In Which Kendeshel Fights Warlocks on Wyrmstooth

Another Skyrim catchup post from mid-December. This one is Kendeshel’s playthrough, and features more action on Wyrmstooth! So by definition, there are spoilers here for that specific mod, though for side quests, not the mod’s main one.

Play by play

Play date: 12/14/2023
Session number in this run: 33
Picked up again at the Safehouse, then returned to Wyrmstooth for more adventuring!
Took the Dev Aveza to Fort Valus just to see what that was like
Saw some fire being flung around outside the fort, but couldn’t tell what was going on until I got out there
Found a dead hag and a dead flame atronach, so took the fire salts
From there, hoofed it over to Stonehollow to see about getting within range of the two quests I wanted to run
While there, saw that the town was nicely rebuilt
Took a room at the Handsome Hermit inn
Spotted the various mercenaries hanging around, but I still had to do all their favor quests, so nothing to do with them yet
Explored a nearby mine that seemed like a large and active mine, Frostvein
Lots of NPCs in there and a whole bunch of orichalcum veins, but no obvious signs of quests to take while in there
Faelor found me again while I was wandering the town
Reached the tower again where I’d found the naked Nord, Wulfmere’s Watch; fast traveled to it to get Rulnik to catch up
Got into a fight there with a couple of witches, then proceeded on my way
Found a run-down house that appeared to be an unmarked location, and which had marauders at it; fought and dispatched same
Passed the entrance to Coldwave Crescent but decided to not engage for now
Then made it into a broad marshy area that I really rather liked
Found an abandoned camp there that appeared to be the remains of a Stormcloak camp
Also spotted a giant camp, but made a point of sneaking past that so we wouldn’t have to fight the giant and his mammoth
Then made it to Krakevisa, and took out a necromancer outside the building
Then got in and started running the place
This, like the vampire lair, was a tough go at first
Only after clearing that space (including the underground town) did I work my way back out and loot the place in depth, including at least two different places where I nabbed a bunch more books for the museum library, as well as the unique spellbooks
Have at this point gotten most of the unique spells for this mod, I think i’m still missing one of the draugr ones, and the Conjure Mudcrab one
Also got an opportunity to practice Alteration in one room where the shelves were tall enough that I could not get to all the loot, but I whipped out the Telekinesis spell to get at a bunch of that stuff
And I grabbed buckets of Ruined Books once I remembered i could give them all to Latoria
Discovered after the fact that one of the warlocks I’d killed had been a named NPC, Malentis, and he had a staff I could grab for display
Finally made it back outside, and fast traveled to the Imperial docks
Popped into the Dockmaster’s house and discovered OHNOEZ he was dead
Found his journal with a clue but no other obvious sign of anything I could take to launch a quest
Everything in the house, including the journal, was marked Steal, so I didn’t grab any of it
From there, attempted to find a way over to the witches’ island
Wound up cutting across a horker island and fighting a bunch of horkers there
That island had the bloody remnants of a camp, but a bit less of a horrid mess than the horker island by Solstheim
Could not find an easy way up the slopes of this island
Found the boat back to Wyrmstooth though, and that dropped me off near the farm I’d spotted before
Fought a marauder there, then took the boat right back to the witches’ island
Found my way up the slopes to the witches’ lair
Found the NPC I needed to talk to on guard outside
She told me what I suspected would be the case: the Nord had been a cad, and the witches had confiscated his pants because they made the wearer more attractive to the opposite gender
However, the warlocks from Krakevisa had attacked the witches and stolen the pants
So this witch, Glendora, had been forced to stay on guard outside by her sisters
I promised to get the pants back, which meant I had to fast travel right back to Krakevisa
Speed-ran through most of the place until I found a single Ritual Master NPC down in the underground town area
Took that guy out and retrieved the pants
Then got back out again and fast traveled back to the witches’ island
Handed the pants over to Glendora and got her quest reward
Also got the antidote for the Nord back at the tower, Gjalrunn
Fast traveled back there so I could liberate him, for which he was very grateful, and he chirped about having a drink with him some time
Deliberately lied to him about not being able to find the pants, though–not that I had a choice in the matter on that, I did not have a dialogue option to confront him about Glendora’s side of the story!
While I was talking to Gjalrunn, a couple of marauders showed up, so I had to run down to help Rulnik take them out
And by the time we did that, Gjalrunn was gone
From there, fast traveled back to the Dev Aveza and returned to Solitude
Did huge swath of display and inventory managing, and topped 1,000 displays \0/
Which meant I now had access to the Blade of the Curator!
Saved there until next time

Commentary

Since I discovered that I could take the Dev Aveza to Fort Valus, I tried that out in this session just to see what that was like. Answer: a bit bumpy in my opinion. This was another situation where I got an actual gangplank to come off the ship vs. a ladder, but the landing point was on top of one of the fort’s little towers. And it took me several moments to figure out how the hell to get down from there, because it was not terribly obvious on casual inspection.

So this strikes me as more of a Wyrmstooth issue than a Legacy one, really. But even given that, I’m glad to see that the two mods met well enough to let that exit from the ship happen.

A Wyrmstooth thing I did really like in this session, as well, was coming back to Stonehollow and seeing how nice the town looked after the rebuilding effort. I also quite liked the Handsome Hermit inn in Stonehollow. It was very pleasant to walk into an inn that didn’t follow the same standard inn format that most of the inns in Skyrim use (at least, the ones in the smaller towns).

Plus, I had to LOL about the innkeeper making a joke to me about Shouts. Told me to give him a shout if I needed anything–and ahem, er, not that kind! Hee. I see what you did there, innkeeper. Points for the innkeeper being funny, and also for this being a nice indicator in general that yes, my status as the Dragonborn is known in this town.

I was confused by the Frostvein mine, though. It was quite large, and had a whole lot of orichalcum veins in it, as well as a lot of NPCs. However, none of them had any interesting dialogue prompts, and I couldn’t find any other sign of potential quests while in there. So I’m not entirely sure what the point of having the mine that close to the town is? There’s nothing about it in the PDF guide for the mod that I downloaded, either.

I’m given to understand that all those orichalcum veins, in earlier versions of the mod, were wyrmstone and/or brimstone. Which I suppose would have made the mine more interesting at that point of the mod’s history, just because it’d be an easy source of unusual ore. But for whatever reason, that ore was written out of the mod. So now the mine’s just full of orichalcum, which is way less interesting to me in general. I hardly ever use orichalcum at all, even after I’m able to make Orcish gear. The only time I ever made a point of using Orcish gear was Delga’s playthrough. Since then, not so much.

That said, it was at least interesting to check the mine out. And even if it doesn’t seem to serve any quest purpose, it does aid the overall feel of Stonehollow being a town reestablishing itself after the dragon torched it. Also, if you’re a player for whom orichalcum is important, there is a lot of it to be had in there! So it does serve as a way to stock up on that, I suppose.

On the way to Krakevisa, I quite liked the marshy area I went through, just for the overall visual design of it. And also, another indicator that the Stormcloaks have been trying to explore the island, since I found a destroyed Stormcloak camp there.

Krakevisa itself, like the vampire lair I’d run the previous session, turned out to be a hard run at least at first. It had a lot of hostiles in it, and I had to find the rhythm of how far back to stay in combat, and how fast to throw my summons for dremora or storm atronachs. This was definitely a situation where I have to admit, I was pleased to be able to summon three things at once. I suspect I’d have had an even tougher go of it if I hadn’t had the perk from Project AHO.

The place was also surprisingly huge. There was not only a main building with a bunch of structure to it, but also tunnels that led down into an entire underground town that the warlocks had taken over. I had to fight a whole lot more hostiles down there, too.

I poked at starting the plot that launches when you find the Dockmaster dead in his house. However, there was no sign of anything obvious in there that I could interact with or take to launch a quest, even the Dockmaster’s journal. So the vibe I have from this is that it’s an “unmarked” kind of quest that you have to follow specifically by looking for clues rather than just relying on quest objectives. And I may or may not follow through on this, depending on my level of patience. I’m kind of leaning towards saving it for a future playthrough, just because Kendeshel still has a lot to do and I’m feeling like I want to get on with more of the Legacy of the Dragonborn content.

And plus, if I save some stuff for a future playthrough, that gives me more reason to run Wyrmstooth again, so!

For now, I proceeded with the plot to go talk to the witches about the pants. And, entirely as I suspected because I have in fact played a pretty good chunk of Morrowind at this point, the Nord had been a cad and the witches had confiscated the pants because they were enchanted to make the wearer more attractive to the opposite gender.

(Snerk. So clearly not pants anybody who’s queer needs to give a fuck about?)

Hitting the witches’ lair and talking to Glendora, though, rapidly made clear that I really should have visited these witches before going to Krakevisa. Because Glendora told me that the pants had been stolen in turn by warlocks from Krakevisa! So I had to fast travel right back there, speed-run the place, find one more hostile to kill, and confiscate the pants.

And I did get the antidote for Gjalrunn back at the tower, even though Glendora was rather baffled as to why the hell I wanted to bother. I was a bit disappointed, though, that the available dialogue choices didn’t include an opportunity to confront the guy about his side of the story vs. Glendora’s. The only option I had was to just lie to him about whether I’d actually found the pants–though, granted, I don’t mind bullshitting the guy about that, since Glendora had established he was taking unscrupulous advantage of said pants.

Lastly, important to call out that with this session, I topped one thousand displays in the museum! Which unlocked access to the Blade of the Curator. More on this to come in a future Kendeshel post!

Next time

Kendeshel’s next post will feature a bunch of side questing, including for the mercenaries on Wyrmstooth! Which means a little light thievery, picking a fight in Markarth, and charging my way through a boatload of Forsworn.

And oh yes: I also finally ran Blind Cliff Cave, one of the few locations in the base game that I hadn’t ever visited in previous playthroughs!