In Which Faanshi Hunts More Stones and Viinturuth

This session was all about fetching the last few Stones of Barenziah, hence running Sunderstone Gorge, Rannveig’s Fast, and Yngvild. With a side helping of taking out the dragon Viinturuth!

Highlights

• Play date: 9/2/2022
• Session number in this run: 55
• Started at Windstad
• Horse-boinged to Heljarchen and picked up Jordis the Sword-Maiden for follower duty
• Rode over towards Sunderstone Gorge
• Encountered en route:
  • Noble on horse with escort; saw his escort vanish? And the noble galloped off in the opposite direction
  • Thalmor who may have fought a wild creature out of my view?
• Jordis got briefly stuck on the trail behind me but she eventually caught up
• Made it to Sunderstone’s general entrance
• Found a couple of trolls chasing a hunter; took out the trolls, and the horse helped! What a good horse!
• Threw Jordis and dremora at the necromancer at the entrance, then started running the place
• Killed once by the necromancers halfway through who fried me with fire
• Second time through sneaked like a PROPER GODDAMN NIGHTINGALE, and let the dremora and Jordis do most of the heavy lifting
• Threw healing on Jordis a couple of times because even with her ebony armor she was vulnerable to fire damage
• Threw dremora and also storm atronachs at the final necromancer
• Got the word for Fire Breath off the wall; got the Stone of Barenziah and the boss loot
• Mined the silver veins on the way out, then rode from there towards Rannveig’s Fast
• Major encounter on the way: two giants and one mammoth vs. three bandits
• Was going to try to avoid the battle but Jordis got in on it, so I threw dremora into the fray; took down both of the giants and the mammoth
• The giants had already killed a couple of the bandits; found the bandit chief lying next to a dead sabre cat a little ways off
• Very overloaded at this point but went ahead to Rannveig’s Fast anyway
• Threw dremora at the ghosts outside the place, then at the ghosts inside the place
• As well as Sild, because fuck you Sild, Khajiit is not inclined to participate in your experiment, and she will be helping herself to this fine pink stone of yours
• Back out again! Horse-boinged to Whiterun; sold all my extraneous loot
• Boinged to Heljarchen to drop off building materials
• Summoned Arvak so i wouldn’t have to take horse into the north
• Boinged to Saarthal to get near to Yngvild
• Saw shadow of dragon that might have been Mount Anthor dragon? Did not get close enough to engage
• Did however fight assorted snow bears on the way to Yngvild
• Discovered Ysgramor’s Tomb by accident because I misjudged where i was on the map, but made it over to Yngvild after reorienting
• Ran the place very minimally, tried not to engage with the female ghosts if I could avoid it, also didn’t pick up the creepy journals 😛
• Took out Arondil and wound up having to kill some of the ghosts anyway
• Got his Stone of Barenziah and Grand Staff of Charming
• Headed south-east-ish from there to get into Eastmarch
• Fought en route:
  • Snowy sabre cat
  • Snow bear fighting an ice wraith
  • Frost troll
  • Couple of non-snowy sabre cats
  • Snow bear attacking hunters in Wayward Pass
• Found Alduin resurrecting Viinturuth! WELP we can’t have that now can we
• Took care of that problem with my crossbow; also had to take out another frost troll in the middle of the battle
• Finally headed into Eastmarch; hoofed it down along the road and picked up all the jazbay I needed to take back to Avrusa
• Passed Imperials with prisoner, later also passed Stormcloaks
• Mined a silver vein
• Made it to Ansilvund and saved there for the night

Commentary

Very adventurous kind of session, running two different dungeons in search of the last few Stones of Barenziah!

I always forget that the mages about halfway through Sunderstone Gorge are usually a problem. This time was no exception. For Jordis as well as me! I saw her drop down into the recovery state a couple of times, thanks to getting fire in the face from the hostile necromancers. Fortunately I was able to get to her and throw healing spells on her before anybody fried her once too often.

Note to self: give Jordis some more healing potions! Or see about giving her something enchanted to bolster her health regeneration. Or both. Khajiit cannot have her future bride unable to sustain herself in battle!

And at any rate, hostile mages is entirely what I have the ability to summon pissed off storm atronachs for. 😀

Little sad that I didn’t think to take screenshots when I came across that bandits vs. giants and mammoth battle. Because that was impressive to watch. Not exactly sure what provoked Jordis to get in on the fight, though I expect it was probably either a bandit or a giant hitting her by mistake. Didn’t seem to take much, though! So I had to jump in on the battle to give her backup.

And once the dremora were summoned, it was game over for the giants.

Tried to minimize my run through Rannveig’s Fast, partly because I didn’t want to attack the subjugated ghosts if I could avoid it. Just because, well, they’re subjugated. Little disappointed to discover though that killing Sild didn’t free the ghosts. I did pass one on the way out, and he did still attack me.

Likewise, tried to minimize the run through Yngvild. I couldn’t avoid fighting all of the subjugated ghosts there, either. But I expressly avoided picking up the various creepy journals.

Got a Grand Staff of Charming in addition to the Stone of Barenziah. Non-zero possibility I’ll have to give that staff to Enthir? Will have to doublecheck if I’ve run Onmund’s favor quest with this alt.

Last but not least, ran into Alduin resurrecting Viinturuth as I got closer to Windhelm! Which just goes to demonstrate that what I thought was an earlier Viinturuth sighting was actually Alduin himself. Which I should have realized, because Alduin is the only actually actively dark named dragon in the game, I think.

(And, this tells me to doublecheck in Shenner’s game too, since I haven’t killed Viinturuth in her run yet either.)

Next time

22 down, 2 to go! I’ll pick up Faanshi’s next session with running Ansilvund, and then I’ll see about destroying the Dark Brotherhood.

And somewhere in there I also need to run the Book of Love quest, just for the Amulet of Mara I’ll get out of it. Because I want to marry Jordis before I head off to Solstheim with Faanshi!

Screenshots

No screenshots this time.