In Which Merawen Defeats the Ebony Warrior and Arranges a Peace Council

Just what it says in the subject line, mostly–the two big events of this session were my defeating the Ebony Warrior, and getting both Ulfric and Tullius on board with the peace council hosted by the Greybeards.

Gee, I wonder how that’s going to go!

Highlights

Play date: 10/26/2021
Session number in this run: 87
Since it was still late in Windhelm when I started this session, went over to the forge to practice smithing; helped myself to some of the ingots by the workbench, and made a bunch of things
Also enchanted a bunch of things and then waited by enchanter table until shops and booths opened
Sold a bunch of things to Niranye and Oengul
Went back over to palace to talk to Ulfric, and get him on board with the peace council
Passed the Ebony Warrior: “The next time we meet, it will be at my last vigil.”
Headed out of Windhelm to go do that, and maybe see if there’s still a dragon around Fort Amol on the way
Fought assorted bears, trolls, wolves, and sabre cats
Passed a possible Companion who’d killed a couple of sabre cats
Passed Imperials + prisoner who fought a troll
Imperial seemed to have his ass handed to him by the troll but I had no way of healing him
Also, he threw me the Stormcloak soldier line about sending true sons and daughters of Skyrim to Windhelm. Wut?
Got Bone Break Fever off of two different bears and Witbane off a sabre cat, geez, the animals of Skyrim were particularly diseased in this session
Came down the hillside near Shor’s Stone looking for the Ebony Warrior’s camp
Found arch cryomancer vs. arch pyromancer battle
Cryomancer won, so I had to fight her; she was confident enough to pause battling me to take out a nearby troll, too
Had to finally call up the dremora to distract her and deal her the final blow, since I ran out of magicka potions
Made it to Last Vigil site; fought the Ebony Warrior; good hard fight! Had to invoke Dragon Aspect Shout to get the Ancient Dragonborn to help me, and use the dremora
Dude ragdolled me a few times with Unrelenting Force, and hit me with Disarm Shout which knocked my sword out of my hand and I had to hunt around for it after the fight
Got him down in one go though, sent him off to Sovngarde, and claimed his stuff
Went back cross-country towards Solitude
Imperials vs. at least one Stormcloak? Found one dead Stormcloak and the three Imperials went back into “why did you join the legion” mode
Stormcloaks who didn’t say anything
Thief who tried to pull “give me all your valuables or I’ll gut you like a fish” line
Me: “Do I look like i have any money?” (said while wearing the fancy arch-mage robes, fancy jewelry, fancy dragonscale gauntlets and boots, and fancy aetherial crown)
Thief: “I guess not!”
Me: lololololol
Clearly the thief does not recognize what money looks like
Bandits tried to be pissy at me at Fort Fellhammer
Threw the dremora, a storm atronach, and Unrelenting Force at them for a bit and took out a few of them, then went on my way
Leveled up to 84; re-took light armor perk at the fifth tier
Fought hostile Argonian not long after that
Spotted Imperial courier in passing
Followed Clairvoyance spell till it led me to Windstad; hi Roggi!
Dropped off Ebony Warrior’s stuff; did a little smithing to use my materials; set out again
Bandits + a dunmer necromancer near Ustengrav
Chaurus as I cut across the marshes towards Solitude; weird seeing one of those outside a Falmer cave
Found unmarked location with camp with a couple of hay piles and a copy of the book The Exodus
Another chaurus and a frostbite spider got my Destruction to 100 😀
Fprpbpt hard frame rate hit after dragon bridge, and then a little later i crashed; thrown back to just after killing the first of the two chaurus, boooooo
Re-did killing another chaurus and getting Destruction to 100; saved just to preserve that
Got to solitude this time by swimming to the mill and coming up from there
Sold stuff to Gulum-Ei, Radiant Raiment, Bits and Pieces, Angeline’s, forge
Talked to Tullius and got him on board with the peace council
Checked in at home
Runa gave me two circlets, what a good kid <3
Did some alchemy to burn through ingredients, then set out again
Chased off a mudcrab with the Rout spell
Queued up to alternate between Pacify and Rout on the way back to mage college
Dragon near Meeko’s Shack, but I eluded it; may have been a flyby
Walking the road not too far from Morthal when Lami’s corpse suddenly dropped into my path, what the actual fuck? When the fuck did Lami die?
Well fuck, that kind of screws Morthal out of their alchemist?
Rolled back to a prior autosave in the session to see if it reproed; this time I found her corpse invisible right at the entrance to Morthal
She must have been killed by that last dragon I fought there? Sorry, Morthal :/
Saved for the night

Arranging the peace council

This worked out more or less the same way it did for Alarrah, including both Ulfric and Tullius trying to blow me off and assuming I was there to join their forces. And both of them being super skeptical about a peace conference until I said “ALDUIN”, at which point they started paying attention real fast.

(It’ll be interesting to see how getting this arranged plays out when I’m actually involved in the war in the next playthrough.)

Fighting the Ebony Warrior

Since this was the big new thing for me in this session, this was actually a little more interesting to me than doing the peace council. And I gotta say, the Ebony Warrior did put up a hell of a fight.

I had to do both the Dragon Aspect Shout, so as to have the Ancient Dragonborn spirit available if my health dropped low enough–and it did. I also had to keep conjuring the dremora, just for the sake of periodically distracting the Ebony Warrior so I could regroup and restore my health.

I could probably have stood to have one of my housecarls along as a follower here, too. And more health potions.

It was amusing how he kept yelling at me to hit him harder, too. Dude really wanted me to send him to Sovngarde. Which just goes to underscore the observation I made before–that it’s a little sad that the game does not present you the opportunity to actually tell this guy, “Look, dude, I am literally going to Sovngarde to take down Alduin, biggest threat to the world ever, you wanna come along and help?”

Still though he was clearly bent on dying in battle. Very Klingon kind of attitude, really. And I’m glad I held out to be able to fight this guy, it was worth the work to get there!

WTF happened to Lami in Morthal, anyway?

As I said above, it was really weird to have Lami’s corpse literally drop in front of me on the road near Morthal. Because there was no sign anywhere nearby of what might have killed her, no visual cue, no audio cue either.

The particularly alarming part of this was how she landed head-down, and her head partly clipped through the road. I was able to gently pull at her until her head came out of the road. :O

Nor did I want to leave her in the road, but dragging her back into the town didn’t seem very respectful either. I’m sad that I had no particular way to deal with her remains gracefully or respectfully. It would have been nice to be able to make a grave or a cairn or a pyre for her.

At the very least, I wish I could have gone into the town, found Jorgen, and gone, “Uh, just so you know, I found your wife out in the road. She’s kinda dead.”

Second time through, after I came back from autosave, at least her corpse manifested within Morthal proper. But also invisible. This was not an improvement!

And I’m really curious as to WTF killed her. The most likely candidate is the Legendary Dragon I fought the previous time I’d been in Morthal. This had been right by Jorgen and Lami’s house. And it would have been absolutely possible for her to get killed by that dragon and for me not to notice, because I was kinda busy fighting the dragon.

Still though, dammit. I liked Lami. And this does kind of screw Morthal out of their alchemist. Idgrod the Younger seems like she might be a good candidate for an emergency backup alchemist, or maybe Falion? But the game doesn’t seem to account for a new person taking over the shop if Lami dies. The bigger cities have that kind of scenario set up for the various vendors; I’ve specifically seen it in action in Markarth, with Tacitus having to take over the forge after Ghorza died. But Morthal doesn’t seem to account for this.

I’m also real curious as to why the game just dropped her corpse in front of me. My theory for that is, Morthal doesn’t have a Hall of the Dead like the major Holds in Skyrim do (and also, Falkreath). So maybe the game didn’t know what to do with her. It seems very like the recurring dragon corpse problem I had in Alarrah’s run, where that dragon corpse would keep manifesting near me, because “near the player” is apparently considered a “safe” location for corpses the game’s trying to clean up.

(Which makes me a little skittish that I may be haunted by Lami’s dead body until the end of this run? Um.)

Also curious if this behavior would reproduce if a named NPC dies in Dawnstar or Winterhold, since those locations also lack a Hall of the Dead. Because hi, I’m an SDET! And this is buggy behavior that engages my QA brain!

Next time

I left off en route to the mage college, so I’ll be doing that. I want to see if I can get my Illusion up to 100 before I get there, so that I can do those last two ritual quests.

That’ll probably take up all of the next session, and after that, I’ll be able to move on to continuing the rest of the main plot. Finally!

Screenshots

Editing to add

11/17/2023: Fixed missing gallery, and added a session number.
10/5/2024: Added play date to highlights section. Converted gallery to a native WordPress one.