In Which Gyllerah Goes to Northern Elsweyr for a Dragon Problem

It’s been a while since I’ve done ESO posts, for the simple fact that I hit a big ol’ wall of ESO fatigue.

So with that in mind, here’s a catchup post to cover some of the actual RP highlights I’ve done with Gyllerah over the last month and change.

Play by play

Play dates: 8/25, 9/1-9/2, 9/30, 10/2-10/3, 10/7, 10/10, 10/26-10/28/2023
Session numbers in this run: 298-308

Friday 8/25

Ran first part of the Northern Elsweyr plotline, which required me to go find Abnur Tharn in Riverhold in Northern Elsweyr
Tharn sent me off to investigate some power surges that felt familiar to him, and which turned out to be caused by Cadwell
Found Cadwell at the third site of these surges, trying to dig into a grave, which he had apparently dreamed about and which had a mysterious headstone talking about the Betrayer
GOSH I CANNOT IMAGINE HOW THIS IS PLOT RELEVANT XD
Went looking for the defense force outpost which had been completely fucking trashed and which was on fire—due to dragon attack
Volunteered to help and was sent off to recover important military papers; this required me to kill a bunch of undead hostiles as well as some necromancers
Finally found Captain Nala-do and handed the documents off to her
Found Tharn, and he sent me off to follow Khamira and a strike force heading to a source of the necromantic energy he was sensing; destination turned out to be Sleepy Senche Mine
Went in there with Khamira’s team, and we split up to search the place
Killed more undead and necromancer hostiles
Fought my way through to the end, at which point i was hailed by a dragon, Mulaamnir, who called me ‘little morsel’ and basically gave me an ultimatum for me and Tharn to GTFO of Northern Elsweyr
Had an option to tell him that the next death would be me killing him, but that seemed rather more impulsive than appropriate for Gyllerah, so I took the ‘I’ll tell Tharn what you said’ option
Returned to Riverhold and found Tharn in council with Khamira and Gharesh-ri
Told him what the dragon had said, including the part where Euraxia Tharn was the dragons’ “puppet”
We all agreed we would try a parlay with Euraxia in Rimmen
Called a halt there as Tharn gave me a quest reward, until next time
(Also made a whole bunch of level 42 gear for Marwyth)

Friday 9/1

Ran the Selfora plot in Deshaan, pretty much the same as how Marwyth had done it, though I left out the side plot of fetching supplies for the healer
Bought 10 more bank space slots since I went over 70,000 gold
Then boinged over to play Marwyth too

Saturday 9/2

Spectated on trial–was going to run trial with the Guild but discovered I should have installed the last patch on the computer 😛
Didn’t want to delay the Guild getting started so let them pull in fills and just watched

Saturday 9/30

Finally checked in for some action with the Guild as I ran a trial with them, did the Sanity’s Edge trial for the first time in Necrom
Felt pretty good about that trial, only a little rough around the edges 🙂

Monday 10/2

Ran another small portion of the Northern Elsweyr plot
Met with Abnur Tharn in Rimmen; he walked me through all the shitty things Euraxia is doing in the city
Went to parley with her, and saw her necromancer Zumog Phoom at the door of her throne room
He had Cadwell the Betrayer’s head and was using it as a familiar
And this of course went very badly
Tharn teleported us out before Euraxia’s guards could capture us
But we landed in the palace sewers because Tharn is getting old and his power doesn’t replenish as easily as it used to
I escorted him out, fighting a few skeevers as well as Euraxian thugs on the way out
Then we compared notes and realized that two different places were in danger at once
Tharn opted to go to Riverhold and warn them Euraxia is about to attack them
I went off to the Desert Winds Adeptorium
(but first returned to Cliffshade for the night)

Tuesday 10/3

Went to run Desert Winds Adeptorium–which I’ve run before, it looked familiar
But this time as I got in there, killed a bunch of Euraxian hostiles
Found the entrance to the inner part where an NPC named Zamarak challenged me
Told him I was there to help and he was willing to let me through, but we discovered the Grand Adept under attack by the head goon in the place
I killed said goon but she’d already killed the Grand Adept
The shade of the goon begged me to free her since the necromancer had trapped her soul, and also milked the info out of her about where the rest of Cadwell’s body is
Got the objective to return to Tharn and let him know what’s going on
For now logged off for the night

Saturday 10/7

Ran the Necrom trial Sanity’s Edge again, for practice
And we also did a vet “spider run” after

Up through 10/10

Since everybody was given a free house due to the Telvanni event, poked around that place; I may need to make that Marwyth’s digs when I’m in more of a mood to play ESO some more

Thursday the 26th

Ran a harrowstorm in Western Skyrim just to get event feathers off the boss there, at Black Morass Ritual Site

Friday the 27th

Did some rearranging of Gyllerah’s one allowed outfit to give her armor a new look for a while, combo of ebony and glass

Saturday the 28th

Ran the next step of the Deshaan plotline to talk to the Vestige of St. Veloth which I’d done before as Marwyth; went pretty much the same as when I did it for her
Played through to the point of needing to proceed to Eidolon’s Hollow
And this also got me more event feathers

ESO fatigue in general

I backed off fairly hard over the last several weeks playing ESO. I have not outright quit and currently do not intend to do so, but I did need a break for a while.

And moving forward, I’m going to make a few adjustments to how I do ESO posts. Since a lot of the time I put into ESO is just running crafting and stuff, that isn’t interesting to me to write about at this point. And I’m not going to count any session where I don’t actually run quests as a playthrough session anymore.

Likewise, it takes a lot of time for me to review screenshots for every post, so I’ll be cutting back on ESO screenshots too. Most of the screenshots I take in the game are just talking to characters anyway, so those aren’t really interesting to me at this point either. I mostly use them for my own benefit when reviewing a post, just to make sure whether I missed anything I want to write about.

(Though I reserve the right to keep talky screenshots if they are particularly plot-relevant. Or funny! Sometimes they’re actually funny.)

Plot in Northern Elsweyr

I knew going into this plot that there was going to be action involving Cadwell, but was not aware in advance that it looked like it would involve Cadwell’s original body. Or at least, his head, which was being used as a familiar by Euraxia Tharn’s chief necromancer. Which makes sense. If the Cadwell I’ve been dealing with is Soul-Shriven, his body would have been reconstituted in Coldharbour at his death, like mine.

But that raises interesting questions about whether the Cadwell I know is essentially his soul, and maybe the body I’m seeing reanimated by the necromancer is what’s left of the original Cadwell’s intellect.

As I dip my feet back into this plot, I’ll look forward to seeing where it goes.

For now, anyway, I’ll note that “Zumog Phoom” sounds like he ought to be a villain in Thundarr the Barbarian. 😀

Also, I like that this plot does actually make Tharn’s age a factor in his power. I had already noted while reading about him on the wiki that he is surprisingly aged–in a way that has strongly added to my vibe that active practitioners of magic do tend to live longer than non-mages. But Tharn is human, so his body’s got to wear out eventually. And apparently “eventually” means “the signs of it are showing up now in this plot”.

Maybe this also leads to him admitting at least some responsibility for the dragons being loose in Northern Elsweyr! Dude’s mellowing a bit in his old age, it seems.

I did see a minor bit of disconnect when talking to Gharesh-ri in Riverhold, though. He introduced himself to me–but I’d already met him, as part of running the Aldmeri Dominion plot. So this appears to be another side effect of ESO having so many plots, and it being so difficult to keep track of what order players run them in.

I noticed also that Gharesh-ri did not identify which Mane he is Speaker for, either.

Telvanni/Necrom event

Even though I do own the Necrom DLC, I pretty much ignored this event due to aforementioned fatigue with the game. But I did notice that everybody who owns the DLC got a free house, and that included me. So I poked around the house in question, Kelesan’ruhn, just to check it out.

Later on I may make that place Marwyth’s official digs, since Gyllerah has a house already. But I dunno yet, having trouble mustering enough of a damn to furnish an entire new house. We’ll see. I may change my mind about this once I finally run Necrom.

Trials with the Guild

Backed off of these due to the fatigue issue, though I did pop in a couple of times to play the Sanity’s Edge trial since I hadn’t seen that before.

And I did learn an important thing, which is: I need to be sure to keep my Mac’s ESO install up to date with patches, as well as the install on the Deck. Because the Mac-side install is the one I use for trials!

Plot in Deshaan

This has been some of the contributing factor to my being fatigued by the game lately–because I’d recently already run this plot with Marwyth and was dragging my feet doing it with Gyllerah, too. But I did at least nudge the plot pointer a little further along.

Next time

Not sure yet. But most likely, more action in Northern Elsweyr. Since I haven’t actually run that plot to completion yet, it’s naturally more interesting to me than the stuff in Deshaan. But I may do more of that too just because I’d like to clear Cadwell’s Silver.

(And at this point it is kinda hilarious that I’m doing Cadwell’s Silver and Northern Elsweyr at the same time. But dealing with two different versions of Cadwell is kind of par for the course for Gyllerah boinging all through time!)

And the witchy festival is on again, so we’ll see if I muster enough interest to fight that crow monster again. I have been collecting feathers and event loot.