LE True Dragon Hunter Caravan

[Nobadovah]

Hi all,

Well first thing first, let me apologise, english isn't my native language. Then back to the topic.

One of the main threats of the game (supposedly) is dragons. They're kindda weak once you finished upgrading your character to stand against them. But at first, if you didn't ram all the dongeons you passed by and/or waited to be strong enought to do the main quest (as i admit i did from time to time) you don't stand a chance against them, same goes if you dowloaded some mods to give them more punch.

 

And with what weapons do you attack dragons?

 

- One handed weapons doesn't seem realistic, their tooth are at least the same size than your sword and they've bunch of it. Their skin is too thick to get throught anyway (best light armor ever).

- Two handed weapons, now we're on something if i had to melee a dragon i'd probably go for a 2 handed axe, the problem would be that they don't land that often so you basically wait for them strike them a few time and wait again.
- Magic kindda sucks as well in a RP point of view. Bretons racial power is not called Dragon Skin for nothing (well it obviously "is for nothing" due to my few best dragon killers character being mages but RP is something different)
- Bow and arrows then? Don't make me laught, an arrow doesn't pierce a plate armor at point blank and you want to kill a dragon with it? (Well firing highter and wait till the arrow goes down gives it more punch and penetration (english longbows decimated the french army that way during the hundred years war that way) but you can't hope to hit a dragon that way)

 

There is a weapon that immediatly comes to my mind when i think of hunting dragons, the dwemer balist found in many dwemer ruins.
Well basically any huge crosbow would do (the small ones are decents for sure but they're obviously not meant to hunt dragons)

So let's pretend i'd have a crossbow "meant" to hunt dragons i could not use it as it is because of it's size and weight, but i have this mod called gipsy caravan wich i like (though i'd not have stored all that in a caravan, a one person bed and a chest is all i'd have put in or around it , eventually a two person bed'd be ok if you've a fighter as wife or husband)

So now i have a caravan and a balist. Let's pretend the caravan roof is flat, why wouldn't i mount the balist on the caravan? There'd be nothing there except the balist, a "big" decorative chest wich would be where the "bolts" would be (giant bolts made from the same logs used to build your home and lots of ingots, not the tiny ones, they'd be delivered from some store directly to that chest, or made at construction's sites such as the lakeview manor). You'd go on the roof using a lader (kind of a door) that'd be on one of the side of the caravan and you'd just jump back on the floor when the dragon'd be dead.

It'd basically be a crossbow without the current reloading animation (maybe some noise as the rope draws would do? doesn't need to be fancy and your hands shouldn't be seen at all) a longer reload time, huge damages, and no way to move around (because if you're firing the balist on the roof you can't be driving the caravan, yet you could aim of course, it'd be better in first person point of view).

Crossbows seem to be a dwemer invention in the vanilla game (mostly in dawnguard DLC), and there's a dwemer artifact (often considered daedric because it's given to you by a daedra but it's of dwemer conception) that could be of some use in solving that "i can't move" problem. I'm speaking of parasortis.

I've a caravan, a mounted ballist but that's not enought cause i'd be toasted or frozen before i could fire a second shot if i stand on my caravan's roof unprotected while hunting dragons.

I've that shield i'm skilled enought to upgrade without destroying the enchantement (if i have the right perk) so why couldn't i mount it on the ballist? Forget the shield part, you're aiming a balist so it won't protect you from things like arrows, if some foe follow you on top of the caravan the physical shield won't protect you either (it shouldn't even be in your inventory anymore). It doesn't even need to be visible (could be cool though) and could even be made unavailable outside the caravans roof. So basically you'd swap (permanently or not) the ability to draw parasortis for a protection from magic up to 50 points (wich most dragons' breath don't reach in the vanilla game) when using the balist.

A balist to hunt dragons (and some appropriate bolts) : checked
A mean to take it with you : cheked
A protection from dragons' breaths : checked

Ok, now i'm fully equiped to hunt dragons (and/or waist my costly huge bolts on anything i want to pin on the groud). :)


If anyone feels like creating that mod or something close it'd be great, just tell me when it's done so i could test it out. = )

I'd try to do it myself if i had any skill at moding, but so far all my tries, even the most simple ones ended up to be total failures (yup, even something as simple as creating a single weapon or armor with new textures) :4/