Skyrim Journals: Lopiken [Year 3]

Day 311

It's too late to safely make it back to the inn without freezing to death (this armour is a joke) so we're spending the night in the ruins. As for the mission, it didn't go as planned.

We left a little later than we intended, because a couple of recruits had been idiots and stayed up most of the night drinking in the cellar. They were ordered to return to Windhelm and will be reprimanded there. The rest of us met up with the scout near the ruins, and I was incredibly surprised to find the scout was Ralof! We haven't seen each other in almost three years, ever since the disaster at Helgen! I wish we had more time to catch up, but he informed us that the Imperials had already established a small camp inside the ruins. Apparently, their spies had learned what we had planned.

They outnumbered us, and definitely outmatched us in experience, as this was only supposed to be a training mission to find some ancient crown. We managed to defeat them with sneak attacks and lost only a few soldiers ourselves. I feel terrible for them and their families. Even though we prevailed, we shouldn't have subjected such inexperienced soldiers to this. I suppose we didn't have a choice, though. I hope this crown was worth it.

Fighting in those dark ruins was pure chaos. Thankfully, my experience delving in such ruins benefited us in that I was able to find alternate routes to give us advantages against the Imperials. Galmar was impressed enough with my performance that he wants to suggest I play a larger role among the Stormcloaks. I wanted to tell him that that's the opposite of what I would want, but I suppose I need to take what I can get in order to prove myself to Ulfric.