In Which Kendeshel Acquires Mehrunes’ Razor and the Gray Cowl of Nocturnal

Catchup post for Kendeshel’s Skyrim run! Main action here is post-Alduin, doing some side stuff to acquire Mehrunes’ Razor, and the Gray Cowl of Nocturnal. Also ran the Unholy Vigil plot in Dawnstar.

Play by play

• Play date: 10/2/2024
• Session number in this run: 47
• Picked up again at the museum
• Snuck over into Erikur’s house and yoinked the letter there for the Gray Cowl quest; got objective to get the deed from Gisli
• Found Gisli in Bits and Pieces and bought the deed off of her
• Went out to go find the final instructions, and Sofie asked me to play near the Winking Skeever; sorry, kid, dragonmomma’s got a little business to finish up
• Got the final instructions out of the barrel behind the Winking Skeever, and the objective to go get the sword at Silverdrift Lair
• Gave a gold piece to Noster Eagle-Eye
• Airshipped over to Dawnstar to check in with Silus
• Gave him all the pieces of the Razor and got objective to meet him at the Shrine of Mehrunes Dagon
• Tried to hoof it out to follow Silus to the Shrine, but spawned a dragon!
• And I think it diced me, too, because the screenshots indicate I tried to follow Silus to the shrine twice
• Also spotted a giant near Agrane’s camp, but I did not engage; may have been a dragon vs. giant encounter, since I also saw a dragon in the sky in the distance
• Did however finally make it to the Shrine
• Dagon ordered me to kill Silus, as he does
• Exploited the bug so that Silus would attack me first, and killed him in self-defense!
• Fuck you, Dagon, I’ll put this Razor under ward so nobody can use it to wreak anything
• And heh, the altar asked me if I wanted to follow Dagon once the Razor was reassembled, but that’d be a hard pass
• Took out Dagon’s summoned dremora, as well as the ones inside the Shrine
• Found a Black Band in a strongbox in there, which was displayable for the museum
• Also found an Ancient Daedric Lord Cuirass, which was also displayable
• And a Daedric Cloak, also displayable, really this whole shrine was swimming with even tastier loot than normal
• Headed back down from the shrine, and took out an ice wolf
• Reached the Hall of the Vigilant for the map
• Looted a displayable Death Hound Collar off one of the dead Death Hounds
• Found the letter to kick off the Unholy Vigil quest, but decided first to finish off the Gray Cowl
• Spotted Gjalrunn from Wyrmstooth again hanging out getting drunk on the road (my dude, there are taverns for that, y’know)
• Went to Silverdrift Lair and started running the place
• Excavated the Nordic dig in there, which bumped my Archaeology up to 50 (not clear from the screenshots what I spent the resulting perk point on)
• Killing the draugr boss (this time through a Dragon Priest) in Silverdrift Lair also satisfied the pending side quest I had from Farkas, so got the objective to return to him
• Got the word for the Disarm Shout off the Word Wall
• Found a Daedric Lord Cuirass, not to be confused with an Ancient Daedric Lord Cuirass; this one was not displayable
• Found the Ancestral Sword of Clan Ice-Blade
• Went back to Dawnstar and rented a room at the inn
• Screenshots got a little weird at this point, don’t remember what I did, but I was on the road and encountered the following:
  • Cut through what was probably Fort Dunstad, but not a hundred percent sure
  • Orc skooma dealer, did not engage
  • Snowy Sabre Cat, did engage
• Then returned to the inn and found the note there about the Windward Ruins, to move the Unholy Vigil plot further along
• Went to the Windward Ruins and found dead Azarain and his journal
• Had a bit of time to kill so investigated the fishing shack west of Dawnstar about the whole crabs issue; took out bear there, and assorted cranky mudcrabs
• Found a shell on the beach to display for the museum (Scallop Shell – Orange and Pink)
• Found dead Seviur and journal
• Returned to Dawnstar for nightfall, and tracked the correct NPC into the mine
• Took out assorted cult and vampire hostiles at the altar and resolved the quest
• Found a couple of displayable books on the dead Vigilants there
• Returned to the Dev Aveza and slept the night
• Airshipped back to Solitude and checked in with Latoria to give her more Ruined Books
• Put a bunch of things on display:
  • Vigil armor from the quest
  • Gauldur Amulet
  • Mehrunes’ Razor
  • Ancient Daedric Lord cuirass
  • Death Hound Collar
  • The books I’d found
• Created items at the Archaeology Workstation to display:
  • Nord Wedding Amulet
  • Dragonscale Coffer
  • Nord Tomb Relief
• Put those items on display as well
• There may have been a crash of some kind, I saw my screenshots indicated I put the Ancient Daedric Lord Cuirass on display twice…? But no other indicator of doing the other stuff twice too
• Leveled to 65
• Went back to Latoria and picked up items she’d reconstructed from the Ruined Books
• Lucia hit me up for an allowance when she found me in the streets of Solitude; gave her 1,000 gold
• Gave Sofie a new dress
• Saved there until next time

Rebuilding Mehrunes’ Razor

As with all other playthroughs, I did take shameless advantage here of the bug that lets me bypass attacking Silus. But this time through, I gotta say, Kendeshel was probably tempted to kill the guy anyway, never mind whether Dagon wanted her to or not.

Because after hearing him pontificate about his visions of personal destiny, I’m pretty sure she’d become convinced that yeah this guy is a complete flake. And that under no circumstances should he be trusted to have a dangerous Daedric artifact, and that his attempt at a museum was clearly not legitimate scientific interest at all!

So yeah, Kendeshel just wanted it to make sure it was kept under proper wards, and wasn’t going to be in clearly inappropriate hands. Auryen, at least, knows how to damn well protect an artifact!

Sidebar: There sure are an awful lot of artifacts in this museum

One side thought I had, re: not even just Mehrunes’ Razor, but every single other Daedric artifact you bring in if you’re playing Legacy of the Dragonborn: there are crunchy political questions to ask, about the impact on the world of the Dragonborn Gallery having such a huge concentration of powerful artifacts!

I mean, during the lifetime of the Dragonborn, nobody’s going to cross her and try to take them, sure. But what happens after the Dragonborn dies? Is some future Jarl of Skyrim going to take those artifacts as a means to take over Tamriel and become the new Emperor? Or is a new Emperor going to start war with Skyrim to claim those artifacts for the Empire?

And what happens if you’re playing Legacy of the Dragonborn and you’re on the side of the Stormcloaks? Because I damn sure wouldn’t put it past Ulfric Stormcloak to claim every single artifact in the museum to solidify his rule. And extend it.

For that matter, I’d expect it to be of significant interest to the Daedric Princes. Here’s this Dragonborn gathering all of their powerful artifacts, and hoarding them, as opposed to using them to further their power. I should think that would open up the museum to further risk from, oh, say, pissed off Dagon cultists who want the Razor back!

Auryen’s going to need more wards, is what I’m saying here.

And it’ll be fun to see if any of this comes up once Odyssey of the Dragonborn releases!

The Black Band and artifacts in general

Found the Black Band ring in a strongbox, when I looted Mehrunes Dagon’s Shrine. According to the wiki, this is an artifact that originally appeared in Oblivion. So this’d be another thing Legacy ported in!

It’s not a thing I care about using, though, and that’s honestly applicable to most of the extra artifacts that Legacy imports. And, for that matter, most of the artifacts in Skyrim to begin with. These are the Daedric artifacts I’ve regularly used across playthroughs:

• Bow of Shadows (or the Bow of Obfuscation, given that Legacy renamed it to patch with the AE)
• Azura’s Star
• Mehrunes’ Razor, sometimes
• Dawnbreaker
• Volendrung, but not often

Everything else, meh. Some Daedric artifacts I still haven’t bothered to get at all, because their quests do not appeal to me. And of those I still get, I’m actually glad to just chuck ’em into the museum and leave them there for the display count.

And for the record? I did indeed put the Razor on display and under ward as soon as I got it back to the museum. Kendeshel was having plenty enough damage available to her with the Blade of the Curator, and the Daggers of Riften! She really didn’t need the Razor.

Next time

Kendeshel’s next post will feature beginning work on the museum’s planetarium; killing multiple dragons; cleansing both Farkas and Vilkas of their wolf-blood, and then cleansing Kendeshel’s own wolf-blood; running Raldbthar for the final aetherium shard; taking out Alain Dufont; running Bthalft and the Aetherium Forge, and making the crown; and going to Ivarstead to follow up with the Remnant spy there.

Screenshots