In Which Delga Returns the Lexicon to Avanchnzel and Apprehends a Wanted Woman

Second post for today, and this one’s for last night’s play session! Main highlights: returning the Lexicon to Avanchnzel, and then running the In My Time of Need quest, involving the Redguard woman Saadia hiding out from her Alik’r pursuers.

Highlights

• Play date: 11/13/2021
• Session number in this run: 15
• Did a little alchemy in Honeyside
• Sold a couple things I didn’t need to Balimund
• Headed out to Avanchnzel while trying to avoid Largashbur as best I could, so as to not have any more orcs DIE
• Made it to Avanchnzel
• Kept hearing a bear but bear never charged?
• Headed into the ruin and proceeded to run it
• Machines killed prior to boss chamber: lots of spiders and spheres
• Veins mined: two iron
• Found Restoration skill book
• And geez, you ghosts, I’m not a thief either and I can still pick locks
• Killed by spinning blade trap, because I don’t have Become Ethereal active yet, also Lyds kept activating the pressure plates
• And I had to leave behind a lot of dwarven metal because it weighed me down too much
• Also, original Alarrah Avanchnzel post said I had to fast travel off the balcony to get out of this place, so I could not leave overloaded past ability of my potions to get me out
• And, I had to have the maneuverability to get past the spinning blades to the lever to turn them off, and make sure Lyds stayed out of the damn way
• Killed the centurion with Volendrung and leveled up to 29; took another Two-Handed perk \0/
• Put the Lexicon back
• Fuck yeah ebony arrows
• Quaffed a draught of strength to get to fast travel back to watchtower, and sell things in Whiterun
• Smithed a bunch at Warmaiden’s after hours, then sold stuff to Elrindir; this kicked me up over 5K, which should let me go buy Lakeview Manor’s land
• He had an orcish shield \0/
• Slept until light in Breezehome
• Decided to run In My Time of Need, and went to the Bannered Mare to look for Saadia
• Oh hey look there’s Sam Guevenne challenging me to a drinking contest! Hold that thought, Sam
• Asked Saadia “hey do you know there are Alik’r warriors looking for a Redguard woman?”
• Saadia: “Shit I am so busted, you, I need you to help me!”
• Went to go question the Alik’r prisoner in the Dragonsreach dungeon
• Went to Swindler’s Den to take out the bandits and then confront the Alik’r warriors
• Let Kematu make his pitch to me about his side of the story
• Decided to help Kematu this time
• Went back to tell Saadia to come meet me at the stables
• Kematu: “Surprise!”
• Saadia: “SHIT.”
• Got Kematu’s payment for helping him capture her and bring her to justice
• Returned to Breezehome and saved for the night

Unfathomable Depths quest

Running Avanchnzel was still fun this time, but slightly frustrating in that I realized that I could not make it out of there with all of the dwarven metal items! The only way to get out of the place is to either backtrack out the whole way, or to fast travel off the balcony.

I wound up leaving behind a whole helluva lot of dwarven metal items. So I’ll have to think about whether I’ll bother to go back there at any point and recover all the scrap metal I left. Part of me wants to just because all that metal is good for making ingots and dwarven stuff can get me money. But on the other hand, it’s not like I’m going to be lacking for other opportunities to get dwarven metal. This is only the first Dwemer ruin I’ve run this game so far!

It was also a bit of a challenge to make it past the one spinning blade trap in the place. My usual strategy for this at this point is to use the Become Ethereal Shout. And while I have that first word, it is not activated yet, because I am currently fresh out of dragon souls.

And I tried the strategy of making Lydia wait before the trap while I scampered down to hit the lever to turn it off. This worked only up until the part where I told Lyds to go ahead and follow me again–and she promptly walked over the pressure plate that turned the trap back on.

So I had to tell her to wait again, this time at a point just past the pressure plates. As long as I was unencumbered (because I’d had to ditch all that excess dwarven metal), I was able to duck in between the extended pistons and stay out of the way of the blades. By doing that, I was finally able to make it down there, turn off the trap, and have Lyds safely follow me again.

I had forgotten though that the reward for doing this quest is the Ancient Knowledge ability, which boosts how fast you can learn Smithing. Awesome. I am confident at this point that that’s one of my favorite things to do in the game, but for an orc in particular, it’s even more relevant!

And, it was neat to finally get my mitts on some ebony arrows. Not only off the one live centurion I had to take out in the boss chamber, but also on the deactivated ones you find on the factory floor in this place.

Getting back to Whiterun afterwards also gave me an opportunity to finally nab an Orcish shield. This fills out Delga’s entire Orcish armor set! And while I do tend to focus on the two-handed weapons with her, I’ve found it necessary to keep up on my one-handed weapons as well. Which means having a shield handy is useful.

And, coming back from Avanchnzel with what loot I did get, as well as the stuff I smithed and sold, meant I was able to kick my gold tally up over 5K. Which means the purchase of the land to build Lakeview Manor on is in my near future!

In My Time of Need quest

I was on the fence about whether to do this quest again, since I’d already played through it twice and tried both of the possible outcomes. But since I’m enough of a completist that I don’t like to leave unfinished quests just hanging out in my journal if I can avoid it, I went ahead and decided to clear this one out.

This time through I opted for the “turn Saadia in to Kematu” version of the plot, which is what I’d done before with Alarrah. Part of this was because I know now from Merawen’s run that if you go the other way, you can wind up with Alik’r warriors stuck at your Whiterun gates for the rest of your game!

But also, it seemed a bit more appropriate for Delga, too. She wants to help everybody, but I feel like she also has a very strong sense of justice. So she would have wanted to hear Kematu’s side of the story, and once he presented his case, she would have been pissed that Saadia played her.

And that got me 500 more gold from Kematu, so there’s that.

Next time

Gotta boing back down to Falkreath so I can buy some land from the steward there, and get started on building Lakeview! Rayya needs a house to hang out in, after all! And it gets her a chance to get the fuck away from Falkreath’s asshole Jarl.

Which raises the question of which NPCs to get to be stewards! I see a couple of the orcs from Largashbur are potential stewards. I may have to go back there and recruit those guys just to get them an opportunity to get the fuck out of their stronghold and maybe actually survive.

I’ll have to think about this, though. From what I’ve seen reading up about orc culture on the wikis, it seems to me like most orcs at a stronghold would be dismissive of the idea that they should go someplace else.

Once I get Lakeview underway I’ll need to think about what to do next. I’m almost to level 30 and I need to get the Companions plot moved along a little farther, so I should probably go take out that Silver Hand leader at Fort Fellhammer!

And I ought to go have a word with Delphine and get the Horn of Jurgen Windcaller back, too. Not only so’s I can finish out the Unrelenting Force Shout with the Greybeards, but also because that’ll get me at least one known dragon to kill so that I can rack up another soul and unlock Become Ethereal.

Screenshots

Editing to add

• 11/28/2021: Galleries have finally been fixed, so here’s a couple of screenshots from this session!
• 11/18/2023: Galleries broke again so restored the missing gallery, and also added play date and session number markers.
• 10/6/2024: Converted gallery to a native WordPress one.