I get there, smoke fills the air. I sneak in, help my brothers. Within moments, I'm into darkness. Once the smoke clears, I'm regaining my composure. First thing: find Frost. Horse usually runs from battles it can't win.

I search the surrounding trees. Nothing. I hop onto Shadowmere to follow the road into Falkreath, and it's then I see a shape on the road, lifeless. The closer I get, the worse the dread fills me. Sure enough, it's Frost. Dead.

When I got Shadowmere, I never had any reason to move Frost from the DB's front door. I suppose I could have taken him to Falkreath, but why bother? He was safe there.

This game killed Frost. I should be shedding tears, but I'm not.

Because Shadowmere is so awesome, the game can kill my other horses and I won't care!

***

There is an actual reason for this post, and I'd like to know if anyone else has experienced "out of sight" game mechanics affecting the outcome of your play.

I've also come across dead, charred beyond recognition, NPCs, the result of a dragon attack. Oddly, I've yet to see a town/city atttacked by a dragon when I'm not there. It's just starting to get a little creepy this only happens when I'm visiting it.

Dragons spawn, so they will only spawn in area's where you are not somewhere else. The event described above is a scripted event. Those guys just spawn.

My Shadowmere is dead too.

Those bodies I find randomly in Skyrim are scripted? Well, that's a bummer. I thought they were attacked randomly. I know dragons spawn, because I can see them flying mountain tops (on the road leading to Solitude, if I position my view just right, I can see two at the same time circling), but I just figured they still did their thing.

Scripted. Bah. I suppose it makes a little sense to realize villages and cities aren't attacked without me defending it, but it sort of ruins the mechanics of dragons a bit.

Just think how many of our quests would fail due to random dragon attacks.

Which is probably the reason why they are scripted in the first place

LOL! Yeah, you're right. It would really svck to be on my way to Riften and a message pops up "The Thieves Guild Quest failed because the city was burned to the ground."

PS: Sorry for the improper thread placement. I'll be sure to add spoiler threads in this location in the future.