In Which Gyllerah Saves the Ebonheart Pact

And now, back to ESO! This post covers Gyllerah’s first week of February action, and while half of that week was a lot my doing the usual writs, surveys, crafting, and selling stuff, the actual adventuring featured finishing up the Cadwell’s Silver plotline for the Ebonheart Pact. Basically three sessions’ worth of actual action for that week.

Play by play

Play dates: 2/5-2/7/2024
Session numbers in this run: 347-349

February 5th

Pushed the Ebonheart Pact plot further along
Picked up where I left off and went to Jorunn’s Stand
Ran that place pretty similarly to how Marwyth did it, but with a few minor differences, see below
Problem sorted! Got named the King’s Arrow, and got the messenger asking me to head to Shor’s Stone in the Rift
So headed that way, and met up with the Companions there
Had to help take down a ward on Redbelly Mine, save a few miners, and keep the Reachmen from doing some rituals
But OHNOEZ the tomb of Sinmur the giant was down there! And Sinmur’s ghost got out! OHNOEZ
Got objective to meet up with Vigrod at Fallowstone Hall
Held that until next time

February 6th

Made a hard push through the rest of Gyllerah running the Ebonheart Pact plot for Cadwell’s Silver
This pretty much meant running everything from the tail end of Shor’s Stone up through ending the plot at Trolhetta
This also meant I was able to finally catch up with the bit of plot I’d already done at Taarengrav, as well as the previously recovered shard of Wuuthrad
Main plot points of interest:
- Helping the Companions retake Fallowstone Hall
- Standing witness to a Skald being promoted to Sage after the previous one was killed
- Helping the Pact fight off Reachmen attackers at Vernim Woods, which included some necromancy to question a slain cultist
- Helping suss out the reason why the thane in Nimalten was assaulted
- Meeting up again with Aera Earth-Turner, last seen way back in Bal Foyen after she and her family had to flee Bleakrock and she lost her daughter
- Discovering Aera had been acting as a spy for the Worm Cult OHNOEZ, and having to kill her when she fled rather than face the thane’s justice
- Freeing the Companion spirit Hakra after a necromancer tried to control her at Pinepeak Cavern
- Witnessing Thalik Wormfather’s merging of his spirit with that of the dead giant Sinmur
- Witnessing Wuuthrad getting shattered
- Having to help Riften after Sinmur attacked the place, including figuring out what happened to a traumatized young woman’s father, and killing zombies raised by cultists trying to swamp the city with the drowned dead
- Getting the other two fragments of Wuuthrad by Helping overthrow a corrupt housecarl and helping Fullhelm Fort fight off attacking undead, and then questing up onto Forelhost
Finally reported in with the Pact forces led by Jorunn Skald-King, and we rampaged our way into Trolhetta take down the Worm Cult as well as the ghost giant
Jorunn had some lines about how there was a hard road ahead even after this, which was of course setting up to proceed to Coldharbour
Then realized that I still hadn’t fulfilled Cadwell’s Silver, so had to swing back a little to do one more side plot that required me to kill a Worm Cult healer
Then I finished Cadwell’s Silver, and got quest objective to return to the Harborage
So did that and talked to Cadwell
Got the Soul-Shriven style book, and Meridia’s necklace, which I then promptly deconstructed ;D
Did final inventory managing and finished up until next time

February 7th

Did a bunch of surveys, and a dolmen and a harrowstorm while running those
Went back to the Rift area I ran at the end of the Ebonheart Pact plot, because I’d picked up a Pact soldier amulet and I wanted to run the brief quest to gather up amulets of the fallen
Had to report back to an NPC after that to turn them in, so he could notify the next of kin

Commentary

I ran Jorunn’s Stand this time fairly similarly to how Marwyth did it, but in the name of changing things up a bit, I did try a couple of different things.

This time through, I told Thane Oda Wolf-Sister that the canis cap was invigorating, just to see what her dialogue would be. She liked that a lot. This, I feel, is an indicator that Gyllerah is more capable of bullshitting in the name of diplomacy than Marwyth is. 😉 And Oda did like that gesture a lot, so I’ll say Gyllerah called that effort well spent. Even if she likely discreetly ran off to dunk herself in the nearest lake at the earliest opportunity!

I still chose not to kill Fildgor, though I paid more attention to my fight with him this time. As I saw when I ran this plot as Marwyth, I noted that he called for help from the spirits of Sovngarde, who seemed to be feeding him at least a bit of energy–and that still made no goddamn sense to me this time through.

But almost immediately after the point of calling on the spirits, he stood down. Because I was still kicking his ass. And overall, it just felt like he surrendered way too quickly. I do wonder if he’d be more of a fight for a lower level character?

As I’d done with Marwyth, I turned Fildgor over to Jorunn and let the king execute him. I don’t think Gyllerah has any more patience for treason than Marwyth does.

Also, I’m still kind of surprised that Fildgor surrenders to begin with. I think if it had been me writing the story, I’d have made it more obvious that the spirits of Sovngarde actively and explicitly rejected him, to show that his grand plan of commandeering his sister’s soul was bullshit.

Better yet, it would have been nice to see Nurnhilde’s spirit in particular telling him to fuck off. I feel like she needs some decent closure there, given that her asshole brother was trying to pull her out of Sovngarde and imprison her inside his body.

After that, though, Gyllerah pulled ahead of Marwyth in the Ebonheart Pact plotline, because I took her on into the Rift to meet up with the Companions there. And it was cool to see the Companions in play here, not gonna lie. They seemed a lot more effective here than they do in Skyrim, especially with their Harbinger, Vigrod, actually right there in the field with the fight.

I noted with interest, when I looked Vigrod up, that he’s the Harbinger right before the one who made the bargain that turned the Circle into werewolves.

The plot at this point took me next to Redbelly Mine, the same mine that appears near Shor’s Stone in Skyrim. But here, it was significantly larger, and full of Reachmen rather than spiders! So that was cool.

Running Vernim Woods got me to a point where I had to choose between a cruel and less cruel way to get information out of the attacking Reachmen. The cruel way actually wound up leading to necromancy, and raising a dead cultist to be questioned. I didn’t realize that was where that choice was going to go before I chose it!

And that ties into the second incident of necromancy, that I talk more about below.

Meanwhile, I really rather liked that an entire little town exists in the Rift in ESO that doesn’t exist in Skyrim: Nimalten. This place is over in the western part of the Rift, not far from Ivarstead, Shroud Hearth Barrow, and Geirmund’s Hall. The lore page for it on the wiki does not say what destroyed it between the time of ESO and the time of Skyrim, so I guess that’s still an open question. But it’s neat nonetheless to see that difference in the same territory between the two games.

I was surprised to see Aera again and that she also turned out to be a traitor, but shouldn’t have been surprised by that, really. Since she was clearly unhappy and suffering still, after her daughter’s death. (Also, I doublechecked the wiki, and saw that she turns traitor no matter how you play out Bal Foyen, it only impacts which family members she lost. So, since as of this writing Marwyth has also finished running the Ebonheart Pact, I can confirm that Marwyth had to deal with this, too.)

The plot at Fullheim Fort was fun, even though the housecarl influencing the thane there had “Wormtongue” written all over him.

Forelhost was surprisingly challenging, just because it was treacherously cold in a way that reminded me a lot of survival mode in Skyrim. I specifically had to light a bunch of campfires to keep warm, and to keep from taking ongoing damage from the cold. Mind you, this didn’t seem to impact my overall health bar all that much. But I bet it would have if I were a lower level character.

And fortunately, the cold damage was not a constant thing. I didn’t have to care about it while inside the barrow, and I never had to go far away from any campfire to do anything, including getting the nearby skyshard.

The other interesting thing about this leg of the plot was a second round of necromancy, just to question the ghost of the cult leader who’d come up there. This was a bit of a legit doubletake, because of course the vast majority of Tamriel’s cultures frown very heavily on necromancy of any kind. So I can’t help but think that this is one of those times where the game expects you to do something that your character, most likely, would find actively repellent.

Especially if you’re a Redguard. Of course, no Redguard character is going to be running this plot unless they’re explicitly running Cadwell’s Gold. But even then, the point remains, I’d expect any Redguard who adheres to the traditions of their people to balk hard at having to do any kind of necromancy. And I’d expect most other races of Tamriel to balk pretty heavily, too.

And yet, this plot gave no other option but to do this necromantic ritual, to move the plot along. I wish there’d at least been some sort of acknowledgment of this, in how the scenario was set up.

As I noted above, this was actually the second time running this plot that Gyllerah had to engage in necromancy. I wasn’t thinking closely about this at the time. But looking back on it, what I have to conclude here is that Gyllerah is not above necromancy if it serves a higher purpose. She is at the very least willing to engage in it against the Worm Cult in particular, as she has a standing personal grudge against them after all.

Maybe her having met Vastarie before was enough to make her consider what circumstances are appropriate for this kind of magic at all?

Anyway, the cult leader’s entire group had been wiped out by the draugr inside the barrow. And he snarked at me about how I was apparently going to waltz in there singlehandedly, and the puzzle door would just open for me?

Son, you clearly haven’t met a player character before. And after rampaging through Coldharbour, draugr are a cakewalk. I got this.

I had optional quest objective to summon the guy again, but didn’t bother. Because see previous commentary re: eew, necromancy.

Finishing up the plot got me commentary out of the Skald-King that read like it was supposed to hook into proceeding to Coldharbour, and reaching out to the leaders of the other alliances to get a joint raid going. But since this was me running Cadwell’s Silver, I of course did not have to do that.

Instead, I went to the Harborage to check in with Cadwell. Who gave me a necklace of Meridia, and also the Soul-Shriven style book. Yay? LOL.

I deconstructed the necklace, even though that was the kind of thing that by rights Gyllerah really would have kept, in character, along with the other mementos of the main quest. But since the game does not give you unlimited storage space for your things, I had no option but to blow it up. Narrative-wise, though, I feel that Gyllerah’s probably got a chest of precious objects like this, even if it’s not on camera.

And heh, now I can make everything with the Soul-Shriven style? Yay? I mean honestly, game, it’s not like Gyllerah would actually want to wear anything that reminds her of the Soul-Shriven in Coldharbour. As you’d expect, most of that style does look pretty wretched. There’s one exception to this, the Light Armor hood, which is simple and basic and actually something I could see Gyllerah not mind wearing. She’s that kind of practical. But still.

Next time

Gyllerah’s next post will feature getting Bastian as a Companion; beginning the Daggerfall Covenant’s plotline for Cadwell’s Gold; moving Azandar’s personal quest further along; and last but not least, significant action in Wrothgar.