With its branching story, massive world, and incredible replayability, The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim has earned a place among the best RPGs of all time. However, just because Skyrim is a great game doesn’t mean that nothing silly ever happens in it. One player recently had a completely ridiculous encounter with an NPC who wasn’t sure whether or not dragons existed–while standing right next to a dead dragon.
The dragons of Skyrim are mighty and intelligent creatures that rule the skies and can cast powerful magic by shouting in their spoken language. Throughout the game, the player will often encounter dragons in scripted sequences and random encounters, but this is a recent shift to the status quo. Before the return of Alduin, dragons had all but disappeared from the face of Tamriel, leading many NPCs to refer to them as mythical beasts.
Reddit user Utinjiichi shared a screenshot of an encounter with the Khajiit trader Akhari where Akhari asks them if they believe “all this talk of dragons.” While this may seem like an innocent statement, the rest of the image features the body of an enormous dragon displayed prominently in the background. To make things even more hilarious, Akhari is clearly shown to be standing less than 10 feet away from the dead dragon, just facing the other direction.
There are many oddities that enterprising or fortunate gamers can find in the world of Skyrim, but this moment may be especially memorable. Skyrim NPCs often have a set of lines they can draw from at any situation, which is part of what led to the infamous “arrow to the knee” meme. Generally, this serves to add a sense of life to the game, but in this specific circumstance, it instead highlights the constructed nature of Skyrim. Fans may find it difficult to believe that anyone could stand near a dead dragon easily 20 times their size and still openly wonder if dragons are even real.
As of writing, it appears that other fans also find this moment absurd and hilarious. One user joked that the nearby dead dragon was actually an aggressive gecko, which led other users to conclude it was a fire gecko from the Fallout franchise. A second user declared that Akhari was the Skyrim equivalent of a flat-earther, a third called her the Skyrim equivalent of an anti-vaxxer, and a fourth stated that the dragon was just the body of a very big Argonian.
The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim is available for PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
