]-13

While her physical hobbies had atrophied from lack of use, mostly thanks to being stuck inside because of COVID-33, and her professional skills had plateaued from a lack of drive and difficulty, her more couch potato skills had improved by leaps and bounds. Competitive gaming, especially multiplayer games, could get really, really intense, and for someone who actually enjoyed the difficulty and the skill level required, her skills had kept going up.

"They had good daily quests," she said out loud, sounding and feeling defensive despite no one being nearby to hear her argument. "Give me a break."

A single point represented about two hundred hours of intense study, practical use and training. For gaming, that only counted the situations where there was actual, deep interaction with the systems and actual difficulty. Mods, cheats and the like didn't count for much, while PvP counted for a lot. All told, her digital hobbies accounted for about fifty-four hundred hours of serious game play, nearly half was busy playing Marvel Rivals.

She had thousands more hours, either on dedicated RP servers, or modded so much there was no challenge.

Or...modded in other ways. Tucked into one of the pages, a note fell out, and on it was her name, her Loverslab account name, and a message.

We Know.

Slamming the book shut to avoid dying from embarrassment, she walked over to the standing stones, content to distract herself with the only other thing of interest within a kilometre of her. Three statues, each capable of...

'What are you guys going to give me?' she thought, walking over to the nearest one and resting her hand against it. Up popped a scroll of paper, brown and faded like an old school Morrowind popup. The words on it were in a font that looked like handwriting, despite having each character being identical with one another. Despite all her senses telling her that this wasn't natural and was possibly a hallucination, the paper still floated there.

The Warrior: Improves combat skills experience gain by 20%

That was about what Sarah had expected from them, being a complete imitation of Skyrim's Guardian stones. The other two were similar. She picked the thief stone, because while having magic and combat skills were both useful to staying alive, she didn't actually have any magic or combat skills to benefit from. There was also one final message that popped up.

Would you like to be reborn under a constellation?
Options available: The Lover, The Lord, The Mage

Unlike the last 'pop-up', this one had another note attached to it.

Important dates are important, whether they are birthdays, rebirth days or death days!

Sarah was half-aware that each constellation corresponded to a particular month. One of those Constellations was her...astrology sign, for lack of a better word, and would provide her with powers even if she wasn't technically born in Nirn.

She pondered, before picking The Mage. There were no tool tips to tell her what each of them did, but the Mage in game provided more magicka, whereas The Lover provided temporary paralysis powers via sexual assault, and The Lord provided healing with a side of fire weakness. In every Elder Scrolls game, The Mage only provided benefits.

When she selected it, the scroll wrapped itself up and popped out of existence, and suddenly, she could feel a steady thrum through her blood. She felt...power. Unadulterated, raw power flowing through her veins. It peaked when she looked over towards the guardian stones, then ceased just as suddenly, though her blood still felt hot.

The Mage: Increased MP +4, Magery 0 [13]

Her choice popped up in the book under the advantage section. It was strange that she hadn't felt the magic coming off the stones when she first got here, but she realized that not everyone in the Elder Scrolls had access to magic. She only got her magicka after getting The Mage birth-sign. It was only a game mechanic, or fantasy power fantasy rules that required every character having the option of being a mage. Having a warrior that couldn't cast spells because of the choices players made during character creation? Locking a player from content depending on their build? That was close to an actual RPG mechanic, and probably blasphemy at Bethesda.

Still, it was something she was happy for. It would be rather scary if every farmer and craftsman had access to magic powers to charm someone with brainwashing magic, or turn their empty hands into their own personal flamethrower. It would make the random spell casters that dotted Skyrim that much more shocking, but there were plenty of dangers in Skyrim that didn't come from magic.

She shivered, then frowned. She was forgetting something.

Taking a few steps away from the stones, it felt like someone had doused her in cold water as the magic of the stones left her. Shivering, she wondered if that was why Necromancer's always seemed to hide out around the stones in game, or if she was overthinking things again. All she knew for certain was that casting spells away from the stones would feel a lot more difficult, but would probably be a whole lot safer. Don't ask how she knew that, she just knew.

Looking down the road to where she knew Riverwood was, she wondered if there would be a wolf waiting for her. There were two in the game, which were scripted to be there as far as she could remember. She figured that she'd throw a rock at it if it showed up, or jump into the river that was much larger than the one in game. It wasn't the worst thing in Skyrim she'd face. After all, there were loads of...

Spiders. She forgot about the spiders.

She let out a nervous giggle as she felt the hairs on her arm stand up. She had, for the longest time, forgotten about the spiders in Skyrim, being a firm and full time supporter of the Bear mod that turned every spider in Skyrim into a T-posing bear. She highly doubted that every spider had been modified in such a blatant fashion, and the thought of pony sized spiders flinging webs, venom and babies made her sweat.

'I can't just stand here and wait until nightfall.' she thought, looking at the rising sun. It was almost noon.

She looked around at the scenery all around her. The clearing of the stones provided a rather good look at the surrounding lands, and besides the vast forest, large river she was sure she wouldn't make across and the mountains that stretched into the sky, there wasn't a building in sight. The thought of being alone in the wilderness after dark scared her into action.

With a lot of effort, she started walking.

'Please be a wolf.'

——

Sarah's arrival hadn't been a blip on the radar, or an announcement in a town square. It was more like a explosion in a valley. Lot's of echos, lots of sound, but not very clear or accurate. This made a few beings...nervous.

Down the road, unknown to Sarah, the wolf that had been waiting for her turned a corner, and waited. If the traveller was something worth keeping around, then a single wolf would be rather simple to counter, avoid or kill. It was a simple system to test an unknown, and one multiple deities might have used. If they survived a simple test, they were either a threat, or an opportunity. If they died...ah well. Most modern people wouldn't survive, but that was a bonus to most of the deities of Nirn.

The wolf wasn't supposed to be there, but then, neither was the boar.

In Skyrim, a single wolf was no threat to most inhabitants, but would have made mince meat of Sarah the accountant. So would a boar, but a boar was much more dangerous than a wolf, even towards an experienced Isekai transmigrator. Someone had obviously thought that one wolf wouldn't be enough, and had sent the boar as overkill. Someone wasn't happy there was someone walking around they couldn't see. Against even one or two adventurers, the boar would probably win.

The seven member strong wolf pack that had been nudged towards the road were not meant to be there, either. One boar against a pack?

The wolves ate their fill of boar.

Nice try, you gold bitch.

——————

a/n: Rewrote this chapter twice now, and I'm not sure how I like it. Obviously, it's a little bit more of an infodump than I'm comfortable with, and the first draft was lengthy. Had to clip a bunch of it. I am rolling her skills, although not nearly as much as I would actually playing an RPG. More to keep things random and interesting, and more generic.

Think Is she going to do well during this fight?, or a momentum style system, rather than rolling for hit and rolling damage, keeping track of HP, initiative and so on. GURPS has it's strengths, but being quick and easy isn't one of them.

Had the weekend off work and decided to write. That will change as I go into 5-10hr schedule that someone decided has to end during rush hour traffic. My work plus commute is now about thirteen and a half hours, leaving me with very little free time.

And I apologize for getting Threadmarks and Index mixed up. This is my first posting a story to this site.

 

[the_great_white_north]

Chapter 1.2

Skill used three times during session. Your Hiking skill may be increased.

That got a scowl from the woman, who was looking a little red as she walked. She wasn't burned, yet, but she knew that she'd be itching by nightfall. She may lack the ginger gene, but she still burned easily. The welt on her foot was going to hurt tomorrow, too, thanks to the cheap dress shoes she'd been wearing when she died.

"Come on," Sarah said to herself as she scanned the treeline. "It's gotta be here somewhere."

The first thing players ended up finding was a mine with bandits. Embershard Mine. It was a simple mine that, as far as Sarah remembered, had a single loading screen and some iron. A little dirt path that led to the entrance, shored up by wood to signal to the player it was a mine as opposed to a normal boring cave.

It took twenty seconds to run to it from the standing stones in game and so far, she'd been walking for exactly three hours since waking up. All around her, the sound of the forest echoed through the valley, and her eyes darted every which way searching for threats, or shapes moving through the trees. Every so often, her mind would remind her that spiders were excellent climbers, and she'd scan the tops of the trees as well.

"This must be what fighting Spiderman feels like," she muttered to herself. "No one ever looks up."

Not that she hadn't seen anything. She had spotted deer, rabbits, a couple of foxes or wild dogs, as well as many, many species of bird. Ravens, crows, seagulls and several others she'd never seen before, and that wasn't getting into the small little birds that everyone overlooked. Finches, woodpeckers, hummingbirds and various others that looked completely different from what she was used to. It was striking how many species could fit within such a small area; to a modern woman, it was like walking into prehistoric times.

She was kind of curious what era she arrived in, and also a little worried. She'd never played ESO, and the difference between the first era and the forth was something like several thousand years. A lot of things could happen in that time, and she didn't have photographic memory. There was no way she'd remember the lore of year, say 1E915 off by heart, if such a date even existed.

It was somewhat of a surprise when a single wolf walked into the middle of the road, not seeming to spot her as she came to a stop. Said wolf looked somewhat like a pudgy, lanky dog, with grey mangy fur and yellow eyes that seemed to lock onto her. It seemed surprised to see her.

"Get out of here," she said in a calm but firm tone. When it didn't move, she picked up a rock and tossed it, aiming towards the ground and not the wolf itself. She wasn't cruel. "Not food. Shoo."

The wolf gave off a slight growl, but turned and walked away. Unlike wolves in a game, in real life they weren't nameless mooks that would just mindlessly attack travellers on the road. A human was dangerous, especially in Skyrim, and most of the wildlife either stayed far away from them or came in overwhelming numbers.

A single woman walking along the road without a weapon in sight, yet not bothered by what she saw as a spicy stray dog, the wolf's mind screamed wizard, or witch, and decided caution was the better part of valour. Good ol' Darwinism and natural selection existed, even in Skyrim.

"That's right. Keep walking." she called after it before she started moving again.

It was barely a hundred metres when there was the sound of thunder above her head that sounded...odd. Like dice hitting the sky, Sarah paused and listened, but after a moment of nothing happening, continued on her way.

Unknown to Sarah, the rumble above her signaled a disposition roll of the wolves. To her it was just thunder and a slight headache, but the heavens above were watching, as if deciding her fate.

——

With magic in the very air, most animals were smarter than on Earth, but even the residents of Nirn, save perhaps some of the Bosmer, had no idea how much smarter.

Grey-Feet was younger than most of the wolves in his pack, but was lighter, too. He usually moved through the day, searching for prey while keeping predators away. For the others, him returning early was always a sign of food in the future, and his pack-mates were usually quick to get up.

All he got was a couple of whines from the sleepy, and apparently well fed wolves. He must have missed a successful hunt.

His sister was still up, gnawing at a bone with great glee even as he approached.

Swift-Tail! A human, alone and unarmed on the road! was the best translation a human could get. Hunt?

Humans never unarmed. she responded, even as she continued chewing her new toy. They need their outside teeth. Magic user. Make your hair burnt and smelly.

He didn't like the reminder. Even now his tail still sometimes felt like it was on fire. He didn't think the woman was magical, but no matter how hard he tried, his sister would not move from her spot, or part with her bone.

Mine. Get your own.

The others weren't much better, and as the wolf nudged another of his brothers, he got a very irritated, and rude response. Deciding that this required more authority than his position had, he went to his father. His father whined, although he finally woke. It took a little bit of cajoling, but he finally got his story out.

Already ate, was the approximate response. Sleepy.

Winter was almost over, and soon there would be plenty to eat, but the larger prey animals were still scarce, and extra food wouldn't hurt, especially with the females being pregnant. He tried again, getting a low growl.

Is it a large human?

He paused, thinking of the scrawny looking human, even for human standards.

No.

Don't wake me for anything smaller than an elk was the final response, before his father turned and fell back asleep.

——

It was another hour before she saw the first signs of civilization. A camp was ahead, with log cabins and a small wall, as well as a dock and what looked like a smithy. She figured she must have passed Embershard mine and somehow made it to Riverwood, which was a lot further than she though it'd be.

"There you...are..."

Except it wasn't Riverwood. It was much too small, and obviously a mining settlement.

Embershard mine was right in front of her, and it was very active and not housing bandits. From the outside it looked more like a fortified hamlet rather than a mine. The dirt path leading to the entrance was well trodden, and it was hard to tell where the road ended and the mine's work area started. Multiple buildings sprung around the area, and a low wicker wall was erected around the impromptu hamlet to keep wildlife out.

In addition to a log cabin, which probably housed the workers when they needed to sleep, there were several smaller buildings that looked like storage sheds, a smelter and an outdoor warehouse full of ores. There was even something that looked like a two-storey bar and/or brothel, though the scantily clad lady sitting outside in the sun didn't look like she was currently working, instead enjoying a meal with one of her more conservatively dressed colleagues as they chatted and laughed.

The mine shaft stood at the centre of the dirt road leading through the camp, and even as she stared, a minecart shot out, having been pushed out by a miner inside. Looking closer, she could see the rail tracks that were laid from wooden boards. One of the workers nudged the other, pointing towards Sarah with curiosity.

To her left, several workers were loading carts and wheelbarrows full of ore onto a makeshift barge made from rough logs strung together with twine. It didn't have sails or rigging, and the raw logs reminded her of old logging photos of men steering logs down a river.

There weren't guards, although one of the men loading the barge looked up at her, gave a wave, and started walking towards her. He was big. White, with blonde hair combed into a ponytail and his beard grown out into a moustache and sideburns. He looked older, but his arms looked like solid muscle from a life of lifting stones, and the bright blue paint or ink made him much more intimidating.

As he approached, his eyes roamed the surrounding area behind her, no doubt looking for signs of an ambush. He had a pick attached to his waist, and it looked like he knew how to use it.

And for some strange reason, the man wasn't wearing a shirt. None of the workers were wearing shirts.

"Heill reogen." the man said aloud, causing Sarah to frown. "Ertu tindur?"

Hail (Joe) Rogan. Are you on Tinder? was the unhelpful translation Sarah's mind supplied her. Internally, she cursed Sheogorath, deciding he was as good an excuse as any for her being Isekaid without a language perk.

"Don't suppose you speak english?" she asked, getting a confused look from the bigger man.

"Eh, Tamrielii?"

"I'm sorry, I don't speak Cyrodilic either." she said, shaking her head side to side. "I don't suppose you can point me towards Riverwood? Town?"

What followed was a brief exchange of gestures and an advanced game of Pictionary. It was hard to tell, but Sarah was pretty sure he understood what was being asked, although, in her opinion, Elf Squawg sounded a lot more badass of a name than Riverwood.

The big man exchanged a look behind him with another, paler man that might have been an imperial, who said something back to him. There was a shake of the head, then some more words, followed by a conversation that involved pointing at Sarah's shoes.

"Is the road collapsed? Bandits? Wolves?" she asked, getting a puzzled look from the two men. "You know, wolves. AWOOOH."

She mimed howling to the moon, only to get a grim expression from the Imperial. He gestured for her to do it again.

"AWOOOH. AWOOOO—oh, wait, your fucking with me, aren't you?" she asked, getting a laugh out of several other men who had been listening in. A couple more had walked out of the mine, and for some reason, none of them had a shirt on, either. "Right. So, if it isn't wolves, why can't I go to Ri—sorry, Elf Skwauw?"

The Imperial looked down at her feet, then gestured, then pointed, then pointed towards Riverwood, or the direction Sarah was guessing Riverwood was located in.

"Yeah? I'm going to walk it. It's not that far."

It was the big Nord who said something, then held up his hand with one finger up.

"Ein." Two fingers. "Teh." Three. "θrir." He did something with his mouth and tongue, making a sound that wasn't meant for English.

He continued. Four fingers. "Fjór"

'Oh, that one sounded Norwegian.'

They were surprisingly easy to remember, and they almost sounded like an offshoot of English. Despite that, Sarah frowned at the impromptu language session.

"Ein—atta."

"I'm sorry, but eighteen what? Is that a distance?"

"Deildir." the man said, and Sarah squinted at him, making sure he knew how helpful that was.

It was the Imperial man that had a solution. He took one, dramatic step, followed by another one.

"Ein." He took two more steps. "Teh."

"Paces?" she asked, going down to the ground and writing out a pace. It was about five feet, give or take, but it seemed that a rough estimate was all that the men were willing to do. "How many...of that to Elves Skawg?"

"Hr'rir—tíu mille passum."

Sarah noted it almost sounded Latin, but not quite, which man sense because Imperials were always somewhat roman-adjacent in the older games, and only generic Western European in Skyrim. Sarah had no idea why they would change it, but to each their own.

Writing out one through to ten, with a single dot next to one, and ten carefully spaced dots next to ten, she pointed. The Imperial corrected her math. One thousand paces was approximately a mile, or whatever their equivalent of a mile was.

'A league?' she thought, double checking her calculation, even as the men watched her work it out.

"Three and ten?" she asked again, pointing to each number. "Thirteen miles?"

The man shook his head and corrected her.

"Thirty?" she repeated. "Thirty fucking miles to Riverwood?"

This was definitely not a game world, and Sarah was learning that in a rather safe way. Being told.

Thirty miles, close to fifty kilometres, or a forty-five minute drive on mountainous roads was one thing. Walking through Skyrim with no weapon, no magic and no survival skills for close to twenty-four hours continuously was something completely different, and not something she wasn't looking forward to, to say the least.

"How do you walk thirty miles to work?" she asked, pointing towards the mine, only to get a shrug and a gesture to the camp dorms. "Oh, alright. So you guys walk thirty miles once a month or season, or something?"

She mimed out walking, and then pointed towards the nearest miner, then towards town.

Again, the Imperial looking man shook his head, smiling the entire time.

"What's so funny?" only to get a few more laughs when the man turned and told them the joke before Sarah. "What?"

Even the big Nord was trying very hard not to laugh, but all that did was make his shoulders jump up and down in fits. He pointed behind her, towards some tarps that were covering something wooden, with a curved top and a wider bottom.

Boats. They didn't walk, because why the hell would anyone walk thirty miles when there was a river right there?

"I, err, don't suppose I can get a lift?"

 

[the_great_white_north]

Chapter 1.3 - Embershard Mine

The sun had long reached it's highest point sometime during the walk, and was already close to setting as she was put within the saloon. With it being close to the winter solstice, the days were short and besides the brief heat of the midday sun, was starting to cool enough that the workers started putting on shirts, if only to be modest. The ones doing most of the heavy lifting were still bare, and Sarah had the impression that the shirts came right back off as soon as they were out of view in the shaft.

One of the men, an older but skinnier looking Nord, was currently keeping her company inside the brothel as they figured out what to do with her. It was definitely a brothel mixed with a western saloon, mixed further with a mead hall and cafeteria, although the workers were all on duty and therefor it was mostly just the ladies cleaning up the tables and stocking the shelves with clean bowls and cutlery. There was one older cook in the back making something that smelled delicious, but she hadn't seen more than a passing glimpse of the matron.

"You not going to put a shirt on?" Sarah asked the older man who was made to watch her. "You'll poke someone's eyes out."

The man didn't react to her, having no understanding of what she was saying. She mimed poking her own eye, then pointed down to his bare chest. He chuckled, then threw a linen tunic over himself. She figured he was just being polite, as he didn't fasten it up.

It wasn't that the man was unattractive, even with him looking like he was in his late fifties to early sixties, but there was only so much hair Sarah could take. The man had hairs growing on his hairs, and she wondered if his wife ever woke up with hair in her teeth.

"Gunr." he said, pointing to himself, distracting her.

"Sarah." she replied, pointing to herself.

He asked something, then mimed eating something. Sarah replied with opening up her pocket inside out and showing that it was empty. He got up, and went to grab something anyways.

The language barrier was getting annoying, but there was little she could do besides start learning. Unless the system provided her with a useful language perk, or a universal translator, the old fashioned way was...

'Hang on,' she thought. 'Why can't I do just that?'

Pulling out her book from her jacket, she opened it up and skimmed over towards the skill page. Taping the page, she got out a piece of a branch she'd found on the ground, and tried to make a mark. Nothing happened. She then pricked her finger, and used the blood to write. This, at least, got something to happen.

"Language," she muttered. "Language skills, language..."

It wasn't a flash of inspiration, but it was like someone had sat her down and listed out a few options, although she couldn't remember where or who did this, she just knew her options, as well as what form payment would take. Her unspent points were at the top, just waiting for her to spend on something.

The ink on the page shifted, and there were more words written underneath.

New Advantages:
High TL 4 [20]
System User [15]
Witching Hour [4]
Celestial Events [1]
Signature Gear: The Tome of the Planeswalker [1]

New Disadvantages:
Wealth (Dead Broke) [-25]
Social Stigma (Foreigner) [-5]
Status -1 [-5]
???

There was no message to accept or decline, and the system just added whatever it wanted. Sarah watched as a counter at the top of the screen read unspent CP disappeared in a flash. Even after the points were spent, there was no explanation for the question marks.

'Goddamn it Todd! Stop updating your decades old game!' she thought loudly. 'You're breaking my System!'

The price seemed steep to Sarah, and there was no explanation to what each entailed. The disadvantages, at least, were rather simple. She was a foreigner, in a land that didn't like outsiders much, and she was fucking broke. She didn't have a single coin, or septim, in her name. The High TL was something new, and her mind mused at the possible meaning.

"Tech level?" she muttered.

It made a certain sense in her mind. She was from a future society, as far as Skyrim was concerned. It didn't matter much, as Sarah had no idea how most technology worked on a basic level, let alone an engineering one. She wasn't going to single handedly uplift Skyrim into a better world by herself, especially as a nobody stranger that just showed up.

There was movement, and she went to put the Tome away as Gunr came with a bowl of stew and some drink. He sat it down, said something. He looked at the book, but said nothing as Sarah moved to put it away.

"Thank you." she answered back, not quite sure what the best way forward was.

There were now several people inside the saloon, and a couple of miners had spotted her book as she had put it away, but Sarah thought nothing of it. Sarah was used to mass produced pages and was therefor unaware of just how expensive such a book looked to an outsider. It was expensive, but that was a whole separate issue.

She ate the stew, which was an onion, barley and carrot stew with a few bits of what might have been meat if you squinted, as the man in front of her eyed her for sometime.

He wasn't as big as the first Nord, and might have been part Breton, with a bald spot forming on the front of his head. Skinny as he was, he was still muscular, and his baldness didn't seem to affect his chest hairs.

He said something, and Sarah had to make a gesture to get him to repeat it in a different way.

Where are you from?

Or where did you come from, or where were you born. Or what race. It was all very confusing.

"Vancouver, British Columbia." she said after a while. "Canada. Um, Earth."

The man stared at her for a long time, dissecting her words.

"This is...Skyrim?"

The man nodded. Thankfully, the English pronunciation of the province was similar enough.

"Skyrim is like British Columbia. A province of a larger nation, Canada." she explained, using her hands to make a bigger circle. "Skyrim is a part of the Empire. The Empire is like Canada. Follow?"

The man shook his head, saying a couple words, but Sarah made out Canada and British Columbia.

"That's because..." she paused, unsure for a moment whether she should talk about her Isekai status. Most fiction, and the fanbase, thought that was a bad idea, for several reasons. The most common reason involved the local inquisition coming and burning the person at the stake, but the local inquisition was the Thalmor, and they were bad news, no matter what.

"Earth is like Nirn. Mundus."

There was a flicker of confusion from the older man.

"Earth liksom Tamriel?" the man questioned, sounding like a correction.

"No, Tamriel like North America. Continent. Tamriel and..." she stopped, trying to remember the lore correctly. "Akavir are continents. Europe is a continent. Asia is a continent. Earth is a planet. Nirn is a planet."

For an old miner who got the short straw, he caught on quick to what Sarah was saying.

"Hver?"

It was a question, and a simple one, meaning it was one of who, what, where, when, why and how. Sarah was leaning towards the last two being the correct one.

Of course, there was one answer that answered four of them at once.

"Sheogorath."

The effect was immediate. The man straightened, then recoiled as his mind caught up to the English pronunciation of a very familiar word.

There was a litany of words that came from the man's mouth, and Sarah was half-sure she learned a few choice Nordic swears just then.

"Var?"

"He probably thought it was funny," she answered. "You know, ha-ha-ha sort of funny."

There was a ruckus from outside as someone outside started laughing.

"Like that. Funny."

Sarah wasn't laughing, and Gunr understood completely. What Sheogorath finds funny is not something most would laugh at.

——

With the newfound foreigner within one of the guest rooms that the ladies set up, Gunr, Tommen and Cestius discussed what to do in their usual way, over a bit of alcohol.

"I don't like it."

It was the first thing the large old Nord said, starting their impromptu meeting.

"No shit?" Cestius said, the Imperial drinking his cheap wine rather quickly. "Four whole words, Tommen? You usually aren't so talkative."

That got a glare from the big Nord, though he added nothing else. He said what he said, and he meant every word.

"She's not all that bad," Gunr started, getting a smile from the Imperial. "What? She isn't."

"The women looks like she's turning into a dreugh. Didn't know you liked them like that."

"Some people burn easily," he argued, before sputtering. "I'm also married. Happily married."

"With a whole legion of kids, yes, I've heard." Cestius responded, before his tone got more serious. "The men have been talking."

"You didn't actually tell them about...you know..."

"I thought you would have known me better by now Gunr," the man answered, sounding somewhat irritated by the question. "But some of them might have heard, and it doesn't stop them from forming their own guesses."

"What have the men been saying?" Tommen asked, the old Nord having stared at his fortified ale and not drinking a drop since the conversation started.

"They think she might be a Thalmor spy. That, or an Imperial one."

"That has to be the dumbest thing they could of thought," Gunr argued. "A spy would at least know the language."

Cestius nodded. "A spy wouldn't invoke a Daedric Prince's name in their cover story, either. Still, people are cautious. The war wasn't that long ago."

They all hummed, and drank their drinks in silence, save Tommen, who still stared at his own drink. The sound of the workers going to bed was a lack of laughter and noise, and strangely even the girls had decided that their energy was better spent sleeping than working late, leaving the three alone within the hall.

Candles were put out first, then the hearths were left to die on their own. Most of the miners were Nords, and weren't bothered by the cold, with some even sleeping in the nude to better deal with this strange heat wave. Snow melt, and they were barely into Sun's Dawn. There was even talk of going home early to start planting.

"She was heading towards Riverwood?" Tommen asked, not looking at Gunr as he talked. "What for?"

"She's familiar with the name, although it sounds like she's heard it second or third hand. Perhaps she thinks it's bigger? The College would be a better destination for her, given her...status."

"The College hasn't been the same since the collapse," Cestius cautioned. "There's talk that their numbers are at an all-time low."

"It's on the other side of the province," Tommen added. "She'd never make it on her own."

"A temple would be better for her," Gunr said between sips. "Perhaps one of Stendarr or Mara—"

Gunr trailed off as he looked outside the large window framing the wall. It held no glass. Most of the men here were Nords and weren't bothered by a little northern breeze, but tonight it was warm enough that not even the Imperial complained enough to shut the window's wooden panels.

The camp had descended into complete and utter silence by now, and only the call of a distant owl was heard. Gunr stared out the window, searching for the owl in question, though his eyes never seemed to find it.

"I can take her in," Gunr said, surprising the others. His wife would not be too happy with her husband returning with another woman. "I don't think she chose to come here. She's not at fault. I can afford to house her for a few weeks. A month or two, if necessary."

"Are you sure? I know things have been good for your family, and for the mine, but an extra mouth to feed is still an extra mouth, and the woman doesn't strike me as someone who could hunt or craft." Tommen asked, knowing the man well enough that he didn't have to ask what had changed his mind.

"Charity is a virtue. One I've taken for granted many a times."

"Charity? That what you're calling it? I don't think Aevr wants to share you with another woman." Cestius joked.

"She's not dumb. She obviously knows her numbers," Gunr argued, ignoring the Imperial. "She just needs to gain her bearings and make a name for herself."

"You realize that Palagius' new lord has a vested, personal interest in the woman?"

"I'm sure the Daedra have looked at all of us, at one point in our lives. It doesn't seem right to cast her out for reasons outside her control."

None of the men in the table bothered with arguing further on the topic. The man's mind was made up, and when he ventured home in the morning, he'd be bringing her in tow. There wasn't even enough time to send a letter to his wife before he'd show up with a foreign lady. Hopefully, she wasn't pregnant when the mad god delivered her to Skyrim. Gods help him if she was; Aevr was no slouch with a knife.

Gunr was the first to leave, giving each of them a drawn out goodbye as he knew they would most likely not be awake when he left. With just the two of them left, Cestius finished his drink next, cleaning his cup and dish in the dark tavern with well-practised efficiency. Soon, the man stood across his table, ready to leave and only his Imperial manners making him wait for his friend to finish or dismiss him.

Tommen didn't stand up immediately. He sat in his chair, thinking about something that was bothering him, but it was hard to figure out what it was. When it finally came to him, he spoke.

"What day is Sheogorath's summoning day?"

Cestius drummed the table, thinking.

"I don't think he has one, officially. He just shows up when it suits him, but if I had to pick a date...Palagius' day, probably."

Tommen's eyes tore from his drink. "That's today."

Cestius didn't react, save for a slight widening of his eyes. He was composed enough not to mention the Daedra's name aloud during his summoning day.

"So it is." he said, straightening himself and walking towards the door. "Goodnight, Tommen. Try not to think too hard."

The old Nord did indeed sit there thinking to himself in the dark. Outside, the owl continued to hoot it's tune, even as a wolf broke in with a tune of it's own. His home was beautiful at night, and under the light of the moons it turned almost into a different world. He could already see the glowing light of Moon-Moths in the darkness, illuminated by the faint aurora above.

He wasn't one for omens, but he knew the gods worked in mysterious ways. He wondered what reasoning they had for sending a woman who looked softer than an elf into the wilderness of Skyrim.

In one fluid motion, he chugged his drink down and placed the cup softly on the table, gathering himself and walking out into the cold air towards his tent. He was almost there when he glanced back and up towards the tavern's upper floor. In the moonlight, through one of the few pieces of glass on the building, a shape could be seen. The woman was still up, it seemed, reading a book of all things.

He frowned. They didn't have books at the mine.

A wolf howled.

He shook his head, even as he ducked into his tent for the night. "I'm too old for this shit."

——

The upstairs of the saloon was completely separate from the rest of the building. There was no internal stairwell, requiring anyone going upstairs to use the external staircase that had been hastily erected behind the building, and rather poorly. Raw logs, sawed in half and still wet when Sarah had made her dangerous trek up in the dark. Coupled with each step being a slightly different height from one another, and some having an obvious slant or knot sticking out, she had decided that she wasn't coming down till morning.

Once she was inside, she found it rather warmer than the downstairs. The door was actually fitted properly, and a second door was closed that stopped the draft from entering. The windows, while smaller than downstairs, had actual glass in them, cut in small, square pieces and held together with a metal frame. It gave the room light, but stopped the heat from the central hearth from escaping. The downstairs hearth had a vent in the floor that allowed some of the heat to travel upwards, but one of the servers also came in with a pot of charcoals that she threw into a brazier, adding to the heat.

Each "room" was only separated with a simple partition, and for most of the evening, Sarah was worried she'd hear and smell sex from her own cubby. Strangely, either the girls were respectful and kept it quiet, or they didn't have a lot of work with the miners tonight. That, or she'd horribly misconstrued their job.

In her room, which was as private as any for the time period, Sarah looked over her book. It had changed at some point in the night, and she wasn't sure why.

Of course, she wasn't very gifted in astronomy, and she wasn't looking out the window at the moment. If she did, she might have noticed a few curious things.

The Witching Hour.
You have 55 minutes remaining.

The writing was written in red, and the time ticked by the more she looked at it. She had no idea what the countdown was for, but the more she looked at it, the more it bothered her. Despite her feelings, she didn't close the book. Something about this time felt right in her mind, and she wasn't going to dismiss the possibility that this was an important moment in her golden finger she'd need later on.

The Witching Hour. It would sound scary, if it wasn't in the advantage page.

Looking at her character screen, the new additions were written in red ink, looking like corrections on a paper rather than additions to her soul. High TL, System User, Witching Hour, Celestial Events and Signature Gear. To someone who played with GURPS, it might have meant something to Sarah, but right now it was just meaningless English words put together with a price tag.

Picking up a twig she had found on the floor, she scratch something into the paper. Red ink appeared from the tip.

'Did it give me a blood quill?' she wondered, looking at the red, splotchy word she'd attempted to write with the stick. It looked like a child's writing, but it was legible and very much looking like blood. Looking at her wrist, she was happy to note that her attempt hadn't carved words onto her own body.

Pursing her lips, she tried what all good programmers do when faced with a system they know nothing about.

?

The pages flipped towards the back, and blank pages that had definitely not been there before were now in front of her.

Write an advantage, disadvantage, skill or power, followed by a ? mark.

Starting off small, she wrote System User? into the page. Once again, red ink came out.

It was...basically what she expected. If she still wanted to be able to modify or even look at her own skills and abilities, then she needed to spend fifteen points on the advantage. The system had decided that the choice was obvious, and spent the points automatically. For Sarah, it was annoying, but it was also something she definitely would of accepted. Just seeing her own stats was a bonus.

The next on the list was the witching Hour, which sounded scary, but actually was rather good. Every evening, when the veil was thinnest (which the Tome said was somewhere between midnight and three-thirty, depending), Sarah would be able to modify her character sheet much more freely with the points she somehow accumulated. Currently, it was the witching hour, and accounting for points the system already spent, she had four remaining.

There were so many options, and so little time to look through it all, but the system was kind enough to filter what was hopelessly out of her reach and only show the stuff that she could select, and those just slightly out of reach.

She glanced at the divider that separated her from the two working girls, the cook lady and the launderer that also shared the space. No noise came from their rooms, save a bit of snoring from the old cook. She'd have plenty of time to figure things out, which was good. Ten points wasn't a whole lot, but it opened up several options.

'I need something to get me money, keep me alive and...' she thought for a moment. 'Get back to Vancouver, preferably quickly. Mark won't wait around forever if he thinks I'm dead.'

Attributes, traits, skills and quirks may be modified:
-During the Witching Hour,
-During special dates
-During Celestial events, such as Conjunctions or Stelliums

You may freely upgrade any skill, trait or ability, so long as:
-You have worked to improve it, or,
-You have used it in an adventure, or,
-You have used it in a difficult manner and succeeded, or,
-You have talent related to it.

You may upgrade certain traits, powers or skills without these requirements on certain days, in certain places, using certain rituals. The ability gained depends on the ritual in question.

She read it twice, committing to memory what it was asking for, and what she was capable of delivering. From what she understood, it allowed her to upgrade some things like Morrowind and Skyrim. By doing it. Other times, she'd be able to upgrade things by...

'What the hell is a Sellium?' she wondered.

Since she was clueless as to Celestial mechanics, her skills and abilities would mostly be improved by just doing something over and over again. It was limiting, but it also meant that Sarah would benefit from picking a route, and sticking with it.

She immediately thought of a focus in archery and stealth. The trap of stealth archery was that eliminating enemies from a distance, clandestinely, was a great way to make the game swing more in favour of the player without overwhelming them with mobs of people attacking at once, but it was mostly like that because fighting with weapons was boring, and Bethesda had somehow made magic broken. The bad kind of broken, as opposed to the good kind. Archery, however, required just enough skill to make it interesting, while still being useful at every level of the game.

It wouldn't be perfect, though. Unlike in a game, her bow couldn't parry a sword, and she wasn't that great at running backwards while shooting one. She couldn't hold a thousand arrows in a gamer inventory, either. Swords were something she'd probably have to learn regardless, since most people in this world had at least some sort of martial training in their youth, and getting killed by some peasant farmer turned bandit would be rather embarrassing. Magic, however...

'If I could level up restoration or illusion high enough, I probably won't even have to kill anyone.' she thought, looking at one of her disadvantages, Reluctant Killer, with a scowl. 'Although, it shouldn't be that bad to take a life. People do it all the time.'

Most people had no idea how they would react to taking a life, and most would not handle it well even if it was fully justified. Sarah had a magic Tome that told her exactly how she'd react but like most people, she thought she'd handle it better.

Hiking was a skill she had used, and her character sheet informed her she had '3/200', whatever that meant in terms of hours or experience points, meaning she was nowhere closer to being able to march herself to Riverwood by herself. The fact that it was at the top of the list of skills she could gain or upgrade, and the one she had used the most in the past day, spoke volumes.

Below it, there were several other skills that she'd used in one form or another, as well as a few attributes, traits and so forth.

Tamrielic was listed as a language she was learning, as was Nordic. It stood at one 'experience points' in each, out of two hundred. In plain English, it was rather shit, and Sarah added language to the list of things she needed to practice as much as possible.

'Mind Block...' she thought as she looked at the skill in question. 'Fucking Sheogorath.'

There were only so many people she had met so far, and only one of them for sure had read her mind, hence the skill was one of several that she was allowed to upgrade with points. She whispered a few choice curses in English before moving on.

Survival (Woodland), Animal Handling (Canines), and Gesture were skills she wasn't expecting, even though she really should have. At this point, with so few actions of hers to grasp at, the system counted her throwing a stone towards a wolf as enough of an excuse to unlock upgrading up the Throwing skill. It really was trying to help her, as much as it's limited form could.

Linguistics she did expect, and it was the system that was surprised by it's inclusion. Normally, such complicated skills are reserved for someone learning at a higher education, not from winging it in the boonies. To somehow gain access to it...

It was the sound of wood being whittled that was the first clue that someone was in her room. Sarah looked around, and found the man carving something with a rather large and mean looking blade, being very careful not to get shavings onto his suit.

"Sheogorath," Sarah said out loud, looking over at the man who continued to work. "What are you doing in my room?"

"Bringing you your gift, of course!" he said, loudly, yet not a single other person stirred.

"I don't want your gift."

"Oh, my company is my gift to you," he said quickly. "This isn't my gift. I'm just passing it along."

"Either way, I don't want it."

"But you already accepted it, my dear! What was the word? Your Celestial whats-its-face!"

She blinked, not entirely trusting her ears. "I thought the Tome and system was my golden finger?"

"Oh, you had one. I just let you access it earlier to keep you alive."

"But...it didn't do anything?"

"Didn't it?"

Sarah's immediate answer was no, but a part of her realized that something had happened, even if she didn't know what it was. Not that she was going to admit that out loud.

"You're welcome!" he said, continuing his work. Another shaving fell from his hand and landed on the floor, but nothing seemed to stick. It definitely wasn't wood. "Just give me a moment. Have to manually make it compatible."

Sarah sat herself more upright as she watched him work, even as she looked over the Tome some more. There were more things she wanted to explore, but she felt that whatever the Mad God was doing was much more important. There would be other nights.

Hopefully.

"Ah, there we go! Finished!"

The object in question didn't look like much. A glowy orb of some sort of energy that didn't light the room, didn't give off heat, and didn't even so much as hum, but radiated something that felt like a higher power.

"Now, where to put it?"

"What is it?"

"A power that improves your skills at making or repairing things..." he said somewhat eagerly. "By one! Which, now that I say it out loud, doesn't sound all too impressive."

He looked over at Sarah, then frowned.

"Strange? I thought you had more points to spend?" he said, looking down at her. "Ah, well, a few more disadvantages won't hurt anyone."

"Wait a minute. I have to pay for my golden finger?" she asked. "Each roll?"

"Of course! That's how they work, right?"

"But you have the power already in your hand," she reasoned. "I have to pay for them twice?"

"Well, yes. Otherwise it'd be incompatible with your System!" he answered. "GURPS has it's own way of calculating the cost of powers. It's all rather well balanced for what it is, though depending on who's running the show, you can get away with a lot. Almost as much as a Gamer System!"

"But...how the hell am I supposed to stop Alduin with a system that double bills me?" she asked.

He stopped for a second, looking at her with a confused expression.

"You really aren't taking the whole you aren't a part of destiny thing really well, are you?" he said with a serious expression, one that made Sarah nervous. "You are a hundred point NPC character, at best. You aren't the Hero, and you aren't the Villain; you aren't anything in this world. Destiny has no ability to touch you here. No plot armour or fate bullshit to muck up your life."

"But Miraak—"

"Is a nine-hundred point character, with millennia of experience, one of my brother's on his side, an army at his beck and call, powerful magic and destiny behind him." he continued. "Alduin is even stronger, although more restricted in his actions, in a Cthulhu sense. He's a god, trapped in a dragon's body."

And just like that, the seriousness of the moment was gone. Sarah wondered if the Hero of Kvatch was in there, somewhere, and had taken control for just a moment.

There was something else that was bothering her, however...

"It's somewhat ironic, but Harkin is the weakest of the major threats, what with being a cuck to Molag—"

"Hang on! Did you give me a system that was incompatible with the system I already had? How is that helpful?"

"It really isn't. Now hold still. This is delicate work, and there isn't much time. Not much time at all. Oh, I hate a deadline."

"Now wait just a second—"

"This will actually be easier if you—GO TO SLEEP!"

Words of Power were common among deities, and the Elder Scolls universe was no exception. What else was a Dragon Shout but a Word, just shouted really loudly and obnoxiously at the enemy? Mortals always had the power to fight off a god's power, whether that was a command or an affliction. It was one of the powers that the Aedra and those similar to them blessed mortals with. However, after a full day of walking and with the stress of being isekaid, Sarah put up little resistance. Her head hit the straw pillow, and she went to sleep with a snore.

The orb entered her, and Sheogorath made a few additions to the Tome, content that his power would allow him to modify it without authority, even during a normal night. For him, this wasn't a normal night.

The Tome fought him but eventually succumbed. It, too, wasn't powerful enough to stop him, yet.

A new line appeared at the bottom of her page, under the Disadvantage section.

???
???
???

Three new disadvantages. It wasn't great, but like all other things Sheogorath did, it was more out of boredom than anything malicious. He took one look at the second line, harrumphed, before plastering on a smile. It was more interesting, even if it worked against him, and what was life without a little adversity among siblings?

"A good night's work!" he said, before disappearing silently. The countdown finished, and the Witching Hour was over, leaving Sarah to snore the rest of the night away.

___

a/n: So I had a lot of extra time, because I was home sick. Decided to write this one out in the meantime. There's only so much Neo Citron one person can drink.

 

[Uthalem]

Excellent. Most people get rather queer when I mention their foreknowledge is useless.

Click to shrink...

This implies he has done this before?

Enjoying this so far, please keep it up!

 

[pendevin]

Sarah is so confused by gurps (and I am too). that said I really like this so far.

 

[the_great_white_north]

Chapter 1.4

Why Walk, When You Can Bob?

Gruwin moved through the building with quiet steps, aware that most of the people here were dead to the world, the wrong noise could rouse them faster than he could get out. Everyone here knew his face, having passed by several days ago and camped along the road, and if he was caught here...

Even without Hold guards, there were too many miners to fight. Even if only the girls woke, he'd be hard pressed to silence them before one of them screamed her head off. He contemplated running a dagger through their necks before they ever got a chance to wake, but stayed his hand. There was still a chance one of them would wake the others, and even if he succeeded, the miners wouldn't let him get far.

Looking into one of the rooms, he spotted the strange pale women that he'd spotted walking through the wood alone. She was decently pretty, although that might have been more about her exotic looks rather than anything objective. Her clothes were strange, too. A jacket that seemed far too thin to protect someone from anything besides a light breeze, trousers made from a material he couldn't describe, and shoes that just barely fit the definition of a shoe. They were well made, but nothing about her clothing was something a noblewoman would be caught dead in.

Her book, however, was something else. He had no idea what was in it, or what topic it entailed, but the book was very expensively made, and his fence would no doubt find a buyer rather easily. He thought it'd be difficult, or that the woman would have hid it better, but there it was, just laying on her stomach as she snored. Even her arms, which he expected to be clutching it in her sleep, just lay lazily above her head.

'Far too easy.' he thought as he grabbed the book and made his way to the door. She barely moved, although her snore hitched for a second. He clutched his dagger tightly, but she went straight back to sleep.

With the book, several bits of jewellery from one of the girls, as well as some expensive articles of clothing, this haul was looking rather profitable. At least eight hundred septims immediately for a weeks worth of work, and another twenty thousand if he could fine a buyer for the jewels. It wasn't great, but it was technically more than a miner would make, and much easier on the body.

Safer, too, so long as no one caught him.

Making his way through the forest instead of the road, he walked with no light. He didn't want to be seen, after all, especially after spending the past week on the road, and his eyes were well adjusted to the low light of twilight.

The book thrummed with energy, although it was energy that he, as someone born under The Shadow, was ill equipped to sense. He was a simple Nord, but that couldn't be held against him. Even an Altmer born under any of The Mage's charges would be hard pressed to notice Celestial magic, especially such a small, innocuous amount.

Signature Gear was such a simple trait that most Celestial Users always overlooked, but it's effect on reality was so absolute that it was basically one step away from fiat backing. So long as the user did not willingly, through no trickery or deceit, give up the item under it's protection, they would never 'lose' it. It didn't matter the method of how one 'lost' it. Damaged, misplaced, stolen or even just stained, the user would always get it back, with only a mild inconvenience in funds or wasted time.

A Signature Katana (always a favourite) getting damaged could be repaired. Doesn't matter that a normal repair job would create fractures in the metal. This repair job restores it to perfect condition, even if it was shattered into a thousand pieces. Repairs are never an issue.

Your favourite wasteland rifle isn't manufactured anymore? Never seems to breakdown in any way that can't be fixed with scrap parts and grit. Even regular maintenance isn't an issue.

Got your dragon bone bow confiscated by the guards? It's in the chest in the next room. For some reason, the guards think this is enough distance from you, and the bow never gets sent off to a vault somewhere.

Lose your magic staff? It's hanging in the local pawnshop with a $20 sticker hanging from it. No one bats an eye as you buy it, except perhaps to tell you your Merlin costume sucks, all while pointing out it's July, not October.

Lose your wand? A bird thinks it'd make great nesting material. Said nest just happens to be above your front stoop.

Whether it was a famous hammer of a Norse God, or a wand fitted to a specific wizard, such a thing assured that the user did not go without their favourite toy for long. For normal items, this could be overwritten by a god or being strong enough, or through enough happenstance that the Celestial Powers would take pity and refund the points rather than try and engineer a scenario in which the user got their item back.

The Tome, though, was anything but normal.

Gruwin paused, his well honed danger sense telling him something was off. If he'd used the road, he might have spotted the shadow beside him stopped slightly after him. If he'd fled east, or south, he might have avoided the shadows entirely.

It was a shame for him that wolves didn't need their eyes to hunt.

——

The morning came quickly, and Sarah was gently woken up by one of the girls at some time between the middle of the night and too damn early o'clock. The sun wasn't even a gleam on the horizon, but men were already getting ready to move downriver, which meant that Sarah had to get up and prepare things with them. She wasn't riding for free.

She hissed as the sunburn from yesterday flared up, causing her to shift uncomfortably on her bed, before she realized there was someone speaking to her. The girl who woke her said something, and Sarah had a moment of clarity when she reached down for the Tome, and found nothing there.

"What the fuck?" she said out loud, before ruffling the sheets and blankets, then checked under the pillows, then under the bed. Panic started to set in when she started searching the drawers and found nothing.

"Hey," she called out to one of the girls. "Have you seem my book?"

The girl stared at her, then Sarah started miming opening a book, then holding and reading a book. The woman shook her head.

She felt herself start to shake. Her golden finger, gone on the very first night. She didn't know whether to start crying, or tearing the place apart looking for it.

"Sarah," a voice said, and Gunr was standing there looking at her strangely. He said something else that sounded vaguely like "Er du ok?"

She shook her head, gesturing the act of turning a page, then pointed at her bed.

"Tyv." he answered, causing one of the girls to rush over to her own room.

'Looks like I got mugged my first night.' she said as she spotted the muddy boot prints that lead to her door. That led to a couple other doors, too.

There was a lot of shouting and screaming from the next room as one of the working girls started moving and shifting things, then throwing things. She had decided to multitask, and was currently crying, while tearing the place apart.

From the looks of things, at least to those unaware, Sarah had gotten off rather easy. A book, even a fancy book, compared to a couple generations of jewellery in the family, and likely the only stored wealth the girl had. There were many other things stolen, mostly from the girls, including her skirts and underwear she had in her dresser, which meant someone had come into the rooms at night while everyone was asleep.

'I suppose it could have been worse.' Sarah thought, thinking of all the killers, vampires, bandits and the like in game. Those were only the PG-13 threats she could think of off the top of her head, and they'd only kill someone. 'Much worse.'

The barracks or log cabins were searched, and a set of footprints were found at the edge of camp heading out into the forest, acquitting all the miners of the crime. It was decided that the thief probably came and left in the middle of the night, and that there'd be a low chance of them being found.

It was frustrating, but not something she'd be able to fix anytime soon. Hopefully, Sarah hoped it'd be useless to the thief, being in English and tied to Sarah's soul. There was always the chance the thief could modify somethings and give Sarah warts or something, but a part of her was really, really fine with how things turned out. Strangely fine.

It was weird, and it was kinda freaking her out how she wasn't freaking out, if that made any sense.

It was as if...

If I walked that way, she thought, looking over towards a small goat trail to the west of camp.

She shook her head. Even if she found the thief, she was unarmed and had some Judo classes she'd learned when she was ten, against someone who had no qualm about walking into a camp full of burly miners and robbing them blind. She wasn't getting the Tome back, no matter what her instincts were telling her.

But it still messed with her head that she felt everything was going to turn out fine.

Ignoring the strange mental battle she was fighting with her self, she got to work helping the miners load the barge by hand, letting the heavy work distract her. The miners had made it themselves, and it showed in the slap-dash nature of the boat in question, and the lack of anything that made it a boat as apposed to a raft you'd make on a desert island. Quick and simple, but it meant that the ores and ingots had to be carefully stacked so they didn't tip over. There was a proper way, and an improper way to load it, and Sarah had no clue which was which.

The workers finally got sick and tired of correcting her mistakes, and ended up giving her a simple, repetitive task that didn't require any knowledge or skill on her part. If the items she ended up carrying happened to be the heaviest items, no one mentioned it, although Sarah had her suspicions.

They worked until the sun went from a shimmer on the horizon, to just barely above it. Sarah's arm burned something fierce as the scabs and burned skin from the day before started to blister, when the last of the goods were loaded and she guided to an empty spot near the centre, where Gunr and several others sat.

With a farewell, or rather a Farvel, the group cast themselves from the little makeshift pier and onto the river, letting the flow take them at a steady pace of maybe four kilometres an hour or so. It was slow, but they didn't have to do anything, with just two pilots steering the barge downstream and avoiding the banks and rocks. It was easier to do than it sounded, as the river was almost thirty metres across at it's narrowest.

"So," she said out loud. "Anyone know any good sea shanties?"

——

Grey-Feet laid content on his side, tucked out of the way of the feeding frenzy that was taking place. His belly was full already and he preferred to rest by gnawing at the strange object he'd found. The human had been carrying it, and although it wasn't food, the skin of it felt good to bite on.

The older ones in the pack took their time eating, making sure the younger ones got their food first, and were now just gnawing the meat off the bones casually, relaxed with their easy hunt. Unlike a boar, the man was on the skinny, gristlely side and wasn't all that filling when split eleven ways, but he'd been carrying a lot of useless things that seemed somewhat interesting, enough to keep Grey-Feet occupied. Each of the cubs had gone and torn through the bag, searching for their own toys to keep them occupied.

The leather of the thing didn't tear when he sunk his fangs into it, and he felt a hum in the back of his head as he chewed. It was a nice feeling.

Now that the hunt was finished and their bellies were full, several of the other started looking his way. A growl dissuaded most of them.

He paused when he saw his sister looking greedily at his new chew toy, and he made sure to get up and move a little further away. She wasn't as easy to intimidate. His sister followed him.

Hey, she growled out. I want.

He moved faster.

——

As it turns out, the men liked her rendition of The Wellerman. She tried a few more songs from Assassin's Creed: Black Flags, then a short rendition of Alicia Keys before she started running out of songs she knew by heart. By then, some of the other men had started singing their own songs, and they were much better. Still, it passed the time, and it seemed that time was all they really had. After the first hour, everyone had drifted into comfortable silence as the pilots navigated down the river.

Swatting at another fly taking a bite of her, Sarah listened to the kid sitting across from her as he tried to shoot his shot. The Imperial, Castius, which sounded like a medieval weapon of some kind, didn't speak much to her or to anyone, but was having a fun time listening to the kid as he kept speaking. Gunr's expression revealed nothing, although he decided that a boy not even eighteen trying to seduce a stranger was the best entertainment they had on the boat.

Trying, and failing. A language barrier made it very hard to be suave. Sarah was of the opinion that either the kid was bragging about owning a horse, or he was trying to brag about his horseback riding skills. If she had a better grasp of Tamrielic, she probably would have slapped him. It made Gunr laugh, though, and it wasn't long before the boy just went back to siting in silence.

Thirty miles didn't seem like much, until you realized that a car travelling thirty miles was usually doing so at a hundred klicks, and it still took a half-hour. At a steady pace of however fast the river was moving, it would be sometime in the afternoon, or later, when they finally arrived.

Sarah glared at the sun shinning through the cloud cover, shifting her jacket so it was covering her face better. She was still sore from the sunburn yesterday, and she wasn't looking forward to having even more burns. Eventually, her skin would toughen out and get a tan enough that she could sit outside in cloudy weather and not get burned, but that usually took about six peelings.

At some point in their journey, the trees gave way to small homes and farms, gardens and farmer's fields and at one point, a small watermill. The fields were completely empty, although a few had farmers tilling the ground and getting ready for planting. A couple even gave Gunr a wave, which he returned, and Sarah wondered if Gunr was from Riverwood.

It came as a surprise that Riverwood wasn't seen, but smelled first. With most of the woodlands surrounding the river being a musky smell of river reed, mushrooms and what was presumably fish, the smell of burning embers, cooking hearths and smoked foods carried in the wind. The sound came next, with shouts, laughter and the noise of someone hammering on an anvil echoed over the water. They had finally arrived, and it seemed that they had made good time, too.

It was large. That was the first thing Sarah thought. It was much larger than the town in the game, yet still small in comparison to some real towns. Calling the town of Riverwood a town in TESV: Skyrim was somewhat insulting, given how it was twenty people and five buildings in game. Compared to the game, the real thing might as well have been a city.

The town, or more likely a village, looked to be around sixty dwellings, all hugging the river on the south side, with actual walls blocking off access to it's non-river side. The whole village fit within maybe two hundred metres of palisade, and had a population that was probably only a thousand people, but Sarah's mind still kept comparing it to the Creation engine and it's limitations.

Everything at ground level to about two to six feet off the ground was either stone, brick, clay or in a couple of extreme cases, ashlar, no doubt holding the basement or cellar of the house. Above that were wood framed or log cabin style houses, followed by tiled, shingled or thatched roofs. The large stone building at the top of the hill looked to be a fortified manor of some kind, and either housed a garrison or a lord.

It wasn't just the buildings that caught her attention, but the space between them. There was little need for a wall facing the river, and even with the waterfront properties, there was barely any space left to waste. Every bit of lawn seemed to have something happening within it. One yard was full of laundry being washed in buckets. Another looked like chickens were being kept. Another was a pig sty, with at least four hogs. One even looked like it had a bunch of bee hives in it, and another down from it had an orchard. Many had boats, rafts and canoes, but one looked like the entire three backyards was all ropes, nets and hooks of all sorts.

'How big are the rest of the cities?' she thought, eyeing how many people were just walking about. 'How big is the Imperial City?'

A city of a quarter million, half a million and even a full million came to mind, but her mind just couldn't conjure the image in full. Big. Very big.

She eyed the landscape, searching for familiar buildings or landmarks she'd find in game. The mill was the closest, but even that dwarfed the game version. The lumber yard looked like it took about the same footprint as the village itself, and there were close to a hundred people walking and working within it, with several saw mills running at once. The waterway surrounding the mill looked like someone upstream had just thrown all the logs they cut into the river. Despite the ice and the freezing water, there were still people wading into the water and dragging them out with the help of oxen.

The river widened near the village to the point that it looked like it split. One path went towards the town, eventually ending at the mill. The other way went downstream, towards what Sarah knew was Whiterun then further still towards the ocean.

They didn't go towards the docks, or towards the mill. Instead, they drifted towards the downstream portion of the river, unloaded onto the land via the age old method of chucking a few ingots onto the bank, and then jumping into the water and wading over. Gunr was first, then the boy, and another man who looked like he was being sent home because of a shoulder injury. When Sarah jumped in, she almost gasped at how cold the water was, then her legs decided that it wasn't a danger. Despite the cold and the mud, it felt rather nice on the sunburns, right up until she was out of the water and in the wind. Then the cold really started to hurt.

"Farvel!" the captain repeated the same word the big Nord foreman said to the boat as it left. Something else was said, which could be classified as stay out of trouble, or perhaps see you in a month, but for Sarah it was beyond what her brain was capable of translating. Even though she only sat on a boat and did nothing, she felt drained.

Gunr and the young boy that had tried hitting on her were in some sort of discussion, no doubt about their plus one on their trip, before the younger of the two bent down and picked up the six ingots that had been delivered. Once he had them stored in his backpack, he picked a direction and started walking, a little put out and not glancing back. Gunr chuckled, before motioning for Sarah to follow him.

The ground around the mill was pilled high with prepared logs stripped of every branch, and some being turned into wooden boards that looked rather like 2x4s, 2x6s, and 2x8s, with a couple 4x4s and 6x6s to even it out. None of them were put inside, being left out on dunnage to bake in the sun and get wet in the rain. Only a couple of things got covered, and those things almost looked like they would end up as either ship keels, masts, or large beams for a building project.

It took quite a bit of time to walk through the lumber yard, more than Sarah was expecting, and her legs were starting to hurt where they got damp. Exiting the yard, they were met with piles of wood that were getting burned in large pyramid pyres, having probably been infested with worms or they were the waste product that couldn't be sold. She wasn't too sure.

The North-Eastern gate was completely open, and a couple of the guards stationed by it waved to Gunr, casting a few questioning looks towards Sarah but saying nothing about it. They had caught up to the boy, who was sweating from carrying all the weight by himself, but he wasn't willing to part with the load when Sarah offered to help.

'Prideful bastard.'

Entering the town, she realized it wasn't as big as she first thought. Bigger than the game world, but compared to the big city everything in town was reached by foot within about five or six minutes of slow walking. There wasn't a giant marketplace and square, either. Most of the businesses, and there was only about seven or eight, were all along the main road. There were a couple of stalls selling foods, herbs, clothing and some didn't seem to sell anything at all. One business she walked by looked like it might have been an inn, another looked like it was solely a pub, and one that might have been a brothel. There were three more fixed stores that she couldn't tell what they sold, but she was guessing a grocer, camping store and maybe a furniture store.

She couldn't see the blacksmith, but she could hear an anvil in the distance. and despite how cramped everything felt, she wasn't sure she saw a single familiar face in the crowds. She wasn't even sure where the Riverwood General Goods store was.

After a bit more walking, they passed what amounted to the commercial district and headed into the residential area. Gunr's house was located on the main drag near the far end, and Sarah realized she had walked almost the entire way through town through the north gate, towards the south-west gate. The gate was partially closed, with a large wooden door being swung shut, but a smaller door built into the bigger one was left open for people to walk through. She realized if she kept walking out the gate, she'd end up at the mines, eventually.

Gunr distracted her when he introduced his house. His was actually one of the bigger ones, being twelve metres long, and looked more like the game version of a Skyrim house than any of it's neighbours. It was a single storey home from the outside, with a pointed roof to keep the snow load off it. Stone came up about two or three feet from the ground, and the rest of the house was rough boards and thatched covering the holes. The roof was also thatch, but it looked like there was an attempt to build a proper roof, with a truss that went across the top like a ship's keel that arced out past the edge of the building. There was a single entrance in the form of a wooden door that wasn't quite properly fitted, and maybe two windows, both of which were boarded up for the winter months.

Outside, it had a front porch that ran the entire front of the house, and there was one younger lady already standing on it waiting for them. She was carrying a baby in a sling, and had bags under her eyes, and looked ready to start fighting people. She didn't look particularly pleased to see Sarah standing beside her husband.

Saying something rather rude and partially aggressive, Gunr ended up having to raise his hands in a placating gesture, calming the women and saying something much nicer back.

"Sarah?" Gunr called, "Aevr, minn wife."

It might have been that Sarah was getting used to the Nordic language, but it started sounding very much like English at certain points, to the point where an entire sentence would have one or two words that seemed familiar.

"Aevr, Sarah."

The lady, Aevr, said something that sounded like a threat, before walking inside. Gunr didn't seem to bothered, only ushering Sarah inside before walking in and closing the door. Unlike most houses in Skyrim the game, there was a mudroom where Sarah took her muddy footwear off, as well as her jacket and hanged it on a coatrack. That got a strange look from Aevr, but Gunr didn't seem too bothered by her Western manners.

Turning the blind corner of the mudroom and walking through a door frame without a door attached to it, she entered the house proper. It was...lived in. It was about the nicest thing Sarah could say about it. The room could have been described as spartan, except that wasn't right. It lacked most of the knickknacks that people collected, and everything was either handmade or an antique passed down the family line, but it was by no means empty. Wooden chairs and stools made from rough lumber, a table that looked like it was older than the house, a bench that looked like it belonged outside and was brought in for the winter months, and some cabinets and cupboards that lacked doors. Some half started projects were there, including some additional furniture, and some clothes that were half sewn and stitched during the winter months stuck inside.

The room itself was large, measuring six by nine metres, The centre was taken over completely by the hearth, which had something cooking on it. Rough stone, surrounded by dirt, the hearth sat lower than the rest of the room by about a foot and a half, which were raised up with wooden planks. Each one looked like they were a sliver waiting to happen, and Sarah wondered if it was too late to put her shoes back on without seeming rude.

There was a slammed door, and Sarah realized that Aevr and Gunr had both gone to their bedroom to argue it out, some of the words being loud enough that she could hear it through the much better door connecting the main room and the beds.

'They could of at least took the baby with them!'

The boy holding his youngest sibling looked completely confused by the stranger that now stood within his home, and Sarah had no idea why the wife didn't trust her with her husband, but felt completely fine leaving her alone with her children. It was a cultural difference, probably, or this reality had something preposterous like invincible children.

There was a sound of the front door opening, and a little slip of a girl came running in full tilt, searching the house before spotting Sarah standing there awkwardly.

"Er onkelen min her?" the girl asked, holding the tiny bow a little tighter as the voices of her parents rose slightly. "Hvem er du?"

Sarah had no clue what the two arguing in the other room were saying, exactly, but every fifth or sixth word seemed to be Sarah this, or Sarah that, which made the subject rather obvious. The voices kept getting louder, meaning that even the neighbours could probably hear.

"Sarah?" the girl asked with a frown, looking her up and down and deciding that whatever she saw wasn't all too impressive.

"Sarah." she answered, pointing towards herself.

"Aela." the girl, maybe forteen or fifteen answered, her frown getting more pronounced. Sarah balked when she recognized the name, then realized that with a population in the tens of thousands, there were probably hundreds of Aela's between here and Whiterun.

The voices reached a pitch, and there was the sound of things being thrown around in the bedroom, as well as what were most certainly threats. There was no other way to describe them.

"Um, sorry?"

The girl glared, crossing her arms and showing off the rather impressive muscles for a fourteen year old girl. Sarah was rather cowed by the girl, although that might have had something to do with the many knives holstered across her body.

——

Sectemus was running late. Again.

Sure, travelling across Skyrim on foot was slow no matter how skilled one was, and delays were inevitable. As a courier, the state of the roads caused him to reconsider moving to this savage land. A trip by boat or by teleportation would have been quicker, and cheaper if the delays were factored in, but his client had paid good money to only travel by land. Books didn't like water, or so he was told by the client, repeatedly.

He wasn't sure what the problem with teleportation was, but Sectemus' boss made sure to iterate the Mage's Guild's monopoly on teleportation, and couriers were meant to break that monopoly, and that he should, in no uncertain terms, Shut your Trap!

Another bump, and he felt it through his entire body. His horse wasn't one that he'd normally use for courier runs, but the books in the satchel behind him were much too heavy for one of the faster horses he preferred, and he was forced to use a Palomino he'd never ridden. Not that it was a bad horse, per say, but as neither himself or the horse knew one another, they didn't know how one reacted to certain unforeseen situations.

Such as two wolves having a tug-of-war in the middle of the road.

The shaggy horse, feeling slightly intimidated by the sudden appearance of two wolves, decided to do what all good horses bred in Skyrim were trained to do. Charge them. Of course, it did so by lifting it's whole body off the ground and trying to stomp one of the wolves, knocking both rider and cargo into the dirt.

"Stupid horse!" he cried as his backside hit the ground rather hard.

Books of all sorts piled around the horse as it continued it's effort to stomp the wolves, who now realized that there was something much larger than them trying to kill them.

Picking up as many books as he could and stuffing them back into the bag, the two wolves retreated, leaving a very proud and stupid horse to strut back to it's rider, unaware of just how much damage it had done to the books it was carrying.

"I hope a Khajit or Bosmer buys you and eats you!"

The horse neighed, stopping one foot on the ground as the man loaded the books back up and onto the saddle. A wolf cry in the distance made him pause, but the next four or five howls made him load the books faster.

"You got all the books covered in mud, you damn lug! If I end up—shit, how did that one get over there?"

A lone book was off to the side of the road, having appeared to have landed much further than the rest of them. He hurried, picking it up and examining it with a critical eye.

"Strange," he said, looking at the teeth marks in the book. "I don't remember—"

Another howl, this time much closer, made him forget his line of thought and run towards the horse. Throwing the last book onto the pile, he mounted as fast as possible, and took off at a gallop. The wolves nipped at his heels the entire way.

——

The arguing had managed to keep up for at least another half hour, which was an impressive display of endurance for an Earth family, although Sarah was unsure if Nord families argued more or less than average. So far, it had mostly been one sided, with Gunr having only raised his voice once, slightly, although it was quickly droned out when Sheogorath's name was dropped. In Sarah's mind, that was entirely justified.

More children had arrived at the house, and now there were six of them, all looking rather confused or scared at their parents arguing in the next room. Everyone save Aela, who Sarah was pretty sure wasn't the future Huntress of the Companions, but still hadn't uncrossed her arms. Or stopped staring. Sarah was pretty sure the girl hadn't blinked once since arriving.

'How the hell do you teach a kid to look intimidating?' she thought, looking at the girl drumming her own fingers against her biceps, menacingly. Somehow.

There was a lull in the yelling, until the words Kyne, and something that sounded like Jhunal came up, then the arguing continued again, although a lot more subdued and pointed. It wasn't until Gunr brought up Dibella that the screaming started again.

"I'm going to wait outside," Sarah said, gesturing towards the front door. "I'll...go for a walk or something."

Walking out the front door, Sarah thought about her options. Sleeping outside seemed like a horrible idea in a land that was still frozen in early spring, and she had no skills to defend herself with. Without her powers, she was basically just a squishy human being that knew math really good, and that wasn't something the Warriors of Skyrim liked in a person.

Only when she was outside did she realize she had forgotten her jacket, she reached backwards, only to yelp when she found Aela standing RIGHT THERE!

"What the hell? You training to be a ninja or something?"

Aela didn't say anything but still managed to get the point across that Sarah was not welcomed in this house all the same. Not breaking eye contact with the girl, she reached over and grabbed her jacket, putting it on and turning towards the outdoors. It was now truly dark out, with only a gleam of light over one of the mountains in the west lighting the landscape. It was also very, very cold, to the point that it felt like being in the Rockies rather than being in a fertile valley. She figured the trees and grass themselves must be highly resistant to the cold if they had to deal with this every night.

A couple of guards passed by, sparing a glance at the shivering woman and the glowering girl behind her. They had definitely heard the yelling, but had the presence of mind to completely ignore it. It wasn't a danger to the village, and it wasn't worth getting in trouble for stopping their own patrol to gawk.

Yelling, this time from the village gate, forced Sarah to squint into the darkness. A rider was on horseback and running from something, waving his hands in the air and yelling something to the guard that could of been a warning, but it was more like an open the fucking door!

The guards did end up opening the door for the poor man, who charged through without stopping, two wolves chasing after him and zig-zagging their way through the legs of one of the guards, who had started shouting more words that Sarah was pretty sure wasn't PG-13 language. An arrow flew past her, missing the wolf by several metres and Sarah by a couple dozen centimetres. Even Aela started adding new words to the swear dictionary.

The rider didn't spare so much as a glance at Sarah as he rode dangerously close to her, the horse's leg hitting a dip in the road and causing the horse to stagger, slight, as it forced itself back up. A single book that had been balancing on the pile of other books tipped from the bag that was half open on the back, dropping it to the ground with a soft splat.

Sarah's eyes never left the dark skinned book, even as a guard rushed past her to try and take care of the wolves. The duo were making a good show of their evasion skills, and so far had managed to dodge every blade and arrow aimed at them. She reached down, picking up the book. It was her Tome. There was no mistaking it for anything else.

Looking around, no one seemed to be looking her way. She pocketed it into her jacket. There was another sound above her head of thunder that went unnoticed by the village.

Turning, she walked back, getting a strange look from Aela as she went past her.

"Changed my mind about the walk."

Aela had a very unimpressed look about her. She was asking a question.

"I'm sorry, but I don't understand you."

The wolves didn't stop their antics, and one of them bolted right past the two, back out the gate and into the forest before a single guard noticed they had changed direction. The second one followed shortly after, somehow running between the buildings and out the gate even as the guards tried to push it closed.

Aela still didn't look; all of her focus was on the woman in front of her. The lack of shouting inside the house signalled that it was probably alright to reenter, and hopefully, Sarah would be able to wrangle a plan together that didn't involve charity from a family thirty seconds away from a divorce.

Another noise of thunder, or dice rolls, made Sarah perk up as a thought hit her.

'There's no way the Tome would actually make me roll in my day-to-day life?' she thought as she walked inside, the little apprentice ninja following her the entire time.

'Right?'

_____

a/n: Well, this cold I caught managed to take everyone I know down at some point, and from the looks of things, it takes about 2 or 3 weeks to get over it. It's the kind of cold that makes you just want to sleep, but my body refused to sleep, so I spent most of the time laying in bed and staring at the ceiling doing nothing. Fun times.

 

[Me. Joka-r]

Current date probably 10 to 15 years before 4E 201.