Hello guys and gals and guy/gals and all the other species that visit this glorious website featuring the greatest thing to happen to video game journalism since video games (I’m totally talking about myself–I have to keep my self-esteem up somehow! D:)! My name is, of course, Horror Spooky, and this is the inaugural edition, the very first ever, SPOOK HOUSE! This is my new column, where I will provide humorous anecdotes from the realm of video gaming and other nonsense. If you find informative editorials boring, then worry not! By the time you’re done reading this, you won’t have learned a single thing!

For those that don’t know, I have been feverishly working on my FAQ/Walkthrough for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, as well as a review for the game, and a guide to help you create the character YOU want to create. All this content will be coming in the ensuing weeks on Cheat Masters, so be sure to visit here constantly! And I mean, constantly. Oh, and click on all my stuff, too. That would be fantastic, folks!

But back to Skyrim. I’ve been playing it a lot. I mean, to the point that my personal relationships have been damaged. My schoolwork has suffered, I missed my friends’ (yep, plural, don’t mess with fireworks, kiddos) funeral, my newborn daughter was brought into the world without me present, my other kid said his first words (“Where’s daddy?”), and I have failed to take my medication since Friday! Okay, none of that is true. Except the medication part. That’s partly true. But don’t take my word for it.

As one would expect, Skyrim is filled with many amazing, wonderful things. Dragons fly in the sky, spewing flames from their throat at unsuspecting citizens; giants herd mammoths and are viciously hunted by the Companions guild; assassins charge weary travelers when they least expect it, blade swinging and ready to kill. Yes, pretty much anything can happen in Skyrim, and anything does happen. Especially when you pass the controller off to your friend.

You see, in Skyrim, I rarely travel alone. While chilling at one of the local inns (err…I mean working on my guide), I met a young woman named Lydia. While her looks were subpar at best, she was rocking a sword, and all I had to ask her was to follow me, and she obliged. No first date. No long conversations about the future or what our kids would look like. Hell, she didn’t even ask me my name. This is literally how the conversation went down:

“Follow me.”
“Okay.”

Let me sidetrack a bit, but I actually decided to apply this to real life. If I were to walk up to some random person and ask them to follow me, would they do it? Well, we don’t have an “inn” near my town, but damn it, we have a McDonald’s, and that’s as close as I’m going to get! So, I headed to the fine establishment, and spotted a young girl, looked like she was about 20 or so, sitting by herself. She was reading a college textbook, and looked like she did not want to be disturbed. But my father always taught me to be a gentleman always disturbs a lady, so I tapped her on the shoulder.

“Follow me.”

When I got out of the hospital, I returned to playing Skyrim and working on the guide. Luckily my companion Lydia was still with me. Together, Lydia and I had many grand adventures. We scaled entire mountains together, we fought dragons, we murdered every dark elf we came across, and we blew rabbits to pieces with the Fire Breath shout. If that’s not love, I don’t know what is.

Then my cousin Josh came over. Whenever Josh comes over, all hell breaks loose. Cracks appear in the floor and tentacles from an otherworldly octopus monster grab at our ankles and suck our life force from our every bodies. Needless to say, this makes Josh’s visits not only scary, but oddly sexually arousing. He chilled out and watched me quest in Skyrim and then pause the game every so often to type up the guide. At one point, I was writing a very lengthy description on how to complete a quest, and he asked to play.

I passed the controller to him, without thinking much of it. He promised to just mess around and not do anything, so that was cool with me. But then an urgent phone call whisked me away for a moment. I was gone, oh, maybe five minutes–when I returned, I discovered something truly horrific.

In the time I was gone, Josh and Lydia killed a dragon. Jolly good. But Lydia also wound up dead. Josh was burning her body with the fire spell when I returned. Shocked, I asked what happened. Josh claimed that a troll had murdered her and he found her body like this.

“Stark naked?” I asked. “You found her nude, lying in the snow?” Lydia’s armor was missing.

“I just found her like this, man! I swear!”

My little brother backed him up (and he was under oath to the Sun God), so I had little choice but to believe his story. I sat down and started typing away. I glanced at the screen, and Josh was still burning Lydia’s corpse.

“What are you doing?”

“Cremating her. She died a warrior’s death! She deserves an honorable burial,” Josh replied as Lydia’s legs turned a disgusting shade of black.

“So…” I leaned back in my chair, my heart heavy from the death of my companion. “She died there.”

“Well…” the camera panned from Lydia’s corpse upward. The camera was aimed at the top of a cliff, that was fifty or so feet in the air. “She actually died up there.”

I paused. “Well, then how did she get down there?”

“…”

“…Josh?”

“…”

“Josh?!”

“Fire Breath, okay! I blasted her around like a ragdoll! Then I shot her lifeless corpse off the top of the cliff! Then I stole her clothes! Bitch got what she deserved!”

Lydia was dead and gone. Josh maintains that he did not murder her, but simply desecrated her body and stole all her belongings (which in this day and age, is fairly tame). I will keep Lydia’s fur boots and armor with me for the rest of my adventures in Skyrim. She will be truly missed.

The moral of the story? Don’t fall in love with Skyrim companions…because you’ll just end up hurt!

Stay tuned for more Spook House and much more Skyrim goodies!