In Which Shenner Raids Faldar’s Tooth and the Thalmor Embassy

Yet another Shenner session, just because I’m trying to get Shenner’s number of sessions caught up with Faanshi’s before I start switching back and forth again. One more Shenner to go, then I’ll switch back to my Khajiit Guildmaster!

And in this one, I did a bunch of fishing, cleared Faldar’s Tooth, and then went and made life difficult for the Thalmor at their embassy!

Highlights

• Play date: 7/3/2022
• Session number in this run: 31
• Started at Whiterun; boinged to Lakeview
• Did a bit of alchemy and smithing; could not yet make a full set of regular dragonscale armor, but did make a dragonbone bow and sword, and a bunch of arrows!
• Decided to go fishing, since it was raining
• Did a circuit around Lake Ilinalta; caught catfish and pygmy sunfish, but wound up having to restart the game when it hung on me, when I tried to go underwater to fight slaughterfish, oops
• Back at Lakeview when I came back from restart; fast traveled directly to Half-Moon Mill this time to take advantage of the fishing spot; caught a couple more catfish this time
• Fast traveled to Heartwood Mill and fished there; weather turned sunny so I tried out the Ring of Kynareth, which did indeed make it rain, cool
• Headed north towards Sarethi Farm to look for Swims’ lucky fishing hat
• Actually ran Faldar’s Tooth for the first time in full as I went by the place and the bandits got aggressive, and I have Team Dragonborn, so right then, bandits, let’s do this
• Tried out the Pride of Hirstaag spell that lets me summon a bear, awesome. BEAR IN YOUR FACES, ASSHOLES
• Found a bunch of wolves in cages, and an ice wolf and regular wolf fighting in a pit
• Took out at least a dozen bandits both outside and in; took longer finding the way out than it did to actually take out the bandits
• Also found that there was a fishing spot right by Faldar’s Tooth, too
• Proceeded from there and cleared Autumnshade Clearing, after fighting a Spriggan Earth Mother and two sabre cats
• Went roughly west-ish and found Sarethi Farm but did not stop to interact with the place
• Found the target fishing spot which turns out to be on the same island as Geirmund’s Hall; found the lucky fishing hat!
• Went a little further west and reached Ivarstead; couldn’t find the target fishing spot there
• But did find Narfi, and got the mini-quest to find out why he’s troubled and to find the remains of his sister Reyda
• Didn’t follow up on that for now; instead, had an interlude of dropping off stuff at Lakeview and selling stuff in Whiterun
• Boinged to Riverwood to talk to Delphine and get the plan for the embassy
• Boinged to Solitude; sold a few things at Radiant Raiment and Bits and Pieces
• Realized I didn’t have clothes to change into when giving Malborn my armor, so popped by Proudspire (HI JORDIS) only to discover I didn’t have any boots in any of the wardrobes there
• So came back out and popped into Radiant Raiment to buy accessories
• Then ELDER DRAGON! Landed right in the market area, and I had to change back into my armor for fighting! Dragon quickly dispatched by mostly the Solitude guards and Imperials, though I got in a few shots
• Changed back into Fine Clothes, then went into the Skeever to talk to Malborn and give him my stuff
• Wound up accidentally quaffing several of the potions I wanted to give him because I hit the wrong goddamn controller button; however, did at least maintain the invisibility potions, which was good because I needed those
• Came back out and found the Khajiit outside, so bought things from Ma’dran to keep up my amber supply
• Met up with Delphine and got the party clothes and invitation, and headed to the embassy
• Got Idgrod to be my distraction, yay!
• Got stuff back out of the chest and commenced Operation Invisible, and actually pulled it off
• Made it to the door of the solar and just barely made it through; the mage at the door followed me in, but as soon as i was in I quaffed another potion; all five of the Thalmor agents lost track of me, muahaha
• Made it to the office and nabbed the evidence, then made it downstairs and called up an Undying Ghost
• Shot Rulendil with my bow to initiate the fight; got him dispatched as well as the Thalmor Soldier
• Nabbed the Esbern dossier and scrambled back upstairs into position
• Called up a bear to eat the guards but really kinda didn’t need it, because I was close enough that I one-shotted them both with my dragonbone sword, fuck yeah \0/
• Got Malborn and Etienne out unscathed
• Took out the troll in the tunnel, and nabbed the unusual gem on the way out as well
• Found Rulnik at the exit of the cave waiting for me, no Rulnik and Gogh following me through the embassy like Argis did on Ysani’s run, so damn good thing I had all those invisibility potions XD
• Boinged back to Riverwood to check in with Delphine
• Got my stuff back and her recommendation to get to Riverwood and talk to Brynjolf
• Boinged to Riften, parked in Honeyside, and saved for the night

Commentary

Started off this session on a fishing jaunt, going around Lake Ilinalta. And I discovered finally what it actually means when I’m swimming and the sound switches to this sort of “water in my ears” gurgling for no apparent reason. It means there’s slaughterfish.

And given that Rulnik kept trying to throw lightning at them, the fight music kept playing, and the game considered me in combat, ignoring them was not an option even after I came out of the water. But the bastards were surprisingly difficult to kill.

Hell, they were difficult to find until I remembered that oh hey, I do have the Detect Life spell! So I started throwing that, which helped me pinpoint where exactly in the water the slaughterfish were. Hitting them, however, was another matter entirely. The Elemental spells I’ve got as part of the AE content seemed to do best in terms of damaging them, or else Unrelenting Force. But there were two of them, and they moved fast.

I finally decided to try putting on my ring of Waterbreathing, and see if I could go underwater to just stab the things to death. When I tried that, though, the damn game locked up on me and I had to restart.

Which meant I lost the pygmy sunfish I’d caught, too! Booooooo.

Continued fishing attempts by boinging to Heartwood Mill, where I tried out the Ring of Kynareth for the first time. Very nice. The wiki says it has exactly one other potentially practical use, but the ability to call rain while fishing is still pretty neat. We’ll see if it’s necessary for fishing at some of the northern locations, too.

Heading north-ish from the mill put me in range of Faldar’s Tooth, which also put me in range of the aggressive bandits there. Up until now I’ve mostly been avoiding the place, but this time? I wanted to see if Team Dragonborn could take on the whole bandit fort.

Answer: yes.

So this was the first actual time I’d been inside the place to run it completely. So I saw all the wolves in the various cages in there, as well as a regular wolf fighting an ice wolf in a pit. There were at least a dozen different bandits in various places, though it took me longer to actually find the way back out then it did to kill all the bandits. The layout of the place was kind of confusing, and took me a little bit to figure out from the map.

Nice to do a new thing, though, even though Shenner’s playthrough is my sixth time through this game!

Discovered once I came back out again that there’s also a fishing spot right by the place. Which raises questions of how safe it is to actually use that fishing spot. Can you fish there safely if Faldar’s Tooth respawns? Or do you have to have the place in a cleared state if you want to fish in peace? It’ll be interesting to find out.

Next interesting fishing spot I found was the one where I needed to recover Swims-In-Deep-Water’s lucky fishing hat. This turned out to be on the very same island where Geirmund’s Hall is located, which will be useful later for purposes of fetching bits of amulet.

When I reached Ivarstead, I had another minor first: I think this is the first time I’ve ever actually interacted with Narfi, the beggar who hangs out at the remains of his family’s farmhouse and babbles about his missing sister. This is the guy who’s the reason I won’t run the Dark Brotherhood plot, because you’re expected to kill this poor pitiful sod. Which… no.

But this time through, while looking for Ivarstead’s fishing spot, I actually found the house and saw Narfi standing around outside it. So I went over to talk to him, and got the quest hook to find out what happened to his sister.

Didn’t follow up on that for now, though. Instead, I decided to go ahead and run the Thalmor Embassy.

Once I made it to Solitude, I had the surprise of an Elder Dragon landing right in the market area. I’d documented an Ancient Dragon landing in Solitude during Faanshi’s playthrough, too, which makes two times in this pair of playthroughs where I’ve seen dragons hit Solitude.

Which raises a fun question: so far, of the five major cities (Whiterun, Solitude, Windhelm, Markarth, and Riften), I’ve seen dragon attacks inside only three of them. I have to go all the way back to Alarrah to recall the dragon that got killed right inside the Whiterun gates. And I’ve seen a dragon attack in Riften’s graveyard, too. And I think maybe three or four total times that there’s been a dragon attack inside Solitude.

But I have yet to see it happen inside Markarth or Windhelm. I don’t know if this is a matter of those being the cities I visit the least, or what.

After the dragon attack, though, I resumed my business of prepping to hit the embassy. Wound up actually accidentally quaffing some of my own potions rather than handing them off to Malborn as I intended, just because I wasn’t paying attention to what controller button I was hitting. Oops.

But I did not waste all of my invisibility potions, thankfully. Which was good, because they were vital.

Because this time through, just because Faanshi had rampaged through the place, I had Shenner be more circumspect. Shenner has the Invisibility spell at this point, but does not have Quiet Casting. So having a dozen powerful Invisibility potions, with a duration of 60+ seconds, was super helpful.

I made it all the way to the door of Elenwen’s solar without alerting anybody–but when I went through the door and became visible again, that did alert the mage at the door. Who came running in in full RAR mode trying to find me, and that also alerted the other four Thalmor agents in the room.

None of whom were able to find me, because I quaffed another potion immediately and then scrambled into a corner to get out of their way, until they decided they were all jumping at nothing. Lololol.

I did actually have to engage Rulendil and the Thalmor Soldier down in the interrogation chamber, as well as the two Thalmor who’d captured Malborn. And I was vaguely disappointed that I didn’t actually need the bear I summoned, because I was able to kill both of Malborn’s captors with a single critical hit from my shiny new dragonbone sword. It would have been so satisfying to throw a bear in the faces of the Thalmor. 😉

Next time

Welp, it’s time to head down into the Ratway again and look for Esbern! And despite Delphine’s suggestion that I talk to Brynjolf, I know how that little conversation will go. I’m still feeling kind of disinclined to join the Guild with Shenner, just to keep some level of difference between this playthrough and Faanshi’s.

Which means I’ll need to save Shadowfoot Sanctum for a different playthrough.

But there are other things I could still do in the Ratway. I can see about acquiring Dawnfang/Duskfang, one of the new artifact weapons brought in with the AE content, a sword that actually changes its name and powers depending on the time of day.

And for what it’s worth, I can also find the tame skeever. Lololol. I see absolutely no reason why I’d want a tame skeever, but I may or may not do this anyway depending on how playing the Ratway works this time.

Before I head down there though, I may derp around Riften a little longer and look for other things to do. I’m almost to level 44, but I need to get to 46 before I hit Karthspire with Delphine and Esbern!

Screenshots

Editing to add

• 11/22/2023: Restored missing gallery.