In Which Veghra Has an Extremely Bad Day in Daggerfall

About five months after the fact, I have finally reached the point in my backlogged posts where I can introduce you all to the first of two new alts I’ve been running on ESO. I’ve had the page structure up for Veghra the Orc for a while now, but here finally is the first of her actual posts!

Introducing Veghra, an Orc with a gift for magic, exiled from her clan in Wrothgar–and about to have an extremely bad day when she reaches Daggerfall in Glenumbra…

Play by play

Play dates: 2/12-2/14/2024
Session numbers in this run: 1-3

February 12th

New alt! Created Veghra the Orc as a Daggerfall Covenant alt
Set her up as a Sorcerer
Skipped the character creation tutorial this time, but also got immediately dropped into Necrom and leveled up to 3
Since I got dropped right near the Necrom Outskirts Wayshrine, I used it to boing straight to Daggerfall–at which point I was found by the Hooded Figure
Played through that and the initial round of Coldharbour, just to get all that business out of the way
This dropped me into where I actually wanted to be, which was Stros M’Kai
And this time through I confirmed that yes, coming through as a brand new character got me a quest prompt on the Argonian as soon as I woke up on board Kaleen’s ship
Played through the initial encounter with Kaleen and got the quest to go recruit Jakarn for her heist
Headed over to the grave to do that
This played more or less the same way it did for Gyllerah–minus the conversation beforehand with Irien
But Jakarn was still nervous about running into Irien on the way out
Went with him after breaking him out to go retrieve his stolen gem from the goblin mine, again, more or less the same as how Gyllerah played it
Met the orc who worked for the headman on my way out of that, and once again lied to her about whether I’d seen Jakarn
Returned to the inn and resolved the quest with Jakarn by giving him the gem, and got his agreement to help Kaleen
Nicolene, another member of Kaleen’s crew, ran up to give me the quest pointers for Neramo and Larisa
Left off at that point until next time, having made it up to level 6

February 13th

Vorked on getting Veghra certified to run writs
Did this in Summerset, but am not assuming she was there in character for narrative purposes
This was just a matter of convenience, I’m assuming she got trained in doing all these things in her clan
Then actually ran some writs
And since she was of course on starter materials, I had to buy a few things, some iron and maple
Main RP action: continued the plotlines in Stros M’Kai
Ran the plot to help Neramo, pretty much the same as I’d played with Gyllerah
Then ran the plot to help Larisa rescue her crew
Main difference this time was that I decided Veghra would give the poisoned captain a swift death; that seemed appropriate for an Orc
Got Neramo and Larisa both to agree to help Kaleen’s heist effort
Got directive to return to Kaleen’s hideout, and left off there until next time, at level 8

February 14th

Ran some RP action with Veghra, in a push to get her leveled up to 15 so she could have a back bar
Finished up action on Stros M’Kai
Ran a couple of side plots I hadn’t done yet:
- Helping a wounded Nord who wanted me to kill the king goblin in a nearby camp
- Finding a note by a dead body and taking it and a piece of jewelry off to the dead guy’s sister
Also ran the side plot with the researcher Rulorn, who was trying to put a Dwemer automation back together
Then finished up on Stros M’Kai by running through the rest of the heist plot, and sailing off from there to Betnikh
This time I talked to all the various crew on Kaleen’s ship, and saw that yeah, several of Larisa’s crew had shown up on board
Got to Betnikh and ran the plotline there
Played this through pretty much the same way I did as Gyllerah
Veghra also sided with Lambur on the question of whether to destroy the relic; Vegs may be pissed at her tribe but she was not about to let any such relic be used to smack Orcs in general
Meanwhile also ran a couple of side plots
Very first one i found was the local chieftain’s only daughter wanting to go see the world before she was handed off into marriage, and WELP BOY HOWDY this was something Veghra could sympathize with
Had to talk to her mother and grandmother
Grandmother basically told me to tell her granddaughter to follow her heart; mother was all “she must do her duty!”
Waffled hard on which way Veghra would go on this
She gets the whole duty of a chieftain’s daughter thing, and I think in any other timeline where she hadn’t had to stick up for her sister, she may have reminded this other girl of her duty to her father
But the timeline Veghra is actually in means Veghra told her her life is her own
Other plot was one where I came across a wounded Orc at a camp being tended to, and he was bitchy at me, and hostile to the idea of outsiders showing up on Betnikh
So Veghra was all WTF IS YOUR PROBLEM, and she accepted a challenge to duel three of this guy’s hunters
Kicked all their asses, and wounded guy gave me his axe
After destroying the relic, yep, Captain Kaleen sure was fucking surly
Irien, who actually came with us (I hadn’t realized this while running this plot as Gyllerah), was surprisingly supportive and told me she thought I’d done the right thing
Agreed to take the chief’s petition to join the Daggerfall Covenant to Daggerfall
(Can do, your chieftainship, will diplomatically refrain from mentioning I’m also taking your daughter)
Kaleen very grumpily took me to Daggerfall
And LOL, I didn’t get this line from her, but according to the wiki, if I’d tried to talk to her again after arrival, she would have explicitly ordered me to get off her boat
All right, all right, I’M GOING, ungrateful bitch
Talked to Lambur on the way out and she was happy with me, anyway, and hoped to maybe sail with me in the future
Found the noble to hand the petition off to
And as soon as I entered Daggerfall proper, found the Prophet’s projection
So went ahead and found the nearby Daggerfall Covenant flavor of the Harborage
Ran the whole “Prophet gives me the backstory on the current crisis” sequence
And all of this session let me run Veghra clear up to level 15, which let me unlock her back bar
Stopped there until next time

So this is what’s up with my making a third ESO alt

So you may be asking, hey Anna, what’s with making a whole new character on ESO? Don’t you have plenty to do with your first two characters? Yes. Yes I do.

But here are the initial reasons I wanted another alt:

Running writs for potential resources to sell, or otherwise use in crafting
Possible alt for primarily being a crafter and a resource farmer
I’d also just been wanting at least one alt in each alliance, so

When I initially created her, I was mostly planning on playing Veghra as a crafter. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to RP with her, because I totally have been. She’s the character where I’m doing the primary RP for the Daggerfall Covenant, after all. As of this writing Gyllerah is also working that area for Cadwell’s Gold, but by definition, Gyllerah is skimming through there. Veghra is running it in depth.

Since I am super behind on my posts, I’ve been playing Veghra long enough at this point that she’s leveled up into Champion status along with Gyllerah and Marwyth. And although I had not originally planned for this, Vegs has turned into a second DPS alt, because I’ve been having great fun running an Oakensoul one bar build on her, and she’s actually now doing more damage than Marwyth does.

More on this to come in future posts, though.

While setting Veghra up, I waffled hard between Sorcerer and Arcanist. But I finally went with Sorcerer. And so far, the core character idea for her is, she’s actually quite good at making things, just because the Orcs have a long tradition of the women dominating the smithing. And while she’s not incapable of defending herself in physical combat–she’s an Orc, after all–her real talents lie with magic.

And I’m feeling pretty pleased with her backstory, which I wrote up in depth on the Veghra Playthrough page. If you haven’t seen that page yet, check it out.

Ain’t no party like a Coldharbour party so let’s get this party started

This being my third time through character creation in ESO, I opted to skip the starting tutorial. This had a few immediate consequences:

I got dropped straight into Necrom, which kinda surprised me. Apparently it drops you into your most recent accessible content if you don’t do the tutorial?
I immediately leveled up to 3, presumably this is to cover not having gone through the tutorial?
In my starting inventory, I also got the same starting equipment I got with the first two alts.

So that was convenient and quick.

But I also wasn’t planning on starting to play Veghra right in Necrom, either. I wanted to cut straight to the chase and send her through Coldharbour. I’ve been trying to play her in as linear a fashion as it’s possible to do in ESO. Meaning, I don’t want her bounding all over the map necessarily.

And also meaning, I wanted to get the main quest underway with her right out of the gate. In no small part because of how I’ve experienced with both my prior alts that there are RP encounters all over the place that are clearly presuming you’ve already gone through Coldharbour.

Of course, landing at the Necrom Outskirts Wayshrine did mean I got Leramil the Wise trying to hail me with her “Fate has need of you, proxy” opening line. Sorry, Leramil. Fate’s going to have to wait a while for this Orc!

So I used the wayshrine to boing straight to Daggerfall–and was immediately greeted by the Hooded Figure. Insert ominous orchestra strike here.

This being my third time through, nothing about the initial Coldharbour stuff for me was surprising at any point. Still very intense, still fun to play through, just not surprising! And it certainly also gave me an opportunity to start working on learning how Sorcerer skills work.

I figure Veghra was every bit as horrified by what happened to her as Gyllerah and Marwyth were… though I’m going to have some fun thinking of how wrathful she’s going to get once she’s in a position to deliver smackdowns to Mannimarco. Because nobody does vengeance like a worshipper of Malacath.

For now, though, running Coldharbour’s opening chapter dropped me out where I actually wanted to start Veghra to begin with: namely, Stros M’Kai, the starter zone for the Daggerfall Covenant.

Running Stros M’Kai’s zone quest

I started playing Veghra at about the exact same time Gyllerah reached the Daggerfall Covenant in Cadwell’s Gold. Which meant that I ran Veghra through the starter plot for the Covenant right on the heels of Gyllerah doing it. This immediately let me confirm that yes, Gyllerah broke the plot flow a bit by doing some stuff out of order. While running the same plot with Veghra, I did not have any trouble finding quest markers to show me what to do next.

Which just underscored my resolve to try to play Veghra in as linear a fashion as possible.

Doing the same quest as Veghra did give me a couple of places where I could think about things differently, since this was a new character. For example, when I reached the point of meeting the Orc Moglurkghul and had to lie to her about Jakarn, I think that Vegs probably felt a bit more guilty about that than Gyllerah did. Mostly because she was lying to a fellow Orc, and that didn’t sit well with her.

She went through with it anyway, because she was trying to proceed with the promise of recruiting people for Kaleen. And Kaleen had laid out for her that the headman was a bastard, so. But still. Pretty sure lying to a fellow Orc doesn’t exactly violate the Code of Malacath, but also pretty sure Malacath doesn’t look exactly kindly on it either!

A note about Veghra’s residence and starting narrative

I decided to not play with the same idea I had going when I started Marwyth, re: where Marwyth actually lives. Y’all may recall that I decided Gyllerah and Marwyth had a sort of weird Dragon-Break-y thing going on where they were occupying similar spaces in their own individual timelines, which resulted in Marwyth showing up in Cliffshade while Gyllerah wasn’t there.

Decided not to use the same idea with Veghra, though. I arguably could, just because I feel like a Dragon Break of sorts is as good a reason as any for why there are literally millions of Vestiges running around Tamriel in 2E 582. But just for the sake of varying it up a bit, I decided this idea would not apply to Veghra. (And it also isn’t applying to my newer alt, Ashoshah, about whom I will be posting real soon now.)

Mind you, I’m still using Cliffshade as the main home base for all four of my alts, just because it’s convenient. I’ve acquired several more houses in the game this year, and am slowly working on furnishing some of the others so that characters besides Gyllerah can have an “official” place to live. But I’m not there yet.

And Veghra does have an official starting narrative, which I describe on her main playthrough page.

Getting Veghra started on running writs

Since my original intention with Veghra was to run her primarily as a crafter, it was of course necessary to get her set up to run daily crafting writs. So I took her to Summerset to do that.

Mind you, for narrative purposes, I am not assuming she actually went there. She had no reason to be there, and also, I feel it appropriate to assume that she was trained to make all of the various crafting items already just growing up in a stronghold. Especially anything that requires smithing.

I learned pretty quickly, doing all of this, that I am not a fan of the starting style of Orc light armor. I went for that initially, on the grounds that I was going to set up Veghra as a mage. But I don’t like the overall style of it, or how it looks kind of shiny on the main body areas. It wound up making Veghra look like a discount Power Ranger, and I did not approve.

So I slapped the Covenant Scout costume I had on her until I could make her some better looking gear. And set myself the goal of making as much of that gear as possible the Ancient Orc style, since I was liking what I saw of that.

Next time

Veghra’s next post will feature a lot of questing in and around Daggerfall, as well as forward motion on the other sorts of things in ESO that a new character needs to do! I.e., the main quest, and getting started with the Fighters and Mages Guilds as well.