In Which Kendeshel Becomes Thane of Eastmarch and Haafingar, and Goes to Wyrmstooth

Now back to Kendeshel! This is a mix of vanilla Skyrim content as well as modded stuff. Vanilla action includes some side questing, but also running Blood on the Ice in Windhelm; buying Hjerim; becoming thane of Eastmarch; taking out the Thalmor assassin threatening Malborn; clearing Lost Knife Hideout and getting the Headman’s Cleaver; retrieving the White Phial in Forsaken Cave; slaying Potema; buying Proudspire Manor; and becoming thane of Haafingar.

This post contains spoilers for three of the mods I’m running in this playthrough: major spoilers for Legacy of the Dragonborn and Wyrmstooth, and minor post-plot spoilers for Moon and Star. Legacy spoilers are specific to the Excavation of Windcaller Pass quest, and Wyrmstooth’s spoilers are for the beginning of its overall plot. Read with caution if you’re not already familiar with these mods.

Play by play

Play dates: 11/13, 11/16/2023
Session numbers in this run: 28-29

Monday the 13th

Picked up where I left off in Windcaller’s Retreat
Backtracked a bit to look for the rest of the icy shards
This took a while and I found three more of them, bringing me to five
Thought the sixth one was in the southern section of the caverns, so so went back out to the camp and down into the southern area to join the others at digging
Broke through the last blockage and explored on ahead
Latoria freaked out at me about the “terrible beast” who’d stolen the Windcaller artifacts I’d found, and making horrible noises while it did that
Circled back to follow up with Marassi and got the directive to track down the beast
Which led me to the raccoon Fafnir, which had gotten its paw trapped, so I freed it and it liked me!
So then I needed to explore the rest of the area
Got into a corridor that had a gas trap of some kind, but the raccoon rescued me from that
Made it out to the final exit which opened up south of Ivarstead, then went back in to follow up with the others
Everybody giggled over the raccoon and decided to name him Fafnir
We all decided to adjourn to the museum
Went out the northern exit and caught everybody fighting an attacking sabre cat
Went back in to try to find the final icy shard, which required a bit of jumping to get to
Then finally made it out to catch up with the others
Reported to Auryen that I had all six shards and he gave me the directive about the Coldforge
Hoofed it all the way back in to Windcaller’s Retreat and rebuilt the Icestaff to get that done
Realized Fafnir wasn’t following me; wasn’t sure if he got stuck somewhere back in the cavern, but didn’t quite want to bother to go back in and look for him
Instead rode back to Whiterun to pick up the Dev Aveza
Spotted Vigilant vs. skeletons at the White River Watch spawn point
Also got a courier who had the letter from Mila asking for a second goldfish
Checked on the girls in Breezehome and slept there for the night
Gave Sofie 1,000 gold! HEY LYDIA make sure she spends it wisely, okay?
Came back out in the morning and got another courier, this one with the letter from Falk Firebeard for the Potema followup
Flew the Dev Aveza back to Solitude and turned in the new artifacts, and a few other new items as well
Made several items for the Natural Science displays
Flew the Dev Aveza back to Whiterun
Returned to the excavation site to look for Fafnir
No sign of him, so I looked it up, and confirmed on the wiki that Fafs returned to the Guildhall with the guild team; bailed on the excavation site and started doing some side quests
Rode over to Lost Knife Hideout to take out the bandits in there and get the Headman’s Cleaver; also found a Khajiit cloak
From there, aimed for the site of Rains’ Shelter to nab that for the Tools of the Trade quest
The shelter turned out to be at Clearspring Tarn; found Rains’ remains and journal just down the hill from where the shelter was lying
Hunter at Clearspring Tarn said I looked a little rough around the edges; checked, and yep I sure did have Rockjoint, must have gotten it off a bear, stupid bear
Cleared that up with a Cure Disease potion
Next boinged to Kynesgrove to brawl with Klija Wolf-Claw
Spotted Dravynea going into the inn so went over to talk to her and give her frost salts
Headed next to Windhelm
Spotted J’datharr out with Ma’dran’s Khajiit so time for another round of Hand the Thalmor Assassin His Ass (always a fun game!)
Went into the city, stopped in the cornerclub, and talked to Malborn
Then went back out again to the Khajiit camp
Bought the Daedric mail off of Ma’dran and then asked him about the spy
Got pointed at J’datharr and told him Malborn has a message; cue the fight! Took him out quickly
Went back in to tell Malborn all clear
Took a room at the inn and then got up in the morning to check in with Brunwulf Free-Winter, who gave me permission to buy property in Windhelm for my service in battle, and also the pointer to be thane
Already had four out of five favor quests done
Talked to Captain Lonely-Gale (Brunwulf’s steward), and found I couldn’t buy Hjerim yet because I hadn’t run Blood on the Ice, so headed back out into the city to do that!
Got favor quest number five by giving a gold coin to Silda, when I found her as a witness for the start of the plot; also bought five rounds of Pickpocket training off of her
Ran it as per previous playthroughs, including bypassing the part where you have the opportunity to accuse Wuunferth first
Did the confrontation with Calixto twice though because he killed Arivanya the first time through and I didn’t want her to die; second time through I took him out before he could reach her
She snarked about the fire enchantment on my dagger, LOL
Reported back to the steward when I took Calixto out, and bought Hjerim and most of its furnishings
Reported back to the Jarl and got thaned up
Adjourned to Hjerim–and as soon as I walked in, BOOM, MOON AND STAR ASSASSINS
But Calder was also there, so he and Rulnik and Gogh and I took out the assassins very quickly
HI CALDER WELCOME TO TEAM DRAGONBORN help me get rid of these bodies, won’t you?
Then, boinged over to Forsaken Cave to run the place to get the White Phial; did so with no issues; this time through Curalmil spawned as a dragon priest
Returned to Windhelm to give the Cracked White Phial to Nurelion; got his five gold and his bitching about it being broken; got Quintus’ 500 gold
Finished up in Windhelm by going over to check on Aventus Aretino
Spotted Jarl Korir’s family outside the Palace of the Kings, wut?
Also spotted Tova Shatter-Shield leaning over Calixto’s body, which hadn’t despawned yet; uh, lady, just so you know? That’s the asshole who killed your daughter, you want I should ask the Hall of the Dead to let you set him ON FIRE? Or would you like me to set him on fire for you? I can totally do that
Popped in to have a word with Aventus, and got the quest to go take out Grelod the Kind (and for the record Kendeshel will be destroying the Dark Brotherhood)
Finally returned to Solitude after all of this for inventory managing and artifact dropoff
Also to prepare for the rest of the Potema plot, and getting thaned up and buying Proudspire!
Saved there until next time

Thursday the 16th

Started in the Safehouse; did a little inventory and display managing
Headed next door to the Blue Palace to see Falk about his Potema letter
Proceeded to run the rest of the Potema plot as per previous playthroughs
Killed only once partway through by vampire who got me with a frost blast, oops
Actual fight with Potema went way easier though with three Dremora lords
Got out with Potema’s remains and boss loot
Was not overloaded, so fast traveled straight back to Solitude
Checked in with Styrr to sanctify the remains
Checked in with Falk and got the Shield of Solitude—a light version!
Checked in with Elisif and got the quest to take her husband’s horn to the Shrine of Talos
Returned to the museum for more inventory and display managing
Set out the next morning and went through the Guildhall to check in with the explorers
Got the next excavation quest started with Marassi, to go to Rkund; however, that one’s going to have to wait a bit!
Tried to get the Dev Aveza to go to Whiterun, only to discover oops, left the damn ship in Whiterun, LOLOL
While I was out there going WHERE THE FUCK IS MY RIDE a dragon showed up, so had to fight it
It looked like it flew off partway during the battle, but when I went back out into the city proper, it landed and I had to finish the fight
The dragon took out a guard but no other obvious casualties I saw at the time (hold that thought)
Took the cart down to Whiterun
Did some shopping with Ri’saad
Got yet another courier, this time with the note from Quintus asking me to come see him about repairing the White Phial
Checked in at Breezehome; hi girls, hi Lydia, no further assassins, right?
From there rode over to drop off the horn
Noted that I still need to buy Tundra Homestead with this alt, too
Dropped off the horn and fought the Thalmor agents there as per usual in modded runs
Boinged from there to Hendraheim, and went to take out Aesrael for the Elven Hunter armor
Rode over to Gloomreach to run it and get Arkayn’s Tool Bag for the Tools of the Trade quest
Returned to Hendraheim for a sleep
Boinged to Goldenhills to pick up profits from there, which got me over 35,000 additional gold
Returned to Whiterun, and went into the Bannered Mare to finally meet up with Lurius Llore and kick off Wyrmstooth
Lurius sent me to Falkreath to rendezvous with some mercenaries he’d hired to try to track this dragon that had been targeting supply shipments, and seemingly with very deliberate intent
Rode down to Lakeview since the rendezvous point was very near there
Killed a couple of mudcrabs in the pond by the house
Went over to talk to the mercenaries, who reported a dragon hanging out at Ancient’s Ascent
We all ran over there to try to take the dragon by surprise; I went on foot, since I didn’t want to bother to retrieve the horse when I was traveling with a large party that didn’t have horses
Cut through Bonechill Passage, killed the trolls inside, and came out at Ancient’s Ascent
Saw a dragon perched on the Word Wall as per usual, but then SURPRISE, got smacked with something that paralyzed me and threw me to the ground
A dragon named Vulturkrah addressed us, to the effect of “oh good, worthy warriors to face me, seek Wyrmstooth”, and then buggered off
Returned with the mercenaries to Whiterun to report in
Lurius asked me to meet up with him to take a ship from Solitude to an island in the Sea of Ghosts
So I took the Dev Aveza back to Solitude
Before heading over to take the ship, checked in with Elisif to let her know I’d dropped off the horn
She gave me the right to buy property in the city, and the pointer to becoming thane
Threw a boatload of money at Falk Firebeard; bought Proudspire and all of its furnishings, including the Children’s Bedroom
Talked to Elisif again; had already fulfilled five favors in Solitude so immediately became thane \0/
Got a Greatsword of Solitude (another of the special thane weapons courtesy of Legacy)
Went out to visit Proudspire–and as soon as I came in the door, boom, MOON AND STAR ASSASSINS, fighting with Jordis! Who did a splendid job helping me take them out, way to go, new housecarl! Thank you, carry on
Took all the stuff off the assassins, then went back out into the city to head for the ship
At which point Kayd went by me with the other kids and threw a line about “my father died, things won’t be the same without him” (at which point WAAAAAA, more on this below 😢)
After that, finally went off to rendezvous with that ship; got down to the docks in the rain
Found a fishing spot on the docks that I don’t think I’d known about before, so did some fishing, but didn’t catch anything interesting
Realized that Lurius and the mercenaries were not at the docks yet, but saw the quest marker moving on the map to come to me, so I hung out at the docks waiting for them to catch up
They finally showed up, and I had the talk with Lurius to get onto the ship and launch the main body of the Wyrmstooth plot
Which even included a title card, LOL
Also had a short on-ship animation similar to going to Solstheim
We landed at the island, and immediately got into a fight with some local bandits, called “Marauders” in the local parlance
Fought our way through them, then more marauders at an Imperial fort, Moonwatch
Set off for Stonehollow to try to get supplies and figure out the next phase of the plan, but we discovered the place had been destroyed by dragon fire; left a couple of people behind to help the wounded
Decided to try to hit a barrow to find a way into our target dragon’s lair through Wyrmstooth Barrow
Found a tower (Wulfmere’s Watch) that may have had some hostiles at it, comobat music kicked in there, but nobody actually came at me?
Fought two different named dragons on the way, Nehkrahqeth and Nehrinqeth
Also spotted a couple of giants nearby, but did not engage
Reached the place and its layout reminded me of Bleak Falls Barrow some
Fought more marauders there, both outside the main entrance and inside
Discovered a locked gate we couldn’t make it through, and got a directive to search the entrance chamber for clues
Found a book that kicked off what appears to be a side quest, and also found several examples of local alcohol, e.g., Soln and Iceholm Ichor
And found a journal that had the clue we needed to proceed through the gate: I had to find a specific sword to activate the mechanism
This required us all to head back out and aim for a shipwreck a short run away, the Wreck of the Salty Knave
Reached the shipwreck and had to take out a few more hostiles, but found the sword
Which was a good place to stop until next time

More on the Excavation of Windcaller Pass

The action here with going back and looking for the icy shards was primarily what I had in mind when I said in my previous post that I found traversing back and forth so much through the cavern system a bit much. And I didn’t find hunting for the shards particularly rewarding, either. I had to resort to checking the wiki for where to find the ones I’d missed, just because the hunt passed my personal threshold of how much patience I have for hunting around for bits of something in a dungeon.

Players who find that kind of hunting more rewarding than me, though, may well like this better! And at least I did get a fancy spear out of it, once I finally talked to Auryen about how to reassemble the thing.

I knew from reading on the wiki that I should expect the excavation party to pick up Fafnir the raccoon, and that whole little subplot was mostly pretty cute. I really liked the whole scene with everybody discussing what to name the little guy.

But Fafnir was also a source of a bit of confusion for me, as well. I didn’t figure out how the hell the raccoon managed to save me from the area of the cave where the air was bad for some reason–and for that matter, I wasn’t entirely sure why the air in that little bit of the cave was bad. I think I triggered some kind of a trap, but I’m not sure? I just knew that suddenly I was coughing, and losing my health bar fast. I had to keep chugging back healing potions until I finally saw a directive to follow the raccoon.

I have no real idea of what I did to actually succeed at that, but I got out of the dangerous bit of cave, so yay, I guess?

Also, I had not realized that even though I rescued Fafs from his paw being trapped, he would not actually turn into a pet follower like the various CC pets. I thought he’d gotten stuck somewhere in the cavern system while I was trying to find the sixth and final icy shard. And I even came back later assuming he’d gotten stuck in there somewhere. But no, I was wrong–he actually went back to Solitude with the rest of the excavation, to live at the Guildhall. So apparently he’s a general Guild pet and not a specific me pet.

I’m fine with that. I have plenty enough pets and followers as it is!

By and large though I did enjoy the excavation adventure over all, even if the cavern system was larger than I would have preferred. So we’ll see what happens with the next excavation quest! I do have that one unlocked now and started, but Rkund is going to have to wait a bit, I have other mod business to do first.

Lost Knife Hideout and the Headman’s Cleaver

I did not bother with the slightest bit of stealth when running Lost Knife Hideout this time through.

‘Cause I mean, seriously. Three Dremora lords. Plus with Rulnik and Gogh, even without Gogh summoning his own storm atronach, this put Team Dragonborn at six strong. I had no need of stealth!

The only other notable bit about running Lost Knife Hideout this time was that I found a Khajiit cloak added in by Cloaks of Skyrim. Which had a nice description on it, but no enchantment of interest. This did at least give me an extra thing to take back to the museum, along with the Headman’s Cleaver.

Getting Rains’ Shelter

This was one of the other items in Tools of the Trade that seemed most interesting to me to get, so I wanted to make a point of hunting it down. And I gotta say, I’m kinda giggling over all of these various special tools being found next to dead remains. I know that they’re all named after contributors to the mod, of course.

But now I’m also totally making up a bit of a headcanon about this. Since I found a map talking about all their last known locations in the Guildhall, this implies that somebody in the Guild knew about these people. Marassi, presumably. So one therefore assumes that all of these people were not only other adventurers, but specifically relic hunters and/or archaeologists.

I’m not sure what I think of Rains’ shelter in particular, though. I do like that it gives you access to your Safehouse storage, which is in keeping with the Dev Aveza doing so.

On the other hand, I’m also running Campfire. And if I’m actively camping in the wild and want to use my bedroll for Campfire skill bumps, I have to actually sleep in the Campfire tent. Plus, the Campfire tent is the actual object I can see when I set it up on the ground, and which I can enter to sleep.

Whereas Rains’ shelter is a thing I specifically do not set up on the ground like I do the Campfire tent. I just activate it and it moves me off to a standalone room that acts as the “inside” of the shelter.

Which means that if I want to take advantage of both Campfire and Legacy functionality here, I guess I need to assume I just have two tents? Or else that I have one tent but its functionality is split across two things? It’s kind of messy either way. And I do not see any particular patch to address this on Nexus, so I guess I just get to handwave it being weird. S’allright. Because like I said, I do like having in-the-field access to the Safehouse stuff.

Brawling with Klija Wolf-Claw

Speaking of handwavy things I have no good headcanon explanation for, I went to Kynesgrove to run my Companions side quest to brawl with Kilja Wolf-Claw and make her make amends for wronging a fellow citizen.

The problem with this: I’d already killed this exact same character as part of the Civil War Champions plot. Because if you side with the Legion, and she needs to show up in Kynesgrove anyway (like, say, if the Companions want you to go beat her up), that is a separate instance of Klija.

The wiki mentions no known fix for this. So now I get to amuse myself with what the headcanon here is! Did she have a twin sister? Or did she actually survive fighting me near Whiterun, and have to leave the Stormcloak forces after the Imperial champion handed her her ass and then proceeded to stomp all over Windhelm? Has she been sulking at Kynesgrove ever since?

In which case, extra special awkward that I came back to beat her up again, and could still hand her her ass without any special armor or fancy enchanted weapons involved. 😀

Running the Blood on the Ice quest

I had a refreshingly bug-free experience running the murder plot, this time! I’ll give it up here for the USSEP.

I did wind up taking out Calixto twice, though. This was entirely because the first time through, he managed to kill Arivanya before I could kill him, and dammit, I did not want her to die! Second time through, I was able to save her.

But she snarked about the fire enchantment on my dagger! Listen, lady, I just saved your ungrateful Altmer ass. Maybe do me the courtesy of assuming I know how to handle my blades? Just a thought!

Moon and Star assassins continuing to show up

I figured once I got Honeyside that I’d probably see Moon and Star assassins show up at least once in every single vanilla house in the game once I got them. And in these sessions, I got evidence to indicate I’m right. Assassins jumped me in both Hjerim and Proudspire Manor. Fortunately, they didn’t get very far with that given that I was coming in with Rulnik and Gogh, and there was a housecarl immediately on hand.

Which leaves an inevitable jumping to come in Vlindrel Hall once I get thaned up in Markarth.

At this point I suspect I will get hit only once per house. I haven’t seen additional assassins showing up at Breezehome or Honeyside yet. But we’ll see if I’m wrong and any other assassins actually do show up there.

In general though wow the recurring assassins are annoying.

Apparently not all of the deposed Jarls stay stuck in the Palace of the Kings?

I spotted Korir, the former Jarl of Winterhold, actually outside in Windhelm with his little family. Which surprised me! I’d thought that the various deposed courtiers would always be in the court at the Palace of the Kings.

But apparently Korir’s family in particular specifically gets exiled to Brunwulf Free-Winter’s house, according to the wiki. Which still doesn’t explain why I saw them outside of the house! Even if we assume a story here of Brunwulf entrusting the house to Korir and his family (which, that actually sounds good, Brunwulf’s living in the palace now anyway), I’d still think they’d be inside the house in standard game behavior.

So not sure whether Immersive Citizens kicked in here to put them outside, or what. Or if they’re just stuck outside Brunwulf’s house for the rest of the game? I’ll have to check back again next time Kendeshel sets foot in Windhelm and see if they’re still there.

Finding Arkayn’s Tool Bag in Gloomreach

Having run Gloomreach already once recently (and finding that it was kind of dull overall, really), I would not ordinarily have bothered to take Kendeshel in there.

But it turned out to be the location of another of the Tools of the Trade items! So I did need to go in. Gloomreach itself was, again, not terribly interesting. But getting to the tool bag did turn out to be a bit of a challenge, just because it was bodged into a tight little crevasse I legit had trouble navigating. Not so much that I couldn’t eventually successfully get the thing! But enough to make it a bit of a challenge, and that for me was the correct level of work to do.

As for the tool bag itself, not sure yet how useful this is going to be? The idea appears to be that you can stuff some of the other special tools into it, and therefore just carry one thing in your inventory while also getting immediate access to the special abilities of all the other things. So far I’ve only stuffed Malrus’ Codex into it. I’ll need to play with this some more and see if it works with stuff like the shelter.

And can I stuff the backpack into it? Would that do weird visual things if I’m not directly carrying the backpack? That might actually be useful if I’m not visually wearing the backpack, yet still getting its carry bonus. This will require testing!

Fucking dragon fucking killed Beirand, man

There I was heading out to the Dev Aveza’s dock, intending to go to Whiterun, when I realized that whoops, I’d left the damn ship in Whiterun. How embarrassing!

But while I was boggling about that, a dragon showed up. I started fighting it, but partway into that fight, it buggered off. Visually, it looked like it flew way off to the south. This was not, however, the case. I went around the Guildhall back to the zone in front of the museum, to go out into the main city–at which point the dragon spawned inside Solitude proper, and I had to finish the fight.

At the time, it looked like it only took out guards. But I discovered later that there had been a casualty, and an important one: Beirand the blacksmith. 😢

I only discovered this when Kayd ran by me and threw off a line about how his father had died, and things wouldn’t be the same without him–at which point I went WAIT WHAT WHEN DID BEIRAND DIE OH SHIT THE DRAGON GOT HIM.

So I ran up to the forge, and confirmed that yep, Beirand’s apprentice (who I normally never see) was now running it. I like his lines, and he’s got the Young Eager Male voice type, which I like as well. But still.

And I popped into Bits and Pieces to talk to Sayma, who also now had different lines about Beirand, all of which were now in past tense. Sniff. I’m so sorry, Sayma! By way of condolences, here, let me buy several thousand septims’ worth of stuff from you. And if it makes you feel any better, I totally ate that dragon’s soul.

Here’s the kicker: by the time I found out Beirand was dead, it was after I’d already kicked off Wyrmstooth. And I didn’t want to retcon all the play I’d just done!

So I had to let Beirand’s death stand. For which I now has a sad. He’s one of my favorite smiths in the game! 😢

Speaking of Wyrmstooth…

As of this pair of sessions, I finally got that plot started.

Lurius Llore had a bit of snark for me: “I thought you were never going to show up!”

In his defense, he reached out to me at level 10 and here I am coming in here 40-some-odd levels later. But hey, what can I say? With the whole running en entire Guild thing, not to mention the TRYING TO SAVE THE WORLD FROM ALDUIN thing, and being captured and forced into slavery, what can I say, my dude? The Dragonborn is busy. Be glad I’m finally getting to you at all!

And right out of the gate, I liked that Wyrmstooth did set me up with several colorful NPCs. It impressed me in that area about on the level of Legacy’s NPCs for the Explorers Society, in fact! Lurius as well as the various mercenaries were all performed well, and had a bunch of amusing lines to give them all a sense of personality.

For purposes of this session, though, the action started with some prologue. Lurius sent me off to Falkreath to rendezvous with the mercenaries, and our objective was to try to track down this dragon that had been harassing and destroying East Empire Company trade caravans. Which seems like pretty standard Skyrim stuff–dragons destroy shit all the time in this game, after all. Except that this dragon, I learned, seemed to be acting with specific intent and motive. And Lurius wanted me to lead the mercenaries in, ideally, putting a stop to whatever the dragon was intending as well as destroying it.

How exactly Lurius knew the dragon was acting with specific intent, the mod does not make clear. So I just have to take it as read that Lurius had this information.

The mercenaries and I wound up going to Ancient’s Ascent, since they’d heard a dragon was hanging out there. Normally in a vanilla game, a dragon is hanging out there. But this time, when we showed up, the mod handed me a surprise! I got thrown to the ground by something. And the camera skewed diagonally, like it does when Karliah hits you in Snow Veil Sanctum with her poisoned shot.

A dragon called Vulturkrah addressed us at that point, crowing about worthy warriors to face him, and commanded us to seek Wyrmstooth.

And wasn’t that all just a bunch of ominous.

I’m not sure how the dragon downed me, mind you. I presume some kind of a special Shout, but I legit don’t remember if I heard him Shout or not. It was a fairly scary moment, though. (And I want to make a point of calling this out, because it’ll tie in to my commentary about the end of Wyrmstooth’s main plot as well.)

Once we reported back to Lurius in Whiterun, he asked me to join him and the mercenaries on a ship bound for an island in the Sea of Ghosts. I agreed to do this, and headed back to Solitude to rendezvous with the group there. And after an interlude of buying Proudspire, Elisif declaring me her thane, and learning that Beirand had died (sniff), we got going for the main body of Wyrmstooth’s plot.

Which even resulted in a title card, LOL. Not unreasonable for a significantly sized mod, I guess? Particularly one taking me to an entirely new worldspace. Still, I found it a little distracting to see a title card in the middle of a playthrough.

Once we got to the island, we went straight into action. There was a fight with marauders as soon as we came off the ship, and more of them in a nearby Imperial fort, Moonwatch. There were two different named dragons I had to fight in a marshy area partway along the route we followed to try to reach a specific settlement, Stonehollow. And then, more marauders at the barrow we wanted to get to!

I kinda feel like I had barely enough time to actually take note of the local scenery, though I did get some rough impressions. The island looked overall like a cross between standard Skyrim terrain and Morrowind–in that there were various Skyrim-style trees, but also a bunch of giant mushrooms. I think the assumption here is supposed to be that this island, like Solstheim, picked up some of Morrowind’s flora after Red Mountain blew.

This implies that Wyrmstooth, geographically speaking, can’t be too far west of Solstheim in the Sea of Ghosts? Just because I’d think that if it were significantly to the west, like say over close to Castle Volkihar, that’d be pretty damned far for winds to carry any spores of mushrooms from Morrowind.

But I haven’t seen where Wyrmstooth is supposed to be on the map, I’ll need to doublecheck this if I can.

I definitely got a sense of the place being pretty large, though. Maybe a bit smaller than Solstheim, but not by much! I did note multiple named locations that are going to invite later exploration, because yeah, there’s more on this island to do than just the main plot.

For this session, though, I just worked on getting there and getting the island’s main plot under way.

Next time

Kendeshel’s next post after this will continue the main action of Wyrmstooth!

Screenshots

A lot of screenshots here, so click to expand…

Ivarstead — The Terrible Beast of Windcaller Pass

Editing to add

10/20/2024: Converted gallery to a native WordPress one, and put it behind a Details block because it’s large. Also, since this post has spoilery review commentary about Wyrmstooth, adding the Reviews category to it.