So, just now, I fast traveled to Markarth. Understone Keep to be exact. And standing right in front of me, is a Draugr, which proceeded to SCARE THE CRAP OUT OF ME because I had turtle beaches on loud and I don't exactly always expect to see a Draugr as soon as i fast travel into a closed cell friendly city.

Anyway, it swung at a guard and then Janessa one shot it for me. Anybody have anything like this happen to them? Is there some sort of reason for it?

i'm pretty sure its a glitch. i fast traveled and there was a dremora with me twice in a row.

Wow, nope never had that happen. (though as you yourself said, the random encounters have surprised me many times thus far)

Yes, a Draugr when I fast travelled to Riften. What the?!?

The most random thing thats ever happened to me was on my first character, 30 minutes into the game on the release night. 100 feet out of riverwood i got owned by a thalmor patrol. It was an amazing death to witness so soon into the game.

Several times after hitting the mid 20s or so in terms of level I've had this happen.I've had both draugrs and frostbite spiders magically appear in Whiterun. I sort of assumed it happened to everyone because I don't use a lot of fast travel but have experienced this stuff a number of times.

I had just arrived in Riverwood around midnight and I noticed a thief trying to break into the trader's shop. Since I happenend to be the guildmaster, I instinctively approached him.

This thief NPC first gave me a generic friendly greeting, then turned hostile! The clamor of the battle alerted two guards that came to my help and so did Alvor who had just left the inn and was heading back home.

After trading a few blows, the thief screamed and ran away in a corner of the village begging for his life. The guards didn't accept his surrender and murdered him in cold blood.

After this unusual encounter, I stood there for ten minutes with a O_o look on my face...

I fast traveled to Dragon Reach in Whiterun, suddenly a bandit stands behind me.
I had ice storm equiped on both hands, so I send him flying all the way back to the Gildergreen tree. Pretty funny, but obviously a glitch.

Maybe related to how people follow you if you go trough a door when they are talking to you?

Regardless, this is unintentional bug, not a random encounter

I`ve experienced being ambushed by Thalmor patrols once or twice myself as random encounters.Also whenever I travel to Riften there is usually a thief being chased all over the place by everyone in town he`s usually got good gear on him too which is a bonus.

Wow, just when I forgot about that Draugr....something weirder happened just now. I'm currently doing DB quests. This isn't really a spoiler, but let me put it in spoiler tags just in case.


I'm literally just standing here for the past 10 minutes thinking, what the hell just happened. Or how he even got there, the only way onto the boat was climbing through it as a crime, rofl.

I saw her once in Blackreach.

Maybe Ulfric is sending assassins, too.

I was just walking to Windhelm, and the very last random spawn point before you get to the city spawns.... Imperial Soldiers with a captive walking 'towards' the city. They walked right on by, no one paid them any mind.

This reminds me of the spawn point near Ivarstead which is, for some reason, very likely to spawn the imperial soldiers with the nord prisoner. Once, I saw them heading to Ivarstead. The guards there attacked the soldiers... as well as the prisoner in tow! O_o

Out in the wilderness late one night near a bandit camp that I was spying on before my ambush, I saw what appeared to be 2 people fighting, one was using Fire Destruction and the other was using Frost Destruction. This was an epic battle to the death, a fight between an Arch Pyromancer and an Arch Cryomancer. This led me to believe that their may be disfunction between the evil wizards of Skyrim, I mean maybe the Arch Pyromancer stole the Arch Cryomancer's sweet roll idk. But it was a pretty epic fight and I was rooting for the Cryomancer but sadly the Pyromancer won. So I did the good deed of killing him at he was weakened in the fight and proceeded to loot both of their bodies.

I fast traveled to a crypt to help the companions and came across an island engulfed in flames. Wasn't sure what was going on so I proceeded onto it, looking to the skys for a dragon. None appeared and no sound. Found a corpse on the ground badly burned with a name, not just "charred corpse" or something. In front of her lay a book called "flame cloak" which I took. Hopefully I can master its secrets because its apparent she couldn't haha

A thief getting killed in Riften only to have Haelga start to rub his crotch and say. "Bodies still warm"

Found a dead draugr whilst following the coastline recently, no obvious reason for it to be there... Looted, teabagged and thrown in the sea.

Did you have the Zombie Apocolypse mod installed?

The Fire vs Ice mage thing is a random scripted encounter. So are those thieves that sneak into places at night, they pretty much always get caught by guards too, it's hilarious. I saw that charred corpse with the Flame Cloak book next to it too.
But the best parts are totally unscripted events that happen in the game, the sheer amount of random unscripted stuff makes this game such a blast for me. The random encounters that are scripted are still a nice touch too, though! I'm enjoying reading all of your stories, feel free to post more. =D

I was walking out of the Dark Brotherhood Sanctuary, when all of a sudden the body of a hunter, two wolves and an elk fall from the sky. The hunter's body got stuck halfway in the ground head-first. I got free animal products.

Obviously a glitch, but still pretty random.

Oh. another random event. was near Shor Stone visiting the wife at her place of work when a thief ran up. Did the whole "Here hide this for me, tell no one and I'll reclaim it later..." crap and hands me enchanted armor. Sweet. good luck getting this back haha. Anyway the guy he stole from runs up in his under garments yelling "STOP! THIEF!" He then asked me if I saw anyone, I said "no" but I turn around and the guards killed the thief. Guess he wasn't coming back for his stolen goods. I looted his body and left haha

Was attacking a castle last night full of witches. a dead one fell from the sky. I looked up for a falling broom stick. none fell... I was kinda disapointed.

Keep having a dragon fall from the sky (empty) outside of the dark brotherhood before it moved to dawnstar.Scared the crap out of me the first time. I shouted and drew my sword the first time. Realized it wasn't attacking.

This happened to me yesterday, in Winterhold.

I rode Shadowmere into Winterhold, when suddenly a "Challenger Mage" challenges me to a duel. I accept, naturally, and then Janessa summons a Daedra using Sanguine's Rose, and suddenly Shadowmere, Janessa, a Daedra, and my Spectral Assassin are all attacking him at once. He yells "You're cheating! Magic only!" when suddenly a dragon attacks. Then, that thief comes up to me and tells me to hold something for him and commences to get one shot by the Mage's fireball. Then the guards jump in and start attacking the mage and an all out war happens between all my followers and the guards when another dragon attacks.

So now I'm fighting like 6 guards, random College of Winterhold mages that came to the rescue to help, two dragons, a mage challenger and the hunter that was after the thief who stole his item.

It was by far the funniest thing I've seen in the game so far. Needless to say, alot of important people died so I had to reload lol.

Speaking of the Mage Challenger, I had one show up on a nearly pure warrior character. I leveled her enchanting a bit, but that was it. She wore heavy armor and swung around a two-handed hammer.

He got mad at me when I didn't use magic to fight him.