In Which Shenner Starts Cleansing All-Maker Stones

Meanwhile, back on Solstheim, Shenner and her Team Dragonborn posse have begun the work of cleansing the All-Maker Stones, and setting things right not only for the Skaal, but for the island as a whole! Take that, Miraak!

Highlights

• Play date: 8/9/2022
• Session number in this run: 50
• Started at Severin Manor; did a bunch of alchemy, enchanting, and smithing
• Leveled up to 58; took a Stamina boost; took another Enchanting perk
• Went out to sell a bunch of things to the raven rock shops, then dropped off more things at the manor to clear out the inventory for adventuring
• Headed out through the gates and encountered mage fight at Old Attius Farm
• Called up the Ayleid Lich to help wail on them
• Shortly thereafter, found the burnt spriggan by dead Hroldulf’s boat; killed said spriggan
• Shortly after that, though, the game crashed; thrown back to coming out of Severin Manor the second time >_<
• Re-did leaving Raven Rock; this time spawn at Old Attius Farm was random pissed off Nord
• “Disgrace to my own kind?” I’m sorry, I can’t hear you over the sound of me KICKING YOUR ASS
• Then found another mage fight closer to Tel Mithryn, and a Lurker Vindicator
• Called up the lich again, and let Team Dragonborn focus on the fighting mages while I took out the lurker
• Marked the Sun Stone for the map
• Mined a silver vein
• Found Bujold’s Retreat and listened in on the opening “welp their leader sure does suck and is doing fuck all to get them out of this dire situation” conversation
• Talked with Kumar to get the scoop on the place; briefly talked to Hilund but she rather plaintively asked me to leave them be
• Can do, don’t mean to intrude, be back later after I finish saving the Skaal!
• Killed en route to Saering’s Watch:
  • Assorted horkers
  • Another lurker, this time a Lurker Guardian
• Surprisingly I did not alert the bandits at Haknir’s Shoal?
• Wound up coming up along the spur of land with Frossel, so looted the bandit camp there and mined the gold vein
• Then orichalcum vein
• Reached and ran Glacial Cave; sorry rieklings, Imma hafta confiscate this interesting looking skull
• Came back out and spotted dragon briefly in the distance, over Frossel? But then it vanished, which seemed like a glitch, I think maybe the Saering’s Watch dragon was over there briefly? Or rendered in the wrong place? It came back anyway as I made my way uphill
• Passed a dead snow bear and three different piles of ice left over from ice wraiths, so the dragon must have cut a swath along the cliff
• Passed Benkongerike and reached Saering’s Watch
• Called up Dark Seducer archer, and also broke out the crossbow
• Took out the dragon, but fucking Miraak fucking sniped me
• HOWEVER: also noticed the draugr trying to fight him lolololol; they had no better luck with it than I did
• Miraak didn’t disappear immediately either, don’t know if that was buggy or what
• Ran up to the word wall to get that Bend Will word, and took out a couple more draugr on the way up; Miraak was gone when I returned
• Onward to the Wind Stone! Cleared the place, woke up a bunch of very surprised Skaal, and took out the lurker that emerged
• Returned to the Skaal village
• Came in in the middle of the night, so did some smithing to burn through looted materials; made myself a couple more sets of camping supplies for camping out on this island
• Checked in with Storn and got his directive to cleanse the rest of the Stones, and also to go talk to Neloth
• Went back out and sold a boatload of things to Baldor; also bought several stalhrim items
• Hi yeah this may be way more gold than you guys have seen in a while? Glad to stimulate your local economy, but I need those tasty looking blue bits of armor please, also the weapons, and got any of that I could smith with? I got more gold!
• Boinged back to Raven Rock
• Got courier with the first note from Ralis
• Hit Severin Manor for another round of loot dropoff and smithing
• Saved at that point for the night

Commentary

First thing I want to note here is that it’s kind of funny to think about my character having the power to summon a spectral Ayleid Lich. From what I’ve seen looking up the lore for it on the wiki, liches are considered the most sophisticated form of undeath. And it takes a necromancer a whole lot of effort to pull off achieving that state.

Which means that lich I’m summoning is a former Ayleid necromancer, or at least a remnant of one. But even that remnant is pretty fucking powerful–level 50 and packing a lot of magic, even a little higher level than dremora lords. I gotta wonder if this spectral lich retains any cognition? Is he pissed off that some Nord barbarian has started summoning him to beat up on things? 😀

Most of the session though was familiar territory at this point, so not too much to say about that.

However, I’ll also note that this time through, throwing a bunch of gold at Baldor the smith, it occurred to me that throwing the Skaal several thousand gold is probably a major boost to their local economy, LOL. Not that they have anywhere besides Raven Rock to spend it? But hey, Raven Rock’s got their mine open again, so who knows, maybe they’ll get more trade going!

Relatedly, this was also the first time I’d ever realized that there’s a garden by one of the village houses. So even though they’re predominantly a tribe of hunters, clearly the Skaal are doing at least some small amount of agriculture with what little room they have at their disposal.

Next time

Since I’ll be picking up again in Raven Rock, cleansing the Earth Stone should be next on my agenda. Then I’ll want to swing by Kolbjorn Barrow for round one of cleaning that place out.

Not sure if I want to go straight to Neloth after that? There are at least three different AE plots I want to check out, not only Ghosts of the Tribunal, but also the quests for the stalhrim fur armor and netch leather armor! So plenty of new stuff to sprinkle in over the main Dragonborn plot action!

Screenshots

Editing to add

• 11/23/2023: Restored missing gallery.
• 10/10/2024: Converted gallery to native WordPress one.