A Skyrim Mod

Hi, I’m John. It’s not my real name, but you can call me it. Before I get into this, I’m a huge fan of Skyrim, the 5th game in the Elder Scrolls series. It provides a unique RPG experience to a gamer like me, but enough about my life story. One day, I was browsing a popular Skyrim mod website called The Skyrim Nexus. I was browsing recently submitted mods, most of which looked like crap, when I came across one entitled “For the experienced only”. This looked interesting. I clicked it, and the preview picture was nothing more than black color. I though the picture was too dark and low quality to see anything. There were no downloaders, and no endorsements.

“Strange” I thought, “Usually recently submitted mods get a few hundred downloads.” I was about to click the back button, but something caught my eye, the description. It simply read: “Getting ridding of this, taking it someone else or get me.” English must have been this guy’s second language. Curiosity got the best of me, and I downloaded it with the Nexus Mod Manager. The file was only a byte large, I’ve never seen such a small file, blank text files are bigger than this. The file it downloaded was a text file. It was entitled “Help”. I opened it, it was a sentence long. “Help. Find her, dangerous, kill you if no find.”

I, once again, could not understand this. I thought this may have been some kind of mistake, and I downloaded it wrong, but sure enough, it showed up on my list of working mods. I started Skyrim, eager to begin. Everything started normally, I clicked continue from last save. The screen froze up a little bit, which was not too much of a surprise, for my computer was about 6 years old. But, at the last second I could have sworn I heard a baby crying. It was very faint, and stopped as soon as it began. I couldn’t make anything of it, so I just thought of it as a sound glitch. My player spawned at the gate in Riften (one of the main cities in Skyrim). I was about to walk to the blacksmith to see what he had for sale, when I overheard a guard talking to another guard.

“…Another one found dead, in the lake next to the gate. I hope we can find this guy soon.” That was odd, for I’ve never heard of anything like this in Riften. While walking by another guard, he said:

“Be wary of the Rotting Cave, it stinks of death in there.” And with that, “Map updated” appeared in the corner, which is what happens when you here about a dungeon. Excited, I bought some arrows from the blacksmith, and was about to leave to explore this “Rotting Cave” when the blacksmith said:

“ Whatever you do, do not go to Rotting Cave.” That only evoked my interest more. I checked the map; it wasn’t too far away from Riften. After a few minutes of walking, I found the cave. At the entrance were 2 skulls mounted on stakes, which is the symbol of a necromancer type dungeon. I entered it, and for some strange reason, the only loading tip was “Leave now”. I shrugged it off, thinking it was a sick joke by the modder. When the place finally loaded, I was in a very narrow pathway. I heard a crash, and boulders blocked the exit behind me.

“Well, either way, I gotta find my way out. No going back now.” I thought. I looked in the favorites list for weapons, there were non.

“Son of a…I could have sworn I brought weapons with me” Nope, no weapons, no armor, nothing in my inventory. And, as I said before, the exit was blocked, no going back for my supplies.

“Guess I don’t have much of a choice now.” I walked for about 5 minutes in a straight line down the narrow path, when suddenly the cave ambiance was gone, no sound, nothing. I ignored it and kept walking, suddenly I came to a wide room. It was too dark to see anything. Luckily, there was a torch I could pick up. I lit it, and was not prepared for what I saw before me. Bodies, dead bodies, pools of blood, and bones littered everywhere. But this wasn’t what disturbed me; because there was usually bones found in caves, it was the fact that these were the bodies of children. I was disgusted and confused, for children weren’t programmed to die. In the center of the room was a wooden table, standing over it was a women. She looked human, but what she was doing made her anything but human. Tied to the table was a child.

“No, no, its not perfect!” She screamed at the child and slashed his throat with a dagger. That caught me off guard. She looked up at my character.

“Oh, hello player, I’ve been expected you!” She called. Did they just break the 4th wall on me? “Oh, where are my manners?” She continued”. “I am Miyuki Ishikawa. Here, let me give you a tour of my cave. This is my room where I make friends.” She beckoned to all the corpses. “And this,” She pointed to a shelf. “Is where I keep my friends,” She finished. My character walked over to the shelf, I wasn’t in control of it anymore. The shelf was full of black soul gems, the kind that keeps human souls. I never used them, for, even though the NPCs are nothing more programmed entities, I still felt bad for trapping their soul, and dooming them to unrest. I felt sick. This lady kept soul gems of dead children.

“And now, you can become my friend!” and with that, I was struck down instantly by an unknown spell, but instead of the loading screen showing up, my body just laid there. It stayed like this for about a minute, and suddenly, the screen went static for about 10 seconds, then, what followed will haunt me for the rest of my life. What I saw onscreen were pictures of dead children, mutilated on what appeared to be the side of street. What was even more disturbing was that the pictures didn’t have crime scene tape, or any indication of police work. It looked like the murder was fresh. I threw up on my desk. The pictures faded out, and were replaced by a Japanese woman with an evil smile, and the text “You’re next” was on the screen. Suddenly, I grabbed what was next to me, my new butterfly knife, still in mint condition, and jammed it through my eye.

I woke up in the hospital; the nurses there said I was out for 3 days for a stress-induced coma. There was a bandage over my eye, and they told me I need 20 stitches and probably wouldn’t see from that eye again. That’s ok, it’s nice to know you’re missing an eye.

I left the hospital and came home. I walked into my bedroom, hoping to get some sleep, but when I walked in, I saw bodies, dead bodies of children everywhere. I reached for the phone to call 911. There’s no phone. I turn around to go out the door. There’s no door.

Epilogue

 * Article from local newspaper, location unidentified for safety reasons*

"On February 13, 2013, local citenzen of *Location unidentified* heard screaming coming from his neighbor's house. He ran to his house to find the door unlocked. He found the source of the screaming, but was shocked at what he saw. He found *Name inidentified* huddled in the corner, muttering like a madman, saying "Get the bodies away from me, get them away!", but there was nothing there. The man also had several cuts and gashes on his arms, apparently self-inflicted. Written on the wall in blood was "I'm sorry" over and over again. The neighbor called 911, and the police came and took him away. He will most likely be taken to a local asylum. Later into the investigation, police found the man's computer running, with 'Skyrim', a popular Role Playing Game. Officers contemplate whether this was the reason for the man's strange behavior."