In Which the Dragonborn Pursues a Lost Legend

So y’all may recollect that in my post about sorting out the nightmares problem for Dawnstar, I found a book called Lost Legends in Nightcaller Temple while traversing it with the priest Erandur.

Reading this book triggered a whole different quest. And in last night’s run, I started that!

Highlights

• Went up to the marshes north of Morthal to find a place called Folgunthur
• Found Folgunthur dotted with previous dead adventurers and the obligatory bunch of draugr
• Read up on exactly what the “lost legend” was, a powerful wizard murdered by his sons, who claimed his amulet and broke it into three bits, and caused enough havoc that the High King ordered all record of the family expunged from recorded events
• Tracked through the dungeon to find the boss draugr, the first of the three murderous sons, and got the first amulet bit from him

Commentary

So yeah, bopped up to the Morthal neck of the woods—just west, as it happened, of Windstad Manor. But I didn’t feel like popping over there quite yet to check in again on Valdimar. Will do that again soon.

Instead, I focused on trekking up through the marshy wastes with Lydia to try to find our destination, which turned out to be a ruin called Folgunthur. There, I quickly found evidence that Lyds and I weren’t the first adventurers to set foot in the place recently. An abandoned camp stood outside the place, where I found a journal setting the stage for what to expect inside.

Answer to that: the actual dead adventurers. And the obligatory pile of pissed off draugr.

The dungeon as a whole was nicely balanced between “not too long to drag” and “just enough puzzle to be interesting”. This was another dragon claw type puzzle dungeon, which I appreciated—nice to run into another of the dragon claws, just because I kind of feel like collecting them. <3 I have three now, not counting the golden one I returned to the shop owners in Riverwood!

And, being a draugr nest, it also was fairly dark in places. So I whipped out the Candlelight spell a lot, figuring that with Dawnbreaker as my primary weapon, it wasn’t like I was going to do a lot of sneaking anyway.

(Side note: I really ought to name my ebony sword! I used it as the primary attack weapon for a little while in this dungeon, before recharging Dawnbreaker with a soul gem. The ebony blade got several of my soul gems filled, so I was able to take care of the recharging problem.)

Further in the dungeon I found the dead body of the Dunmer guy who’d written the journal. He had additional notes on him with other hints about how to continue the quest, and he had the ivory claw as well. Used that (and a few tips from the wiki as to how to proceed) to finally make it further into the dungeon and get to the boss chamber, which contained a bunch more draugr. And in particular, the boss draugr, Mikrul Gauldurson, the first of the three murderous sons in the legend.

He took a little bit more doing to take out—three or four whacks with Dawnbreaker, versus just the one!

But once I accomplished that, I was able to also get his “Gauldur Blackblade” weapon, and the first of the amulet bits off of him. I also found the boss chest behind his coffin, which among other things had a tasty ebony greatsword in it. 😀

Also, I found another Word Wall, this one with a word of the Frost Breath Shout.

I have enough Shouts at this point that I really ought to try them more often. I like Unrelenting Force, but some of these other ones seem like I should totally try them in battle. Like Frost Breath, or Ice Form, or Marked for Death. I’m the Dragonborn, I should damn well use these Shouts!

It also became evident to me that this quest was only part 1 of 3, and the others would have to be done another night. Also, part 2 does appear to require that you join the mages’ college at Winterhold to get access to that ruin, so I guess I now have enough reason to take that on!

For the time being though, part 1 of the quest was enough. I bopped back to Whiterun—or more specifically, to the Western Watchtower near Whiterun. Cue the obligatory fast travel dragon dropping on Lyds and me!

We dispatched the beast, this time without any guard NPCs around going “you took its soul!” Got the dragon bone and dragon scale bits off of it, as well as a few other bits of loot, which capped off the loot I was already carrying from Folgunthur. And all of that pretty much added up to a very, very profitable crafting and smithing and selling run in Whiterun, the rest of the night!

I improved a lot of the armor and weapons I was carrying, both for selling and for keeping. Though I did actually wind up selling the ebony greatsword at Warmaiden’s, since I’d made a Nordic mace that did more damage and which I intended to give to Lyds. Also went up to Dragonsreach to borrow the wizard’s enchanting table and enchant a boatload of jewelry, which I then sold (along with the dragon bits) to Belethor.

All told I racked up over 4,000 gold for the night’s efforts, and stashed that in my chest in Breezehome along with the cache of gold already there. Now I’ve got over 12K in gold, so I’m about halfway to getting that home in Solitude and finally becoming Elisif’s thane!

Got my Smithing up over 70 as well, and got my level almost to the tipping point from 32 to 33. Once I level up again, I should be able to unlock Glass Smithing, and that’ll let me make more tasty expensive armor to sell.

Next time

Not sure yet. Doing actual quests certainly seems my most profitable course of action for building up that gold cache. But I’m not sure yet if I want to advance the main quest (and go to Riften), deal with Dawnstar some more (and try to get to be thane there), go to Winterhold to start dealing with the mage college, or try one of the other miscellaneous quests on my list! I’ve got one for investigating a Dwemer ruin that sounds interesting, so I may wind up doing that! I haven’t done any Dwemer ruin stuff yet.

Editing to add

3/12/2022: Reformatted this post to make it better match ones in later playthroughs.