I started playing TES V: Skyrim yesterday. Here is a little bit of a story about my impressions of the game, especially when spooky and unexpected things happen to you for the first time.

I bought my first horse, some old brown bay whose name I'm still trying to figure out how to change, and decided to go out on a little ride across open country with my hot brunette sidekick Lydia. Since my character is at lucky level 13, I figure that I should be able to handle whatever comes our way as I decide to start upon the marathon climb the 9,000 stairs (I wonder, do they raise money for cancer research like the CN Tower climb in Toronto, Canada?) Anyway, I'm out enjoying myself on a nice cloudless night with a giant full moon looking like it's about to touch the ground when I suddenly hear a spooky sound in the distance: dragon screams. You know the dragon screams. Here you are, doing whatever it is you're doing not really looking for trouble and then this giant winged magical dinosaur-monster swoops in to gobble you up like leftover Halloween candy. Now, because I cut my teeth on TES games with Morrowind, I did what everyone should do: save, save, save before I started to cry, cry, cry.

So here's the scenario: circling a craggy mountain top is this nasty dragon. On the ground below, a pack of wolves are attacking and ripping to pieces a mountain goat and a rabbit. It's nature, whatever. Until they notice my superbad (not really) Breton mage throwing fireballs toward the sky, and then they decide that they want some white meat for their dinner. The wolves are killed without much ado, but the burning wolves catch the attention of Puff the Magic Dragon. So much for surprise. Doing my best to toast the motherfraker, as he's one of those Ice-blowing dragons, and keep my sixy Nordic fashion model sidekick alive with healing spells, we're working on double-teaming him fairly well until the unexpected happens ... A giant - and I mean like Jack and the Bean Stock I'm going to drink the blood of the Englishman giant - comes rushing out of no where, and it is now time to GTFO!!! Unfortunately, old Puff the Refrigerator can fly over the whole open plane and freeze us solid, so there really is no way to outrun him: nor the thundering giant. And before I know it, wham!, Lydia goes sailing through the air after being smacked like a golf ball with the Giant's club. This svcks. Where did I leave my horse?

This is where it gets interesting. The Dragon and the Giant start to go at one another. From trying to kill the Dragon, I quickly change sides and start throwing every bit of magical pain I can think of against the Giant. This fight drags on for another five minutes as the Giant charges between me and the Dragon, who have now become awesome pals, until the Giant dishes out the death blow to my new friend Puff. So Puff is rotting away into the weird magic dragon-flaking thing as my guy steals its soul or whatever (I want to write a letter to the developers on that one: I mean, have they read Summa Theologica? Did they ask the Vatican if dragons have souls? I'm digressing. But seriously...), and I'm doing the sort-of-like Highlander knock-off of taking its soul, whilst the Giant keeps coming at me, and I keep running away and dodging crazy circles around the bastard as he swings his 5-iron of pain my way. I must have chugged 8,000 Septims worth of Magicka-plus energy drinks, because my double-charged lighting bolts suddenly go quiet -- I drank up all my Gummy Juice, and now I'm pretty much absolutely [censored]. Or at least I thought. I mean, it's not like I have armour or big weapons or anything to rely upon, and I'm now positive that my magical armour has run out and I'm sitting at my 0% protection (yeah, that's right, about to get manhandled by a big dude without protection ... it's a nightmare), when I remember that I have one other weapon: my trusty Steel Dagger (Fine) tucked away. Pulling what is essentially a Swiss Army knife in comparison, I decide to make one heroic charge before he clobbers me to death: And the knife slash kills the bastard!

So the Giant is dead. The dragon is dead. A pile of wolf corpses are strewn about. I felt happy until I remembered that Lydia was knocked over the mountain and died, which made me very sad and I was about to hit the "Load Game" file to try and run away from this encounter when, turning around, I see her running up next to me from the distance. She lives! I guess the Giant knocked her so far that she fell in a lake, and only made it back after everything was dead. I laughed like a maniac for a couple minutes, and decided to write up a post about it on the forums.

If this is the sort of random excitement and entertainment you can get by just wandering around in the wilderness, at early levels of the game and without it being part of an active quest, I think I am going to have loads of fun with the rest of the game. Will it prove to be the best TES game to date? I'm note sure yet. But fighting dragons is pretty sick; I mean, in Oblivion, you never had to worry about death from the skies, and in Morrowind all you did was slaughter Cliffracers (I think they went extinct).

Does anyone else have any hilarious encounters in their first couple hours or days?

I giggled through that entire post. Dont tldr that never tldr that.

I dont have anything that silly but i did talk to a woman in solitude about her upcoming wedding, and then a few hours later ran into a couple who were being escorted to said wedding. The neat thing was that they were clear across the map. I thought itwas a neat way of bringing the world to life.

I really enjoyed reading this, Cicero1983. "Puff the Refrigerator," lol. Great stuff.

That was a great story! Bravo on your writing. This is why my friend, who was not sure about this game until I started playing, now takes over more than me. I haven't really had a chance to play for awhile in, well, awhile. But when he plays, I don't watch anymore since he's gotten past the point I have. Also my OCD makes me reload a lot when I don't need to, but I'm working on that. I just love to explore in this game, that is honestly one of the most fun aspects to me.

I had something similar happen, although not quite as dramatic. I was fighting a Dragon on an icy trail when I giant came running down said trail chasing a goat. I just killed the dragon and was near full health after drinking some potions just before it had died when I turned around trying to find where the giant had gone. Unfortunately it was just in time to see the club connect with my face, it was a one hit kill. I was level 18 in Heavy armour. I guess they were both random encounters because after the reload and going back up the trail neither one was there.