In Which Gyllerah Discovers the Secret of a Flooded Ruin

After the big action of the previous session, it was a bit of a nice break to do a side quest! Namely, at the Corgrad Wastes.

Highlights

• Play date: 10/16/2022
• Session number in this run: 15
• Went out with the intent to try to find a spot of foul water to fish in, since I had an absolute boatload of foul water bait
• Killed assorted critters, and was killed once by a gryphon; used this as a bunch of practice for bow as well as soul trap
• Never did find that fishing hole, and instead wound up getting pointers for three different side quests
• First up: Linwenvar telling me about a murder that had happened nearby at the Russafeld Winery, and investigators needing a third person to help out
• Took the quest but didn’t run it yet
• Next up: talked to an NPC near the Illumination Academy, Merenfire, an Altmer who was doing a very bad impersonation of a Nord warrior
• Upon questioning her, got pointed at a mage at the nearby Academy
• Again, took the quest but haven’t run it yet, was still more in the mood to try to fish
• Got to the area right around Corgrad Wastes and stopped to talk to a Khajiit, Amsha, who warned me about the area being cursed and lamented that some of his friends wouldn’t leave, because they were looking for others that had gone missing
• Went to check out the situation at a nearby vagrant camp, and discovered the vagrants were at odds with a nobleman, Faidur, over whether they had the right to be in the area
• Spoke to Faidur, who was right there, and discovered he was less of an asshole than I would have expected given the intro to the conversation
• Faidur asked for my assistance in investigating the ruins, as they were his family’s ancestral home and he was trying to discover its history and why it had been abandoned
• We broke into the place and started searching it for clues
• Found some tattered journals and scraps of letters, suggesting that the place and its village had been hit by the Thrassian Plague
• Also found, further down in the ruined manor, a pack of feral elves in ragged clothing with a leader who greeted us politely–AT FIRST
• So of course they captured Faidur and I had to rescue him, as well as the other still surviving missing vagrants
• Took out the ferals’ leader, then found the so-called Saviors, who were Faidur’s actual ancestors and who were using blood magic on the descendants of their villagers to keep themselves alive, yikes no
• Destroyed the stone the Saviors were intending to use to drain Faidur to revitalize themselves
• Returned to Alinor after that to do a little crafting, organizing of loot, and deconstruction of items; successfully made Adept Rider greaves! First time I’ve made a craftable set item

Commentary

I started this play expecting to try to re-find a location I’d stumbled across before for doing foul water fishing. I have an absolute boatload of bait for that kind of fishing, but so far in exploring Summerset, I have found only one spot where I could actually use that bait. So my plan was to try to find that spot again.

Not so much in actual practice. Instead, I wound up picking up not one, not two, but three leads for side quests.

First up: found a guy called Linwenvar who lamented to me that wine availability at the local winery had taken a hard blow, due to a murder. He told me that murder was stymied as investigators needed a third person to participate, due to protocol. So since the conversation clearly wanted me to do so, I agreed to go check out the situation and volunteer to be the third investigator.

Yet another example of “I’m the player character so of course random NPCs are going to point me in the direction of situations where interfering strangers should under no circumstances be actually interfering”. 😉 But hey, I guess Linwenvar thought I looked reputable, by which I mean “fellow Altmer”? Or not. Maybe he just wants somebody to restore his access to alcohol sources!

Next up: near the Illumination Academy, stopped to talk to an NPC I’d already noticed before, a High Elf woman named Merenfire who was bellowing a very bad impersonation of a Nord warrior. And didn’t seem the slightest bit fazed by being asked why, in fact, she was talking like a Nord. She seemed to actively believe she was one, and when pressed, directed me up the hill to the academy to talk to a mage up there.

I know a little of what’s going on here, because yeah, I peeked on the wiki! And Paul and I wound up running this little side quest in the next session. More on that in that post.

I was still mostly in the mood to fish, though, so I explored a while longer. Still no sign of the actual fishing hole I was looking for.

Finally, right around the Corgrad Wastes, I decided to go ahead and do some more NPC interaction. Found a Khajiit called Amsha, who, as I noted above, was freaking out about the area being cursed and some of his friends having gone missing.

(I found Amsha also notable because he had a very panther-like look to his overall fur, aside from his white hair and whiskers. He looked very cool.)

So I went to check out the situation with his nearby friends at a vagrant camp. The little group of vagrants was at odds with a nobleman, Faidur, when I got there. They wanted to find missing friends of theirs, while Faidur was challenging their right to be squatting on his ancestral lands. When I spoke to Faidur, though, he turned out to a bit less of an asshole than I’d anticipated. He asked me to help him search the place for clues about its history, since he was trying to find out why his family had shunned the place.

When we started searching it, I found letters and journals hinting that the place had been swamped by a plague, which Faidur identified as the Thrassian Plague. Which, now that I’ve read up on the lore about it, yikes. The disease sounds brutal, and given that the Sload actually deliberately created it and unleashed it on Tamriel, extra yikes.

And once we got further down into the place, we discovered it was not entirely abandoned. We found a pack of feral elves in ragged clothing, with a single leader who could actually speak and who greeted us politely. AT FIRST.

I should have taken it as a warning that Faidur stayed behind to talk to the guy, and asked me to go on ahead–because of course as soon as I got into the next zone, I found evidence that the feral elves were not in fact benign. They had been kidnapping people. And this was the point at which I also heard Faidur yelling for help, as the feral elves nabbed him.

Once I started seeing the feral elves turn hostile, they very heavily reminded me of the Falmer. But this was more of a behavior thing than appearance, really, because they snarled at me similar to how Falmer do in Skyrim. But none of them had any actual weapons or armor. They were just wearing ragged clothes, and their attacks were just swiping at me with their hands.

Turned out though that there was a bigger problem down in these depths. I tracked the quest marker around to some prisoners that needed freeing, which necessitated me finding some keys. I took out the ferals’ leader.

Then I found Faidur, finally–and the so-called Saviors, which turned out to be his actual ancestors who had been responsible for the flooding of the estate and the surrounding village in a desperate attempt to protect everybody from the plague.

Only now his ancestors were all in this weird, withered, practically dormant state, and the only reason they were still alive at all was because they were using blood magic on the descendants of their enslaved villagers. I.e., the feral elves. And they now wanted Faidur to replenish themselves and break out of this weird withered state they were in.

Yeah eighty-nine kinds of no, here.

So I shattered the stone they were trying to use to drain Faidur of his vitality, and got him and the other prisoners the hell out of there. Faidur, in his gratitude, agreed to make nice with the vagrants he’d been previous at odds with, and hoped to use what little power his name and lineage might provide him to bring them some aid and support. And he gave me an heirloom belt and some gold!

With that, I returned to Alinor for a crafting epilogue, and successfully made my first craftable set item, Adept Rider steel greaves, since I had done enough research to let me make that.

Next time

Next post will be all about Paul and I having a little chat with the Proxy Queen in Alinor, and then investigating what exactly was going on at the Illumination Academy!

Screenshots

Editing to add

• 11/24/2023: Restored missing gallery.
• 10/11/2024: Converted gallery to native WordPress one. Changed header graphic to the one I’m using on later Gyllerah posts.