Ragnar The Conqueror

by Rainbow Dum Dum

Imagine driving home from work, and then the next thing you know you're floating in an endless abyss with some weird fucking blue textbox asking you beta test their new 'system', whatever the hell that is. Whatever, I'm supposed to get stronger with the more land I control. The High Kings throne is lookin kinda empty... Skyrim Gamer!OC

4. Chapter 4

"Falkreath hold will be mine."

Silence was met at my proclamation. Gavnuk, Umak, and Kragrau all had looks of disbelief. Morbrukk, like usual, was stone-faced. I could never read him, and that made it difficult to determine whether he was pleased or annoyed. And Guruk?

Guruk stood wide eyed, jaw slightly hung open in disbelief. Seconds passed as I stared back at his disbelieving expression, unmoving and unyielding.

"By Malacath…you really mean that, don't you? You're serious."

"Deadly."

A small chuckle escaped Guruk's mouth, but soon that chuckle evolved to a uproarious belly laugh. It took some minutes, but Guruk eventually calmed himself down. Slamming his fist on the table, he stared at me, a proud grin on his tusked mug.

"Now THAT'S what I'm talking about! Drive, ambition! I wasn't sure before, but you put all my doubts to rest. Boss, as long as you keep that drive, I'll follow you."

"How are you going to do it?"

It took me a second to realize who was speaking, but I turned to look at Morburkk's intense gaze.

"I'm sorry Morbrukk, you're going to have to repeat that. I didn't quite catch what you said."

He let out an annoyed sigh, "It's all well and good that you have a hefty goal you're trying to accomplish, but that means nothing without a plan. Do you even have one? I'm not about to follow you on some suicide quest just for a power fantasy."

"I've already devised two separate plans on how to go about taking over Falkreath hold."

I cleared my throat, "The first plan is to become well known amongst the populous of Falkreath. This will involve doing tasks for those who request it and establishing relations with as many people as possible. Doing so will result in Siddgeir possibly giving me a task to complete, and once I show my competence, he'll no doubt make me a thane. Both before I'm thane and after, I'll be spreading seeds of doubt of Jarl Siddgeirs competence as Jarl. I'm sure you've already noticed that Falkreath hold has a bandit problem. Well, that's because he's got them all on his payroll."

I let the orcs talk about that revelation for a few moments before continuing, "Not to mention that Falkreath is basically Hircine's hunting grounds in nirn, at least in Skyrim, it would be of no surprise to me to find that this hold has werebeast problems. And we'll be taking care of both."

"What do you mean boss?"

I turned to Umak, "I know that there's a werebeast that currently lives in Falkreath. He is in possession of a daedric artifact known as Hircine's ring. It's supposed to give him complete control over his lycanthropy, but that ring is cursed. And it's just a matter of time before the ring's compulsion proves more powerful than his own mental fortitude. Once that happens, he'll surely be arrested. That's where I make my move. I'm going to take the ring and break the curse on it. Once that's finished, I'll either keep the ring or give it back to the man depending on what the ring does for those who don't have the curse of the werebeast. Either way, we secure a powerful ally in doing so, and either him or myself will make the other werebeasts submit."

"…How do you know so much about all of this?"

"When I went to Falkreath, I saw the man with the ring on his finger, and I recognized it on sight. In the stories I read during my youth, the tale of Hircine's ring was one I read frequently, as it was one of the only ones available at the time. But there's another account of the story where the ring was cursed, and that seems to be the true tale given the other story of Clavicus Vile's rueful axe."

A fib here and there, but with just enough sprinkles of truth that it was enough to convince the rest of the crew that I wasn't lying. I mean, I did see Sinding when I went to Falkreath in the game, and I did see the ring on his finger when I played modded skyrim. So nothing of what I said was inaccurate.

"Regardless, that leads us to the next phase. With our newly acquired werebeast army we will systematically take over every nook and cranny of Falkreath. I'm talking abandoned forts, caves, towers, you name it. Any and everything outside of Falkreath Capital will be under our control. With the bandits and werebeast problems taken care of it'll be phase two. This branches off into two possible plans. So right now, I'll continue explaining the first plan and then we'll pick off from here when I explain the second one. Once I've taken care of the problems that Siddgeir should have been taking care of, at least in the eyes of the people, I'll call out Siddgeir on his incompetence as a Jarl. If Siddgeir doesn't want a riot he'll be forced to succeed his position of Jarl to one of his thanes. As far as I'm aware of, the only other thane would be his uncle Stuhn. He is far too old for the position, and it could also be considered nepotism if he was to be chosen."

"Boss, a Jarl isn't chosen like that. I'm pretty sure a moot needs to be called and the Jarls of the other holds choose a new one."

"Not to worry Gavnuk, with Skyrim's little Civil War they'll only be calling a moot to decide the next High King. If this were a Major hold like Whiterun or Riften, I could see them calling a Moot to elect a new one. But Falkreath just isn't important enough for them to gather all of the Jarl's to elect a new one in the middle of a fucking civil war."

"Regardless, the first plan is dependent on both the public perception of me, and Siddgeir making me thane. The first plan is a bust if I'm not made as a thane. So, here's the second plan. During our domination of the wearbeasts, there will inevitably be those who refuse to submit. We'll kill them, and I will present one of their heads to the Jarl as a trophy. Unfortunately for him, that head must have been the dead mate of another werebeast, who will undoubtedly seek justice. I will command one of the werebeasts under my control to storm Falkreath Capital and kill Siddgeir. Coincidently, Stuhn will die to a sudden heart attack days before this happens. Leaving the Jarl's throne empty and ripe for the taking. I will then courageously take off after the beast that killed the Jarl and bring back 'its' head. Of course, we'll just use the head of another uncooperative beast, but it's not like the citizens will know. By avenging Siddgeir, combined with my already established reputation amongst the hold, I would be the only viable candidate for being Jarl."

I turned to Morbrukk, "Good enough for you?"

He shuffled in his seat, uncomfortable with the attention I was giving him. "Yes boss."

"Do we have any role in this at all?"

"Yes Umak, you will all be in charge of various sectors of our every growing, well, I guess you could call it an organization. Gavnuk will oversee all the non-combatants we take in, as well as head of the mine we've established. Guruk will be in charge of our bandit forces and will be given a base to stay in if he so wishes."

I took Guruk's excited disposition as a solid yes, "Morbrukk will similarly be in a position of leadership. He'll be co-leader of our Werebeast division, with either myself as the other co-leader or Sinding, the man I mentioned earlier who has the cursed ring. Not all werebeasts are suited towards combat, and you will be in charge of werebeasts more suited for tracking."

I waited for Morbrukks silent nod before continuing, "Umak, you will be head of our alchemical fields. We'll take every practitioner of alchemy we can find and have you all do your thing, with you at the head of it. Of course, you will be given your own building to manage everything if you so wish to have one. And finally, we have Kragrau."

I turned to our final member, who sat with nervous anticipation. "You will be in charge of our magicka corps. Any and everything magicka related will be under your control. Any bandits or witches we find that live under our banner will be given to you, and you'll oversee them. Given the very real delicate and dangerous nature of magicka that you'll be dealing with, you will be given your own base of operations."

"Now, with everything said and done, I'll be heading up to my room. I'll leave the contract I mentioned earlier on the table but get ready, we leave for Halldir's Carin in the coming days, probably within the week. Morbrukk, would you check our food storage? I need to know what we have so that I can make us food for tonight."

(-)

As soon as I got to my room I groaned and collapsed backwards on my bed, face in my hands. I cringed in my hands at how I acted, in my attempt to sound like a calculating, smart man with a hidden agenda I totally made such a fool of myself. By the Nine, I really said that I had machinations laid far into the future.

I sounded like such a tool!

I was not prepared to fully explain myself, those two plans I mentioned earlier? They were still on the drawing board of my mind, I have no idea if they'll even work given that I don't know shit for dick on how everything actually functions. For all I know, werebeasts are incapable of being reasoned with or if it's even possible to tame the wilder ones!

And speaking of that, my plan is heavily reliant on Hircine's Ring. A daedric artifact, something just yesterday I was telling myself I would lock in my basement. When in the hell using one enter the forefront of my mind?! It's too late to back out now, if I don't follow through with my 'brilliant' plan then I lose the support of my only two combatants.

Besides, Hircine is one of the better Daedric princes, right?

…I'm doomed, aren't I?

None of that right now! I can focus on that later, right now I need to practice Transmute. I got out of bed and grabbed the tome from my nightstand and went to the basement to grab some firewood. Thanks to all the variety of trees in Falkreath, we have many different types of wood we use for firewood, which means I can use them for my test runs. It'll be easier to transmute wood into other types with frames of reference after all!

Back in my room, I laid the book in front of me as I sat on the floor and flipped through the pages until I had the more in depth explanations that Devas must have written during his time in jail/when he was dying. I grabbed one of the oak logs and placed It in my lap. I then moved another log, likely birch based on the bark, and placed it behind the book. Okay, what did Devas do again? He saturated the log in his magicka and focused intently, and he was able to accomplish this sometime in a 13-day timeframe between the day 74 and day 87 entries. With all the information I have at my fingertips, I should be able to accomplish it much sooner than that. I'm fortunate that the book was written as a personal logbook and not an academic text, otherwise I would have had a much harder time understanding everything.

Alright, time to start practicing. I grabbed the oak log and placed my hands on each side of it. I closed my eyes and…realized I had no idea how to draw on my magicka. I know I have it, otherwise I wouldn't have the gauge and stat for it on my profile. Is it as easy as simply just willing it? I don't know if the system grants me the inherit ability to just use magicka, or if the stat grants me the capacity to learn how to use it. Might as well try, right?

I closed my eyes again and attempted to will my magicka to move. Nothing came of it, but I had an almost indescribable feeling of…you know that feeling you get when a word is just on the tip of your tongue, but you can't quite think of it? That's what I'm feeling internally, the magicka is there, and I can almost feel it, but it's just out of reach. It feels like I'm trying to draw on something that's not there. I guess a better way to visualize it would be that my magicka is a glass of water, and I'm trying to drink from it, but I keep missing the glass with my straw and end up just sucking on air.

I breathed deeply and slowly, I focused again, but instead of trying to will my magicka to move, I instead focused innately to find the source of my magicka, trying to guide my 'straw' to the glass of water.

I sat for what felt like hours, focusing so intently that the world around me faded into nothingness. I sat in complete silence, searching inside myself, but eventually I felt it. It was a small thing at first, but something connected inside me, like that feeling you get when you finally find that word that on the tip of your tongue. I let out a small grin and tried manipulating my magicka again, and it was night and fucking day. The feeling of cold water running down my skin doused my arms and hands as I slowly and methodically manipulated my magicka to surround the wood. I concentrated on what I wanted; turning the oak wood in my hand into birch wood.

I opened my eyes, and in my hand appeared to be birch wood. I excitedly set it down and grabbed my iron axe and split the wood, only to be disappointed to see that only the inside was mostly oak. In fact, I only turned about half an inch of the outer layer of wood into birch. I must have done the same mistake that Devas made, but on the plus side…

Alteration spell created: Birchskin [Novice]

Birchskin (1/5) [Novice]: A spell derived from the oakflesh spell. Turns the surface of the caster or an object into birch for half an hour

Cost: 80MP

Birchskin added to Alteration spells list

+4 levels to Alteration Tree

Alteration [4/100]: How proficient the user is with Alteration Magicka.

+1 to INT for creating new novice spell

It's a step in the right direction, though with that cost I can't practice often. Hmm. System, what's my magicka regeneration rate anyways?

Magicka regenerate 1%/10 seconds

So regardless of what stat, they'll regenerate to full within 16-17 minutes if I completely deplete my reserves. Slower than the game, but much faster than what I originally anticipated. Regardless, I have nothing to do for the next 12 minutes or so, might as well go downstairs and see what we have for food, gotta make the guys and I an early dinner.

I ended up roasting up some large cuts of venison with thyme tied to it and apples for everyone. Simple, but the sweet taste of the apples pairs well with the gamey flavor that venison has. Simple, but tasty all the same.

(-)

"Guruk, where'd you say the wooden weapons were?"

"You're not going to call me Ruk, are you?"

"Answer the damn question Guruk."

"I should have guessed, they're by the Umaks hut, they should be in a little chest sitting next to the wall."

Guruk and I had decided to work off our dinner with a spar. Neither of us wanted to use our iron tools, too deadly and we couldn't afford to chip the iron, so Guruk had informed me of how Guvnak and him had worked together to make wooden weapons so everyone could practice. Lucky for me, Guvnak does use axes as his main weapon choice, and he never used the wooden ones so they're still in great blunted condition.

I found the chest quickly enough, I grabbed the only wooden greatsword and tossed it to Guruk behind me, grabbing my own wooden axe afterwards.

"Guruk, do you guys have any wooden shields?"

"Nah, none of used them. Though you do so…I guess you can use your iron one. It's practically 60% wood anyways, shouldn't effect our spar much anyways as long as you don't bash me with it."

"Got it."

I hurried back inside and grabbed my shield, and made my way back to the field. I cracked my neck and stretched my legs a bit, Guruk performing his own stretches on his side of the field. As I made to stand, I grabbed a good sized rock, and tossed it up and down a bit as I stared at Guruk across from me.

"Okay, I'm going to throw this in the air and we'll start when it lands. Sound good to you?"

"When should we stop?"

"When do you usually stop?"

"When the weapon breaks."

"Then we'll do that, you ready?"

"Toss the damn rock and get ready."

I smirked a bit and threw the rock high in the sky. I readied my axe and raised my shield, my amused expression quickly morphing into a serious one. Guruk, like me, readied his greatsword in both hands. I narrowed my eyes, and the rock hit the ground.

Guruk exploded forward from his position, a battle cry roaring from his mouth as he rushed towards me. I slammed my feet into the ground, shield prepped to block the incoming attack. Guruk leaped into the air, and with a war cry spun in the air, cleaving his greatsword through the air towards my side. I quickly shifted and blocked the attack, but the force of the attack pushed me back. Dust kicked into the air as I held my ground against the force Guruk used against me. Gritting my teeth, I ducked and angled my shield so that the sword would slide off its surface. It worked, and Guruk awkwardly overextended and ended up stumbling a bit. I capitalized on the moment and slammed my blunted axe blade onto the wooden blade of his greatsword, chipping the wood and causing some small cracks.

My victory was short lived, as Guruk quickly used his falling momentum as a means to twist upright. During this, he used his other foot to kick up a lot of dust into my eyes. I cried out in surprise as I was quickly blinded, my eyes burning with intense pain. His heavy footsteps alerted me not a moment too soon as his sword hammered into my hastily raised shield. I could already see Guruk's shit eating grin as his greatsword kept hammering away at my shield. Powerful blow after blow rained down on my shield, causing tremors to race up my arms. As I blocked each heavy strike from Guruk, I used my free hand to rub my eyes, alleviating the pain – if only momentarily. With my vision restored, I waited for just the right moment, and just as his blade swung down for another hit I struck fast with my axe into the blade's side.

My blow to his blade put it wildly off course, the blade striking into the ground beside me. Grinning, raised my shield and slammed the rim into the flat of the blade, causing more damage to the blade's surface from before. Not giving him a moment to breath, I attacked ferociously. Slashing and smashing wildly with my axe and it's head. With my axes smaller size and weight, I was able to attack faster than Guruk ever could. Now it was my turn to hammer down on Guruk while he played defence, blocking each blow with the flat of his blade, chipping the wood and causing even more cracks into the wood. And not a moment later…

SNAP

I stared bewildered at my now broken axe, the head spinning into the air before falling onto the dusty ground. I looked at the neck of my axe as if I was seeing shit, but no. Where the head stood was now splintered and jagged pieces of wood.

+2 STR for strenuous sparring

+1 Lv Axe Proficiency [13/100]

+2 Lv Blocking [10/100]

"Ha! Guess that means I win!"

"Oh that's horseshit and you know it!"

"I don't know boss, your weapon seems pretty broken to me."

"Because I'm the who broke it!"

"It's okay boss, just take the loss with some dignity."

"When did this even become a competition?!"

"Sounds like something a sore loser would say…"

"Hey Guruk?"

"Yea-"

"Fuck you."

(-)

I panted in exhaustion as I stood in the center of the clearing by The Twilight Sepulcher, surrounded by the corpses of wolfs and elks alike. Fun little fact about going out to get EXP, if I leave with the intention of hunting for exp, the system gives me a little prompt asking me if I want to start a 'hunt'. Doing so makes it so that the system just keeps adding up the EXP I gain for killing creatures instead of just giving it to me immediately after I kill something, so it's very useful for not being bombarded with notifications constantly. Good thing too, because I've killed two small packs of wolves and three Elk, and the constant notifications would have been so fucking annoying. But for now, I'm pretty spent. It's the middle of the afternoon so I should get back if I want to keep trying to get transmute down.

Would you like to end your hunt?

Yes.

Hunt has ended!

8 Wolves and 3 Elks killed

+3 Lv Axe Proficiency [16/100]

+2 Lv Blocking [12/100]

+2 Lv Light Armor Proficiency [5/100]

+1 Lv Heavy Armor Proficiency [3/100]

+165 EXP

You have leveled up! +2SP, +1PP

Choose which stats you would like to increase

Put both into INT

Allocating points…

Profile updated!

Name: Ragnar

Race: Nord

Level: 3

EXP: 40/200

Health: 140 Magicka: 140 Stamina: 120

STR: 16

INT: 14

END: 12 (14)

DEX: 12

SP: 0

PP: 2

Land Controlled:

-Cracked Tusk Keep (+2 END)

People under your leadership:

Happy: 5

Neutral: 0

Unhappy: 0

I gathered together the wolf corpses and stacked them up together in a pile and waited. Around this time that bear came around so maybe…

I heard twigs snap behind me and I turned around. Sure enough, the mama bear and her cubs were behind me, and another bigger bear, likely the father of the cubs. I smiled a bit, grabbed one of the wolves and tossed it towards the family of bears, and just like last time I had to give them more than just the one. With each toss of a wolf corpse, the mama bear pawed them towards the two cubs for them to eat. Once they were full, the mother bear took her fill of the wolves. I noticed that the father bear was patiently waiting, making sure that both his kids and his partner ate before he took part. All the wolf bodies were eaten, and father bear still hadn't eaten, so I grabbed hold of one of the elk bodies by the leg and slowly dragged it forwards, as to not startle it. To my eternal surprise, the bear didn't flinch, growl, or move at all, he just waited as I got close enough to where I could swing it around myself so that it rested in front of him.

I swear to the Nine above me that the bear tossed a smug smirk at the other bears before chowing down on the elk's meat. The mother bear let out what I could only guess was an annoyed huff as it gazed back at me expectingly. I sighed, grabbed one of the other elks, dragged it forwards, and heaved it so it laid in front of her, a pleased growl leaving her maw. Once the father was done with his elk, the mama bear grabbed the dead elk by the neck and dragged it away after her kids and partner. As they disappeared into the foliage, I turned to look at the last dead elk.

How the fuck am I going to drag this shit home?

(-)

Birchskin has leveled up x1!

Birchskin (2/5) [Novice]: A spell derived from the oakflesh spell. Turns the surface of the caster or an object into birch for 30 minutes

Cost: 70MP

I sighed as I placed down the temporary birch skinned oak log next to me in the pile of 4, grabbing the first of the pile and waiting another 10 minutes for my magicka to recharge.

I got back to the fort early evening from dragging that elk carcass back to the base. I left it with Kragrau to drain the blood and skin the animal, and immediately left to my room to begin practicing transmute. I had spent the better part of an hour with little to no success before I had a thought; was the reason that I couldn't perform the spell because my magicka reserves weren't large enough? Actually learning and creating the spell for the first time ended up taking more magicka than what it actually costed, if the cost for casting Birchskin the first time was any indication. Transmute itself might cost 120 magicka when I have it in my spell list, but sense I don't have it on the list the spell could cost as low as 160 Magicka to use it without knowing it.

And that's when I had a new idea, I had gotten an intelligence increase when I first created Birchskin, so wouldn't the same apply to other spells I learn and master?

I had thought about just creating as many different varieties as possible of oakflesh that I could think of but dismissed the idea. I don't want my spell list to be a long list of spells of random nonsense spells that are all level one, a deep part of my soul is profoundly against such a notion. Instead, I'm going to see if mastering a spell, even if it's a novice one, will net me any stat gains. And if it does, I can create a short, but useful, array of oakflesh variants and master those for intelligence increases. I had an idea for the wood anyways. Because Birch is harder than oak, we could use the wood for our mine support beams. However, birch wood is one of the rarer woods of Falkreath hold, so cutting them down to use the wood would be too costly to be effective. But, as transmuted ore proves, using heat on the transmuted material will effectively make the change permanent. There's this technique that builders will use on wood called charring if they need to, where they purposefully lightly burn the wood they're going to be using. Not only is it aesthetically pleasing to look at, but it also actually proves to be super beneficial. It makes the wood resistant to fire, insects, fungus, and rot. All of which would be super useful for the support beams in the mine.

First, I'll experiment with the wood to see if birchskin would even work for that intended purpose. It's not transmute, and therefore I'm unsure if the application of heat will do anything. But at the same time, birchskin was created with the intention and casting method of using transmute. I have no idea how casting oakflesh works, but I imagine that how one casts it is different than how one would cast transmute. The birchskin spell even explicitly states that the surface of the caster or object is turned into birch. So it stands to reason that with birchskin, the surface of the altered wood, if exposed to enough heat, would stay as birch.

But that all can wait until later, right now I need to master birchskin. Luckily, Birchskin is a novice tier alteration spell, so mastering it is actually going by pretty quickly. I just need to cast the spell and let the spell run its course repeatedly for me to level up my skill. I've tried hitting the altered wood with my axe with varying levels of force, but it hadn't gotten any results, so I stopped. Though, with the pace this is going at it's going to take me most of the evening and night, I should go make everyone food before I hunker down and max out the spell.

I went down and went to the elk carcass that Kragrau left on the prep table I set up. Like normal, I chopped up the venison and portioned them out. Salt curing the ones I would save for later. I grabbed the leaner cuts I didn't cure and seasoned them lightly with a bit of salt after pounding them down a fair bit to make them more thin and even. I started a fire with some wood and set a cooking pot over it. I grabbed another one and filled it with some water we had stored and placed four fully chopped potatoes in the water and hung it over the fire on the spittle. I grabbed the last of our butter, going to have to buy more next time I'm in town, and waited as I got a nice light sear on the sides of the Venison, just a couple of minutes on all sides. I grabbed some thyme sprigs and placed them into the pan, and sliced a good portion of the butter into the pot. Grabbing a spoon, I basted the venison cuts with the butter over the sprigs of thyme, and afterwards set the venison cuts on the side to allow for some carryover cooking, and to let the venison rest. Back to my potatoes, I checked them for softness. Shaking my head, I cringed a bit, I should have started on the mashed potatoes a little earlier than this, but there's no changing it now. Snapping my fingers, I grabbed some more wood and placed it in the fire, and grabbed a bellow that I knew we had and started feeding the fire air, this should increase the temperature enough to cook the potatoes faster. I have to be careful though, overcooking them will turn the mashed potatoes into a soupy mess.

I systematically blew air into the fire and checked the potatoes every five minutes or so, and in no time, I had the desired softness for the potatoes. I took the pot off the spittle and set it down and carefully drained as much water as I could without spilling any potatoes. Once I was satisfied, I placed the pot back on the table and grabbed an already cut goat cheese wheel. I took a semi-thick slice from the wheel and set it down, cut it into thin strips and set them aside. I grabbed a hammer I cleaned earlier and went to down mashing up the potatoes, mixing in the stripped goat cheese as I went with a little bit of bottled milk. I stirred and folded in everything, tasted the mashed potatoes, added a pinch of fire salt I stole from Umak's alchemy shed. Where he got that, I have no idea, but I found that the taste of fire salts are like salt and pepper combined with smoked paprika. But it's very strong, so you can only use just a bit when used in cooking, but it's so good.

Regardless, I grabbed the rested venison cuts of meat and sliced them up. Placing the sliced pieces of meat on a large plate, I took both the pot of mashed potatoes and meat to the table where we ate and called everyone in. We all ate our fill, and then I made my way back up to my room, settled down by the logs of wood, and got to work mastering Birchskin.

Name: Ragnar

Race: Nord

Level: 3

EXP: 40/200

Health: 140 Magicka: 140 Stamina: 120

STR: 16

INT: 14

END: 12 (14)

DEX: 12

SP: 0

PP: 2

Land Controlled:

-Cracked Tusk Keep (+2 END)

People under your leadership:

Happy: 5

Neutral: 0

Unhappy: 0

Hey, so I'm wondering if I should do a small time skip to the end of the week in order to get the ball rolling and so we won't have to wait three to four until Ragnar gets his next piece of territory. At the same time, I don't want to just skip past the work he would be putting in to level up and get stronger. Do you guys think I should do it? I was thinking about maybe a 2-3 level increase, because the time skip would just go until the end of the week, the day that they enter Halldir's Carin, but if you guys would rather see the progress he makes rather than just be told it I can do that too!