When I was in high school, I played a lot of basketball, and if you play a lot of basketball, at some point you will sprain your ankle. The severity of it will vary, but it will happen, as sure as Bowser kidnapping the princess or your job kidnapping your week.  When you sprain your ankle, you basically have two options. You can come in crutches, trotting along mechanically while people feign interest, or you can sack up and just limp.

I was the kind to walk with a limp. I’d mummify my ankle in tape, then proceed to swing it forward like my torso was holding a golf club.  I thought I was being brave. Doing the guy thing. Yet sometimes, when you choose the path of the limper, it looks like you’re doing this on purpose – trying to walk with swag. Like your average Congressman, I blame the rap videos. Nevertheless, I became a victim of this association, one day after I suffered a serious sprain.

There I was, hobbling to my locker, when another kid swerved around and cut me off like an angry motorist. At first, I thought nothing of it. I mean, I wasn’t even old enough to drive, let alone use it as an analogy. In fact, I still didn’t get it when the kid started to do an exaggerated pimp walk, flashing a few gang signs to his female friend giggling beside him. Slow as I was, physically and mentally, it took me a whole nother minute to realize he was mocking me.

By then, the moment had passed.  It was too late to get even.  I could only get mad.

This is how petty I am. If I could go back in time, one of the first things I would do is tell this fucker I sprained my ankle.  It wouldn’t be the only thing as I am not a complete moron, but things of this nature would be first in line as opposed to buying stocks and stopping 9/11.  Instead, I would go back to that autumn day in Millbrae, tap this dude on the shoulder and say something like Hey, I know you’re trying to impress your girl, but I am not trying to be like the young kids with the gangsta walk. I sprained my ankle playing basketball. Then me and his girlfriend would proceed to make out while he buried his face in a puddle of shame.

There’s just one problem with this scenario.  I would have one less thing to be angry about.

You don’t have to be an angry person to write an angry character, but you do have to know what it’s like to be angry. Otherwise it just loses that authenticity.  When you first meet Puck and he asks you Have you ever hated someone so much, you just want to bite off his eyes? That sentence was born out of real, unmitigated anger. If I were to write that opening sentence now, he probably would say something generic like I just want to punch his face.

The difference between the two is why it’s important for someone like myself, who has nothing to be bitter about, to collect these moments like so many rare Pokemon. Acrimony.  Loathing.  Spite.  I save them all in my little memory cabinet because I want to remind myself what it feels like. If I find an incendiary troll post, the first thing I do is rage, and if my rage is strong enough, I immediately bookmark the page for later use. Yet even without the bookmark, I would probably remember. Shit, I need to remember. In a sense, it’s almost a form of method writing. If I want Puck to be a mass of unadulterated anger, I can’t let that emotion be a stranger.

They say don’t get mad, get even, but I don’t know.  Personally, it would be incredibly satisfying to get even, but from an artistic standpoint, I don’t see a problem with getting a little mad.

The world of Skyrim is not built to scale. Objects on the map are further than they appear. When playing an open world game, such warning labels are never applied, but the implications are there. Just as a second in real life is tantamount to a minute of game time, so is a single step akin to traveling ten.

However, unlike with time, in-game distance can hardly be quantified with neat little ratios.  We may be able to travel from Markarth to Riften in less than a day, but that doesn’t represent or even give us an idea of the actual time it should have taken if Skyrim were real. That’s because if Skyrim were a landmass the size of Europe, spending most of your game traveling from hold to hold would be incredibly fucking tedious.

Thus, when the lore tells you there are 7000 steps on the way to High Hrothgar, the bullshit detector should not sound the alarm. The idea as a developer is to make the journey appear to be of significant length without making it a chore.  At the same time, being cognizant of these realities doesn’t stop the question from burrowing into your mind.  Every time I walked the steps, I felt the junkie need. I felt a burning desire to count.

And with that, the basis for the character Dar’Rakki was born.

Of course, like all the NPCs, The Conspiracy of the 7000 Steps was never explicitly designed to be a quest.  The true nature of Dar’Rakki’s conflict has nothing to do with the Greybeards or High Hrothgar or even the notion of conspiracies. Dar’Rakki is a character about coping with grief.  Thus, when trying to integrate the player into that story, the logical thing to consider was how people try to allay that suffering.

For those who bypassed the backstory, Dar’Rakki never wanted to come to Skyrim. It was his childhood friend, Adanja, who coaxed him to make the journey. She promised him she would never leave him alone, and when she lost her life to save him, he treated it as a betrayal. In truth, his anger belies his sadness, heartbreak, and fear. As the prototypical stranger in a strange land, his survival will likely depend on the kindness of others. Yet after what happened to Adanja, the one thing that scares him more than making new friends is the thought of losing them. To Dar’Rakki, the Greybeards represent the best Skyrim has to offer. If they can’t be trusted, then no one can.

Which is precisely why there are consequences for telling him the truth.

Dar’Rakki’s quest, you see, is not about how many steps there are or whether the Greybeards are a bunch of lazy charlatans. It’s about white lies and how what we want to know isn’t always what we need to hear. When you converse with him, you learn that Dar’Rakki is fragile – with a mind that should be bubble-wrapped and handled with care. If you plan on telling him the truth about the Throat of the World, you might as well drop him from it.

Sometimes the warning labels are there. Even if they’re just implied.