I recently made a new character (pure mage) and had just joined the College of Winterhold. As Lydia and I were walking out the building a dragon dive-bombs us from out of nowhere; clearly some kind of stealth prototype. Getting hit by a gout of flame as soon as you set foot outside = "Oh (insert preferred expletive)!" Since my character was only level 10 the fight was a little bit more interesting than when my other chars fight a dragon.

What made it worse was that the dragon decided to camp on one of the towers once its health dropped enough, and after proceeding up through the tower and killing it with a well-aimed Ice spell, its body fell off the edge of the tower and into the sea below.

At least I was able to absorb the soul despite being separated from the dragon's corpse by a couple hundred feet of solid rock.

Was clearing out a bandit fort. I killed everyone outside, and the moment i enter the building I am swiftly decapitated by a bandit chief. I was like ...

Noob moment, when I first ran through Bleak Falls Barrow, I was oblivious to the pressure plate with the swinging spiked-door mechanism, it nearly gave me a heart attack.

This happened to me too the first time I ever played Skyrim. Thing is I was running from Draugr and all of a sudden I got a face full of metal trap thing. Scared the bejeezus out of me.

First time i fought a Dragon, i died i know newbish but it was a thief char and he bit me to death.

Hehe yeah I've actually been got by that twice while I was learning the game. The second time was when I learned what a pressure plate was. I now try to look for them when exploring dungeons, I don't always succeed though.

That sounds like a pretty cool fight!

One time I was fighting a troll, and I was a really low level so I ran from it. Then a few seconds down the road I ran into two giants, who also started chasing me. Then a few more seconds later a dragon swooped down on us! I ran into Dawnstar with a troll, two giants, and a dragon right behind me. It must have been a pretty comical sight!

Another time I saw a rune on the floor in a dungeon, and I moved closer to look at it. Apparently I moved a bit too close, because it blew up in my face and scared the crap out of me!

For me, my oh snap moment would be meeting the furry friend just down from High Hrothgar.

Yeah and the village people tell you all your going to have to fight is wolves..

Runes get me a lot too. But apparently they work both ways:

During a quest I had to kill a Hagraven and a bunch of hags and witches that were with it. I tried sneaking close to one of them to sneak attack it, but another one "sensed" me and so all of them got up and started looking for me. As I crouch-ran towards the nearest shadows, I heard a loud explosion that scared the crap out of me. Turns out that one of the hags, while looking for me, had set off one of the runes that had been set. I reloaded a save to confirm this, I sniped one of the hags and the rest heard the shot and started looking and sure enough one of the hags walked onto one of the runes and set it off, killing herself. That time I laughed. Hard.

I was taking a nice ride near Falkreth, when i heard flap of wings. I immediately froze and looked around. Just as i decide that it was nothing after all, a dragon drops down behind me!

Dragons never seem to do this for me; they always like to play hard-to-get, and are distracted by the oddest things (mudcrabs, wolves, bears).

They like you, obliviously. Perhaps they like dangerous partners? Jokes aside, my dragons get distracted too.

I got jumped by a skeever in the wild and had the exact same reaction

^{Hmm, had a giant chase me into rorikstead once. I tried to outsmart his AI path detection by running into the field of one of the farms. Well, his pathing was better than I thought and he followed me inside and killed me while I was repeatedly trying to jump over a simple fence to escape. It felt like Doom all over again ...}

My moment was finding out I could shoot arrow at a Rune and watch the Baddie go over to investigate the arrow hit and have the Rune go off.... that was cool... It makes you really look for Runes for a whole other reason..

I have a battle that have been burned itno my memory:

I was exploring a Nordic Ruin where a group of vampires had taken residence. I went through the ruin pretty easily, only encountering the lower ranking vampires. Then I found the room where the boss-enemy of the dungeon were. It was a Master Volkihar Vampire, a spellcasting, sword swinging badass with a set level somewhere over 50 IIRC. He used lighting magic to completely drain my magic in no time, removing my advantage of being trained in restoration, and then started to cast vampiric drain and ice storm. He was healed, I became rally slow and had nothing to counter his steel longsword with by the time he decided he wanted to go toe to toe.

Probably one of the coolest fights I have been in despite the fact that I lost. I got him the next time though.

My oh snap moment happend about one hour after i stole some chees from a giant. A mammoth droped from the sky and landed on my head, successfully ended my dead-is-dead character career (got to tell you the giants really like their chees if they are willing to throw mammoths over it)

Fort Neugrad, I'm sure everyone knows that bandit boss there. First time around, like lvl 7 and just destroyed everything in my way, until I open that door. Chop-chop, see you later. I left her there.

Second time around, I used Flame Atronarchs on her (I tried her on before play - chop-chop-chop), I hurt the wench and then I ran around the fortress for an hour, just to understand she wasn't there. Grab my 800kilo of loot smiling and walk out the door -> chop - chop Damnit!!!!! Leave the loot, sneak out and I dealt with it, flame atronarchs, trying sneaking arrows, no way, so I ran for my old security spot - climbing a wall, hitting higher ground...took me forever and this time I was lvl15.!!! She must've been at least lvl 30-40.

a giant and a mammoth were fighting a group of evil bandits, so i helped them kill the bandits, then he starts chasing me too.

Was it close to Falkreth? I entered a dungeon around there and encountered weak enemies all the way to end, were i met the same boss as you. Unlike you thou, i stood no chance and had to bugger out.

The ancient Nord ruin southwest from Labyrinthian. It's the one with a trapdoor in front of an empty chest, and where you fall in a cage with a gloating necromancer. I'd heard about it before on the forums, where people said how stupid he was because he opened the cage himself, and how he only attacked with his little dagger. Well, I left him to do his explanations and preparations, expecting nothing more. YEAH RIGHT. After his explanations, that sly bastard suddenly turns around, and blasts me in the face with a freaking area-related fire spell which drains half of my health! Good thing I unlocked the cage beforehand while he was rabbling his speech with his back towards me, so I managed to get out of the cage after his little talk only to finally get blown up. That f*cktard must've been arch-mage level in strength!
I eventually managed to get close by using healing spells first and evasion of his magic, and then putting up a ward which really didn't work too well, so I sprinted the last bit of distance and hack-'n-slashed him to bits with my dual wield blades (and downing a few fire resistance and healing potions). But I'm never going to trust you guys about the strength of enemies.

Well, I was level 46, so I guess it's probably got something to do with your level.

I still step to close to those runes on the floor, for some reason I am attracted to them. * oh those are pretty runes*
Need to remember to fire a spell at them instead of inspecting them.

I had a fire dragon attack mudcrabs today. Not sure if the fire hurt the mubcrabs in the water or not.

LOLOL