In Which Delga Battles Necromancers and Recovers Stolen Books

Short-ish session since it was a Sunday night run. I ran Sunderstone Gorge to find the Word of Power there, and also ran Fellglow Keep to recover the stolen books for the mage college.

Highlights

• Play date: 12/5/2021
• Session number in this run: 36
• Dropped off a bunch of things in Breezehome chest to lighten the load, then set out with Lydia for Sunderstone Gorge
• Hostile NPCs: Orc skooma addict who tried to punch me, this did not go well for her
• Non-hostile NPCs: three Imperials + prisoner right by Vuljotnaak’s bones; three Imperials and no prisoner right after; hunter who took out an elk near entrance to Sunderstone
• Fought Dunmer master necromancer at the entrance to Sunderstone Gorge; he killed me once, but I got him the second time through
• Ran the entire dungeon with no real issues
• Got the word off the Word Wall for Fire Breath
• Also got a third Unusual Gem
• Headed back towards Whiterun
• Hostile NPC: thief (male Khajiit)
• Non-hostile NPCs: Khajiit caravan who were all “what happened here?” at the dead thief I left lying back there; also, spotted the Headless Horseman!
• Hostile creatures: two wolves
• Reached Whiterun, and sold some stuff to Elrindir
• Slept the night at Breezehome; dropped a few things off in the chest for safekeeping
• Got up to do shopping at Belethor’s and Arcadia’s
• Headed out then to go to Fellglow Keep
• Wound up running the bandit hideout near Whiterun, since I triggered an encounter with bandits walking back there, and that alerted the other bandits still there
• Opened chest after that fight, and that brought on three more bandits
• Looted all the bandits and stashed stuff in a barrel to come back to later
• Hoofed it over to Fellglow Keep, and ran the place without too much trouble
• Actually freed all the vampires this time, and let them take out mages ahead of us in the dungeon
• Freed Orthorn and told him I had this handled, he thanked me and fled
• Still didn’t kill the Caller, as I passed the Persuade check to take the books and go
• Leveled up to 45 while picking a lock on an Adept-locked chest on the way out; took a Light Armor perk
• Non-hostile creatures: flyby blood dragon on the way back
• Hostile creatures: sabre cat
• Grabbed all the stuff out of the barrel at the bandit camp, and tromped back into Whiterun
• Sold all the bandit loot at Warmaiden’s and Drunken Huntsman; bought Adrianne out of most of her building materials
• Also sold a bunch of stuff to Belethor
• Returned to Breezehome and stashed ingredients at the alchemy station
• Made a few food items just because I could, and because I brought a bunch of food items out of Fellglow Keep
• Saved for the night

Commentary

Not too much in terms of new commentary here, since both Sunderstone Gorge and Fellglow Keep are familiar locations to me at this point.

None of the mages at Sunderstone were much of a problem, with the exception of the Dunmer at the entrance, since he was a Master Necromancer. He killed me only once, though, as opposed to the Master Necromancer who handed me my ass at Ilinalta’s Deep. Which is an indicator of how well I’ve leveled up at this point—it’s harder for a Master Necromancer to take me out now!

(Which is not to say it can’t be done—because he did kill me once. Which just goes to show that I’m not off the hook for monitoring my health bar, or remembering to bolster my resistances and/or armor protection with appropriate spells and/or potions.)

Likewise, Fellglow Keep was not much of a problem either. Just for the sake of variety, I decided to set all the vampires in the cages loose this time just to see what would happen! I will headcanon this by assuming that Delga had no way of knowing they were vampires; she comes in, all she knows is that the mages in this place were considered bad news by the college. And here they have live prisoners. Clearly, the right thing to do is to free the prisoners!

And if the prisoners proceed to go kill their captors, sounds fair to Delga!

I did still tell Orthorn I had it handled, though. Dude is still a fairly fragile NPC and I didn’t want him getting killed! So I hope he runs off and has a happy rest of his life someplace not inhabited by necromancers.

(Little sad that he doesn’t get to recover a place at the college. It’d be nice to see him restoring his place at the college and just peacefully continuing with his studies!)

Next time

I’ll see about getting Kharjo his amulet back, and then swing by Stony Creek Cave to sweep the place again and find Shalidor’s writings for Urag. Then it’ll be back to the mage college to continue that plot!

Screenshots

No screenshots this time, just because both of the locations visited in this session were familiar and nothing unusual enough to warrant a new screenshot happened.

Editing to add

• 11/19/2021: Added play date and session number markers.