In Which Gyllerah Accidentally Unleashes Dragons, But Also Saves Stonefalls

This post for Gyllerah in ESO covers a full half a month in time, but a whole lot of that was general writs and crafting action–so less to go over here than you’d think. Main actual RP action here was finishing off the Demon Weapon plot with Abnur Tharn and Khamira; running some side plot action in Stonefalls (some of which was fun, some of which decidedly not); and finishing up the main Ebonheart Pact plot in Stonefalls as well.

Play by play

Play dates: 6/29-7/15/2023
Session numbers in this run: 253-269

Writs and crafting action (across several days)

Writs and crafting, often relying on Marwyth to yoink ingredients off the Daggerfall ships
Master writs, which led me to getting enough writ vouchers to buy enchanting and jewelry stations for Cliffshade, and research scrolls to beat down research timers
Dipped into master writs chucked into the Guild bank, as well as ones I got off my own writ rewards
Maxed out Enchanting finally and was able to start doing Enchanting master writs
Learned nirnhoned as a trait on something, finally, and unlocked a new dye color for that achievement
Made level 36 gear for Marwyth
Periodic fishing and harvesting of ingredients on Artaeum
Antiquities in Eastmarch and Stormhaven
Killing of free-roaming draugr in Eastmarch to try to get guts for a Provisioning master writ
Survey reports in Bangkorai and Stormhaven (first time doing any surveys in Stormhaven)
20,000 gold as a daily reward was very helpful in letting me buy more bank space
post-trial, worked on crafting
Did a whole bunch of extra crafting and antiquities to pay for a Dawn-Prism to replace the one Amy gave me for Triune necklace research

Thursday the 29th

Returned to the plot with Abnur Tharn and Khamira; went off to Cormount to find the wagon that would take me to the Halls of Colossus, and met up with Tharn and Khamira there
As soon as we showed up, EARTHQUAKE, gee, that’s not the slightest bit suspicious or anything
Also, not the slightest bit suspicious that the place is chock full of carvings and reliefs of DRAGONS all over the place
Ran the place and took out assorted minions of Euraxia Tharn; had to jump down into a hole to pursue some of the minions, which I was a bit daunted by until I woke up Almalexia’s Lantern and got a better look and just jumped down in
(Didn’t have to worry actually, because that then triggered a zone change as opposed to my breaking my damn fool neck, which is what I would have expected in Skyrim)
Also, Tharn snarked about how I could have just waited for his portal
Solved some more reflected light puzzles
Got to the end of the ruins at which point Khamira clued in that oh shit the weapon is dragons
Tharn was all “well fuck, I don’t have any use for dragons, but c’mon let’s put an end to this”
We took out the last minion only, more earthquake
Tharn whipped out the Wrathstone to try to block a great door from opening, only, exact wrong thing to do, because it just opened up faster
And SURPRISE! LOTS OF ESCAPING DRAGONS
Khamira, Tharn, and Narrator: “Oh shit, that’s bad”
Tharn opened another portal and we boinged back to his camp for general “well shit, this sucks, we’re going to have to go warn Elsweyr that we just released a fuckton of dragons into their territory” purposes
Abnur gave me a quest reward and told me he’d be in touch
After that, boinged off to Stonefalls and ran the Coral Heart plot; this played through pretty much the same way it had done for Marwyth
Settled the situation with the dreugh, and sanctified the skeletal remains for the priestess of Vivec
Picked up the skyshard by the same neat statue I’d seen as Marwyth
Resolved the quest with Holgunn (and got his crack about making me a Thane of Whiterun, they’ll take ANYBODY, har har har yes game I see what you did there)
Got next quest to head off to Fort Virak and hoofed it in that direction
Got the skyshard up on the ridge
But this time actually decided to run the plot at Sulfur Pools
Stopped to talk to the guy who asked if I’d brought troops, and offered to help him find his family members
Found his sons, then found his wife and daughter hiding in a cave
The daughter was protecting the mother, who’d been stabbed with a poison blade by the local covenant commander (who was clearly a dick)
Went and set some supplies on fire to draw the guy out, and then took him out
Parallel to that, asked by another NPC to help him recover their scattered guar
Had to recover harnesses off some dead guar and use those to hook the still living guar back up, which convinced them to trundle back over to their stable; recovered six guar
Got rewards for both quests and considered that enough adventuring for now

Sunday the 2nd

Went back to Deshaan to run Fort Virak
Discovered the Zabamat dolmen nearby, which fired off when I got near it
Did happy fun Dark Anchor time! Anchor defeated! Loot achieved!
Then ran Fort Virak, again pretty much same way as with Marwyth, including the part where getting discovered as a wisp kept happening to me
Took out General Serien at the end, and this time I caught the part where his ghost killed Garyn, and Garyn’s father flipped out
Got the objective to head to Kragenmoor and deal with Tanval flipping out
On the way though decided to get in some side questing
First: found Caalorne, the trader hanging out not far from Sathram Plantation; he had a quest to go to the nearby Sheogorath’s Tongue delve and recover several potions that had been stolen from him
Took this quest and ran the delve, which was fairly easy, really; got the potions, got the delve skyshard, and took out the delve bosses, of which there were two
Was going to go to Sathram Plantation after that to check out the story there, but on the way there got hailed by Scout Galsar, who did the thing where he ran right up to me to ask for help
He was an Ashlander whose tribe’s wise woman needed help, so I went “oh cool Ashlanders” and went to go check out the situation
Talked to the wise woman and got her quest to get flowers and herbal ingredients to take to the temple, then showed up at the temple to help administer the gathered medicines to dying soldiers
The curate asked me to pray to the Tribunal for help
Servant of Almalexia showed up when I prayed and did in fact remember me from the earlier Ebonheart plot; called me “the child whose soul was stolen”
Almalexia’s Servant advised me to go and take some ash samples from a couple of urns down in the chapel, which I used to summon ghosts of fallen Ordinators
Defeated them in battle and convinced them to help defend the temple
The wise woman showed up and gave me an artifact to try to soothe the attacking renegades
Had to deliberately collapse the mine tunnels that the renegades were trying to use to get into the temple
Also still had to take out the Ashkan, though, because clearly he was a dick
Talked to the wise woman after, and she lamented her tribe not having a male eligible to take the position of Ashkan
Situation diffused, so moved on, finally reached Sathram Plantation, and started running the plot there
Found the scout just outside the place who was freaking out about her commander apparently having gone berserk and killing a bunch of their own squad
Ran in to find the guy and he claimed to be killing strange doubles of his troops, and demanded I speak to him to prove I wasn’t one of the doubles he’d killed
Learned from him that there was some sort of weird creature on the loose that was able to duplicate people’s bodies
Tracked the creature into a cellar and killed it after it had duplicated one of Ulov’s scouts
Tracked the creature out from there to a stable where I found a Dunmer woman named Ruvali (who I actively hated as a character on racism grounds, see below)
This woman said she’d been separated from her husband when the plantation slaves revolted
Had to find Ruvali’s house because she claimed to have an idol that the creature was scared of
Also found that her husband was dead and duplicated by the creature; used the idol on the duplicate to prove to Ruvali that her husband had been killed
She named Ra-shadda as a Khajiit shaman who’d summoned the creature as part of the slaves in general rioting on the plantation
Found Ra-shadda and questioned him; learned that he’d summoned the creature in vengeance for his wife being tortured to death by their masters, but now he regretted summoning the thing and gave me instructions on what to do to dispel it
Used the idol I’d taken on five spirits to kill him and capture their essence
Went to report back to Ruvali, who had spoken to Ra-shadda while I was killing the spirits
The game gave me no option to hand this vicious woman over to the slaves, it only gave me a choice of whether or not to agree with her that Ra-shadda needed to be punished; I explicitly told her I believed Ra-shadda mourned his wife
Ran off again to hit a nearby altar and finish charging the idol
Returned to Ruvali and found her untying Ra-shadda
Ulov showed up again, only he was a double, so had to kill him as the creature had taken him as his final victim
Parallel to all of this:
- Took skyshard while exploring the estate
- Found a side plot involving other slaves who had rioted, most of whom appeared to be dead
- The last one, J’kur, had a note for someone named Vahara, who I found outside the plantation on my way out; had to tell her J’kur, who she’d grown up with in Senchal and clearly had romantic feelings for, was dead
- And I had to leave her alone to mourn him
All in all a brutal little plotline–and it didn’t even dispel the dro-m’Athra still haunting the plantation, so so overall not satisfying 😛
That was quite enough of that for the night

Saturday the 15th

Spent pre-trial hours running dolmens in Stormhaven, to try to practice using Spell Power Cure + Pillager’s Profit armor combo
Ran trial at Kyne’s Aegis with the Guild
This actually went pretty well I feel, did a decent job of keeping up with folks and throwing heals in directions when needed
And we actually had time to run the trial twice, so I scarfed up a bunch of Roaring Opportunist gear
Later, ran Kragenmoor and Tormented Spire in Stonefalls to finish up that part of the Ebonheart Pact plot
Explicitly declined to go take out the Vanguard captain for the Grandmaster in Kragenmoor, just because Gyllerah is doing Cadwell’s Silver and doesn’t need that for completion
Played through Tormented Spire pretty much the same way Marwyth did
Got the quest at the end to move on to Deshaan and deal with the plague

Running the Halls of Colossus with Abnur Tharn and Khamira

I liked the tail end of the Demon Weapon plot, though it did put me in the direct line of fire of a bunch of Abnur Tharn’s snark. Like, say, the part where I had to jump down into a hole to go after some of Euraxia Tharn’s minions, and he threw a line about how I could have just waited for him to open a portal, y’know.

My dude, if you’d actually offered to open a portal, I wouldn’t have had to jump into the hole, now would I? Sheesh. Insert obligatory “Shut up, Tharn!” here. 😉

And I gotta giggle a little that it took until the very end of the Halls of Colossus for either Tharn or Khamira to clue in that the secret weapon we were looking for was, in fact, dragons. I have a bit of a suspension of disbelief problem here, just because of having a hard time imagining how, exactly, a group of dragons got sealed into a place they didn’t want to be. Especially given that ESO dragons are a lot harder core than the ones in Skyrim, and by extension, I feel like the ones in the legend behind this plot would have been even more powerful.

So how the fuck did Khunzar-ri actually manage to seal them in? And what had the dragons been doing all this time? Were they actually awake or in some kind of magical suspension?

I did LOL at Abnur Tharn’s consternation about this reveal, though. He clearly didn’t expect it, or make it to the point of realizing that a) if the weapon was dragons, then b) MAYBE OPENING A LOCKED GATE IN THE SECRET RUINS WASN’T A GOOD IDEA?

I kind of wish I could see the scene where Abnur Tharn has to explain to the new Mane Shazah exactly how the hell he managed to cause dragons to rampage across Elsweyr. And as I write this, I realize that this must surely be the in-game explanation for why dragons do in fact rampage across Elsweyr in the random world events players can run there! As well as why the Dragonguard has been rallied to try to fight them.

Side plot at Sulfur Pools in Stonefalls

I ran this plot specifically because Marwyth hadn’t, and it let me vary it up a bit between the two alts I have running right now.

I’d thought this location was Hrogar’s Hold, but I was mistaken! The two are right next to one another, and there’s a whole separate plot with the hold according to the wiki. I may or may not swing back to run that plot later. Don’t know yet.

But at any rate, there was good action here with the various little quests to help out the family and guar herders there. I particularly liked the part where I got to set some supplies on fire just to draw out the Covenant commander, so I could take him out. (And I kinda feel like Marwyth would have been way more entertained by setting things on fire than Gyllerah was, LOL.)

Other side plots in Deshaan

I liked running the Sheogorath’s Tongue delve. And suspect it’s probably not wise to inquire too closely as to why, exactly, that place is called Sheogorath’s Tongue. 😉

And I also quite liked the plot with the Ashlander tribe that had a schism between followers of their Ashkan, and followers of their wise woman. This was my first real look at Ashlanders in ESO, and it was cool to see how they’re portrayed in this game. Probably best as well that I came into this plot first as Gyllerah, too. I expect Marwyth would have a much more complex reaction to running this one!

Especially the part where the curate of the temple asks the player to pray to the Tribunal for help. Gyllerah’s all “sure, why not”, but I envision Marwyth balking hard at that and having to think fast about whether she should advertise that she is not, in fact, a worshipper of the Tribunal.

The continuity of the Servant of Almalexia recognizing me as the “child whose soul was stolen” was a nice touch–this being the same Servant of Almalexia who showed up for me during the earlier Ebonheart plot. And I won’t even quibble here about whether the Servant should have registered that my soul was stolen, because I actually ran that plot before I finished Coldharbour! (Had I not done so, and instead run the Ebonheart plot as part of my current Cadwell’s Silver run, it would have made quite a bit less sense.)

I do wish I would have had the opportunity to propose to the wise woman after the plot was over that maybe, just maybe, her tribe could consider appointing a woman to be Ashkan. Just a thought.

Sathram Plantation

I want to like this plot more than I did, because it was a good crunchy plot in many ways. But it had the problem of a screamingly racist character that I really, really did not enjoy interacting with.

Ruvali, the widow of the plantation owner who gets killed by the creature rampaging through the place, had a lot of really horrible commentary about Khajiit being animals and “incapable of normal emotions”. And she also ranted about how she and her husband were going to expand the plantation and trade out their Khajiit slaves for Bretons and Redguards. This was not any more palatable than her attitudes about Khajiit.

And you also get with her one of those checkpoints where you have to choose what to do based on your dialogue with her–which in this case is whether to punish the Khajiit who’d caused the body-duplicating creature to rampage across the plantation to begin with. Your choices are to pitch to her that Ra-Shadda’s actions were driven by grief over mourning his wife, or to agree with her that he should be punished.

This woman’s racism was so blatant that I was actively pissed off that I didn’t get option C, “refuse to acknowledge she had any authority whatsoever in this place, and leave her to the mercies of her former slaves”. As an Eye of the Queen, a citizen of the Aldmeri Dominion, someone who was instrumental in helping Mane Shazah gain power in Elsweyr, and someone who I envision as specifically having a background spending some of her childhood in Elsweyr, I cannot abide the idea that Gyllerah would put up for an instant with a woman who’d actively enslaved Khajiit.

And Ruvali is lucky that I ran this plot as Gyllerah rather than Marwyth. Because Marwyth, Ashlander and active abolitionist, would have had even less patience with her and may well have just killed her on the spot.

Plus, it was frustrating that resolving the plot didn’t even dispel the dro-m’Athra loose on the plantation grounds. And I had to go tell one of the few surviving escaped slaves that her beloved, who’d masterminded the whole revolt, had died.

All in all, definitely not satisfying. But at least Ra-shadda and Vahara survived, so there’s that. And Ruvali gets to be destitute maybe, because seriously, fuck that racist slaving bitch straight into the sun.

I will not be running this plot as Marwyth.

Finishing up the Stonefalls plotline

This was mostly played out the same way Marwyth did it, with one exception: in Kragenmoor, I explicitly declined to go kill a Vanguard captain for Kragenmoor’s Grandmaster. Partly because I didn’t explicitly need that for Cadwell’s Silver, and partly also just because it seemed unnecessarily vengeful when Marwyth did it. And I didn’t want to do it again.

And that put me in position to send Gyllerah on into Deshaan, and follow in Marwyth’s footsteps to deal with the plague plot.