In Which Shenner Stops an Assassination and Finds Miraak’s Temple

Successfully saved Councillor Morvayn of Raven Rock from assassination, yay! And now I have Severin Manor, so I have a home base to work from to set about the important Dragonborn business of taking down Miraak. As well as doing all the other tasty side things to do on Solstheim!

Highlights

• Play date: 8/7/2022
• Session number in this run: 49
• Doing another Shenner session this soon because I wanted to try out different performance rings on my controller (details below)
• Started in Raven Rock and went to talk to Adril Arano
• Ohnoez somebody is trying to assassinate Councillor Morvayn! Well, we can’t have that
• Got directive to go talk to Geldis
• Staked out the tomb; yep, this Dunmer being in here is totes more suspicious than the visiting Nord barbarian, innit?
• Hey Adril, Tilisu Severin totes was being suspicious
• Hurray! I get to break into their house!
• HI “SEVERINS” came by to borrow a cup of—OKAY THEN guess I’m going to have to stab you
• And also I’m going to have to take your stuff, including these ebony daggers
• Hey Adril, here’s that hard evidence you wanted
• Off to Ashfallow Citadel!
• Stopped by Kolbjorn Barrow to meet Ralis and get that plot started
• Then, fought en route:
  • Cranky imperial in Dwarven plate and other mixed armor with two more ebony daggers
  • Three ash hoppers
  • Dueling mages
  • Another ash hopper; got Droops off that one, but had a potion of Cure Disease, take that, ash hopper!
  • A nix-hound
  • Reaver camp near Ashfallow, took out the two bandits there when they attacked me first
• Took me three tries to run Ashfallow Citadel; killed by Vendil the first time, and by one of the Morag Tong henchmen with him the second time
• Third time through ran into a problem with my summoned Dark Seducer warrior getting pissed off at me, WTF? I think she maybe got hit by fire from Rulnik?
• Finally took him out though
• Got the boss chest loot, and got the East Empire pendant on the way out
• Called Daedric horse to return to Raven Rock
• Triggered nix-hound related minor bug?
• Reported in to Adril and Councillor Morvayn
• Hurray! I’m a citizen! I have Severin Manor!
• Sold a bunch of things to Glover and Fethis, then tromped over to the house to take it over and stash stuff
• After that, headed out to hit Miraak’s temple
• Went up the path past the mine
• Found Ashfall’s Tear, cave right behind the mine, which is apparently the secret hideout of the cult that I’ll be finding out about later in Ghosts of the Tribunal? Did not try to engage with it for now
• Fought two ash hoppers and the reavers at Brodir’s Grove; took out the reaver lord and got his blade Stormfang
• Found an Elder Dragon up on the tall hill near Miraak’s temple
• Realized I was right by Kagrumez but didn’t get close enough to mark it for the map, will have to come back
• Reached the temple, found Frea, and started running the place
• Reached the Black Book and did the initial encounter with Miraak
• Got very heavily overloaded but still had enough potions to get out without lagging too hard
• Followed Frea to her village; met Storn and got the directive to go Saering’s Watch
• Daedric-horse’d back to Raven Rock first though for loot drop
• Saved for the night

Commentary

Normally I try to hold to the pattern of swapping back and forth between Shenner and Faanshi. But this time I made an exception, just because I wanted to try out the heavier-duty performance rings I have on my Nintendo Switch Pro controller–because I want to see if they address issues i saw trying to play Morrowind. So since I knew I was going to want to try them, this Shenner session was to see how well I’d be able to use them in Skyrim first.

Answer: pretty well, actually! The end result of this appeared to me that I needed to exert a little more pressure on my move rings to move about–but I also saw that it seemed slightly easier to deal with combat. And on my slow PC, that’s important! I liked the experience well enough that for the time being I’m going to keep those rings on. Next step will be trying them out in Morrowind.

In the meantime, though, this session saw a bunch of my favorite initial content running Dragonborn–i.e., saving Councillor Morvayn from assassination, getting access to Severin Manor, and then the long push through MIraak’s temple to get the Dragonborn plot properly underway.

Notable things about playing this plot through this time:

One: stopped by Kolbjorn Barrow on the way, just to get that plot started, and while the conversation with Ralis played out as usual, I noticed he was not actually digging as he’s been when I’ve seen him before. But not sure if this was a bug? Or just a “he can just stand around, or he can dig, and I happened to find him when he was digging?”

Two: got the disease Droops off one of the ash hoppers. I’d never seen that before! So even aside from AE content, there is apparently still stuff in Skyrim I haven’t seen yet.

Three: ran into a nix-hound! Which is AE content. And weird-looking!

And four: took me three tries to run Ashfallow Citadel. Vendil took me out the first time. One of his Morag Tong henchmen in the final room got me the second time through.

On the third time through, I also noticed my summoned Dark Seducer got pissed off and started hitting me, to wit, WTF?! I’m not sure if I hit her by mistake when I was trying to shoot into the room, or if she was pissed because she got fire damage off of Rulnik? Not even sure if your summoned creatures/entities can get pissed at you if your follower actually does them damage, but it seems like that’s what happened.

Once I came back to Raven Rock I triggered what appears to be a known bug with the “My Pet Nix-Hound” AE content. This content is supposed to let you buy a tame nix-hound from the guy who runs the Retching Netch. Once you do that, then your pet nix-hound is in theory supposed to be able to periodically find random things for you.

When I came into the town, I saw a message saying that the Nix-Hound had found something, and a Daedra heart appeared in my inventory. But the thing is, I hadn’t actually bought the tame nix-hound! Apparently there is a known bug with the critter doing this if you come into the same cell? So I’ll have to see if I keep getting random items just coming back to Raven Rock.

(Not sure if I actually want to buy the nix-hound? Since I’m already ‘meh’ about the other pets I’ve acquired. But on the other hand, I could at least have it guard Severin Manor?)

Main item of interest on the way to Miraak’s temple was discovering Ashfall’s Tear. Which I only stumbled across because I saw a nice large “cave” icon on the HUD, pretty much right behind the Raven Rock Mine, and I went “wait what? What cave is up here OH RIGHT WAIT is this AE content?”

Answer: yes. It’s apparently the secret hideout of the cult I’m going to be discovering later when I start running Ghosts of the Tribunal in earnest. For now, I did not engage with the place, I don’t want to get ahead of myself.

But I will take a moment to be amused that the cult’s secret hideout is literally just up the hill from Raven Rock. That seems like an insufficient distance? But then again, this is Solstheim. Go too far north of Raven Rock and you start running into rieklings and werebears, and yeah okay fine maybe it’s not too close after all. You do you, secret Tribunal cult!

Next time

I’ll hit Saering’s Watch, and probably go there on foot just so I can swing by Haknir’s Shoal and get the Deathbrand map.

And maybe I’ll talk to the Nords at Bujold’s Retreat? Kind of feeling like Shenner really has to be Team Nords this time through, just on general solidarity principles.

I’ve got Gogh following me around, so not sure yet if I’d find it a bit much to also have rieklings? Gotta think about it!

Screenshots

Editing to add

• 11/23/2023: Restored missing gallery.
• 10/10/2024: Converted gallery to native WordPress one. Also corrected typo in the Next time section, and properly capitalized “I’ll”.