In Which Delga is Challenged by Hermaeus Mora

My ability to play Skyrim this week has been spotty due to the whole adventures around the internet outage at my house, but also because the day job got crunchy again. But that said I did get in a short-ish play session last night, finishing up the run in Nchardak and advancing the main Dragonborn plot!

Highlights

• Play date: 1/13/2022
• Session number in this run: 72
• Resumed Nchardak
• Mostly remembered the trickier parts of having to find all the control cubes; however, wound up forgetting how to get to the side room where the resonance gem is, so had to rollback to the start of the session and redo it to actually get to the gem correctly
• Lost track of Calder a couple of times, and in particular once when he fell off one of the ramps, and YIKES don’t scare me like that, son!
• Second time through got the resonance gem, and also the boss treasure in the room behind the final centurion
• Followed Neloth back to the Black Book
• Ran the Epistolary Acumen level of Apocrypha
• Hermaeus Mora was particularly snarky about how “you thought to reject me and yet HERE YOU ARE!” Okay yes fine what do you want, monster?
• Got second word of Bend Will shout, and ultimatum to go get the knowledge of the Skaal
• Followed Neloth out of Nchardak
• OH HI SURPRISE DRAGON! Took out Krosulhah
• Also took out a couple more spare reavers still in the area
• Arvak’d back to Raven Rock
• Dropped off a bunch of stuff in Severin Manor
• Also did some smithing to bump up my Smithing a few points, and likewise alchemy
• Slept a few hours, then got a bunch of the extraneous loot and went out to sell stuff
• Revered Dragon rudely interrupting my shopping!
• Did round one of fighting with it, and it flew off to sulk for a bit, long enough for me to sell a bunch of stuff to Glover
• Bought more ebony ingots so I could improve the helmet I’d just made up to Legendary
• Hey Calder, i have a present for you! Calder: “I am sworn to carry your burdens.” Here, why don’t you carry this helmet? It goes with the rest of your armor and will protect your head!
• Then the Revered Dragon came back for more and finally crashed down by the ash yam crop behind the market
• Killed it! But Miraak sniped its soul 😛
• Then resumed shopping and sold a bunch of stuff to Fethis and Milore
• Saved for the night

Commentary

The bullet points in the highlights might make this session seem shorter than it actually was, I think. I’m not going into huge detail just because most of last night’s session was familiar territory, so I’m mostly just focusing on the parts that made this specific playthrough stand out.

I liked that I mostly did okay getting through Nchardak this time, and that the only thing I forgot to do properly was finding the room with the resonance gem. And it turned out that just re-doing the run from the start of the session was less annoying than flailing around the dungeon trying to make it back to the proper place–because by the time I’d realized I’d missed the resonance gem, I’d gotten far enough along that Neloth, Calder, and I were on the way to the Black Book.

The good news was, at least, that the second time through went faster.

It feels a little weird playing Delga as actively hostile to Mora, but I’m sticking with the idea that she’s hostile to him on the grounds of being appalled that he disintegrated Septimus, and so far she’s not hearing any argument out of him that following him would be a good thing. Plus at this point, Delga’s had enough reason to see that Miraak actively being Hermaeus Mora’s follower sure as hell doesn’t say anything good for Mora, given how the Daedra doesn’t seem to give the smallest fraction of a fuck that his minion is trying to take over Solstheim. He only seems to care that Miraak is about to leave his direct control.

This meant though that once I made it to Apocrypha again via the Epistolary Acumen book, I was able to take the conversational path with Mora that let him be super snarky at me about how I’d tried to reject him and yet there I was in his realm.

(Yeah well, Cthulhu Lite, I wouldn’t be coming into Apocrypha if your pet Dragonborn hadn’t decided to be an asshole to everybody else.)

Heh. Yeah, I’m definitely more hostile to Mora this time through as a player as well, in no small part because I know he kills Storn for no damn good reason. Just because he wants the secrets of the Skaal. I’d written before that my initial instincts about this particular Daedra suggested that people flipped out about him more than warranted–because knowledge is supposed to be a good thing. But Hermaeus Mora’s actions in the game indicate he clearly just wants knowledge for the sake of having it, not because he actually wants to do anything useful with it, or because he takes any joy in learning a new thing. He just wants to be able to say “I know all of these forbidden secrets.”

And, he has no compassion for a servant he thinks has stopped being “useful” to him.

Meanwhile, finally decided that maybe it might be a good idea to round out Calder’s set of ebony armor by giving him an actual helmet! Maybe this’ll help keep him alive longer!

This does mean he now basically looks like the Ebony Warrior at a casual glance, but we’ll see if this starts being weird at all if I get Delga to level 80! I might have to trade off Calder’s armor for something else before then!

Noting also for the record that this is session 72 of Delga’s run, so far. I made it to 89 sessions with Merawen, so it seems like to me I might make it to a similar number with Delga. We’ll see how much more on the Skyrim mainland I’ll want to do after I get done handing Miraak his ass!

Next time

I’m now at the point of the Dragonborn plot where the next major action will in fact bring about the death of Storn. So I think it’s time for side activity for a bit on Solstheim! Many options to choose from, so I’ll see what strikes my fancy.

Screenshots

Editing to add

• 11/20/2023: Restored missing gallery, and added play date and session number markers.
• 10/7/2024: Converted gallery to a single native WordPress image.