In Which Kendeshel Goes Side Questing

And now, back to the Legacy of the Dragonborn playthrough, starring Kendeshel! This is another catchup post, since this session was run in mid-December.

Action covered in this post is an assortment of side quests, a couple of which are for the Wyrmstooth mod, so minor spoilers for that mod here.

Play by play

• Play date: 12/17/2023
• Session number in this run: 34
• Picked up again at the Safehouse, and did some inventory managing
• Initial plan was to hit the College of Winterhold and get some training
• So went out to the Dev Aveza–and triggered another fucking dragon right there in the cell for the access to the ship 
• Threw Rulnik and three storm atronachs at the thing–but of course had to run out into Solitude to take it out when it finally crashed, and was a little scared about it taking out other NPCs :/
• But nobody obvious appeared to have died?
• So proceeded to sell a few things to Sayma as well as to Heimvar up at the forge
• Then returned to the Dev Aveza and went to the College
• Where I had the alarming experience of both Sergius and Urag throwing the “my friend died” line
• Took five rounds of training with Faralda, which let me level up to 56
• At which point I also took five rounds of training in Restoration with Colette
• Talked to Urag about the Elder Scroll and got the pointer to go talk to Septimus, but did not do it at this time
• Instead, airshipped back to Solitude, with intent to swipe the necklace for Daenlit from Erikur
• Realized that:
  • Kendeshel’s Pickpocketing stat sucks
  • So clearly I needed to make some Pickpocketing potions, and some jewelry to bump my Pickpocketing
• So made the jewelry and the potions
• Discovered that I’d forgotten to park Rulnik in the Safehouse while I broke into Erikur’s place–because he wasn’t obviously following me when I got off the airship! Snerk
• But anyway, Erikur’s place is literally next door to the museum, so it was easy enough to get in there
• And easy enough to pickpocket Erikur once I had the jewelry on and quaffed the relevant potion
• Erikur apparently spotted me on the way out though, I failed a sneak check, but I got out fast enough that he didn’t actually yell for guards
• And I did get the necklace!
• After that, took the Dev Aveza to Markarth to find Embersunder for Athir, and kill the guy that Shargam wanted killed
• But first, checked in with the Jarl to look for work, and got his initial “go kill a Forsworn leader” quest
• Which conveniently was Deepwood Redoubt, fantastic, I needed to go there anyway for Embersunder
• So left the airship at Markarth, and went out to get Rigmor the horse from the stable
• Rode off for Deepwood Redoubt
• But first decided to stop and run Blind Cliff Cave finally since I’d never done that before
• Killed a few Forsworn on the way in since the place was essentially a large Forsworn lair, with a cave bit and then also a tower bit
• Killed Petra for Melka, and got her to fork over her staff as the reward
• Got back outside again, and since I was near Karthwasten anyway, went over and threw the dremora at Kinthal’s Saints camp since I realized I still hadn’t finished that plot with Kendeshel
• Took them all out and got all the camp loot
• Read the bandit journal, but also read one of the unread books I still had in my inventory
• This triggered a side quest to find all the Relics of the Crusader—or at least, the versions of them added in by Legacy
• From there, fast traveled to Lost Echo Cave since that was my closest landmark to get to Deepwood Redoubt
• At which point Faelor the wolf showed up–which answers the question of whether she can get off of Wyrmstooth
• Was tempted to run Volskygge, but held off on it for now
• Threw dremora at the Forsworn in Deepwood Redoubt, and rampaged through the place
• Took out the Briarheart in Deepwood Vale to satisfy the Jarl’s quest
• Then made it into Hag’s End and took out assorted hags and witches, then the hagraven
• Got the Bloodthorn dagger for display, and also got Embersunder
• Whirlwind Sprinted over to get the Predator’s Grace boots–which looked different this time!
• Fast traveled back to Markarth
• Checked in with the Jarl and got his reward for the quest, then got his quest to go get his father’s shield back, which pointed this time at Lost Valley Redoubt right by Hendraheim
• So that’ll put me in range of Kendeshel finally running Forgotten Seasons too, good
• Sold assorted things to Ghorza and Lisbet and Ghorza’s brother Moth
• Then finally tracked down Ulfgar and found he was hanging out in the Silver-Blood Inn
• Was worried about whether I’d get into issues with attacking the guy in the inn, but finally just confronted him
• As soon as I told him Shargam wanted him dead, he drew his sword and attacked me–which meant self-defense!
• So got into it with him and took him out without a bounty
• All favor quests for Wyrmstooth mercenaries were then satisfied
• Returned to Solitude for more display and inventory managing
• Saved there until next time

Commentary

Side note before I get this session post started: as I noted at the top of the play by play, I got yet another random dragon spawn when going out to the Dev Aveza at its dock in Solitude. This is bugging me enough that I spun off a whole separate post about that.

It also made it extra alarming when I showed up at the College of Winterhold, and had both Sergius and Urag throw me the line “my friend died”. Which immediately made me go who the fuck died at the College?!

I had to run around a bit doublechecking presence of assorted trainers, before I also remembered to just look up all the major College characters on the wiki. This confirmed for me that yes, all the trainers are set Essential. And all the remaining characters are either Essential or Protected. Which makes me wonder who the hell died that both Sergius and Urag would react to!

I suppose they could be reacting still to the deaths of Savos Aren and Mirabelle Ervine? Which does make sense, though I wasn’t aware that characters could still react to the deaths of other NPCs even long after the fact as the game proceeds. That would make more sense to me though than the other possibility I can think of, which is, I know I’ve lost a College guard at least a time or two in this run. I.e., the guard added in by Immersive College of Winterhold. So I suppose that could cause character reactions too?

The important takeaway here being, even though I do get a lot of dragons at the College, I’m not at risk of losing anybody there. Just Solitude, apparently. 😭

Meanwhile, I started working on the side quests for the mercenaries from Wyrmstooth. First on the queue was to steal the necklace for Daenlit, which required me to break into Erikur’s house. Now, as I’ve said earlier in this playthrough, Kendeshel is not supposed to be a thief, and I still don’t plan to play her as one at any point.

But this now makes the second time theft has come up in her personal narrative. I really wish that Wyrmstooth would have given me a reason why Daenlit specifically needs this necklace stolen, as opposed to just trying to buy it off of Erikur. Did he steal it from her Bosmer clan or something? Was it a sacred artifact of some kind? Project AHO did establish to my satisfaction that Kendeshel is not above thievery if she thinks there’s a greater moral imperative at work. But Wyrmstooth didn’t give me any such thing.

I’m going to assume for narrative reasons here that Kendeshel knows Erikur is a dick. Now that she’s a thane of Haafingar as well, she certainly has reason to have picked up on that. So I don’t think she felt particularly bad about stealing the necklace from him.

I shall likewise assume that perhaps off camera, Kendeshel learned from Daenlit what the story on the necklace was.

Once I started running stuff in Markarth, the first new interesting thing there was running Blind Cliff Cave finally, for the first time ever in any of my Skyrim playthroughs. The place was essentially a giant Forsworn lair, and I did have to kill several Forsworn. The main point of the place, though, was to talk to Melka the hagraven and get her quest to take out her rival, Petra.

It was a bit weird to hear actual dialogue coming out of a hagraven! And I was legit amused by her mistaking Kendeshel for a Breton. Kendeshel’s actual line was “What? I’m no Breton.” But what I think she probably actually said was “Lady, do I look like a Breton to you?”

Melka dismissed my protest by saying “You all look the same.” Which was interesting and kind of hilarious, given that presumably, Melka used to be a human woman herself. (At least, going by how hagravens are created in the lore.) So has she been a hagraven for so long that she’s just forgotten the variations in what humans and mer can look like?

Also, I rather liked that I had to explicitly ask Melka to give me the staff she promised as a reward for taking out Petra. That seemed fitting. And I was also a little surprised and pleased that she didn’t turn on me at the end! But she didn’t, so I didn’t try to start any shit with her.

After taking out Kinthal’s Saints bandits camp, I stopped to read the bandit journal from there, as well as one of the other unread books in my inventory. And this triggered a side quest put in by Legacy, to get all the Relics of the Crusader–Legacy’s versions of them, not the ones put in by the Anniversary Edition.

One wonders whether the Legacy versions would be all judgy like the AE versions are? But I’m not inclined to try to find out. I’m perfectly fine with just gathering this gear for display purposes. Pretty damned sure that if the armor wanted to get all judgy, it’d definitely be judgy at Kendeshel. Particularly after she just stole that necklace from Erikur. 😆

This session was, I think, the first time I fast traveled on mainland Skyrim after running Wyrmstooth. Which meant that fast traveling to Lost Echo Cave was the first time Faelor showed up! That confirmed that yes, the wolf does in fact follow me to mainland Skyrim. So presumably I’m somehow managing to coax her on board the Dev Aveza when I travel back and forth. Divines only know how!

Getting Embersunder was easy enough, especially since I did it in conjunction with running the Jarl of Markarth’s quest to take out a Forsworn leader. And once I got back to Markarth, taking out Ulfgar for Shargam was easier than I expected.

The PDF guide I’ve been following for Wyrmstooth turns out to be a bit out of date in some respects, and this includes finding Uthgar. The guide described him as hanging out on one of the bridges in the city, but where I actually found him was inside the Silver-Blood Inn. This was apparently a change made to the mod after that guide was written, from what I saw in its changelog on Nexus.

And I was legit relieved that taking out Uthgar was less difficult than I’d feared. I was a little nervous about confronting the guy, and whether I’d wind up getting a bounty for killing him. But it turned out that as soon as I told him Shargam wanted him dead, he just pulled his sword and attacked me.

Which meant I could defend myself and take him out without a bounty! Awesome.

Next time

Kendeshel’s next post, continuing getting caught up on sessions I’ve already played, will feature Kendeshel taking her turn to run the Fall of Winterhold quest in Immersive College of Winterhold, and the East Empire Company quest in Windhelm!

Screenshots