In Which Shenner Saves a Moth Priest for the Dawnguard

Double session post, mostly all about moving the Dawnguard plot along. With bonus brief return to Solstheim!

Highlights

• Play date: 10/8, 10/9/2022
• Session number in this run: 64-65
• Picked up where I left off in Dimhollow Crypt
• Freed Serana and ran the rest of Dimhollow; got the word off the Word Wall and got out of the crypt
• Fast traveled to Lower Steepfall Burrow to get within range of Castle Volkihar
• Got on Swift Wind for riding and headed that way
• Paused for picking up with Skyrim Together (see following post)
• Came back next session and picked up on the beach where I’d left off
• Rode to Icewater Jetty
• Escorted Serana to Castle Volkihar and dropped her off
• Nope, Harkon, hard pass on the vampire thing; he kicked me back out of the castle
• Boinged with Gogh to Solitude
• Sold a bunch of things at Bits and Pieces
• Found the Khajiit on site so also sold stuff to Ma’dran
• Boinged to Fort Dawnguard to check in
• Helped Isran fight off the vamp attack, and got tasked to go find Sorine and Gunmar
• Boinged to Whiterun first and sold stuff to Ri’saad since Khajiit were on site there too
• Also sold things to Adrianne
• Boinged to Harmugstahl to get in range of Sorine
• Saw a dragon spawn but it didn’t get close enough to fight
• Convinced Sorine to go to Fort Dawnguard
• Boinged to Bonechill Pass to meet up with Gunmar
• Four red dots showed up on my HUD but then vanished, so don’t know what kind of hostiles they were o.O
• Went into the cave and helped Gunmar take out an ice wraith, a snow bear, and the target cave bear
• He agreed to go to Fort Dawnguard
• Boinged there to meet him and Sorine
• Did next encounter with Serana to get the pointer to find a Moth Priest
• Boinged to Riften and questioned the carriage driver to get pointer to Dragon Bridge
• And while I was talking to him vampires showed up; fight on! Carriage driver even jumped in on the fight, but the vamps took out one of the guards before it was over
• Nabbed all their stuff and went in and sold a bunch of it to Balimund
• (I think but am not sure that I may have leveled up to 66 by this point? So let’s say I did for argument’s sake; took Health bump, took Elven Smithing perk again)
• Got five rounds of Smithing training from Balimund while I was selling stuff to him
• Boinged next to Dragon Bridge and questioned a guard to get the pointer for which way Dexion went
• Rode over on unicorn and investigated the ambushed wagon
• Then hit Forebear’s Holdout and rescued Dexion
• Serana raised one of the other vamps after I nabbed all her gear, so we had a naked zombie vamp for a few minutes, LOL
• Boinged back to Fort Dawnguard to check in
• Got Dexion to read the first Elder Scroll
• Got Serana to ask about going to find her mother and agreed to go with her to Castle Volkihar
• Checked in with Sorine, sold her a bunch of things, also got quest to find Florentius, and got her first crossbow quest
• Checked in with Gunmar and got a full set of heavy Dawnguard gear as I am in heavy armor mode right now
• Spent a little time improving that armor for the smithing practice
• Found Isran and got his sanction to go find Florentius
• Boinged to Solstheim next because the crossbow quest was at Hrodulf’s House
• Hostile High Elf at Old Attius Farm
• Killed a few ash hoppers and a couple of ash spawn as well on the way to the house
• Found the unmarked location with a skeleton and a treasure chest, and LOL, Serana raised the skeleton
• Took out the reavers in the house’s cellar, and Serana raised the leader, who then still recited all his usual bandit lines before he disintegrated
• Got the schematic
• Overloaded so Daedric-horse’d to Raven Rock
• Hi Glover! Hi Milore! Hi Fethis! Here’s some stuff for you to buy off me!
• Boinged from there back to Windhelm, then boinged to Shor’s Watchtower to get to Ruunvald
• Dragon showed up, and a bear, and another two vigilants vs. three dremora battle
• So we got in on that action, took out the dremora, and Serana raised one of the Vigilants
• Then we took out the dragon
• Found Tolvald’s Cave during the fight
• Went up to mark the location of Ruunvald
• Mined the quicksilver vein nearby
• Got the Dawnguard war axe and the journal outside
• Boinged back to Riften to offload stuff
• Did some alchemy and enchanting at Honeyside
• Sold dragon bits to Elgrim
• Sold a bunch of other things to Balimund, Madesi, Bersi, and Brand-Shei
• Boinged back to Ruunvald
• Stopped there and saved for the night

Commentary

Not too much new to comment on here since this is all a fairly straightforward run through the Dawnguard plot.

Main fun notable thing here was that Sorine did send me back to Solstheim to go get her that first crossbow schematic. I’d kind of skipped Hrodulf’s House on purpose when I was officially running Dragonborn with Shenner, since as I’ve written before, I don’t particularly care for that location’s backstory. But I don’t mind stopping there if I have a particular quest objective to fulfill.

And it was, admittedly, hilarious to see that resurrected reaver spouting off the usual reaver lines. Serana’s resurrected thralls usually aren’t that chatty! I’m going to have to see if this repros in Faanshi’s run, since she’s got Serana there.

It definitely feels odd having a summonable horse already, when I haven’t yet reached the Soul Cairn and gotten Arvak. Having the Daedric horse has certainly been helpful, and it was specifically helpful in this session. But I think at this point I do actually legit prefer Arvak! Because he’s actually got a bit of a backstory, and the soul of his owner goes out of his way to tell you all about how he’s a good horse and entrusts him to you. Which is charming even if Arvak is an undead ghost horse. 😉

And the last thing I’ll note here is that all of this action was done in the Windows 11 VM on my new Mac. Skyrim, unlike Skyrim Together and Elder Scrolls Online, seems to have no problems whatsoever running on an ARM build of Windows. Bethesda has patched the Skyrim binary recently, so I wonder if making it build on ARM was part of recent work?

And I do definitely appreciate playing Skyrim on a computer-sized thing. I knew that already from playing Shenner on my PC laptop, but I appreciate it all the more on a laptop where I can play with Ultra-tier graphics.

It occurs to me, as I think I may have mentioned before, that Sorine’s crossbow quests are less important in a run that includes the AE. Because I’m already carrying around an Enhanced Ebony Crossbow, which is going to pack a bigger punch than the Enhanced Dwarven Crossbow I’ll be able to build once I get all those schematics. Moreover, I even saw multiple serious business crossbows in Sorine’s own inventory when I bought stuff from her.

However, I feel like her quests will still be worth doing for the sake of being able to make exploding crossbow bolts. 😀

Next time

Time to run Ruunvald and free Florentius! Then I’ll probably boing back to Fort Dawnguard to check in, give Sorine her first schematic, and get her quest for the next one. And also get the Stendarr’s Aura spell off of Florentius.

Then it’ll be time to go hit Castle Volkihar with Serana! Probably won’t make it all the way to the Soul Cairn in Shenner’s next session, but that’s likely session after that.

Screenshots

Editing to add

• 10/30/2022: I was wrong, I did actually have screenshots for this post! I found them misplaced in my Windows 11 VM on my Mac, because I hadn’t set up the VM correctly to save screenshots out to my usual spot. I’ve corrected that problem. So I’ve added the screenshots I missed.
• 11/23/2023: Restored missing gallery.
• 10/11/2024: Converted gallery to native WordPress one.