In Which Marwyth Witnesses the Rampage of Veya Releth

I’ve been doing posts for ESO lately that cover an entire week’s worth of action for my various toons, but here I’m going to make an exception. Because for the last week of 2023, I got in enough action with Marwyth that doing a full week for a post would be enormous. So I’m chopping that week’s action in half, and for this post, I’ll talk about the 24th through the 26th of December.

Because this was when I ran the plot to meet Veya Releth in Balmora–a character who becomes very important later in the Summerset portion of the Daedric War storyline! And I have a lot to say about that, so this deserves a post all to itself.

Play by play

Play dates: 12/24-12/26/2023
Session numbers in this run: 74-76

December 24th

New Life Festival
- Did war orphans thing in Grahtwood; had to kill some wildlife and then did a monetary donation
- Then found another Old Life shrine in Glenumbra
Then decided to go launch the plot in Balmora to meet Veya, and boinged off to Vvardenfell
Found the sergeant hanging out in the street in Balmora to kick off the quest
Got sent to go talk to Councilor Eris, who did not want to talk about difficulty in his family, but was willing to send me off to try to locate his daughter
Talked to the captain of his guards, Brivan, and got pointer to try to find Veya’s friends passing notes back and forth
This required me to try to tail a runner, which I had trouble with, until I finally got it the fourth time through
Tracked the runner to an inn and confronted someone called Drevis about Veya’s whereabouts
Went off to some ruins west of Balmora to discover Veya’s mentor: Naryu! \0/
Helped Naryu clear the ruin since she had a writ against the cult leader there
That got her willing to tell me to go back and tell Veya’s father to STOP SENDING OTHER OUTLANDERS because somebody’s going to get hurt, and Naryu was only willing to deal with me
Reported back to Eris to confirm for him that his daughter was alive
Coming out of that, was intercepted by Ashur, another of the Morag Tong, who slipped me a map for me to find the Tong’s secret safe house in the city
Had to do a bit of a scavenger hunt before I finally found the secret basement Naryu was hanging out in
Naryu told me to go steal a Redoran registry to get more info on what happened to Veya’s brother
Swiped the registry without any trouble, and it confirmed Veya’s brother had been explicitly exiled
Naryu sent me out into the swamp to Veya’s hiding place
Only OHNOEZ Brivan had hired mercenaries already scouring the swamp!
Learned from Brivan that Ulran, Veya’s brother, had killed one of his own soldiers to defend an Ashlander
Found Veya, but then had to fight the more hostile mercenaries until we could make a break into the cave she’d been hiding in
Clued Veya in on what I’d discovered, and we discussed going to find the Ashlanders that Ulran had been fond of helping
Naryu showed up with news that a guard force was coming, so we had to make a break for it
Got out through the back tunnels without actually killing anyone (thank you, improved Sneak stats)
Went to go provide a distraction by talking to Veya’s father while she and Naryu made another break for it
Told the councilor what was going on, and he ordered the soldiers to let me pass
Headed off to meet up with Naryu and Veya at the Ashlander camp, only to discover that the place had been taken over by the mercenaries
Naryu held Veya back while I snuck into the place to investigate
Found House Redoran orders, and the wise woman of the tribe captured in a tent; she told me her people had been hauled off into the mine along with Ulran
Snuck into the mine and found Ulran dead along with several slain Ashlanders
Got a speaking stone off of Ulran’s body
Accidentally hit my “go home” button, so had to wayshrine back into the area to re-do entering the mine, oops
Naryu and Veya caught up, and Veya broke down sobbing over her brother’s body
The speaking stone did not show me a projection of Ulran, it was buggy, but his message played okay anyway
Main theme: somebody deliberately set Ulran up
Went back out again to report back to the councilor that his son was dead
He gave me a quest reward and I moved on to the next step of the plot
Ashur caught up with me, running messages for Naryu yet again
Went to talk to Veya in the secret basement, where she was chomping at the bit to kill something
Then went off to find Naryu as she was about to execute a writ against a high-ranking Redoran official
Got Naryu to agree to hold off until we could get more information, and was poised to sneak into the manor house along with her
But left off there until next time

December 25th

New Life event stuff
Old Life shrine hunt on Auridon this time, so got a few more locations there on Marwyth’s map
Main event with Breda was the Khajiit lockpicking one in Rawl’kha, so had to go overland to get into Reaper’s March
Went Northern Elsweyr -> Grahtwood -> Malabal Tor -> Reaper’s March
Got in a bit more skyshard action and picked up another skill point
Made it into Rawl’kha, and ran the lockpicking trial very quickly 😉
Then reported back to the event tent and got event rewards
Returned to Balmora to finish running the Veya plot
Picked up where I left off breaking into the manor along with Naryu
Got through without having to kill any Redoran soldiers \0/
Snerk, the councilwoman Naryu was targeting, on the other hand…
Talked the councilwoman up until I got info out of her, and until Naryu could catch up and take her out as per her writ
Info in her quarters told us she was working with House Hlaalu and House Dres, and that there was a forthcoming Redoran council meeting
And a letter from Captain Brivan spilled the beans about Ulran’s former squad being sent off to a fort to get them out of the way
Got spotted on the way out and got dinged with a high trespassing bounty, but ran off before anybody could attack me
Derped around a while in the wild harvesting resources until my bounty wore off
Then went into Balmora to find Veya in the secret basement and tell her what was going on
Veya insisted on going to the fort to find Ulran’s soldiers, so I went with her
We killed assorted cultists on the way in
Found one of the soldiers dead on a spike outside along with some civilians, and other Redoran soldier gear scattered around the area
Got a key off one cultist and broke into the main headquarters
Found the soldiers inside and while Veya pumped them for info, I got the key to their cage off the cultist leader–who turned out to be a Clavicus Vile worshipper
Overheard the soldier I’d talked to yelling for Veya not to run off
Came back to free him, and he blurted out that he’d told Veya that her brother died because of a loyalty test set by Captain (then Lieutenant) Brivan
So let him out and told him to stay the fuck out of any further proceedings
Ran back to Balmora and found Naryu, and the city was in an uproar trying to find Veya
Naryu and I split up to search
Found a bunch of dead soldiers in the Redoran Kinhouse
Found Captain Brivan’s wife, who said her husband had gone off to the council meeting at the stronghold to protect the councilors
Found Naryu again and we met at the stronghold, with no choice but to do a frontal assault and fight our way through a bunch of the Warclaw mercenaries
Finally got to Captain Brivan, who was still alive, long enough to say that the order for the loyalty test had come from Veya’s own father
Veya stabbed Brivan to death very thoroughly, and renounced any further adherence to Morag Tong rules and to being Naryu’s apprentice
Then she vanished, and Naryu and I had to race to catch up with her before she slaughtered the council
Got to a locked basement door—through which I saw Veya confront her father, and then stab him to death, YIKES, all while Naryu scrambled to get the door unlocked
Then Naryu and I had to actually fight Veya–and Veya kicked my ass, killed me twice
Had to finally break out a Crown Fortifying Meal to bump up my stats and hit her with siphoning a lot, because she sure as hell was doing that to me (ow)
We finally downed her, at which point the High Councilor came in and offered us a deal
House Redoran would keep its mouth shut about our involvement in this whole sordid affair, and publicly assert that Veya died defending her father from the mercenaries
We just had to keep our mouths shut about everything and get the hell out of Dodge
Naryu was grumpy about this but we agreed, and after the councillor left, Naryu clued me in that Veya wasn’t actually dead yet
Told Naryu to spare her and that she deserved a second chance, so Naryu decided to arrange to get her safely off to Summerset
Then told me to get out of the place and meet her back in Balmora
I got out, killing a couple more Warclaws on the way, and hightailed it back to Balmora
Found Naryu and Ashur tending Veya in the secret basement (turned out Ashur had some healing skills, who knew?)
Had final convo with the melancholy Naryu
Got quest rewards, a skill point–and one last flirt out of Naryu, whuff 😉

December 26th

Ran New Life event again
Had to go to the Old Life shrine in Glenumbra again
Breda pointed me off to do the Lava Foot Stomp, which required me to dance in four places in Stonefalls
But this unlocked an achievement for doing all nine of the New LIfe event quests with Breda!
Got a new dye color as well!

New Life Festival Stuff

I made a bit more of an effort with the New Life Festival at the end of 2023, and this time mostly did it as Marwyth rather than Gyllerah. I tried to get all of the festival quests this time, because I knew there’d be an achievement for it. And I focused my attempts at event tickets on getting the Hoardhunter Ursauk mount, which I thought looked cool. <3

Most of the festival quests I had done before as Gyllerah, so those ones weren’t exactly surprising. But they’re still fun to do.

I don’t think I’d done the one with the temple in Grahtwood collecting donations for war orphans, though. Or the one requiring me to do the lava foot stomp dance all over Stonefalls.

And Marwyth, I feel, is not immune to the allure of a good festival! I kinda feel like she was grumpy at first about being asked to dance in public, particularly in Morrowind, but got over it when she realized it was fun.

The lockpicking quest in Reaper’s March was definitely right up Marwyth’s alley. I figure she took it as a point of professional interest to get through those locks quickly, particularly with merry light-fingered Khajiit within range, judging her every move. ;D

Thing about going to Reaper’s March, though, was that Marwyth hadn’t been there yet. And I don’t have a house in Reaper’s March, so I had to go in overland to get access to that part of the map. That let me mark a whole bunch of locations for Marwyth’s map, since I had to take a long overland route to get to Rawl’kha… and I didn’t mind doing that per se. But this does make me think that for Veghra purposes later, I may just need to get a house there! I do have more gold at my disposal now, so maybe after I finish saving up in-game gold to trade for crowns with other players and get the DLCs I want, I can start allocating gold towards getting more houses.

The signal fire quest in Bergama is still my favorite of the lot, though. Just because I really like the backstory with that one.

So I had fun with this, and did finish all the quests in the days covered by this post, which got me an achievement and a new dye color. (And I got the mount later, see next Marwyth post!)

Quest action with Veya–and Naryu–in Balmora

This was great. I’m very glad I swung back to do the questline that lets the player meet Veya, since I thought she was a cool character when I ran the Summerset part of the Daedric War plot as Gyllerah. But I never did run the initial plot where you meet Veya, as that character. So I made up for that and played through meeting her as Marwyth instead.

And I’m very glad I did, because I loved this plotline to bits. Not only because Veya herself was a powerful character, but also because there was excellent mileage with Naryu Virian as well. I already knew I quite liked Naryu, from meeting her before as both Gyllerah and Marwyth. But this plot here kicked up my affection for her a lot. And I now one thousand percent ship Marwyth and Naryu. <3

That said, this plot kicked off with a bit of a bumpy task. I had to trail a runner to find out where Veya was meeting friends of hers. This was a kind of task I’ve had before in multiple places (e.g., Mournhold and Coldharbour), and I know at this point it’s a task I have trouble with, since I always have issues keeping my target from seeing me. It took me four tries to finally do it right and proceed with the quest. But once I did, things got more interesting very quickly.

(LOL, as I write this post, I only just now noticed that the NPC I had to talk to about Veya was named Drevis. Not to be confused with the Illusion trainer at the College of Winterhold in Skyrim. :D)

I gotta giggle a bit at what I learned about Veya once I went looking for the ruin Drevis pointed me to: i.e., that she was trying to join the Morag Tong, and had become Naryu’s apprentice. And that somehow, her family hadn’t managed to figure this out. Also, strong side question here of why Veya was trying to hide it. As Naryu tells the player, the Morag Tong are legal in Morrowind. So it’s not like Veya was committing a crime by joining their ranks.

Though I suppose that she might have thought her family would still disapprove of her activities, even if they weren’t technically illegal. Still though, I can’t say I think much of Councilor Eris’s guard force if they couldn’t figure out where the hell Veya kept vanishing off to, and who she was associating with. ‘Cause I mean honestly, Brivan and his subordinates couldn’t manage to trail Veya’s friends on their own?

Or even trail Veya?

Sheesh. But then, given what reveals were dropped about both Brivan and Eris in this plot as it proceeded, I suppose as well that they had larger matters distracting their attention!

And while I’m side-eying some of the procedures these NPCs were doing, I also gotta side-eye the Morag Tong a bit, too. Because the secret safehouse I had to locate turned out to be just around the corner and down an alley from the Redoran Kinhouse. Their super secret hideout was a short stroll away from Veya’s family’s house?!

Naryu, my darling, I love you immensely, but I think your organization could have chosen a little better for security purposes. Even if the House Redoran guard force couldn’t find their own asses with compasses and maps, much less their councilor’s wayward daughter. Just saying.

Also, I gotta giggle about Naryu’s lines to me when she asked me to go steal a Redoran registry for her. She told me “Oh, don’t look so offended!”

Naryu. Sweetheart. I am a member of the Thieves Guild. That’s not offense you’re seeing in my eyes, that’s the glint of challenge and profit. Of course I’ll go steal this registry for you. Sit tight, BRB!

Got another burst of things getting super interesting, too, once I reached the point of discovering why Veya’s brother, Ulran, had been exiled: because he’d specifically defended an Ashlander from his own men. And this had to strike a hard chord with Marwyth, comma, the exiled Ashlander. She was already committed to helping Veya and Naryu, but once she found out about Ulran’s actions, this made things all the more important.

And once Veya found out her brother was dead, things escalated very, very quickly.

I was kind of in awe, in fact, about how lethal Veya got when she decided to deliver her vengeance. Clearly, the girl had a talent. Unfortunately for Naryu and the Morag Tong, just not one they were able to harness for productive use!

But between Veya rampaging through soldiers, killing Brivan, killing her own father, and then handing me my ass quite thoroughly before I finally took her down, yeah, wow. She was beautiful and lethal and kind of terrifying, even more so than Naryu.

I very much liked the urgency of the scene where she killed her father, too, all while Naryu desperately scrambled to unlock the gate so we could get in there and intervene–but to no avail. Really fine job there on the part of the game writers, setting up the situation so that I could witness the confrontation, but not do anything to stop it! Gut-punching. Very well done.

Last but not least, I also was deeply amused by Naryu actively flirting with me at the end, even given her melancholy over Veya’s fate. Particularly this line:

“I hope you don’t leave here with the impression that all Dark Elves are conniving dirt bags. Some of us are also kind of sexy. Like me, for instance.”

To which I can only LOLOL, and imagine Marwyth grinning broadly, winking, and purring in reply:

“May I remind you I am a Dark Elf? I know just as well as you from conniving dirt bags. And I also know from sexy.”

I ONE THOUSAND PERCENT SHIP NARYU AND MARWYTH. Marwyth is going to spend the rest of her run madly crushing on Naryu whenever she has the good fortune to cross paths with her. WHUFF. <3

Possible future assassination goals for Marwyth

One more thing I want to touch on here, which will start showing up in forthcoming Marwyth posts: friend and guildmate Cync gave me the Orsinium and Gold Coast DLCs for my birthday in January. So now this means I have access to the Dark Brotherhood in ESO.

And of all three of the alts I have as of this writing, Marwyth is certainly the one that best fits the Brotherhood, I think.

Honestly, if I could, I would have her totally join the Morag Tong. She is smitten with Naryu, and now has “be as beautiful and stabby as Naryu Virian” as a life goal. Joining the Tong would let her do that. Legally, even, at least as far as Morrowind is concerned.

But since the Morag Tong is not a joinable faction in ESO, that means if I want to have Marwyth follow in Naryu’s footsteps, that pretty much means I’ll need to run the Brotherhood with her.

Here’s the problem with that, though: in ESO, unlike in Skyrim, admission to the Brotherhood requires you take out a civilian to get their attention. This is the same thing you have to do in Oblivion. And I do still balk at that as an entry requirement. I much prefer how Skyrim does it, to at least hand you an NPC you can kill who very clearly has it coming. That is more palatable to me than just taking out some hapless NPC farmer or merchant or guard.

And I’m not convinced Marwyth would want to do that, either. She can kill, admires Naryu’s proficiency and grace at it, and aspires to be that lethal herself. But that doesn’t necessarily equate to “is willing to take out random innocent civilians”. Marwyth does have enough of a hero streak that she is working on saving the world from Molag Bal, after all. This doesn’t jibe well with the idea of being willing to murder random civilians.

If Marwyth had a choice in the matter, she would definitely prefer the path of having legal sanction to assassinate people who have writs out against them. So I’ll have to think about this, and see if I can come up with a narrative that would satisfy me here.

The one counter argument I have here for myself is, for the most part, that NPCs you kill in ESO do not stay dead. Whether they are delve or world or trial bosses, or just random farmers or merchants or dockworkers. (The dockworkers of Daggerfall, in particular, I’ve seen slain over and over and over!) So it’s kind of hard to buy the narrative that I have to kill a random civilian to get into the Brotherhood, when that very same civilian is going to be alive and kicking again an hour later.

Which just makes me feel like the Dark Brotherhood clearly isn’t paying that much attention, if they think you’ve actually killed somebody when they’re clearly only mostly dead. Snerk.

Next time

Marwyth’s final post for 2023 action will feature side questing on High Isle and Vvardenfell, picking up Ember as Marwyth’s first Companion, and pushing the Ebonheart Pact plot further along!