In Which Ysani Discovers the Oghma Infinium and Heads to Solstheim

This is another double session, this time covering play done on Monday 4/11 and Tuesday 4/12.

Main action here was moving the Discerning the Transmundane plot along and finding the Oghma Infinium, and oops welp Septimus sure did disintegrate, and now I have a Daedra calling me his champion? Yay?

The rest of the action here was all about prepping for my Solstheim run with this character, including improving Volendrung so I could hand it over to Argis.

Highlights

• Play dates: 4/11-4/12/2022
• Session numbers in this run: 76-77

Monday’s play

• Picked up at the hunter camp just south of Bleakcoast Cave
• Found the hunters, definitely not Altmer, and got treasure map 8 off one of them
• Hunters surrounded by cranky horkers, so I threw the dremora at them, and now I have a whole buncha horker tusks
• Hoofed it from there up the hill, and discovered I was right by Snow Veil Sanctum; did not try to re-enter that dungeon
• Little further up the hill found Journeyman’s Nook; took out the bandit in there and saluted poor lost apprentice Borvir; got treasure map 2
• Boinged from there to Guardian Stones, and hoofed it to the Shrine of Talos; got sample off the dead Thalmor I’d stripped before
• Returned to Septimus’ outpost and oops, well, he disintegrated!
• Got the Oghma Infinium and Hermaeus Mora’s next encounter; read the book and took boosts to combat skills, because sure as hell not hurting for magic; that pushed me almost up to leveling up to 68
• Boinged from there to mage college
• Found J’zargo and checked in with him about the scrolls, to finish off his quest
• Bought training off of Colette and that leveled me up to 68; took another health bump and a light armor perk
• Then bought two more rounds of training with Colette which maxed me out with her for training
• Bought remaining training rounds from Faralda; also sold her a bunch of staves and a couple more to Tolfdir
• Boinged next to Fort Dawnguard to give Sorine her schematic; had to do it twice because I thought I sold Gunmar Mehrunes’ Razor by mistake (but I think I was wrong? the game doesn’t seem to offer it as an option to sell Gunmar but it does Sorine, so that’s not consistent)
• Got Sorine’s final schematic which will be on Solstheim; also got a dwarven crossbow off of her and sold her the old one
• Bought assorted building materials off of both her and Gunmar, and sold them as many of the enchanted weapons I had as I could
• Boinged from there to Riften; sold a bunch of stuff to Tonilia and three of the four merchants in the Flagon
• Courier found me coming out of the Thieves Guild entrance, and lolololol, Calcelmo wanted to buy the Dwemer crossbow I’d just bought off of Sorine
• Popped into the Bee and Barb to give Talen-Jei his amethysts, so now he gets to be all conflicted about whether he hates me or likes me
• Boinged next to Windstad for equipment shift, and fought basement skeevers
• LOL, mannequin that I put Harkon’s armor on duplicated the Ancient Shrouded, so now that mannequin has two different sets of armor on it
• Dropped off dragonscale armor because I felt like Nightingale mode
• Improved a boatload of things and built some shrines in the cellar as well
• Boinged to Lakeview and dropped off a boatload of books; also built a shrine to Stendarr there after transmuting a little ore
• Boinged to Heljarchen and saved there for the night

Tuesday’s play

• Picked up in the basement at Heljarchen; did a little smithing and a little alchemy
• Then went on a selling spree!
• First to Markarth: sold a bunch of stuff to Lisbet, Endon, Ghorza, Bothela, and finally the Dwemer crossbow to Calcelmo
• Next: Solitude, sold stuff to Gulum-Ei, Sayma, Angeline
• Boinged from there to Falkreath
• Elder Dragon! Killed it with storm atronachs + Auriel’s Bow, but okay fine yes, the guards of Falkreath helped 😉
• Stopped by all three built houses, doing an equipment check; actually retrieved dragonscale armor from Windstad as well as major weaponry, dragonbone weapons + dragonbane + chillrend + Nightingale Bow
• Did a BUNCH of smithing to improve the armor and weaponry to prep for Solstheim
• Also made some jewelry, got smithing back up over 80, which will stand me in good stead for getting to forge stalhrim
• Trotted from Heljarchen down to Honningbrew; passed three Thalmor + prisoner, did not engage; sold a bunch of stuff to Mallus
• Headed into Whiterun, sold a bunch of crafted armor to Adrianne, other items to Belethor and Arcadia
• Got Argis following! Hi honey! Did you miss me? Wanna go on a road trip with me to Solstheim so we can fuck up a dragon cult trying to kill me? And here, have a great big orcish hammer!
• But before we go: where the hell are the kids? Found both Lucia and Erith wandering around and gave them both dolls as presents (and presumably explicit instructions to guard the house while Mama and Papa are gone, and to send word to either Lakeview or Heljarchen if housecarl help is needed)
• Boinged back to houses briefly because I couldn’t remember which one I’d left the boots for mage mode in, then finally boinged to Windhelm
• Bought all the flowers from Sofie; sorry honey, I’d adopt you too if the game would let me
• Paid the captain double to take Argis and me to Solstheim
• Greeted councilor Arano when I arrived; Arano, comma, who had no idea who Miraak was
• Saved there for the night

Commentary

It was actually kind of cool coming up from Bleakcoast Cave and discovering both Snow Veil Sanctum and Journeyman’s Nook in rapid succession nearby. I’d been to both of these places before of course, but coming at them from a different angle like that was fun and helped fill out my mental picture of where things are in that corner of the map.

Nothing new to report with Hermaeus Mora’s encounter, other than language commentary below.

It was slightly and briefly alarming to wonder if I’d accidentally sold Gunmar Mehrunes’ Razor at Fort Dawnguard! And confusing, given that the Razor showed up in the list of things I could sell to Sorine, but not in the list of things I could sell to Gunmar. Which makes no damn sense given that Gunmar is, in fact, the smith. On the other hand, I’ve seen that unique items like the Razor or the Nightingale Armor don’t show up in the list of things I can usually sell to vendors, so maybe it’s a bug with Sorine, not with Gunmar?

(Now I’m totally going to have to see whether the Razor or Auriel’s Bow or the Nightingale gear shows up in the list of anything I can sell to general vendors, vs. smiths.)

Meanwhile, I boinged back and forth a lot between houses in these two sessions, moving equipment around. And I wound up dropping off armor and then coming back and picking it up again!

This was partly because I realized I was about to go to Solstheim–so I wanted the best armor and weapons with me. Which meant having the dragonscale and the Nightingale armor available. As well as the best weapons, the assortment of bows and blades that are my best armaments right now.

I spent some time tromping around in the Nightingale armor, but while wielding Auriel’s Bow. This felt weird! Auriel’s Bow, surprisingly, is as of this writing my best bow in this session, better even than my current dragonbone bow. But it feels contradictory to be carrying it while wearing the Nightingale armor. I feel like if I’m going to be wearing Nocturnal’s armor, I should damn well be wielding her weapons, even if they aren’t quite up to par with my other gear at this point.

And since Auriel’s Bow’s entire point is dealing sunlight damage, that seems explicitly anti-Nocturnal! So at least during Monday night’s play, I did at least grab the Nightingale Blade by way of apology to Nocturnal for not carrying the bow.

Language commentary

Interesting terms observed:

• Recoin du Voyageur: Journeyman’s Nook (lit. “nook of the voyager”)
• Gjalund Loup-de-Mer: Gjalund Salt-Sage (lit. “Gjalund Sea-Wolf”)
• Corberoc: Raven Rock
• La Maison Redoran: House Redoran

Voyageur as a term choice here intrigues me. I think it’s a straight-up translation of the English concept of a journeyman, if I’m understanding the fr.wiktionary.org page for the word correctly? Specifically, definition number two.

Gjalund Salt-Sage’s last name gets translated over to Loup-de-Mer, which I discover is an actual French idiom! (Source) (Source) Basically, it’s like calling him an old seadog. Or seawolf, as the case may be. And that seems like the same core idea of Salt-Sage, even if it’s not a direct translation!

Corberoc looks like another portmanteau name, corbeau + roc.

Forgot to mention in the previous post where I’d talked about meeting Hermaeus Mora: the French voice actor performing him is doing a pretty good equivalent of how he’s performed in the English build. For lack of a better word, Hermaeus Mora’s voice comes across to my ear as kind of… gurgly. Which kind of makes sense, given that Mora chooses to present himself as a churning mass of tentacles.

The French version of his voice is not quite as gurgly as the English version, but they’re still doing a pretty good job of it.

Next time

Now that Ysani and Argis are actually on Solstheim, time to get down to business and start seeing about getting Dragonborn underway! I’ll probably start the same way I did with Delga’s run, getting to the assassination plot as quickly as I can so I can get Severin Manor, but we’ll see how that plays out!

Let it also be noted: this post marks Ysani’s 76th and 77th sessions, and I’m only just now starting on Dragonborn, and will need to return to the main plot after that as well. So I think I’m on track for Ysani having the most sessions of any character so far. Delga made it to 83, and Merawen made it to 89. And I’m pretty damn sure Ysani will make it into the 90’s. I’ll need to see if she makes 100 sessions!

Screenshots

Editing to add

• 11/21/2023: Restored missing gallery, and added play date and session number markers.