Hours 13 - 14: Phial Under M for Murder

The White Phial lies in a an ancient Nord cairn to the west. Retrieving it is simple and the Draugr here seem to be lower level than the ones I encountered previously. On the way to the cairn, I did bump into two Vigilants of Stendarr. I'm sure Illia would disapprove of wanton murder, but I know they carry pendants which improve Block by 10%, so I slay one of them, and the other one has to dir too to prevent the crime from being reported...

On returning the White Phial to the alchemists in Windhelm, Nurelion the alchemists gives me a measly 5 gold, first accusing me of breaking the Phial and then stating that I'm too stupid to know how. Although his assistant pays me a bit more, I storm into Nurelions chamber with murder in mind, but am unable to harm him or wake him, instead receiving this message:

I walk around Windhelm some more and to vent my anger pick a fight with someone called a Veteran Warrior who's wearing a full suit of steel armour. The guards don't stop our fight and what's more a passing mercenary even stops to help me out:

The Veteran Warrior turned out to be carrying 5000 gold! This is enough to buy a house in Whiterun!

After some more exploration I stop to investigate a grisly murder scene. The guards say they're stretched thin and unable to look into this, the latest in a spate of killings by 'The Butcher'. After they agree to let me help them, I follow a *literal trail of blood* to a house which contains clues, which leads to more clues, which leads to the killer, the Court Wizard.

Kudos to Skyrim for having one of these combatless quests like Oblivion did, but really this was just done so much better in Oblivion. The whole plot of the quest, including how ridiculous it was the guards didn't think to follow an actual trail of blood (and we're talking litres of the stuff, not just drops) was *extremely* simplistic and straightforward, with very little in the way of cool extra dialogue available, and seemingly no other way to complete the quest other than go from location to location as required by the script.

One fantastic detail I did like, however, was that after you present your evidence to the chief guard or whoever he is, he says the wizard will be arrested, and you get the little 'quest complete' sound (and message if you have the HUD visible) - but I noticed he walks off straight away, so I decided to follow him. He actually goes up to another guard and asks him to accompany him to arrest the wizard. I followed them upstairs to the wizard's quarters, where they had some more dialogue, and the wizard is then escorted all the way to the dungeons underneath the palace and locked in a cell!

It's great that they added all that entirely optional activity too add more depth, but they just needed to go that *little bit* further to make it truly amazing. Extra dialogue options from the wizard once he's in the cell, or even a further quest from him, for example.