Skyrim - The Reluctant Dragonborn (Vol 1)

This anti-walkthrough thing was made with the GOG anniversary edition.

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Content Warning

Again, this is Skyrim. It's a game about people who go around chopping each other's heads off.

If you don't like that, stop reading now.

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Part 1 - The Reluctant Dragonborn

Part 2 - Do You Want To Be A Dragon?

Part 3 - The Adventures of Fahdonmul

Part 1 - The Reluctant Dragonborn

Hostility, and VioLens

In late 2023 I finally got around to installing the 64-bit version of Skyrim, specifically the Anniversary Edition from GOG. This finally frees me from the fickle nature of Steam, but it did require a little work since my must-have mod (Dance of Death) no longer worked on it.

Fortunately, there is an equivalent in the form of VioLens. This was a bit awkward since it had an annoyingly large dependency chain like an NPM package run rampant - this is actually one reason I didn't install the Dawnguard and Dragonborn add-ons back in the day, because even Dance of Death requires a laundry-list of other mods to function with those. One of the dependencies VioLens has is SkyUI, which completely changes the game interface and took some time to get used to.

I came back into Skyrim fresh from having played Dishonored I and II, and having failed yet again to write a suitable anti-walkthrough for either one (though it was fun to pretend the protagonist was Garrett in Dishonored II). As a result, I called my character 'Corvo' and set to work.

Not all of this went smoothly. Since I'd never run any of the DLC before, I was constantly bombarded with various side-quests such as the Saints and Seducer bandits, who were clearly intended for a much higher-level player than I was at the time.
Around this point I gave into temptation and altered the settings in VioLens to remove the level limit on performing kill moves such as decapitations.

This had the interesting side-effect that it removed the level limits on the NPCs as well, resulting in Corvo frequently losing his head to any old skooma junkie capable of waving a piece of metal in the air.

Corvo loses his head to the Saints while still in his Helgen armour

Home is where your heart is

The first part of the game went pretty much as you'd expect. The imperials Find You Guilty and sentence you to death for reasons, much like Beren in Ultima VIII. Alduin rescues you for reasons. You escape with whoever happens to be closest and then get told to warn Whiterun that they might have to expect dragons.

You get sent to Bleak Falls Barrow for want of anything better to do and to help level up, and then Mirmulnir starts causing trouble at the Western Watchtower. You stand around and watch while the guards kill him, and accidentally swallow his soul, an unwitting act of necromancy for which you get made Thane of Whiterun.

After that, I gave the main plot a rest for a while, and focused on getting a home and learning Alchemy. I did my usual process of bankrupting myself to purchase the home in Whiterun, not even being able to afford furniture for it once the purchase had gone through - only to discover shortly afterwards that the Anniversary Edition was packed full of potential homes. Not too long afterwards I received the Hendraheim Letter, and one decapitation later inherited a spacious, fully-furnished manor house for nothing. As far as I know there isn't a way to sell houses in Skyrim so I was stuck with Breezeblock in Whiterun.

This proved to be less of a problem than I first thought, since I very quickly became persona non-grata in Whiterun, having racked up a bounty for assassinating Thalmor agents. This made learning Alchemy awkward, since after I had learned everything I could from the trainer in Morthal, I was forced to make hasty sorties into Whiterun for my training, nipping in, learning the inner secrets of Alchemy and then running like hell before the guards could dismember me.

For the most part it was just a matter of buffing up my character in the usual manner, gathering as much Abecaean Longfin and Cyrodiilic Spadetail as I could get and hoarding it to go on an alchemy binge. The feedback loop occurred around Alchemy level 70, at which point I was able to begin fashioning swords of ultimate power. Not armour, mind - I need some semblance of balance, after all.

As my powers grew I started doing things like building a robo-horse, plus the usual standards like stealing the Dark Brotherhood armour from Hag's End and fashioning The Precious, a ridiculously powerful ring of stealth that makes the Ring of Khajiit look like a Christmas cracker toy.

Corvo's trusty steed

The robo-horsie is a good investment, as it does not tire or suffer injury if dropped like a mortal horse. The ghost horse is still my favourite, but that can only be obtained via underhanded means.

So, Corvo did his usual trick of racing up and down the Whiterun road like some twisted version of the Lone Ranger.

Only, instead of people saying "Who was that masked man?" as he rides off into the sunset it was usually "Oh... What happened?!".

Ohh... What happened...?

Greybreads

Eventually I figured I should probably go and see the Greybeards. This time, I carefully read every single etched tablet on the way up the mountain, keeping track of the numbers, and got a blessing as a result. At the time I didn't actually stop to see what effect it was granting - after all, blessings in Skyrim are generally as useful as a free toy from a box of cereal.

It wasn't until some time later that I discovered animals were no longer hostile, and put that down to the game glitching at first. A day or two later I realised that something strange was going on and had a look through all the magical effects to try and figure out what was happening. Ta-da - the Voice of the Sky effect stops animals from being hostile and has a 24-hour (realtime) duration! That's handy.

Once the effect lapsed, I went back and read the tablets again, and the Voice of the Sky effect was renewed for another 24 hours. This proved exceptionally useful as a vegan alternative to the Kyne's Peace shout I usually use to make sabrecats and wolves go away, as it works for a lot longer, affects all animals, and does not require me to sacrifice the immortal soul of some unfortunate dragon just to make it work.

Skyrim wolves are actually quite pretty when not trying to eat you

Meeting with the Beards, they told me that their creed was to use their Voice powers only for peaceful purposes. Saying that I would do the same did not meet with a favourable response as they pointed out that Akatosh had given me that power for a reason.

Once I left, I was assailed by a bunch of psychos from some kind of anti-dragonborn cult, and was sadly forced to brutally decapitate them all outside the inn at Ivarstead.
Miraak's fruitloops also turned up at Whiterun and received similar treatment, however, not all of the bodies despawned, leaving a headless corpse in the middle of the street for the rest of the game.

Zombie Zombie

Being the Dragonborn was a busy time as everyone suddenly dumped about two dozen quests on my head all at once. One of these was to investigate a zombie outbreak. This turned out to be a big mistake, since the quest is impossible to win. While it makes an interesting change to have the player arrive too late to succeed, it also kicks off waves of zombie attacks which can never, ever be stopped.

One of my usual ways to relax in Skyrim is to ride up and down the Whiterun road, looking for Thalmor Justicars to mug. If you investigate the zombie outbreak, the random encounters will start to spawn zombies instead of Thalmor. Not only is this greatly disappointing, but the zombies are vicious, highly contagious and will give you brain rot if you look at them funny, which is a pain in the ass because you'll quickly start running out of Cure Disease potions.

Eventually I reached breaking point and forcibly removed the zombie files from the data directory, moving them into a separate folder for backup. This did end the zombie outbreaks and allowed me to get back to the serious business of paving the road to Whiterun in Thalmor heads.

Why do we want to hunt dragons anyway?

Although I had gone to retrieve the Horn of Jurgen Windcaller, I put off visiting Delphine for as along as possible, because she would demand I kill Sahloknir at Kynesgrove. This is a questionable motivation on her part, but it also makes permanent changes to the game. Right now, the world is your oyster and you can run around antagonising the Thalmor as much as you like. But once you start talking to Delphine, dragons will begin spawning and attacking people in force.

This is:

• A: An annoying distraction from the task of making yourself Public Enemy No. 1 in the Aldmeri Dominion, and
• B: A problem, as the more dragons there are flying around, the harder it gets to keep them alive.

Wait, what?

Truth be told this has been brewing for a while. The Kynesgrove mission has always been a bit of a sore spot with me. Kynesgrove marked the point in my first playthough where "I really hope these dragons I'm soul-eating are just dumb beasts..." was soundly dashed. Still, I went around sucking the souls out of men and mer as well in Oblivion, right? Is it really that different? Uh... more about that later.

Long-time readers may remember that I got very funny about killing ice-wolves in Ultima Ascension. I wasn't too happy about killing dragons in that one either, so in retrospect I should have seen this coming. That said, DMFA paints the dragon race as absolute villains in that series, and given that it's had a profound effect on me, it's probably why I went along with it.
It's taken me a while to see what should have been blindingly obvious - in DMFA, the 'Cubi race are powerful and prone to evil, but are being threatened with extinction by the even more powerful and evil dragons, which they arguably don't deserve. By backing the 'Cubi, I'm backing the underdogs. But in Skyrim, the dragons are the underdogs. They're powerful and prone to evil, and being threatened with extinction by... you. Oops. I guess old prejudices die hard.

That said, even in the 2020 playthrough I was starting to get a little funny about it and did what I could to avoid slaying dragons who had names. Nahagliiv got killed anyway, leaving me with a part of the map which I could never go back to because if I did, I'd accidentally ingest a dying dragon's soul.

So. This time around, I thought it would be interesting to try playing Skyrim with as few dead dragons as possible. You get all kinds of weird speedrun challenges and "Can we beat Skyrim using only a fishing rod?", but I couldn't find any evidence of a "Let's beat Skyrim killing as few dragons as possible" run.

So, instead of being a good little Dragonborn and Ultimate Dragonslayer, I decided to put the main quest firmly at the end of my TODO list.

The Fearless Vampire Hunters

Instead, armed with a stupidly powerful sword, a robo-horse and a hideously overpowered ring of stealth, I spent a few happy days riding up and down the Whiterun road, hunting Thalmor while dressed in shiny Dark Brotherhood armour like I'd escaped from Club Animalz, and giving the finger to any Whiterun guards who attempted to make an arrest.

This must have must have resulted in rather tense discussions inside Whiterun while the Jarl and his advisors tried to decide what to do about the wayward Thane, likely resulting in "What has he done now...?" from a facepalming Jarl Balgruuf each time a fresh trio of headless elves was discovered.

When the miscellaneous quests began to dry up a bit, I figured I'd try and become a vampire hunter. As with the Knights of the Nine in Oblivion, this wasn't because I had some obsessive hatred for vampires, it was more that I joined the Dawnguard because I was feeling bored.

Being a somewhat ambivalent and half-hearted vampire hunter had its perks, as it meant that when I met Serena, I had absolutely no issues with letting her live, though the same could not be said about my superiors.

Got any dawns you need guarding?

Anyway, we went off on a bunch of adventurers together, including a voyage to the Soul-Cairn - where stolen souls go to be used as bargaining chips for higher powers. Here, I ended up fighting the dragon Durnehviir, jailer of the aforementioned stolen souls.
This was a brutally short fight involving the fish-enhanced crossbow. Fortunately Durnehviir wasn't killed outright, being somewhat undead. After he'd had his ass handed to him, he turned up perched outside the building when I left, waiting for me.

This had me worried that he wanted a rematch, a final duel to eternal death. Fortunately, it turned out he just wanted to be summoned in the mortal realm. This is a big ask because it means stealing the souls of three perfectly good dragons just to give one dead dragon a few minutes of fun.

Hello.

As an aside, this opens up the philosophical question of whether the dragon souls used to power shouts are also being dumped into some kind of soul-cairn rather than erased and burned up as a power source.
The canonical explanation is that a dragon stealing another dragon's soul absorbs their power and their knowledge like how cannibal tribes supposedly hoped to gain the attributes of the victims they ate. But that simply does not happen.

If this was the case, you would have a lot of dragon kills that had no effect at all because you already understood the Shouts they did. Conversely, eating a top-tier dragon such as Sahloknir, Odahviing or gods forbid, Mr. Paarthurnax, would activate virtually all your shout powers in one go.
Hell, if it really worked like that, killing Mirmulnir would grant you an instant and total understanding of the Dragon Language and their customs, which we know is not the case. Instead, you barter dragon souls for abilities of your choosing, exactly like the explanation of the soul-cairn.

After all, Delphine - and other mortals such as Arngeir are only really guessing about the mechanics of one dovah killing another, and they could well be wrong. Be that as it may, discomfiting dragons is something I'd still prefer to keep to a minimum. Mind you, Durnehviir does ask nicely and I can't outright say "no" to a dragon, can I?

Anyway. Some time around this point it became necessary to obtain a set of Elder Scrolls, so Corvo was forced to join the Mage's College at Winterhold - something I usually do to procrastinate over the Diplomatic Incident questline. So I ended up becoming Archmage ahead of schedule into the bargain, and also made contact with Hermaeus Mora who has now become the tentacle-monster of lore rather than the weird vortex he usually appears as in the base game.

Serena kept spoiling the demonsration by getting in the way

Dawnguard culminated in an exploration of the Forgotten Vale in the northwest corner of Skyrim. This had a last minute "Wait, I forgot something" when the Voice of the Sky effect ran out just as we approached the cave entrance, forcing me to run back to High Hrothgar for a quick meditation on the history of the Dragon Wars.

Once inside the Forgotten Vale, I was given the task of filling a jug with water from a bunch of wayshrines. On foot, because the Forgotten Vale isn't part of the overworld so the Robo-Horse wasn't allowed to enter.

At this point Corvo started to show a few worrying signs that he was really beginning to go off the rails. While much of the Forgotten Vale is awesome, one of the most memorable parts of it is a frozen lake where you are ambushed by two dragons, Voslaarum and Naaslaarum who burst out of the lake in a cinematic spectacular.

The idea is that you destroy the Water Twins before proceeding to fill the jug with magical water from the next waypoint. Indeed, you cannot do the jug thing while in combat. However, if you lurk in the wayshrine and don't come out, the dragons will eventually get bored and start attacking the nearby Falmer colony instead of you. Once they are distracted by that, you can fill the jug and continue on your merry way.

This is absolutely not what the Ultimate Dragonslayer is supposed to be doing, and under no circumstances are they expected to keep checking in on the Water Twins "to make sure they're both okay".

Naaslaarum (or Voslaarum) chilling on the ice

After the Dawnguard quest was finally finished, Corvo was frequently hassled by vampires, who would get into fights with his horse.
This got particularly interesting when the vampires would cast life-draining spells on the robo-horsie, yelling things like "I'll have your blood!"

Talk about drawing blood from a stone

It later turned out that the vampires were specifically attacking his horse. Without the presence of his trusty steed, they would ignore Corvo entirely. Vampires in caves would just say "I don't talk to meat" at worst, or failing that, polite greetings. Vampires specifically sent to assassinate the player would stand around in a field looking stupid.

For a while I assumed that this was some strange glitch with the Dawnguard add-on, or that I had somehow brokered a peace treaty by being one good terms with both the Dawnguard and folks like Serena and her mother.
It turned out that this was actually due to the Voice of the Sky blessing from High Hrothgar. Vampires, it seems, are in the wolf faction, so for as long as you're on good terms with the feral wolf populations, the vampires will also be chill in your presence.

Raid over Whiterun

Once Mirmulnir has been topped off, there will be random dragon attacks on cities. Possibly in revenge for the de-souling of their fallen zeymah. This remains a low-probability event until the main plot is further advanced, but it can happen.

It did in fact happen while Corvo was passing Whiterun in search of treasure, and it ended very badly.

The Dragonborn - the Ultimate Dragonslayer - snapped and went completely feral, efficiently cutting the throats of all guards shooting at his precious dragon.

With Corvo hidden by the power of The Precious, the dragon became very confused and flew away, leaving the Jarl to contemplate a field of dead men and the sinking feeling that somehow, his deranged Thane was in some way responsible.

Hands off my dragon

Use Your Illusion

With the Vampire Threat ended, all the teleportation devices in the Forgotten Vale accounted for, and even more Thalmor heads lining the road to Whiterun, Corvo was starting to run out of excuses for avoiding the main plot. However, there was still one major obstacle that could not be ignored - Delphine had snapped.

As mentioned in the original Skyrim page, Corvo's habit of hunting down Thalmor Justicars and liberating their heads can have unusual effects on the other characters. While he may not even have a bounty, the act of decapitating a Thalmor Justicar without first releasing their prisoner will cause certain NPCs such as Talsgar the Wandering Bard to switch immediately into murder mode.

Talsgar is in fine form

It turns out that Delphine is particularly susceptible to this, and the moment the Dragonborn entered the inn in Riverwood, she ran over and, in the ensuing fight, promptly lopped off his head.

For want of a head, the world was lost

It is somewhat amusing that Delphine is so vindictive about me killing Thalmor agents, given that they would do exactly the same to her if they only knew where she was. Still, this is a Problem. To work around it, Corvo went back to Winterhold Uni and began buffing up his illusion spells, largely by casting Fear and Fury on nearby horkers.

Dwarven Horse is too powerful for Fury

Through quiet reflection and great meditation he was eventually able to master the art of the Pacify spell, the only known way of making Delphine function normally, albeit for approximately 30 seconds at a time.

With this in hand, it was time to confront Delphine.

By re-casting the spell at her periodically it was possible to talk to her long enough to trigger the next stage of the quest - Kynesgrove.

Corvo turned up at Kynesgrove, at which point Delphine went crazy and had to be subdued by another dose of Pacify. Then it was a matter of quickly riding up to Sahloknir's grave, and quickly shooting him in the head before he can fully regain consciousness. If we can't avoid killing him, we can at least minimise his suffering.

At this, Delphine will stand amazed and tell Corvo everything she knows about the return of the dragons, up to and including her insane plan to break into the Thalmor Embassy.

It's only going to get worse.

Then, as soon as the conversation ends, she will say "Good, I could use the practice" and immediately start trying to kill him again. Corvo gave her the same treatment as Sahloknir and fled before she could recover.

It got worse.

The Dragonborn takes a holiday

So far, Corvo had been stubbornly refusing to give Miraak and his cultists any satisfaction, either beheading them in the middle of the road, or eventually ignoring them completely since they didn't even merit that much effort.

But, faced with the dual prospect of finally having to go to Solitude and watch Rogvir die, followed by going into the Thalmor Embassy at the behest of a madwoman, Corvo decided it was time for a break. So the Dragonborn took a vacation on Solstheim, the hot new tourist destination which had recently opened.

Solstheim has good skiing, at least

While he was there, Corvo started asking questions about Miraak's cult and soon got dragged into a web of intrigue.
When investigating Miraak's temple, things started to go bad.

The place was littered in dragon bones, and that was Not Good. Even the Skaal lady was disgusted by the dragon skeleton hanging from the ceiling in one of the rooms.

Each of these skeletons had a name and a voice now forever silenced

Most people seem to go after Miraak out of some territorial dispute because he's a rival Dragonborn, or because he starts gazumping dragon souls from you, or simply because he's been sending thugs to kill you and needs to be taught a lesson.
None of this really mattered to me, but the fact that Miraak has been deliberately murdering over a dozen dragons to eat their souls, that does matter. And for that, he must die.

This may seem hypocritical, given that Corvo has killed over 2000 people. Even though Corvo with his dragon soul may be running from a draconic moral framework himself, there are two important differences between a dragonborn killing a mortal and a dragonborn killing a dragon.

Firstly, the mortal races breed. There will be more Orcs. There will be more High Elves. There will be more Nords. But there will not be more dragons, because they were created directly by Akatosh and cannot reproduce. In slaying a dragon, you are taking something out of the world that can never be replaced and that is a serious matter indeed.

Secondly, Alduin's shenanigans aside, Corvo has been sending his enemies to the Aetherius, whereas Miraak has been stealing his victims' very afterlives - Soul-Cairn theory nothwithstanding - and that has got to be stopped.

Get Bent

Around this point it became clear that I would need to learn all three words of the Bend Will shout, and worse, power them all up. This was a horrible situation as I had exactly one dragon soul - Sahloknir's - and could not stomach the prospect of getting more if I could help it, for the reasons outlined above. Dragons are people too, after all.

The first word is at Solstheim's only official dragon lair, which in my case was guarded by Mr. Ancient Dragon. The game expects you to go there, kill the dragon who is only doing his job and learn the Word, getting a free dragon soul into the bargain. I, on the other hand, snuck past the dragon using the One Ring, read the word and tiptoed away, leaving the dragon to chill in the snow.

Mr. Ancient Dragon

...The notion that I was supposed to wantonly rob them of their soul there and then simply did not occur to me.

It turns out that there is one 'free' dragon soul you can get from the tomb of Jurgen Windcaller. It is not known whose soul this actually is (Jurgen's?), but it is there for the taking, and this may be helpful to make your quota. In the end I had to kill one of the randomly-spawned Ancient Dragons and then resurrect him. (Partial soul-stealing is canonically a thing in Skyrim - though partially devouring a dragon does not have precedent, I will admit.)

...This did leave him a little confused.

Fox impressions

Much of the quest involves finding Black Books which allow you into Hermaeus Mora's realm of Apocrypha. One of these is found in the Dwemer ruin of Nchardak which you must explore with Neloth, one of the powerful Telvani Wizards from Morrowind. When you leave, you will be ambushed by the dragon Krosulhah.

As usual, you are supposed to murder him and take his soul as booty. As usual, I did not. Ignoring a dragon isn't too difficult for me, but Neloth seemed to have problems with this concept. So it was time to alter reality just a little.

Krosulhah has a base ID of xx017F87, where xx is a 2-digit number based on the load order of the DLC modules. For me it was 04 but this may vary owing to the fact that I nuked the Zombie Attack module.
Thus, with something like setessential 04017f87 1, Krosulhah was granted the gift of life eternal. Something for him to chew over when he has to choose between serving Miraak and Corvo. "Those who will not serve Miraak must die" is a fine slogan, but as we shall see, those who do serve Miraak aren't guaranteed to live either.

Miraak the Invisible

Later on, while sightseeing the island, I came across a bunch of Rieklings attacking a snow dragon. As dragons go, this is the sports model - a sleek white paint job with purple highlights, though the spoilers down the back are a little sharp and pointy for my taste.

As I watched, the Rieklings managed to slay the dragon, causing him to drop down the slope. Breaking into a run, I headed towards the scene and uttered one word: resurrect.

This had an interesting effect. I did it quickly and from a distance, so the dragon just got up and started fighting the Rieklings again.

As with the Whiterun massacre, I joined in the fray, slashing and shooting Rieklings to keep the dragon safe from all who sought to harm his lily-white hide. I did this with The Precious enabled, since the dragon would probably not understand my intentions or motivation. While clearing the place out, I discovered something weird. Miraak had arrived.

While I have never seen him do this, Miraak is known to have an annoying habit of turning up when the Dragonborn makes a kill and stealing the dragon's soul himself. This kill-stealing is probably one of the main reasons people dislike him, and it looks like he was trying it on.

However, with emergency medical aid given to the dragon, no soul was forthcoming and Miraak just stood there, invisible, yelling things. I only discovered he was there by accidentally shooting him in the head like the invisible Mysterious Stranger in Fallout 3. Once I knew he was around I found him and tried to pickpocket him - but to no avail.

Eventually, once the threats were neutralised, the snow dragon flew away and Miraak was left standing there like an invisible lemon.

Miraak the corpse

With an invisibility ring, an insta-kill crossbow and a psychotic determination to avenge Miraak's victims, it was not particularly difficult to get through Hermaeus Mora's playground.

Corvo is not a cat to be messed with, not even by Hermaeus Mora and his toadies

The final confrontation with Miraak was particularly brutal and cruel as he soul-eats his own dragon-friends to try and prolong his existence, but it was also over very quickly as Corvo was armed with supernaturally powerful weapons.

Dragon soul-murders aside, the most depressing part is that you don't get to kill Miraak yourself, Hermaeus Mora does it for you. Still, you get to eat his soul, a fitting revenge in that he has now suffered the same fate as the dovah littered around his temple.

In addition, you do get a bunch of dragon souls - presumably including his own - and that will allow us to unlock the "summon Durnehviir" shout without having to kill other dovahhe.

You can also glue the three dragons he's just killed back together with the resurrect command, though since they're canonically dead, the game will disable them once you leave the area. This can be fixed too, but we'll get to that later.

When summoning Mr. Durnehviir, you need to aim the shout at a large patch of ground for him to arise from. Shouting in the air won't work, unlike, say summoning Mr. Odahviing.

Perversely, the sea will work too:

Mr. Durnehviir goes for a swim

How to train your dragon

I should probably mention at this point that the Bend Will shout isn't particularly great. The big selling point is that it allows you to ride dragons, but this is not particularly interesting as you don't get to control the dragon. It's basically Fast Travel with extra steps.

When one of the Ancient Dragons decided to attack Raven Rock, I attempted to use Bend Will to defuse the situation, riding the dragon to the opposite side of the island and releasing them.
This had a couple of interesting effects, in that the dragon would follow me around Solstheim thereafter. But it did not stop them attacking Raven Rock whenever I returned there, which was the whole point of the exercise. The fact that Bend Will doesn't have any kind of "Stop attacking those people and go play somewhere else" command is a large omission.

Faced with the difficult prospect of keeping a wayward dragon under control and not murdered by Redoran Guards, I had a look to see whether there were any mods available to extend the range of commands you could give your hypnotised thralls.

I found nothing to help with that directly. But I did find something else. Something big and lovely.

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Part 2 - Do You Want To Be a Dragon?

While there isn't a "scold wayward dragons" mod, there is a mod to become a dragon.

The Play-As-A-Dragon SE mod adds an additional power to transform into a dragon and back on demand. It does also add the ability to pilot the dragons whom you have temporarily enslaved, but since you get to have the wings of a dovah yourself, there doesn't seem much point.

The mod can be found here: Play-As-A-Dragon SE on Nexus

NOTE: I use 1.7.4 with the GOG Anniversary Edition - later versions of the mod may crash the game on start as the DLL is expecting a later version of the game engine. Fortunately 1.7.4 is still available for download as of this writing.

Manual installation is a little awkward owing to the mechanics of turning the player into a dragon. There are dozens of places where the game expects you to have two arms and two legs, and so, like some kind of "playable wolf" mod, it is necessary to intercept parts of the game where it does this to avoid a messy crash if you try to make the dragon sit at a grindstone, for instance.

As such, there are a few requirements including the SKSE script extender, an address lookup table and the 'monster race fix'. Plus SkyUI. Fortunately all of these are compatible with the GOG version, so it wasn't too much hassle to get things up and running. If you have some kind of mod manager it may be even easier - I did not as I'm doing this under Linux and all the managers I tried had .NET problems.

Getting to grips with being a dragon took a little effort. It was like watching a baby animal that doesn't quite know how to hunt but is trying their best to figure it out.

While being a dragon is a fantastic, liberating experience, you will still need to transform back into your bipedal form in order to enter buildings, use various items such as grindstones and generally get anything done.

Dragons, it turns out, don't make great blacksmiths

Things which are important to note - there is a menu in the SkyUI MCM screen, though sometimes it takes a while to appear. This menu allows you to tweak various settings, including which kind of dragon you turn into, plus tweaking various draconic abilities, such as whether you're fire-resistant, how far your bite attack reaches, damage multipliers and so on.
It also allows you to control factions. The default setting is that you're friendly with people, but not other dragons. This will not end well since the other dragons know how to fight and you do not. They will kill you in short order if you get too close to one of the dragon lairs.

I enabled 'friendly dragon NPCs' and this is how I had things set for the remainder of the game.

Rawr

Okay, so you're a dragon. What can you do?

To begin with, you'll be waddling along the ground. Since the dragons are strictly wyverns, they only have two legs and wing-arms so they are distinctly ungainly when moving in this fashion.

In this mode, you can do a bite attack with the left mouse button, slam your tail into the ground with the right mouse button (this staggers people, but you cannot club passing Thalmor to mush with it, sadly). If you go into sneak mode (CTRL), the dragon will lie down and chill out (wings may clip into the ground, but eh, it's Skyrim). If you side-step left or right you can also do a wing-slam by pressing both mouse buttons at once, but I've rarely used this.
You can press 'F' to switch to first-person view. This is handy for talking to people and reaching objects on the ground which you can't easily reach in third-person mode. However, it should be used with care, and you should NOT do this in flight, as it can leave the dragon walking in the air and that will require a transformation to fix.

Flying is the real killer app. Pressing Space/Jump from the ground will cause you to leap majestically into the air in a cloud of dust. From here, 'W' will fly forwards and you steer with the mouse. The dragon will bank as you turn and soar through the air, flapping his wings automatically.

Oh, for the wings of a dov

While flying, the left and right mouse buttons are supposed to perform various air-based attacks. In practice these seem to make the dragon do two different kinds of roar sound, which is useful in its own right.
Run (left shift) will make the dragon perch. This only works on objects which have a perch marker on them. Most thatched buildings have these, as do most word-walls. The dragon will automatically home in on the nearest perch, which is not necessarily the one you expect, and they will stay there until you take off again. You cannot shift around while perching. Mostly I do this so I can land on a building and loom ominiously, which is more fun than it sounds.

Come out, Delphine! I know you're in there!

There are two ways to land. CTRL (sneak) while hovering near the ground will cause the dragon to gently lower himself to the ground, but this does take a little while and for a long time I thought it was broken.
Alternatively there's automatic landing which is what I usually do - aim the dragon at the ground and he'll do an emergency stop, though how well it works depends on the location. Most places the dragon will land perfectly. Sometimes he will land in a slightly different spot than you had intended. Other times he'll clip part-way into the ground and wallow around in it like a drowning man.

Dragon mode does not come with fire-breathing abilities built in - unfortunately - and you don't get the dragon-specific flamethrower effect. No, you either have to land and bite people, or burp little gobs of fire at them with the shout. Shouts of course being a bit of a sore spot as you usually have to sacrifice a fellow dovah's very soul in order to make them work.

Biting people is a little hit-and-miss as well. You'd expect to be able to go in and chomp someone's head off, but - possibly because you're a newbie - it seems to do about as much damage as a shortsword, and dragon hide or not, you'll be in trouble in a fight against the Thalmor Justicars. To make things worse, the dragon's head tends to loll around crazily so it's hard to tell exactly where the bite is going to land. There is a head-tracking mod for this which the dragon mod author uses, but this has not so far been ported to the GOG build.

However, we can fix some of these things.

The following commands will unlock the dragon version of Fire Breath, allowing you to do the proper flamethrower attack, though this will be a little goofy since the dragon has ADHD and will tend to look at passing squirrels instead of the enemy, causing the dragon to spout flames drunkenly, incinerating everywhere except the target.

Still, if you want super dragon powers (that we should really have had in the first place):

player.addshout 10c4e0
player.unlockword 252c3
player.unlockword 252c4
player.unlockword 252c5
player.teachword 252c3
player.teachword 252c4
player.teachword 252c5

Note that burninating things with your dragon breath counts towards your destruction skill, so you may find yourself leveling up.

Drem Yol Lok, Delphine!

Okay, let's look at improving your bite next.
The dragon bite is classed as an unarmed combat attack, so if you fashion a pair of gauntlets with a strong Fortify Unarmed Combat enchantment - say plus 180 million - then your bite can be much, much worse than your bark. Since they're gauntlets we can also increase the armour class to stratospheric levels, giving you the kind of protection that dragonscale is supposed to bring. This will put you on a far better footing, but without making it overkill since magic attacks will go straight through it.

The bite kill-move is a little tricky to get working, but immensely satisfying when you can pull it off, as you'll chomp down on the Thalmor, shake him like a dog killing a rat, and then spit the body out. (The one annoyance being that you usually seem to see this from behind).

Meddle not in the affairs of dragons

I later discovered that the right mouse button (simply called "Roar" in the documentation) can be used to perform other attacks while flying. If you dive onto a ground target and perform the attack, you may be able to grab things. Mammoths work particularly well as the dragon will carry them in his claws.

Like a dog, I'm not sure what to do with it once I've caught it

However, there does not seem to be a reliable way to drop them afterwards, apart from transforming into your bipedal form. Still, if you've ever wanted to dump a mammoth on the top of the Western Watchtower, this will let you do it.

In addition, the 'roar' attack seems to allow you to claw at other airborn targets. Since I'm trying to protect my fellow dovahhe, this is not a practice I recommend. However, it is devastatingly effective against Alduin.

Fahdonmul

There are philosophical questions about exactly who Corvo is. For instance, if he has the soul of a dragon, does that mean Akatosh has created a new dovah from scratch, albeit one crammed into a cat body?
Or is it like Lord Nerevar in Morrowind where we're actually Nahfahlaar reborn, but with his memories a bit scrambled? Numinex is also a possibility - after all, he could not remember his own name after his long imprisonment in the Hofkahsejun. That said, if the Dragonborn is a recycled dragon from the before times, statistically he's most likely to have been one of Alduin's minions in his former life.

If Corvo is truly a newborn dragon, he'll need a dragon name. Corvo can stay as a nickname since some dragons seem to take pseudonyms such as Nafaalilargus while working for the Empire. You don't want people Shouting your True Name, after all.

My first attempt was Frinrosahmul, which translates as "Hot Love Husband" (yes, I was trying to make the gayest dragon name I could think of). However, a dragon's true name always contains three words, and unfortunately 'Husband' is a compound word consisting of 'Hunter-Strong'. 'Frinrosah' works, though grammatically it is probably supposed to be 'Ahfrinros' (Hunter-Hot-Love) which doesn't roll off the tongue so well.

Eventually I settled on 'Fahdonmul' which means 'Friend-Strong'. Dragons such as 'Kruziikrel' and Miraak's useful idiot 'Relonikiv' also boil down to two English words but are still three words in dovahzul thanks to the magic of compound words.

Things to do in Skyrim when you're a Dragon

I kind of expected the novelty of being able to fly around Skyrim to wear off after a week. Two months later and I'm still finding new things to do, along with the old classics of performing aerobatics under the Windhelm bridge, biting Thalmor, and even just landing on random buildings and looming ominously.

The robo-horse has been sadly neglected lately as the dragon can fly much, much faster than the horse can ride. So when I'm collecting books for Winterhold College, I'll go onto the roof, turn into a dragon and flap off into the distance, before returning with the books and landing on the roof again.

Look at your arch-mage! Look who's running the place! I'm a fucking dragon!

It is also interesting to note that when you land, your big dragon feet leave two marks on the ground, whether it's mud or actually gouging the masonry is unclear. Archmage or not, the maintenance staff are not going to be happy about that.

Fahdonmul has a large footprint

For that matter it's quite impressive that the dragon is able to land on thatched cottages and lurk there without the whole thing collapsing. Nordic craftsmanship clearly doesn't cut any corners.

One of the first things I did was go around the word-walls to see if any were free. This was a good way to get killed before I enabled the 'friendly dragon NPCs' option, because there are not very many empty word-walls, and the occupants don't want to give them up.

The only one I could immediately find was by Winterhold itself - and while it has the usual compliment of bones and treasure, this word-wall does not have the landing marker, so the dragon cannot perch on it. This is probably why nobody else wants it.

Nonetheless, with a little effort I was able to plop down on the thing, and start guarding the word-wall against... myself.

Guarding the word-wall from me

I will also note that it is possible for two dragons to perch on the same word-wall. However this causes them to stack and it looks... well, unfortunate.

Hot-Love-Hunter is aptly named

Things not to do in Skyrim when you're a Dragon

There are two things which you should never, ever do as a dragon.

Firstly, do not transform back while flying. This seems obvious, but given that the Z key is used both for shouts and triggering powers such as the transformation, it is easy to get confused. When you're cruising 100ft off the ground it pays to double-check whether you're about to clear the sky, blast an enemy, or re-enact the Scroll of Icaarian Flight from Morrowind.

The second, and more critical one is to never, ever load a game where you're on horseback, if you are currently a dragon. Land first and transform before loading. This usually happens involuntarily if the dragon is killed and the last quicksave was taken while you're galloping down the Whiterun road, but it is definitely something to be avoided.

The process of switching from Dragon mode to horseback mode will give the game a total shit-fit. There is no other word for it.

Hollow Man Part I

Corvo is now standing on top of his horse, with no head, just an empty suit of Dark Brotherhood armour and a somewhat mangled tail. You can still ride the horse around at this point, but getting off it will lock up the game. Getting arrested or fast-travelling will destroy the program outright. Your only recourse is to load up a save where you're a dragon, change back to cat form and then load the horseback savegame.

Hollow Man Part II

Getting arrested is also not good if you're a dragon as you won't fit in the cell. Even if you pay your fine in Whiterun, you'll still get stuck in the front porch, though with some skill it is possible to wriggle your way out of it.

Dragon Reintroduction Program

Mirmulnir and Sahloknir are the only two dragons you are absolutely forced to kill. Apart from Alduin, but he doesn't count, since he cannot truly die.

It didn't occur to me until I became a dragon too, that it might be possible to glue Mirmulnir back together again afterwards. I always felt a bit sorry for Mirmulnir once I started to see the bigger picture.
Here is a dragon who escaped the Dragon Wars and the Blades and is believed to have managed to keep himself intact the whole time until Alduin shows up.

Not only that, but he has lines for yelling in panic once he realises that you're not even just going to kill him, but eat his immortal soul as well. These lines are not voiced, but do appear in the subtitles - it's possible they were deliberately cut to avoid squicking the player and making them question whether perma-killing an intelligent creature who just begged for his life is really what they ought to be doing as the hero of the game.

Anyway, let's see if we can fix that. After all, if we can eat his soul, we can barf it up again, right...?

Since Mirmulnir is long gone and the bones and scales have been taken from his corpse like holy relics and placed in the burial urn in Hendraheim, we can't just quickly revive him via the RESURRECT command. This will be a little fiddly.

I would go to the Western Tower for this, since it is, after all, where Mirmulnir met his fate in the first place.

prid 0005A6CA
moveto player
resurrect
setessential 0001CA05 1

This should give you a living, and very confused Mirmulnir. He will be violent at first, which is quite understandable. If you suddenly woke up next to the guy who killed you, I suspect you'd have a bit of a panic attack too.

I'd recommend turning dragon and flying away while he works out his issues. Go to Solitude or somewhere far away, and maybe wait a while just to be safe. By the time you return, Mirmulnir will have relocated to Bleak Falls Barrow, where he will have calmed down.

From hereon, he will no longer be hostile to the player, and will focus his energies on hassling the bandits who live near the barrow.

Mirmulnir living his best life

Sahloknir too, arguably deserves another chance. He, too, can be put back together with a bit of duct tape and some console commands. Again, it is fitting to do this at his grave - though to be honest, I don't know if that matters. It might be possible to revive him anywhere you feel would be a good place to have a dragon kicking around. Though doing so inside Solitude, for example, is probably not going to make you popular.

prid 00032D9F
moveto player
resurrect
setessential 00032D9B 1

Sahloknir - despite his horrendous toadying towards Alduin following his resurrection - will be a little more grateful than Mirmulnir and will not attack you upon being revived. Having been brought back at Kynesgrove, he should settle down to patrolling that area, presumably awaiting further instructions from his new thuri, Fahdonmul.

Other dragons, such as Nahagliiv, Vuljotnaak and Viinturuth also deserve protection, but we'll sort them out as they are encountered.

Vulthuryol is a special case, and can be protected at any point as he is the world's only subterranean dragon. He has apparently spent the entire Dragon War and subsequent purges in Blackreach and can be summoned at nearly any point by shouting Unrelenting Force at the big glowing orb there. His code is setessential 0007EAC7 1.

The dragon reintroduction program is going well, though there have been a few complaints from farmers.

I Just Want To Get Along

It is worth noting that with the 'dragon NPCs are friendly' option is enabled, most of the dragons become significantly less aggressive in general, probably because they are taking the player's friends and enemies into account.

Nahagliiv will go after any guards in Rorikstead, but this may very well be because those guards are trying to arrest me for crimes against the Thalmor Dominion. He does not target civilians.

Vuljotnaak can often be seen attacking things, owing to his proximity to a random encounter trigger. But whenever I have investigated this, his targets have either been giants, or persons explicitly hostile to the Dragonborn (Dark Brothers, Morvayn sympathisers, angry Thalmor Justicars, Vampire assassins etc) and he makes a good early warning system for detecting such types. He has never yet been observed attacking a friendly party.

As mentioned, Sahloknir will tend to circle around Kynesgrove, but does not seem to be looking for trouble, and Mirmulnir attacks bandits but otherwise remains placid. Viinturuth has only ever been seen attacking trolls.

In effect, Fahdonmul is acting as a go-between, a bridge between mortals and the dovah, and has basically arranged a fragile truce between the two sides. This, I feel, would have made a much more satisfying ending to the main storyline. To put it bluntly, we have already wrecked Alduin's plans by co-opting all his allies, and we haven't laid so much as a claw on him yet.

This truce is not perfect. As mentioned, you will have dragons swooping in to help if someone tries to attack their beloved thuri, and you will also have idiot legionaries or stormcloaks trying to attack a dragon on general principles. This, among other things, is why we want to set dragons to be Essential where it is possible to do so.

"Yeah, I know it looks bad, but it was like that when I found it. Really..."

---

Part 3 - The Adventures of Fahdonmul

Okay, just because we're a dragon, that doesn't excuse us from the main quest. In fact, it will give us more dragon friends to play with, since some of the aforementioned dragons are still in their graves and we want to get as many as we can back on their wings before we shut Alduin down.
So, our holiday in Solstheim is over, barring a few longer-term quests like the barrow excavation mission. We should probably be doing something about the World-Eater.

To recap, our last meeting with Delphine left her planning espionage on the Thalmor Embassy before suddenly turning around and trying to behead the Dragonborn again. Now that we've procrastinated long enough, we should probably go to back to Riverwood and kick off the Diplomatic Incident quest.

Initiating this quest will result in Vuljotnaak being resurrected by the Whiterun road, so you might want to stop by and give him the setessential treatment so the giants don't get him. Vuljotnaak's code is setessential 000FE430 1.

It is also fun to troll Delphine by leading her out of the inn (since she will be after your blood), transforming back into dragon mode and flying off to Solitude while she watches.

We don't get too much leeway to be a dragon at the Thalmor compound, though conveniently most of the buildings are perch-capable. Probably best to just take The Precious, a very sharp sword and maybe the dragon-bite gloves if you want to try and transform in the courtyard.

Fahdonmul looms ominiously over the Thalmor complex

Once you've slaughtered your way through the Thalmor complex and mostly drawn a blank, return to Delphine at Riverwood to brief her and get your kit back.

The next mission is to rescue Esbern in Riften, so take off in front of Delphine and wing your way to the City of Thieves.

Delphine wishes Fahdonmul a safe journey to Riften

At this point you should probably kill the Thalmor assassin prowling around, and ask the Bee and Barb folks about Esbern.

It may also be fun to beat up Brynjolf before running down into the Ratway. Once there, things go pretty much as usual, except that, when you leave the Ratway with Esbern in tow, the Thieves Guild will be foaming with rage and attempting to murder you for hassling their man and you'll have an exciting chase back to the city gates.

Now, with the Thieves Guild thugs beating you up outside the city, turn back into a dragon and soar away to Riverwood, leaving Esbern to fend for himself.

Just another brick in the wall

Once you land back in Riverwood, Esbern will magically walk in through the door of the inn and Delphine will (possibly) be left in a non-hostile state by his presence, at least to begin with. She will likely revert to violence while Esbern explains his plans and may need to be sedated with the Pacify spell a bit.

Then, she will abandon the inn to Orgnar (if he still has his head attached) and set off with Esbern to Karthspire. You can - and probably should - flaunt your draconic nature as soon as they leave the inn and flap your way to Karthspire as Delphine yells threats and curses.

At this point, Nahagliiv will be resurrected by Alduin near Rorikstead. You can protect him with setessential 000FE431 1.

It also may amuse you to savage Alduin with your claws during the resurrection process (right mouse button). If you have sharpened your claws with fish-powered enchantments, this will be an instant kill, causing him to crash-land. (SLEN TIID Aargh!)
When he recovers he'll immediately run off, leaving a very confused but docile skeletal dragon standing there and watching you. (He'll get better).

Nahagliiv needs to put on some weight, he's not looking too healthy

Note that it is possible to give yourself the dragon resurrection shout via the PSB command, but it doesn't seem to work for you, unfortunately.

There is also likely to be a Blood Dragon near Karthspire and they may be hostile on first encounter. Wipe out the Forsworn until the dragon calms down and slay anyone threatening him. (I do not have a valid baseid for blood dragons, so it is not possible to give them blanket protection against death unfortunately).

Once the dragon is placated and safe from the attentions of the Forsworn, go into the Karthspire caves and start beheading the remaining Forsworn. Watch out for Delphine since she will try to do the same to you. By regularly pacifying her you should be able to get into the temple proper.

Note that it is possible to operate the Blood Seal as a dragon, though you do not get to see Fahdonmul cutting his foot open or anything like that.

Dragon blood? Not a problem.

Then you should be able to read Aldiun's wall, assuming you can keep Delphine's head straight long enough for Esbern to get all the words out.
The main hall is large enough that you can comfortably stretch out your wings and lie on the banquet table while Esbern potters around.

We don't need no education

Esbern explains that Alduin was defeated by being yelled at, but it didn't record exactly what he was told. (Possibly that "Matter is composed chiefly of nothing.")

So now you'll have to go to see the Greybeards and ask them if they know any good curses to shout at a dragon. They don't know any, but reluctantly admit that Mr. Paarthurnax might, so you should probably go and ask him.

Meeting Mr. Paarthurnax

While it is entirely possible to flap your way up to the top of the mountain at any point, Mr. Paarthurnax does not expect this and will be out of the office, either hunting or perhaps hiding from Blade agents in some kind of super-secret lair. In order to meet with him, you will need to summon him via a particular sequence of events.

You must first learn the Clear Skies shout, which the Greybeards will plop onto the floor as if they expect you to lap it up like a dog. Moving into the exact position necessary to absorb the words is a little tricky for a dragon, but it is doable.

Next, you must dispel the freezing weather protecting Mr. P from psychos such as Dolphin who wish to murder him on sight without trial. You do not have to go through the gateway itself - once you've yelled at the protective barrier, you can just fly up to the top of the mountain and avoid it completely while the Greybeards watch. But it is only by ringing his doorbell in this fashion that Paarthurnax will know to expect company.

Mr. Paarthurnax will want to go through a few formalities first, namely breathing fire at each other. Unless you have been doing things with the Companions it is most likely that you do not know the shout and will have to learn it from the nearby word-wall.
Do not use the 'true' dragon flamethrower breath that we're not supposed to have, as Mr. Paarthurnax doesn't expect this and will start trying to kill you.
Again, reading the word-wall is an awkward manouever for a young dragon since you have to get very close to the thing before it will 'take' properly. If this action starts taking too long, Mr. Paarthurnax will begin grumbling things like "Why do you intrude here, if not for tinvaak?".

Once this is done, you have a nice chat and eventually the topic gets on to the subject of Alduin, and exactly what we should be yelling at him to make him go away.
Mr. Paarthurnax explains that the ancient heroes shouted the draconic equivalent of "Fuck off and die", but there is a problem as it is impossible for a dragon's mind to understand the concept of mortality, so he cannot teach you the magic words because they are outside his comprehension.

This problem is made even worse by the fact that you are also a dragon.

What you're saying is... We're screwed.

To be honest, Paarthurnax's theory feels a little dubious since most of the dragons now living today have actually experienced mortality, falling to the Akaviri, the Blades and so forth, and are only alive again because Alduin chose to resurrect them. Meanwhile, Mirmulnir, Vulthuryol, Ahbiilok and Paarthurnax himself clearly have had enough working knowledge of mortality to have escaped it up to the Fourth Era, with even unfortunates such as Nahfahlaar having been canny enough to survive nearly 4000 years past the initial slaughter.

To digress even further, it is likely that Alduin is being selective about the dragon resurrections - good guys such as Nahfahlaar and Papre who threw their lot in with with the mortals presumably didn't get a look-in, and it's equally likely he didn't have much use for Sweet-Roll-Devour (slain by the Blades while plundering a bakery).

Exactly how Alduin knows which dragon is in which grave is unclear, since most of the dragons were buried after his banishment, and he's much too big to go exploring ancient barrows for dragon burial maps. But he clearly does know somehow since he addresses each dragon by name during the revival procedure. What happens if he gets two of them mixed up and uses the wrong name is unclear.

Be that as it may, we need a way to beat up Alduin, so we don't have much choice but to try and learn DragonRend and hope it doesn't also rend us in the process.

To do this we need a particular Elder Scroll. However, since we did the Dawnguard add-on prior, the Dragonborn is already in possession of the Dragon Scroll. So we may as well fire the thing up and see what happens.

If this is done in dragon mode, the game will skip the animation of the player unfurling the scroll, since they have no hands. Either way, a window opens to the past and you get to see the ancient Nord heroes, Gormless and Haken, heroically murder one of Akatosh's children before your very eyes.

Look what you did! I can't believe what you did!

It is, in fact, entirely possible to spend the whole cutscene staring at the dead dragon carcass in a state of shell-shock. As the heroes battle Alduin behind him, the player contemplates the deliberate destruction of an ancient and irreplaceable being by two meat-heads and a crazy old man. Fortunately the player is still listening to the battle, at least on some basic motor level and as such, you do somehow end up learning the magic words, even if the dragon snuff movie has caused your mind to lock up. (Maybe Paarthurnax was right after all)

Note that if you are viewing this as a dragon, the three heroes will have an odd tendency to lurch around erratically, especially when you turn your head.
This is because you are in fact present in the past, and your big dragon snout is pushing them out of the way as you move. It may also cause the Ancient Nord heroes to turn and look at you strangely if they are nudged too close, or, if you shove them around while Alduin is talking to them, his head will bob this way and that as the person he's addressing gets flipped about.

Interestingly, one of the conversation branches with Mr. Paarthurnax will mention that Gormless and company are supposed to be old friends of his. Given the eagerness with which they go about killing his zeymah I suspect that this may have been a rather one-sided friendship. To be sure, when you meet them in Sovngarde, they never ask you to tell Paarthurnax "hi" from them, or talk about him at all.

Veteran of the Dragon Wars

It is possible to revive Alduin's fanboy with the console.
This will cause him to fly up into the air, land where the fight took place and stare at the player suspiciously while Alduin gets his ass handed to him in the background.

I have used up all my weapons and I'm helpless and bereaved

Furthermore, by keeping Mr. Dragon selected (or using PRID 43788), it is also possible to exfiltrate him from Merethic times to the Fourth Era. You will have to use the 'enable' command since the game will deactivate him after the cutscene, presuming him to be dead. This results in him squatting on the floor in abject confusion while his mighty lord gets the shit kicked out of him for the second time in five subjective minutes.

But the war's still going on, dear, and there's no end that I know

Update

Note that if you are so inclined, there are at least three other dragons you can bring from the Merethic Era to the safety of the Monahven:

prid 8BC83
enable
prid 8BC84
enable
prid 8BC85
enable

...though by doing this, you risk turning Mr. Paarthurnax' quiet meditation retreat into a madhouse.

Another Update

Looking in the editor, Mr. Dragon's baseID is actually 44245. Using this to set him essential before the cutscene happens is not recommended, since it will cause Gormless and Haken to stand there confused after the kill-move doesn't kill the dragon.

The living, and the not-quite-dead

For that matter Mr. Dragon seems to be convinced he's taken a fatal injury and will be entirely motionless, although he still seems to be making the usual dragon breathing sounds.

Resurrecting him will snap him out of it, though it doesn't do anything for his would-be assassins, who are still unsure how to react. Mr. Dragon will flick his gaze back and forth between Gormless and you.

Now what do we do?

...Setting him essential after the cutscene via setessential 44245 1 should be fine.

Meeting Mr. Alduin

Once you have learned the secret of torturing dragons by giving them an existential crisis, Alduin will turn up and give his usual "My belly is full of the souls of your fellow mortals" speech, ignoring the fact that he is dealing with a full-fledged dovah, albeit one who was brought up by mortals and doesn't really know what he's doing as a result.

Obviously we could fight him in mortal guise, yelling at him and then giving him a fish-augmented crossbow bolt through the head. However, attacking him as a dragon is a lot more exciting.

You will probably have to take off first so that you can yell at him. You will then have to land quickly while he's still dithering around looking for a place to crash-land, and the landing mechanics as a dragon are a little flakey so it is possible that you will miss and find yourself landing somewhere down the slopes of the Monahven.
If this happens you will have to try and scramble back up the mountain quickly before he can take off again, but realistically you should probably just go back into the air and yell at him again. Using manual landing (CTRL) will make things a lot easier.

Once you have landed next to Alduin, bite him on the ass, which will cause him to curl up in agony. An enraged wolf can have a biting force up to 500Kg or so, but since my fortify unarmed combat enchantment adds 180 million points, this likely gives Fahdonmul a bite force measured in megatons. Alduin cannot die, but he is probably regretting that fact right now.

Alduin just wants the pain to end

Note that being a dragon, you have a lot of mass, and this means you can literally shove Alduin around.
If you keep biting him to ensure he remains helpless, it is entirely possible to roll the World-Eater down the mountain to Whiterun while the refugee dragon looks on in dismay.

Alduin's day just gets worse and worse

 

Alduin isn't quite sure how it all happened

It also possible to rake Alduin with your claws (right mouse button) while he's in the air. This will elicit a grunt of pain from the World-Eater and cause him to drop like a brick. On the mountain he will curl up in agony, while Paarthurnax keeps telling you to use DragonRend on him before he can consume you. Alduin looks more like he's about to puke.

Either way, being beaten up in this manner will render him intangible, so you cannot use the shout on him even if you wanted to, nor can you push him down the mountain. If you wait an hour he'll recover, dive through into the mountain and the fight will resume again, once he's managed to break out of the hillside.

In situations where he's been hit with Dragonrend but doesn't want to land, clawing him up may prove useful.

Once Alduin has finally managed to break free and run off, Paarthurnax will want a word. At this point the refugee will take off and start circling the mountain, which appears to be the default dragon behaviour if they don't have anything else planned.

Mr. Paarthurnax points out that Alduin has probably gone back to Sovngarde to commit further acts of soul-vore, and that by running away like a little kid, his fanboys will start to suspect that he's losing it and begin to wonder if Paarthurnax or Fahdonmul might be a safer bet as their thuri.

However, to run down Alduin you'll have to pursue him into Sovngarde, and to find out how he does that, you'll need to interrogate one of his buddies. Technically, there's a lot of dragons we're on first-name terms with, but unfortunately they won't know the answer.

Mirmulnir was killed before he could re-establish contact with Alduin. Sahloknir was killed immediately after his resurrection on Delphine's orders. In both cases, they have switched allegiance to me after having been re-resurrected, and won't know what Alduin is doing since even if he was planning to tell them, he'll believe they're dead.
Vuljotnaak and Nahagliiv are similarly under my thumb having been granted the gift of the Essential Flag, a reward that even Alduin cannot match, so they won't know what he's up to. Vulthuryol, on the other hand, has been living in a cave for the last few thousand years. Depending on how long he's been down there he may not even know about the Dragon War, let alone how Alduin gets into Sovngarde.

So. We will have to find a dovah who is currently loyal to Alduin, deep enough in his inner circle to know his secrets, and yet open-minded enough to consider switching sides. And then do something unpleasant to them until they're willing to talk.
Mr. Paarthurnax points out that Whiterun still has the equipment needed to trap a dragon, though whether it actually still works 4000 years after Numinex was captured... I guess we're going to have to find out.

Note that Viinturuth will have been resurrected some time around this point. He can be protected with setessential 000FE432 1.

He's fallen in the water!

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Fahdonmul's story continues in Volume 2:

The Reluctant Dragonborn Vol 2

...In which the dragon Fahdonmul joins the Imperial Legion, causes mayhem in Sovngarde and throws horkers around

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