"I almost forgot about those annoying folk. There are thousands of them up in the foothills and mountain caves of the reach right?" I said with a frown.
"Aye, like worms chewed through apples. I put them to the sword before and almost broke them but in the those places no army dares cross they fester still." Ulfric said bitterly.
"Troublesome. An open enemy we could impale with little trouble but one that plays hide and seek with anyone we send after them requires a different set of tactics. I'll think on this matter and send you whatever solution I can think of." I said after deeply considering this problem.
"In a hurry to leave Windhelm already?" he asked with a raised eyebrow.
"I have an appointment to keep. Beyond that I will see where the winds blow me." I said frankly.
"A pity. I had hoped to host you for a while at least." he said sounding genuinely disappointed.
Ulfric ended up offering me a room for the night if nothing else after this. When Lokjun made it's appearance it caused quite the stir in the city.
"A strange beast but powerful." Galmar said gruffly as he looked over the thing.
"Gryphon's are already incredibly powerful beasts and Lokjun has been further empowered through draconic mutation. It's practically on the same level as a Wyrm but limited by it's age. It will only grow more powerful as the years pass." I said while roughly scratching the scaled monster between it's wings on it's back.
"It seems the gods truly favor you." he said with a tinge of envy.
I shrugged it off though and after a few hours of discussion about the various things Ulfric needed to deal with I eventually turned in for the night. -
He spoke of the tensions in his city, the deals he was negotiating and running with the great houses of Morrowwind and even his own concerns about the fate of skyrim. While skyrim was not going to be devolving into a civil war and Torygg was still alive the other signs of the old prophecy were still already fulfilled. The prophecy was quite clear that the final herald of Alduin's return and the last dragonborn's rise would come when the frozen throne was without king and bleeding. A war of ceding from the empire and the death of Torygg even because of an accident would fulfill these last lines in that prophecy.-
My actions in this political landscape wouldn't stop the return of the dragons, but it would lessen the damage skyrim would take. As much as I might wish for the prophecy to just get delayed even further I knew that it wasn't a good idea. I couldn't just focus on purely the dragon crisis but had to look long term after that as well. The thalmor were still very much a problem that needed to be dealt with and the other two problems from the game were also massive concerns. -
The vampire prophecy involving Auriel's bow, the literal bow of a god being used to darken the sun letting Vampires walk this world without restriction. Like all prophecies this one was able to be fulfilled in different ways because of it's vagueness but only one or maybe two of these ways were acceptable. For starters the actual corruption of the bow was unacceptable. That would permanently taint the sun in the sky which would be no different from an apocalypse. Ignoring the ecological aspects of this, which were vast mind you, the magical implications were dreadful.-
The sun wasn't the only source of magicka on Nirn but it was the largest by far. If that entire magicka source was corrupted the magicka coming from it was also going to be corrupted. Forget the fact the plants and animals would likely mutate violently in the face of this anyone and everyone would likely also start to mutate over time under the corrupted magicka's influence. Every single mortal race draws in magicka from the air passively from the moment they are born. When all of this magicka is corrupted this corruption was bound to wreak havoc on the mortal races.-
Being a mage would be SO much fucking worse as we constantly drain our pools and refill them with ambient magicka. We would either change almost in a matter of months or just plain die as the corrupted magicka tore us apart from within. The second option discussed and used in the game was "bloodcursed" arrows fired from the bow. These were basically just elven arrows soaked in the blood of a daughter of Coldharbour that replicated the effects of corrupting the bow but only temporarily. This was more acceptable as it only meant the influence on the world would be minimal unless the one using the bow was an ass and spammed that shit for some reason.-
Then there was the third option that technically fulfilled the prophecy but otherwise changed nothing. I was of course referring to the bow being used to darken the sun through whichever of the other methods before being destroyed returning everything to normal. Destroying a godly artifact was troublesome but by no means impossible. The easiest method was just handing it to another god to break. Another method was using the artifact to fuel a ritual of some sort. Much like how Martin Septim used the blood of Talos along with a daedric artifact to open a portal to Mankar Camoran's paradise during the Oblivion crisis.-
That last method is especially effective when the rituals purpose is to break apart the artifact to begin with. Personally I think corrupting the bow or destroying it are both foolish and wasteful actions. It would probably be best to use corrupted arrows and then wield the bow as a supreme weapon. This would be especially ironic if you were to say steal the power of Lorkhan first.-
You know the god whose heart had been sent flying across the sea by this exact bow? I mean after all who better to wield a divine bow than someone with actual divine power flowing inside them? Or the bow could just be dropped to the bottom of the sea and left to be forgotten for all time, that would also work. The last problem the last dragonborn would deal with was less apocalyptic in nature but more individually troublesome. I wasn't exactly a huge fan of the idea of getting enslaved by Miraak after all. Or getting enslaved in general really.