In Which Kendis Confronts Alduin, Interrupts Necromancers, and Recovers a Shard

Wow, I am super behind on my playthrough posts. And I’ve been so heavily playing ESO lately that my Skyrim playthroughs have actually lagged! I’ve hit a point where ESO has become more interesting just because it’s got way more content I actually haven’t played yet.

But that said, here are the last three sessions I’ve done with Kendis on the Switch, the earliest of which was back in late May, and the last of which was last night.

Play by play

Play dates: 5/24, 6/4, 7/7/2023
Session numbers in this run: 66-68

Wednesday May 24th

Picked up at Jorrvaskr with Aela as follower
Headed out from there to stables only to realize at that point that right, I didn’t have Yngvi, i couldn’t saddle up
So fast traveled to Hob’s Fall Cave to get within range of Yngvild
Heard snow bear but did not engage; did however engage snowy sabre cat en route to the island
Ran Yngvild as fast as possible
Tried to avoid the ghosts but they didn’t give me the option, so had to take them out along with the draugr
Explicitly declined to pick up the journals, or the Stone of Barenziah
Got the werewolf totem out of the chest as well as other loot
Returned with Aela to Whiterun and put the werewolf totem in the Underforge
Got Rulnik following me again from Breezehome
Hoofed it northward from Whiterun across the plains
Dragon vs. giant at the Western Watchtower; dragon won the fight so I looted the giant
Made it to Stonehill Bluff with no trouble
First giant was standing outside the access up into the camp; tried to sneak past him but he spotted Gogh, so okay fine I guess we’re doing this
Took out that giant, then snuck into the camp
Remembered I was carrying a boatload of invisibility potions so used one
Got to the mammoth tusk powder, got sample, and ran like hell; did not have to engage the other giant
Boinged to the Throat of the World and HI PAARTHURNAX
Read the Elder Scroll and did the cutscene (without moving, since this is a Switch playthrough, didn’t want to trigger the cutscene bug)
Got Dragonrend
HI ALDUIN
Smacked him several times with Dragonrend to keep him grounded, and pelted him with crossbow bolts, with a few extra for principle while he was pontificating 😉
Had convo with Paarthurnax about trapping an ally of Alduin’s at Dragonsreach
Got the sample of Unmelting Snow
Boinged to Windhelm
Went into the White Phial to talk to Quintus and gave him the ingredients; he restored the Phial and took it to Nurelion, but whoops RIP Nurelion
Got the Phial and told Quintus to make it bolster my magic
Hoofed it south from Windhelm and picked up rest of remaining Jazbay grapes needed
Boinged to Sarethi Farm
Found Rift guard fighting Imperial soldier; Avrusa ran off out of the way; Imperial soldier won the fight, and I did not interfere
Backed off to talk to Avrusa when the fight was over; gave her the Jazbay grapes and resolved the quest
Hoofed it off from there over to the island that has Geirmund’s Hall
Fished at the fishing spot there; finally found the Ring of Kynareth but didn’t get any interesting fish
Went back by Lakeview to check on the bookshelf situation; yep, upper shelf of that bookshelf still fucked; I think I triggered the bug where if you take a book while you’re reading it, it fucks up the shelf count?
Cleared the entire bookcase
Stopped by Windstad to drop off books in the library wing
Saved there for the night

Sunday June 4th

Picked up at Windstad Manor
Boinged to Statue of Meridia to run Wolfskull Cave
Zombie horde!
Reached and ran Wolfskull Cave as per previous playthroughs; take that, necromancers! Take that, Queen Potato!
Overloaded when I got out so summoned Arvak and boinged to Solitude
Sold a bunch of stuff until I wasn’t overloaded anymore
Went to the Blue Palace to check in with Falk; yep I sure did take care of Queen Potato for you
Boinged next to Septimus’ outpost to give him the blood samples
Cue opening up the Dwemer box and Septimus going poof
Kendis was not thrilled with Hermaeus Mora oozing his way back into her presence, but did read the book though!
Took the Path of Magic and leveled up to 55; took Health bump and Adept Alteration perk
Boinged to College of Winterhold next
Took five rounds of training in Illusion from Drevis
Sold some enchanted things to him and Tolfdir
Came back outside from that and cue Ancient Dragon! It actually flew around a bit just outside the college, so I had to fight it out on the bridge–where I saw the slightly disturbing visual of Yngvi going over the side 😮
Dragon finally crashed onto the Hall of Countenance, so ran in there to attack it
Faralda came with, as did Rulnik and Gogh; s’allright Faralda, I got this
Finally withdrew and went back out to try to find Yngvi; did a circuit around the perimeter of the college but couldn’t find him; when I came back, though, he was back in place in the college courtyard
Mounted up and boinged to Whiterun; sold a few more things
Boinged to Lakeview and saved there until next time

Friday the 7th

Picked up at Lakeview
Did a bunch of resource gathering with the intent to hit the three houses and see if I needed to build anything else
But first did a bunch of Alchemy, and spot checked remaining building at Lakeview
Started seeing graphical sharding when I went outside though to find Yngvi, spiking off of Kendis’ backpack in particular
Boinged to Windstad but got a repro of the NOTHING RENDERING AT ALL bug when I arrived
This was extra alarming given that I heard Rulnik and Gogh attacking… something
Tried to fast travel back to Lakeview and then back to Windstad, but issue reproed
Boinged to Heljarchen instead, but still got graphical sharding, spikes off of Kendis’ backpack whenever I was at a workbench
Rebooted the Switch, restarted the game, and it went away
Did some spotchecking of building at Heljarchen; got Marcurio to replenish the log supply
Boinged back to Windstad for additional building checking
Got skeevers in the cellar
Did a bunch of tanning and then made a bunch of leather armor to sell, and one gold necklace
Came back upstairs again to get Yngvi, and go on a selling run
First stop: Solitude, at all merchants, and also the Khajiit outside
Issue reproed with the Khajiit not having their tents
Next stop: Markarth
Main notable thing there was overhearing a conversation between Endon and Kerah and their kid; more on this below
Next stop: Whiterun, where I sold assorted things
Next stop: college, where I sold things, but less than I wanted
And I was already maxed out on training so couldn’t load up anybody with my gold
Decided that was enough selling things for now
Boinged to Tundra Homestead to get within range of running Raldbthar for the final Aetherium shard
Got Ancient Dragon vs. giant
Dragon killed the giant, and then came after us, because its flight path came over us way close
Took out the dragon, and left dragon and giant loot in the chest by the forge
Rode over towards Raldbthar
Passed bear, wasn’t going to engage, but Gogh went after it so had to swing back to kill it
Spawn point near Fellglow Keep triggered cultists and a Blood Dragon, so took the lot of them out
Rode up to Shearpoint then and realized that there was another dragon parked on top of the Word Wall–so the dragon we’d just killed was not the Shearpoint dragon
Did not engage new Shearpoint dragon; instead, headed eastward to Raldbthar
Hit silver vein on the way
Hit the outside shelf with the chest and assorted other loot
Yngvi and I reached the outside bandits, and Yngvi went to town horn-stabbing them and stomping on them
Onward into Raldbthar!
Once again one-shotted Alain Dufont
Had trouble getting Rulnik and Gogh past both of the spinning blade traps; Rulnik did better, and Gogh auto-caught up with me once I was far enough past the traps
Didn’t bother with stealth to try to get past all the Falmer; Team Dragonborn was too large and conjure-y at this point
Got all the interesting loot in various places
Freed up all the gears to open the door and took out the centurion
HI KATRIA and oh hey look the final Aetherium shard! See you at the forge!
Got final boss loot out of there and took the elevator back out again
Quaffed a potion because overloaded at this point
Boinged back to Tundra Homestead and picked up loot from there
Tried to ride over to Whiterun to sell stuff, but at the crossroads near Honningbrew, a fight broke out
Guards started shooting at something, and I heard arrows hitting nearby me
Went to investigate, found dead bandit chief, so looted his stuff
Found dead sabre cat just past the crossroads, and a live terrified bandit who ran off as soon as Yngvi went after him; he did not get very far
Rounded up assorted loot and finally, this time, made it into Whiterun and sold a whole bunch of stuff
Returned to Lakeview and stashed what non-expendable stuff I still had on me, including finding somewhere to put Aegisbane on display, as well as the two enchanted glass weapons I got out of Raldbthar
Saved there for the night

Commentary

I was legit kind of surprised at myself that I’ve gone weeks without doing a Skyrim session. This has two major causes.

One: ESO does have way more content I haven’t actually played yet, which makes it inherently more interesting to me.

And two: Between the Switch being unpredictable with the weird graphic glitches lately, as well as still having some residual disgruntlement over having bailed on Survival Mode, I’ve been less eager to pick up again with Kendis’s playthrough.

But I’m too much of a completist to bail on playthroughs in progress entirely. So I did at least want to clear my backlog of Kendis RP!

Most of this post covers stuff I’ve done before in previous playthroughs, of course. But one of the new things I can talk about is running a Companions quest with Aela to go get one of the werewolf totems. Which, I am sad to admit, was not nearly as interesting as I was hoping it would be. It was basically a lot like any other “go to this location and kill all the baddies to get the thing” quest in Skyrim. With the added disadvantage of the locale for this particular quest being Yngvild, which I’m on the record as disliking just because the necromancer there is horrible.

Plus, once we actually got the totem, all I had to do with it was put it in the Underforge back at Jorrvaskr. There wasn’t even any interesting conversation with Aela to be had about it. I really feel like there should be more with this, but ah well. It just strengthens my resolve to de-wolf Kendis.

Running the first part of the Potema plot didn’t go any differently than it has for me in any other playthrough, but thanks to a recent Skyrim Together Reborn session, I will forever now be thinking of her as Queen Potato. LOLOL. 😆

And I’ll say this though–even with six completed Skyrim playthroughs and two more in progress, I’m still occasionally running into new things in the game.

Case in point: stopping in Markarth on my selling run in last night’s session. I don’t have Vlindrel Hall yet with this character, so I went into the inn to rent a room. And while in there, I heard Endon the silversmith having a conversation with his wife Kerah and his daughter Adara–about when her brother Cade would be coming home.

I had no idea Endon and Kerah had a son! And apparently a son that went off to fight for the Stormcloaks!

Endon wistfully told her that Cade wouldn’t be coming back to them until the war was over. And, heh, well, dude, got news: I put a stop to that war! If Cade’s not back yet, he’s not coming. Sorry. I’m pretty sure I didn’t kill him, but if I didn’t, one of my fellow Imperials probably did!

But anyway, I like this not only for character development reasons, but also because Endon’s family is a Redguard family. And this means Cade is a Redguard fighting for the Stormcloaks. He is clearly someone who made the opposite choice Kendis herself did! And weird as I find the idea of a Redguard voluntarily fighting for a faction who’d just as soon have all the non-Nords out of Skyrim, I also can’t exactly fault the idea either. There are multiple Nord/Redguard NPC couples present in the game. And Hammerfell did secede from the Empire. I can easily see brash young Redguard lads being sympathetic to the Nords wanting to do so, too.

What also makes this interesting from a “family development” standpoint: apparently Endon’s grandfather actually fought for the Legion. And Adara asked her father if she could join the Legion when she grows up!

Heh. Another part where Kendis was probably thinking, “Legion’s doing fine, thanks!”

And now I’m imagining a headcanon where Kendis does in fact reach out to this family. The game doesn’t give you any real reason to talk to Endon if you’re not playing the Thieves Guild. But I could definitely see Kendis paying her respects to a Redguard family here. Maybe even offering to try to find out if Cade survived the war, and if Endon and Kerah actually got the news that Ulfric Stormcloak had been defeated.

Last but not least, took Rulnik and Gogh into Raldbthar, to run the place and get the last Aetherium shard for Katria.

And I swear, it is never not funny to confront Alain Dufont. He’s stupidly easy to kill. And possibly also just stupid if he thinks he’s going to hold out against a woman armored up a hell of a lot more than he is, and carrying nastier weapons.

As per previous playthroughs, I had issues getting Rulnik and Gogh past the spinning blade traps in this ruin. Rulnik kinda did okay, particularly after I’d loaded him up with a flotilla of healing potions. But poor Gogh just could not make it past the blades without losing all his hitpoints.

I felt sorry leaving him behind, but on the other hand, he did automatically catch up pretty quickly. He may have only about three hitpoints, but he does at least catch up quickly after you move on!

Next time

I’m feeling like I want to clear out the pending quests on Kendis’ queue, and then send her off to Solstheim with Rulnik to run Dragonborn. And right now I’m feeling like hitting the Aetherium forge, and doing the rest of the Cause quest.

Screenshots

No screenshots this time.