In Which Marwyth Goes to Summerset

Now swinging back around to Marwyth in my ESO runs, and the first of her action in February of this year. This post technically covers the first full week of February, but there were only two actual sessions of action in that week, so I’m counting this as two sessions.

Jumped around through various plots: launching Marwyth’s turn with the Summerset plot, helping Mirri find her mother, moving the main questline along, doing some side questing in Clockwork City, and launching the Psijic Order quest with the Augur of the Obscure.

Play by play

Play dates: 2/1-2/7/2024
Session numbers in this run: 103-104

February 2nd

Started Marwyth on the Summerset leg of the Daedric War plot
Played through the initial parts, meeting Razum-dar, and questioning folks in Shimmerine
Met Valrsirenn and found the Daedric ritual in the basement of the monastery
Crashed the Kinlady’s party, then had to go rescue the Kinlady from the Aldarch
Valsirenn cleared me to go to Artaeum and talk to the Ritemaster
Made sure to activate the wayshrine while there, so Marwyth would be able to get in and out of Artaeum

February 7th

Did a bunch of jumping around through various plots
Ran the plot to help Mirri find her mother, and bump up my rapport with her as Marwyth
Played it to the same point as Gyllerah, though this time I didn’t need to bother to kill the main delve boss since I’d already cleared the delve
Marwyth already had that skyshard, too
Then went to the Harborage and ran The Shadow of Sancre Tor
Played this pretty much the same as with Gyllerah: kicked Mannimarco’s ass and then got the Amulet of Kings
After that boinged to Clockwork City and ran the Precursor plot to talk to Zanon, which required me to get into the Reactor District
Learned from the wiki that I could reach another skyshard I’d noticed before via the top floor of Zanon’s workshop, so finally got that
Learned Zanon was trying to reconstruct an early model of a factotum, who also was unusual in how expressive he was and that he did in fact sound male
Zanon recruited me to go find a critical part for this factotum, which required me to head over to the Mnemonic Planisphere outside the Brass Fortress
While over there, launched a different plot involving a young woman named Amili Lloryn, who was an apprentice to the Astronomer there, in charge of managing Sotha Sil’s stored memories
The Planisphere had been raided by Nocturnal cultists after those memories
Had to fight a bunch of the cultists and retrieve six wandering stars that had been fucked up by the attack, and place them back in their proper places
This revealed to Amili how exactly the Astronomer is chosen for the position, and that the cost of becoming the Astronomer is give up all their memories
Which meant she had to do that, as the next in line
She freaked out about this, and I had to choose to tell her what to do, whether to accept her duty or serve Sotha Sil as herself
Marwyth grudgingly told Amili to trust in herself, which led her to accepting her duty and letting the Astronomer perform the spell to nuke her memories
At which point he vanished into dust
While running that plot, also found the part that Zanon wanted, so I brought that back to him in his workshop
Got the factotum’s head talking and it dropped a hint about where to find one of its other parts–and only then did I realize oh right I do already in fact have one of those parts, and two as Gyllerah
For now though let this sit for later
Next stop: Artaeum, where I went to talk to Oriandra about helping out the Psijics
Got the elixir to amplify their ritual
Also spoke to Loremaster Celarus about joining the order
Got the quest to find the Augur of the Obscure and seal time breaches in Summerset
Spoke to Josajeh and got her quest to go get the Augur from Wasten Coraldale
Did a little bit of harvesting on Artaeum before leaving, and marked the set station for Marwyth’s map
Forgot that Mirri doesn’t like it when you harvest bugs, oops, but hey I got a huge resolve bump off finding her mom, so no real harm done!
Next stop: back to Summerset to run Wasten Coraldale, again pretty much same as Gyllerah
Helped the young Altmer woman locate her father, and helped the father find his crewmates and make it safely back to Summerset
I don’t remember getting a quest to take a dead crewmate’s note back to anyone in Alinor–but discovered that person was hanging out at the Plaza of the Hand, and specifically talking to the father I’d rescued about singing “Star-Eyed Bride of Alinor”, ha!
Hadn’t previously realized that that old elf was in fact the father I rescued
Last but not least got really tired of Marwyth’s weapons glowing red, so I respecced Marwyth’s build to get rid of that ability, and focused instead on the Nightblade, Bow, and Dual Wield abilities I like best
And I re-dyed her main armor for an anti-Nightblade look, LOL, with white and the Vivec shade of blue, and also brass

Commentary

Running Summerset reaches all the way back to the beginning of Gyllerah’s run–so it was actually really nice to revisit that, taking Marwyth into that plot this time. I also liked actually doing it in sequence with Vvardenfell and Clockwork City. Much better narrative cohesion!

I wrote extensively about the Summerset plot in Gyllerah’s posts, so I’m not going to recap that much here. But I will say that it definitely felt different as Marwyth, particularly the parts involving joining the Psijic Order. I don’t think Marwyth’s at all comfortable with the Psijics, even if she does have enough magical aptitude to make her interesting to them. For her, this plot is very much a matter of her own better nature, which she generally tries to ignore, surfacing anyway and making her grumpily go okay fine I guess I’ll help you save the world, because apparently that’s what I do? Even if she’d just as soon pick every pocket on Artaeum.

And probably couldn’t stop herself from at least guessing what was in the Ritemaster’s pockets. ;D

Same deal with the Main Quest. A big part of Marwyth just doesn’t feel worthy to be the one that Five Companions are calling on to save the world from Molag Bal. But at this point she’s pretty fairly well committed. Not to mention harboring a great big pile of grudge against Mannimarco and the Worm Cult for killing her to begin with!

(I can’t imagine playing the Vestige at all and not being incredibly pissed off about that! I suppose if you’re playing a much more paladin-type character than I tend to play, you might be placing more emphasis on the whole WELL OF COURSE I MUST HELP SAVE THE WORLD mindset. But even a paladin-type character’s got to be at least a little put out by having their soul yanked out of them, amirite?)

Gotta say, though, that I still love the Augur of the Obscure. And I suspect Marwyth finds him mightily entertaining.

Good mileage, meanwhile, in Clockwork City. Marwyth’s worldview got to be rattled around some more with the plot in the Mnemonic Planisphere, where she had to deal with advising Amili on choosing between giving up her identity to take on the mantle of the Astronomer, or serving Sotha Sil as herself.

I don’t think Marwyth was fond of either of those options. She would have chosen “Well, you could always, oh, I dunno, get the fuck out of here and not serve the Tribunal.” But she’s pretty damned sure at this point that nobody would like her throwing that around in Clockwork City. Not to mention the game didn’t give me an option for that.

Didn’t help either that Amili lost her vivacious personality, and did not recognize Marwyth at all after her ascension to Astronomer was done. This, I feel, creeped Marwyth out something fierce.

Last thing I’ll note for this post is that I got really frigging tired of my weapons glowing red whenever I had the Grim Focus ability active on my skill bars. From what I saw on the ESO forums, apparently a lot of Nightblade players have been cranky about this for months. As of this writing, there is still a long-running thread of players being cranky about it.

So at least as of this post’s sessions, I took the step of respeccing Marwyth’s build to remove Grim Focus from her skillbars. It pissed me off that I had to do this, because that ability is one of the best ways to maximize a Nightblade’s damage.

Since then, I’ve built a decent trial build for her, and that does include Grim Focus–or more specifically, the Merciless Resolve morph of it. Marwyth’s one available outfit is also now a color scheme where glowing red weapons doesn’t look quite so goofy. But I’m using that build only in dungeons and trials. When I take Marwyth out for overland adventuring of any kind, especially any thieving, I flip to a build where Merciless Resolve isn’t slotted. Because like a lot of the Nightblade players on the forums, I find it incredibly fucking distracting for roleplay and immersion purposes.

Nothing says “I am a mistress of goddamned STEALTH” like my weapons glowing fire-engine red!

What makes it even more aggravating is that other players do not see the glow. Just you. And it serves no useful purpose, like, say, “your Merciless Resolve skill is now fully powered up and ready to fire”. It’s the same level of glow at all times, regardless of whether the skill is at its maximum power level or not.

At the time of this post’s sessions, I also re-dyed Marwyth’s primary armor with a white, blue, and brass color scheme, which I’d planned to be her “running Coldharbour” look. That armor set is now the main one I use on Marwyth when I’m doing crafting with her, or any overland adventuring, particularly running major plots. I consider it symbolic of that better nature of hers she’s always fighting against, and perhaps also of Gyllerah’s indirect influence on her. Since my narrative here has always been that Gyllerah and Marwyth have been occupying similar space but in different timelines. 😉

But I’d really like it on its own outfit slot, so that I can swap back and forth between her Nightblade look, and her anti-Nightblade look. When I’m done buying dungeons with gold in crown exchanges, I think I may need to invest in another outfit slot for her.

Next time

Marwyth’s next post will feature more adventuring on Summerset, closing a bunch of time breaches, and finally returning to the Thieves Guild plotline–to infiltrate a wedding!