Dagon The Dark (Skyrim)

DAGON THE DARK (SKYRIM)
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Most people don't see this, but Bethesda put a strange feature in The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim. Well, it's not really a feature, it's just a thing that happens. You see, when you use the wait feature, you can see the world move around you really fast.

The wait feature works on an hour-by-hour basis. That is, you can choose to wait a certain number of hours of in-game time. This is different from sleeping because it doesn't heal your wounds. It doesn't put you in a bed during those hours, you just stand there. Most people use this feature for little things, like, for example, if you get out of a dungeon or a building and it's night time, and it's hard to see, you might choose to wait till morning.

The thing about the wait feature that differs from previous Elder Scrolls games, such as Oblivion, is that in between the hours passing you can still see the world around you moving, albeit with an extremely modified frame rate.

Mostly, nothing interesting happens. You see the shadows of trees moving through the day, but nothing of real note. One night I came across something strange happening in between the hours.

I had previously assumed that people and living things didn't even render during Wait time, but it would appear I was wrong. It was about 11 pm, and i was drowsy. I was waiting from 3am in-game to 8am in-game, just waiting for the merchants in Whiterun to open. That's when I noticed something strange pass right by me. I saw some kind of shadowy figure dip out of the ground, up so it's head was showing, then fall back in, all within about half a second. I was shocked at first, and I almost jumped out of my seat. I tried to remember, and decided that the figure must have been the model of a dragon, preforming a flying animation a tad bit lower than it should have been, and missing its texture, just appearing as a black model.

I went on the Bethesda forums to ask about the dragon, but in writing my post, I misspelled "dragon" as "dagon", and we all affectionately dubbed the monster as Dagon the Dark. Even with about three people willing to help me speculate, we were clueless. A person under the alias of "Cylinder-dude" pointed out to me that if Dagon were simply missing his texture files, he wouldn't appear all black, he wouldn't appear at all. he'd be invisible. That's something. He told me he'd dig around in the game files for some all-black dragon textures.

I went back to my game and found something horrible had happened-- there were no more dragons in Skyrim. I searched far and wide for some sort of dragon to fight, but for the life of me, I couldn't find one. Over six in-game days of just wandering around, I didn't encounter one dragon. I even tried summoning Odahviin to fight with me, but nothing came. I did the shout successfully, but no dragon came. I figured something was wrong with my save file, but no-- Dragons were now completely gone.

I tried to start a new game, but that's when it got creepy.

Instead of starting out in the opening prisoner sequence and getting the Unbound quest, the game started off in Whiterun, at Dragonsreach. I searched the whole place and the Jarl was missing. All that happened was I appeared in the hall, and I heard the Jarl's voice say, "You have to slay the beast". I remember questioning weather I had actually heard that audio in-game or not. If you stick around in the hall for a while, you can hear him say, "Please", then the music stops until you leave.

I assumed that by "beast", he meant the drgon you meet in the Dragon Rising quest. I went outside and found Irileth and the rest of the guards waiting for me. I tried talking to Irileth, but all she said was "Please slay the beast".

So, I went down to the tower where you fight the dragon, only to find no dragon. The tower was still wrecked, but nothing was on fire like it usually is. I got close, and suddenly I got pulled into a conversation with one of the guards cowering in the tower. He said, again, with dialogue I had never heard in-game before, "Please... you have to kill it... it's only you... you can save us from it... you have to kill it... Please!" I'm pretty sure that wasn't the voice that guard usually talks in too. I got a dialogue choice; Yes or No. I chose yes, eagar to face the dragon and whatever else my clearly fucked-out game could throw at me.

It was then that the guard looked down at me and scared me. He said something, and it was bit louder than usual. My speakers must have messed up the stereo placement. because it sounded like it was coming from behind me. He said, "Don't just stand there!" in a suprisingly convincing dispair. Then, it happened.

Bam. Dagon the dark dove right the fuck out of the tower, this time without wings (a dragon without wings), swallowed up the guard, and dragged his body into the ground. I jumped, because it made this otherworldly, echo-y grunt that made my speakers buzz and my desk vibrate. From there, it became chaos. All the guards and Irileth started scrambling, running faster than they should have been able to, unarmed and hopeless. One by one, Dagon, a wingless ground dragon came up and swallowed up all of the people, one by one, until there was just me left. And then Dagon came up from out of the darkness and swallowed me. My character got sucked down into the ground, and everything was white. I looked down and the worst part happened. I saw dagon's face. My character's model was inside dagon's model, which was white from the inside, and at the bottom were two piercing, small black eyes and a big black mouth; like a dog's. It stared at me and I couldn't look away, which I initially registered to the game's fault, but soon realized was a deeper problem. I actually couldn't move the mouse. I was paralyzed at my desk, looking at this terrible face. This lasted for what seemed like an eternity, and then I woke up near my bed, standing.

It was insane. I just skipped through time to the next morning, completely blanking out on everything that happened that night. I'm really scared at this point, and I go to my computer to consult Cylinder-Dude about it. I find that he's sent me about five "where are you" messages over the night. I inform him of the events that happened the night prior, then he tells me he can't find the face texture or the dagon "wingless dragon" model anywhere in the game's directory.

He asks me to send him a copy of my game directory so he can patch his game with my buggy files and check it out. I send him the files and over the next few weeks, we both experiment with the game.

First, he played my save file again. He played a few times, and turns out the game has rules:

Rule 1: You need to kill Dagon. How exactly you do that is not certain, but Cylinder-Dude (Who has identified his name as Sam) thinks you may need to get an in-game item to kill him.

Rule 2: You can't let Dagon kill you. Now, this seems impossible at first, but me and Sam gradually found out that the thing that triggers Dagon attacking you is Irileth getting eaten. There is, in fact, a way to save Irileth and, by extension, yourself. Dagon makes a sreetching sound about 1 half-second before he attacks Irileth; If you can sucessfully hear that and start a conversation with her in time, you'll save her from getting eaten.

Rule 3: fast travel and Wait are disabled.

The initial plan was to - Get this - Simply run all over every inch of Skyrim's world, all whilst talking to Irileth every five seconds (we'd used the console to make her follow us), and just keep wandering and searching everywhere for this random item that kills Dagon, somehow. It was a crazy and painstaking plan, but noone can obsess over these things like internet losers.

Sam, understanding my concerns with the game after my black-out episode, offered to try it out for me. (I sent him a thank-you e-mail and he said he was going to work.

And that's the last I heard from Cylinder-Dude.

He was gone. No more e-mails. Nothing. I even scanned the forums for his posts, he just dropped off the map. Nonexistent.

I got scared; so scared I didn't even turn on my computer for a while. I scanned the news for mentions of search parties or something, and eventually succeeded in pushing it to the east-back of my mind. I just tried to forget about Sam and his fate. Of course, it didn't work. As soon as i went to sleep, I hovered over my bed and thought about Sam and what happened to him. It ate me up like; well, like a wingless dragon.

Over the course of a week, I gained the drive to try the game again. I decided that the omputer game ouldn't hurt me-- it was nothing more than a few billion lines of code. I started it up to the opening screen.

"Apples."

I swear to christ, they were chanting, "apples". The home screen music had switched to just a chant of "apples". I disregard my insanity and plunge further into my game.

There are approximately just over 4,000 apples in Skyrim, across barrels and other things. One of them is poison. One of them can kill Dagon. One of them can slay the beast.

I manage to save Irileth for the first few times. I walk backwards, keeping the crosshairs on her in case I need to save her, checking the map every so often to make sure I'm walking in the right direction.

I made it from Whiterun to a fort just outside it before I fucked up and let her die. Which means I had to stare into Dagon's piercing eyes again. Which means I blacked out again. I arose, standing in front of my bed. Angry. Violated. Filled with the kind of strange curiosity that created the first pedophiles. Still determined.

So this is what I did every night. Every night, making it a little further, but blacking out a little longer. This went on for about 2 weeks. Then I found what I made.

Sam is dead. I saw the news that his body had been found naked in the woods. His teeth had been ripped out-- and replaced. With a dog's teeth. This was the morning I woke up in front of my closet, not in front of my bed. I opened my closet.

I swear to Jesus H. Christ that for a mere milisecond - Maybe shorter - I saw Dagon's face in my closet. Did I jump? Of course I jumped. The face went away and at least 40 apples - All with a bite out of them - Some rotting, some fresh - fell out of my closet. Right onto my feet. Apples. Apples. Apples.

"Don't just stand there."

Sam was right behind me. It had to be him. I felt that it was him. I felt what I owed him. He was behind me one instant, and gone in the next. I fell into the apples. They ate me.

He died. He died because of me. He said please. I just stood and did nothing.

There are over 2,000 apples in Skyrim.

Don't just stand there.

You can save us. You can slay the beast.

Please.

Apples.