I left off on the cliff where I fought my first random dragon who tag teamed with that lich to try and stop me from getting my new shout. Still planning to go up to Winterhold, I decided to curve around and follow the high ridge so I could get a good view of what was around before moving out.
As I was rounding the southwestern side, I looked down over a pretty sharp drop and see the ruins of an old fort nestled against the mountain below me. I stopped for a moment and almost decided against going down that way (since the route back looked pretty inconvenient) until I saw bursts of ice shooting out from behind some of the fort rubble towards something I couldn't see. Enough to get my interest so I hunched down and took the safest angle I could down the cliff wall.
By the time I'd traversed the cliff, though, there didn't seem to be any commotion. It wasn't until I was trying to get up over the wall through a section that was toppled over that two mages both robed in black got the jump on me. Annoyingly one of them was a Dunmer so I was doing more slicing with my bound sword than I'd care for as my Atronach is still fire, but they don't prove to be too much trouble. Seeing a lower entrance off to the side and deciding busting down the front door is not really my style, I opted for the entrance into the fort's dungeons.
Turns out the black robe motif wasn't just for show. The whole place was infested with necromancers, and the decor was appropriately grim. Heading in through the dungeon only made me terribly anxious, as there were tables littered with corpses of vampires and master vampires; they seemed to be cutting parts out of and stuffing them into baskets. Wasn't Martha Stewart approved, but luckily there weren't any of those fuckers still walking around in there. I smashed up their stuff pretty good, including a Talos shrine they were defiling with a summoning circle and some kind of prayer room they'd set up lined with sarcophagi. Most interestingly, when I cleared my way to the room connected to the front door, I ran into a mage pounding away on a blacksmith's anvil. He didn't seem to be working on anything interesting at the time, but on his shelf was a very strange gem that started a quest when I picked it up. Neat, but time to get the hell out.
Going out the front door, I remembered that I couldn't go back the way I came, so instead I found a path off leading west that came out to a road. Just up ahead, going the opposite way I'd originally meant to go, was a pretty nasty looking dude in fur armor trudging down the way. Stopping him just to see what he was doing out here, he told me that he was afflicted by a terrible disease and that the blessings of a particular shrine were helping him fend it off as he made his way home to High Rock. Something about their shepherd leading people astray, and that I should probably go check it out sometime. He marked a location on my map that was a ludicrous distance from where we were, so I bid his sickly ass farewell.
Totally forgetting my original goal, I was now moving toward an icon that had popped up on my compass. Clearly some kind of dungeon entrance, so I turned off and followed a ridge again until I was standing directly over it. Of course, looking across I realized I was now much closer to Whiterun than I was before, and could clearly see it over the plains. I figured I might as well jump down and go explore what I'd found, then maybe head back to my home in Whiterun to offload some of what I was carrying. Enter Shivermist Cave.
The inside of this cave is immediately striking. It looks nothing like anything I've come across yet; the entire cave glows bright blue and green, illuminating the thick fog that fills the entire space. I snatched up some glowing mushrooms from the wall and quickly came to a small water-filled room, with a lone spider guarding a thin walkway. Easily dispatched, which made me think I was more than powerful enough to press on without fear. Crossing the bridge and moving ahead, though, the hallway opened up into a large room with crazy insect bits sticking right out of the ground. Two levels high, I spot something on the upper ledge... but I have no idea what it is. It looks like Gollum on skooma, and it has a bow. I throw a Fire Atronach up there and things seem to be going swimmingly - if a little slow - and just before it dies it turns and lands a solid swipe across my face for about 75% of my health. That's not bad. It's a lot better than the 100% some things have dealt me up to now. Looting him, I notice that he's actually a Falmer - frost elves native to Skyrim.
Not really what I was expecting. There was a small hut clearly built out of chitinous shell; the door looked like two interlocked hands, except the fingers were made out of giant insect legs, and the door folded open in a way that made the whole structure seem pretty disgusting. Cutting down another Falmer as I moved deeper into this place, I quickly found an entrance into yet another level called Shivermist Grotto. Inside are a few more Falmer, as well as what seems to be a pen holding the source of said chitin and insect bits - giant centipede looking things that spit poison from a distance. The caves that connect these rooms are tight and narrow, though, and it's easy enough to keep safe just summoning meatshields loyal Atronach friends between myself and them.
Approaching what I hoped was the tail end of this place, the luminescent walls and fog gave way in the final corridor to more typical rock and torchlight. Moving around the final bend, I came to the prize: excavated from the mountain was an ancient entrance with two enormous bronze doors more than twice my height. They were turned at an awkward angle that made it obvious this was not where they were originally fashioned, and pushing them open confirmed it. They swung out into a room maybe fifty feet tall and twice as long; dark except for a bonfire lit somewhere against the wall, but you could hear the machinery everywhere. I wanted to appreciate the amazing Dwemer architecture more, but there was one last miserable little shit elf left, and apparently he'd found a way to activate the enormous Dwemer golem. Not wanting to fight them in such a huge open space, I backed into the cave I'd just come from, but this Falmer was some kind of mage and was a hell of a lot tougher than the others. He actually managed to push me back maybe halfway through the grotto; the caves made it hard for him to get to me, but it also made it hard for me to get past my Atronach to him, and he knew enough Restoration spells to make shit difficult. Eventually we wound up in the room with the centipede pens, and I shouted him over the ledge, jumped down and finished him off with a bound sword to the brain. Fortunately, the Dwemer golem proved much easier as he wasn't nearly as nimble as the Falmer and seemed to need to pause and vent steam every now and then (maybe due to constant fire damage, I'm not sure).
The discovery is awesome and I was just glad to have finally found another Dwemer ruin (and some nice Dwemer swag, chest and helm armor), but once I've had my fill of checking out the pumping machinery built into the walls, I climbed the path out of the room, which dropped me back in Shivermist Cave. Felt pretty satisfied at this point, so I jumped out into Skyrim where there's just enough nighttime left to see some aurora lights.
In what I guess was appropriately inconvenient, my looking up at the lights immediately drew my attention to the dragon bearing down on my position. This battle went kind of like my last dragon fight, except that this dragon is a total nutjob. It flew maybe two hundred yards away just so it could torch a saber cat that was clearly minding it's own fucking business, and I'm pretty sure at one point it stopped so that it could breathe fire on the waterfall nearby. Maybe it hated fish, I don't know.
Either way, me and Mrs. Hotstuff kick his ass, I ate his soul like Shang Tsung and I wind up overencumbered yet again desperately trying to haul my loot back to the place I came from. The end.
(at least until all the dungeons in the game are gone, lol)
