To little surprise I failed to make any progress on my gun and could only set it aside. I still had a good half days light left and decided to get some sword practice in. Leaving my room I headed for the stairs that the hall of attainment had and rather than go up them I instead moved behind them where a wooden trapdoor lay neglected. This led to the Midden, an underground area that was typically used to practice dangerous spells or run experiments best left out of the light of the sun.-
The place was cold, wet and filled with all sorts of horrors from generations of failed experiments and summoning accidents. It was that last bit that I was after. Perhaps not great for much else these creatures would serve as suitable enough training buddies for my blade. Entering the ancient cold chambers of the Midden where a cold wind blows the stale stench of various foul things I quickly found a target. It looked human with armor and everything but it's body was shriveled up and dry like gray jerky and it's eyes were replaced by two pale glowing blue lights. -
In it's hand a corroded blunt iron ancient sword hung from closed fingers.
"Aav Dilon(join the dead)!" the dry growl of a voice spoke as the Draugr charged me.
"Praan nu(Rest now)." I replied in Dovahzul which it was also speaking.
There was a slight flicker in those glowing lights before the dull sword of the Draugr swung at me. I stepped back to let it miss me as I reached for my chest and closed my hand around the handle of my blade as I drew it out of my soul. I raised the blade and slashed out perfectly horizontally as I stepped forward and removed the things head from it's shoulders.-
It was harder than doing the same to a living person because the flesh was dry and stiff but I could handle it. Undead were VERY different than in the game, you couldn't just expect them to fall over fully dead again by hitting them wherever. Usually when a corpse was reanimated the magic applies to all of it and so in order to truly "kill" them again you had to cause catastrophic damage to the body in some way. -
If it has a head removing it does the trick most of the time but if it was raised without a head you need to mutilate the torso and joints enough to cause the reanimating magic to fizzle out. Alternatively you could use a restoration spell to directly attack the essence of the undead killing it that way. Draugr were a topic of interest to most necromancers because as far as the uneducated on the matter know they are "natural" undead. Many necromancers as a result thought they were superior undead but if you found the right records you'd be able to figure out this wasn't true.-
Draugr were "delayed" reanimations, not natural at all. See the way it works is the tombs that the dead are laid to rest in have a mix of magics worked into the very stone that accomplishes two things. The first is preserving the bodies of those placed within. The second is to imbue false life into those bodies over time to preserve a fragment of the mind and strength the person had in life. This was done with a trigger of sorts to aggressively attack any intruders but to never leave the tomb, usually anyways.-
The second purpose of those magics is why Draugr could speak and still roughly knew how to use magic, shouts and weapons. There were different kinds of Draugr as well based on who they were when alive. The low ones like this one were barely better than broken minds in mummified bodies. The better the magics woven for them however the better their minds were preserved and their strength as well. At the highest level, known as "deathlords" Draugr had full minds and completely preserved skills from when they were alive, they just lacked the souls to go with it.-
I dreaded ever meeting and having to fight one of those because they are almost always legendary warriors when they were alive. Don't even get me started on dragon priests from the same era. Gods damned liches the lot of them, POWERFUL liches. I sent a stream of fire to turn the Draugr to ash before moving deeper into the midden. My next encounter was a bunch of creaking skeletons without weapons. I slashed apart bones with absolute focus until they crumbled and collected the bones for bone meal. After that was a Clannfer, a daedric beast with a body that looked like a mix of two dinosaurs.-
It had a head like a hornless triceratops and the body of a velociraptor. They had pale yellow leathery skin and long sharp claws that were alchemical ingredients. This one looked like it had been summoned from the Deadlands, Mehrunes Dagon's realm, awhile ago. It was skinny from malnutrition and had pale spots on it's skin from frost bite. I actually felt a bit bad for the thing since it was from a fiery, dry place and this was the exact opposite. Short term it would have been fine since daedric creatures are hardy things but long term stay has clearly caused it to develop health problems.-
That didn't mean it was not immediately hostile the moment it spotted me and screeched before charging me with claws outstretched. I felt serious resistance as I slashed at the beast while side stepping it but that was expected. It was slow and had trouble with fast movements from long term exposure to this environment and I easily danced around it leaving long but ultimately shallow wounds with each pass. Still it made me work for the kill and I was nice and warmed up once it finally collapsed weakly. I dispatched it with a swift two handed downswing at the weak point just behind it's skull plate at the base of it's neck.-
I cut off the claws and put them away before throwing a [banish] spell at it to send what was left back to Oblivion. Following the path it came from I couldn't help but sigh as there were more and more daedric creatures. All of them were from the Deadlands so I was fairly certain some idiot had opened a portal and died before closing it.-
As I turned the corner I immediately spotted the portal and WHY the person probably died. Pacing inside the chamber past a doorway too small for it to pass was the hulking scaled form of a Daedroth. Monstrous creatures standing eight feet tall on average that were to put it bluntly bipedal crocodiles. They also had an innate magic that made them stronger and their skin harder to penetrate so they were really damned durable. They were particular favorites as summons for this trait in fact. If I had to guess some moron thought to try and lure one through a portal to bind it as a summon and got killed instead because, to no surprise, the things were not friendly.