("I'm starting to feel like a side character, here.")

("Wanna trade? You can be Dragonborn if you want, instead.")

("Shor's bones, no.")

"Farengar," the jarl says once they arrive at what turns out to be the court wizard's laboratory. "I may have found people to help you with your dragon project."

    "Have you?" wonders the wizard, looking up at the trio with interest.

"This one here says he believes he is Dragonborn."

    "Well, that would be remarkable if true."

The way Farengar manages to sound simultaneously deeply interested and completely neutral about whether he gives this credit is kind of impressive. This is why Ruby didn't want to mention it.

"I'll leave you two to it," says the jarl who seems to have just assumed that Ruby is gonna help with whatever this is.

(The fact that he's right doesn't make this any less irritating.)

"Well, if you are the Dragonborn of prophecy, this task should be very easy for you. There is this little something I want you to fetch for me, where by 'fetch' I mean I want you to brave a dangerous Nordic ruin to search for it and hope it is in fact there and that your search won't be in vain."

He lifts an eyebrow. "While I am certainly no stranger to dangerous Nordic ruins, what does this have to do with dragons?"

Farengar lifts an eyebrow right back but accepts the rebuke for what it is and explains: "This little something is an ancient stone tablet mapping dragon burial sites."

"You believe this dragon, or these dragons, are coming back from the dead rather literally, then?"

"It's a possibility."

"And I assume you have good reason to expect this stone tablet to be in these Nordic ruins of yours. And more to the point, to expect that that's either the only such tablet or the easiest to find."

"The latter, yes. I have reason to expect many ruins would have something like it, and have several leads, but the one I'm sending you to is closest."

"It really sounds like something someone at some point should've copied into a book."

"You'd think! But no, I don't think it has. My source was pretty certain."

"Well, alright, I suppose. Where's this ruin?"

"In the mountains overlooking Riverwood from the west. It's a place known to the locals as the Bleak Falls Barrow."

Map to the Bleak Falls Barrow

"So we're gonna just go to an ancient Nord ruin on the say-so of the wizard of the Whiterun court?"

"Yeah. It's... Well, I do want to do something about the dragons, in addition to the fact that I'm apparently meant to regardless, and this seems as good a lead as any. Plus, I... well, want to make Jarl Balgruuf like me enough that he'll lend me some troops to take the Valtheim Towers."

"—you still mean to do that? Of course you do. And the books for the College?"

"I'll return them eventually, but I think the dragon issue is a little bit more pressing, at least until we have a better grasp of the situation."

"Hmm, alright."

"Look, I said it before, you don't have to come with me if you don't want to."

"No, I do want to, I just... Well, to be honest, I have the impression that you kind of need someone to hold in your reins because otherwise you won't stop to think about whether you should be doing whatever it is you're doing next."