A Thing that Happened in Skyrim

So last night like thousands of other people I was up a bit late playing Skyrim on Steam.

I was waiting around to —

…you know, a lot of people don’t have this yet, so I’ll buffer just a little and put in a spoiler tag. I’m not sure how to say what part of the game I’m in not to spoiler it, but, I’m maybe 15 hours of play in, and just wandering doing random things?

Anyway, I was waiting around to play hide and seek with a ghost girl in the middle of town. When suddenly, a group of three guys – labled “Hired Thugs,” come up to me on the street and charge at me with intent to murder. One of them had an enchanted axe. And let me tell you, these guys were tough customers. I have fought dragons, and they weren’t as hard to kill as these guys. The first time I fought them, they slaughtered me, and the second time I put up a good fight but they still did. On another reload, they killed my companion, which also was no good, and there didn’t seem to be any way to prevent them from spawning at this point.

Finally, using hit and run tactics, I took them all down, and looted the gold off their bodies. The leader of the group had a note – a contract, saying who hired them.

I read the note and realized it was signed: Lami. The nice alchemist lady that lives right here in this village! Why, I know where she lives and everything!

So since her home was unlocked, I barged in and talked to her, figuring I could demandingly ask why she hired three incredibly though assassins with magical axes to chop me in to flaming bits. But she just gave me the same answer wheel she always did: a sort of hello, would you like to have training in alchemy?

What the hell?

The note that I found said “this will teach her not to steal things that don’t belong to her.” I was confused, because… I never stole from this lady! Sure, I steal things a lot, but I hadn’t stolen from her…

And then I remembered that I accidentally did, kinda. See, the mouse sensitivity in Skyrim is really bad, and when I meant to click on her alchemical bench, in order to use it, I once accidentally clicked on a little object that was sitting right next to the bench as a decoration, and “stole” it. She saw me do this, so she gave me a slap on the wrist and said “Hey, I saw that!” and put it right back. Her conversation options didn’t change, and I didn’t get a bounty or anything, so I figured, oops, misclick, no harm done really.  It wasn’t even an expensive or rare item (I think it was actually bone meal).

Except now she’s hired literally the toughest guys I had fought to that point in order to destroy me for doing that? I sure hope that this doesn’t happen again while I’m doing other peaceful things, because that is a really stupid way to interrupt my experience, over what is really a dumb UI glitch.

I will say one thing, though, I went right back to her shop and took literally everything off of the shelves. She owed me, so, if she’s gonna summon flaming axe assassins, I may as well make it worth her while.