Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Farewell Lydia

Something interesting happened to me in Skyrim this week. My faithful housecarl from Whiterun, Lydia, died in a fight with a dragon.  This seems to be a somewhat popular topic this week, but I assure you that you will find no interesting uses of her corpse here.

There we were, taking on a dragon.  I generally use a 1h sword and Flames, so I need to be up close and personal. Lydia was using a Warhammer, so she was right up there with me.  I guess she took too much damage and went into her 'don't hurt me' stance.  Since the dragon does AoE,  it didn't save her.

Before that encounter, I purchased the Breezehouse house for a cool 5,000 gold.  Since Lydia is my housecarl she also lives there. After the fight with the dragon, I returned home to store its bones and scales.  I happened to notice Lydia's room was empty but somewhat decorated. It did looked lived in. She won't be coming back.

It's not often that I have that kind of realization in a video game.  Something as simple as an empty room can do it.  I briefly thought about reverting my save to just before the fight, but resisted the urge.  I think that would do a disservice to the game and possibly my memories of it once I've stopped playing.