In Which Nona Signs On With the Dragonborn Gallery

Nona is now back on deck! Or Deck, as it were. 😉 This is the next episode of her playthrough in progress.

Main action here is finishing up the starting quest for launching Legacy of the Dragonborn: i.e., bringing back a few initial relics, and accepting Auryen’s offer to be his relic hunter! Also, lots of commentary here about the addition of fossils to Legacy v6.

Play by play

Play date: 11/27/2024
Session number in this run: 7
Set out from Whiterun to head to the Reach for that third relic for Auryen
Number of times killed en route: at least 3?
Number of crashes in Solitude: at least 1?
Killed en route:
- Wolves (4)
- Dragon at Western Watchtower (1)
- Sabre cats (3), though this may have been at least two occurrences of the same cat, since I got killed multiple times
- Mudcrabs (1)
- Random hostile Argonian (who was carrying Dragon Priest Ashes)
- Spriggan (1)
Noted that what’s normally an abandoned, derelict house in vanilla Skyrim was an actual little farmhouse in Tuxborn
Also passed on the road:
- Ri’saad’s Khajiit on the way to Markarth (seen at least twice, second time through they got into a fight with a wolf)
- Imperial soldiers (without prisoner, seen at least twice)
- Mounted noble with Imperial soldier escort
- Refugee farmers; donated gold to them
- Wedding party lost on the way to Solitude
Skill bumps off of followers:
- Two-Handed to 19, from Lydia
Found Altar of Magnus for the map; activated it to turn on the display for the museum, even though Magnus wouldn’t take me as a follower
Marked Old Hroldan Inn for the map
Found Jephre’s Stones for the map; activated that as well for the museum display
Got Speech bump to 20 off of reading A Dance In Fire, Chapter 7
Stopped at the Shrine of Dibella to get the display active for that, too
Finally made it to the Forsworn camp, and pretty sure I remember dying here at least once
Read Death Blow of Ebernait for a bump to Block
Got the Jade Warrior 2 relic
Returned to Solitude to take relics to the museum
Turned in the relics to Auryen
Accepted his offer to be his relic hunter and got tour of the museum
Got the Curator’s Guide
Started noting new NPCs around the museum in this version, notably Millie the cleaning lady
Wandered into the Natural Science gallery and made a couple of the exhibits there with what I had on me
Then went out to sell stuff
Spotted another new Legacy NPC, Radcliff the Troubadour
Sold stuff to Beirand
Tried to check back in with Auryen about the Safehouse; he didn’t have the prompt for it yet though
Got the Skull Crusher weapon from him, though
Sold stuff at Bits and Pieces
Talked to Noster Eagle-Eye and got the quest to get his helmet
Boinged to Whiterun to sell more stuff
And got the courier with the notice about the Safehouse because OH RIGHT that’s how that works
Boinged back to Solitude to go unlock the Safehouse
Found the area in the Natural Science wing that has the fossils! Neat!
Chatted with innkeeper at the Winking Skeever
Sold stuff to Fihada at the Fletcher shop
Raided the donations box

General commentary

Everything I did in this session was stuff focused around Legacy of the Dragonborn, basically. It’s all also stuff I did starting off Kendeshel’s run, so this was not unfamiliar territory to me.

It took longer than I wanted, though, because I started triggering what turned out to be a known issue with Legacy of the Dragonborn as part of Tuxborn: i.e., performance issues in the museum. I kept having crashes when entering the place, an issue which has persisted as Nona’s run has continued.

Tuxborn’s devs knew about it, and a fix is expected to come with the release of version 1.0 of the modpack. But since Nona’s playthrough is on version 0.5.2, and the fix cannot be backported to that version of the modpack, it’s meant I’ve been having to deal with it in all of Nona’s sessions.

I’ve decided I’m okay with that, and am proceeding with Nona’s playthrough anyway. And in this session in particular, I persisted with it despite the crash behavior, just because I wanted to get Nona to the point of having access to the Safehouse.

Between that and getting killed by things regularly on the way to the artifact location in the Reach, I did wind up having to do a lot of things multiple times. Honestly, though, that wasn’t really outside of the bounds of my normal experience with Skyrim!

So some of the random encounters and critter fights I have in the notes may or may not have gotten retconned out of existence, just because I did get killed and/or had to deal with crashes multiple times. The main highlights, though, persisted! I.e., getting the third artifact, signing up with Auryen as the relic hunter, and getting the Safehouse.

And speaking of Tuxborn 1.0

As of this week, a test build of Tuxborn 1.0 has been made available to its player base! I’m participating in testing it!

But noting here for the record that as of right now, anyway, I am still planning to continue Nona’s playthrough. Tuxborn 1.0 will be fixing several critical issues in 0.5.2, most notably, performance issues with the LOTD museum and Safehouse. I’ll have more to say about those as Nona’s posts continue. But for now, let me simply say that those LOTD museum issues are the main reason why I’ll say right now:

If any Steam Deck players want to play Tuxborn, absolutely do 1.0. Either come join the testing effort, or wait until the final version of 1.0 drops! It is not worth starting a 0.5.2 playthrough at this point, especially if you want to play Legacy of the Dragonborn as part of it.

Now with that said, onward…

Minor overlap issue with SkyUI and Compass Navigation Overhaul

A thing I started seeing as of about this session in Nona’s playthrough was a collision between SkyUI, and Compass Navigation Overhaul.

Nona’s run is the first time I’ve seriously used SkyUI. Up till now I haven’t really cared for it, and I’ve been using mods to explicitly revert the UI back to vanilla even if I have to install SkyUI to make other mods work.

But this is also the first time I’ve used Compass Navigation Overhaul. I was really excited to start playing with this one, just because it does a thing that makes Skyrim closer in feel to ESO: it puts short text descriptions on screen of what your active quests are!

However, I soon discovered that if I had a SkyUI menu up, having the quest text shown by Compass Navigation Overhaul could sometimes cause an overlap of text. You can see this in one of the screenshots on this post.

Ultimately, my solution to this was to get into CNO’s INI settings, and shove the text it displays over to the right side of my screen. This did take a bit of finessing of the settings, though, and I still wasn’t entirely happy with the final result, just because some of the mods in Tuxborn’s load order had their objectives cut off on the right side of the widget. Still, having the text showing on the right was better than having it on the left!

Auryen making his pitch

I don’t think I really cottoned on to this when running Legacy v5 with Kendeshel, but it amuses me how enthused Auryen is when you come back to him with the initial three relics. He starts happily going on about how the player is no mere treasure hunter… which makes me wonder about the caliber of any previous paid relic hunters he’s sent out to find stuff for him, LOL.

I also noticed this time through, upon accepting his offer to be his relic hunter and getting his tour of the museum, that he explicitly talks up display space to chronicle the player’s achievements. He does not throw the word Dragonborn around that I noticed. But he’s clearly operating under the expectation that the player is in fact going to do things worthy of commemorating in a museum!

I didn’t play the “come to Solitude as the hired relic hunter” start with Nona as I did with Kendeshel. But by this point in Nona’s run, she’d already been ID’d as the Dragonborn and become thane of Whiterun. So it’s absolutely plausible that Auryen has heard something whether or not it comes up in direct conversation with him.

Also, it amuses me that the Dragonborn Gallery is called that right out of the gate. Even before you sign on as the relic hunter. Which implies, narratively speaking, that Auryen was already aware of the idea of being Dragonborn being hugely important in Nord culture! I do buy that, given his academic history, his expertise, and his age. Even aside from any direct connection to the player, I can easily see him deciding to christen the museum that, just to attract Nord visitors.

Of course, the player turning out to actually be Dragonborn doesn’t suck for publicity, either. 😀

I don’t see Nona as actually calling that out. She’s too sweet-natured to make a big deal about being Dragonborn herself.

But I absolutely think Lydia would call it out. Especially the modded version of Lydia that Tuxborn is running! She’d already established herself as of this session as being very forthright and willing to speak her mind.

Nona: “Thank you, Mr. Morellius, I’ll be happy to take the position. May I introduce Lydia? She’s my housecarl.”

Auryen, offering a hand, while raising a brow: “Indeed? Clearly you are a cut above the average relic hunter, if you have your own housecarl? Lydia, very pleased to meet you.”

Lydia: “Thank you. Yes, my thane hasn’t said as much herself, she’s modest, but just so you know, she is the thane of Whiterun. And Jarl Balgruuf directly appointed me to be her housecarl. It’s my job to keep her alive. So if you’re going to send her out to dangerous places to find dangerous relics, I’d take it as a personal favor if you’d make my job easier and help make sure she’s properly outfitted for the task.”

Auryen: “Oh my, a thane. Well then, I’ll be more than happy to subsidize gear for the both of you, and for its upkeep at Solitude’s forge. Or Whiterun’s, if you prefer.”

Lydia, satisfied: “Good. And oh yes, since my thane also didn’t mention this: you are aware, aren’t you, that she’s Dragonborn?”

Nona: “Lydia, I don’t see how that’s relevant–“

Lydia: “It’s absolutely relevant. This place has the word Dragonborn right over the gate. Mr. Morellius seems like a smart man, I’m sure he must see the potential in drawing people here with an actual Dragonborn bringing in relics to show them.”

Auryen, grinning rather broadly: “Now that you bring it up, yes, I have heard some quite exciting things on that very topic. Word did get here from Whiterun. And with your permission, I do have some ideas about how we might take advantage of it if you’re willing to entertain them…”

LOL. 😆

Fossil display area in the museum

This early in Nona’s playthrough, while I was already seeing signs of the museum performance issues, I did at least make it into the section of the Natural Science wing where the fossils are displayed! It’s a whole extra floor to that space, up some stairs from the main area. So that was cool.

And now I’ll say a little bit more about fossils in general in LOTD!

I’m not hugely well versed on fossils IRL, to be sure, but my understanding is that they are at minimum several thousand years old. Which raises the question: is there enough time in the known timeline of Nirn to allow for fossilization of living creatures to happen?

Skyrim takes place in year 201 of the Fourth Era. Prior to that we have:

Dawn Era: No actual linear time
Merethic Era: Few known dates from that era, and it’s also unknown how well the dating system for it maps to later time measurements
First Era: 2,920 years
Second Era: 896 years
Third Era: 433 years
Fourth Era, as of the start of Skyrim: 201 years

So at least as of the First through Fourth Eras, that’s a total of 4,450 years. Which doesn’t seem like enough time for fossils to form.

But if you look back into the Merethic Era, there seems to be wiggle room there for maybe another couple thousand years’ worth of time to happen. The actual flow of time in Nirn seems to have started as of the beginning of that era. So if you assume that Merethic Era years were at least in the same ballpark as later Era years, that adds another 2,500 onto the total, and that brings us to 6,950 years.

Still not quite enough to meet the 10,000 year threshold I see mentioned on the Wikipedia page for fossils!

However, we’re also talking about a world that involves magic and known powerful deities, as well as a whole host of other creatures of lesser power. And mortal mages, who even have the ability to turn things to stone via the known schools of magic. (There’s a plot involving such a mage in ESO, in fact.)

The lore for the Dawn Era specifically describes the whole of creation being in flux and the laws of nature not even being settled yet. So it seems absolutely plausible to me that any number of upheavals during that era of the world could have resulted in highly unusual fossils. And once time became settled and the laws of nature fell into place, it seems equally plausible to me that having magic as part of existence could speed up the creation of fossils considerably. There are any number of magical disasters all over the timeline, some of which are even on camera in various games, that could result in creatures being directly or indirectly petrified/fossilized, just because of the huge amount of magic being thrown around.

And this all ties in to an NPC added in by v6 of Legacy of the Dragonborn, Darnette, who’s supposed to be a Merethic-Era scholar! It certainly implies that Legacy is expecting its fossils to all date back to the Merethic Era, anyway.

More on Darnette, though, when Nona meets her! (I’ll cover this in a later post.)

Notable other follower lines

Gorr is still a man of simple pleasures, and one of his pleasures is starting some shit:

What are we going to kill today? Bandits? Forsworn? Imperials? Stormcloaks? So many choices, so hard to choose.

Aviendha would like to register a protest about the weather in Skyrim:

Is the weather ever nice around here?

No, no it is not. It’s Skyrim, honey, it’s always cold AF, even when it’s sunny! Just be glad I didn’t take you to Winterhold.

Next time

Nona’s next post will be a busy one! It’ll feature a surprise attack in the middle of Solitude, and the kidnapping of Aviendha; heading to Ustengrav to search for the Horn of Jurgen Windcaller; surprise spotting of familiar NPCs from Whiterun inside the museum; hearing from the Jarl of Falkreath about how hey, wouldn’t it be cool if I were his thane?; meeting Lucien and Gore; kicking off several quests; and more!