Welcome to Jastinia of Windhelm’s legendary edition Ultimate Skyrim/Take Notes playthrough. My name is Anna and I'm blogging her playthrough on my WordPress page, Unearthed Arcanna, but posting all the content here too. Got questions about Jastinia? My modlist? Our roleplaying approach? Check out all the “playthrough links” below for more information about the series.
Playthrough links
- Full blogpost with pretty pictures!
- Ultimate Skyrim, other mods, and MCM setup
- Character backstory
- Character creation and build
- Self-imposed roleplaying rules
- Jastinia of Windhelm journal index
Story recap
Jastinia was born in Windhelm to Imperial immigrants. Her Nordic peers shunned the small, quiet girl and she spent much of her childhood on the docks, listening to Argonian stories and finding acceptance in their kindness. When her father vanished and the guards found her mother murdered, the Argonians adopted the 8 year-old and raised her as their own. She worked the docks while they trained her in Black Marsh’s native disciplines: leatherworking and tanning, stalking and hunting, footwork and conditioning and light infantry drill. Jastinia used her talents to help outsiders like her throughout the city, whether her Argonian family, the Dunmer of the squalid Gray Quarter, or the countless poor and beggars teeming Windhelm’s streets. But as she grew older, she knew it wasn’t enough to just be an advocate for Windhelm’s outcasts and outsiders; she also needed to be their champion.
With help from her Argonian teachers, and from the legendary Torbjorn Shatter-Shield who was impressed with the teenager’s passion, she trained to join the Stormcloaks. To rise in their ranks and elevate her voice in the Palace of the Kings. To fight for the freedoms of outsiders throughout Eastmarch, to show Skyrim was their home too. To prove she wasn’t the small-shouldered, craven, Imperial rat the Nords thought she was. She tested herself in the sewers under Windhelm, the tundra beyond its oppressive walls. She planned, prepared, and waited until the 31st of Last Seed, 4E 201. Her 16th birthday. The age of adulthood. The age of enlistment.
Last Seed, 31st, 4E 201
Sailor’s Rest. Windhelm.
Early morning.
-----
I don’t remember my last real birthday present. Last year it was Torbjorn bruising my arm in a sparring match. “The best kind of gift,” he smiled before he gave me a matching mark on the other side. Such a thoughtful guy that Torbjorn Shatter-Shoulder. The year before it was a handful of Septims from Shahvee, but they weren’t so much “Happy Birthday” as “services rendered for harvesting all those creep clusters.” And before that? I wish I remembered. Dad’s old Legion manuals? The silver pin mom gave me? Has it really been that long? Honestly, if I can’t even remember I can’t blame my friends for forgetting either. It’s not like Argonians celebrate their own hatchings. Why would they celebrate mine?
But not this year. This year is special. This year I had four gifts waiting for me at the Sailor’s Rest door. Plus one more still waiting in Windhelm.
The delivery came first. “I’ve been looking for you,” the Nord said as he approached me. Shit. Did Viola figure out how that ring got back in her dresser? One of Rolff’s goons looking to send a message to their favorite Dark Elf lover? My fists were clenched when he handed me a parcel. “Got something I’m supposed to deliver. Your hands only.” A small package wrapped in skeever pelt. A folded note. I started opening it even before he left.
I’d recognize the jagged handwriting anywhere, etched by claw instead of quill in the writer’s second language. “With walking boots securely tied, and knapsack on your back, it’s over hills and over dales, you’ll cover tundra tracks.” Oh, Scouts. Everyone on the docks knows his writing: heartfelt, personal, and really quite bad. Best longshoreman in Windhelm, best skirmisher west of Black Marsh, worst poet in Tamriel. And yet, as I read his words, “the wind full in your face,” “the ruggedness you embrace,” I felt the autumn air rush across the White River onto my cheeks. The greatsword heavy on my back, the rugged hauberk weighing my shoulders. Hidden behind his silly, stupid rhymes was a deep familiarity for the child he’d raised for eight years. A warm encouragement for that silly, stupid girl and her silly, stupid plan, shared on a day she hadn’t celebrated since mom and dad were alive.
I felt it was a book before I unwrapped the parcel. At first I thought it was one of Sadri’s (heavily) used wares, crude cover bound with thick thread and thicker fabric. But once I thumbed through its blank pages, I realized not even Sadri was that cheap. It was only after I felt the carving on the cover, the coarse white fabric along its spine, that I realized this book wasn’t a fourth-hand Sadri special. I recognized the fur from that snowbear I killed the other month, whose pelt I sold to Shavee. The same pelt she and the other Argonians must have trimmed, cured, and bound into a blank journal for the outsider girl they had taken in. Between the binding, the hundreds of paper pages inside, the inkwell and hawk-feather quill, I don’t want to think how much time this journal took. Or money it cost. More generosity I will repay one day. I swear it.
Last Fredas, after Scouts wrecked my poor legs with another barrel-hopping drill, he told me something. “You have quite the story to tell, Wargirl.”
“Stop it.” I could never tell if he was making fun of me with that name so I threw a snowball at him just to be safe. Of course he dodged it but he still grinned. “And it’s only just beginning,” he added. Holding this journal, I know why he said those things.
Thank you, Shahvee. Scouts and Shallows, Gallus and Teebus and Neetrenaza. Thank you for the lessons, these gifts, my home. Thank you for everything you’ve done for me.
Four presents from my Argonian family would’ve been enough on any other birthday, but there’s still one last gift waiting in the city. Behind the gates, beyond Candlehearth, up to the towering doors of Skyrim’s oldest castle. Inside the Palace of the Kings, my final present is waiting. And I’ve got the lumpy greatsword, patchwork armor, wobbly legs, and bruised shoulders to earn it. At least, if Jarl Ulfric will have me. So I pray to Kynareth, to all the Divines, to anyone and anything who helped me survive in a home that never wanted or welcomed me. Please. Bless me with strength. With courage. Grant me this wish so I can join the Stormcloaks and help those who have helped me.
And please don’t let Ulfric’s guards throw me out into a snowdrift.
Last Seed, 31st, 4E 201
Candlehearth Hall. Windhelm.
Late afternoon.
-----
“Kill an ice wraith,” he said. “Try not to die,” he said. Um, easy for Galmar to say. If even half of the Stone-Fist’s tales are true, he probably kills an ice wraith every day before he eats what’s left of it for breakfast. If he and Jarl Ulfric didn’t want some Imperial weakling in their army they could have just said so. Did they really need to send me to die? Does every Stormcloak recruit have to do do this? Galmar had an answer for that too; “Only the ones I’m not sure about.”
Yeah. That makes two of us.
I don’t know what I was expecting. Trumpets and fanfare? A royal welcome with all the guards saluting? We’re sorry for mocking you all those years, Jastinia of Windhelm. You’re the Stormcloak material we’re looking for! Oh, don’t get me wrong. There were plenty of guards waiting at the gates and inside. The same bastards who harass me in the market, the same taunts I get whenever they see me: “Stay out of trouble, Imperial.” “I’ve got my eye on you, Imperial.” I didn’t bother telling them why I was there. If anyone is going to laugh me out of the hall, let it be Ulfric Stormcloak himself. Not his minions who shove past me on the streets, shove my friends into the gutters.
Ulfric and Galmar were talking when I arrived. Something about Whiterun and an important-sounding man. About high kings and Empires and elves. They preached about conflicts older than my parents would be today if they hadn’t left me, voices echoing through stonework older than Skyrim. I stepped back. Retreated. What are you doing here, girl? This is too big for you. Listen to Ulfric boom about his cause and crusade. Listen to Galmar growl about battles you’ve never even heard of. These men fight for a lifetime of wars, grudges, and broken promises. They fight for their people. Who do you fight for? Impoverished Argonians and Dunmer who never asked for your sword anyway? A city that shuns you? Yourself? Be honest. What are you trying to prove anyway?
I didn’t know then and I’m not sure I know now. But I do know I didn’t leave fast enough as I stood there gawking at the most powerful man in Eastmarch as his voice filled the hall. I know he noticed me.
“Only the foolish or the courageous approach a Jarl without summons.” His eyes were ice as he towered over me from his throne. That’s when I should’ve run. Everything about this was foolish from my play-soldier outfit to the crude iron hunk on my back. I can’t decide what’s stupider: the idea that the True Sons and Daughters of Skyrim would want an Imperial orphan in their ranks, or that I actually came here to make that idea real.
I took another step back but Scouts stopped me. Shahvee. All of my friends on the docks, in the Gray Quarter, in the streets and sewers. Promises I made to all of them, a pledge they never expected me to keep but one I swore to keep anyway. My oath: I will rise in this city and make it better for them. Show the Stormcloaks that outsiders could fight just as well as any Nord. That Skyrim was our home too. I felt this journal in my pocket, heard Scouts’s words about Wargirl’s untold stories in my ears. Sensed Torbjorn Shatter-Shield nodding in approval behind me. Fathers and mothers unlike the ones that vanished and left me here. People I would make proud.
I bowed before replying: “A fool would have joined the Empire.” See? Sometimes I’m sharper than this dull chunk in my scabbard after all. I could tell by Ulfric’s smirk that yeah, he thought so too.
Ulfric sent me to Galmar to continue my enlistment, but now Galmar is sending me to a bloody grave. Or a frozen one if the weather gets me before the wraith. Couldn’t he ask me to slay some skeevers instead? A spider? You need sewer pest extermination and I’m your girl. But an ice wraith? Shit.
And yet, I agreed. “We’ll see about that, now won’t we,” Galmar said. I guess we will. To Galmar’s credit, he gave me some bottled brews that are supposed to keep me alive. Or maybe just die slower. I won’t be surprised if I’m the subject of a Stormcloak bet by now: double-or-nothing on the dead Imperial dock-waif. I’d take those odds. Neither Nirvanye nor Revyn stocked any books on these wraiths and I know as much about them as I know about any other fantastic creature; I might as well be fighting a dragon for all I know.
I’ll figure this out tomorrow. Some sword drills will distract me from my impending death. Sweat and calloused hands, a buttery Candlehearth dinner, a restless sleep in my doorless room by the docks. I can’t think of a better way to get ready for my first and last Stormcloak mission.
Sorry, Scouts. Guess Wargirl’s story is going to be a little shorter than you wanted it to be. But if you get in on Galmar’s bet, you’ll definitely earn back the money you wasted making this journal.
Heartfire, 1st, 4E 201
Sailor’s Rest. Windhelm.
Mid morning.
-----
I really need to remind the Duskstars to fix that awful machinery in the kitchen. Except Falyn’s just going to tell me the pipes are older than Windhelm and if I want to fix them I can fix them myself. “Break anything and it’s coming out of your deposit.” Like the grinding gears could get more broken? For all the rent I pay those two, you’d think they could at least repair the cracked paneling on my wall. But then again, maybe rumbling contraptions and broken wood are exactly what 35 gold per night gets you. At least he and Tabiah change the bed sheets every 2-3 weeks. Talk about luxuries.
I wish last night’s only disturbance had been the creaking pipes. The dream was worse. I’ve never seen an ice wraith before but I imagine they are similar to the creature that visited me. A ghostly serpent bristling with icicles, snow falling from its pale form. It hissed like blizzard winds through cracked walls, crunched like ice floes buckling under a cargo ship. I stood before it with my claymore, hands firm on the hilt, armored in Stormcloak blues and browns. You can do this, Jastinia. I told it to myself through chattering teeth as frozen mist slipped from my lips. You can do this. *I* can do this.
Except then the sword became paper in my hands. Flopping and bending in the wind before blowing away entirely. The cuirass faded to clothes, underwear, as even that began to fade. Bare and frozen in front of the shimmering entity, I stepped away like I was back in the Palace throneroom. Tripped. Fell. The specter expanded, growing and spreading batlike wings as it lunged forward, my hands held high, No, Wait, please don’t I’m sorry I shouldn’t be here as I saw Galmar and Ulfric standing there laughing. Others joined them: Argonian snickers, Torbjorn’s chuckle. All of them mocking the idiot Imperial, shivering and naked in the snow about to die.
Another voice joined them, disembodied and speaking straight into my mind. A woman. Taunting. Whispering. Get up, she said. Get up if you can. I did, but not in the dreamscape. In bed. Screaming and thrashing.
Damnit. I probably should’ve just said no to Galmar. Now I’m stuck. I can either “forget” he ever began my trial, much like he and every other Nord in Windhelm would forget me after that. Or I can go to Serpentstone and probably end up like dream Jastinia.
I truly don’t know where to go from here but I know who might. One of them will have been up for an hour working the woodpiles. The other will be sleeping off his mead until noon. Between Scouts and Torbjorn, hopefully someone can help me figure out how real Jastinia can fight this thing better than her dream self.
Hopefully.
Heartfire, 1st, 4E 201
Argonian Assemblage. Windhelm.
Mid evening.
-----
When I asked Galmar yesterday if I’d have help on Serpentstone, he offered some heartwarming advice. “Before you can stand next to your shield brother, you need to be able to stand on your own.” Damn, Galmar. Maybe Scouts should get some poetry tips from you. And he’s not wrong. I know I’ll need to face the wraith alone before Ulfric will accept me. Before any of his Nords accept me. But I’m also not going to forget the friends and allies I have here in Windhelm.
I asked Scouts and Shallows first. Both had heard of the wraiths but neither had actually faced them. “Icesnakes,” Scouts called them. “Fast like vipers, light like wind.” Um, meaning what? They can fly? And what about Serpenstone itself? What do you know about the island? How can I… but before I could ask more questions, Shallows and Scouts were already walking away. Chuckling with that low hiss. “Hey!” I ran up to Scouts as he piled firewood into his arms. “Can’t you give me something?”
His claw tapped my chest. “You have everything you need here.”
Well shucks, Mr. Many-Marshes. Thanks for all your help. Because my naïve heart as been so helpful in lifting all of us out of our dockside squalor. If he wasn’t in Galmar’s betting pool yet, he sure is now.
When I found Torbjorn in the market and asked, he was equally cryptic. “So, Galmar is sending you to Serpentstone Isle, is he?” No, alebrain. I’m thinking of getting one as a pet. He also wouldn’t answer when I asked him if he’d fought one before. “My battles aren’t important, girl. This is your fight. Not mine.” I should’ve guessed he and Galmar enrolled in the same college of Stormcloak philosophy. No wonder Ulfric’s army is struggling for good recruits with all these grizzled “stand alone” veterans in the ranks.
I was about to walk away and smack the dummy around like I wanted to thump Torbjorn right in his bearded jaw when he asked me a question: “Ever been to Mixwater Mill?” Mixwater? I hadn’t. Down the Black River, I think? A few miles south of that shack where I found my copy of Rislav the Righteous. He stroked his beard and nodded, mouth curling into a smile. The knowing grin of a mentor scheming new ways to torment his overeager pupil. “Let me give it some thought. Come see me later this week.” Great. Since when did Torbjorn need time to think of the next way to beat me up? Whatever he’s planning, it’s probably going to suck.
Shahvee saw me sulking back to Sailor’s Rest and was kind enough to invite me to the Assemblage. I told her I had a lot on my mind, sorry, but she wasn’t having it. “How are you supposed to get to Serpentstone with an attitude like that?” Scouts must have told her, which meant all the Argonians knew. Even better. That betting pool must be quite lucrative by now. “Now get inside before I tan one last hide of the night.” Hah. Yes, ma’am. I’m glad I did too. Those Nords can insult Argonian food all they want, but no one can spice a skeever and cabbage stew like Shahvee.
I was finishing dinner and this entry when Scouts joined me at my table. “Be at the docks tomorrow at mid-morning, Wargirl.”
“I thought I already had everything I needed.” I know the backtalk wasn’t necessary but I couldn’t help it.
“Here?” he tapped my chest again. “Yes. But not here.” This time his claw tapped my head. I smiled. No arguments from Wargirl.
“Anything I should bring?” Sword? Dagger? Our weighted armor for extra conditioning? A spare blade for sparring or-
“A towel.”
Uh-oh. That can’t be good. For all their past disputes, it looks like Scouts and Torbjorn are on the same page about at least one thing: how to torture their trainee. Sigh. Better turn in for a mediocre night’s sleep courtesy of the clanging Sailor’s Rest machines. Sounds like I’m going to need it tomorrow.
Heartfire, 2nd, 4E 201
Docks. Windhelm.
Early afternoon.
-----
So. Damn. Cold. Really glad I brought this pocketsize wash-rag with me today. That’s exactly what I needed to dry my frozen body after a blood-numbing White River bath. At least I’m huddled by the brazier now and presumably done for the day. Unless Scouts pushes me in again.
I don’t know how Scouts knew I was late just by looking at the sun but he did. He was already shaking his head before I opened my mouth with the lame apology I’d prepared.
“Put those on,” he gestured towards a shabby tunic and shirt folded in the snow. “Return when you are changed.”
“No armor?”
“Nah,” he said like he’d even considered it. “I don’t think so.”
I’d given up on questioning his instructions a long time ago. Shallows let me into the Assemblage where I changed. It was weird at first, back to undressing in front of all those dockworkers just eating breakfast and making their beds. Wasn’t this why I eventually moved into Sailor’s Rest in the first place? Not that the Argonians noticed today as in the past. I might as well have been a cat grooming herself in the corner for all they cared. Shahvee’s explanation was just as today when I first asked her at 12; we’re no more interested in you than most of your kind would be with us. True, but that doesn’t make it any less weird and I’ll still change behind my crates, thank you very much.
Mistake #1 was leaving on my fur boots when I returned to Scouts. “First you are late. Now you are careless.” I kicked them off. My toes curled into the wet, frozen slush.
“Should I go barefoot against the wraith too?” Oops. I couldn’t help it: mistake #2 – being a smartass. “Ahh. Wargirl has fire today.” Scouts shook his head. His Jastinia-you-messed-up-now shake. “Let’s get the Wargirl her sword.”
After buckling it on my back, I found Scouts at the end of the dock stacking wood. “We done playing dressup yet?” Okay, maybe I was asking for it that time. He faced me: “Do you trust me?” Obviously. If I didn’t, you think I’d be wearing this frumpy smock in public without even some slippers?
Trusting the quickest Argonian ranger in Skyrim was mistake #3. He was standing in front of me one moment and then he wasn’t. He was behind me as if he’d been there the whole time. A gloved, clawed hand on my back. A push.
Mistake #4 was the throatful of icewater I swallowed when I hit the surface. Ice freezing my lungs. Slicing my limbs and cutting at the edge of my vision, shearing away consciousness as my muscles went gray and blurry like my sight. I tried paddling but the thick, heavy fabric pulled me down, heavy on my limbs like the heavy sword on my back as the cold went from sharp to numb to nothing. Scouts was saying something but I didn’t hear it. I didn’t hear anything. My ears stung, the world slipped, and I reached for it with fingers that couldn’t even feel the water anymore as gloved, clawed hands reached down and pulled me free.
It must have been Scouts who dragged me to the fire because he was standing over me when I stopped coughing. “Warm up, dry off, and find me when you’re ready to try again.” Um, excuse me? You don’t just get to walk away after that. Try what again, exactly? Pushing me in freezing water? Drowning me? Flailing in the White River’s frigid clutches with water in my lungs, cold eating my strength and muscles as my world goes black? So you can just stand there watching while I-
“Do you see that shore over there?” He pointed across the river. “Serpentstone is twice as far from its nearest shoreline. How do you expect to swim to that island when you cannot even tread water here at the docks?” He walked back to his work before I could answer.
Gods he’s an asshole sometimes. At least Torbjorn gets in your face about it. Not stupid Scouts and his stupider lessons, the harsh truths he quips over his shoulder before walking back to his stupid pile of wood. I thought about just shivering here by the fire for a day. A week. Until I was warm again and Galmar and Ulfric forgot about the craven, stupid Imperial who was too weak to even jump into some water. Until Scouts and the rest of his kin forgot about her too. The Dunmer and Argonian lover who wallowed in their filth like her whore mother who died in a sewer. Fade away and quit, die an old, forgotten woman in bed and not here in this river. Not in an ice wraith’s jaws.
But I didn’t. Scouts knew what I’d decide before I did, but I caught up eventually. Wargirl wasn’t going to quit. Not for ice water, an ice wraith, or her icy toes.
I made my next jump without his help, even if I still needed it to get back out. Same with the time after that. And after that. Again and again until my skin was Stormcloak-blue and Scouts called it. I normally protested when he ended our sessions early but my lips were too frozen to complain.
He wrapped his bearskin cloak around my shoulders. “Leave the tunic and cloak when you’re ready. Same time tomorrow.” He walked away but I’d earned a last look over his shoulder. “Don’t be so late, but do bring a warmer towel.” Right back at you, jerk. If I’m jumping in that river again you best believe I’m pulling you right in with me.
Heartfire, 2nd, 4E 201
Ma’dran’s Camp. Windhelm.
Early evening.
-----
Even by this crackling fire, even if ten of these blazes surrounded me, I might never be warm again. Thanks for that, Scouts. So glad you’re trying to give me the full Serpentstone experience by killing me before I even get there.
It took me another two hours of huddling at the Assemblage firepit to calm my seizing muscles enough to shiver back to Sailor’s Rest. If I wasn’t running low on coin I would’ve just stayed under the blankets for the rest of forever. If there’s one advantage of having a bedroom with cracked walls over a smoky kitchen it’s the warmth: the Duskstars run their broilers all day and night to sear their salmon and steam my room. But I knew once I got under the cowhides I would never leave. I split firewood outside instead; colder than the blankets but more profitable. Hinging at the hips, axe held vertical, sinking my legs into each strike. Just like Torbjorn told me to practice even when I wasn’t wielding my greatsword.
After selling the wood, my plan was to head up to the marketplace to buy or even stitch a cloak. I’m not going to survive another series of polar-plunges if all I have is that tunic and the dockside brazier. But when I looked out across the bridge and saw the fur tents by the stables, I knew where I’d be going instead.
Ma’dran was reading when I arrived. “You look colder than last time, my dear.” And actually, I’m way colder than that. The Khajit offered me a discount on his caravan’s furs but even his cheapest were out of my price range.
“Mind if we move to the fire?” My teeth were chattering as the evening air reminded me of the morning’s ordeal. Of what awaited tomorrow. We joined Ma’jhad and Ra’zhinda as they roasted salmon over the logs.
In exchange for news from beyond Windhelm’s walls, I shared news from behind them. Not idle guard rumors or Viola’s gossip. Trade talk. Insider tips. Nirvanye and Revyn were flush with pelts but there weren’t enough tanners to cure them into useable fur plates. Oengul had plenty of steel for weapons but little iron for everyday goods. Ma’dran took notes as the other Khajit asked questions: the price of silver, the color of Sadri’s gems, the cost for skooma in the sewers. I answered what I could which wasn’t much, but still far more than they’d learn getting tossed off the bridge by one of the guards if they caught the “mancats” even looking at the gates.
Word across Skyrim was more fascinating. Refugees turned raiders on the roads. Bandits and dark mages occupying ruined forts across the province. The High King might be dead, Jarl Ulfric might have killed him, and the Empire might have captured Ulfric just weeks ago at a border-crossing. Caught? Ulfric Stormcloak himself? But I just saw him yesterday!
The Khajit said he escaped and that’s where the conversation shifted from politics and war to fantasy. Gossip even Viola wouldn’t put on a flier. Ma’dran repeated it twice and I still had to ask him again. “A dragon saved him? He repeated it a third time but I still didn’t believe him. It sounded like the kind of Stormcloak sycophantism I’d hear from Rolff or Nils, not the worldly Ma’dran. I guess Skyrim doesn’t have enough real magickal dangers so now tavern drunks are peddling stories about extinct ones. How would dragons just come back out of nowhere? And why would they do anything to Ulfric other than snack on him? Of course, Ma’dran’s group had no answers. They hadn’t seen the monsters themselves. Just heard third-hand rumor from merchants who spoke with guards who knew mill owners whose cousins were there at Helgen when, by the gods, a dragon attacked!
Right. And I’m actually the leader of the Dark Brotherhood.
It wasn’t until I was about to leave when Ma’dran asked about me: “This one still wishes to wear the storming cloak?”
Maybe. If I don’t get killed by real monsters: eaten by the wraith, frozen by a storm. I told him about Ulfric and Galmar, Serpentstone and the trial. My new training with Scouts and whatever torture Torbjorn was planning.
He stared into the fire. “Khajit still do not understand why one with such a warm heart wishes to join such cold men.”
Not this again. Didn’t I already explain this last time? Did they want to camp out by the stables for the rest of their lives? Did they enjoy the stares and comments, the armored hands grasping their shoulders, backhanding their cheeks? Don’t they understand I can change things if I rise through the ranks? Show Ulfric what outsiders can do, encourage others like us to join and fight for our home against an outsider Emperor that can’t even find our home on a map. I wanted to get into it all over again, but I didn’t want us to part ways like last time.
So I just told him the truth: “It’s for all of us, Ma’dran.”
He chuckled and stoked the embers. “Of course. You are a true daughter of Skyrim. You know more of such things than Ma’dran.” He poked my chest with the stick, still smoking and ashen from the fires. “But dear girl should be careful to not lose her warm heart, yes?”
“I won’t.” Not to all the ice in Ulfric’s eyes nor all the wraiths on Serpentstone. We both smiled and Ma’jhad traded me his old hide cloak at a discount. “For a warm heart in cold water.”
I need to get back to Sailor’s Rest, but I’ll stay a little longer. The Khajit are preparing to sleep, my entry is done, and I even read some of Rislav. And yet, I feel warmer here than in my bed despite the snow falling around us. Safer. Some “true daughter of Skyrim” you are, Jastinia. Foreign-named, foreign-blooded, more at home surrounded by Argonians and Dunmner and Khajit on Windhelm’s outskirts than inside the walls where you were born. But I remind myself that’s why I need to do this. That’s why I need to prove Skyrim is for all of us, not just the Nords. For everyone who calls this land home.
And that’s why I need to get back to Sailor’s Rest to sleep so I can just drown from my frostbitten limbs tomorrow and not exhaustion.
Commentary
I wrote a longer commentary section in the blogpost itself. To check it out, visit and scroll down: https://unearthedarcanna.wordpress.com/2021/03/08/jastinia-1-happy-birthday-08-31-09-02-201/. Here were my main thoughts after finishing:
- Find your voice.
- In-game journaling is slow.
- Screenshot during playthroughs, not after.
- Staged screenshots will gray your hair.
- Inventing quests/stories is fun.
- No playthrough shortcuts!
Thanks for reading and join us and I next time as Jastinia continues to train with Scouts, get lost in her own head, and learns what Torbjorn has in store for her.
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