In Which Ashoshah Flees Coldharbour and Joins the Brotherhood

I know I just finally got caught up with starting to post about my third ESO alt, Veghra–but now here’s my fourth ESO alt, who I only just started playing. I’m skipping ahead in the backlog since she’s brand new, and I’m also covering territory with her I haven’t done before on the other alts. So I won’t be duplicating myself too much by posting her stuff as well.

Everybody meet Ashoshah the Khajiit, my brand new baby Arcanist, and newly minted member of the Dark Brotherhood!

Play by play

Play dates: 7/21-7/22/2024
Session numbers in this run: 1-2

July 21st

NEW ALT because SURE WHY NOT LOL
Never mind that I’m a fuckton behind on putting up all my playthrough posts 😆
But only went as far as getting her created
Skipped the tutorial and got started at level 3 as per what happened with Veghra
Then parked her in Cliffshade until I was ready to start playing her properly

July 22nd

First things first on this alt, made her a set of gear via Gyllerah
Ran that gear set for the rest of the session
Spotted the Hooded Figure in Marbruk, LOL, just as I was heading to the bank to get mats for crafting gear; did not interact with her at that point
I was going to skip starting Coldharbour with this alt for a bit, but then realized it’d be a good way to contribute to her general state of being fucked up
So went ahead and talked to the Hooded Figure
Took me a bit to find her, she was not still hanging around Marbruk, so I went to Vulkhel Guard
Hooded Figure was on board a ship rather than by the wayshrine, which I wasn’t expecting
But got her to point me at the Benefactor belowdecks
OHNOEZ THIS ONE HAS BEEN MURDERED AAAAAAAAH BOOM COLDHARBOUR
Played through that as per previous playthroughs, but more on this below
Landed in Khenarthi’s Roost and met Razum-dar
(Break to go switch to Veghra and run dragons with Saints guildmates)
Then came back to pick up with Ash again, and ran Khenarthi’s Roost
Did the general “investigate the place” quests I did before as Gyllerah
When I ran the plot at the temple, let the young apprentice sacrifice herself to bind the evil spirit rather than her master
Also ran Hazak’s Hollow and the side quest for acquiring the cursed books
The cursed books quest I played differently this time, see below
Right about here though I took an opportunity to take a plot break
Boinged back to Summerset, and got set up on all seven types of writs
Was deeply amused that pack merchant Marakar totally hit on me 😆
Then actually ran those writs, since I could
Took me a bit to pick up necessary materials but nothing I couldn’t manage from the Swamp Haven guild bank
Bopped into the Marbruk Outlaw Refuge to sell some stolen stuff, since I did come across at least one Thieves Trove while running Khenarthi’s Roost
So since I was in there anyway, talked to Amelie Crowe to get the Brotherhood quest going
Got hailed by the Prophet as soon as I set foot through Marbruk’s open gate, but I have thoughts on the actual narrative for this, see below
Once that was done, resumed action on Khenarthi’s Roost
Also explicitly left the Green Lady to take out the Sea Elf ambassador who had the Silvenar killed
(Ash does not have the same amount of mercy to spare that Gyllerah did, that’s for sure)
Played through to the point of Raz asking me to proceed to Auridon, and blipped back to Cliffshade for an inventory cleanup
Once in Anvil I think she was hitting skooma withdrawal pretty hard, and wound up killing Aelf in the graveyard since the guy was wandering around drunk
She wasn’t even consciously considering Amelie’s pitch about the brotherhood at that point, she was just freaking out and maybe convinced the guy was a Daedra, or else maybe that he simply had some skooma and she had to have it
But that was enough to trigger the messenger showing up to give me the note from the Brotherhood
Got a bounty and immediately blipped back to Cliffshade to pick up some counterfeit edict scrolls (am I taking shameless advantage of fast access to my main house and stuff? YES, YES I AM)
Scroll cleared up the bounty problem so then boinged right back to Anvil
Went to the lighthouse and spoke to the Speaker in there
He gave me the right to use the Blade of Woe, and sent me off to a noble’s estate to take the guy out
He also gave me a tip about using some hidden smuggler tunnels underneath a particular run-down inn
Got into the tunnels and had to sneak past a bunch of people, some of whom spotted me, so I had to take them out
Once I made it into the estate proper I eluded a fire mage and got into the main house, where I found a suspicious note upstairs talking about a secret meeting down in the wine cellar
So had to sneak down there and trigger a couple of false casks to open up a secret passageway
Took out more defenders as I snuck my way through to where I could eavesdrop on the secret meeting
Heard my target and a couple other people talking about how murders were happening in Anvil: murders of MEMBERS OF THE DARK BROTHERHOOD! Gasp!
Had to keep going in further before I could finally catch up to my target
Took out a couple more of the estate protectors on the way, and finally reached the guy and took him out with the Blade of Woe
(And yep that was a rather stupidly over the top cinematic on that, snerk)
Got out again
Had a bounty on me again, so took my time heading back to the lighthouse to meet up with the Speaker
Turned in the quest and got the objective to check in at the Sanctuary
Met the matron Astara there and got the Shrouded Armor costume, and the general speech about how things worked in the Sanctuary
Was told to get initial directions from another NPC, and to meet some of the other assassins in the place
Left off there for the time being
And at this point Ash had leveled up to 15, which let me unlock her back bar, yay!

HOLD UP fourth alt, WTH, Anna?

So yeah, fourth alt for me in ESO!

This is a thing I’ve been thinking about for a while. I thought that one alt per alliance was going to do me, but three things finally changed my mind:

I’ve been wanting to try the Arcanist class since I see bunches of players running them
Finally coming up with a character idea to run the Dark Brotherhood
I got the pretty Mane of Many Rivers hairstyle as a recent crate reward in daily logins, and since that’s a Khajiit hairstyle, I needed a Khajiit to actually use it

Actually having a character concept to launch me into running the Dark Brotherhood was a big factor here, too. I’ve been thinking about running the Brotherhood plotline for a while, since friend and guildmate Cync/Kelinmiriel was kind enough to gift the relevant DLC to me!

The problem was, I didn’t really feel like I had a character that would be appropriate for joining the Brotherhood. Gyllerah and newer alt Veghra were both right out. Marwyth, my Nightblade, was arguably the best match for them… but as I’ve written before on this blog, she was less of a proper fit than you’d expect.

Marwyth is absolutely on the wrong side of the law. But there’s a difference between being a thief and being an assassin. And while Marwyth’s moral code lets her find assassination acceptable in the context of the Morag Tong and their Writs of Execution being legal in Morrowind, that’s not the same thing as being a Sithis cultist going around assassinating people because you believe the Night Mother wants you to.

Plus, Marwyth’s gotten far enough along in her character arc that I have a hard time buying her joining the Brotherhood at all at this point. She leans a lot more towards Chaotic Good now, especially now that she’s finally reached running the Coldharbour finale of the main quest.

But then I thought, well, if I make a brand new character and use that alt to run the Brotherhood first, then that would put me into a position to pursue a redemption-type arc. And that appealed to me a lot more than trying to stuff a character with a history of doing more heroic things into an organization of assassins.

And then I thought: what if my new assassin was slightly unhinged, perhaps with a skooma problem, and was convinced that she was seeing Daedric duplicates of people that needed to be killed? An in-character explanation, you see, for why players in ESO keep seeing the same NPCs respawn over and over even after killing them. 😀

Once I thought that up, the new character was born.

Introducing Ashoshah

Ashoshah is another character named for a character in stuff I’ve actually written, but in this case, a character that hasn’t yet appeared in a published work. I selected this name just because I thought it might work well for a Khajiit, and for the record, I pronounce it in my head as a-SHOW-shuh.

Since that’s a trifle hard to roll off the tongue, though, I will also frequently refer to her as Ash, which I’m seeing as her likely in-character nickname. Or Murderkitty, which is her out-of-character nickname. (My wife has pointed out quite correctly that all kitties are murderkitties, and I feel any cat owner will back us up on this.)

I decided to set her up as an Arcanist, just because I wanted to experiment with that character class. And I’m fully cognizant that this is arguably not a good choice for an assassin! From what I’ve seen of the various Arcanist class abilities, stealthy is not a word one can apply to them. But fuck it, I already have a Nightblade! And I know how to make invisibility potions, and how to get Jailbreaker and Darloc Brae armor. Ash will be fine.

And as I’d done with the other alts, I built Ash some starting gear via Gyllerah. Since she incarnated at level 3, I set it all to level 4, and improved and enchanted it all to what seemed a reasonable degree based on what mats I had available. (Which is to say: purple on all the armor and weapons, blue on the jewelry.)

Since I’m fond of the Heartland Conquerer + Adept Rider mix, I used those sets, and put the Training trait on everything that could accept it. For styles, I used a mix of Dark Brotherhood, Assassins League, and Thieves Guild styles, all of which seemed fairly well in character. I don’t have a full set of all those styles for Gyllerah yet, but I had enough of them that the three of them together worked pretty well.

And I chose a color scheme that seemed to fit pretty well with Ashoshah’s blue and green hair: Maormer-Eyes Gray, Abyssal Beryl, Dried Blood Brown, and a little bit of Glenbridge Green.

What I know about her backstory is now in place on her official playthrough page.

And as with Veghra, even though I’m parking Ash in Cliffshade as a matter of convenience, she does not actually live there in character. I’ll need to figure out where her official digs will eventually be.

Getting started in Coldharbour and Khenarthi’s Roost

I originally thought I wouldn’t run Coldharbour with Ash right out of the gate, but then realized that it’d actually be a good way to contribute to her general state of being fucked up. So decided to go through with it!

Because here’s the thing: your character fucking dies. And you are shown flashes of your viewpoint of Mannimarco sacrificing you. And you wake up in Coldharbour, one of the worst possible Daedric realms for you to get stuck in. That’s some heavy duty trauma right there.

The game does not give you any real option to RP being freaked out about that. But I’m thinking Ash barely managed to keep her shit together, because Lyris got to her fast enough. And once Lyris found her, there wasn’t time to freak out.

So she plowed through rescuing the Prophet in a very manic kind of mode. And once she fell through the Dark Anchor and landed in Khenarthi’s Roost, she was still in the grips of that.

I’ve written a lot about playing on Khenarthi’s Roost as Gyllerah, so I’m not going to replicate those details here. But what I will say is that meeting Raz was probably enough to brace Ash a little further. Partly because he’s a fellow Khajiit–but also because he seemed to believe her once she started babbling about escaping from Coldharbour.

But he also had a line that I didn’t get from him as Gyllerah, just because I played the whole flow of events rather differently with her:

“A Daedric Prince, you say? Raz has a nose for lies, but you seem clean as an ocean breeze. Hmm. If anyone else asks you … where will you say you came from?”

And that right there, I think, stopped Ashoshah cold. It was a reminder that people do not fucking believe her if she says weird shit happened to her.

So she gritted out a lie, even though it made her mentally pull back from the idea of Raz as a potential ally. And I think she spent the rest of her time on Khenarthi’s Roost in the tail end of the trauma of escaping Coldharbour, throwing herself headlong into helping out on the island without really thinking at all about what she was doing. Because if she stopped to think about it, she’d have to grapple with the idea that she died.

And she really, really did not want to think about that at all.

I’ll note one exception to this, though: the side quest where you have to help a ghost find cursed books, and you are presented with the option of destroying the books for the ghost, or turning them over to a Khajiit follower of Hermaeus Mora, who shows up at the same shrine.

I decided to help the Khajiit this time, partly because a) fellow Khajiit, and b) she explicitly mentioned Hermaeus Mora. And since Ash’s backstory is that she was brought up by ciphers in Apocrypha, of course Mora’s name is going to carry weight with her. So she gave the books to Sahira-daro.

When I ran Hazak’s Hollow, I figure it had to have rattled Ash to learn that Hazak was another Khajiit in the grip of skooma. And of course the game didn’t actually have any just lying around his hideout–but Ash totally looked. Not in-depth, because she had Khari with her, but she was absolutely keeping an instinctive eye out.

And one more thing I’ll note re: Ash’s actions on Khenarthi’s Roost: eventually the better parts of her nature, the parts of her that prompted her to help Razum-dar deal with everything that needed dealing with, will surface again. Not sure yet what the circumstances will be to prompt this, but it’ll be interesting finding out!

Narrative explanation for Ash doing crafting, and also what happened when the Prophet pinged her

Even though I took Ash to Summerset to get her set up on running writs, I am going to assume for the sake of her narrative that she didn’t actually go there in character. Doing it on Summerset was entirely a matter of convenience for me as a player.

Instead, I’m assuming as part of her backstory that she learned how to make a bunch of basic things growing up in the orphanage she landed in. This was because she was pretty much forced to do so, as a means of proving herself useful to the orphanage’s headmistress. So she’s able to make basic things and sell them when she needs to make a few quick coins.

Likewise, I’m also assuming that the Prophet’s first ping of her did not actually happen in Marbruk. For story purposes, I’m going to assume instead that his projection found her right at the very tail end of her saving Mistral from the Sea Elves. And that instead of going to Auridon as Razum-dar asked, she instead fled to the Gold Coast.

Because by that point, she’d managed to convince herself that Coldharbour could not possibly have happened. She could not possibly be dead, because she was still walking around, talking with people, and trying to help save the island from trouble!

But when the Prophet’s projection appeared to her, that jabbed her right in the psyche. We’re talking NO NO NO NO THIS ONE DOES NOT WANT TO TALK TO YOU STRANGE GHOST MAN THIS ONE IS NOT DEAD NO NO NO SHE DOES NOT WANT TO THINK ABOUT COLDHARBOUR GO AWAY!

Getting to Anvil

I actually picked up the Dark Brotherhood quest from Amelie Crowe in Marbruk’s Outlaw Refuge, since again, a convenient location to get that done.

Story-wise, though, I’m going with, Ash ran off from Mistral after her last conversation with Raz. And she managed to buy her way onto a ship other than Captain Jamila’s Prowler, without giving a fat flying damn where it was going, just as long as it got her the hell away from Khenarthi’s Roost. Let’s say that ship is what got her to Anvil.

I’ll also assume for narrative convenience that she talked to Amelie Crowe there. And since I know that’s actually an option for launching the plot anyway, I don’t mind tweaking the narrative to allow for that here.

At this point, Ash also had to be desperately craving moon sugar, or skooma, whichever she could get her mitts on first. Amelie going on about the Brotherhood was not, I think, anything about which she had any actual fucks to give. She just wanted her brain to stop shrieking at her about Coldharbour and Molag Bal and strange spooky ghost men appearing to her out of nowhere.

(And I am now also totally imagining the Prophet sighing and trying repeatedly to ping poor Ash over the next several days. “Vestige? Ahem. Vestige. You really do need to find me. The fate of the world is at stake. Are you hearing me, Vestige? Hello?” 😆)

Sucks to be you, Aelf

Once I talked to Amelie, anyway, I faced the question of who exactly to kill to get the Dark Brotherhood’s attention. I’m still not a fan of having to kill a random innocent NPC to do that, but, well, it’s part and parcel of the whole joining an organization of assassins thing.

I started wandering around Anvil just to see what opportunities presented themselves. And in particular, I wanted to see if I could find any obvious NPC dead bodies lying around–just to play with the whole “Ash sees what she thinks are Daedric duplicates” angle. I did see at least one dead body behind a building, but I didn’t see a live equivalent nearby! So kept looking.

And finally, in Anvil’s graveyard, I saw a guy staggering back and forth and periodically lying down as if to take a nap. He looked like he was drunk off his gourd, or perhaps even stoned on skooma. That seemed like a perfect opportunity, especially given that I was imagining Ash desperate for some skooma to shut her screaming brain up. So she attacked the guy in a fit of desperation, just to see if he had any skooma on him. I’m quite sure she was not consciously thinking of Amelie’s pitch about the Brotherhood then, not in the slightest.

But it was enough to get the Brotherhood’s attention, regardless.

Talking with Speaker Terenus

I’ll say this for ESO’s version of the Dark Brotherhood: they are much more on top of things than Skyrim’s version. Which makes good lore sense. ESO is, after all, set earlier enough in the overall timeline that the Dark Brotherhood hasn’t yet reached the point of falling apart that you see playing Skyrim.

Terenus was suitably imposing and creepy. I had to talk to the guy while he was sitting next to a fresh corpse in the lighthouse! The game did not really give me an opportunity to freak out about that in dialogue. But that cannot have been good for Ash’s nerves.

And yet. Once he made the pitch to her to let her into the Brotherhood, I think Ash took it in no small part because of a frantic little voice in the back of her mind going, “If I’m dead… what does it matter?” A voice counterbalanced, as well, by a big part of her just desperate for a safe place to shelter. And after her traumatic childhood and treatment at the orphanage where she grew up, she was also accustomed to having to work for her keep. So if this meant she’d have to kill to earn a safe place, she was numbly willing to accept that.

So time to go take out Lord Quintus Jarol

Getting into the Jarol estate, at least from a play mechanics standpoint, felt a lot like infiltrating places for the Thieves Guild. Only this time, I was trying to sneak my way in there for purposes of stabbing, rather than theft.

And yeaaaaah I did rather miss having Nightblade-style stealth. But I made up for it with a boatload of Sips of Invisiblity, which I’d made as Gyllerah when doing Ashoshah’s gear set. Three seconds wasn’t long at all to be invisible, and the cooldown before I could use the next one was fairly long. But I made up for that by having a lot of potions.

Less stealth than I would have liked did also mean I got spotted more than I would have liked, as well. And therefore had to kill a bunch of “innocent” characters, i.e., general citizens of Tamriel. Checking my achievements in the game, I see that I’ve racked up a tally of 34 citizens killed as of this point. And yeah, I expect most if not all of those are on Ashoshah as of this writing. The game’s UI doesn’t let me actually see how many of them are per character, but!

Really, though, the most interesting part of this whole affair was the conversation I overheard between Lord Jarol and his visitors. I.e., the whole part where members of the Dark Brotherhood were being murdered! Oh the irony!

As a plot concept, I like that a lot. And it’s kept my interest enough to proceed through several more days of Ashoshah, as I’ll be documenting in forthcoming posts.

Last but not least, I must note that this was my first opportunity to actually use the Blade of Woe. I find ESO’s handling of this particular weapon interesting compared to Skyrim. In Skyrim, it’s a single weapon you can get off of Astrid, if you kill her. In ESO, however, every member of the Brotherhood can summon it to use in a killing. And it’s not an actual object in your inventory, so you don’t get to carry it around with you. Instead, the game treats it as a “synergy”–i.e., a special skill that you can invoke in certain circumstances. For me, as a Steam Deck/controller player, this means I have to hit the Y and B buttons at the same time to utilize the Blade, when I’m crouching right behind a target.

And killing somebody with the Blade of Woe also triggers a graphic cinematic of you stabbing them, including a spurt of blood. Yuk. There is an option to turn that off, and I may yet do so. Much will depend on how much active Brotherhood involvement this character will have, once I’m done with the main DB plot.

Finding the Sanctuary, and meeting Matron Astara

I’ll say this for the Dark Brotherhood Sanctuary in ESO: it’s nicer than the one in Falkreath in Skyrim. It’s still very creepy, mind you, but it’s larger and better laid out. And so far I like Astara much better as a person in charge of a Sanctuary than I do Astrid, just because Astara seems much more focused and stable than Astrid. For whatever values of “stable” you get with a member of the Brotherhood, aheh.

Also, the Sanctuary’s better hidden in this game. Which is not to say it’s difficult to find. It’s not. There’s even a DB-style handprint on your compass to point you in the exact right direction. But at least visually, it’s tucked away nicely in a natural corridor between rock faces, well away from any public wayshrine or road.

The Gold Coast is not a large zone, which does make you wonder how hard various NPCs must be looking to find the Sanctuary, if they haven’t been able to locate it. There just aren’t that many places in the zone to put it. But at least I like that it’s not right smack next door to Anvil or Kvatch! And the Black Door is not blatantly obvious to passersby. So I like that much better than how Skyrim handles it, especially the Sanctuary by Dawnstar.

And another detail the ESO Sanctuary has that the Skyrim ones don’t: Dark Guardians, skeletal guards that patrol the place. These apparently also showed up in Oblivion, but I haven’t played much Oblivion yet, so I hadn’t actually seen them! But I’m pleased to see this as evidence of ESO maintaining continuity with older games.

Also, skeletons patrolling the place just in general are creepy. Raises real interesting questions about who those skeletons were in life! Former members of the Brotherhood? People that the Brotherhood caught trying to break into the Sanctuary, and later raised to defend it? I HAVE QUESTIONS.

Relatedly, I was disappointed to discover that the Sanctuary doesn’t have a fence. But it does have a general merchant. Who is also a walking skeleton, and a talking one at that! Which strongly suggests that this branch of the Brotherhood, at least, definitely has access to necromancy.

One last thought

As of this writing I’ve already unlocked several of the Arcanist abilities, and have used them in combat. Which raises the real interesting question of what Ash thinks about having these abilities. I haven’t decided yet if she just straight up inherited them from her parents, or whether they were a gift of Hermaeus Mora to his faithful.

But I am definitely beginning to see why this is a popular class. That Fatecarver beam attack packs a wallop!