Author's Note: This is not official TES lore, just so you know. This is just a pretty good cover to the bizzare fact that in-game vampire stats are lowered if you feed, which allows daywalking.
Disclaimer: Do I really even need to put it anymore?
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
The Story of Octavian
Distractions of the Day
I was very nervous as I watched the tone of the sky change from a deep, spotted black to the many shades of sunrise. As beautiful as it was it was also quite unnerving for me. As the sun began to creep over the hills and mountains to the East, my skin began to tingle and itch a little, and my eyes slightly watered. My eyes quickly adjusted, but the feeling on my skin was not leaving. It was not quite painful, but it was incredibly distracting. It seemed to me to be the shadow and echo of a burn.
I left the clear hilltop I was standing on and as I stepped into the shade of a tree on the way back to the city I felt the itch lessen everywhere the shade covered. That was what Janus meant by "direct" sunlight. I quickly found the guardsmen to whom I'd given over the Nordic leader of the Blood Ring Bandits. They let me bring him to the main square, for his public trial. It was about ten in the morning when I was supposed to bring him in. That was Skingrad's "rush hour" on weekdays, so most people would see and hear about it.
I walked triumphantly through the town, dragging the bandit behind me. He barely struggled, mostly because my hand was like a vise on his wrist, and he could tell that I could break it easily. My admirers from the first night had seen me, and had begun to bring a crowd who were overjoyed to see the sight of this hated man being dragged to the court. By the time we were there, everyone in Skingrad was there. After a lengthy trial where people choked out horrid accounts of the wrongs that he and his gang had done to them or their loved ones, he was almost sentenced to death.
I say "almost," because of some very bizzare circumstances that I would never in a million years have foreseen.
First, I would normally have said that he should be imprisoned for life, but with crimes like that, I was unsurprised that everyone in town was screaming "kill him!" But even more than the fact that he had negatively affected every single resident of Skingrad in a drastic manner, was the actual occurances.
The trial went smoothly until after the sentence, which was right after sunset. He was being dragged off to the prison to await the execution. But then the winds came. They were winds that would have ripped the trees from their roots were they any less deep. The debris prevented the Nord's official execution from taking place when a piece of it pierced his heart, killing him instantly. With them came blasts of heat, and a horrid stench. They were coming from the West in the direction of…
I cursed aloud as I remembered what I had come South to do. Kvatch! The city was in danger, and so was the hier to the Dragon Throne. I would need to go there, immediately. I rushed to Janus' castle and told him everything. Out the window to the West the sky glowed red. The winds weakened within the hour. I fed on one of the vagrants running around using the turmoil to their advantage. I had given him a potion to alleviate my fatigue when it came indirectly through his blood, and began towards Kvatch. I would need to use all of my new power to get there quickly enough.
I stood facing the blood-red section of the sky. I prepared myself and ran, swearing to return to complete my training as a vampire. I felt the wind rushing past me as I ran as fast as any horse. I jumped over boulders and fallen trees easily, and cleared the distance by sunrise. But there was no sun here.
Clouds as black as ink covered the sky here, and over the city itself, only two minites away, the sky remained blood red. The rain poured down in buckets, and the stench from the city could choke a pig. I could see the bodies hanging over the ramparts of what remained of the city walls, and I could distinguish inhuman forms moving in and around the castle. I could also see a small camp to the South of the city. I made my way there.
Okay, we'll be getting more into the main quest of the game for now.