In Which the Bards College Quests Actually Commence

Twitter thread from 5/18/2021, in which Alarrah runs the Bards College quest, as well as the quest to Hob’s Fall Cave to find Pantea’s flute.

In Which This Time, the Bards College Quests Actually Get Commenced:

4:04 PM · May 18, 2021

1. So one thing I found out before the incident with the innkeeper made me reset my Solitude progress is this: if you show up at the Bards College already having King Olaf’s Verse from Dead Men’s Respite, you can still give it to the headmaster Viarmo.

4:05 PM · May 18, 2021

There’s even a dialogue option for you having already been there and having the verse right there!\n\n2. What is slightly less great is that this also apparently breaks the Investigate the Bards College initial hook to get you there in the first place.

4:06 PM · May 18, 2021

That quest never clears, and according to the wikis, it just hangs around taking up space in your Miscellaneous quests list. Oh well! At least this time I didn’t piss off the innkeeper. 😉

4:07 PM · May 18, 2021

3. Anyway, handed over the verse and Viarmo was all HOORAY–until he actually opened the book and found out it was so old that part of it was no longer readable. At which point the quest prompted me through suggesting to the guy that he just make up the missing bits!

4:07 PM · May 18, 2021

Which struck me as kind of hilarious and maybe a little ethically dubious. But also really kind of bard-like.

4. So then we scamper off to the Blue Palace to find Jarl Elisif (another Jarl who’s a woman! Awesome!) and present the verse to her.

4:08 PM · May 18, 2021

And by ‘we’ I mean, Viarmo. Elisif is pleased enough that she goes “the Festival is ON, and also, here’s some money”.

5. Viarmo sends me off to go confirm with somebody named Jorn that the festival is re-instated.

4:09 PM · May 18, 2021

6. Festival happens, effigy is burned, multiple folks thank me for making it happen again. And now I’m officially a bard! Yay? Apparently the Bards College in Solitude will just make any schmoe a bard who comes in and fetches artifacts for them.

4:09 PM · May 18, 2021

Musical proficiency? Naaaah. Poetic presentation? Don’t need it! Reinstated our festival that lets us burn an effigy of a false king every week? WELCOME ABOARD, FELLOW BARD. Lol.

4:10 PM · May 18, 2021

7. Nearby professor when I talk to her gives me an opening hook for one of the “go fetch a missing instrument” quests: her flute. And, in the name of flute player solidarity, I elect to set out on that quest pronto.

4:14 PM · May 18, 2021

8. Turns out though that the destination for the quest is way, way east of Solitude. I took a crack at starting over that way on foot, only to discover that the immediately nearby roads led me to a big ol’ body of water and indeed northward towards the very edge of the map.

4:14 PM · May 18, 2021

So at that point I decided, y’know, maybe it’s a better idea for me to just go back to Solitude and hire a carriage, mmkay?

9. Which is what I do. Carriage driver can take me and Lyds to Dawnstar for 50 gold. SOLD! Let’s do this.

4:15 PM · May 18, 2021

10. We get dropped off in Dawnstar, which is way snowier than Solitude. Also way smaller. Their inn is the same style as the ones in Riverwood and Morthal, and I overhear bits of conversation setting up the plot for the local drama: people are having nightmares! OHNOEZ!

4:15 PM · May 18, 2021

Of this, however, I’m thinking Alarrah’s all “well that sounds dodgy but y’know, I’m on a mission, I’ll have to deal with this later.”

11. So we don’t stay in Dawnstar for very long. We set off south and east-ish from there to see about getting to where we need to be on foot.

4:16 PM · May 18, 2021

12. More road time means more random encounters. Went past a group of four people that seemed to be three Imperial soldiers and a prisoner? Dialogue was thrown at me: “Citizen, your presence is interfering with Imperial business. Move along.”

4:16 PM · May 18, 2021

Smells like potential Stormcloak capture to me.

13. And Alarrah, despite having little love for the Imperials (they did, after all, TRY TO EXECUTE HER), grumpily moved along.

4:17 PM · May 18, 2021

Smells like potential Stormcloak capture to me.

But as she went, I’m pretty sure she was measuring the odds of whether she and Lyds could take three Imperial soldiers.

4:17 PM · May 18, 2021

14. Things got snowier and icier as we looped around south, east, and then north. Random critters encountered; frostbite spiders, a troll, a sabre cat, wolves, a deer, and later on actually also a sabre snow cat. And, a new thing: ice wraiths!

4:18 PM · May 18, 2021

14. Things got snowier and icier as we looped around south, east, and then north. Random critters encountered; frostbite spiders, a troll, a sabre cat, wolves, a deer, and later on actually also a sabre snow cat. And, a new thing: ice wraiths!

4:18 PM · May 18, 2021

15. Went past a couple of potentially interesting locations, a pass through the mountains, one standalone building that I didn’t get close enough to to check out, a fort that I ALSO didn’t get close enough to to check out, and an area that might have been some kind of shrine?

4:19 PM · May 18, 2021

(And which was where I ran into some of the ice wraiths.)

16. I also found a lighthouse, and further down from that, in the distance, what looked like additional buildings? I’m pretty sure I was pretty close to Winterhold at that point?

4:19 PM · May 18, 2021

17. However, where I needed to be to find the flute did not appear to be Winterhold, so I didn’t head down to those buildings. Where I needed to be turned out to be a cave hidden in the ice, and I had to do some jumping to get down there.”

4:19 PM · May 18, 2021

Which, as a player, I did find a little nerve-wracking just because I keep looking over edges and being very reluctant to jump lest I break my poor Dragonborn’s neck. 😉

4:20 PM · May 18, 2021

18. Inside the cave: skeletons. And necromancers! Fucking necromancers, man! This time encountering them was rather more grim, as there were signs all over the lair that they’d been using captives for unspecified dark purposes. I saw cages, and bodies in various stages of death.

4:20 PM · May 18, 2021

19. However, what necromancers we ran into were not actually much of a challenge, even the Necromancer Adept at the end. Which might have been an indicator of me running a quest I’m a little overpowered for now, I dunno. 😀

4:20 PM · May 18, 2021

20. Also, it was hilarious how my Sneak is so high that even when I’m not actively sneaking, opponents can lose track of me IN THE MIDDLE OF A BATTLE. One of the necromancers wandered off going “I must have been imagining things” while Lydia’s arrow was sticking out of her. Lol.

4:21 PM · May 18, 2021

21. There was a chain of traps involving soul gems on pedestals spitting frost beams along the route I needed to go. At Paul’s wise advice, I hit them with arrows to knock them out of place and turn off the traps, which then also let me get the gems. Shiny!

4:21 PM · May 18, 2021

22. Along the way, looting various stops to pull interesting things out of chests and off of shelves, I found two interesting things: a black soul gem, and also a gem that called itself ‘Unusual Gem’ and kicked off a quest hook in my list of quests.

4:22 PM · May 18, 2021

23. Made it to the end of the lair, with only a little bit of trouble. Lydia had a couple of close calls that involved her following me with an ice spike sticking through her, but that didn’t seem to slow her down any. I imagine her going “Feh, it’s just a flesh wound!”

4:22 PM · May 18, 2021

24. And, got the flute without too much trouble. Alarrah by now is definitely going “this place sucks, fucking necromancers, and also holy crap it’s cold”.

25. So back out of the cave we go, and once we’re safely outside, I fast travel back to Solitude. Boom.

4:22 PM · May 18, 2021

26. Went back to the Bards College, found the professor, and gave her her flute back! She was very happy to receive it.

4:23 PM · May 18, 2021

And though she could not pay me (apparently Bards College professors don’t have much extra cash? They must be hard up for patronage indeed), she did offer to teach me “a few tricks”, which promptly bumped up like 7 or 8 of my stats by a point.

4:23 PM · May 18, 2021

NICE. So yeah I’ll be looking for the other two professors to get their instruments back for them too. 😀

4:24 PM · May 18, 2021

27. Meanwhile, promised the lady in the apothecary in Solitude I’d try to get info on her daughter that got posted to Whiterun when she joined the Imperials. Even though as a player I’m sort of snorfing at “hey, you’re from Whiterun! Do you know such-and-such?”

4:24 PM · May 18, 2021

28. Also, a kid in Solitude keeps running by me and saying “I thought adventurers were supposed to look tough.” Hey, fuck you spudlet, you killed any dragons lately? No? Then get out of my face.

4:24 PM · May 18, 2021

29. And now I’m up to level 16. Next time: seeing if that shiny Elven Helmet was still available in one of the Solitude stores!

4:24 PM · May 18, 2021

Editing to add

1. This post was written on 3/18/2022, but is backdated to the time of the tweet thread for organizational purposes.
2. 10/1/2024: Reconstructed the original Twitter thread locally, since I deleted my Twitter account.
3. 10/3/2024: Converted timestamps on reconstructed tweets from GMT to PDT.