Skyrim Autobiography of Ori: Level 55 Wander, Adventurer, Dragonborn

Guards envy me and my adventuring ways, but still suspect me (with reasonable justification) stealing all that's not bolted down.  Ladies love me and give me better prices, jarls want to be me.  Shopkeepers count me among their dear friends.  I have spoken with gods, and killed demons. 

The Forsaken quiver in their furry boots when I visit their nasty plateaus.  After I've killed them, I strip their bodies, but leave the weakly enchanted weapons they gave their lives to protect.  I use the hearts of their shaman in potions that I will never use. 

I have one house, in the first city that made me a thane, with a housecarl, who I've never touched, though she clearly wants to jump my bones, which I have collected from dragons, so many that I have lost track of where I stashed them.  

When I've uncovered massive ruins, filled with enemies, I summon forth a Dremora Lord, and listen to my enemies pitiful screams as he cleaves through their feeble iron armor with one swing of his great sword and then cackles "There could be no other end!" 

In my early days of adventuring, I considered myself quite the chef, but now I sometimes go weeks without eating, my only sustenance life-sustaining potions, and spells that draw on my deep magical reservoirs.  My last true meal was raw horse meat, eaten after my mount was side-swiped by a bear.  I killed the bear and ate its claws, because I could.

I am the greatest smith in the land.  Give me two ingots of iron and I will give you legendary dagger that outshines your family heirlooms.  My daedric armor is the fortress I walk within.  Sometimes, during battle with lesser foes, including everyone, but the strongest of ancient and blood dragons, I lose the will to fight. In the old days, the Falmor pushed me to my limit.  Now I admire the strange beauty of their glowing underground lair as they hack ineffectually at my armor, till, sometimes after hours of exertion, they die as a result of many reflected blows.

My enchanted jewelry is even more powerful than it is beautiful.  I travel with a pocket full of diamond rings and necklaces.  They make me stronger, quieter, and healthier.  With the right accessories, I can unlock the most secure chests, or kill giants with one swing of my life-absorbing sword.  Even so, I yearn for more power.  The ability to put two enchantments on a single item alludes me.

My book collection rivals the library at the Mages College (where I am the arch mage).  I possess rare books, skill books, and books of spells I've already learned.  Some books tell stories of ancient weapons that I have found, improved upon, and sold for a pittance to innkeepers or the travelling khajit. 

I've discovered hundreds of ruins, forts, and homesteads.  I've completed dozens of quests, but still have so much to do.  Dragons plague the land, and Stormcloaks, Empire, and Thalmor troops all engage in petty diplomatic and war games that bore me to tears.  I could walk into the cities of their egotistical rulers and slaughter all who challenge me. 

Sometimes I've even tried, but while their guards fall before me, like the wheat I swipe from farmers' fields as they watch, their rulers cannot be killed, and merely groan, collapsed on the floor for several moments, before rising to continue their limp-wristed dagger stabs.  Sometimes in these fits of rage, I will eventually resign myself to their Sisyphean attacks: I am the stone, destined to always roll back to a time before, as even in death, I awaken on the threshold of my rage, with opportunity to begin again, the killed guards return as though I slaughtered them in a dream that I have just woken from.

Despite these moments of ennui, I still find much joy in the world.  There's so much to learn.  Even when I became a legendary alchemist, I still did not know the mysterious 3rd and 4th properties of many of my herbs and reagents.  Sometimes, I'll even come across an ingredient I've never encountered, like ground mammoth tusk, or wisp wrappings. Even so, a few months ago I made the choice to give up all I'd learned of Alchemy, and thus redirect some of my mental energy to other endeavors.

It was a necessary sacrifice, because I find that it's harder and harder for me to reach the epiphanic revelations that seemed to accompany every day of my early career.  I have become comfortable with my best skills, and now must become a master of all the disciplines I'd previous despised or ignored. 

My skin has grown soft beneath my heavy armor, and I feel naked and slick as a slaughterfish when I break out my light armor.  The great sword is slow and heavy, despite my strong hands.  Though I like to pilfer, rarely have I picked the pockets of the towns people.  What could they have to interest me?  Their amethyst wedding ring?  The key to their depressing hovel?  Despite this doubt, and a faint distaste at this sort of behavior, it is a skill I've ignored, and thus I have resolved to see if it could be of any future use.

Maybe this is a sign that the final chapter of my adventuring remains to be written.  Wearing my amulet of Mara, I've discovered women across the region, attractive, capable women, of a variety of races, are more than willing to become my wife and tend my home (when they're not collecting bear hides, or working their forge). 

Perhaps even, it is time to put a stop to these dragon attacks, and settle down in 1-9 cities with 1-9 wives.  At the same time, I've heard Ulfric and the jarls speak of the tradition of Kingsmoot, and I wonder, with all the dragon souls I've absorbed, am I not meant for some greater purpose?