In Which Marwyth Uncovers Plots in Clockwork City

Swinging over to Marwyth’s playthrough in ESO now, continuing my catchup on play done in mid-January. Main action here: getting my Clockwork City on!

Play by play

Play dates: 1/15-1/17/2024
Session numbers in this run: 93-95

January 15th

Ran ship robbing again because I needed small game
Flipped into damage build and got Ember on deck
Then went to run some dailies, though those turned out to be repeats
Fighters Guild: Bangkorai, did the Mournoth Dolmen near the Halcyon Lake wayshrine again just because that’s easy to get to
Mages Guild: Hall of the Dead in Eastmarch, did that as a surgical strike as much as possible, got in, got the thing, got out
Undaunted: Corpse Garden again
Later, with Ember on deck, began running the Clockwork City
This required me to go to Mournhold to meet up with Divayth Fyr at the Tribunal temple, and he told me to meet him at the waterfall north of the city
Fyr opened a portal that was supposed to get us into Clockwork City, but we did not land in the place he expected
Plus, a shadow appeared and made off with some of his animus, which crippled his ability to call up anything above rudimentary magic support
So I had to chase his shadow, and also get past a shitton of traps, which required flipping a couple of trap release switches
We finally caught up with the shadow, but I had to avoid killing it, lest Fyr’s animus be permanently lost
He slurped the shadow back into himself, at which point we were threatened by an incoming wave of factotums
And Fyr, in his irritation, OBLITERATED ALL OF THEM in a wave of fire
We then aimed for the Brass Fortress, the heart of this realm
Reached the city and we were confronted by a Clockwork Apostle officer, Luciana Pullo
She was fairly snotty to Fyr, and from her, I found out that you have to become a citizen of the city if you want to get any traction in it–and becoming a citizen required a sponsor
Fyr told me to deal with that, after which he’d contact me further
So I found a few NPCs just outside the city who were also working on getting a sponsor
This required me to agree to help them out
Went to talk to a pair of Dunmer siblings
The sister sent me off to find her brother, who was experimenting with firepot spiders; helped him gather oil from them
Went into the city with the siblings to drop off the oil gathered with a constable who’d offered to sponsor the siblings and their compatriot
Found out from her that people had been going missing in the city; I agreed to help if she agreed to sponsor all of us
So set out investigating WTF happened
Meanwhile, found the part of the city where the downtrodden live, Slag Town, and discovered the downtrodden were referred to as ‘the Tarnished’
Talked to their unofficial mayor and picked up a daily quest from him
This required me to go find some runic residue and inactive runelights from them, in one of the two delves in this DLC, so headed over there
Turned out the delve, the Shadow Cleft, was a pocket bit of the Evergloam encroaching on the Clockwork City, so lots of gloam monsters in there
Also found a Clockwork Apostle who was seeking a colleague who’d been pulled into the place via a portal; he sent me in with a recording device
Grabbed the items I needed to find for the Slag Town folks
Also found some fields of pumpkins being guarded by ‘scarecrows’, which turned out to be dead bodies whose ghosts were enthralled into acting as scarecrows, and BOY HOWDY was that creepy
Once I interacted with the ghosts they realized what was going on
They were all also Clockwork Apostles and one of them was the person I was looking for
A third told me to destroy a device keeping their souls captive, so did that
Also found the skyshard, then got out and returned to the city
Turned in that quest with the mayor Orc and got a reward coffer from that
Then returned to running the rest of the main plot for the city
Met up with my colleagues again and Neramo sent me into the Depository Documatis
Had to remote pilot a “skeevaton” to interact with various bits of that archive; had trouble getting the thing past a couple of traps, but fortunately it was not destroyed
Got the necessary evidence and followed up with Neramo
Then talked to Kireth, who worked with me to record a conversation she set up with a suspicious constable–who then actually proceeded to knock her out and chuck her down into the Mechanical Fundament
So I had to talk to her brother Raynor and then to the Slag Town folks again, trying to figure out where the hell the constable might have stashed her and why
Then headed into the Mechanical Fundament to try to find Kireth
This required me to cut through the Reactor District, which meant I also had to either sneak past hostile mechanisms or just outright fight them
Kireth was in fact alive and easy to find, along with a Khajiit she was looking for, the same Khajiit I’d seen earlier talking to the corrupt constable
Got both of them out safely, which led the the arrest of the constable and successful acquisition of sponsorship
Then Fyr showed up again to enlist my further help, and informed me he’d spread the word I was now his aide
He wanted me to ask around about suspicious behavior on the part of Sotha Sil himself; Fyr thought he was acting very out of character, but could not ask questions himself because he tended to intimidate people too much for them to talk freely to him
Left off there until next time

January 16th

Did a harvesting run around Alinor to try to get enough iron hide to finish up the clothier daily writ, since I bumped up what materials Marwyth could use

January 17th

Had to do a little harvesting around Alinor to get more galatite ore
Killed B’Korgen the world boss at Welenkin Cove, since I saw other players fighting him
Played Gyllerah, then swapped back to Marwyth
Updated saved data in Caro’s Skill Point Saver and Dressing Room so if I fuck up a build again, I can restore it
Meanwhile activated Mirri and boinged back off to the Clockwork City to move that plot along some more
Figured out how to toggle my helm on and off with a quickslot, so that’s helpful
Talked to some aides as per Fyr’s request
Learned from them that yep, Sotha Sil sure was acting weird, making them install inefficient lamps, and turn them when he comes into the room and everything (I smelled shadow shenanigans!)
So Fyr sent me off to talk to my other compatriots
We had to replicate one of the lamps that had been ordered thrown out by Sotha Sil
Fetched a bunch of parts for that lamp out of the Mechanical Fundament
Went in there with Mirri and avoided some of the factotums successfully, but did have to kill assorted fabricants, as well as some factotums I was not able to elude
Made it down to the lowest level by accident when I tried to jump over something to get to the skyshard, only to realize oops, that thing was farther down than I thought (ow)
Found a couple chests and a bunch of harvesting nodes down there though, and finally found my way back up to to get out again
Talked to a merchant to get the final necessary part, then talked to Neramo about making the lamp
Neramo theorized that they might emit invisible light; ultraviolet, presumably?
Fyr planned to call for a congress and persuade Sotha Sil to give a presentation, and his plan was for me to plant the lamp up on the balcony, activate it, and see what it did to Sotha Sil
Kireth however warned us that the balcony in question was now heavily guarded, so I had to figure out how the hell to get up there; it was not obvious!
Resorted to a walkthrough video that finally told me where the frigging lift I had to use was, and it was a lever that did not look like a lift at all, even a Dwemer lift
Using that though put me on the second floor of the Clockwork Basilica, which was a trespass zone
Made it to the place where the lamp had to be courtesy of invisibility potions
Getting out again, though, I got spotted
Managed to get the fuck out of the way and not engage in combat
Used a Counterfeit Leniency Edict to blow away my bounty, and invisibility potion’d my way out successfully this time
Also realized Mirri had killed somebody, oops!
Got back down to Fyr and told him the lamp was in place
The congress began and Sotha Sil started talking
Flipped the switch for the lamp and SURPRISE! Sotha Sil was a shadow imposter!
Chased the shadow into Sotha Sil’s quarters while everybody freaked the fuck out
Killed it, but it issued a warning as it vanished
Went out to figure out WTF to do next
Talked to Fyr, who told me to check in with Varuni
She sent me over to check on Chancellor Gascone who was apparently AWOL
Checked his rectory and found a shrike in there searching the place
Killed her and then came back out to report to Varuni
Had a line mentioning a bunch of feathers all over the quarters too; hadn’t actually noticed that, but hey, my character was more observant than me, I guess? LOL
Varuni told me to go have a word with Proctor Luciana about Gascone’s whereabouts
Found her outside trying to disperse some frightened citizens
Talked to her a bit and got her to send me off to an artificer in Slag Town
Dalamor loaned me a fabricant nix-hound who picked up on Gascone’s scent from a note I’d found in his quarters
(Sidebar: lots of writing on metal plates rather than paper in Clockwork City, kept seeing bookshelves that were moving sets of these plates, that was kinda cool)
Snuffler the nix-hound led me outside, and eventually down into the oily area I’d seen before
Snuffler lost the trail, but I found a Nord in a makeshift camp and learned from him that Gascone had headed west
Eventually spotted his oily footprints and followed that trail in pieces
Killed assorted hostiles on the way
Eventually also found a fatally wounded conjurer Gascone must have fought
She was in Ebonshadow light armor, which I really liked the look of, but she also was clearly a Nocturnal worshipper
And she intially thought I was maybe a Clavicus Vile worshipper
Marwyth: FUCK NO
Wrangled out of her where Gascone had gone: off to the Ventral Terminus, so headed there
On the way, found a broken brassilisk which started a side quest
Once I reached the Terminus, Gascone bitched at me through a box at the door (how modern!), and refused to let me in
Had to find another way in and killed more hostiles en route, mostly skaafin
Made it in and reached a puzzle where I had to spin a bunch of valves to activate a factotum
But didn’t get past that because I saw an alert that the game was going down for maintenance
Stopped there until next time

About Divayth Fyr

The first thing I want to note here, with getting the Clockwork City plot underway, is Divayth Fyr.

I knew about him from playing Morrowind, but up until this point, I’d only known what I saw about him in that game. Which was certainly enough for me to see that he’s about as much of a dick in ESO as he is in Morrowind, LOL.

But here’s the fun part. I looked him up on the wiki, and apparently he was originally a Chimer?! Holy crap, he was 4,000 years old by the time of the Morrowind game?! And apparently a friend of Sotha Sil’s!

And he was also around when Azura cursed the Chimer and turned them into the Dunmer, and when Sotha Sil joined the Tribunal. I gotta LOL about the part where he point-blank refused to worship Sotha Sil, too!

Of course, I had to question exactly why the plot had me meet him inside the Tribunal temple, where we were presumably in noticing range of Almalexia and her servants. His dialogue suggested that the servants of the Tribunal would get cranky at him if they knew we were heading into the Clockwork City. So, my dude, why exactly did you have me meet you inside the temple? Why not have me meet you right by the waterfall?

Heh. I suppose that by virtue of being Divayth Fyr, he gets a wide berth or something from the temple staff? Or, equally likely, he might just not give a fuck.

And I’ll say this for Fyr: his complete and utter obliteration by fire of an oncoming phalanx of factotums was really fucking impressive. I mean dang. :O

About Clockwork City

I find it a little confusing that the entire realm is called “Clockwork City”, but the part of it that’s an actual city is the Brass Fortress. There are a bunch of outlying named locations outside the Brass Fortress, but they’re far enough away that it’s weird to me that they’re all considered part of a “City”. It’s kind of like if Skyrim called its Holds “Cities” instead of “Holds”, even though the various Holds all contain multiple distinct named locations, often outside of the actual towns.

But nonetheless, to maintain naming consistency, let me be clear that when I say “Clockwork City”, I’m talking about the entire realm, not just the Brass Fortress.

With that noted, let me say that I found the entire realm stunningly beautiful. I really liked the little metallic touches on all the various fabricated trees. To my eye, the whole place at first glance looked sort of like the autumnal look of Riften in Skyrim, since all the “flora” was in gold or bronze or brass type shades. But a closer look let me catch the metallic glints on the flora, a visual reminder that I was not looking at living plants. That was neat.

And at the same time, even though the place was stunningly beautiful, it was also disturbing on a couple of levels. For one thing, what flora and fauna were present were all fabricants. The countryside, such as it is in Clockwork City, is not a living terrain.

For another, when I went to help Raynor Vanos with the firepot spider oil, I found that there was a huge lake of oil down in the ravine near the Brass Fortress. And in a word, yuk. That had to stink. It does seem like an inevitable byproduct of building an entire mechanized realm, sure. But it also strongly implies that Sotha Sil sees no issue with large lakes of oil lying around in his realm, even though the place is by and large gorgeous.

About the Brass Fortress

Once I actually got into the Brass Fortress, the whole theme of “simultaneously beautiful and disturbing” continued.

One big WTFery of course being that as near as I can tell, all the people in Clockwork City are stuck there. Permanently. As the player character I don’t have that problem, since I can port out to my primary home or use the wayshrines any damn time I like. All the NPCs, though? Stuck. There are even conversations amongst the NPCs in the Fortress, where newcomers are pitching a fit about needing to get home again, only to be told over and over that they just need to accept their new lot in life.

And, well, why? If Sotha Sil is capable of creating a city outside of space and time and into which people are apparently known to just spontaneously appear, is he not capable of giving them a way to get back to their original homes? Or does he just not give a fuck? Neither of these is a good look for an alleged god, especially the latter.

From what I see in the lore peeking on the wiki, there is something called “the Doors of Egress” that do allow people out of the place–but most citizens are not informed of this fact. The Doors are apparently restricted to the Clockwork Apostles.

Even for NPCs, it’s clearly possible to get out of Clockwork City, but they have to work at it apparently? The three characters I met on the way in, with whom I had to team up to get sponsorship, are in fact characters that show up elsewhere in the game: Neramo, Kireth Vanos, and her brother Raynor. And apparently they all manage to get out of the place for me to meet up with later! How exactly they managed to do this, fuck if I know. One presumes Neramo managed to create an appropriate device or spell to get them out?

Powerful mages, too, apparently can get in and out according to the lore. Which explains how Divayth Fyr can come and go as he pleases.

But if you don’t happen to be a powerful mage, or don’t have the benefit of being a player character so you can wayshrine in and out as you please, you’re just fucking stuck. Also not a good look for Sotha Sil.

And the second big WTFery is the whole idea of “the Tarnished”, the second-class citizens who have to live in the slum called Slag Town because they haven’t been able to find a role in the Clockwork City society. Where, as you might expect, they are pretty much forced to live on whatever they can scrounge because the “actual citizens” give no fucks about them.

Tangentially related to this, I also discovered that there’s no such thing as food and drink as most citizens of Tamriel know them. Instead, citizens of Clockwork City get by on a thing called “nutriment paste”, and I swear to god I spent a good chunk of this plot waiting for a reveal that the paste was made of ground-up Tarnished. That didn’t actually happen, but it sure as hell felt plausible.

Especially given how all the various factotums, and to a lesser degree the Clockwork Apostles, kept reminding me of the Cybermen. I kept waiting for some sort of Cybermen-flavored reveal to happen, too, something that would show that the factotums were converted Tarnished or something. Again, didn’t happen.

But I think it’s a measure of how disturbing I found the overall place, despite its beauty, that I kept looking for those kinds of plot reveals!

And to be sure, this contributed to what I feel is Marwyth’s overall visceral revulsion about the place. She was definitely unhappy to find the Tarnished relegated to the slums, and one thousand percent on board with doing whatever it took to help them out. Including light theft where required!

One more thing, too, I want to note about the overall society: it was full of tech that was leaps and bounds above what most citizens of Nirn have available to them. Yet Sotha Sil apparently never saw fit to take some of these ideas out into the world beyond his city, and maybe do some good with them?

Really not a good look.

Mirri vs. Ember for backup

According to my notes I had Ember on deck for getting into the Clockwork City with Divayth Fyr… but I’m not a hundred percent sure of that. And I don’t have any screenshots to back it up.

But I know for sure that I swapped to Mirri once I started playing the main plot of this DLC in earnest. I knew Mirri would give me Rapport points for doing so, which was the main reason I wanted her. And I was not disappointed. She had a lot of fun commentary every time I set foot in the place.

Mirri’s dialogue in general frequently references Vehk–of all the Tribunal gods, Vivec’s clearly the one she actively venerates, at least enough to swear by him or sometimes call out to him in supplication when she goes into combat with you. She always calls Vivec Vehk, too.

Her dialogue specific to Clockwork City, on the other hand, mentions both “Sotha Sil” and “Lord Seht”. So she’s clearly aware that the Tribunal gods can go by multiple names. I don’t get the vibe off of her that she worships Sotha Sil in quite the same way she does Vivec, though. She strikes me as coming at the Clockwork City with a hefty measure of scientific curiosity, since she talks to the player about the place in terms of trying to reason out why Sotha Sil built things there the way he did. Though she also throws a wry remark to the player about how “you’d probably just walk up and ask.”

She’s not wrong!

About running the plot

Once I got the plot underway, anyway, it was good strong fun. I had only a few minor quibbles that didn’t really get in the way of my enjoyment of the action.

Piloting Neramo’s skeevaton through the Depository Documatis was simultaneously cool and disorienting. It kept flipping between first and third person, which included the camera zooming in and out a lot, and this was very distracting! And made me a little motion sick. But fortunately that sequence wasn’t terribly long.

Talking to folks in Slag Town when trying to find Kireth was a little glitchy. I spoke to an Argonian who wanted me to do her a favor quest before she’d talk to me, but then I was able to talk to a different person and bribe him for info. And that apparently let me off the hook for helping the Argonian, because I didn’t see any sign of a quest for that anymore in my journal. I’ll need to look out for this when I run this plot as Gyllerah.

My main thought when sneaking into the Reactor District to get to Kireth: LOL, does it threaten your sponsorship if you break a fuckton of the machines in the city? I should think Sotha Sil would not be amused by my destroying so many of his shiny, shiny toys?

And Kireth was in fact easy to find, once I reached the Mechanical Fundament. Which made me wonder WTF the point of chucking her down there actually was. The idea seemed to be that the constable she’d talked to was corrupt as fuck, and only pretending to sponsor people just to get their money. And then presumably chucking them down into the Fundament to be killed off by the factotums.

But given that I found both Kireth and a Khajiit she was looking for (who I had in fact seen earlier, talking to the corrupt constable), and both of them were still alive and unharmed, this kind of negated the overall threat level of the place for me.

Once I got to the part where I had to help Neramo build a lamp, I was intrigued by the idea being tossed around of the lamp emitting “invisible light”. I’m assuming that actually means ultraviolet? Which is an intriguing concept to work into an ostensibly fantasy setting. But then, the Dwemer always have been very technically advanced, that’s part of the lore, and Sotha Sil did a lot of emulating them when he built Clockwork City. So it stands to reason that he’d understand ultraviolet light.

The part where I had to place the lamp was tricky for multiple reasons. And since as of this writing I’ve started running the plot as Gyllerah, noting this for my own benefit:

Remember to look for the lever to get upstairs, it does not look like a lift at all
Bring invisibility potions and maybe borrow a Counterfeit Leniency Edict from Marwyth?
Maybe consider not bringing a Companion upstairs with me, Azandar is not exactly built for stealth

Because I did kinda have to LOL that Mirri managed to kill somebody while I was trying to get the hell out of the place. And yet nobody in the vicinity reacted to this. I’d think that a death in a trespass zone should be a much bigger deal! But good thing nobody reacts to the Companion doing stuff! Unless it’s a Companion-specific plot, anyway! 😀

Next time

Marwyth’s next post will feature more Clockwork City, but also more Guilds and Glory action, and some Thieves Guild side stuff as well!