I don't remember who said it in some other post but I hope my character starts out in a prisoner transport that gets attacked by a dragon.

As far as why I'm in jail... I'm just a drunk nord who's wife and child died in a horrible avalanche and I'm just trying to drink the pain away. CHEERS :foodndrink:

Starting as a prisoner is TES's trade mark.
And I like it.

Jargon the Noob Hater is my name and I hate noobs, as my name implies. Just the other day for the umpteenth time I ran across another dunmer named Dritz Urden begging me for spare septims. It was the fifth time it happened that particular day and I just wanted to drink my mead in peace and here comes some overly annoying dunmer butchering the common tongue and propositioning for septims I earned by actually going out and killing something and I had enough. Enough I tell you! What would you have done in my position?

I tell you what I did, I showed him that I wanted him to shut it... by beating him to death with my bar stool.

And that is why I am here in this dank cell. Okay, the property damage may have had a bearing on my arrest, too. And did I mention that I set the dunmer on fire? Yeah, I set him on fire. And a portion of the bar too.

Say, now that I'm a little more sober I notice you're a dunmer, too... you wouldn't happen to be yet another named Dritz Urden?

I shot a "Necromancer" with my bow. It's not my fault he was the cousin of the Count.

Or that he was a sanctioned wizard of the mage's guild. Or that he was casting a heal spell.

Shouldn't have been wearing black robes in a dungeon with no way for me to tell who is who at range.

My Dunmer got drunk till he couldn t no more and pissed on the glass of the captain of the guard while he was on civie garments.
To add to the picture i was totally naked because i insisted in betting my underwear in a illegal hazard game.
And to complete all i burned the magistrate northen 20 years old beard while on trial, so they throwed me in jail to be forgotten and re forged the key into horseshoes nails.

In supreme irony the savior of those start up humans will be an elf, dark blue skinned, that smoke skuma like a kajhiit, sing like bob marley like an Argonian and is pricky like an altmer, and really couldn t care less if the world ends.

I m gonna screw up something bad before saving the world if i m in the mood. If not, i ll delegate the task to some folish subordinate and watch how he kills himself trying and then share the loot with a dragon while we drink some reliquary old dwemer alcohool till we drop dead.

My character will be a near-feral khajiit, descended from Khajiit slaves that escaped from Morrowind to Skyrim in the 3rd era. Arrested for the following:
Homicide against idiots.
Assault against anyone who threatened her.
Menacing demeanor toward everyone.
Brandishing a weapon against the wrong people (Her claymore has no scabbard to store it)
Public obscenity for pissing on someone's corpse after killing them.
Indecent exposure for wearing nothing more than her fur coat.

I'll probably play as a barbarian from the Colovian Highlands who had to escape his homeland due to a blood feud. He wandered off to Jerrall Mountains and where had to slay livestock to eat. Eventually his crimes were reported to the militia in the Hold of Riften. So in order to preserve his freedom he had to kill a few guards and got a warrant for his head. The rest is history..

1. Province wide killing spree for no discernible reason.
2. Stealing EVERYTHING in a town and trying to pawn it off in the next village over.
3. Multiple accounts of disturbing the peace by attempting to jump over the city wall, walking on rooftops, kicking around merchandise in stores and getting disturbingly close to peoples faces when talking to them.
Possibly all three.

I always wake up in a cell wondering what happened between the first cheap wine and the last brandy

My Nord character found the joys of spellcasting at an early age, and was shunned by the tribe, then was framed by the village elder to teach other members of the tribe not to follow the nasty magic road and concentrate on the hard steel skills of blades or blunts

my character was so badass , but so badass, that they thrown me in jail for almost killing everyone in the planet. and then i lost my memorie and forgot i had all that skill, and then we start again...

no.. even better, alduin pooped, i born!

My character (and others) was caught and accused of crimes of esponage against Skyrim after a local chieftain was tipped off that a cell of spys on his lands and caught him along with his "co conspirators" (my other future characters) and ordered them to death.

It seems to me every time a new TES game comes out my character gets caught smoking Green lichen.

Then awakens in a new land imprisoned...and has to save the land AGAIN!!!

As Todd said in his podcast with GameInformer, its really a tradition to be a prisoner. And personally I love to sit down to a fresh elder scrolls game and sniff the prison-cell air, feeling all o fthe nostalgia i had for morrowind and oblivion, plus a hint of impending excitement for the skyrim that is ahead of me. Such a great small thing that im glad they didnt change.

"And i hope you learned your lesson about insulting the TES series"- guard as he lets me out of jail to another doomed world

Nobody told me that carving my initials in Alduin's Wall would land me in jail. :down:

I'd like to have seen a variation on their "Prisoner" theme ... where you are already on a mission that the intro movie sets up but you were captured, and its day 9 of your torture, the day you finally break, and as they ask their questions, you give the answers.

"Where are you from?" [I'm from Morrowind]
"What race are you, scum?" [I'm a Breton]
"uh, boss, he could be the one, we should ask a-about the sign, remember?
"Yeah yeah, ok. Hey scum, tell us your birth sign before I snap your neck!" [It's .... ?]

... And then on from there like such. Once your character is fully fleshed out and you've spilled all your guts (telling them everything about why you are here, which is how the player is informed as to his own mission), one guard goes upstairs as two more re-chain you and bring you back to your holding cell. Only just before you can get locked away, one of the two guards starts complaining of chest pains. In that moment, you're able to steal his dagger from his waist and slaughter them both. You quickly gather their armor and supplies and chase after the one that left earlier to go upstairs. You catch up to him just above the stairs, and have a quite more difficult battle, but hopefully you prevail. Which means no one ever got to hear your confession, so your reasons for coming to this place are still a secret, and you are still able to continue your quest.

So then right from the very start, you're involved in a mission of vital importance that goes on from there. Its a variation on the theme, but it could a little more visceral and exciting right from the start, and you get some revenge on your captors for beating you for 9 days, etc....

My Morrowind character was the Dunmer leader of an Argonian tribe. (don't ask) He staged raids on Imperial merchants, till the Legion got tired of him.

I like the idea that you are in prison because you are the Dragonborn and somebody feels you may be a threat to their power. Perhaps those left in power after the fall of the Empire fear that the Dragonborn might relight the dragon fires and rebuild the empire which is why they are hunting down the last remnants of the blades and anyone suspected of being a dragonborn or something like that?

I tend to wonder if maybe at the beginning of the game that you will have to choose pro-Empire or anti-Empire, and that will determine where you start and what side will be trying to kill you. That would make some sense, anyway.

i have been a member of an infamous group of like thirty other nord highwaymen and something like this happened... (fast foward to 3:20)
only i got caught and my highwaymen buddies were killed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tY6M399lcWc&feature=related

My bosmer was just turning of age. At a celebration with his family, his little brother attacks his father without provacation. Killing the father instantly and then attacking the mother before she can even scream. Barely running away with his life he realized that his brother had been killed years ago and a vampire had taken his place. With the vampire too close in persute to stop and ask for derections, he ran north. He ran until he came to a town and was able to elude the beast. Before he could enlist help however, the vampire had given his identity over to the authoritys as the killer. Seeing wanted posters of him around the settalment, he yet again fled north.

His new reputation traveled faster then he did though. His arrivale in skingrad was not a welcome one. Barely able to elude the guards, he made a new life as a hunter. Living off of the land while avoiding guards and soilders. At the shrine of Sanguine, he meet good friends that appeared to enjoy the tales of his adventures. During this time he learned much of magic and partyed hard. Eventualy his past caught up to him. So he fled. To the north as he always did. Until he heard of the northern land of skyrim. It was there he could stop running and make what he would call a life.

While little happened on the journy except a bandit or two and getting lost, he made it. Needing money he became a freelance bounty hunter. At first he worked solely for villages that could not handle attacks from bandits, but a few well connected individules did not like his attacks on their soilders. After an ambush in the woods caught him off guard, he woke up in a cell.

The rest shall be written...

My character was was placed in prison due to indecent exposer inside of a temple.

The next day, the gods made it so that no one could remove their underwear.

Hey.. I'm cool with it.