Finally got a dead thrall for my mage. I chose a master necromancer from Hob's Fall cave. He made a good follower, keeping quiet, being lethal, but just a bit laggard about keeping up with me. I was on the master destruction quest and found I had to head far west. Amazingly, at level 62, my mage hasn't been farther west than the Abandoned Shack.

So there we were running west towards Rorikstead when I saw a Thalmor patrol with a prisoner. Gladly taking a 45g bounty, I cast Frenzy on the last member. Oh, joy! It boiled down to a shoot-out between my thrall and the Thalmor mage. The prisoner took to his heels, apparently. Since I had just started Diplomatic Immunity, I stripped the hooded robes off the mage for use later.

Continuing up the road we encountered Talsgar who said to me, "Walking around with dangerous magic like that will only attract trouble." Hm, okay, thanks for the tip. Then we found M'aiq, and one of the things he mentioned was, "I saw a mudcrab yesterday. Horrible creatures!" I sometimes wonder if the game is merely full of coincidences or if it actually sets things up, because what happened next was very odd.

Realizing I was on the wrong road, we backtracked east to the fork and headed down the road towards Markarth. A short ways up this road is the site of an ambush, usually by bandits (there's a dead horse, overturned cart and dead Khajiit) so I was wary. Seemingly in the clear we continued when out came three very angry Thalmor. After dealing with them, the mage proved to be carrying an execution order on my guy! Cool, that's the first time for me. Still, Talsgar was right, in a way.

West towards Old Hroldan we went, blowing up wolves (me) or ice-spearing them (dead thrall). But then there appeared a big mudcrab that fairly swaggered into the road. I jumped on a rock outcropping and gave my thrall a clear shot. WTH? He was in attack mode, approached the crab, but did nothing as the crab snipped him down to a stump. Only then did the reason become clear: the game glitched, and all the attack effects played at once, but unfortunately for my thrall, too late to have any effect on the mudcrabs. I tried to reanimate him, pulling him out of the water onto the shore first, but he's gone for good.

Mudcrabs. Horrible creatures!

Don't underestimate the power that a Mudcrab has

Maybe I could make a mudcrab a permanent follower...

... nah, they're too slow.

I rather have a slow thrall then to have a fast one that can get beaten down fast.

http://youtu.be/M-gJoDca2qc

Don't dis the mudcrab man...

...I'm still traumatised by the fact my first death in Skyrim was to a mudcrab - after oblivion I refused to believe that a crab could be a threat to even a neophyte adventurer... well he showed me.