Today, I killed off my Bosmer. His name was Pegaro, and I deeply role played him. He made it to level 37 and died trying to drink away his problems, which he had many of.

Now to the topic; has killing off/retiring/ending a character really struck anyone here emotionally? I know it sounds nerdy, really nerdy, but I'd like to discuss this. If you've similar stories, please post how they went and how you felt.

How did you kill him?

Dropped excessive amounts of mead on the floor of an empty Vindrel hall and used the equilibrium spell to have him die, then saved in third. Now I have a picture of him dead on the floor surrounded in bottles.

It was a role play death, so nothing actually killed him.

Maybe u could make a character who got drunk and accidentally rode his horse off a cliff

Not in Skyrim no, but in New Vegas I had a character which still to this day is my favorite rp out of Oblivion, FO3, New Vegas, and Skyrim. He wound up being the victim of a corrupt save, and it really tickedme off too.

One of my characters in Skyrim commited suicide by jumping off the cliff at Azuras shrine. I guess after 176 hours, he finally had enough of the double life he was leading.

I don't kill off my characters, I just let them rot in their savefiles that I'm never going to use again.

I always play Dead-is-dead on these kinds of games on the hardest difficulty, and generally one of my first characters is just an attempt to make the canon protagonist (canon Nerevarine, canon Lone Wanderer etc), basing their actions and stats off of implications within the game. For example for the canon Nerevarine I'd use the default face and race (Dunmer), pick the class that best matches Dunmer, then pick the Warrior sign as the original Nerevar was a great warrior. For the Lone Wanderer, well...within the game your father is a scientist doctor, you can defuse a nuclear bomb with relative ease and you were introduced to firearms at a young age. That to me implies a Lone Wanderer with high perception, intelligence and Agility. EVERYONE he knows and loves dies though and he generally ends up in crappy situations (loses half his brain, gets abducted, gets enslaved), so low luck. With the canon Dovahkiin I might decide a personality trait is that he's power hungry, since it's often implied the dragonblood does this to people, that Thu'ums become a part of you and the Dovahkiin learns several negative ones, and the promotional trailer for Dawnguard seems to imply he went vampire. How to justify his vampirism? With other implied features: yeah he's power hungry, as suggested.



Something odd happened with my canon Courier in New Vegas: he lived, lulz. Not only was I able to do a successful DID playthrough where I completed everything, but I was able to do it with the canon version of the Courier. And not only was I able to do it with the canon Courier, I was able to do it on the FIRST TRY. I must be on my 47th unsuccessful Lone Wanderer, but the Courier? The Courier stayed true to the story about how, for whatever reason, he's simply impossible to kill.
As proud as I was to cross the finish line, it was also hard to accept that the Courier's run was over. This was a character that'd literally been to hell and back and survived it all without flaw. This was a character with a lot of hard work put behind him, and not only that, the general storyline and dialog of New Vegas seems to imply a Courier with a charming personality, so I played him that way.
He did it; he didn't die. He got to walk off into the sunset like a boss. So why am I so sad it's over? Because it's still hard to let go.
In such a playthrough, you're investing a lot of time and effort and basically writing a character. Closure, whether a death or a success, means you have to stop writing, even when you don't want to. Letting go of something you've created? Yeah, that's always hard.

I felt terrible when Gutslit ended up at the end of the TG's questline. I'm starting all over on the PC version now. He shall not be joining guild for awhile. Gutslit is the most unreligious Khajiit you can find, and he just doesn't want a part in religion. He deeply respects Hircine, but no way he's worshiping anyone.

I do something similar. Whenever I get bored of a character, I usually just fast travel to his house, go to sleep, turn off the game, and say "he spent the rest of his days relaxing as a retired adventurer in [insert guild here]"

Or maybe I will go to a guild instead, for example, I got to Jorrvaskr, go to sleep, turn off the game, and say "He spent the rest of his life fighting against the silver hand until one unlucky blow killed the famed hero"

However, I never actually RP any of this. As I said, if I do this, it means I am bored with a character, and don't want to spend too much time with him in the first place.

Poor horse...