I started with a new character on tuesday, a beautiful female high elf Didn't do much so far with her, some radiant quests for small money and the MQ up untill my first visit to High Hrothgar. Level 6 only, to give an idea.

I just did the Saarthal-quest from the Winterhold college, and after the final battle and seeing the glowing ball I rushed outside to tell the arch-mage about this wonder. With a feeling that 'action had stopped for the while being' I planned to quietly head back to Winterhold. Then it happened. Out of nothing. I came outside, and after reaching the stairs I had the biggest Skyrim surprise so far. A dragon attack!! That early in the game, yes. Didn't even went looking for the Horn of Jurgen Windcaller yet. And to be honest, I didn't even know dragons could start appearing in the wild then already. Thought it would only be after Kynesgrove. Anyway. A dragon at Saarthal. It didn't see me. At all, but the music of the game changed of course. I saw the beast, a frost dragon was attacking something in the distance. Couldn't see what it was... I walked up, used the stairs and tried to find a safe and higher spot... The dragon was very busy attacking, but in the snow storm I had no idea what.... untill... I saw a mammoth! A dragon was attacking a mammoth. My second surprise, as I only had Mammoths in giant camps so far. And I was watching, astonished. Because it was epic. The dragon landed a couple of times, made the earth shake while he slammed his tail on the ground, and each time he flew up a cloud of snow covered the view. It was narrow, he only blew his frost while on the ground.

The mammoth attacked the dragon as well. And man... this mammoth was a tough one. The dragon got downed, and didn't fly anymore after a while. I was walking up, trying to get to an even higher point. And then, this surprising, sudden... silence. Just the wind was hearable. Third surprise. And this change gave me an eerie feeling. Something was not right. Slowly I walked towards the spot I last saw the two giant beasts fighting... And they were both dead! Incredibly, they must have taken the lifes out of each other the same moment. To top it all off, when I got my elf up close, she took the dragons soul. The second, after the Whiterun-one earlier today.

Minor lesson to be learned here... Though maybe rare, you will be able to find dead dragons in the game. I might have been on the right place, the right moment to witness and experience this. That is one thing I love about Skyrim, you never know what's going to happen next unless you're in a heavily scripted dungeon sequence. Got a free dragon soul without swinging a blade I hope to see more of this... To be fair, I got a bit tired of killing dragons. Further in the MQ, when they spawn all over the place, I have used fast travel to avoid encounters. But this experience made up for it. And it made up for all the bugs, even that.

Here's some screens:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/30521717@N04/6728413725/in/photostream

http://www.flickr.com/photos/30521717@N04/6728413607/in/photostream/

Sounds fun, random dragons start spawning after defeating the dragon at whiterun's watchtower by the way.

that was a great bit of luck. thanks for sharing.

very nice, thanks for sharing - i had a similar experience the other day, i was walking around and came against a dragon duking it out with a giant. Mine didn't end as well as yours, I heroically joined in against the dragon, killed it - and was standing around congratulating myself when the giant attacked and killed me!

Giants are ungrateful beasts, a simple thanks would have been more appropriate

I've had a couple of similar experiences. I too had a frost dragon attack winterhold when I was doing those quests, but I've had a couple of occasions where I've arrived in a city to find a dragon attacking. I go to help but before I can equip my bow the town guards have already killed it. Free dragon soul/bones/scales for no effort!

The funniest incident for me also involved a dragon, a giant and some mammoths. I ended up starting a fight with a dragon without realising that a giant encampment was near by. The dragon decided it wasn't bothered about me or my follower, despite us firing arrows at it. I run over the hill to get close enough to fire another arrow at it only to find it spewing flames at a giant and a pair of mammoths. The giant was doing his best to king hit the dragon with his club, though with not much luck, and the mammoths were basically panicking and trampling everything in the vicnicity. Needless to say, when my follower and I got too close we pretty much ended up being lunch for the party

It was so funny to see a giant and a dragon sparring, but my follower and I did end up getting trampled to death.

Yes, these types of encounters can be great fun. Glad you're enjoying the game.

In my experience fast travel makes the chance of encountering a dragon higher, not lower.

That made me laugh, sorry Can't count on giants to be your friends, haha.

Conversely, you can learn quite a few words of power without having to fight a dragon if you delay this quest. Of course you will not have souls to activate them.

I'm on my third playthrough, and this has been the ONLY playthrough where on more then one occasion I've wound up fighting two dragon's at once. I haden't even talked to the greybeards when these fight's occured, and I was playing a thief, a very low level one...somewhere in the teen's. I thought at first it was two dragon's fighting, but no, they were both out to kill me. One breathed ice, one was fire...which didn't matter cause I'm dunmer. I eventually took them both down...after like 30-45 minutes. The second time this happened to me, I was walking up to one of the dragon alters (I forgot what their actaully called, the symbol is a dragon head on the map) and I ended up in the middle of an actaul dragon fight. One was a regular dragon, the other was a blood dragon. Watching them fight was actaully pretty awesome...eventaully the regular dragon took enough damage that he crashed landed..I took him out, then finished off the blood dragon. Up till now I had never been attacked, or even seen, two dragons in the same place at the same time let alone fighting each other. Minus Odahviing of course. Both fights just struck me as awesome..although at the time I was more like "SH** SH** SH** SH** SH** SH** FIND HIDING SPOT NOW SH** SH**".