Have you ever ran into an old Dunmer stronghold? I did, and I remember that fucking moment vividly even after all those years.

I'm not a very proactive player, as in I don't go around doing random crap just for kicks, I actively "clear" towns or locations or whatevs before I go on to the next, like I'll do all the quests in Seyda Need before I move up to Balmora and stuff. This of course leads to some linear playthroughs all around, I could play the game for months and still only know like 20% of the map and that's exactly what happened to me, I had been playing Morrowind for a couple years when I found myself doing the Imperial Legion questline, the one where you have to go to this secluded ass-of-the-world mining town because they're the only ones recruiting, there, I felt like doing some exploration because I had never been to that part of the map before... Ohh boy. I had seen the strongholds many times before, but they all looked the bloody same from outside and they almost always had some nasty critter up top by the entrance who would turn me into a daedric kebab before I could even reach the door, this time around I felt confident, the Legion had given me some nice armor and I was cruising through their quests, of course it was hard to kill that Daedroth but I did and felt like I could take more of the same upon entering... I was fucking wrong. It's not more of the same. It's terrifying. Things with no face are actually the nice looking ones, the nasty looking ones have a cock in the place where their damn nose should be, then you've got some weird-ass snailmen called dreamers who sling some real nasty spells at you, all of this while you run around in a seriously creepy and monotonous place with weird items all around and ash dolls and bells and stuff, of course it's dark as hell because after all, pretty much no one down here has eyes. It became downright panic-mode for me when I saw the first blighted abomination, the fast, hulk-like ones, I was so terrified I legit believed a single attack would infect me with the blight disease (don't you dare judge me, this was an intense session).

And all of that topped with a single beautiful detail, I was freaking out and decided to try my luck with an Illusion spell to pacify one of the faceless dudes who was blocking my exit, it miraculously worked and while I was runnign past him I saw tha I could talk to the dude, of course I expected some random generic NPC response, as this kinda stuff should not have worked at all... Nope, the guy started talking about pilling furniture that speaks with him and how I should go and have a chat with Dagoth-Ur. Screw that, that was the worst, the way this guy was sentient and had a personality and intelligence and such deranged madness, that's what trully scared me the most. The devil's in the details.