In Which Finds-The-Way Faces Alduin and Wrecks a Wedding

My final Skyrim catchup post for the month of January swings me back around to Finds-The-Way’s playthrough! This session has Finds finally having her first meeting with Hermaeus Mora and her first crack at Alduin on the Throat of the World, but it also moves the Dark Brotherhood plot along considerably. Took out some contracts! Discovered Amaund Motierre’s big plan! Really screwed over a wedding in Solitude! And squared off against Cicero in Dawnstar! And got herself a nifty (probably) Daedric horse!

Play by play

Play date: 1/31/2024
Session number in this run: 46
Picked up again at Lakeview, and slept the night
Heh, caught Gregor coming out of the house on my way out the door
Gregor clearly showing up for the regular housecarl meeting, or maybe he’s having a polycule with Lydia and Rayya? ;D
Boinged off to Septimus’ outpost to hand over the Lexicon
Got the essence extractor, and had the initial encounter with Hermaeus Mora
Boinged next to the Throat of the World to check in with Paarthurnax
Read the Elder Scroll at the Time Wound, and got Dragonrend
HI ALDUIN!
Kept up a steady stream of throwing Dragonrend at Alduin because I SAID LAND MOTHERFUCKER
He had the chance to summon a few meteors, but otherwise the battle went quickly
Had convo with Paarthurnax after and got objective to go talk to the Jarl at Dragonsreach
Next, boinged to Alchemist’s Shack and slept the night there
Then rode over to Sarethi Farm, and turned in the crimson nirnroot to Avrusa
Got objective to get her the Jazbay grapes (and this time, forgot to get my stock from the ingredients barrel before I came to the farm, oh wells)
Then it was time for Dark Brotherhood business
Decided to go after just Hern at the mill, which took a few tries
Returned to the Brotherhood Sanctuary to check in with Astrid, and got her instructions to go to Volunruud and talk to Amaund Motierre
Before I went, checked in with Nazir and turned in the contract
Fast traveled straight to Volunruud since I’d already cleared it, and just had to go in far enough to talk to Amaund
Got the amulet to take back to Astrid, and the letter explaining the contract
Returned to the Sanctuary and talked to Astrid again, who told me to take the amulet off to Riften to have Delvin Mallory apprise it
So boinged to Riften and checked with Delvin, who explained exactly what the amulet was (an amulet of the Elder Council) and gave me a letter of credit to take back to Astrid
Returned to the Sanctuary yet again and got the quest to take out Vittoria Vici at her wedding
Spent some time reading about strategies for this, and eventually decided my initial game plan was going to be to try the magic bow Gabriella planted on the site
Boinged back to Lakeview for supplies check–and got an Ancient Dragon, which I had to then kill along with Rayya
Boinged off to Solitude to do the deed, which took a while, see below
Astrid denied me the bonus for killing Vittoria specifically while she was speaking, but did at least give me the spell to summon the ghost of Lucien Lachance
Next objective: talking to Gabriella about framing the son of Commander Maro of the Penitus Oculatus
This required me to steal the guy’s schedule and then figure out where I could intercept him
Current game time meant I had to try to intercept Gaius Maro in Markarth
Took a few tries at this because I thought that if I provoked him into attacking me in front of a guard, the guard would jump in
But this didn’t work in front of Understone Keep, and I couldn’t get it to work at the guard tower either, even after I Fus Ro Dah’d him off of it (LOL)
Finally provoked him and started fighting with him again on the guard tower–and this time Endon the silversmith actually came running to help, because ha, Endon likes me!
That let me kill the guy bounty-free, and I took all his gear and planted the letter on him
Returned to the Sanctuary once more
Checked in with Gabriella and got Olava’s token from her, since I killed Gaius inside a city; she told me to go talk to Astrid, though
At which point I discovered that Cicero had allegedly flipped out and attacked Veezara
Everybody was tending to Veez and Astrid was pissed; she ordered me to search Cicero’s room for any clues
Found all five of his journals just lying about
That let me find out he knew about the Sanctuary in Dawnstar, so Astrid ordered me to track him down, and gave me Shadowmere
So now I have the cool badass horse, which also means that I left the Dwarven Horse just standing around at the Sanctuary, LOL
Fast traveled back to the Windward Ruins
I’d forgotten I’d left a camp set up inside the ruins when I’d gone to Dawnstar to kill Beitild, so dismantled that
Shadowmere got aggro on the skeevers in the ruins, and then I headed over to find the Sanctuary
Had flyby dragon
Khajiit camp was up but it was late, so Khajiit were not out
Found the Sanctuary literally just right outside Dawnstar, and found Astrid’s werewolf husband Arnbjorn wounded just outside
He told me he’d fought and wounded Cicero
I told him to get back to the Falkreath Sanctuary, and went in to try to run the place
Got killed by one of the ghost assassin guards, an archer who may have been using fire arrows? Died very quickly
Thrown back to coming out of the Falkreath Sanctuary
Re-did boinging to the camp at the ruins, and had flyby dragon again
Got into the Sanctuary again, and this time I summoned the ghost of Lucien Lachance, just so I could hear his lines warning me that Sithis wouldn’t like it if I killed Cicero
Was able to mostly follow Cicero’s various lines as he pointed out that the Night Mother wouldn’t like it either
Finally opted to spare Cicero
Got the less powerful jester gear that was just lying on a table, and the set of Worn Shrouded Armor (saw warning on the wiki that I wouldn’t be able to actually use that, I ust wanted it for display)
Boinged off to Bloodchill Cavern and dropped off a lot of things: Vittoria’s wedding gear, the jester gear, the Worn Shrouded Armor, and the Penitus Oculatus armor I snurched off of Gaius Maro
Boinged back to Lakeview for supplies check
Sofie asked me for a gift, so I gave her a new blue dress
Saved there until next time

Finds meeting Hermaeus Mora

I took the polite route with Hermaeus Mora this time, as I think Finds is way too laid back to get bent out of shape about Mora being a demon, really.

Also, as a worshipper of Sithis, I’m pretty sure her take on it is that the Void supersedes everything. Even the Daedric Prince of Fate and Knowledge. But she’s also laid back enough to not argue about it! And as long as Mora doesn’t get in her way with the whole carrying out the will of Sithis thing, sure, she’ll see what he’s offering.

Noting also for the record that I’m feeling a little more kindly disposed towards Mora, after playing through the Necrom plotline in ESO. We’ll see if this persists once I get my current crop of Skyrim characters over to Solstheim.

Taking out Hern for the Brotherhood

Right about the time I played this session was when I discovered that you don’t actually have to run all of Nazir’s contracts for the Brotherhood. You can get by with running a bare minimum of them, just enough to move the plot along.

So at this point I elected to just take out Hern, the vampire at Half-Moon Mill. This took me a few tries, though. I wanted to position myself to snipe him, but couldn’t identify the window of time when he was actually outside the house. Since this is a vanilla playthrough, he’s not outside nearly as often as he is if you’re running the USSEP or other mods that can impact his behavior.

When I finally found him outside and tried to snipe him, I did not kill him fast enough–and wound up pissing off his wife, too.

So I rolled back to when I saw Hert come out of the house, and went inside while Hern was still in there. I provoked him, and then just straight up killed him after he attacked me. Which satisfied the contract. HA.

Talking to Amaund Motierre

The part of the Brotherhood plot where I had to go to Volunruud and talk to Amaund Motierre was definitely one that challenged my German comprehension. That whole sequence of scenes, talking to Astrid to get the orders, going to Volunruud and talking with Amaund himself, coming back to Astrid for the followup, and then finally taking the amulet off to Delvin, had a bunch of complex dialogue flying around. Enough that I was not able to keep up with a lot of it.

So I had to double-check a lot of dialogue against the wiki, just so I’d have some idea of what the hell was going on.

On an up note, I didn’t actually have to fight anything at Volunruud, so that was convenient. I just had to go in far enough to find and talk to Amaund. He and his guard were just in the first side room on the left, which doesn’t contain any hostiles.

I got Amaund’s pitch for killing several people as part of a grand plan to eventually take out the Emperor. And I took the slightly astounded “You want us to kill the Emperor? Of… Tamriel?” dialogue option, just because it made me LOL. Finds is new enough to the assassin gig, never mind her tribe decreeing her fated for it, that she’s not overly prideful! She was expecting to quietly work her way up!

So taking out the Emperor seems like an awfully grand target. But hey, the Night Mother wants what the Night Mother wants, and far be it from Finds to argue with the Night Mother.

And heh, I hadn’t realized until I started checking my screenshots that Amaund’s first line to me was being stunned that a representative of the Dark Brotherhood actually showed up to talk to him! I hadn’t caught that reading his line in German, but once I checked the wiki for the original English, I saw this was his line:

“By the almighty Divines. You’ve come. You’ve actually come. This dreadful Black Sacrament thing… it worked.”

It does amuse me that the game gave me no opportunity to tell Astrid that I am in fact the Guildmaster of the Thieves Guild, so yes, I know who Delvin Mallory is, thank you very much.

I didn’t catch this because I was running the scene in German–but I did confirm on the wiki that if you’re a member of the Thieves Guild already when you’re running this quest, Delvin does have slightly different dialogue to you when you come to him with Astrid’s request.

“Oh. Oh I see. Well, you’re makin’ friends all over, ain’t ya? So, uh… how is Astrid doin’ these days? Tell her to stop by some time. We can have a drink. Catch up. Ah, but business! Of course. What kind of business?”

So there was that, anyway. And come to think of it, this may be the first time I’ve seen any character in Skyrim actually comment on you having connections to more than one faction at once. At least, if you’re running an unmodded game. 😀

Until death do us part is usually not supposed to be this fast, I think

Bringing the amulet back to Astrid led right into the next major Brotherhood event: taking out Vittoria Vici at her wedding. This was the part of the plotline that made Paul bail on running the Brotherhood; he wasn’t comfortable with killing a bride at her wedding.

And TBH, neither was I, really. But I was trying to hang in there for the sake of making it through the plot.

There are a lot of potential strategies about how to handle this called out on the Elder Scrolls Fandom wiki for this quest. I spent some time considering them, and finally decided to go with the idea of using the magic bow and Elixir of True Shot that had been planted on the balcony by Gabriella.

I got into Solitude fairly late, so I went to Proudspire and enchanted a necklace and ring on the house’s enchanter table, to boost my bow damage. Then I showed up for the wedding. And found that balcony with the enchanted bow and the elixir.

My first crack at assassinating Vittoria once she went up on the balcony, though, was a failure. I thought I was invisible when I fired, and thought that that would save me from anybody ID’ing me as the culprit. I was apparently mistaken. Because as soon as I tried to escape, the guests came after me. I got killed as soon as I came down the stairs.

Which, in fact, threw me into a bit of a loop. Because I kept getting thrown back to my last auto-save, which was my coming out of the stairs! At which point I’d get killed again, lather, rinse, repeat.

So I had to do a manual rollback to being positioned on the balcony. And that time, I punted to the strategy of hitting the groom with a Frenzy spell and letting him take out his own blushing bride.

Which was absolutely a more cruel option. But it was also about the only other one which seemed to have minimal chance of my getting fingered as the culprit. And I had to figure, if Finds was the sort of person who was willing to become an assassin to begin with, she wasn’t exactly in a position to quibble about methods.

And the Frenzy spell actually worked. I tried it a couple of times, but this was because I misread my Crime stats, and thought I’d gotten a bounty when I had not in fact done so. And this time, I got out of Solitude without getting intercepted or killed. Everybody was freaking out around me. But I was able to get out while sneaking and invisible, until I was somewhere where it was possible for me to fast travel back to the Sanctuary.

Framing Commander Maro’s son

Up until now I’d been used to dealing with Commander Maro as part of destroying the Dark Brotherhood, not joining them. Playing the Brotherhood’s plotline, though, meant I was going to have to frame his son for being involved in an attempt to assassinate the Emperor.

This required me to get hold of Gaius Maro’s schedule. I got it with surprisingly little effort. I just sauntered into the Penitus headquarters in Dragon Bridge, dropped into Sneak, and snurched it. And none of those clowns thought it was the slightest bit suspicious that there was an Argonian visibly “sneaking” around, LOL.

(Heh, this is what I get for sneaking being blatantly fucking obvious when you do it in ESO. Particularly when you’re running a plot that requires you to sneak while two or three other players are also trying to sneak. Shh! Nobody look at me! I’m being sneaky.)

Current in-game time meant I had to intercept Gaius in Markarth. And this took me a few tries, because I was operating under what appeared to be an incorrect assumption: i.e., that if I provoked Gaius into attacking me in front of a guard, then the guard would jump in on my behalf. I couldn’t get that to happen at all.

But what I could get to happen was Endon the silversmith to jump in and fight the guy with me. So that let me take out Gaius Maro bounty-free! And plant the incriminating letter on his body. Which I’m sure Endon absolutely disregarded, even though he was close enough to see me plant it at the time, snerk.

Local madman flips out, and everybody in the Sanctuary is surprised?

Taking out Maro led me right on around to the next big plot point: having to hunt down Cicero and square off against him at the Dawnstar Sanctuary.

The beginning of this little crisis was, perhaps, one of the few times in this game so far where Finds may actually have gotten riled. Veezara is the only other Argonian in the Brotherhood, and a fellow Shadowscale. So I absolutely buy she’d have gotten at least a little cranky at Cicero for harming him.

When Astrid ordered me to search Cicero’s quarters for any clues, I found not one, not two, but five journals. In true Skyrim NPC tradition, Cicero didn’t seem to think it was at all a problem to just leave a bunch of incriminating journals lying around! He didn’t even have the excuse of assuming that the barbarians in the Falkreath Sanctuary couldn’t read. By all evidence presented to me in every single Elder Scrolls game I’ve played to date, Tamriel is overall a surprisingly literate society, across multiple eras of its existence.

And heh, this also was I think the first I’d ever delved into Cicero’s backstory. I skimmed a bit about him on the wiki before, but reading his journals during the plot really helped drive his history home.

His history is, indeed, rather tragic, as stories about assassins that go crazy as their organizations collapse around them go. And I think reading those journals blunted Finds’ anger at him, at least a bit. But not enough for her to not go after him.

This was the point in the plotline where Astrid gave me Shadowmere, too. I’d of course already known about this horse, and that he’s considered the most powerful horse available in Skyrim, prior to Anniversary Edition content. Now that I’ve actually got him, I can certainly concur he looks very cool.

But I gotta admit that abandoning my poor Dwarven Horse made me feel a bit sad, too!

I had not realized that the Dawnstar Sanctuary was literally just right outside Dawnstar. I mean, seriously, you just walk around the corner from Silus Vesuius’s house, and it’s right there. The whole damn town has to know it’s right there. Its door is even in Innkeeper Thoring’s rumors, for fuck’s sake.

HOW DID THE BROTHERHOOD THINK THIS WAS A SECRET AND SECURE HIDEOUT?

And sure, I get that realistically speaking, almost all of the locations in Skyrim are a lot smaller and more compact than they legitimately ought to be, given the setting. But even given that, it’s really kinda silly for the Dawnstar Sanctuary to be that obviously close to the town.

I wrote earlier in Finds’ playthrough about wondering exactly who or what is the source of the voice of the Black Door of a Brotherhood Sanctuary. Dawnstar’s, it turns out, has a different password on it than the one in Falkreath. Which suggests that each door of an individual Sanctuary may be a unique ritual creation? I’m still not finding anything about this on the wiki, hunting for lore.

On my second attempt to run the Dawnstar Sanctuary, I summoned the ghost of Lucien Lachance. Partly just to try it, and partly because I specifically wanted Finds to hear his lines warning that Sithis wouldn’t like it if she killed Cicero.

I did finally opt to spare him. I don’t think Finds was happy about it; as I noted above, I figure she was pissed that Cicero had assaulted another Argonian. But she also cared enough about the Night Mother having proclaimed her Listener that she didn’t want to risk pissing her off.

And, yeah, even though I don’t think Finds will admit it, reading Cicero’s journals probably gave her a tiny grain of sympathy for the guy, too.

Last but not least, LOL, it only just now occurred to me as of writing this post that Babette the child vampire basically looks just like Sofie. This had to have struck Finds as a trifle disconcerting! But I also expect she probably doesn’t try to tell human children apart. ;D

Still, giving Sofie a blue dress does at least make her stand out a bit more from the vampire child!

Achievements unlocked

Bound Until Death: For completing that quest

Achievements count as of this post: 40.

Language commentary

Interesting terms observed:

Anderwelt: Otherworld (used by Septimus in a line he doesn’t have in the English game, when I bring him back the Lexicon)
Ineinandergreifen: To interlock
Hochelfenblut: High Elf Blood
Waldelfenblut: Wood Elf Blood
Dunkelelfenblut: Dark Elf Blood
Falmerblut: Falmer Blood
Orkblut: Orc Blood
Schatulle: Casket/coffer
Aufwiegelei: Incitement, dissent (used by Septimus as he describes what he did for Hermaeus Mora)
Seuche: Plague, epidemic
Elendsschlund: Wretched Abyss (lit. “Maw of Misery”, how Hermaeus Mora is initially tagged when he first appears to the player)
Schicksal: Fate, destiny (used by Paarthurnax as he urges the player to take the Elder Scroll to the Time-Wound)
Alduin der Geflügelte: Alduin on the Wing (lit. “Alduin the Winged”)
Schwester Falke: Sister Hawk, i.e., Kyne
Ihr seid verbannt!: You are banished!
Sarethihof: Sarethi Farm
Nirnwurz-Zucht: Supply of nirnroot
Ein einzigartiger Zauber: A unique magic/spell (how Astrid describes the spell to summon Lucien Lachance’s ghost)
Attentäter-Abschaum!: Assassin scum! (because boy howdy Gaius Maro is not happy to see me)
Hengst: Stallion
Geist-Assassine: Spectral Assassin (i.e., the ghost of Lucien Lachance)
Narrenhut: Jester’s Hat
Narrenhandschuhe: Jester’s Gloves
Narrenkleidung: Jester’s Clothes
Narrenstiefel: Jester’s Boots
Getragene Schattenkapuze: Worn Shrouded Cowl
Foltergeräte: Torture Devices
Brautkranz: Wedding Wreath
Vittorias Ehering: Vittoria’s Wedding Ring
Penitus-Oculatus-Rüstung: Penitus Oculatus Armor
Penitus-Oculatus-Helm: Penitus Oculatus Helmet
Penitus-Oculatus-Armschienen: Penitus Oculatus Bracers
Getragene Schattenrüstung: Worn Shrouded Armor
Firiniels Ende: Firiniel’s End (the bow)
Getragene Schattenhandschuhe: Worn Shrouded Gloves
Getragene Schattenstiefel: Worn Shrouded Boots

From what I could tell trying to translate Septimus’ German lines back to English, the translators took at least some liberties with him. This line, for example:

“Grabt, Dwemer, in der Anderwelt. Ich werde eure verlorenen Geheimnisse lüften und mich in eure Tiefen emporschwingen.”

This translates back to English as:

“Dig, Dwemer, in the Otherworld. I will reveal your lost secrets and soar into your depths.”

This is not a line Septimus has in the English version of the game. But given that the German game has him saying this when I give him back the Runed Lexicon, this still seems in keeping with his reaction. And I like it, too. It’s poetic and odd, and sounds like the kind of thing a crazy servant of Hermaeus Mora might say. “Soar into your depths” in particular is neat.

I wrote in an earlier post about inconsistencies in how Dragonrend is translated. As of this session, I can confirm that “Drachenfall” was used in the message to the player that you’ve learned the Shout:

Erlerne den Schrei “Drachenfall” von den Helden der Nord.

And I can also confirm that “Drachenfall” is how the Shout appears in Finds’ Shouts menu. So that’s that, the Shout is officially translated as “Drachenfall”.

The way German grammar treats sentence structure kind of broke the “I can’t quite believe what I’m hearing” line I took with Amaund. In English, you have the opportunity to boggle at him when he lays out what he wants the Brotherhood to do:

“You want us to kill… the Emperor? Of Tamriel?”

In German, this translated to:

“Ihr wollt, dass wir den … Kaiser töten. Von Tamriel?”

As you can see in this sentence, German puts the word “töten” at the end, because that’s what the language does in a sentence that involves two verbs. To my English-speaking brain, that feels like it breaks the rhythm of the line a bit. You could easily expect, though, that the Dragonborn here still vocally stressed “Kaiser”. But since the player doesn’t actually have audible voice lines, you can only speculate on how the Dragonborn would actually enunciate the line.

I can only assume that a German speaker would still make the expected connection here regardless, i.e., that the shocked Dragonborn is trying to get Amaund to confirm that yes, it’s that Emperor that Amaund wants the Brotherhood to kill.

I have nothing particular to note about “Ein einzigartiger Zauber” other than I just like how that phrase rolls off the tongue. A lot of “ein” and z’s here.

When Astrid told me to take her horse Shadowmere, her line in German used the word “Hengst”, not “Pferd” as I might have expected. And “Hengst” explicitly means “stallion”. So I guess the translators thought that was the more appropriate word, since Shadowmere is identified in dialogue as a male horse. (Even though Shadowmere is apparently female in Oblivion, according to the wiki!)

Next time

Finds-The-Way’s next post will be the last one to get me caught up on posting about her playthrough, and then I can resume playing her! Expect that post to feature advancing the Brotherhood plot a little further and going after the Gourmet; nabbing some more Stones of Barenziah; and also moving the main plot a little farther along as I return the blood samples he wanted to Septimus, which of course results in his disintegration.