In Which Merawen Builds Heljarchen Hall and Gains a New Steward

This was a fairly low-key session for the most part, as most of it went towards just working on building Heljarchen Hall, or acquiring stashes of building materials elsewhere to bring there. Plus, a side helping of dragon fighting, and discovering previously undiscovered locations, including a section of the map I hadn’t ever seen before as Alarrah, either!

Highlights

• Play date: 9/14/2021
• Session number in this run: 46
• Blipped from Dawnstar down to Weynon Stones and then walked to Heljarchen
• Built initial Small House and door for Main Hall
• Told Gregor to stand down
• Went to Hillgrund’s Tomb to get Golldir and offer him the steward job
• Got him to buy me some sawn logs
• Fast traveled to Lakeview to pick up leftover building materials; built a suit of dragonplate armor for Gregor
• Whirlwind-Sprinted towards Riverwood
• Got a Courier on the way in with a Letter from a Friend re: source of power at Autumnwatch Tower; noted Purewater Run as location of using the Thu’um? Weird because that place is in the Reach and I was not there, some sort of weird bug for checking where I was when I Shouted?
• Sold stuff to Lucan in Riverwood at the trader shop
• Whirlwind-Sprinted + drawn bow/Sneaked all the way to Heljarchen
• Built more things till I ran out of iron
• Blipped down to Fort Dawnguard; resolved Jarl’s Justice quest with Isran
• Tried for another Florentius quest but nope, Gunmar; this time another Cleansing Light, at Bloodlet Throne; this is the locale for the vampire who’s the ancestor of Dengeir in Falkreath
• Fast traveled to Bthalft to get to Autumnwatch Tower; killed three bandits there, heard the dragon
• Found Autumnwatch Tower; got Word for Marked for Death off the Word Wall
• Dragon showed up but fucked off in the middle of the battle, and started fighting something else that actually killed it, and I could not find the dragon corpse
• Circled around a lot looking for it; discovered Rift Imperial Camp, Froki’s Shack, Alchemist’s Shack, Honeystrand Cave, and a Shrine of Talos as nearby locations
• Finally found dragon south of Autumnwatch Tower after following a winding canyon, and killing a couple of trolls
• Also found some possible unmarked locations: an altar with two draugr and three potions; a collapsed structure with a chest and a dead Nord; and what looked like a barrow entrance with a draugr in it, but which had no actual door, just stairs down from above
• Fought the draugr in the little barrow and also some skeletons, but killed by Ancient Dragon that showed up
• Had to re-find the canyon, the trolls, the dead dragon, and the various unmarked sites
• Saved after I re-found the dead dragon; took out the draugr and skeletons again, this time with Dawnguard armor and Stendarr’s Aura
• Ancient Dragon tried to show up again but this time I fled before it could reach me
• Boinged to Whiterun
• Accidentally triggered Whirlwind Sprint inside Whiterun gates, oops; actually got the Alik’r warriors to go BY THE GODS IS THAT THE VOICE? LOL
• Sold stuff to Warmaiden’s, also bought a bunch of materials
• Sold stuff to Belethor
• Made a boatload of potions at Arcadia’s and sold them to her, also bought several ingredients from her; heh, Arcadia didn’t throw me out even though I was in her store pretty late!
• Discovered I still had the Fine-Cut Void Salts? Because bug in the quest with having had regular Void Salts in my inventory anyway? Oh well guess Wayfinder didn’t need them all that much then
• Overloaded but not so much that a potion of Fortify Carry Weight couldn’t get me to Heljarchen
• Built some more stuff; also had to kill a giant who was standing right by my door and got pissy when I tried to go into my house
• Saved for the night

Working on Heljarchen Hall

Getting and working on the Hearthfire properties is pretty much a known entity to me at this point. So what I’ll say about this here is that I wanted to do the same thing with Heljarchen this game that I had with Lakeview—engaging somebody besides the housecarl to be steward, just to have somebody else besides Gregor on site.

So for Heljarchen’s steward, my choice was Golldir, the Nord I’d met at Hillgrund’s Tomb. I figured the dude might appreciate being able to hang out somewhere besides a tomb! He happily took me up on the offer. Welcome to Team Merawen, Golldir! Hope you don’t mind living next door to giants.

Also decided I’d drop a library wing on Heljarchen this time, instead of an armory wing. But I’m also putting a storage room and an enchanter’s tower there, as those are my other favorite types of wings to add to the buildable houses at this point.

And I built some dragonplate armor and dragonbone weapons, which I’ll need to hand off to Gregor!

Moving building materials around

The notable thing here being, I had a pretty big stash of building materials at Lakeview, so I had to move them all to Heljarchen. Since I don’t have Arvak yet (note to self, fix that ASAP), my only real option was to just load up and tromp over there. I could have done it in multiple fast travel trips, I suppose, but I kind of also wanted to go overland in case anything amusing happened on the way.

And it did give me an opportunity to throw the Whirlwind Sprint Shout around a lot, which triggered a Courier as soon as I showed up in Riverwood. The odd thing there was, the Letter from a Friend he gave me claimed I’d used the Thu’um at Purewater Run, and… no? I didn’t recognize that location, and when I looked it up, I saw that Purewater Run was actually in the Reach. And yeah, no.

So apparently the game just got confused as to where exactly I was throwing Shouts around.

Shopping in Whiterun

The amusing thing here was, discovering that I can apparently sell stuff to Arcadia even after 8pm game time. She let me work at her table a while and then sell her things, and didn’t even throw me out of the place. She did eventually leave her counter though, in a clear sign of “I’m about to close up shop so please GTFO”.

Apparently Arcadia appreciated the company? But I did GTFO before she had to ask me to leave.

And it was while I was buying and selling things with her that I discovered I still had the Fine-Cut Void Salts from the Dawnstar favor quest. Apparently I triggered a bug with the captain not taking those out of my inventory if I already had regular Void Salts? Oh well!

And oh yes—have to giggle over how I fast traveled into Whiterun and accidentally hit my Shout button, which was still set to Whirlwind Sprint. So I accidentally triggered the Shout inside the city gate. Right in front of the Alik’r Warriors who’ve been stuck there this whole game.A

One of them went “By the gods! Is that the Voice?!” Lolololol. Yes. Yes, it is. Hi, did I mention I’m the Dragonborn?

Dragon hunting at Autumnwatch Tower

In between the various bits of building and shopping, I did blip over to Autumnwatch Tower to do that Word Wall. This proved more complicated than expected—because the dragon buggered off in the middle of fighting with me, and got killed by something else off camera.

And for the life of me, I could not find the dragon corpse. I wound up tromping around in circles around Autumnwatch Tower, trying to figure out where it might have fallen. I found five different previously unidentified locations as I did that—the Rift Imperial Camp, Honeystrand Cave, Froki’s Shack, Alchemist’s Shack, and also another Shrine of Talos.

(Note: the Shrine of Talos had assorted items placed there. I could have looted it, but y’know, no. Just because even if Merawen herself doesn’t worship Talos, I think she’s just religious enough to think that swiping stuff from a shrine is just rude. Also, the Dunmer seem to me to be familiar with needing to appease entities they don’t actively worship—i.e., the House of Troubles—so I’d think Merawen would be sensitive to not wanting to piss off any Divines she doesn’t worship, either. She may not worship Talos, but that doesn’t mean she wants to rob his Shrine, either.)

But I also found a section of map I didn’t recognize, once I tried heading south of the tower. This led me into a long, winding canyon with various little bits of outdoor ruins, and, eventually, the dragon. Which had apparently been fighting with a couple of trolls that wound up being what killed it.

It took me two tries to actually secure getting the dragon soul and its loot, though. Because a little further along that canyon, there was also an Ancient Dragon, which handed me my ass. Second time through there I did not engage the Ancient Dragon!

I did however identify the area. It’s Arcwind Point according to the wiki, which is apparently entirely outdoors and comprised of the various ruins I saw, as well as at least one or two others I didn’t reach. And I didn’t get to the point of triggering the location marker, either, because of that dragon.

I will however need to come back and check the place out. Because there’s another Word Wall back there, and this requires investigation!

Dawnguard followup

Dawnguard action in this session was fairly minimal, and just involved reporting in at Fort Dawnguard to get the Jarl’s Justice quest resolved with Isran. I tried to get another quest from Florentius, to get in the last artifact quest and get the Dawnguard Rune Axe, but both Isran and Florentius pointed me at Gunmar for another quest with him.

That quest turned out to be another Cleansing Light quest, this time targeted for Bloodlet Throne. Which happens to be the location where Dengeir of Falkreath’s vampire ancestor hangs out.

Next time

I’ll get that Cleansing Light quest dealt with, and see if Florentius feels like giving me the quest for the Dawnguard Rune Axe yet!

And there will also likely to be further building action at Heljarchen, if I can do another roundup of iron. And I really ought to go say hi to my spouse and kids in Solitude!

Screenshots

Editing to add

• 11/16/2023: Fixed missing gallery, and added a session number.
• 10/4/2024: Added play date to the highlights section. Converted gallery to a native WordPress one.