“I will keep doing it as long as it’s necessary” – A player of The Elder Scrolls 6 has been looking for the 1000-day mission to kill Nazim before the release of The Elder Scrolls 6

“I’d been playing Skyrim for a long time, and one day I had an idea,” YouTuber Sidek told me. “‘What if I just killed Nazim every day until Skyrim VI came out?’”

“I decided to start this as a joke,” they continued, “but I was determined to see it through no matter what, and I would complete the challenge even if no one was watching.”

Now, Sidek’s killing streak against Whiterun’s most notorious denizen – the Redguard noble who has long enjoyed super-meme status in the Elder Scrolls community for his arrogant demeanor and “Do you go to the Cloud District often?” catchphrase – has reached 1,000 days, starting on September 18, 2021. I probably don’t need to tell you that The Elder Scrolls 6 isn’t here yet.

Skyrim is the game Sidek played to pass the time while they and many others around the world waited for more news on Bethesda’s official start of development of the game after Starfield’s launch, and Skyrim was actually the first Bethesda game they played. “I had heard about this game many times, but I had never played it,” they said. “When I decided to try it, I fell in love with it immediately, mainly because of the freedom to go anywhere, enter any house, attack any NPC at any time, etc. This [is a kind of] I’ve never felt this freedom in any other game, and that’s undoubtedly the main reason Skyrim remains my favorite game to this day.”

This freedom allows Sidek to really use his imagination to find different ways to kill Nazeem, and as time goes by, the hobby they develop becomes more and more fun. “I don’t have a set process,” they say of how they come up with each Cloud District-themed bloodbath. “Sometimes I’ll be more creative, but I always make decisions on the spot.

“I usually write down some ideas as well, separate some mods to download later, and that’s it.” They also agreed that they have become “better” at killing Nazim since the quest began, saying, “I’ve learned a lot about places, spells, weapons, NPCs, [and] mods. I have a ton of suggestions and ideas, so I rarely run out of ideas on how to kill him.”

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Of course, with so many kills to choose from, it was hard to pick a favorite. “It’s hard to pick one, but I really like Day 1 because that was the first time I killed him with the bound bow, and I’ve even mentioned that day at other times,” Sidek said. “Another one I really like is Day 36, which has the most views so far and is the one that put my channel on the map in the first place.” In case you’re wondering, Day 36’s kill saw Nazeem die at the hands of popular Khajiit mod companion Inigo, a cheeky outsourcing by Sidek that cuts away just as the Whiterun guards decide they’re still going to pay the murder bounty on the player character. I mean, that’s a misjudgment if I’ve ever seen one.

Sidek’s ability and willingness are so strong that he can send some of Skyrim’s most famous NPCs to Sovngarde – or whatever Elder Scrolls afterlife suits their beliefs – that they even decided to take on an extra challenge midway through TES VI’s Nazeem slaughter journey. The chosen targets were Blades members Delphine and Esbern before Starfield was released. For 376 days – that’s a little over a year – they both found themselves at the disadvantage of Sidek’s bow, sword and various other tools until Bethesda’s much-hyped interstellar adventure began.

Sidek says that maintaining both series simultaneously during their overlapping periods was “a lot harder than they expected”. “There were times where I would run out of ideas and the process of recording the videos would end up taking a lot longer,” they explain, “and sometimes things would go wrong, and Delphine and Esbern are essential, so if I forgot something or loaded an old save, neither of them would die and I would have to go back and re-record everything.” “It ended up being a lot more complicated than I initially expected,” Sidek concludes, “but I enjoyed it and overall I think Starfield came out pretty fast.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly given how long the wait has been, and it looks like it will continue to be, Sidek also stated that they have “very high expectations” for The Elder Scrolls 6, whenever it launches, and that their current hobby will be over. “I often see comments about it being terrible, especially after Starfield came out – which I actually loved, I wouldn’t call it a 10/10 game, but I had a lot of fun playing it – and there’s always people saying that The Elder Scrolls 6 will be the biggest disappointment, but I don’t think so,” they told me. “I believe that if they follow the same route as The Elder Scrolls 6 and just adapt it to a new region, using the tools available today, this game has huge potential to even surpass The Elder Scrolls 6. And if the game is bad, modders can fix it, as they always do.”

As for whether they’ve been waiting for the game to live up to their expectations while now working on 1,000 Days of Nazeem Killing, Sidek explained that not only do they anticipate their quest might last that long, but they “no longer have any expectations on a release date.” “A lot of people have said ‘how many years do you think it’s going to take? Do you think it’s going to be 2,000 days?’ and I just don’t know,” they told me.

“Killing Nazim has become part of my daily life and I will keep doing it as long as it is necessary.”