There are many characters in Bethesda Softworks titles that act weirdly, and that's no different in the regularly ported Skyrim, which continues to have its own host of bugs associated with NPCs and enemies alike. Now, one Skyrim fan has come across two NPCs that strangely take turns hammering a wooden mast on a ship to little success.
Reddit user Axon-axoff recently posted a clip of their latest adventures in Skyrim in which they're exploring the coastal area around the city of Windhelm. Unlike other cities in the land of Skyrim like Markarth, Riften, and Whiterun, Windhelm has a robust port with a trading company and multiple ships moored at the dock at any given time. It's at these docked boats where Axon-axoff comes across the strange NPCs who patiently hammer a wooden mast across from each other, one after the other.
Axon-axoff's Skyrim clip begins with the player standing near the mast of a ship in Windhelm where the aforementioned NPCs appear to be repairing the object upon initial glance. As the character on the right stops hammering, the one on the left continues where they left off, and they go back and forth repeatedly. The two Nords continue hammering throughout the nearly three-minute video while another Nord in the background sweeps the deck and watches the perpetual motions of the affected NPCs.
The two Nords in Axon-axoff's Skyrim video are mostly speechless, though one pauses to say, "er-em," and the other lets out a quick cough at one point. The characters continue to hammer on the wooden mast as Axon-axoff's clip shows the camera circling the Skyrim Dragonborn as it does when a player goes AFK, suggesting that even without the player present, these NPCs would continue their task. One peculiar detail in Axon-axoff's Skyrim video is the sound produced by the two NPCs hitting the wooden mast; it is the sound of metal being beaten rather than a wood-based sound effect.
The Skyrim clip is at its best when the two hammering NPCs serendipitously hammer at the same time to create a rhythm before one character forfeits their duties to the other. Because the two NPCs seem to be locked in a perpetual state of limbo, they may continue hammering the boat moored in Windhelm for the foreseeable future in this Skyrim player's save file. It's currently unclear what is keeping these Nords on this ship, but because it hasn't been fixed with the recent Anniversary Edition of the game, Skyrim players that encounter this issue may not receive a fix.
Skyrim is available now for Nintendo Switch, PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.