There aren't very many (if any) ways to increase your speed permanently or in a traditional manner: looks like Bethesda scrapped that entirely. However, there are a few non-convential and temporary means to increase it:
Sprinting
The basic way to increase your speed is to sprint. Since sprinting uses stamina, increasing your stamina, as Arkive mentions, or your stamina regeneration rate will allow you to move faster for longer periods of time:
- Choose Stamina while leveling up
- Use potions and equip armor with the Regenerate Stamina effect
- The Wind Walker perk in the Light Armor tree will increase stamina regeneration while wearing all light armor
- Using the Become Ethereal shout will prevent your stamina from depleting while sprinting, further increasing your sprint time.
You can also sprint with your horse, although it doesn't appear to be any faster than regular sprinting.
Lycanthropy
If you want to run even faster, contract lycanthropy. In beast form, you sprint much, much faster than normal.
Shouts
While not strictly allowing you to run faster or leap higher, there are a few shouts that accomplish nearly the same thing:
- Slow Time will let you—aptly—slow time to allow you to move normally within your frame of reference but much quicker in others.
- Whirlwind Sprint is an extremely fast sprint that almost acts as a "blink" spell or short-range teleport.
Archery
If you happen to be investing in the Archery skill, you can pick up the Ranger perk, which will increase your movement speed while drawing your bow.
Minimizing slowness
If you exceed your carrying capacity, you'll no longer move at normal speed. So—while not technically a speed increase—if you want to ensure you stay at your speed, you'll want to carry less stuff or increase your carrying capacity:
- Choosing Stamina when leveling up increases your capacity by 5 points
- Activating the Steed Stone will increase your capacity by 100 points
- Choosing the Many Pockets perk in the Pickpocket tree will also increase your capacity by 100 points
Additionally, you can negate the weight effects of your armor, thus maximizing your carrying capacity:
- The Conditioning perk in the Heavy Armor tree will negate the weight effects of heavy armor
- The Unhindered perk in the Light Armor tree will negate the weight effects of light armor
- The Steed Stone will negate the weight effects of any armor you wear.
If all else fails and you're still overencumbered, riding a horse will negate the effects of overencumberence while mounted.
Finally, wearing heavy armor comes with a hit to speed. You can mitigate this by wearing light armor, taking the Conditioning perk, or, as Hafax mentions, activating the Steed Stone.
Short answer: Wait for a mod.
Long answer: You can sort of wing it with with the console.
SAVE BEFORE YOU DO THIS IN CASE YOU DON'T LIKE THE RESULTS.
- Jump. Open the console mid-jump.
player.placeatme 89a85 1
This creates a living mannequin NPC at your location. Did you know mannequins are actually NPCs with disabled animations? Creepy. Unfortunately, there is no way to attach the special script that mannequins have to the NPC you just created using the console. However:
First, open the console, click on the mannequin so that it's ID is shown:
- The
tai
command will disable AI for the mannequin.
- The
openactorcontainer 1
command will show you the inventory
- The
sexchange
command will flip the gender.
Note that since the mannequin lacks whatever mannequin script the real implementations use you will have to use openactorcontainer 1
to change out the inventory. In addition, weapons don't seem to show up on mannequins added this way.
You do this at your own risk, as we have no idea what kind of black magic the mannequin script contains to protect your items, make the weapons display, etc. The console is really for debugging the game, not editing the game.
Source.
Best Answer
I don't think that there is any additional information in the quest journal about Miscellaneous quests (that is, specifically the quests that get filled under the "Miscellaneous" category in the journal). The one line in the journal is all you get.
(Which, yes, is a surprising choice on Bethesda's part. Most RPGs will give you a paragraph or two about any quest in the journal, but Skyrim seemingly doesn't for Miscellaneous quests.)
However, if you've forgotten the context of the quest (which, as you point out, is very easy to do), you can always turn on quest tracking for that individual quest. Make sure that quest tracking is turned on for the Miscellaneous category as a whole (in the left column), and then turn on quest tracking for the individual quest in the right-hand list. (And maybe turn off quest tracking for other quests.)
Also, don't forget that you can select a Miscellaneous quest and get a map location for that quest.
These will let you at least find the person, place, or thing for that quest, even if you can't recall why or what you need to do with them. In almost all cases, what you need to do becomes clear when you get to the person, place, or thing.