In Which Shenner Acquires the Gauldur Amulet and the Gray Cowl

Lower-key session for Shenner this time, which is the followup I wanted after the adventure of opening an Oblivion Gate and going to the Deadlands! I did the final parts of the Gauldur Amulet quest, and also finished off the quest to acquire the Gray Cowl of Nocturnal.

Highlights

• Play date: 7/12/2022
• Session number in this run: 36
• Started in Lakeview
• Did a little alchemy, enchanting, and smithing; improved the weapons I’d brought out of the Deadlands, and also made an amber shield
• Grabbed all the smithing materials
• Went out and mounted up on Swift Wind
• Boinged to Whiterun to sell as much stuff as possible
• Came back out of Whiterun and realized Swift Wind was gone, oops–because I hadn’t actually ridden him
• So Daedric-horse’d to Heljarchen
• Built a bunch more furnishings there to burn through the iron supply
• Daedric-horse’d back to Lakeview; dropped off all materials
• Quaff-traveled to mage college
• Started selling various bits of enchanted jewelry to various mages; bought Frenzy and Rally spellbooks from Drevis
• Boinged to Riften; found Viriya and got her next quest to recover lost bottles of Flin for Ri’saad
• Boinged to Bloodchill Manor; left Scourge and Torment there
• Boinged to Solitude; sold assorted things to Radiant Raiment, Bits and Pieces, Angeline’s
• Boinged to Geirmund’s Hall to get the last Gauldur Amulet fragment; ran the place with no trouble to speak of
• Boinged from there to Windhelm; sold a bunch of things to Oengul and Niranye
• Decided to ride from there to Silverdrift Lair to run the next bit of the Gray Cowl quest
• Encountered en route: wolf, ice wraith, Imperials + prisoner, snow bear
• Ran the place more or less okay, though got overloaded partway through
• Leveled up to 48 partway through the dungeon; took additional Magicka bump, and Apprentice level perk in Destruction
• Had to double back to the part where the Ancestral Sword of Clan Ice-Blade was stashed in a chest
• Also missed the part where I could have found a key but fpfptpbt I had lockpicks 😉
• Got out of the place and unicorn’d to Riften
• Met the Gray Fox in the graveyard and handed over the sword and the deed; got the cowl
• Tromped over to Balimund’s forge where he was actually out late working; did a little bit of smithing, then waited until daybreak so I could actually sell things to him
• Also sold things to Grelka and Brand-Shei
• Then went back out to Swift Wind and boinged back to Lakeview
• Ancient Dragon! Killed it with Rayya, Rulnik, Swift Wind, and summoned Seducer archer
• Headed inside to drop off things and do a little smithing; improved a couple pieces of my dragonscale armor set
• Came back out and decided to run the rest of the Gauldur Amulet quest
• Boinged to Reachwind Eyrie to get near Reachwater Rock; found it had respawned, so had to kill a fresh set of looters
• Also a bear that decided to try to eat Swift Wind while I was in the tower; this did not go well for the bear
• Got overloaded from that, but rode over to Reachwater Rock anyway
• Mined the silver and iron veins
• Ran the place, but also ran into small bug where I tried to summon a Tomb Guardian and that appears to cause Gauldur to get stuck in combat mode? Unstuck him with the debug console
• Got the boss loot and headed back out–but found a fishing spot before I left the cave!
• Then made it outside and mounted up
• Fast traveled into Markarth
• Waited until daybreak and sold a boatload of things to Lisbet after buying her out of soul gems
• Saved there for the night

Commentary

Since this was a lower-key session, the commentary will accordingly not be quite as thorough. But that’s not to say I don’t have some! 😀

First of all, about that Daedric horse. Not sure what I think of the design of it now that I’ve had a chance to really look at it in depth. The tail is definitely weird, and it actually looks like a power cord to me rather than an actual tail. And it makes the same noise Arvak does when you dismount and the horse vanishes, which is still a little weird to me given that the Daedric horse does not look like Arvak.

I feel like though that I need to name that horse something. Arvak’s the soul of an actual previously living horse. And I dubbed the unicorn Swift Wind even if the game UI doesn’t let me name him that. And I feel like I should be calling the Daedric horse something too, if I’m going to be semi-regularly summoning it. But not sure what yet!

(I’ll have to see how often I wind up summoning it, in fact. I think the answer to this question will be “lots”, since I’m probably going to run Dragonborn before I run Dawnstar with this alt. And I can’t take Swift Wind to Solstheim. So I’m going to need that summoning ability! But I’ll worry about that once I’m ready to run Dragonborn.)

Secondly, a thought or two about Bloodchill Manor, since I did actually voluntarily go back there in this session. The reason for that: it struck me as a good remote location to store some of my more questionable weaponry acquisitions. Like, say, Scourge and Torment, the weapons I got off the dremora I killed in the Deadlands. I’m also probably going to move Dawnfang and Duskfang, as well as Bloodthirst, there.

I also realized when I showed back up there that Bloodchill Manor has got a lot of weapons racks. Even more, I think, than Hendraheim does. So I may wind up putting a lot of my armor and weapons I don’t expect to regularly use here.

And also? Bloodchill Manor being parked inside a cave system strikes me as total fucking Falmer bait. I mean, hell, there are multiple locations in the general Winterhold area that either are caverns that lead directly down to Falmer lairs, or buildings where Falmer broke into the lower chambers (like the lighthouse).

And that pretty much tells me that I should totally leave one or more pets there to guard the place. And when I get the Conjure Ash Guardian spell on Solstheim, I should totally plunk one down at the Manor.

Mind you, the game wouldn’t actually have any Falmer breaking into the cavern. But Shenner doesn’t know that. 😉 It would be absolutely in character of her to set up some form of protection on the place if she can’t be there all the time herself!

Third: finishing up the Gray Cowl quest was pretty easy. And I’ll say that I do like the scenario the plot sets up, over all. I.e., that you’re getting the Cowl off its previous keeper, because that guy has to restore his identity in order to protect a young kinsman from being used by Erikur and other unsavory persons trying to steal his Clan wealth. I still feel like I would have liked to dig into that plot a little more thoroughly in actual character dialogue. But given that the Creation had to make do with the constraints I’ve written about re: new character interactions, I also feel like it did a good job of that! The conceit of the “Stranger” leaving you written instructions all over the place helped work around that problem well.

And now I have the Cowl. Not entirely sure when and where, or if, I’ll use it. Since it makes guards hostile it is absolutely not to be used inside cities. But it does have tasty enchantments on it–a bump to Sneak, a bump to Carry Weight (and that’s highly relevant to my chronically overloaded interests), and the ability to see nearby living creatures through walls, as well as judging whether they’re peaceful or hostile.

On the other hand, it can’t be tempered, apparently. So I can’t see this being my primary headgear. At most I might see myself invoking it if I have to sneak very carefully through a hostile dungeon, or if I need a fast extra 50 points of Carry Weight. We’ll see.

Fourth: Finished up the Gauldur Amulet quest, and the main item of interest there was triggering a bug situation at the end that I hadn’t seen before.

I attempted to try one of the new Necromantic Grimoire spells available in the AE, specifically, Conjure Tomb Guardian, while fighting the three undead brothers in the final boss chamber. After the fight was over, even after my Tomb Guardian vanished, I saw Gauldur remain in combat mode up by his coffin rather than doing his final animation that restores the amulet.

I don’t know for sure whether my using the Conjure Tomb Guardian spell caused this. But the wiki does say that if you try to use the Conjure Ash Guardian spell, that one is known to cause this behavior. So it seems possible that the Tomb Guardian spell might also do it. General note for Future Me anyway, as well as interested readers.

Fortunately, this was another issue that was easily fixed with the debug console. I just had to open up the console, click on Gauldur to get his reference ID, and then use that as the argument to the stopcombat command. That made him stand down, and go ahead and proceed with restoring the amulet.

One other item of interest coming back out of Reachwater Rock: I actually found a fishing spot in that cavern! So I stopped to fish before coming all the way back out of the place. And that let me get two of the underwater fish required by my current quest with Swims-In-Deep-Water.

Next time

Left off in Markarth, so I feel some additional action there coming on. I might go ahead and run Forsworn Conspiracy, or work on getting the thaneship of the Reach. We’ll see what I’m in the mood for!

Screenshots

Editing to add

• 11/23/2023: Restored missing gallery.