In Which Shenner Quests into Raldbthar

This is a somewhat shortish post, but this was about all I had time to play on a work night! Main action: getting another aetherium shard, finishing up the Brothers in Irons quest, and heading into Raldbthar for the final shard.

Highlights

• Play date: 7/28/2022
• Session number in this run: 44
• Started at Lakeview
• Boinged to Whiterun; sold things to all the shops
• Boinged to Dragontooth Crater; killed Elder Dragon, by flinging elemental and lightning magic at it
• Killed a horde of seven (!!!) zombies, en route to Deep Folk Crossing
• Got the 3rd aetherium shard; HI KATRIA see you at Raldbthar
• Boinged to statue of Meridia
• Passed three Imperials
• Stopped at Steed Stone to activate it, get the carry weight bump and make my worn armor weightless
• Killed two different frost trolls (without dismounting)
• Reached the beach, and found camp with Pale-Eyes the Argonian already dead
• Camp had three Thalmor that instantly attacked me; this was unwise on the part of the Thalmor
• Got Pale-Eyes’ enchanted iron plate armor and his journal
• Boinged to Solitude; slept the night at Proudspire; dropped off iron plate armor and a few books there
• Boinged to Shrouded Grove to try to get near Raldbthar; fought snow bear and frost troll there
• Fought another troll and frostbite spiders on the way to Raldbthar
• Reached it; saw dragon (yet again, possible Viinturuth) in the distance from the front steps
• Killed exterior bandits
• Then started running the place, and killed interior bandits
• Didn’t bother to fight Alain Dufont though I fought his henchmen
• Killed assorted dwarven machines
• Reached the spinning blade traps and that was a goddamn problem
• Managed to get Rulnik past them but not Gogh, and trying to get Gogh past them wound up making the damn trap kill ME :/
• Thrown back to coming into Raldbthar
• Saved there for the night

Commentary

I went into this session intending to try to finish up getting the aetherium shards, and made less progress on that than I would have liked.

I’m pretty sure this may have been the biggest group of zombies I’ve run into so far, since the initial start of that plot. Seven meant quite a few zombies. Fortunately, nothing I can’t handle at my current level.

In between looking for aetherium shards, I also decided I’d better go by the Steed Stone and activate that one. Just because as always, I am chronically overloaded, and activating that Stone takes at least a bit of the pressure off!

That also put me in a good position to go look for that bandit camp on the northern shore, to finish up the Brothers in Irons quest. This was not difficult; I just had to make it to the camp not far away from Northwatch Keep. The NPC involved with this part of the plot, the Argonian called Pale-Eyes, was already dead at his camp–presumably killed by the three Thalmor also present. Who were immediately hostile as soon as I showed up, and who promptly attacked me.

This did not go well for the Thalmor.

Narratively speaking it was arguably less than wise to go sell all the Thalmor gear I swiped off that trio of Thalmor in Solitude. But well hey, if Beirand doesn’t ask why I show up at his forge with two sets of elven armor and a set of Thalmor robes, and if he never asks me where I got them from, nobody needs to know, right? 😁

After that, it was off to Raldbthar. And the main point of interest there is that I could not get Gogh past that double spinning blade trap. Rulnik was also difficult, but at least I finally got him through okay because he was wearing the ebony plate armor I gave him.

Gogh, on the other hand, just could not make it through. He’s Essential, so the trap couldn’t kill him. But he’s also just level 6, with a pitiful pool of Health points, so the trap constantly knocked him into the recovery state. And I couldn’t budge him once that happened.

I tried and failed to give him healing potions–when I told him I wanted to trade some things with me, he gave me a troll skull!

And eventually, after four or five tries at this, the damn trap eventually killed me. I was thrown all the way to coming into the front entrance of Raldbthar. So clearly I’m not going to be able to make it through with Gogh. When I start the next session, I’m going to have to step back outside and have Gogh wait with the unicorn.

Next time

I’ll run Raldbthar properly. Time permitting, I’ll also go hit the Aetherium forge to finish up the plot.

Screenshots

Editing to add

• 11/23/2023: Restored missing gallery.
• 10/10/2024: Converted gallery to a native WordPress one.