Category Archives: Story Time

Directly following the completion of the massively dragged out “Garn” Oblivion campaign I’ve decided to do a quick postmortem wrap up to answer some of the questions that have been asked over the years and just take a quick, general look back over it all.

What’s up with the name “Garn”? Is “Garn” from x?

First, the name Garn. A lot of people have wanted to know where I got it. A few have commented on it sounding kind of dumb and/or not fitting the character.

You’re totally right. I actually came up with the name several years previous when I decided to try playing an Alliance character in World of Warcraft for the first time. Specifically, I wanted to try the prototypical human Paladin. I always thought human males looked dumb as hell in WoW, and still do for the most part, so I gave him a name I thought sounded appropriately dumb and harsh, like something Conan’s less-known knucklehead brother might have. My decision to use that name in Oblivion was fairly random. This Garn was also “human” and the name was appropriately fantasy-ish so it seemed like an okay fit. I admit at that time I had little idea of what my character’s… err, character would be like. What a different series this would have been if I had played him as just a beefy, dumb fighter. Maybe next time?

“Not actually anything to do with witches.”

Some people have been curious about the particulars of the character, since I rarely talked about the specifics of the game systems during the campaign. All shall now be revealed!

Race: Breton
Birthsign: The Warrior
Class: Witch Blade (custom class focusing on Heavy Armor, Block, Blade, plus a few schools of magic.)
Level: 42
Health: 521
Magicka: 270
Fatigue: 394

Strength: 100
Intelligence: 100
Willpower: 100
Agility: 94
Speed: 104
Endurance: 100
Personality: 90
Luck: 91

Major Skills:
Athletics: 91
Blade: 100
Block: 84
Heavy Armor: 100
Conjuration: 100
Destruction: 88
Restoration: 78

Notable Minor Skills:
Armorer: 89
Alchemy: 41
Acrobatics: 40
Mercantile: 33
Security: 98
Speechcraft: 36

Notable Accomplishments:
Days Passed: 199
Quests Completed: 118
Skill Increases: 675
Training Sessions: 80
Fame: 144
Infamy: 0 – What little infamy I had I would have cleared while doing my Knights of the Nine routine.
Days Jailed: 0
Items Stolen: 1054 – I can’t imagine how I racked up so many.
Items Pickpocketed: 0
Assaults: 58
Murders: 0
Largest Bounty: 40
Creatures Killed: 1902
People Killed: 845
Locks Picked: 441
Souls Trapped: 0 – I didn’t do any soul trapping at all with this character, surprisingly.
Potions Made: 215 – Surprised it was this many. I didn’t do much Alchemy with Garn.
Oblivion Gates Shut: 9 – The bare minimum to advance the plot + Allies for Bruma.
Horses Owned: 1 – Really? I always avoided getting my horse killed and only really ever replaced if I had to.
Houses Owned: 2 – In addition to my Imperial City shack I also acquired but never used the awesome Benirus Manor in Anvil.
Books Read: 236
Skill Books Read: 15
Artifacts Found: 2 – I got the Skeleton Key to save myself the frustration of constantly hording and breaking lock picks, and of course the artifact needed to complete the main quest.
Hours Slept: 225
Hours Waited: 1369 – I waited more than I slept, huh! The waiting mechanic is crucial for saving time.
Nirnroots Found: 114

Gold on hand: 342,662 although I hadn’t sold most of my loot since starting the main quest, and of the little of it I took with me a lot of it was worth a fair amount (magic weapons and armor, mostly.) I also horded almost every piece of magical weapon or armor that fit my class in my Imperial City shack for the first half or more of the campaign. Probably quite a lot of money tied up in there.

I played on default / medium difficulty for more or less the entire campaign. At first this was quite hard thanks to OOO’s rebalancing. For most of the middle and end of the story I found it laughably easy to slaughter my opponents. At the end, going through the main quest line, a lot of the Daedric enemies were actually pretty tough. I ended up bumping the difficulty slider down a tiny bit just to make clearing out Oblivion gates less of a grind.

The story arc/plot of the series? Why didn’t you do x questline?

At first I had only a vague idea that I might do normal quests and write about those, and not coming up with any other great hook early on, that is definitely how things developed. Soon I found myself needing to consider what order I’d play the questlines in for some sort of narrative coherency. The final product is fairly close to what I had imagined with the only difference being that I had originally planned for Garn to be sidelined by evil (an excuse to do the Thieves Guild, Dark Brotherhood, and Daedric questlines) and him doing the Knights of the Nine questline in order to repent. With things taking so long and some conflicting thoughts about exactly how I’d pull off the whole redemption thing, I decided to skip those questlines altogether.

How many hours did you play?!

Naturally it didn’t actually take me more than 9 years to play Oblivion – it’s not that long. According to my last save, almost 122 hours on the nose. I only played a session or two a month, with each session usually being somewhere in the neighborhood of a few hours. There were definitely segments where my post didn’t really reflect how long I had played but for the most part I feel like my time playing is pretty well represented by my writing. I would have loved to play much more often but I found having to write about my adventures before proceeding on to be a big stumbling point. In fact, I wanted to play so much more than I was playing that I actually ended up running through an entirely separate campaign with a different character on the Xbox 360 version of the game back in 2013. I also 100% Fallout 3 during that time as well.

So is Oblivion like, your favorite game ever?

Err, that’s hard to say. I’d definitely say that The Elder Scrolls is my favorite RPG series ever. I love the immersive nature of the world and the more and more I learn about it I absolutely love the lore behind the series. In fact I’ll be playing through Arena soon in one of my Retro Reviews, hopefully.

What mods are you using?

People have certainly noticed that I’m not playing 100% vanilla Oblivion. While I’ve found a few other mods I would have loved to incorporate into the campaign (this one for example, which adds active Imperial Legion forts across the continent) I decided to keep my add-on list static after starting the campaign for the sake of stability. Getting Oblivion mods, particularly complicated ones like OOO, to play together can sometimes be difficult. My setup is fairly solid.

Here they are, and the load order (tuned with Oblivion Mod Manager):

Oscuro’s_Oblivion_Overhaul.esm – OOO is the source of most of the odd tweaks that people have observed.
Enhanced Daedric Invasion.esm – I liked the idea of this mod but apart from having more and more spawns around the gate I didn’t notice many of the cooler enhancements.
AWS-Core.esm – Atmospheric Weather System.
Unofficial Oblivion Patch.esp
DLCHorseArmor.esp – Essential! 😛
DLCHorseArmor – Unofficial Patch.esp
DLCOrrery.esp
DLCOrrery – Unofficial Patch.esp
DLCThievesDen.esp
DLCThievesDen – Unofficial Patch.esp
DLCThievesDen – Unofficial Patch – SSBB.esp
DLCMehrunesRazor.esp
DLCMehrunesRazor – Unofficial Patch.esp
DLCVileLair.esp
DLCVileLair – Unofficial Patch.esp
DLCSpellTomes.esp
DLCSpellTomes – Unofficial Patch.esp
Short Grass V3.esp – So I can see my loot!
Natural_Vegetation_by_Max_Tael.esp
Natural_Habitat_by_Max_Tael.esp
Oblivion Citadel Door Fix.esp
Crowded Roads Revisited.esp
Crowded Cities 15.esp
Obscuro’s_Oblivion_Overhaul.esp
OOO-Level_Stock.esp
DLCFrostcrag.esp
DLCFrostcrag – Unofficial Patch.esp
DLCBattlehornCastle.esp
DLCBattlehornCastle – Unofficial Patch.esp
Knights.esp
Knights – Unofficial Patch.esp
Enhanced Daedric Invasion.esp
Enhanced Daedric Invasion for OOO.esp
No psychic guards v1.2.esc – A classic essential!
PekImperialHorseArmor.esp – Because the Legion should have armored horses too!
OOOPekImeprialHorseArmor.esp
KseAliLeveling.esp – Forces maximized/optimized leveling.
Encumbrance100.esp – Because I don’t like managing my inventory constantly, and I’m a pack rat.
Quest Award Leveler.esp – I think it’s a bummer that you need to optimize quest timing to make quest rewards more valuable / last longer. This mod simply keeps them leveled to you. Problem solved!
Quest Award Leveller – Vile Lair.esp
Quest Award Leveller – Mehrunes Razor.esp
Quest Award Leveller – Kinghts of the Nine.esp

One of the sillier challenges I had during the course of the series was that I didn’t want to migrate this setup to over another PC and risk breaking anything. While there were other reasons, that was one of the excuses I used for not updating my main gaming PC for way, waaay too long. I had built just before I started this campaign. Yeah, it was definitely time to upgrade… 😉

What did you do to take your screenshots?

Nothing too special. I used FRAPS and set it to repeat shots every 2 seconds. A lot of my action shots are achieved by playing normally but occasionally going into third person, plus a huge amount of simple luck. This didn’t always work for me though as sometimes I wouldn’t end up with anything useful after an otherwise awesome encounter. My fight with Mankar Camoran is a great example of that – no great pictures of the fight with Mankcar himself. Beyond that I often purposely framed nice shots using third person view and, more and more often as the campaign progressed, started using the toggle free camera (TFC) console command for the sake of variety.

Things you learned from the series / what you’d do differently next time?

First of all, I learned that writing is hard. Despite not being particularly good at it I absolutely love to write. The problem is that I’m goddamn slow, and I usually have trouble finding the time and the motivation to sit down and write something out, revise it multiple times, sift through my screenshots, etc. This was the main reason this whole project took so long – I’d play for a few hours and then I’d have to come up with the time to pen my adventure before having another session. This was especially frustrating after a great session that got me all amped up to play more.

I found it quite difficult to keep my perspectives consistent with such spread out writing sessions. I ended up purposely experimenting with this for my own benefit which is where the different “From Garn’s recollections” and “From the journal of Garn” subheadings came from. I found it ESPECIALLY difficult to keep my tenses straight when writing something so long and spread out which I admit I don’t have any good excuses for. I guess I won’t ever end up writing my Great American Novel after all… 😉

Directly related, the final format I used for this “Let’s Play” was a bit ridiculous. I would have been far better off writing a more detailed account of a much shorter adventure OR a much less detailed account of something this size or even larger. The next few of these I do will be much shorter form, whatever format those end up being, for the sake of my sanity.

Finally, a little less mechanical, I learned a ton about the lore behind the Elder Scrolls series and a lot about the TES community in general. I actually wish I had sought out more sources than the various wikis and whatnot beforehand as I might have been a little better prepared to make my fiction fit into the canon from the get go. I’d have to say that the various TES related subs on Reddit, including /r/TESLore were especially influential later on into this series.

Shoutouts:

Living in Oblivion – Nondrick’s Non-adventure was a great, less serious, inspiration for starting this originally.
The Elder Scrolls Subreddit and related subs were excellent resources, especially for learning about the lore.
The Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages (UESP) was my main reference when planning my sessions and writing up my adventures.
The Imperial Library also a nice place for referencing the script and in-game books.

That’s about it for Garn! I’ll definitely never do such an epic Let’s Play ever again, at least not in text, but this probably isn’t the last time I’ll be doing one based in the Elder Scrolls series.

Warning: potential main quest spoilers ahead!

From Garn’s recollections:

Closure

Martin and a couple of Blades who happened to be in the great hall when I had appeared sat me up, dusted me off, and handed me a tankard of ale. Believe me, to go from running out of a collapsing building to appearing in another world in the blink of an eye is an uncomfortable experience. Martin seemed relieved to see me, correctly taking my return to mean that I had defeated Mankar Camoran. He congratulated me on my victory and asked if I had recovered the Amulet of the Kings. Still attempting to gather myself, I simply handed the Amulet of Kings to Martin and suggested he put it on, as it was his after all.

“I’d be reluctant too, did you hear what happened to the last guy?!”

The two Blades in the room each took steps back to watch intently as Martin easily placed the amulet around his neck. Martin had more or less always known he was Uriel Septim’s son since we first suggested it to him back in Kvatch but that made it official. Well, almost. Martin remained very respectful of the traditions of the empire and demanded, even in this time of crisis, to meet with the high council to secure their full blessing and carry out all of the traditional ceremonies. Not only that, but lighting the Dragonfires was more than a hollow ritual. It should, as planned, close the gates to Oblivion and end Mehrune Dagon’s invasion once and for all. Martin had already sent a messenger to High Chancellor Ocato in preparation for my return and so we wasted no time and assembled a small retinue to accompany us down to the capital.

“High Chancellor Ocato swears his loyalty to his new Emperor.”

We received strange looks from both city guard and people in the streets alike as we quickly ushered Martin to the Imperial Palace. Ocato met us in the council chambers along with a few witnesses. Ocato knelt down before Martin and told us that he had already met with the rest of the Elder Council to discuss Martin’s claim to the throne and that the decision to back him was unanimous. On behalf of the council he officially accepted Martin’s claim, recognizing him as Uriel Septim’s heir. I had been through so much after the fateful day when I first witnessed the Mythic Dawn’s assassination of the Emperor that coming full circle to that moment was a huge relief.

“Trouble in the streets of the Imperial City.”

Ocato, Martin, and the others ceased with the formalities and began discussing arranging the coronation ceremony when suddenly a young guardsman came bursting into the council chambers screaming in alarm. The guard collapsed before he could deliver the message in its entirety, 2 Daedric arrows sticking in his back. Everyone in the room instantly drew their weapons and not too late, as Dremora soldiers rushed in immediately engaging with the palace guards at the door. I, along with the other Blades, made escorting the Emperor and the High Chancellor out of harm’s way our highest priority and after dispatching a few Daedra found ourselves back out in the streets of the Imperial City.

The situation was worse than first feared. There were multiple Oblivion gates opened throughout the city itself, buildings on aflame, and groups of Daedra pillaging and marauding through the city streets. It was suggested that we return to the relative safety of the palace but Martin instead ordered us all to fight our way to the Temple of the One so that we could light the Dragonfires. In retrospect, that was probably the only sensible reaction.

“Total chaos!”

With the amount of Daedra pouring through the gates the fight to get the temple was incredibly chaotic. Few of the city guard who hadn’t served in the Imperial Legions since the Oblivion Crisis started had ever had to fight Daedra and many of them fell due to their inexperience. Still, there were enough soldiers and Blades around us that we eventually made it to the Temple District. The district was filled with a dense, black smoke and the combined cacophony of screams, cries, roars, and clashes of steel on steel only added to the confusion. Then as our group rounded one side of the temple things got even worse – Mehrunes Dagon!

“Actually Martin, I need to split. I’ve got an appointment… or something. Yeah.”

The Daedric Prince himself had broken through the barriers that had protected us from Oblivion and taken on a physical form in our world. We had run out of time – our plan had failed. Summoning the last bit of desperate hope the soldiers with us could muster we all raised our shields and huddled in a corner to come up with a plan. Lighting the Dragonfires could no longer help us but I asked if, since the Amulet of Kings was an artifact of Akatosh, its power was still of use. That was when Martin came up with a genius plan. He ordered us to get him to into the Temple of the One.

“A plan so cunning you could pin a tail on it and call it a fox.”

Getting the Emperor into the temple was no small task as Prince Dagon stood near the front door fighting off a small group of Imperial battlemages who had been ineffectively peppering him with spells. Soon our careful advance was broken by a swarm of Clannfear and Daedroth that viciously knocked three of our men away, causing many of the others to run in fear. As the High Chancellor broke off to help Martin and I pressed on, running past much of the fighting in the streets, sneaking around the menacing Daedric Prince, and making it into the temple.

Inside Martin began to reveal his plan to me. He would shatter the Amulet of Kings, mixing the divine power of Akatosh with the Dragons Blood of the Septim line. I questioned what exactly he thought would happen but we were interrupted by a heart-stopping booming noise coming from the roof of the temple. Martin and I both looked up to see a large section of the temple’s roof and outer wall give way, and the towered physical manifestation of the Daedric Prince peering in at us.

Before I knew it I was blinded by an intense white light as Martin was enveloped in the scattering beams of intense divine power, and then a pillar of flame rose up from where Martin had just stood. The flames quickly rose up, higher and higher, and then, incredibly, took the shape of a great dragon. There was a brief moment of still as the Daedric Prince stared at the flames curiously, interrupted as the flames parted to reveal head of an actual golden dragon. It struck out at Mehrunes Dagon, letting loose a massive jet of flame breath.

“The Avatar of Akatosh delivers a divine beatdown.”

In the most incredible battle I or indeed anyone in the Imperial City that day had ever seen, the towering Daedric Prince and this amazing avatar of the divine Akatosh traded blows. The fight seemed even enough but where Prince Dagon seemed to suffer from his wounds the dragon barely reacted to being struck. With that it was only a matter of a few more successful strikes until Mehrunes Dagon sustained enough damage that he was cast back into Oblivion. The dragon, perched atop the center altar of the temple, let out one last victorious roar and then turned to stone.

“The smoke clears…”

In an instant all of the Oblivion portals in the city flickered out, their rocky supports crumbling into pieces, the remaining Daedra in the city were seemingly also cast back into Oblivion, and the black smoke that had choked the city’s center began to part revealing blue skies once again. It seemed that not only had Martin’s plan defeated Prince Dagon but it had also restored the protective barriers that separated Mundus from Oblivion, creating a new divine artifact in the process. The city, indeed, our entire world, was safe.

I sheathed my sword, took off my helmet, and began walking away. High Chancellor Ocato stopped me, asking what happened. After I explained the situation he was, of course, heartbroken about losing our new Emperor. He assured me that the Elder Council would find a way, and that Martin’s sacrifice would not go unrecognized. He had been one of our most heroic Emperors, even if Emperor for such a short time. He also recognized me for my part, proclaiming me Champion of Cyrodiil. I was honored but I could only think of all of those who gave up their lives during this struggle: Martin, Jauffre, and Baurus to name only the few I knew personally. I was tired. It had been a long, long journey, and I hoped that it had finally come to an end.

“Hanging up my sword and shield.”

With great fanfare I returned back to the Priory of the Nine. After a brief celebration I went to the Priory’s armory to return the Crusader’s Relics. I had hopes that Pelinal Whitestrake could guide another to take up the cause if ever such a need arose again. While I would continue to oversee the Knights of the Nine and help the people of Cyrodiil wherever I could, my adventuring days were over. I had seen the deaths of two emperors, been in the middle of struggles between the gods and demons themselves, and seen more than my share of all of the good and bad that his world has to offer.

And that is how I ended up here, to tell this story…

Well friends, at long last, with the closure of the Oblivion gates and the completion of Oblivion’s main quest, Garn’s story also comes to a close. Stay tuned for a special epilogue in which I’ll share some behind the scenes details some people have asked me about over the years. Special thanks for my few, dedicated readers!

Warning: potential main quest spoilers ahead!

From Garn’s recollections:

Paradise

Martin rode back to Cloud Ruler Temple while I stayed at Bruma to help tend to the wounded and the dead. Many good men died on that day, including many important members of the order of the Blades, and I felt it only right to take a moment to see to them. After helping where I could and ensuring the rest was left in good hands, I met Martin back at the temple. Martin had just finished making his final preparations. After giving me some last minute advice and making sure I was fully prepared the ritual began.

“Paradise awaits!”

Strange smells filled our nostrils and the great hall gradually appeared to be enveloped in a thick, dark haze, then with a mighty crack the ground sprang open and a portal, not unlike a smaller version of the Oblivion gates, appeared before us. At first the portal itself was tiny, but with a second, deafening crack, the portal took on its full shape and after a few brief moments seemed to stabilize. With a quick nod to Martin I gripped my sword and stepped through the gate.

“A beautiful backdrop for eternal torment.”

In a flash I appeared in a clearing in the middle of a beautiful wood. As Martin predicted there was no return portal behind me – I was simply stuck there. I climbed a nearby hill to take in the area. Exotic wildflowers of rare colors were everywhere and the land was dotted with intricate white marble structures such as bridges and gazebos. I began to follow what seemed to be a path through the hills when I came upon an ice Atronach chasing a man through the trees. I quickly dispatched the Atronach using a flame spell and approached the severely shaken Briton.

The man had little in the way of clothing and was covered in minor scratches and bruises yet to my surprise he addressed me with pompousness not typically heard from someone who was cowering for their lives not seconds earlier. I met several such people while navigating these gardens. From what I could piece together they were servants of Mankar Camoran’s who died and, fulfilling his promise, were blessed with immortality and sent to his paradise. When Mehrunes Dagon had conquered our world they’d return to rule over it as lords. At least, that was the plan.

“Always read the small print when signing up for a Daedric cult.”

While in this place (which they called Gaiar Alata) they were constantly tormented by the Daedric creatures who shared it with them and if they were killed they would simply be reborn to continue the torturous cycle. Most of them seemed to have been driven to the point of despair, if not utter madness, and seemed to have deep regret for their service to Camoran and Prince Dagon though surprisingly a few still remained loyal.

“My retribution is ongoing, actually…”

Eventually I came across a single bridge guarded by a Dremora warrior in full battle gear. To my surprise he greeted me on sight instead of charging at me like so many others I had faced. The Dremora introduced himself as Kathutet and claimed that his kin had fought me and said I fought well for a mortal, so well that they they had a certain respect for me and therefore it was no dishonor to speak with me. He told me he would let me pass if I could do a service for him, that, or challenge him. Either option would bring him honor. While I was unaccustomed to a talkative Dremora, he still served the Daedra, and I would not serve him. I drew my sword. He smiled with approval.

“Kethutet: Not-so-adoring fan.”

Kethutet was strong, and his mighty Daedric longsword slammed against my Crusader’s blade, nearly pushing me off of my feet. As I slammed him back I found time to unleash a flame blast and hit him directly, causing him to unleash a horrific roar of pain. I parried his next attack as well, and another I blocked with my shield. Pushing him off of me a second time, I again cast a flame blast at him, knocking him off of his feet. I crossed the bridge and into the cave that he seemed to have been guarding.

I soon found myself in a complicated cave system that appeared to be some sort of Mythic Dawn dungeon. The cultists here were, seemingly, torturing other servants of Mankar Camoran. Given that everyone here was immortal, many of the torture methods I witnessed were particularly brutal. Soon I heard the voice of Mankar Camoran himself booming throughout the cave system. He seemed to be speaking directly to me, so no doubt his servants and guards knew I was here, somewhere.

“There’s actually a guy at the end of this chain. Yep, glad I skipped Mythic Dawn recruitment day.”

He spoke of the Daedra being the true gods, and the Divines I serve being false pretenders. He spoke of Tamriel being just another realm of Oblivion. Some of these ideas I heard before, read from some of the heretical books I studied in the Imperial City while searching for clues to my past. In the present though, I had faith in the Divines, and attempted to ignore Camoran’s ceaseless saber rattling.

I tried my best to avoid detection while I continued through the grotto but found myself face to face with one of the torturers. I drew my sword but he put his hands up, pleading for me to stop. He claimed that he could help me escape this place and take my revenge upon Mankar Camoran. Since at this point I had found myself quite lost in these maze-like caverns my curiosity peaked. I listened. He said his name was Eldamil and that he was one of Mankar Camoran’s chief lieutenants before he was slain in the battle of Kvatch. He claimed he had since had much time to come to regret his part of seeing the Mythic Dawn’s plans to fruition. He wanted to attone for his sins by helping me defeat Mankar Camoran. I had no particular reason to trust Eldamil but given what I had witnessed in my short time in “paradise” I also had no reason to doubt that he might have come to regret his place at Camoran’s side. Camoran already knew I was here, after all, so there was no point in attempting to deceive me with someone like Eldamil.

“It turns out that the Dremora still hate me after all. :(“

Eldamil escorted me through the dungeon as if I was another one of Camoran’s men condemned to torture and while the other ascended immortals ignored me, some of the Dremora who guarded the grotto saw through our ruse. Eldamil and I soon found ourselves in an all out fight to escape the caverns. Thankfully, after defeating several fierce Dremora guards we found the exit and made haste to Carac Agailor, Mankar Camoran’s palace.

We were met at the gates by Ruma and Raven Camoran, Mankar’s children. They escorted us to see Mankar Camoran himself. Mankar spoke of the changes Tamriel would face under he and Prince Dagon’s reign and how fate had brought him and I together, as one final test of his supremacy. He assumed that I was a pretender and that they could make some sort of an example out of me as well as end Martin’s chances of stopping the invasion in a single, decisive move. They were quite wrong. While they might have the Daedra on their side, I was the Divine Crusader, and I had the Nine watching over me.

“Err. A little sadistic to kill his children in front of him, but the ends justify the means, right?”

Ruma and Raven summoned Daedric armor and weapons and charged me while Mankar sat in his throne, an amused smirk on his face. Eldamil crippled Raven with a surprise electric bolt from behind me as Ruma and I traded swings. Soon it was two against one, and soon, just two. Mankar Camoran no longer wore his smile but instead became enraged. Standing up from his throne and raising his staff over his head he pointed at Eldamil who instantly dropped dead, electricity cracking over his body. I raised my shield and charged.

Catching him by surprise, I hit Mankar Camoran with a mighty shield bash and pinned in him the corner of his throne room, then quickly darted back. I peppered him with fireballs while he answered with a strong blast of lightning from his staff. I blasted him with fire bolt, tumbled to my right, and blasted him yet again. While I had no doubt that Mankar was a powerful mage, and one which had been bestowed the many gifts of a Daedric Prince at that, he seemed to have grown out of practice when it came to dueling. I rolled toward him as he cast his own fire bolt at me causing him to shoot wide and miss me entirely. As I rolled back to my feet the gleaming steel blade of Sword of the Crusader plunged deep into his belly. He he collapsed clutching his wounds I reached out for the Amulet of Kings and snatched it off of his neck.

As soon as Mankar Camoran had drawn his final breath his palace, and indeed his entire world, began to crumble around me. I raised my shield above my head and attempted to weave through the falling debris but it was pointless. Whatever magic bound that realm to our Mundus had been broken and I found myself suddenly tripping over a table in the great hall of Cloud Ruler Temple and stumbling to the ground. I was back.