In Which Ysani Adopts a Child and Acquires Azura’s Star

A somewhat less lightweight session than Wednesday night’s! But some significant life development for Ysani here, as I adopted Lucia in Whiterun to ensure a safe companion and safe place for the adopted dog! And also, I cleared Valthume to kill the dragon priest Hevnoraak (and get Kahvozein’s Fang while I was at it), and cleared Ilinalta’s Deep to acquire Azura’s Star.

Highlights

Play date: 2/24/2022
Session number in this run: 31
Cleared out all the books from the alchemy nook in Breezehome
Went up to Dragonsreach to buy converting the alchemy nook to a children’s room
Hey there, Lucia! How’d you like to live at my house?
Couldn’t get newly adopted Lucia to ask yet to keep the doggo, but did tell the doggo to wait in the house
Lucia left ingredients for me in her chest, including sabre cat teeth, so yay! Can use those for building
Boinged back and forth between Lakeview and Windstad a couple of times, moving materials around and building in both places till I ran out of usable materials
Boinged back to Whiterun and slept at Breezehome
Lucia noticed the dog! Yay! Doggo now officially a pet and staying at the house with Lucia
Did some smithing to burn through dwemer ingots; sold a bunch of things to Warmaiden’s to buy them out of their iron
Boinged back to Windstad for more building!
Leveled up to 50; took first Speech perk to start working my way up that tree
Built things at Windstad till I ran out of logs
Boinged to Windhelm to hit Viola’s house for the Sweep Job
Left her all my gold + an emerald to get to 3K in septims
Boinged to Riften to collect for that job; got another job for Windhelm, Belyn’s house AGAIN? Okay fine but Imma need to leave him another 3,000
Picked up Iona for housecarl duty
Boinged to Lord Stone to get that back and set up the Aetherial Crown with the Atronach Stone; killed the respawned bandits there
Boinged to Western Watchtower with intent to go on foot to locale for Kahvozein’s Fang, except Ancient Dragon! Helped tower guards and Khajiit kill it, hi Ri’saad, yep I sure did absorb its very soul
Stopped in Whiterun to sell dragon bits and loot from both dragon and bandits at the Lord Stone
Went back out to get on the road; this time, cultists at the watchtower!
Started triggering a known bug where the Atronach Stone breaks summoning, and that’s a damned nuisance, but at least a couple other tries got my dremora boys into the fight; guards + Iona + dremora took out the cultists
Continued on the road; passed farmer with painted cow
Thief tried to rob me but talked him down by telling him I’m in the Guild; lol, it would be funny if you could lie about that and still have that thief back off
THALMOR HIT SQUAD! Threw Iona and the dremora at them, and holy crap the dremora totally decapitated one of them! WELL DONE, LADS!
Found the two boys Sond and Bottar that are supposed to clue you in to where Deep Folk Crossing is; would have been nice to find you kids before I found all the shards myself? But okay sure I will buy a dwemer thing from you
Target locale for the Fang: Valthume!
Ran the dungeon, killed once when Iona triggered a blade trap on me OW OW OW OW OW; however, otherwise cleared the place with her and the dremora duo; did Valdar’s ritual to wake up Hevnoraak; took Hevnoraak out with my Bound Bow
Boinged to Honningbrew to sell a bunch of loot to Mallus, also sold stuff to Khajiit outside Whiterun
Boinged to Lakeview for some building
Surprise dead bandit as soon as I showed up; dropped off assorted items, came back out and there were the other two bandits; Team Dragonborn took ‘em out
Got Lydia to replenish the sawn log supply since I know now that all houses share the logs
Back to Windstad for more building! Built a bunch of things till I ran out of iron
Boinged to Solitude to shop; hit Gulum-Ei and most of the other major vendors as well
Boinged back to Windstad to build more things
Boinged to Shrine of Azura and began the quest for Azura’s Star
Hoofed it down to Winterhold
Killed en route: ice wraith, snowy sabre cat, frost troll (blew up latter two with fire spells), death hound (surprisingly without a vampire, and it had apparently killed a goat and a couple of wolves)
Mined an iron vein
Reached the Frozen Hearth inn in Winterhold; got a bandit chief bounty from the innkeeper, also got him to point me at Nelacar
Hey Nelacar, where can I find Azura’s Star? Ilinalta’s Deep? Fantastic. And no I don’t want to hear about how you think all the Daedra are evil, said the Nightingale pledged to Nocturnal
Boinged to Lakeview; went from there to the lake, and started circling it
Killed en route: hostile flame atronach summoned by dead witch; skeletons vs. mudcrabs vs. spider, took all three out at once with blast of frost
Mined another iron vein
Found a fisherman’s camp and chatted briefly with the fisherman
Made it to Ilinalta’s Deep; geared up in full mage gear, Arch-Mage’s robes, Aetherial Crown, enchanted gloves and boots
Lolololol Ilinalta’s Deep is significantly easier to run when you’re level 50 and can call up two dremora lords at once; didn’t get killed once! Fuck you, necromancers!
Likewise, running the finale inside the Star was also significantly easier, not only because two dremora lords, but also magic resistance out the wazoo, so the dremora Malyn sicced on me didn’t immediately fry me
Still it took me several hits to take them out; only killed two of them though, not sure what happened to the third, so I only got two Daedra hearts
Zapped the fuck out of Malyn Varen with chain lightning, very satisfying
Azura went yay and pulled me out of the Star
Now I have Azura’s Star and Aranea’s pledge to help me whenever I need it
Paused there and saved for the night

Commentary

I’m pretty sure this playthrough marks the first time I’ve adopted a kid well before actually taking a spouse? Because I still haven’t found an Amulet of Mara yet. But getting that stray dog did really up the priority of having a kid, so that I could get the kid to ask me to keep the dog as a pet.

And I chose Breezehome as the place to put Lucia, because a) it’s inside Whiterun, and therefore arguably safer for a kid than the rural locale of Lakeview, and b) the house is otherwise empty, now that Lydia is Lakeview’s steward. Narrative-wise, I think I can assume that Ysani probably had a nice chat with Lucia about how not only can she live in Breezehome, she can even be in charge of looking after it. And if she has any trouble, to go and talk to Adrianne or Ulfberth immediately!

If this were real life obviously you wouldn’t want to leave a kid Lucia’s age all by herself in a house. But in the culture of Skyrim I suspect kids Lucia’s age are a lot more self-sufficient than you might expect. Hell, Lucia in particular has been getting by begging on Whiterun’s streets since her parents died, so she clearly has some level of self-sufficiency already. I figure Ysani would specifically talk up making her in charge of Breezehome as a way to encourage her confidence by giving her a specific duty to take care of!

Still though this also suggests that a spouse based out of Whiterun is probably a good idea? Somebody who may be already known to Lucia and who has an established job in the town? That Ysolda is rather pretty… 😉

At any rate, now that I have Lucia sheltered at Breezehome, I also have the dog officially housed there, which gives her some companionship as well. So we’ll see if she actually also adopts a wild pet?

Next major thing I want to talk about is getting set up with both the Lord Stone and the Atronach Stone. I’ve triggered what appears to be a known bug with the Atronach Stone’s granting you a boost in Spell Absorption—wherein it makes your summon spells have a 50 percent chance of failure, because you’re absorbing your own cast spell. This is really frigging annoying.

On the other hand, the Atronach’s Stone boost to magic resistance is also pretty fucking amazing, as it meant I was able to pretty much go “lol, spells” and stroll right through the entire Azura’s Star quest. Granted, having the dremora boys laying waste to every necromancer before me didn’t hurt either!

I’m now at the point where, if I’m geared up correctly, I seem to be doing very well indeed with the whole playing a mage thing. And this is arguably the first character I’ve played as well where I feel like she actually deserved being made Arch-Mage of the college! Because by the time she got there, she was already significantly powerful in two different schools of magic. So she didn’t have nearly the same ramp-up required that Merawen did, after the fact.

And, now that I have Kahvozein’s Fang and the Alteration Ritual quest active, next time I kill a dragon I should be able to get heartscales from it. Which means I’ll be able to return to Tolfdir and get that Dragonhide spell, which will make me even more of a magical powerhouse. Fun times!

Also: I am lolololol’ing forever at the sight of one of my dremora actually decapitating a Thalmor that attacked me. This is now the second execution squad that’s come after me, and I will be real interested to know how many Thalmor I have to have my dremora kill before every Thalmor in the game attacks me on sight. >:D

Last but not least, want to note that I’m about a month in on playing Ysani now, and I’m at level 50. Given that my other runs have lasted all about three months, this suggests I’m going up in levels significantly faster than previous characters did. Presumably because I’m running on a higher difficulty level? It’ll be real interesting to see if Ysani beats Merawen’s level, since Merawen currently holds the record for highest leveled of my characters.

Language commentary

Interesting terms observed:

Abysse d’Ilinalta: Ilinalta’s Deep, lit. “abyss of Ilinalta”
Étoile d’Azura: Azura’s Star
Croc de Kahvozein: Kahvozein’s Fang

In French the word croc can apparently mean both fang and hook (source). I knew the word crochet for hook, and the game also uses that word in the context of lockpicking. So I wonder if crochet is a diminutive of croc?

Next time

I really want to go hit the Thalmor Embassy, but I’m not quite ready for that yet. A couple things I want to do first:

Get the thaneships for Winterhold and Dawnstar in place, just to see if I can boost the number of Jarls that might show up at the party, and who I can therefore call upon as potential distractions
Run the museum quest for Dawnstar and see about getting Mehrunes’ Razor, since I want that in my anti-Thalmor arsenal

By extension, this means I need to go get the Helm of Winterhold. I think I may have already done enough Winterhold-based favor quests that I may need to do only one? So I should be able to get that thaneship quickly.

Dawnstar’s will mean I need to do the nightmares quest as well as the museum one, so those will likely be the bulk of my action for the next round of play!

Screenshots

Editing to add

11/21/2023: Restored missing gallery, and added play date and session number markers.
10/9/2024: Converted gallery to a native WordPress one.