Just thought I would share a crazy chain of events I experienced with the quest "Discerning the Transmundane."

It all started after I received the Essence Extractor from Septimus to open the Dwemer lockbox. I decided to head to Halted Stream Camp where I could collect blood from the dead Altmer in the pit. It had been quite awhile since I had cleared out the camp for a bounty, so I knew the bandits were alive and well. I was scoping out the entrance from a distance, when I was briefly detected and I made the mistake of not looking around to see if I was being watched. Just as I was drawing down on the bandit on the platform, I was detected and then attacked by a wolf with a green shimmer on its coat. Of course two of the bandits saw us fighting and immediately attacked as soon as I dispatched the wolf. However in the next instant a frost dragon landed between us and joined the battle, but when the three of us had whittled its health down to half the dragon took off. The bandit who was closest to me promptly attacked while his buddy hit from a distance with arrows. Right after I finished the first bandit I whirled around searching for his buddy, only to find a spriggan charging at me! Right before I delivered the death blow to the spriggan, I felt a powerful blow from behind which staggered me. I finished the spriggan off and turned to find a Sabre Cat attacking me, immediately followed by the dragon who decided to have another go. Finally I killed the dragon and the Sabre Cat then picked off the bandit archer, who had been slowly picking at me this entire time. I looted all the bodies and lucked out with the bandits who the first happened to be an Orc, and the archer was a Dunmer. I sniped the remaining Bandit inside the compound and headed into the mine. One of the bandits inside was a Bosmer so by the time I got to the pit, the Essence Extractor was full with the exception of Falmer blood.

After selling off the my loot in Whiterun, it was early in the morning of the second day of my quest. I decided to hit the Shimmermist Cave since it was the closest location containing Falmer. As I was sneaking towards the cave, I was detected and attacked by two Giants, one Mammoth, and four Bandits. I had been so concerned with sneaking up to the entrance as quickly as possible, I had blundered right into battle almost as soon as I heard it. Two of the bandits were quickly killed while I was trying dodge and fight one of the giants. The other two bandits died just as I finished off the first giant, and I was now facing an extremely pissed off giant and mammoth. I Fus Do Rah'ed the giant and barely managed to kill the mammoth (who was weakened considerably by the bandits) before he recovered. After that it was a lot of dodging and pumping the giant full of arrows till he finally died. Between this fight and the one at Halted Stream Camp, I had used up virtually all of my healing and stamina potions. After quickly killing the first Falmer in Shimmermist and filling the Extractor, I decided to head straight for the outpost in order to get the Oghma Infinium.

After getting the book, I fast travelled to Whiterun in order to use my bookshelf to boost my skills. When I was satisfied with the levels I wanted to achieve and spread the perks around the Warrior and Thief trees, I headed outside. Where I was quickly confronted by the challenger who taunted my magic skills (which were still fairly weak). I first tried to take him down with magic, being careful not to hit any guards or townsfolk. Finally I got tired of him, took out my Skyforge Steel Greatsword and proceeded to carve his hide up. What can I say, I'm a Warrior not a Mage.

By this time it was the middle of third day, so I headed out to Silent Moon Camp to toy with the bandits there. Upon arriving I am attacked by the wacko Botheiah cultist, which alerts the three bandits who decide to join the battle. After several more potions, I finally fight off all four and proceed to clear out the camp.

Thus concludes the wildest 72 hours I have had so far in Skyrim! I hope you enjoyed the story.

Sounds heck of a fight to me.

I finish that quest and here is what I did...

Yeah it was a lot of fun, I really enjoyed it. Thanks for the tip on Aftland, it never even occurred to me to do that.

I certainly enjoyed your story, very funny! You'd think it get depressing that everything in Skyrim wants you dead all the time. Imagine if it was like that in real life, at the end of the day you'd take a long good look in the mirror and ask yourself what on earth was wrong with you!

I remember this all so well. It was because of the randomness for me that made this one of, if not THE most memorable quest in Skyrim for me.

With my first character, level 35 or so, I just decided out of the blue one day that I wanted to find what the northern most area on the map was. I had finished the Companions, and the tomb of Ysgrammor and that whole area was really cool, so I wanted to explore it more and see what I'd find, if anything.

I see a cave in the distance and find out it's some madman's outpost, who sends me on a quest. Of course, diving into the Dwemer ruin leads to one of the coolest places in the game, and one of the most awesome picking-up-of-an-item in the game, etc.

The first few weeks of the game are the best. When you know nothing, and everything you do is brand new. Random desire to explore leads me to the coolest part of the game. No matter what I do, nothing quite recreates how epic that adventure was.

While I am still very new to the game, technically I am on my third character. The first was messed up beyond fixing due to decisions I had made without really thinking about what I wanted to do with my character. The second was just for fun and biding time until 1.4 came out to fix a lot the quests I was unable to finish before.

I do consider this to be my first official play through, now that I have a basic knowledge of Skyrim and how I want to explore it. Like you said though, that quest and the fun I had playing it will be burned into my memory for a long time to come.