The goat's name is Bartholomew.
I was somewhere around Whiterun on the edge of Fort Greymoor when the skooma began to take hold. Things became washed-out and smeary, and then there was two of everything including me and my pet elytra—an odd kind of mantis-looking bug who I realized, seeing two of the bizarre insect beside me, probably wasn’t the best companion to bring on a 10-skooma bender.
Skooma is a narcotic substance made of refined moon sugar that’s banned in some parts of Tamriel due to its addictiveness, though considered a sacred sacrament by the khajiit. In Morrowind and Oblivion it fortified your speed and strength while draining your intelligence and agility, while in Skyrim it simply restores stamina. Its addictiveness and hallucinatory qualities have never really been modeled by any of the Elder Scrolls games—until now.
JaySerpa is responsible for the Skyrim on Skooma mod, which not only makes skooma addictive, but adds 69 different psychedelic experiences you’ll randomly enjoy one of each time you consume a bottle of the madgod’s favorite tipple. It may sound like a joke, and it was uploaded on April 1st, but it’s clearly a labor of love that took JaySerpa about five months to create. One of the best Skyrim mods? Well, I think so.
The next bottle I drank made me feel 10 feet tall, like Alice in the song. Actually it was probably closer to 30 feet tall. While I jogged over to a nearby giant shepherding some mammoths to compare heights, the world cycled through colors—purple, orange, blue, each one as vivid as an ugly reshade mod. Thinking that at this size I could probably take the giant and his mammoths, I readied my mace, only for the 60-second duration of skooma to end, leaving me my original height. So I drank another.
“This skooma is to lose your head for!” a text pop-up announced as a swirl of red light whooshed around me. Switching to third-person camera I saw that was literally true. I’d lost my head, leaving only a jagged red stump with a shard of white bone jutting out of the center.
(Image credit: JaySerpa)
The mammoths, now charging at me because I’d wandered too close to them, weren’t put off by this, and nor were the three wolves who subsequently appeared to join the party. I bravely ran away as the color contrast went wild, leaving the mammoths to start stomping the wolves instead of me and my elytra friend.
The bottle after that turned me into an unmoving chair for a slow 60 seconds, while the one after that ramped up the colors again, this time cycling through the kind of “why is this option in the photo mode anyway” settings that make everything look like an optical illusion designed to stain your vision when you look away. I killed the last wolf as everything turned so blue I couldn’t see it, then a hazard yellow that really brought out the red of my dark elf’s eyes.
(Image credit: JaySerpa)
“You feel the urge for more skooma”, another pop-up informed me, and I figured why stop now, since I’d used Skyrim’s console commands to give myself heaps of the stuff (~ to bring up the console, “player.additem 00057A7A” followed by the number of bottles you’d like, you’re welcome). Sure, becoming addicted takes away 30 points of your health, stamina, and mana, but only when you’re not drinking skooma. There’s an easy solution to that problem: drink more skooma.
Since the next bottle had the effect of boosting my archery score, I figured why not have another before the effects wore off? And that was when I passed out, which is what happens if you don’t wait for one trip to end before embarking on the next. I responsibly waited for the timer to run down before I drank another, and immediately passed out again.
The strange vision that followed sure looked like the opening credits of a videogame, only instead of transitioning to a cart ride, it ended with me lying on the floor of a hovel near Ivarstead. A filthy down-and-out named Roluf who knew the dangers of skooma well woke me up and gave me a glimpse of my bleak future if I stayed on this path.
(Image credit: JaySerpa)
That might have made me walk away from a life of skooming out, if I’d been able to stand up to do so. Instead, I was stuck in the lying-down pose even as I flew out of the building, which may have been a bug rather than part of the trip, but who can tell? I fixed it by fast traveling to Ivarstead, where I figured I may as well neck the last bottle, just to keep it out of circulation.
It was worth it, because that was when the magnificent goat appeared. The goat wore a floppy hat, left rainbows beneath its hooves, and was named Cabrita Bartholomew according to the prompt that suggested I ride Cabrite Bartholomew. Of course I did, with my elytra by my side. Who knows what adventures we’ll have next?
(Image credit: JaySerpa)
The Skyrim on Skooma mod is available for Skyrim Special Edition, as well as original flavor Skyrim. You can safely install this mod mid-playthrough without having to worry about any effect it’ll have on your save file, although your health and mental stability are another matter.
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