Skyrim: Thoughts on followers

Actually my experience with my followers in Skyrim was kind of unfortunate until lately. My first follower was Sven, the kind of really strange guy from Riverwood that seems to think his mother is insane. I pissed an elf off to befriend Sven so he would follow me on my adventures. You know, this was really long ago so I don't really have too much memory of my times with him. Well, there was this one time when I was in Whiterun training my smithing skill when I suddenly noticed that Sven was missing. I had to wait for quite a while till he ran to me from the distance – supposedly from the direction of the tavern.

But as you might know, from the smithing place in Whiterun there are not really any more directions to choose without exiting Whiterun. Turns out you can exit Whiterun without actually exiting Whiterun, but I will write about this incident in a later post.
So Sven runs happily up to me after being gone for quite a while and I suggested to him to trade some things because I wanted to get all my loot back from him to sell to Adrianne Arvenicci. So I looked into his inventory and there's an ale! I swear he did not have that before. I laughed so hard I probably spilled my tea if I was drinking tea. I don't know if I was because it was a long time ago. But let's pretend that I did. So Sven left me there for hours waiting for him so he could booze... Yay

Minor spoilers from here:

So there was this one quest where you kill this white stag and then you have to kill the werewolf in one of the most beautiful dungeon type of things in the whole land of Skyrim. I was so excited to skin this guy and then getting all that stuff and what the hell I don't even remember what exactly was going on. I think this was a daedra quest though...

Spoilers end here.

I was really excited and then I traveled back to Falkreath and sold a lot of stuff. After a while I noticed that Sven was gone. I tried waiting for a long long time. He did not come. I even went back to that cave thingy where the quest was going on. His body wasn't there either. Well, he never even came home to his mother's house in Riverwood. So I had to find me a new follower. That was not too difficult for me because I actually hated Sven. But I felt guilty. Whatever. His mother didn't even seem to notice.

And then there was Marcurio. I just needed a follower as a packmule real quick because I was about to do some serious questing. So I gave him some money and then he followed me. It was kind of a twisted relationship because I actually really don't like anything that has anything to do with magic. But because I was always tanking with my heavy armor sword and shield and he was standing in the distance throwing fireballs, we kind of complemented each other. And he was such a stupid a-hole always complaining about not wanting to be my packmule but actually I really liked this guy.

He was constantly nagging and complaining like a little child but I thought this was funny as hell. There was one time at Goldenglow Estate that I actually at least wanted to try to sneak. So I told him to wait for me at a certain spot. Well I kind of cleared everything on my own but then a dragon was attacking – in the middle of the night. And I don't even know if we finally killed it but the attack led Marcurio to fight and change his position. So the time I wanted to leave I could not find him anymore. I think I might have searched for him for 1 hour straight. And I'm not talking about an ingame hour.

So by the time that I actually had given up my search and left to go to the toilet (not ingame) and then coming back and taking the controller again I think I just took a few ingame steps. And then I turned my character to the left and there he was standing. Just two steps away from me between a tree and a big dark bushy bush. And he was staring at me with the most stupid face ever. I jumped when I saw him because it was so sudden and also so stupid.

After this Marcurio and I went on many adventures and he accompanied me on many many quests until we started the Dawnguard questline. There is this one point when you can't take your follower because you kind of have to take Serana with you. I gladly took her because I like her but Marcurio had to leave.
But I knew that I could find him at the Bee and Barb anytime. And in fact there was kind of a break in my questing for the Dawnguard where I sent Serana home and actually paid Marcurio again to come with me. And then there was some more questing and somehow you are then required to take Serana somewhere again and I supposed your follower just leaves then.

Maybe that was not the case in retrospect but actually I was so excited about having my own armored frost troll (that died not long after...) that I did not spend a lot of time paying attention to if all my followers were there. So when I noticed that Marcurio was not there anymore I actually was kind of confused and at first went straight to the Bee and Barb. But he was not there. And I could not find any saved game where he still was there except ones that were waaaaaaay too far in the past.

I still go to the Bee and Barb every time when I'm in Riften because he might just sit there on his bench staring at me with his stupid expression that he always had.

I mean this. I am still looking for this a-hole. But he is not there anymore. And that makes me very very sad every time. I would have really loved him to be my steward. I even once considered him as a possible spouse for my character although I was actually sure as hell from the start that my character would marry a woman. He was not there when I married my wife, he was not there when I was desperately looking for a steward to take care of all my things while I would be gone on adventures. I would have gladly left him with all of my belongings in my huge-ass house and my beautiful wife for his well earned retirement. But he never returned.

So I stayed with Serana and grew to really like her. I felt so bad for all the things she had to go through when we did the Dawnguard questline. And there were times when I was just furious because she was and is still ALWAYS standing in doorways that I want to go through. I call her “Schinken” all the time, which is the German word for ham because her name sounds like that serrano ham.

And I really like my Schinken. It's kind of a pity that I can't get her to wear the super skanky Forsworn armor but sometimes she is so sweet when she sees some beautiful scenery and tells me that she's glad to be there with me. That makes up for it. Actually it does not but that's just a minor flaw. And then one time there was the dialogue option to send her off to cure her vampirism. It really seemed to me that she wanted to go through with this so I sent her away. I actually thought that she might be a useless follower then because she would lose her powers.

Turns out I was wrong. She did not change at all. She still hates caves and the sun and sits on every bench or chair she finds because she is lazy. She just got prettier – I actually did not even think that was possible. It's a pity you can't marry her. But that's not so bad because I can have her with me all the time and my wife is home attending to the kids. And two b***hes is always better than one.

We had a lot of adventures together and we still have. And we will continue to go on adventures together. But I can't help thinking about Marcurio all the time when I'm in Riften or somebody says “Divines smile on you, friend” because he always told me that.

I hope you smile on me too now :-(