Elder Scrolls (Skyrim): It Was Probably Just a Bug...

Hey. My name is Carter, I'm 15 years old, and well... I'm not sure where to start with you, but regardless I'll try...

I modded my Skyrim a lot, so I was prone to have a few glitches and crashes every so often. I never really enjoyed lore-breaking stuff like dragons that sing "Puff the Magic Dragon" or stuff like that. I usually just stuck with graphical and immersion mods to improve my game's overall performance and looks. Skyrim has always been a challenge to mod for me, being that I'm not a very experienced modder, especially when it comes to manually installing mods. Anyways, I think it was... maybe a couple months ago? I'm not sure... I've forgotten about most of it because... well, my memory is shit, but I think when I explain it to you, it'll come back to me.

For those of you who aren't familiar with SKSE, let me give you a little crash-course. SKSE is a Skyrim tool that allows you to extend the script in the game. Script is text, or data that appears in the game when you load things up, like when you fast travel. Installing the extender allows you to use mods that would not function without extended script, like SkyUI or something like that.

This is kind of where my problems started. You see, when I began modding Skyrim, I ran into some... turbulence. I knew nothing about manually installing games. Sure I knew how to boot up the-ole' Mod Manager and install games there, but manually installing games... that was not my strong-suit... which brings me back to SKSE.

I didn't really look online to find out how to install SKSE (because I'm a stubborn idiot...), so I pretty much went in blind. Admittedly, I did know what to do. Look into files, find the right file, extract, etcetera-etcetera. A friend of mine (a self-proclaimed modding genius...) gave me rough instructions on how to do it a couple of days prior, and I was confident I knew what I was doing. Yeah, I know... real smart. After thinking I had properly installed SKSE... I booted it up to test it...

The menu was... not right. I had played through the vanilla game before, and... it was nothing like what I saw. The symbol on the left  and the Bethesda logo wasn't there... which kind of made me question if my game was running correctly. I hit control-alt-delete to open the task manager, and to my surprise... it was running fine... there seem to be nothing wrong with it. After opening it again, and sticking to the title screen for a couple of seconds to think... I noticed something else. There was no music. I admittedly, was a little unnerved by this. Being so acclimatized to the "Song of The Dragonborn", I was used to the full and profound effect the music had on me, but on this menu... it was empty, lacking spirit and energy. It felt pretty dead.

I hit "Options", because I wanted to make sure this error wasn't caused by my settings, but after hitting it... my game froze for a couple of seconds, then crashed abruptly.

"What the hell?" I said quietly to myself.

I booted it up again. This time I hit the "Load" button, and what-do-you know... it crashed. For a third time I booted it up, I hit "Continue", crash. Again I loaded it up, hit "Credits", and crash. I had no idea what was going on! One last time I booted it up. I hit the "New", and as a reflex... I cringed; expecting a violent crash. However, this was not the case... the game started up.

I was happy, but at the same time, confused. I thought to myself. "What did I do?"

The wagon scene played out, only... it was not right. The rest of the NPCs that should have been on the wagon were not present, and it wasn't daytime at all. It must have been around midnight when the cut-scene played. There was no dialogue either, and the wagon-driver didn't seem like himself. He was transparent like a ghost. Not blue like a regular Skyrim ghost, but almost like the ghosts you see in the Thieves Guild quest-line when you go to the Twilight Sepulchre, the Nightingale ghosts who attack you.

He dropped me off in the usual spot in Helgen Keep, only this time I was not greeted by the Imperial guards, but one NPC who looked a lot like a Psijic monk with the same kind of ghoulish appearance as the wagon-driver, only this monk was strange to say the least. When he talked to my character... he talked in a very strange way. His voice was deep and resembled that of Hermaeus Mora, who I always thought had a fairly strange way of speaking, although this monk's speech was even stranger. His lines of dialogue seemed as if the words were ripped from other lines of dialogue, because when he talked, he took long pauses in between each word, but the tone in which he said each word was off, and it didn't make any sense.

His first line of dialogue was... "Why... are you... here?"

A option box appeared, and the only thing I was able to do was "...". He then moved closer to my character, whose hands were tied up at the moment.

"You... shouldn't be... in... this place." The monk whispered.

I couldn't do anything as the monk escorted my character to the chopping block. The executioner was replaced with the Headless Horseman NPC, who raised his axe and took a swing. Just as the axe met with my head, the screen went black... and the slicing sound played. I instantly fast-traveled after that, and the loading screen was empty when it loaded up the unknown destination, only mist surrounded the black backgound. Then the screen faded out, and I instantly recognized where I was.

I traveled to Whiterun, It was around 3:00 am in game time, so it was still black. I noticed that my hands were still bound; restricting my character from interacting with anything... all I could really do was explore. Whiterun looked the same as it always did at night, except... something was off. There were no guards, and after inspecting further I realized that there were in fact no NPCs at all. I checked every house, looked in every prison, and I even went to the Underforge, but I found nothing. Not a single trace of life. Then I remembered the Cloud District... the only place I didn't check.

I ran my character up the steps to Dragonsreach and went inside, and after another blank loading screen... I witnessed something truly odd, almost chilling. All items within the massive building were gone, what replaced them was cobwebs and what seemed to be a thick layer of dust that blanketed the large room; as if it had been abandoned for years.

"What is going on?" I said to myself as I made my character look around.

Dozens of corpses lined the middle section of the main room. However they weren't regular corpses of dead NPCs, they looked a lot like the desecrated corpses you would find strewn about Kilkreath Temple during The Break of Dawn quest. The corpses were charred and burnt, like they had been dunked in acid then pulled out to die from their wounds. Desecrated corpses always freaked me out, because when you saw them, you could see the agony they had experienced before dying on their faces. You could see the pain and corruption they endured, and it always unsettled me.

The corpses were not laying down however, were not laying down on the ground. They were instead positioned on their hand and knees, as if praying. Their heads were bowed in subjugation towards the throne, the only item that had not vanished from the castle. Upon it was an unfamiliar NPC that I had never seen before, and would certainly remember if I had installed a mod like this.

He wore a black hood; his face hidden from sight. He wore armour similar to ebony, but had Daedric patterns and designs etched inside. Upon his throne was three skulls that looked upon my character with soulless eyes. When I approached him I learned his name, and to my surprise it had said:

"Jarl Balgruuf The Greater"

I didn't interact with him, instead, he had initiated conversation with me.

"It's... your... fault..." Balgruuf said in a voice that was so unfamiliar. His voice sounded like a symphony of screams all crying out in anguish. He gestured to the three skulls upon his throne. "You... did this... to... us. My... children... you did this... to them"

I was wearing headphones, and I could hear the corpses beginning to talk behind me. They stood up, and began surrounding my character.

"You did this... you... meddled... with a world... you... do not... understand." The corpses chanted over and over as they closed in.

Jarl Balgruuf stood up, then walked towards my character. I wanted to move, to run, but I couldn't. I was actually freaked out, I didn't know what to do. I tried exiting, I tried hitting alt-f4, I tried opening the console, I even tried to fucking shut it off by hitting the power button, but nothing.

It was only until Jarl Balgruuf took a slash at me when my computer crashed. After that, I immediately went into my Skyrim folder and deleted the script extender. I haven't played Skyrim since.

To this day I am stumped as to what happened. I checked online to figure out if anyone had the same problem with the script extender, but I found nothing. There was no mention of any kind of glitch or bug on the Elder Scrolls Wiki of that kind.

I know you were expecting an explanation of some kind, but I have none. To tell you the truth, I don't even think I could think of a guess as to how this happened. I guess the game just bugged...

Right?