In Which Finds-The-Way Assassinates a Markarth Chef

And now, back to Finds-The-Way in Skyrim. This session is from early February, and it is in fact the last post for Finds in my backlog–which means she’s caught up finally and I can resume playing her!

Main action covered here: some more Dark Brotherhood shenanigans, hunting for various Stones of Barenziah, and moving the main plot along far enough to get the Oghma Infinium from Hermaeus Mora.

Also, a surprisingly large number of people got pissed off at me for no apparent reason in this session! I mean, even aside from the whole “because Finds is an assassin” thing.

Play by play

Play date: 2/4/2024
Session number in this run: 47
Picked up again at Lakeview
I think I did this first, not sure, but putting it first in the notes anyway: since I hadn’t stuck a standing stone bonus on the Aetherial Crown yet, took care of that
Boinged to the Guardian Stones and chose Mage Stone
Then put on the crown and boinged to the Steed Stone
Took Steed Stone again, which put Mage Stone on the crown
So now I can use that when I want to be in mage mode
Then returned to Lakeview, and got a gift from Lucia, what a good kid!
Returned to the Dark Brotherhood Sanctuary to check in
And discovered to my surprise that Astrid was pissed at me
I had to go pay 500 gold to Nazir to mollify her
Once I paid my fine to the Brotherhood, got directive to go work on killing the Gourmet
This required me to talk to Festus for the details
He sent me off to Markarth to look for the head chef in Understone Keep, who was apparently a friend of the Gourmet and could identify him
So I showed up to lean on the guy, who turned out to be a dick and abusive to his underlings
So didn’t feel particularly guilty about lying to his face about the Brotherhood leaving him alone
Tried a couple of times to plant Frenzy potions in his pockets
First couple of times through this didn’t seem to work, he didn’t do anything that pissed off anybody nearby enough for them to kill him
Then I tried hitting him with a Frenzy spell–but that only resulted in his killing his underlings and that was no damn good, so had to roll back from that
Finally just pickpocketed a strong enough poison to kill him into his inventory, and that did the trick
Got directive to proceed to the Nightgate Inn and take out the Gourmet, but was honestly in the mood to give the Brotherhood a rest for a bit
For the rest of this session though went off to do non-murdery things
Boinged to Sarethi Farm and gave Avrusa her Jazbay grapes
Then went to Whiterun to talk to Olava and ask her about her token, so she did a bit of a reading for me
That got me the objective to go to Hag’s End for the Ancient Shrouded Armor
Was able to fast travel straight there and bypass having to go through Deepwood Vale
Also, got a High Elf blood sample off one of the hags
Initially thought I’d go in just far enough to get the armor, but when I came back out again I couldn’t fast travel out, got warned of enemies nearby
Realized I’d run into fewer hostiles just running the rest of Hag’s End than I would trying to get back out past all the respawned Forsworn, so did that
Got a Dunmer blood sample off another hag
Re-killed the hagraven at the end, but of course this time the Bloodthorn dagger and the Predator’s Grace boots weren’t there
From there though I was able to fast travel back to Lakeview
Sofie hit me up for a gift, so this time I gave her a doll
Next stop: Whiterun
Sold assorted stuff, then decided I wanted to grab some Stones of Barenziah
Set out on Shadowmere
Got a dragon by the Western Watchtower and had to take it out
There were Imperial soldiers in the immediate area as well as the regular tower guards
Headed to Sunderstone Gorge after that
On the way, took out Taron Dreth and his mercenaries, KATRIA SAYS HI, MOTHERFUCKER
Reached the spawn point at the crossroads to Sunderstone Gorge, where I triggered a Forsworn vs. Peddler fight
Peddler kicked some ass, way to go peddler!
And her horse got into the fight too, alongside Shadowmere
Bought everything the peddler had on her and sold her a bunch of the loot I got off Taron Dreth’s mercenaries
Then reached and ran Sunderstone Gorge
This took a bit since I had to carefully fight the various fire mages in there
Managed to get through without any of them killing me, though I set off a few traps because I wasn’t paying attention ;P
Got the Stone of Barenziah and the word off the Word Wall
Then headed back out and aimed for Rannveig’s Fast
Triggered a Vigilant of Stendarr vs. vampire encounter at the same spawn point
The Vigilant got killed by the vamp, but then I took out the vamp
When I reached the junction with the road to Rorikstead, surprised to be attacked by an Imperial, WTF? See below
From there, proceeded to Rannveig’s Fast
Dispatched the exterior ghosts, then mostly snuck my way through the place
Specifically did not trigger the trap door by the Word Wall; as with several of my prior characters, I figured Finds was all that is a fucking trap door, do I look like an idiot?
Sneaking through the place meant I got 6x damage every time I snuck up on a ghost–a merciful way to take them out really, since they were specifically slave ghosts, and did not want to fight me
Made it down to Sild, killed him, and took the Stone of Barenziah
Got Orc and Wood Elf blood samples off some of his dead prisoners
Tried to go back to Whiterun at that point, but Warmaiden’s hadn’t reset their gold stock yet
When I went into the Drunken Huntsman to sell stuff to Elrindir, HE ATTACKED ME, WTF
Tried a couple of times and he was hostile both times
Rolled back to coming out of Warmaiden’s
Trudged slowly out of Whiterun to sell my overloaded inventory elsewhere
Fortunately Ri’saad’s caravan was on site, so sold a bunch of stuff to Ri’saad
Then rode Shadowmere over to Honningbrew Meadery and sold a bunch more stuff to Mallus
Boinged next to Bloodchill Cavern and dropped off the regular Shrouded Armor there now that i have the Ancient
Next stop: Windhelm
Checked the house of Clan Shatter-Shield because I couldn’t remember if I’d gotten their stone yet; answer: yes I had
Then boinged to Riften, broke into the Jarl’s quarters in Mistveil Keep, and got her stone
(Side note: as of this point in the run I hit level 56, don’t remember exactly when I tipped over? Dropped a point onto Lockpicking here, I think)
From there, boinged off to the College of Winterhold
Swapped into my Arch-Mage gear and the Aetherial Crown
Got 5 rounds of Conjuration training with Phinis–which was still not quite enough to let me buy the spells for summoning Dremora lords and storm atronachs
Decided to proceed with getting a Falmer blood sample so I could return to Septimus
First went down into Winterhold and sold some stuff to Birna
When I came out of her store, DRAGON, so had to fight it along with the Winterhold guards
Summoned a Dark Seducer Archer a couple of times, and tried to hit the dragon with Destruction magic to work on leveling that some
Finally took the dragon out, and realized the Jarl even came out to try to attack the dragon
He did not appear to be armed though! Uh, sir, pro tip, punching the dragon does not work, would you like a nice crossbow? I can set you up with one
Fortunately for Korir he is set Essential, so the dragon did not in fact fry him (and LOL he’s only level 4? Seriously? Huh only some of the Jarls apparently level with the player)
One of the guards was killed in the fight though, so I nabbed Winterhold guard gear for my collection
Realized I could go to Shimmermist Cave near Whiterun for a quickly accessible Falmer to fight for the final blood sample, so did that
First boinged to Lakeview, and Sofie hit me up for an allowance, so I gave her another 1000 gold
Hatchling, if you need more when I’m not here, there are a bunch of gems in the safes in the cellar, try not to spend them all at once or Dragonmom will be very cross with you, mmkay?
From there, boinged to Tundra Homestead to get within range of Shimmermist, and then rode over from there
Did a surgical strike on the place, just in far enough to cast Pride of Hirstaang and throw a bear at the first Falmer I saw
So got that last sample, and boinged off to Septimus’ outpost
Here’s your blood samples, you strange crazy little man
Wait, you didn’t want there to be a book inside this giant Dwemer box thing? Oh whoops wait, you disintegrated
Sure Hermaeus Mora, I’ll read the book, just don’t fuck with my ability to save the world from Alduin mmkay?
Chose the Path of Magic since my magical skills were still fairly deficient
That bumped up things enough to let me level up to 57!
Returned to the college and paid for more Conjuration training to hit 75, which let me get the summoning spells, fuck yeah
Also got a few spells off of Faralda, and Invisibility from Drevis
So now I have all my favorite spells for this character 😀
Sold a few more things to Birna in Winterhold, and saved there until next time

Surprise! Pissed off Astrid!

This session started with a bit of a surprise: checking in at the Dark Brotherhood Sanctuary and discovering Astrid was pissed at me. I do not know what happened there. But my best guess is, I might have accidentally killed the Ghost of Lucien Lachance when I summoned him in the run through the Dawnstar sanctuary?

Because it’s certainly plausible that I attacked the wrong damn ghost while he was helping me fight the other ghosts in the place. Or, I might have hit him with range weapons because of bad aim. Oops.

I’ll have to try summoning him again to see if he is pissed off at me, or if that settled itself when I paid Nazir to make amends.

Or here’s a thought: did Astrid get pissed specifically because I fought Cicero? Who is, after all, also a member of the Dark Brotherhood? That wouldn’t make much sense, given that I fought him explicitly under Astrid’s orders. But that’s the kind of weird bug I’d kind of expect to still exist in Skyrim, even after it’s been out for so long. I’ve certainly ran into weirder Skyrim bugs than that.

Moving the plot along

After I settled things by paying the fine, Astrid was willing to talk to me again. And I noted with interest that when she asked me what the status was with Cicero, I only had the option to lie to her, and tell her I’d killed him. The wiki confirms that you really have only two paths with this: either you kill Cicero outright, or else you let him live but lie to Astrid about it when she asks you. There’s no middle ground of being truthful to Astrid about sparing him.

Which, I guess, is appropriate to the narrative. Cicero has after all attacked other members of the Brotherhood. Yet Lucien Lachance dropped a heavy hint on Finds that taking him out would not go over well with the Night Mother. So by sparing him, and therefore acting the way she thought was best to adhere to the Night Mother’s wishes, Finds is now in the awkward position of having to side-eye Astrid and everyone else in the Sanctuary.

I don’t think she likes lying to Astrid at all. But on the other hand, now she has a niggling little voice of doubt in her head pointing out that if the Night Mother doesn’t want Cicero killed, yet Astrid does, does Astrid really still have the favor of the Night Mother?

Meanwhile, not gonna lie, was definitely not feeling terribly guilty about taking out the abusive head chef in Markarth. That guy was upholding the Markarth tradition of a bunch of their citizens just generally being awful. But once that was out of the way, I was definitely feeling ambivalent about going after the Gourmet.

About the Dark Brotherhood in general

I’m not the target audience for this plotline, really. I’ve decided that Finds, as a follower of Sithis, believes that Sithis expects her to kill in exchange for giving her the power to save the world from Alduin. Which is about the closest I can come to a reason for Finds to be willing to be in the Brotherhood, aside from just “I hate everybody and want to stab them.”

It’s interesting to me as well to contrast this plot with the Dark Brotherhood in ESO, now that I’ve started dabbling in that (see forthcoming posts on my ESO alt Ashosah, for details). ESO’s Dark Brotherhood seems to have much more of its shit together, and isn’t in the same state of disarray as Skyrim’s. They also are much more strict about upholding the Five Tenets, which does at least give the Brotherhood some semblance of a moral code. Skyrim’s Brotherhood under Astrid, by contrast, is much more along the lines of killing just for the money, and because Astrid says so.

In D&D terms, ESO’s Brotherhood is much more Lawful Evil, whereas Skyrim’s is more Chaotic Evil.

I will go ahead and finish the Brotherhood’s plot with Finds, but once I’m done with it, it’s not likely I’ll want to run the Brotherhood again in an unmodded Skyrim. I still want to play the Dark Brotherhood for Good Guys modded version of the plot, just because there is a bit more of a moral structure to that version. I do have that version of the Brotherhood available in Elessir’s playthrough–but I’ve kind of run into the same problem there that I did in ESO, namely, not really feeling like Elessir’s an appropriate character to run through the Brotherhood at all, based on how his playthrough has gone.

With my new ESO alt, I decided I’d run her through the Brotherhood first, and then work her more towards a redemption/heroic story arc. I strongly suspect that I’ll need to do the same in a future Skyrim playthrough, even with a modded version of the Brotherhood. Maybe if I run the Brotherhood straight out of the gate with a new Skyrim alt, and then slap that character upside the head with “SURPRISE YOU’RE THE DRAGONBORN”, it’ll feel more palatable to me.

(But I digress.)

Getting the Ancient Shrouded Armor

I did at least enjoy talking to Olava and getting her to do the reading for me. I hadn’t done this before in a playthrough, since I’ve never had a Skyrim character get that far in the Brotherhood. And Olava doesn’t have any other plot function in the game, as far as I know.

So this was the first time I actually got to interact with that character, which was cool. Anything I can do in Skyrim that’s still new to me is a win! For the same reason, I did enjoy finally seeing where the dead assassin was in Hag’s End.

Surprise! Pissed off Imperial!

On the way to Rannveig’s Fast, I got attacked out of the blue by an Imperial–who turned out to be one of the ones I always see guarding a noble riding around on a horse.

I was deeply confused by this, until I realized oh shit, I still had on the Gray Cowl of Nocturnal! So that apparently also impacts the type of Imperial that guards the horse-riding noble. I guess that guy qualifies as a “guard” for the Cowl’s purposes.

I didn’t actually want to fight that guard, though. So I threw a Pacific spell at him to make him fuck off, and was relieved to see that actually worked. Good to know for later!

After that encounter, I immediately switched out of the Cowl!

Surprise! Pissed off Elrindir!

But wait, there’s more! When I went to Whiterun and tried to head into the Drunken Huntsman to shop with Elrindir, he was pissed off at me too.

I looked on the wiki, and apparently Elrindir has a known bug with getting hostile to you if you attack or kill the random Imperial courier NPC. But I didn’t do that! And of course Elrindir also gets pissed at you if you take out his brother for the Dark Brotherhood contract–which I also haven’t done.

So maybe his bug was triggered by my pissing off that Imperial guard by wearing the Cowl, even though I didn’t actually kill the guy?

I don’t even know. So I’ll have to check back later and see if Elrindir is still pissed at me, I guess. And stay out of the Huntsman for at least several game days.

Language commentary

Interesting terms observed:

Essenzextraktor: Essence Extractor
Bußgeldzahlung: Payment of fine, used when I had to give Nazir 500 gold to make Astrid stop being pissed off at me
Arnbjorn ist in Sicherheit: Arnbjorn is safe
Aber was ist mit dem Verrückten?: But what about the madman?
Feinschmecker: Gourmet
Hochfels: High Rock
Sinderions Glück: Sinderion’s Serendipity (lit. “Sinderion’s luck”), the perk that gives you a chance at making two potions at once at an alchemy table
Olava die Schwache: Olava the Feeble
Teeblätter: Tea leaves
Handlesen: Palm reading
Kristallkugel: Crystal ball
Alte Schattenrüstung: Ancient Shrouded Armor
Vulkanglaskriegsaxt der Verwünschung: Glass Battleaxe of Malediction
Ätherium: Aetherium
Ätheriumschmiede: Aetherium Forge
Spaltsteinschlucht: Sunderstone Gorge
Fürst der Nacht: Nightlord Vampire (lit. “prince of the night”)
Versklavter Geist: Subjugated Ghost (lit. “enslaved ghost”)
Rannveigs Fasten: Rannveig’s Fast
Abenteurergeist: Ghost Adventurer
Schimmernebelhöhle: Shimmermist Cave
Zauberbuch: Dremora-Fürst beschwören: Spell Tome: Conjure Dremora Lord
Zauberbuch: Sturm-Atronachen beschwören: Spell Tome: Conjure Storm Atronach

I didn’t note in Finds’ previous post, which was the first time she’d met Hermaeus Mora, that the German voice performance for that Daedric Prince sounded pretty good. It had the same kind of full and oily sound to it that the English performance does.

When I checked back in with Astrid after paying the fine, she used the sentence I quoted above to ask me what the situation was with Cicerco. Which gave me an example of how German uses different cases of nouns. “Verrückten” is actually the dative case of “Verrückte”, which means “madman” or “lunatic”.

Next time

I’ll probably push the Dark Brotherhood plot further along. Waffling about what to do with Finds after that, though. Not sure if I want to finally start her on Dawnguard, finish up main plot stuff, or take her to Solstheim.