I grew dissatisfied with my level 58 sneak-archer Khajiit, so I rolled some new characters. The latest is a Redguard. I went through what's probably the standard routinel with her last evening: Cleaning out Riverwood, then heading towards Whiterun. While I was doing "honest work for honest pay" on the farms surrounding Whiterun, I noticed the 3 hired thugs come down the road from Riverwood, approaching my position.

I panicked a bit, because I was only level 2 and there were no suitable rocks to jump on nearby, so I ran along the street for such rocks. Rocks to jump on and archery is my favourite way of dealing with unfair fights, and 3 hired thugs vs me are definitely an "unfair fight".

While running and searching for a suitable landscape, Aela approached me, concerning the giant they had just killed. I hadn't even paid attention to their struggle and I know that time is not stopped during conversations, so I just interrupted her blabbering, which meant that the 3 Companions were still standing around in the cabbage field instead of heading back into town.

At this point, I remembered that I had bought the Frenzy spell in Riverwood and used that to get rid of the three thugs, one by one - not only did the 3 Companions and the two farmers help, but also the not-yet-frenzied hired thugs. Smooth.


And here it gets weird.

I fasttraveled back to Riverwood to sell the junk of the 3 hired thugs, and there the courier ran towards me. At first, I thought: "wtf, I don't even know any dragon shouts yet, so what's he up to now?", then I noticed that this wasn't a "Letter from a Friend", but a "Letter from Jervar". I read it.

"Lytha,

I'm aware of your recent assault on Hired Thug. Rest assured I have no interest in that particular matter. I do, however, have an interest in your willingness to employ force when the need arises.

If you are able to assist me, I will gladly pay you for your troubles.

Next time you are visiting Whiterun, please call on me.

Sincerely,
Jervar"


I had no idea who this fellow was, so I looked him up in the UESP wiki. He's the stableboy at Whiterun Stables. I went to him and tried to talk with him, but he only gave me his generic lines.

This was quite weirding me out, so I googled it and read that you need to drop the letter, read it while it's lying around, and pick it back up again. Else the quest won't start. I did that.

When I read the letter outside of my inventory, a strange popup appeared, which I can't quote directly anymore because I didn't save before doing so. It looked very much like a note by a dev, and paraphrasing it from memory (so take it with several grains of salt), it looked like a "w1assault: when starting a quest, a note must be put into the journal"

I clicked the popup away, and I had the misc quest entry "Talk to Jervar about a job involving violence".

So I went back to Jervar and he now had a proper, though very short and generic radiant-quest-like dialogue to which I could basically say "yes, I'll do it" or "no, I won't".

The misc quest journal entry is now:

"Assault Skulvar Sabre-Hilt but don't kill he" (sic)

I was confused about how to do this without getting a bounty - and getting a bounty is a big no-no for me, for some reasons (such as: when I pay the fine, the guards will take all my stolen goods from me, won't they?), then I quicksaved, shrugged, and punched Skulvar into the face, then sheathing my hands quickly to calm him and his family down. Assault done, 40g bounty.

Jervar, to whom I went back immediately, only said: "Really? I hope it did hurt." and gave me 50g, upon which I quickloaded. End of story.



I find this very weird:
- because the UESP wiki had nothing to say about a quest like that,
- because of the weird manner of starting the quest (drop the letter and read it outside of the inventory),
- because of the strange popup,
- because of the grammar issues in the journal entries


Anyone else ever ran into this?

that why i love tes always sumin mysterious to find