The Skyrim Diaries: We Need To Talk About Lydia

Day 70

I’ve slept for, according the highly detailed records I seem to be keeping, 13 hours.

I’ve been pottering around Skyrim now for 70 days. It’s been a good seventy days. I’ve been all over the place. I’ve joined guilds, got in over my head more than once, and had to run through a forest to escape a dragon. Oh, and I’ve recently stumbled across two treasure maps – and there are more out there – although calling them maps is stretching that definition to its limit. They’re better described as “Treasure Vague Sketches And Good Luck With That” but hey, I like a challenge.

Those dragons, eh? You can’t live with ’em and, well, that’s it. You can’t live with ’em. Just today I found a new place to explore. I turned up, and was asked to clear all the undead out of the mine. I don’t know what it is about me that just screams “Give this man a job we’re all too scared and/or lazy to do”, but I seem to get that a lot. Sometimes I’m literally carrying things from one building in town to another in the same town. If there weren’t these couriers that keep popping up, someone would probably ask me to deliver messages to myself and then return to them when that was done for payment. Anyway, clear out the mine – that was fine. I found myself a silver sword fairly early on and it’s invaluable against all the wrinkly undead that seem to be bloody everywhere. Seriously, in Skyrim you’re never more than 3 feet from an undead something – that’s what I’ve heard anyway. So, I cleared the mine. I came out and claimed my reward. The coins were barely in my pocket before a dragon landed right next to me and ate the guy who ran the mine. Ate him, and spat him into a tree. Sure, I looted his corpse afterwards but still…

There is one thing I have an issue with, though. Lydia. I don’t know what to do with Lydia. She was given to me by the Jarl in Whiterun. He couldn’t give me a house – no, I had to pay 5000 gold for a bloody house in a town which I bloody well saved from invasion – but he seems to think that paying me in leather-clad women is fine. So now I have Lydia. She’s there to do my bidding, apparently. She’ll join me on quests, she’ll help me out in the field. That’s what she’s there for. As best as I can work out, she’s like a really violent escort but with none of the fun stuff.

I’ve furnished my entire Whiterun house. I needed somewhere to keep all the stuff I’ve looted. I have a chest full of Falmer ears and various dangerous looking mushrooms. I have another chest packed with ingots and other smithing materials. My books are all arranged by the Dewey Decimal system. There’s even a guest bedroom – I assume it’s Lydia’s room. It says the bed is owned, so it must be hers – after all, we’re the only people there.

So why is she always in my bedroom? Sitting. Or standing. That’s all she does. The first time I went in the house she was just standing there and, if I’m honest, she scared the bejesus out of me. Just standing and staring. Recently, though, she seems to be sitting in the corner of my bedroom and eating bread. And not even daintily. She’s got half a baguette and she’s just shoving it into her cake-hole. Just bread. She’s not even made a sandwich – if she looked, there’s a whole load of food on the kitchen table. I’ve just dumped it there. There’s even a pie. I didn’t do that. It just appeared. I think it came with the table. But no, she seems to be happy to sit there, in my bedroom, banging bread into her face like it’s going out of fashion.

I’ve only slept for 13 hours.

Not really surprising is it?