In Which Marywth Returns to Shadowfen and Vvardenfell

First time I’ve run Marwyth in a while, but now that I’m coming out of hiatus, I wanted to lead with her on my ESO posts! So here’s a new drop of adventuring with my ex-Ashlander Dunmer, featuring some action in Shadowfen to move the Ebonheart Pact plot along, and then some action on Vvardenfell!

As a general reminder, I’m only going to count play days where I do actual adventuring to Gyllerah’s and Marwyth’s playthroughs. Just to relieve myself of having to write about dozens of days where I just log on and run writs. 😉

Play by play

• Play date: 12/1, 12/3/2023
• Session number in this run: 63-64

Friday the 1st

• Ran writs in Alinor
• Boinged to Shadowfen to pick up where I left off with the Ebonheart Pact plotline
• Didn’t bother to disguise myself since I didn’t have a disguise on me
• But found the Keeper I had to speak to, Uxith-Ei; got the directive to light the nearby xanmeers for the hatching ritual, and also find out what the Dominion’s plans were
• Discovered the Dominion planned to kill everyone at the Hatching Grounds once the ritual was complete
• Parallel to that, found an assistant that the Keeper wanted to see, Telixith
• She was pissed off at a particular Dominion asshole who’d deliberately eaten one of the unborn eggs; I went over and killed the guy for her
• Meanwhile I also found a side quest involving notes by the Dominion force’s alchemist, Ruuvitar, about a poultice they were using to harm the Hist
• So I had to gather the specified ingredients, Hist sap and three giant wasp larva, as proof
• Did a bunch of sneaking around but did have to fight at least a few hostiles, Bosmer Dominion recruits, a senche tiger, and some wasps
• But got the xanmeers lit, reported back to the Keeper, and promised to help with the hatching
• Discovered the Dominion had managed to cut off the Argonians’ connection to the Hist, and a mist came up that started killing the eggs
• The Keeper tried to hold it back and I had to run over and save as many eggs as I could
• Kept getting distracted by Bosmer Dominion hostiles attacking me, so was able to save only some of the eggs
• Reinforcements led by the vicecanon Servyna showed up, so I reported to her about what was going on
• Got quest reward and got new directive to proceed to the next place I needed to go
• But before I left, got the ingredients I needed for the poultice, and tested that
• Reported to another Keeper, Keel-Lurash, about the poultice; Keel-Lurash had a very metaphorical way of speaking, don’t know if this was just a her thing, or a communing with the Hist thing, or what
• Then blipped back to Cliffshade for a quick inventory break
• After that, wayshrined over to Ald’ruhn to pick up where I left off with the Vvardenfell plot
• Talked to Seryn who lamented that her brother was being batshit about this whole “I am totally the Nerevarine” business
• She first asked me to help her try to talk him down without attacking him in any way, but he basically blew her off
• Next move was for her to try to maintain the situation in Ald’ruhn while I went to the Cavern of the Incarnate to speak with the main wise woman that the brother had to convince
• Derped around Ald’ruhn for a little before realizing that the place I needed to get to was actually way north, close to the northern shore of Vvardenfell, so set out to hoof it there
• Took to the roads for a bit and eventually veered off cross-country, since there was no good direct route to get to where I needed to be
• Discovered the Urshilaku Camp! (HI GUYS, you’ll be very important to the actual Nerevarine in a few hundred more years)
• Cut through a couple of places that had hostiles, some that looked like Bretons, and also some wraiths
• Finally reached a road on the northern coast, and followed that to the Valley of the Winds wayshrine
• From there, reached the Cavern of the Incarnate
• Found the wise woman Dovrosi being attacked by some skaafins; killed them and saved her
• She invited me in to speak with her in the cavern, and advised me that she didn’t buy Chodala’s claim but was afraid that if she publicly refuted him the tribes would go to war
• But if I brought proof for her that might actually work
• She gave me some sacred grave dust, which I sprinkled on the bodies of three failed incarnates who’d all claimed to be the Nerevarine
• I got their backstories, and they gave me scrolls to use
• Spoke to Azura herself through the statue, and asked her a couple of questions about everything going down–not the least of which was asking her why she was helping the Tribunal
• Then returned to Ald’ruhn to catch up with Seryn
• Accompanied her into the council where Seryn was to present her argument that her brother Chodala is not the Nerevarine
• My job was to give her the correct scrolls from the failed Incarnates in response to each of her brother’s assertions
• We gotr Dovrosi to come down on the side of “no, this guy is not the Nerevarine”
• But of course Chodala wasn’t about to take that, so he buggered off, and I had to kill a bunch of his Red Exiles
• Ran outside to try to catch up Seryn
• Azura manifested through Seryn to speak to me again, proclaimed Seryn the Champion of the Moon and Star, and bid me to help her–but also to return to Vivec City and help Vivec as I could
• Wayshrined right back to the Vivec City Temple
• Went in to speak to Vivec to conclude the quest
• Vivec was starting to get weaker so I had to speak to his archcanon for the next move
• Archcanon Tarvus was very pointed about how I shouldn’t trust Seryn
• That rang alarm bells in Marwyth’s head and she didn’t take kindly to his being snotty about her
• But for now she took his next directive to return to the mage Barilzar in his tower and see about coming up with a countermeasure against the staff
• Left off there until next time and boinged back to Cliffshade for final inventory managing

Sunday the 3rd

• While running surveys on High Isle, ran a volcanic vent there for the first time, which let me level up to 43

Action in Shadowfen

First main chunk of action here was running more of the Ebonheart Pact plot in Shadowfen, and specifically right around the Hatching Grounds. As is often the case with these things, I had a main objective and a couple of side objectives that I picked up while running the main one.

I had an optional objective to disguise myself, but didn’t bother. I hadn’t picked up a disguise for this plot before, and wasn’t in the mood to try to hunt for one either. So mostly I ran this entire area with Marwyth in sneak mode–which mostly worked pretty well.

One of the side objectives was to help out an assistant, Telixith, who was pissed off at a specific Dominion asshole who’d been deliberately eating some of the unborn eggs. I had dialogue prompts to remind her that her duty was to the Keeper who wanted to see her. But fuck that, Marwyth is enough of a Chaotic Good maverick that she was actively pissed off at the idea that somebody would deliberately eat unborn Argonian young. So she was totally on board with taking that guy out.

(And noting now in advance that when Gyllerah gets to this plot, she’s going to be even less amused by this than Marwyth was. Gyllerah is Dominion and I think she’ll be mortally offended that one of her own alliance would stoop so low as to actually eat unborn Argonians. Because seriously what the fuck is wrong with you.)

Now, mind you, the guy in question was a Bosmer and we do know that the Bosmer are on record as being willing to eat their enemies in battle. But this isn’t even eating enemy soldiers, this is eating unborn young. And that seems like a war crime to me, even for Bosmer!

It does raise one cogent point here for me, though. Telixith expressly snarks on the Bosmer for eating their own dead, which is a smaller-picture indicator of hostilities running high in this particular area of the war. But in a bigger-picture sense, given what I’ve seen as both Gyllerah and Marwyth in running alliance-level plots, all sides have their share of forces engaging in various types of atrocities.

Which I think is certainly part of the point of Cadwell’s Silver and Cadwell’s Gold–because getting that kind of awareness must surely be part of what Meridia has in mind when she gives the player the opportunity to see the sides of the other alliances.

Action on Vvardenfell

Here’s the main point of interest I want to talk about, for moving the Vvardenfell plot along: Marwyth having an opportunity to point-blank ask Azura why the hell she’s helping the Tribunal.

I found Azura’s answer very, very telling. She outright called Vivec a murderer, and told Marwyth she’s not helping the Tribunal so much as she’s helping Vvardenfell. This is a hugely critical distinction. Moreover, it also speaks volumes about how Azura is apparently willing to put aside the huge grudge she’s carrying about the Tribunal if it’s for the greater good of Vvardenfell.

Marwyth really needed to hear that. She has a huge pile of doubts about the Tribunal, but Azura has now directly told her she wants her to help Vivec as best she can. And if the Mother of Roses wants her to do this, Marwyth is not about to argue with that.

And I think this may have just settled the longer-term question about whether Marwyth will eventually become a Tribunal worshipper. Right now signs are pointing to “no”. But we’ll see if anything else happens in this plot to sway her.

Overall, I really liked how both Seryn and the wise woman Dovrosi were handled in this plot. Neither of them were buying Chodala’s bullshit, but were trying their best to defuse the situation. Likewise, I really liked that defusing the situation didn’t mean I had to take point on the problem. Which was entirely appropriate. Even if Marwyth is Ashlander-born herself, she’s still an outsider as far as these Ashlanders are concerned. And I appreciated that the plot had me work within their customs to try to talk Chodala down.

It didn’t work, of course. Because the guy’s clearly too far gone along this path. But Dovrosi and Seryn both did their very level best!

And Seryn even gets to step up her game and be proclaimed by Azura herself as the Champion of the Moon and Star. That also is a thing that Marwyth is one thousand percent paying attention to.

Which also meant that when Vivec’s archcanon Tarvus sounded off about Seryn not being trustworthy–not only because she’s a female Ashlander, but also because she’s Chodala’s sister–that rang alarm bells in Marwyth’s head. She already didn’t like this guy very much. And snarking on her about being a female Ashlander in general was very much not a good look to somebody who is, in fact, a female Ashlander. But he was also snarking on the woman that Marwyth just saw get proclaimed a champion by Azura herself.

So nope, she is absolutely not on board with that.

It’ll be interesting to see if this guy’s just a prejudiced asshole, or if he’s got something else going on. Is he secretly a worshipper of Vile or Mephala or Nocturnal? I kinda hope so, having some of this Daedric conspiracy get that close to Vivec would be fun! Don’t know how feasible it’d be, though, because a secret Daedra worshipper would have to be really on top of their game to get that close to the Warrior-Poet himself.

But hey, we saw Vox causing shit in Deshaan so who knows? Not me, not yet!

Running a volcanic vent on High Isle

Running some surveys as Marwyth rather than as Gyllerah got me an opportunity to run a volcanic vent on High Isle for the first time.

This was fun! I usually like running the world event type things like that, but hadn’t managed to hit one of the vents yet just because I haven’t run High Isle for reals with either character. Definitely a lot more fire action going on there, as you would expect.

And it let me level Marwyth up to 43, finally. So that was helpful. Between that and finding some skyshards, I’ve picked up a couple more skill points on this alt. Dropped one on her Provisioning, and the rest on various things recommended by the Skill Advisor.

Additional notes

Not counting this stuff in the session count, as mentioned above. But since this particular session, Marwyth action has mostly just been running writs. Still, had a few things happen I want to note for later reference.

I got some new colors off of the last trial run I did with the Guild, so I used those to re-dye Marwyth’s Outlaw armor. And I got a dye stamp off of the recent big run of Akaviri Potentate crates in the daily rewards, so I tried that out on Marwyth’s Thieves Guild leathers costume. Right now I’m favoring the costume but not sure about the dye stamp, so I may turn that off and return to the Outlaw armor look.

Also, I spent some Seals of Endeavor on the Eyes of the Prophet head marking. I’m wearing that on Marwyth right now just because I think it looks kind of spooky and cool. And I kinda like the idea of it being a sign of her being the Vestige.

I have mostly stopped robbing the Daggerfall ships at this point, just because I’ve maxed out my Legerdemain on this alt. But I did do another run with them just for the gold–and because it’s an easy way to grab a bunch of ingredients. I reserve the option to do this when required, if I can’t otherwise get ingredients for running writs. 😀

(It does remind me I really do need to move the Thieves Guild plot further along with Marwyth, though!)

Lastly, I’ve done a bunch of random exploring with Marwyth, partly for running surveys, partly for running treasure maps. So I’ve gotten some Vvardenfell locations onto her map that Gyllerah hasn’t seen yet, as well as finally marking Leyawiin in Blackwood for her, and Markarth.

Next time

As noted above, I really do need to move the Thieves Guild plot a little further along with Marwyth. So I think I’ll do that next time I adventure with her.

Screenshots