Despite The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim being over a decade old now, the game is still causing players to boot it up once again, create a new character, and escape Helgen to travel through the homeland of the Nords. Skyrim is notorious for being full of interesting and minute details that a player can miss even if they've played the game for hundreds if not thousands of hours. From Elder Scrolls lore details that can be missed from not reading the right book, to a character's true intentions, there's plenty within Skyrim to keep players always finding something new.
There are subtle details located all over Skyrim's map, and with the introduction of new content in the anniversary edition of Skyrim, there's now even more things for players to discover. One Skyrim player has recently stumbled upon a mysterious event when traveling outside Whiterun. The player caught sight of a farmer ahead of a cow, though the cow caught the player's eye as it had an obvious difference from the other cows found in Skyrim.
Usually, in comparison to the dragons, trolls, and other fantastical creatures that roam around Skyrim, a cow is considered quite boring. Players will likely only interact with the animal if they decide to get one in their homestead through the Hearthfire DLC. However, Reddit user asforyou found a loose cow roaming the lands outside Whiterun with strange blue markings all over its body. On further investigation, the Skyrim loremasters in the comments quickly found out the reason behind the markings.
According to the comments of the Reddit post and Skyrim's wiki, the cows with markings appear randomly throughout the world, usually accompanied by a farmer. These cows are unfortunately to be offered as sacrifices to giants in order to stop the latter from raiding farms. However, if a player is to see this event through to its end they will find that it is the farmer who meets an unfortunate end, while the cow is left mostly unharmed. As the cow in the clip is entirely free though, it seems that its farmer must have been killed or disappeared in one of Skyrim's famous bugs.
Other Skyrim players in the comments section wished that the cow would be available for players as either a mount or even companion if it is saved from the farmer who wished to sacrifice it. There is no current way for the cow and player to adventure together, though many are hoping that with Skyrim's active modding community, it can happen soon enough.
Skyrim is available for PC, PS4, Switch, and Xbox One.