In Which Delga Breaks In Her New Housecarl

Nothing terribly significant in this session–mostly just running around fulfilling various pending side quests, and getting some better armor onto Calder, latest housecarl to join Team Dragonborn!

Highlights

• Play date: 12/15/2021
• Session number in this run: 46
• Started in Windhelm and got Calder into active follow mode
• Boinged down to Crystaldrift Cave so I could hit the rupture spot in the Rift
• Came out of fast travel to bear and frostbite spider
• Then spotted what looked like multiple bears attacking a distant figure; found the bears, three of them, and took them out
• Then saw Calder taking aim at something that turned out to be a Volkihar Vampire so I took her out
• Another frostbite spider before I reached the rupture and took out three magic anomalies to close it; was able to retrieve two soul gems, but two of the three anomalies did the bug where their remains were in the air and I couldn’t get to the last one
• Also, startled the hell out of a couple of passing farmers? I think they thought I was attacking them? Heard the woman yell ‘I submit’, but couldn’t tell if they were reacting to me or to the anomalies?
• Swam across the water to continue on to Lost Knife Hideout; fought two more frostbite spiders and a troll
• Discovered Rift Watchtower
• Got ahead of Calder, and also got stuck on a cliff by a waterfall, so fast traveled to Lost Knife let Calder catch up
• Cleared the place, made it to the boss bandit and took him out
• Gave calder some ebony armor I found in a loot chest; also gave him my ebony bow and dragonbone sword
• Got overloaded taking an elven battleaxe out of final chest getting out of the hideout
• Tromped next towards Mara’s Eye Pond
• Blood dragon dropped right on me on the road near fort Amol! Took it out with Dragonbane 😀
• Reached Mara’s Eye Pond, where Calder killed three mudcrabs
• Temporarily stashed some stuff in a sack in the nearby boat; took out the two vampires in the lair, and looted two chests including the boss chest
• Headed back towards Windhelm with Calder; killed troll by the road
• Also sighted the Headless Horseman riding by, wow second time this game
• Returned to Windhelm; made some dragonbone arrows at the forge since we got there in the middle of the night
• Went to Hjerim to sleep for a couple of hours and see if I had any storage chests; answer: no
• Apparently though I’m supposed to have one and the damn chest didn’t appear properly because Blood on the Ice quest broke it
• Kitchen and master bedroom bed still had investigate commands on them though I was able to clear those
• Slept a few hours in the bed; got up again and went to market, sold stuff to Niranye, Aval, and Revyn
• Went to the steward to collect the bounty
• Finished buying main Hjerim furnishings, just no children’s bedroom yet
• Hjerim appears to be buggy as fuck 😛
• Fast traveled to mage college
• Found Enthir and gave him both staves; he gave me Arniel’s warped soul gem and Onmund’s amulet
• Returned Onmund his amulet and resolved his quest
• Initiated favor quests for Brelyna and J’zargo
• Took the gem to Arniel and got him to go to the next phase of his quest, i.e., taking the gem to convectors
• Popped into Arch-Mage’s quarters for a little bit and did some alchemy and enchanting to try to get to level 50
• Went back to tell Brelyna her spell wore off
• She tried the next round of spells and oh okay I don’t think i ever properly had it obvious that she was turning me into a cow and then a horse and then a dog!
• Gave Urag his book that he wanted me to fetch
• Resolved the Aftershock quest with Tolfdir
• Boinged to Solitude for some shopping and crafting
• Got Octieve’s quest to resolve his debt
• Made Calder an ebony shield
• Parked in Proudspire to sleep the night; hi Jordis!
• (Hmm do I ship Jordis and Calder? I maybe ship Jordis and Calder!)
• Tracked down Inskar the next morning to get him to forgive Octieve’s debt by paying it off for him
• I think this was where I finally leveled up to 50; took additional Light Armor perk
• Reported back to Octieve in the Temple of the Divines and he bumped my Two-Handed skill for me
• Made Calder some ebony gauntlets
• Left off there in Solitude

Commentary

Let it be noted for the record that I think I actually kind of like Calder. Partly because as male Nord NPCs go, he’s arguably the cutest of my housecarls if you go for that Gothic-hero, muttonchop-sideburns kind of look.

I’m slightly disappointed though that he doesn’t have that younger male voice! The one I hear out of, say, Onmund. He’s got the gruffer male one instead, I think it’s the same one Gregor and Valdimar both have?

Calder definitely looks more swoonworthy in ebony armor, too. Little reluctant to give him a helmet just because it kind of ruins the Gothic-hero look. But giving him ebony armor in general and better weapons helps him immensely!

Let it also be noted for the record that once I furnished it, Hjerim isn’t half bad in terms of appearance. It does appear to be buggy as fuck though in its own unique ways.

I like that it’s got display cases I can specifically tell it to put weapons in. However, none of the weapons racks or display cases seem to properly accept the Axe of Eastmarch! I want to display the weapon properly in the house where I’m thane, but none of the places I tried to display it displayed it correctly. It stuck out perpendicular to any rack or case I tried to store it.

Also, there’s in theory supposed to be a chest right at the foot of the bed in my bedroom. The chest did not render. Apparently this can be caused by taking the path I did in Blood on the Ice, i.e., going to Wuunferth directly rather than getting him arrested. AUGH.

This means I have no actual storage chests anywhere in the house, from what I can tell. Which is vexing! A house that size and I only get one working storage chest, and only if I don’t trigger the Blood on the Ice bug?

And okay fine, Proudspire, Honeyside, and Vlindrel Hall all have only one storage chest each but Breezehome has two. You’re telling me teeny tiny Breezehome can have two storage chests but the bigger bought houses can’t? This makes no sense. What this tells me though is that clearly, I must use the built houses for all my storage needs.

One other thing worth noting here, since I worked on the favor quests for the apprentices at the mage college: somehow, only just now on my third playthrough in this game, am I realizing that when Brelyna does her second round of spellcasting on me, she’s turning me into various animals.

I’m not at all sure how the hell I missed that before. Maybe because that part of the interaction specifically forces you into third person, but the viewpoint is still kind of weird? This time when I saw her do it, I saw the animal forms appear roughly to her left while I still seemed to be standing right in front of her.

I distinctly do not remember seeing animals before, though, the first two times I ran the mage college. Conclusion: this, like so many other things in Skyrim, is buggy as fuck!

Next time

I have J’zargo’s scrolls to try out, but I’m going to need to make sure to dismiss Calder first because I don’t want to accidentally piss off my housecarl by setting him on fire!

And now that I’ve leveled up to 50, I gotta go get in level 50’s round of training.

Then it’s probably going to be off to High Hrothgar to see Paarthurnax.

And then probably Dawnguard!

Screenshots

No screenshots for this session.

Editing to add

• 11/19/2023: Added play date and session number markers.