In Which Ysani Quests for the Temple of Mara

Another double session post, covering play done on Thursday 4/7 and Friday 4/8. Main action for this was doing a couple of minor quests I hadn’t ever done before, both of which were for the Temple of Mara in Riften: The Book of Love, and Spread the Love.

And after that rather romantic break, I swung back around to more typical Skyrim action–finding another schematic for Sorine, and then returning to Septimus to begin the next phase of Discerning the Transmundane.

Highlights

Play dates: 4/7-4/8/2022
Session numbers in this run: 72-73

Thursday’s play

Picked up at Whiterun, where I did a small amount of forging and selling stuff to Warmaiden’s and to Elrindir
Took a potion of Fortify Restoration to bump up my carry weight bonuses on my gear, then quaffed potion of Fortify Carry Weight and boinged to Heljarchen; dropped off all the excess building materials there
Boinged to Windstad; dropped off Nightingale and Ancient Shrouded armor, Auriel’s Shield, and Volendrung to get the carry weight down
Boinged next to mage college; sold the unknown books to Urag and got his translations of them
Activated Book of Love quest and boinged to Honeystrand cave near Ivarstead
Cue Revered Dragon! Actually had to kill it twice, first time a guard came running over from Ivarstead and I hit him by mistake, which triggered an assault bounty 😛
So I rolled back to coming out of the Hall of the Elements at the college
Boinged to Ivarstead, take two; got the dragon again, this time killed it without ‘help’ from the guards, got it with Dragonbane + dragonscale shield 😀
Rented a room at the inn and slept a few hours, and then commenced the plot involving the love triangle here
Didn’t realize this was in fact a love triangle until I got into the dialogue, and one of the dudes involved is Klimmek the supply guy? Decided to encourage him to go profess his feelings to Fastred because the other guy seems like a douche
Love achieved! Boinged back to Riften to report to the priestess, who sent me off to Markarth next to talk to Calcelmo
Once in Markarth, parked in Vlindrel Hall and saved for the night

Friday’s play

Picked up at Markarth; slept the night, then went to go see Calcelmo
Oh okay he’s in love with Faleen, the Jarl’s housecarl!
Got Calcelmo to fess up about his feelings and that he’s nervous about approaching Faleen himself
So he sent me to Yngvar the singer, the dude who hangs out near the abandoned house and periodically bitches about the Vigilant who keeps asking about it
Yngvar sold me a poem he’d written before but which he modified to be from ‘Calcelmo’
Took the poem to Faleen, who went !! and gave me a letter to take back to Calcelmo
Calcelmo went !! and ran over to the throne to profess his love, aww <3
Back to Riften! Reported in to the priestess who gave me an Amulet of Mara
Put it on and was directed to Gjukar’s Monument
Fast traveled to the watch tower; Elder Dragon showed up
Dragon attacked by the guards and by the Khajiit in the immediate area and by passing trio of Imperials!
LOL, mudcrab tried to attack me while I was chasing the dragon, which was actually kind of adorable
Hit the dragon a couple of times with my crossbow, and called up my storm atronachs, but otherwise barely had to touch it! Because everybody else killed it, and only immediate casualty of the battle was the poor prisoner in Imperial custody
I however got the soul and the dragon loot and bits, then headed onward to the monument
Passed Sleeping Tree Camp en route
Found Ruki’s ghost, who lamented not being able to find Fenrig and didn’t believe that I couldn’t see the battle remains
Headed back eastward to look for Fenrig’s ghost
Second dragon of the night, this time a Frost Dragon; killed that just via sword and atronachs
Made it to Fenrig and told him his wife was searching for him, and led him back towards the monument
Dead lovers reunited and ascended into the sky, aw <3
Quaff-traveled back to Riften to report in to the priestess, and got the Agent of Mara ability \0/
Went ahead and took the quest to hand out fliers around Riften
Also picked up Mjoll’s quest to get her sword back, and got Talen-Jei’s quest for perfect amethysts for a ring for Keerava
Handed out all the fliers and even went into the meadery, I don’t think i’d been in there before
Talsgar the Wanderer was in there, surprisingly; I’d never run into him inside a city!
Spotted guards taking aim at nearby Imperials, I think, when I went out to give fliers to the stable guys; also saw Khajiit
Got a potion off of priestess Dinya for handing out all the fliers, and once that was done, sold a bunch of extra potions to Tonilia and Herluin in the Flagon
Boinged off to Raldbthar to find Sorine’s next schematic
Spotted dragon in the distance but too far away to engage
Cleared out exterior bandits with dremora; also interior bandits, at least as far as the room with Alain Dufont, who I also left alive this time, LOL; you’d think he’d remember me from the first time I came through here and killed his minions but not so much; clearly, Alain is not terribly alert
Boinged back to Fort Dawnguard to give Sorine the schematic, and got pointed at the next one at Nchuand-Zel
But first boinged to Septimus’ outpost to give him the Runed Lexicon; got the blood extractor, and also first sighting of Hermaeus Mora
Boinged to Heljarchen for a little smithing and crafting
Hoofed it from there down to Honningbrew
Revered Dragon on the way! Killed it with atronachs + Nightingale Bow
Sold a bunch of stuff to Mallus
Decided to hoof it in the direction of Markarth to see about replenishing my soul gems
Hostile imperial in ebony armor near watchtower
Second sighting this session of Talsgar, this time going past me on the road
Giant frostbite spider battle! The winner came at me, which was a bad idea for the spider
Passed noble on horse + escort on foot, on the way into Markarth
Got back to Markarth and saved for the night

The Book of Love quest

I’m kind of charmed that there is an entire quest dedicated to resolving other people’s romantic drama. It’s a bit of a nice breather against the larger backdrop of war and dragons and Daedra and all.

I never knew about this quest before discovering references to it on the wiki. And I think I didn’t read closely enough about it until I started playing Ysani this run–and discovered that why yes, actually, having high magic resistance is actually pretty damned useful.

Hence why I bothered with this quest. But then, once I actually started doing it, it was actually rather sweet to get some romantic pairings set up.

I went in favor of Klimmek just because I like him from the quest involving taking supplies up to the Greybeards.

And I was definitely rather surprised and charmed to see Calcelmo, of all people, harboring tender feelings for housecarl Faleen. Apparently it is, in fact, possible to distract him from pestering the Dragonborn to bring him dwemer artifacts!

Last but not least, it was touching to see the ghosts of Ruki and Fenrig ascending into the sky when they were reunited. Aww. I hope that means they got to go to Sovngarde!

Spread the Love quest

Of the two quests you can get from Dinya Balu at the Temple of Mara, this one was less interesting. I would have skipped this one entirely, except that I didn’t quite translate Dinya’s dialogue prompts correctly!

So I wound up handing out the fliers. And it was at least amusing to see the range of reactions to them, even if I as a player had to kind of crinkle my nose about handing out religious fliers.

What’s more interesting to me as a player here is considering Ysani’s motives for helping out Dinya in general. I suspect a big part of it is having Argis as her spouse has mellowed her! And now that she’s struck a significant blow against the Thalmor, she’s got more mental space to revert back to some of her truer self. And her truer self has some space for being a romantic sucker. <3

Discerning the Transmundane quest

The thing of note with returning to Discerning the Transmundane is that this marks Ysani’s first encounter with Hermaeus Mora.

And I think Ysani’s going to fall into the category of probably repelled by Mora, but wary of pissing off a Daedra. She’s had enough dealing with summoning her own dremora now, and dealing with other Daedra (especially Dagon), that I think she’s probably more confident dealing with Mora than my previous characters have been…

But that doesn’t mean she’s foolish enough to piss Mora off. So for now, she’s playing along with him.

Language commentary

Interesting terms observed:

Rougevite: Fastred, the young lady in the romantic triangle in Ivarstead
Sinistrale: Mjoll’s sword Grimsever, as mentioned in dialogue
Tranchedur: Mjoll’s sword Grimsever, as mentioned in my quest journal
Monument de Gjukar: Gjukar’s Monument
Abysse maudit: Wretched Abyss (Hermaeus Mora’s form, lit., “cursed abyss”)

Rougevite appears to be a literal translation of Fastred, since rouge is red, and vite is fast. But I’m not sure that the name Fastred is meant to be taken literally? It seems Nordic-ish to me. If that’s so, though, it’d be an easy nuance for a translator to miss, I guess?

I’m simultaneously surprised and not surprised to see a translation discrepancy for the name of Mjoll the Lioness’s sword, Grimsever. In my actual dialogue with her, she called the sword Sinistrale. However, in my quest journal, the sword is called Tranchedur.

Tranchedur seems like a direct translation, with tranche meaning slice/cut, and dur meaning hard.

Sinistrale I’m less sure of. Reverso.net thinks grim can translate to sinistre. But that leaves the -ale on the end, and I’ll have to guess at what that signifies. Given how previous weapons in this run have been named with portmanteaus, I’m assuming the same is probably in play here. So the question here will be what word might have been smooshed together with sinistre to make this work.

A possibility might be rale, which is death rattle or groan. Either of which might work as an approximation of the sword’s English name, maybe? Not a direct translation, but a similar idea, and that could be good enough for game translation purposes.

Long story short, this does appear to be another instance of different translators working on the voice lines and subtitles than were working on the straight up text in the text journals?

Next time

I’m going to run Nchuand-Zel, which I hadn’t originally planned to do–but well, I want that schematic for Sorine! So I guess I’ll go get those journals for the lost expedition while I’m at it.

After that, I’m going to run another place I’ve never hit before: Liar’s Retreat. This’ll let me get four of the five blood samples needed for Septimus, leaving only Altmer after that. And if I get lucky, I’ll find some Thalmor to hassle to solve that problem. 😉