In Which Gyllerah Quests in Wrothgar and Destroys Azandar’s Adversary

Another peek at Gyllerah’s ESO action during the middle of February. This post covers a week of play, but only four sessions with actual RP/adventuring in them. Main highlights: running more action in Wrothgar for the Orsinium plotline; running the Rkindaleft public dungeon; running the Vile Manse in Reaper’s March; and finishing up Azandar’s personal Companion questline!

Play by play

Play dates: 2/15-2/21/2024
Session numbers in this run: 354-357

General actions for all days

Writs, regular and master
Harvesting and fishing on Artaeum
Style pages acquired, and kept for Gyllerah: Black Fin Legion Bows; a bunch of Ancient Orc ones I bought to make gear for Veghra (body armor pieces, battleaxe, desto staff); the entire Blackreach Vanguard style book, thanks to Seals of Endeavor; Xivkyn Boots
Style pages acquired, and handed off to Veghra: Psijic Shields
A bunch of selling stuff; crossed the 3 million gold mark for the first time! 😀 And later, 4.1 million
Surveys
Antiquities on High Isle, Stros M’Kai, Betnikh
- Another piece of the Thrassian Stranglers
- Another piece of the Oakensoul Ring (note: I had the ring already as of this point, and discovered later that you can make multiple copies of Mythics, so getting more lead parts for it seemed rather redundant)
- An Ultimate-tier item, an Orcish Warcaller drum, very cool
- And another Ultimate-tier item, an Anvil of Orsinium that’s an actual blacksmithing station, fuck yeah

February 16th

Main action for this session: went back to Wrothgar and ran the next bit of the main plot there, with Ember as backup
Reported back to Scarp Keep to talk to King Kurog
Went to his throne room where three other chieftains were waiting to talk to him
When he came in, very confident from our success against the Reachmen, he proclaimed it time for him to be officially made king
The other chiefs were not on board with this, especially Targak, who Kurog then promptly stabbed through the heart right in front of everybody else, YIKES
Kurog was all “I’m sure i’ll find something for someone of your particular skillset to do” and invited me to go explore the city
Thought this was a good point to go find the curator and start the plot for the House of Orsimer Glories
But when I got out into the city I was hailed by another High Elf, Talviah, who wanted me to go find Kurog in his personal club and also put in a good word for him
Did not however elect to go talk to the king
Instead I wanted to go run the other public dungeon I hadn’t hit yet to see if I could get any Ancient Orc style sheets
So got out of the city, called up Bastian, and hoofed it eastward for Rkindaleft
Took a little bit to get over there, and I stumbled across the Maelstrom Arena on the way
Killed assorted hostile critters
Finally reached the ruin and started running it
Found a dejected Orc woman, Glurbasha, just inside to kick off the local quest
She’d come in with a band of adventurers that she was pretty sure were all dead at this point, and also warned of strange altered Orcs; I volunteered to help as you do
Killed a whole lot of hostile Dwemer machines, and a whole lot of hostile feral Orcs
Found the expedition leader on the verge of dying, and read his notes
Eventually also found a living member of the party, Cinosarian, who was trying to figure out what was up with the Orcs; he set me to gathering evidence in parallel with the main goal of taking out the primary bad guy
Said bad guy was a mad High Elf–because of course it was an Altmer–who was trying to “perfect” his captured Orcs by grafting their souls into Dwemer centurions
This guy, the Harmonic Auditor, was creepy in a Davros kind of way, almost all clockwork and confined to a chair
And as soon as I took out his primary centurion, he basically begged me to kill him, which I did
Gathered various bits of evidence and took them back to the living party member, to resolve his quest
And reported back to the Orc woman at the start of the dungeon to resolve hers
No Ancient Orc style pages though

February 18th

With Azandar as backup, ran some guild dailies
- Fighters Guild: Dolmen in the Rift
- Mages Guild: the Vile Manse in Reaper’s March
- Undaunted: Claw’s Strike delve in Reaper’s March
Did the dolmen in the Rift first, Ragged Hills Dolmen, not far from Geirmund’s Hall Wayshrine
Got in fishing while waiting; took a little bit because the dolmen was finishing firing off just as I showed, up so had to wait for it to reset
Then boinged to Reaper’s March
Ran the delve first, which required me to rescue a guar from some skooma dealers; also got the skyshard and killed off relevant boss
Then hoofed it northward from there since the target public dungeon was on the same side of the map
The Vile Manse turned out to give some backstory on what happened to the burned Bosmer village I’d seen before in the area
Turned out some Imperials razed the place, deserters from the Legion of the West Weald, according to the wiki
The leader of this batch of deserters was, it turned out, looking for the Oghma Infinium :O
So Hermaeus Mora showed up a time or two to address me as part of this plot–but clearly a Hermaeus Mora who wasn’t aware I’d been working for him in Necrom
Additional side quest was freeing a Bosmer who was the last survivor of her village, and their Spinner; she asked me to find three dead villagers and recover belongings of theirs, so that she could commune with their stories
After I did that, went after the leader of the Imperials
Killed a bunch of hostile Imperial soldiers, and as I went deeper into the cellars underneath the mansion, some frost atronachs as well
Finally had to jump down a long hole into what seemed to be the remnants of an Ayleid ruin
Mad Imperial dude was down there, and I took him out
But did not get the Oghma Infinium–Mora confiscated that, and gave me a memento instead, snerk
But that was a nice big fun crunchy public dungeon and i enjoyed it!
Az leveled up during all of this, I think to 13? Second most leveled up companion for me at that point

February 19th

Did two extra trials with Swamp Haven because of a weekly endeavor to run four trials
We did Aetherian Archive and Cloudrest, and I was less horrible at Cloudrest this time XD
Then finished up Azandar’s Companion plot to destroy his adversary
This required us to go get three leftover items from earlier in Azandar’s life, in Balmora, at the Star-Gazer’s Observatory near Belkarth, and at Shad Astula–which meant I got to set foot in the latter two places with actual RP in mind
All three characters we had to go talk to had intriguing history with Azandar
Then we had to go hit the Mages Guild in Riften, because they had a special warded scrying room
Az wanted to summon and bargain with the watcher entity from earlier in the plot, Tem
Tem accepted the terms of his contract, which were for Tem to have free reign to hit up Az for a favor later if he made him a rune of unmaking now
Then we headed off to Az’s sanctum in Skywatch–only to discover OHNOEZ, his evil doppelganger was already there and had thrown up an ominous-looking ward on the door of the place
Nobody else in the vicinity seemed concerned though, LOL, not even the person in mage robes standing right next to the door
Evil Doppelganger Az crowed at us about taking over Actual Az’s sanctum and reading all his books and using all his equipment
Actual Az came up with a backup plan of us sneaking in the back way
This required us to go over to the Entila’s Folly delve I’d been in before, the one with the crazy Khajiit and all the spiders, so headed in there and killed a few spiders en route
Found the half-hidden door that led to a back entrance to Az’s sanctum
Got in and took out the evil doppelganger… mostly
Used the rune from Tem on him and the Fateweaver Key, but that didn’t quite destroy him–because we also had to drain all the power out of the Fateweaver Key that Az had made
He asked me to then take it to a cliff on the island and chuck it into the ocean
We had a nice final conversation and he basically now is my best bud, rapport-wise <3
Now I can have Azandar as a houseguest! I’ll need to figure out where to put him
Then swapped off to Mirri and ran a bunch of antiquities
Fellow member of the Saints guilds sent me some mats, so made some Necrom furnishing items to hand over for guild auctioning purposes; submitted those to the guild along with a bunch of raw mats farmed while I was doing antiquities, and leftover mats from Silverbride; requested joint credit on the donations for that since Silverbride sent mats

February 21st

Made an extra set of gear for Gyllerah after reading that you can level up Companions faster if you’re wearing training gear, so I did a set of Adept Rider + Heartland Conqueror and made this her second gear set on her primary armory build
After that, woke up Bastian and ran Undaunted + Fighters + Mages Guild dailies
- Fighters Guild: Malabal Tor dolmen
- Undaunted: Naril Nagaia in Greenshade, which I’d already run as Marwyth
- Mages Guild: Crow’s Wood in Stonefalls, again already visited as Marwyth
The latter of these went pretty much as Marwyth had done, including my agreeing to lean on the mage who wanted out of his bargain with the Crow Mother
This time through I killed a couple more of the bosses, and got achievements and a skill point
And Bastian leveled up to 7

Action in Wrothgar main plot

The first action I had in Wrothgar in this set of sessions featured King Kurog stabbing Targak through the heart–and holy crap yikes? That was my first big indication that the Wrothgar plotline was not going to be pulling any punches. And also that Kurog was going to be–how shall we put this–more complex than he initially appeared.

The response the game allowed me for this was, I feel, insufficient for the situation. I had only a mild “Was it really necessary to do that?” kind of response. So I guess I have to assume Gyllerah was so taken aback that she really had no other idea WTF to say?

Particularly given that this quest narrative is supposed to be that I was invited to Orsinium to begin with by Kurog’s mother. So I think Gyllerah was very aware that she was an Altmer stranger in a city full of Orsimer, and therefore found it probably unwise to make a public stink about what just happened, especially if she wanted to survive long enough to actually leave the city.

But boy howdy, did she note this for future reference.

I only realized much later that Talviah, the Altmer who started bringing me various messages from Kurog that helped moved the plot along, was someone I actually met during the very beginning of the plot. Which was a consequence of having a delay between starting it and continuing it!

Still, I was amused at Talviah asking me to put in a good word for him with the king. That was sheer Altmer status consciousness right there, that was. And rather a turnaround from when I saw the High Elf giving the Orc shit in Summerset for not knowing about local customs.

Action in Rkindaleft

This public dungeon did not disappoint, though I admit to not really having a clear sense of how long the Orcs trapped in the place were there and how their history progressed. References in those point to the original set of Orcs having fled the first sacking of Orsinium, but according to the wiki, that happened back in the First Era. So they had to have been in there for hundreds of years.

What’s not clear to me, though, is how soon after their arrival the Harmonic Auditor started in on them. I have to assume that the Orcs must have fallen victim to him pretty soon after they showed up. The deterioration of their culture, as documented by what scraps of journals you find in the dungeon, is very stark. They go from fully literate down to their scribe being barely able to write at all, and from worshipping Malacath to worshipping “the Great Warmth”.

That kind of a devolution had to have taken a while. It’s also reminiscent of the fall of the Snow Elves, and how they turned into the Falmer–and that’s a creepy thought.

Also, of course the Harmonic Auditor was a mad High Elf. Because of course he was. I’ve written before about how you can’t swing a stick in an Elder Scrolls game without hitting a crazy mage. But a whole helluva lot of those crazy mages do tend to be High Elves!

All in all a nice crunchy dungeon.

The Vile Manse in Reaper’s March

This public dungeon was also very fun. With surprise Hermaeus Mora appearances, and the Oghma Infinium!

But it was a Hermaeus Mora clearly not aware that I’d been taking action for him in Necrom, because of course this was base game content released long before Necrom came out. So, LOL, Gyllerah timeslipped again!

(Sorry about that, Azandar, this shit happens. Maybe you can come up with an Arcanist way to fix that?)

Also, I had to snerk that Hermaeus Mora started the plot by promising me the Oghma Infinium–and then reneging on that at the end, and giving me a memento called the Discourse Amaranthine, instead.

I get why that had to happen, of course. Nobody in the game really gets Daedric artifacts for reals. But still, it was disappointing to not even get a skill point off of having a peek at the book!

Dammit, Mora, you were more accommodating about this in Skyrim. Sheesh. 😀

One other thing I want to note here is that at least in this plot, Hermaeus Mora’s design came across to me as a lot less complex than it is in Skyrim. But he’s also

Still, though, also a nice big crunchy public dungeon, and good plot mileage!

I’ve since run this dungeon on my other alts as well, and I’ll have additional commentary about that when I get to those runs, too. Especially for Ashoshah.

Action with Azandar

As I continued to run Azandar’s personal plot, I found that enjoyable too. I particularly liked getting reasons to hit some places I hadn’t had real cause to visit yet in the game, particularly the Star-Gazers’ Observatory–which reminded me that I still haven’t run Craglorn, and I really ought to do so!

All three of the NPCs I met during that part of Azandar’s plot were entertaining. Each one shed some interesting light on Az’s history as well as what kind of person he is. Nilvon in Balmora really didn’t like him. Elydrina, the Arch-Mage at Shad Astula, had a beef with him. But relented when he apologized for being an asshole to her, and I also noted with amusement that she thought I was attractive.

The scene with Elydrina made it clear to me that Azandar has gotten to be less of an arrogant prick as he’s gotten older. He’s still pretty arrogant, don’t get me wrong! But it was nice to see him apologize to Elydrina, which showed that he’s picked up some wisdom to temper that arrogance and made me appreciate him more as a nuanced character.

And Lillurazha at the Observatory copped to having had a crush on him, once! Which particularly intrigued me, given that Lillurazha was a Khajiit. So this is yet another example of it being absolutely lore-friendly for Khajiit to be romantically inclined to humans or mer, or vice versa.

This led into the finale of the plot, and destroying Azandar’s evil doppelganger. Which was fun! And ended on another opportunity to show the nuances of Azandar’s character, as he couldn’t quite bring himself to destroy the Fateweaver Key–so he had me do it for him. I’m pretty sure that the younger Azandar, the one who had been more of an arrogant prick, probably would have kept the thing. But older and wiser Azandar knew enough to let me, a trusted friend, destroy it for him.

So now I’ve finished off Azandar’s plot, and he is my best bud rapport-wise! And I can have him as a houseguest. I’m not sure which of the houses I’ve picked up will be the best one to put him in; I’ll need to think about that.

Another gear set for Gyllerah

I read that you can level Companions faster if you’re wearing Training gear, so as noted above, I whipped up another gear set for Gyllerah to use when I want to specifically level Companions.

Set this up with Adept Rider and Heartland Conquerer, and made it a dual wield/bow combo–just because I did learn from running Marwyth that I really do like that configuration!

I did the armor pieces in Yokuda light style, just to see what it would look like, and because I had a lot of Ferrous Salts at the time. That style looks better to me if the colors are understated; otherwise, it comes across as gaudy. So I experimented with colors, and settled on Obsidian Black + Jute Green + Starlight Gold.

I’ve rearranged that set of gear a bunch since then. I still have the Adept Rider + Heartland Conquerer combo, but I made different pieces of both sets in different styles since I didn’t like the Yokuda style enough to stick with it. More on this to come later.

Next time

Gyllerah’s next post will finish her February action off, and will feature her pushing the action along in both Glenumbra and Wrothgar. And joining the St. Greymoor guild, for additional trading fun!