This world was not like the present day Earth in my previous life. Here most meat came from hunting and fishing rather than farm raised animals. The sole exception to that was chickens that were regularly killed for food since they matured fast. Most beef came only from bulls that weren't needed whereas the heifers were all sold as milk cows. Goats were also kept for milk with the males that were unwanted butchered for meat. There was of course another source of meat here in Skyrim that was a bit odd by Earth standards, Horkers.-
These were simply put walruses. The primary difference was the tusks. Horkers had three shorter but still protruding tusks coming from their mouths with two at the sides of the bottom and one at the top in the middle. These tusks were used both for food and fighting for the beasts. They were massive creatures usually between seven and nine feet long when fully mature with dense muscle and fat giving them a flabby appearance but colossal weight in the tons. The diet of muscles, clams, crabs and fish gave the meat a lighter flavor and the fat a richness that simply couldn't be beaten.-
Their massive sizes also meant that a single animal could feed several families for a week and one family for a month if preserved properly. They lived in the icy waters to the northern edges of Skyrim and a few small groups were known to live as far as the coast of Solstheim, a small island midway between Skyrim and Morrowwind. This unfortunately also made them choice prey for hunters in that area and had their populations on the low end of surviving from overhunting. There was even a set of laws in place to keep the populations from dropping further.-
Anyways I made our food and turned in for the night. In the morning the gate to the village opened and we were allowed in. I made a beeline for the nearest tavern named the "Cracked barrel" to look for any potential work in the area. The tavern was fairly standard in layout with a long firepit made of stone in the center of the room to provide warmth and cook food over and wooden tables against the walls with bench seats. -
There was four wooden doors that led to the rooms the tavern rented out to travelers and a long shelved bar at the far end in front of the steps to the basement. An older nord woman was polishing a pewter mug behind the bar when I walked in.
"You're a big one ain't ya? What'll it be?" she asked without really batting an eye at my size.
I took a seat on the stool against the bar and still had to look down a bit to make eye contact.
"Traveling with a caravan headed for Windhelm. They'll be here for a day or two and figured I'd look for work in the area to pass time." I said honestly.
She raised an eyebrow at my voice but merely reached under the bar and took out a folded slip of paper.
"Northwind mine has been overrun with brigands who have been harassing us from it. Jarl's put out a bounty on them, details written inside." she said as she passed the paper to me.
I nodded and thanked her before looking at the bounty. It wasn't a whole lot, only five hundred gold. But the bounty included estimated numbers, notable members and even where they were thought to be coming from.-
I tipped the keeper a gold for the help and left the tavern. Making my way back to the caravan I grabbed my pack and headed back into the village. This time I went to the local blacksmith and unloaded my iron weapons from the bandits. The man thankfully didn't try and shaft me and paid the material price for the daggers since they weren't worth reworking while the swords and greatsword got a reasonable second hand price earning me a respectable four hundred thirty seven gold. It would have been more if it weren't for Redbelly mine that happened to be an iron mine right next to the village.-
I wasn't going to feed the things to my own sword either as there was no point. My sword was already at the peak of what an iron weapon could be without enchantments so my next step would obviously be to aim for steel next. Despite steel only being a carbon enriched version of iron the material was still counted as a separate material so I needed to use it to transform my weapon into a steel sword. I also couldn't just feed my sword the raw ingots either.-
The mechanic that my sword used to grow was picky and would only accept something that was a weapon. Annoying but nothing I could do anything about. Still with the iron weapons dropped off my pack was much lighter. One might wonder how I could carry so much stuff on me to begin with and the answer was simply that I didn't. My pack only had the bare minimum of resources in it at any given time. All of my truly valuable stuff was currently in my own tiny plane of Oblivion. Honestly speaking this wasn't even a rare thing as many conjuration/mysticism mages did something similar.-
You see the thing about Oblivion is that it has an uncountable number of planes. Some are massive things spanning whole worlds in size while others were barely bigger than a small chest. The trick I and others used was to send out feelers into the chaos of Oblivion's waters and find these small planes. Once we found one we liked we would then "claim" it and then dump all our shit there. Stashing and taking our stuff out after that is simply opening a small scale temporary unstable portal and reaching through.-
My pack on the other hand was where I kept my food supplies and cooking equipment. It was also totally a red herring meant to ruin the day of anyone stupid enough to try and steal from me. Thanks to that I could keep my pack rather small so it didn't really get in the way during combat. I thus shifted the pack to my back and after getting a guard to give me a direction and marking on my map for the Northwind mine set off. The place wasn't anything special really, just a low yield iron, orichalcum and moonstone ore mine.-
It once had high yield from what I know but that was back during the second era. All that's left now are the unprofitable dregs left over after the place was depleted. Collapsing it was far too dangerous however so it was left to rot for the most part. Some of it naturally collapsed from disrepair but the main path to the summit of the mountain it was built into the side of was intact. That summit was a place of interest for me to begin with as it had something from the Merethic era any Skyrim player would recognize, a word wall.