In Which Kendeshel Becomes Thane of Hjaalmarch

Getting caught up some more on my Kendeshel playthrough in Skyrim. This session is from early February, and features swinging back to address buggy behavior with Crowstooth and Alvarsorr the Rat; becoming thane of Hjaalmarch, getting Windstad Manor, and Valdimar as housecarl; and getting inducted into the Circle of the Companions.

Which means Kendeshel is now officially on Team Werewolf.

Play by play

• Play date: 2/3/2024
• Session number: 41
• After talking to Mangouste on my Discord, further investigated the Crowstooth issue from the previous session, more on this below
• Was then able to take out both Crowstooth and Alvasorr the Rat properly
• Oddly, their named weapons are not museum display items, but Alvasorr did had some Falmer armor pieces I could display
• So I boinged right back to the museum and put those pieces up in the armory, and made a new save
• Then found out what the Ayleid Crown of Rielle is, this was apparently an unobtainable item added in by The Cause, and the patch for Legacy actually activated it
• Not convinced the crown actually works, though, more on this below too
• Tried to go out to shop for enchanting ingredients and additional ebony–and got yet. Another. Fucking. Dragon
• Heard a courier yelling for help
• And after I killed the dragon and did some shopping, came back to the museum
• Courier was hanging out there so I tried talking to him–and he handed me an Inheritance letter
• Pantea Ateia of the Bards College died :~(
• Popped into the Hall of the Dead to confirm who all was actually dead in Solitude: confirmed Pantea, Evette San, Beirand
• Found the casket with the dead Thalmor assassin from earlier in the run, too
• Killed a few skeletons while in there
• Went on to do some general adventuring
• First went to Morthal to run the Fishing contest there
• Confirmed that Legacy gives you a different enchanted ring to fish up since the Warlock’s Ring is covered elsewhere in the mod; got an “Atronite Ring” instead
• Otherwise, that part played out the same as other playthroughs
• On the way back from that, found Hroggar chopping wood at the mill
• He thanked me for breaking Alva’s hold on him, and told me that if I was looking for work, grab an axe and bring him all the firewood I could chop
• So I chopped him some firewood, and that got me favor number two for thaneship
• Then went over to talk to Lami and got her quest to bring her Song of the Alchemists
• Easiest way for me to do this was to just go back to the museum and make her a copy on the printing press, since I didn’t feel like boinging around to various houses to see where I’d stashed a copy for her if at all
• (And I didn’t have one in the museum library, I checked)
• Also finally found Auryen and talked to him about the book I found
• So did the mini-quest where he offers to read the book, which was cute, but ultimately fluff
• So I put the book back in my Safehouse quarters, and made a copy of Song of the Alchemists for Lami
• Checked in with Madras in the Guildhall and got the quest to bring him materials for making the planetarium
• Returned to Morthal and gave Lami the book, and got Idgrod to thane me up
• Bought the land for Windstad and got Valdimar onto the housecarl roster
• Thane weapon: the Battleaxe of Morthal! Looks pretty cool, but nope, not gonna use it, most likely
• Next major action: going to Fellglow Keep to try to fish up another goldfish for Mila
• The place had respawned, so I went in invisible and muffled 
• Could not find a goldfish in the pond there, and the hostiles spotted me when I got out of the water
• But I ran like hell and didn’t bother to fight them, and will need to look elsewhere for a goldfish
• Returned to Whiterun and finally checked in with Skjor about the whole Underforge thing, and got in on Team Werewolf
• Then went with Aela to run Gallows Rock and cleared the place, mostly with daedroths
• Talked to Aela at the end when we found Skjor dead, and got directive to find Silver Hand plans at Faldar’s Tooth
• Boinged to Riften
• Hoofed it over to run Crystaldrift Cave and got the Nerveshatter hammer
• Checked in with Virya and got the quest to go to Dawnstar and deal with the mudcrabs, round 1
• Found Iona waiting for me at Honeyside since Aela displaced her as my follower
• Decided to set Smithing Legendary again
• Dropped a bunch more skill points on Enchanting so I could double enchant things
• Also raised Archery and Speech
• Saved there until next time

Commentary

As y’all may know already if you’ve followed this blog for a while (or just because you know me in general), I’m the kind of nerd that has to investigate buggy behavior. Hell, it’s what I do for a living!

So after the previous Kendeshel session, I had to dig further into the issue of why the hell Crowstooth, Alvasorr the Rat, and their backup Forsworn never showed up when I went up to the tower at Arcwind Point.

First thing I did: the trick of saving to a text file from the console, so that I could look up Crowstooth’s refID for this run. Recall that this is the thing I learned about when I had to investigate what happened to Finds-The-Way’s dog.

Then I moved myself to that refID, which plunked me right at the top of the tower by Bjormund Wind-Strider’s dead (and now naked, because I took his armor) body. But I did not see Crowstooth anywhere.

I also didn’t see any sign of an appropriate dead body lying around in range, when I cast the Detect Dead spell.

So then I tried moving Crowstooth’s refID to me. This didn’t work either.

What did work: enabling the refID. That made Crowstooth appear, live and hostile!

So I killed her. 😀

Then I did the same thing with Alvasorr the Rat, and Iona one-shotted him for me. Good job, housecarl!

This let me get all the loot off of both them, finally. And while it still didn’t explain what the hell caused the problem, I was okay with that. As noted before, the whole area around Arcwind Point is buggy as fuck. So I contented myself with at least getting the loot off the two characters, because dammit, I wanted it for museum display purposes if nothing else!

I was a little disappointed, though, to discover that the named weapons carried by Crowstooth and Alvasorr were not museum display pieces. But I’ll chalk that up to a casualty of the patch for this particular bit of CC content into Legacy just not being as thorough as I would like. And I’m not actually surprised or displeased by it, just because of Legacy having established in their documentation that their recommendation is to play without the CC content at all.

And speaking of that patch work: Legacy’s patch for The Cause apparently activated a disabled item called the Ayleid Crown of Rielle. This thing allegedly has a hidden perk of a 25% boost to Enchanting, to wit, holy crap. But sadly, I’m not convinced it actually worked. I tried to use it while enchanting, but could not trigger a noticeable change in enchantment strength.

As noted above, got yet another fucking dragon in Solitude. This time, I lost another named NPC: Pantea Ateia, the professor at the Bards College who sends the player off for her missing flute. Augh. Which brings me up to three total named NPCs lost in Solitude!

I took the time to confirm this by a visit to the Hall of the Dead, and yep, Pantea’s remains were there, along with Evette San’s and Beirand’s. And I found the casket with the dead Thalmor assassin, the one who’d shown up when I got the Dev Aveza, too.

I’ll still play out the rest of this run, but I’m definitely going to have to be careful about how much time I spend in Solitude, clearly. Which is a problem given that that is, after all, where the museum is. Now mind you: Kendeshel has in fact taken out Alduin as of the last session I played with her, and I’ll have more to say about that in that post. Here, I’ll just note that even with that step taken, I don’t know for sure yet if this’ll cut down on the number of dragon attacks in Solitude. Either way, I will certainly write up my findings!

Meanwhile, in Morthal, I got to talk to the still-living Hroggar, post-Alva. He thanked me for breaking Alva’s hold on him, but there’s a real interesting question here: if he’s still alive, where the hell is he living? Is he still living in Alva’s house? Is she still living in Alva’s house?

Hmm, possible headcanon here: Fallon the wizard does know how to cure vampirism. Maybe the Jarl kills two birds with one stone, figuratively speaking, and tells Alva that if she wants to stay in the town and stay alive, she will submit to being cured of her vampirism. Period. And then she’s put to some damn hard work, because Morthal’s in inhospitable enough territory that the town can’t really afford to waste resources on keeping prisoners confined somewhere.

That’s how I’d write the ending to that tale, anyway, based on what I’ve observed in this run!

I got the thaneship in Morthal, which meant that I got to see what Morthal’s designated thane weapon is, with this modded run: the Battleaxe of Morthal! It did look cool, I’ll give it that. But I’ve hardly ever been a two-handed weapons person in my Skyrim history (as opposed to my ESO one, where I have taken more to that type of weapon). So it’s not likely I’ll ever use the axe. I was happy to have it for display purposes though, if nothing else.

Last but not least, I finally moved the Companions plotline a little further along, and did the Underforge thing, and got on Team Werewolf. I don’t think Kendeshel was necessarily happy about it, but I think she’s still got a big part of her pissed off/traumatized about being captured and enslaved. So she was willing to accept the wolf blood, if it meant gaining more power to protect herself.

Not at all sure, though, how she thinks she’ll present this to Rulnik and the girls. If at all. I do suspect she’ll leave them in the dark, and will probably follow Kodlak’s example later and purge the wolf from her when she gets the opportunity. We’ll see. Much will depend on whether Legacy does anything interesting to the Companions storyline at all.

Also, while Aela pitched a good pitch about the blood of the beast, I kinda feel like Kendeshel may just be happy to accept heightened senses. I don’t know, after her initial transformation, that she’d want to deliberately transform herself. I’ll have to see if it seems appropriate for her to do so, at least as long as she’s got the condition.

Next time

Kendeshel has two more posts to come before I’m fully caught up with her. And her next one will feature running Faldar’s Tooth, some more Legacy-specific questing (finding a submerged barrow, as well as working on the planetarium), and finally starting on running Alftand.

Screenshots