Started out from High Hrothgar today to go visit Windhelm, since I figured it was closer than Solitude. Nearly had a heart attack when I turned around the bend where I lost my horse to that murderous highwayman not too long ago, and saw a figure standing there by the mysteriously unrotted bodies of his old victims.

Quite luckily for me, and more luckily for my horse, it wasn’t another horse-hating highwayman. It was just that bard who keeps walking around all over Skyrim. He still really starting to creep me out, though. When I stopped and said hello, he just said how lucky I was to chance upon a bard on the road. As if he knew I was still dealing with the death of my last horse at some subconscious level.

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Pretty light day today. Started out by riding over to Whiterun, where I was able to convince the Jarl that it would, in fact, be in his best interests to let me have a conversation with the dragon trapped in his palace. Unfortunately, despite my very best efforts, he still gave his go-ahead only on one condition: I’m supposed to stop the war between the Stormcloaks and the Imperials.

The Jarl suggested that I might try to get the Greybeards to call a peace talk since both factions look favorably upon them when they think of them at all. I decided that I might as well take his advice, so I headed back up to High Hrothgar right away.

I made excellent time up to High Hrothgar once again and had no trouble convincing the Greybeards that they should try to end Skyrim’s civil war. Just my luck that I still have to go see if Ulfric Stormcloak and the head of the Imperial Legion would be interested in a parlay.

It was late afternoon by the time I was done on the mountain, though, and I figured that it would be easiest for me to just head to bed early and get up before dawn. I’ll try to head to Windhelm or Solitude tomorrow.

Made excellent time across the mountains to Riverwood today. Surprisingly tranquil walk, as well; didn’t get attacked by any assassins, dragons, or even any bears that I recall. I may have run into a few wolves, but I’ve gotten so used to dealing with them since I’ve come to Skyrim that I don’t think they even merit any mention any more.

Made a stop in Riverwood to sell some more of the jewelry I’ve been carrying around since nobody ever seems to carry enough on them to sell quite everything at once. Also stopped by the blacksmith’s store and found that a suit of armor that matched the malachite-glass helmet I found not too long ago. I wasn’t expecting to find much in Riverwood, but I’m now quite glad that I looked.

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I was in the saddle for most of the day today, but I really didn’t get very far. I headed straight to Riften as soon as I got up, and though my trip to the ruin I had spent the night at was quite uneventful, I ran into two people I wasn’t expecting to meet on my way back to town.

As I was nearing Riften’s outskirts and passing by the side of the lake, I noticed a Khajiit and an Argonian who seemed to be waiting for someone or something, since they were just standing around. When I got off of my horse to see what was going on, though, the Argonian in expensive-looking armor pulled a knife on me and told me to fork over my cash. He wouldn’t back down when I told him what a mistake he was making, but thankfully just then, I recognized him as a member of the Thieves Guild. I don’t know if he let me off then because he recognized me too as a guildmate, because he didn’t realize that he could get in serious trouble with the guild for threatening to kill people, or because he knew I wouldn’t tell Maven or Brynjolf. For whatever reason, I got off fine.

The Khajiit was that M’aiq fellow I’ve seen around before. We had a very brief conversation about the atrocity of the Mudcrab and whatnot before we both went on our ways. I didn’t wonder then, but now that I’m thinking about it, I have to wonder why he was hanging out with a highwayman, and why they weren’t just fighting.

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Spent some time this morning doing odd jobs before I felt like I’d run out of things to do in Riften. Delivered a sword for one of the whiny nobles in town, first off, and since the recipient was in the castle, I helped myself to a courier’s fee while I was there before heading out.

Outside of town, I realized I didn’t know what to do, or where I was going. Taking a look at my map, though, I saw that the ruin the Argonian woman I ran in to on Tirdas wanted me to visit was on the way to the Throat of the World and Whiterun if I took the right route, though, so I decided to head west and plan on “returning the lexicon”, or whatever it was I was supposed to do there. I figured that after that, I could cross the mountains and head to Riverwood or Whiterun to sell some of the merchandise I was hauling around before climbing up to visit the dragon who told me to grab an Elder Scroll so I could go back in time and learn how to kill the dragon that’s going to destroy the world. Or something along those lines.

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I don’t know what I did to get the Dark Brotherhood out for my head, or where I’d go to find them, but they must be amazing trackers, because they definitely know how to find me. It’s not like I’m hiding (except from the guards in the Reach), but I swear that the assassin that attacked me this morning must have known where I was going better than I did.

I had just set out on the road east from Darkwater Crossing when I met the assassin, and I think it was the only time I knew where I was and where I was going all morning. It wasn’t too far into my trip when a bear chased me off the road and I stumbled across a dwarven ruin. I think that that may have really been when I got lost, but in any case, I found that one part of the ruin was just a storehouse, filled with ingots and jewelery, so that was lucrative, at least.

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The first thing I had to do when I got up this morning was figure out where I was. I hadn’t been to the camp I decided to sleep at before I got the Elder Scroll, and I didn’t know where it was, but I knew it wasn’t where I wanted to stay. I was able to figure out how to head to Windhelm, at least, pretty easily, though, and started walking east.

Just that short leg of my walk from the campsite to Windhelm was more eventful than all of the day before it, I would declare. While I was just walking down the road, I ran into a Dark Elf in dark Ebony armor who started attacking me for no reason. He wasn’t even an assassin! I swear, he just started attacking me for no good reason. I’d say the man went mad, but he wasn’t nearly chatty enough to be one of Sheogorath’s fellows.

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Today was quite upsettingly uneventful. I have now in my possession one of the most valuable and purportedly powerful items in all existence, yet I really feel like I did nothing.

From the hut I stayed in last night, I wandered around Mushroom World for a while before I found a building with some sort of lift-type thing inside it that took me up to yet another level of the ruins, this one much like the ones I’d explored before, but with much better lighting. There wasn’t much in that part of the ruin aside from a room with a bunch of weird metal rings in it that had a few button-type controls at the top.

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Turns out finding an old man in the icy wastes of Skyrim was the easiest part of my day today. I suppose the fact that there was nothing else north of the college really made it pretty easy to figure out where the crazy Scrollmaster the librarian told me about was hiding, but I really was expecting to be more lost.

I’m not sure what I was expecting to see inside his hovel, though; I only know that what I found wasn’t it. The guy’s apparently been living in an ice cave with a giant metal cube (that doesn’t even seem to do anything) for some time now, if the librarian is to be believed. All by himself. I really do wonder what he’s been eating. I could tell what he had been drinking— the skooma bottles were everywhere— but I don’t remember seeing (or grabbing) any food while I was down in his icy, cube-filled lair.

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Spent some time doing Business around Windhelm this morning before checking in at the White Phial to see what the man who sent me a letter wanted me to do (and quite hopefully pay me for). I can’t say everything went quite as I expected, though.

First, I was just walking about town when I came upon the site of a murder— apparently the work of a serial killer who has been killing Nordic women around town for some time now, although this was the first time I know I’d seen a body. I had run into the victim before: she had been the cook at the inn where I was staying just last night. I wasn’t nearly as shocked when I recognized the latest victim as when I found the house where she was killed while I was searching around town for unwanted valuables, though; hardly in a mood to solve a murder mystery, though, I decided to just pay a quick visit to the Phial before heading out of town.

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