In Which Gyllerah Goes to the Daggerfall Covenant

Back around to ESO! And specifically, to Gyllerah! This is her action for the second week of February, part 1, covering the 8th through the 11th. Because I did a lot that week, and I’m splitting this up into two posts to help make them shorter.

Main action covered here: getting Bastian as my third Companion; beginning Cadwell’s Gold, and starting official action in Stros M’Kai; helping Captain Kaleen steal some plans from a crooked headman; helping the Orcs of Betnikh fight off attacking cultists; helping wyresses in Glenumbra; and helping Azandar more with his personal quest.

Play by play

Play dates: 2/8, 2/9, 2/11/2024
Session numbers in this run: 350-352

February 8th

Ran the treasure maps I got off of Mirri as Marwyth–which sent me off to, notably, Blackwood
Wound up getting a couple of Antiquity leads while doing this, and also found a bit of a tapestry
Decided to go ahead and run the quest to pick up Bastian as a Companion
Bastian’s foster brother had fallen in with some Sithis cultists who were going to sacrifice him
Bastian had also run afoul of a Dunmer bounty hunter also after his foster brother; she’d knocked Bastian out and tied him up
So I got him loose, and we eventually caught up with the bounty hunter Tenarei and reluctantly joined forces with her
Took out the cultist leader and rescued Bastian’s foster brother Quistley, about which he was extremely snotty and ungrateful, of course
Rather satisfying to see Bastian haul off and pop him one ;D
Left him and Tenarei negotiating about her taking Quistley’s signet ring off to satisfy the gangster type he was in debt to
So now I have Bastian available as a backup
Then picked up with Cadwell’s Gold (without any Companion backup for now)
Went to the Harborage and talked to Cadwell, then hit Meridia’s Light
Was boinged over to Stros M’Kai
But ran into a snag: I woke up on board the Spearhead, but could not find a quest giver
Had to hit the zone guide for Stros M’Kai and select the option to continue the zone story
That pointed me at the quest to go find Neramo and help him get into the Dwemer ruin
Then that let me go talk to the captain, and get the quest to help her steal the shipping records from the corrupt headman of Port Hunding
Also notable: this is where I finally encountered Jakarn
Got into the Grave to get him out, and found a fuckton of traps in there, none of which were that difficult to elude (so apparently no NPCs ever think to actually judge the timing of these traps? Snerk)
Freed Jakarn, at which point he vanished back to the entrance, leaving me to have to go back out through the traps ;P
And at this point if Gyllerah hadn’t already figured out this guy was a scoundrel, she’d have been rather pissed at him for that alone–but as it was, she was all okaaaay fine
Reported in with the captain, since doing Neramo’s quest for him got him on board with her efforts, and getting Jakarn meant we could proceed with the heist
Had optional objectives to get help from all three of the recruited heist allies
- Larisa got me a servant’s outfit
- Neramo contributed a Dwemer doohickey that’d let me shock the guard to incapacitate him without stabbing him
- And Jakarn promised to handle the headman so we could get the key to the strongbox off of him
And all of them did their part, so all I had to do was put on the servant’s outfit
Got into the palace and spoke with a sympathetic servant to find out where the headman was
Met Jakarn on the premises after he brought in a couple of women and partied a bit with the headman, long enough to get him drunk and knocked out
I took the key and went to find the strongbox
Zapped the guard with the doohickey; nobody bothered me about this, even though the zapping was loud and the guy cried out
Got the records out of the strongbox and then strolled right out of the place to go find the captain
Let her hand the records over to a representative of the king of Hammerfell, and that let us finally get the hell out of Port Hunding
The captain’s ship set off for Betnikh, and I started running the local plot there
The local orcs were under attack by Bloodtalon cultists, so I had to go investigate what was going on in three different local areas
Got some backstory on the zombies I’d seen on a previous visit
And also on the goal of the cultists, trying to get an artifact that had been previously used by the king of the Bretons who’d been defeated by the invading Orcs that took over the island
Nabbed three skyshards while doing this, so got another skill point
Got assistance from Jakarn, Neramo, and Larisa through all of this, again
Jakarn made a point of robbing the hell out of the cultist lair he investigated with me, and Gyllerah was grudgingly willing to allow for theft from cultists being morally acceptable
Side note: also rather liked running into an Orc NPC who was a researcher/scribe type, and who made a point of reminding me that not all Orcs are warriors, and that some of them wielded a quill just as well as others wielded warhammers
Nice cultural touch there <3
Played through to the point of needing to go help the chief of the place defend against more attacks
Left off at that point until next time

February 9th

Did a few rounds of Infinite Archive to work on leveling Bastian; got him up to level 4
Put a few of my better Companions gear pieces on him to aim for a tank build, and sword and shield in particular; he seems like a sword and shield type to me
Taken out by boss on cycle 3 though
Did a whole bunch of surveys to clear out my backlog, and this let me hit a dolmen while Bastian and I were in Eastmarch
Moved the plot a little farther along in the Daggerfall Covenant
Helped the Orcs by convincing some Ayleid spirits to let us into the ruin where the cultists were at work
Took out the main cultist, and also found the relic they were after
Had to choose whether to destroy the relic or let the Covenant have it
The captain of the Spearhead, Kaleen, really wanted me to let the Covenant have it, while Lambur the Orc was convinced that if the Covenant got their mitts on it, the Redguards and Bretons would use it against her people
Sided with Lambur on this, on the grounds that the damn thing was powered by enslaved souls and Gyllerah was not okay with that
Boy howdy was Kaleen pissed at me after that
Orc chieftain asked me to go to Daggerfall to deliver his petition for Betnikh to join the Daggerfall Covenant, and Kaleen only took me there because the chief asked her to
Made it to Daggerfall, anyway, and dropped off the petition with a local noble
Then had to figure out what to do next
This was another situation where I’d already done some of the local zone quest (namely, saving the king of Daggerfall from assassination), so I had to hit the zone guide again and tell it to let me continue the zone story
That got me the objective to go help out the wyress at Deleyn’s Mill
Found the wyress and agreed to help out with the crisis there
Had to use an enchanted torchbug to help her gather essence to set up a ward for a building in the town
While doing this, also hit a dolmen that fired off
Played through to the point of the wyress I was helping asking me to talk to another of her sisters

February 11th

Ran some more of Azandar’s personal quest line
Went to his sanctum in Skywatch, and did another scrying to find more of his frayed fates
This sent us off to Ebonheart
Had to walk a little ways southish of the city to find his frayed fate
This put us down in the area of Vivec’s Antlers, where I’d participated in Ebonheart Pact battle stuff with the dreugh, and the soldiers were all still there
Az asked me to play it cool and tell any soldiers who asked that we were just mages looking for reagents
Found that his adversary had beaten us to the frayed fate and already drained it
Then we were off to Malabor Tor, where we had to hit an Ayleid ruin
Fought assorted hostile Sea Elves on site, but also got a bead on where to go next
Which was Nchuleftingth (gesundheit) on Vvardenfell
I’d never actually been in there before and discovered this was a public dungeon, so we ran the place
That led us next to have to go to Apocrypha again, and we found a delve called Quires Wind
On the way, picked up a local quest for that from a cipher we passed along the road
He told me another cipher had basically gone a little batshit and had left a bunch of corrupted scrolls all over the place
And the “Hushed” (who I’d already seen in Apocrypha) and assorted Daedra had become hostile
So I took that plot as well and headed into the place
Met another cipher who was a female Orc, and she gave me the actual objectives: burn some corrupted scrolls and take out the bad guy
So got in there and did Azandar’s plot
Then finished up burning the scrolls and taking out the bad guy, and this time I made a point of finding the skyshard
The place’s layout was multi-level and challenging, and I had to pay close attention to where I was on the map
Finally got out of there and called a halt until next time

Picking up Bastian as a Companion

This play week is when Gyllerah got her third Companion: Bastian. I’ve played him as my characters’ backup enough times since then that I can say he’s the least interesting Companion to me by far. I still will use him if I want a tank, though, because I’ve set Bastian up for that.

And I do kind of like him, even if he’s mostly not terribly interesting personality-wise. He’s that kind of Boy Scout character I’m rather partial to–Captain America and Superman both being examples of that same archetype. Plus, he’s rather cute in a very refined and Imperial kind of way.

I also like his backstory, which sets him up as the son of a disgraced noble who’d been put to death for (allegedly?) attempting to kill High King Emeric. I’ll have more to say about this in future posts.

And, Bastian was raised by another branch of his family, where he grew up with a history of having to rescue their good-for-nothing actual son from assorted shit he gets himself into. Which is where I came in on the plot, because I wound up having to help Bastian rescue his foster brother Quistley.

As part of this plot, I also met the Dunmer bounty hunter Tenarei Vels, who was also after Quistley. Honestly, Tenarei was the best part of this plot, just because watching her clash with Bastian was fun! I do think Bastian’s the most interesting when he has to go up against somebody who does not align with his moral compass.

There was one other interesting NPC running that plot: a vampire, Greywyn Blenwyth, who despite having a very Breton-looking name was actually an Altmer. The cultists had captured him, and in exchange for letting him out of his cage, Greywyn gave me a tip on how to find the hidden entrance into the depths of the lair. This guy was notable to me at the time for his general air of refinement–ESO does love playing with various non-hostile vampire character archetypes, I’ve found. But I learned after I looked him up that he’s also a critical figure later in the overall timeline, as someone who tries to take over the Dark Brotherhood. And he shows up in Oblivion as well, as the contact who reaches out to the Hero of Kvatch to bestow Deepscorn Hollow on them.

The same Deepscorn Hollow I had to help rescue Quistley from! So that’s a highly entertaining tie-in there.

It was also highly entertaining to see Bastian haul off and pop Quistley one. Quistley totally had it coming. 😀

He definitely suits Gyllerah way better than Marwyth, that’s for sure, since he’s very Moral and Upstanding(TM). I also later picked him up with Veghra, since he’s a pretty good match for her, too. More on this to come in future posts, as well.

He’s good for when I’m running Gyllerah explicitly in healer mode vs. damage mode, as well.

His dialogue is not as entertaining as the later Companions, that’s for sure. His penchant for observing “This is a great area for harvesting” in particular wears thin. But I’m at least glad that ZOS did seem to learn from making him and Mirri, and that the later Companions are much more lively. I’m hoping that this trend will continue when the next two Companions drop.

Starting Cadwell’s Gold, and heading to Stros M’Kai

I ran into a problem when I launched Cadwell’s Gold with Gyllerah. As per the standard procedure for the Daggerfall Covenant plot, I woke up on board a ship called the Spearhead. But for the life of me, I could not find a quest giver!

Tumma-Shah, an Argonian member of the crew, was in theory supposed to be my quest giver according to the wiki. But she had no marker on her, and no relevant bit of dialogue that I could trigger with her.

So I had to search around for a solution. I finally found an ESO forum thread with a user that had a similar problem, and from that, I sussed out the core issue. I’d managed to confuse the Stros M’Kai questline, I think, by already doing the part with rescuing Larisa’s captured crewmembers.

I solved the problem by hitting the zone guide for Stros M’Kai, and telling it to let me continue the zone story. So I just missed out on a little bit of initial setup.

Moral of this story: even though in theory ESO lets you play stuff in whatever order you like, this can and will fuck up zone questlines if you’re not careful.

Why hello there, Jakarn

And finally, finally, I got to meet Jakarn. I knew about this guy in general already, but had yet to actually meet him as part of a plot. And I think I like this guy. ;D

He is very, very Han-Solo-ish, even more than Darien, because he is in fact a thief. And full of bullshit charm that he regularly deploys to admirers–mostly female, but as I later came to learn, not entirely!

Gyllerah probably had at least a little sympathy for the Altmer girl Irien that she encountered first, before she found Jakarn himself. And having gotten tipped off that she’d need to get Jakarn out of the Grave (i.e., a prison), she already knew he was not exactly a model citizen. And then there was this girl going “oh, he’s a prince“, so Gyllerah’s bullshit alarm went off.

Mind you, the game didn’t give me any opportunity to actually do anything with this. But I can definitely see Gyllerah being “uh, he’s a what now?” And then thinking to herself that yeah, maybe it’s not quite worth it to try to talk her fellow Altmer out of this.

Heist action

Stros M’Kai’s starting plot is definitely one of those that expects the player to do a little light thievery in order to move the plot along. There is no way to avoid doing the heist, so I guess it’s good that I tend to play Chaotic Good characters who won’t look too askance at thievery if it’s in the name of a greater cause. But it sure would make it difficult to get through this plot as a Lawful Good character.

Having already done the part of the plot where I rescued Larissa’s crew meant it took me less time to whip through this than I would have done with a brand new character (more on this to come with Veghra). And it let me proceed straight to the part where I had to get the plans out of the headman’s strongbox.

And really, as long as I accepted the help of all three of the other helpers in this plot (Jakarn, Neramo, and Larissa), I really didn’t have to do all that much thievery. Just zap a guy with a doohickey, break into a box, and zoom! Off I go.

I do kind of wish that little escapade had some kind of impact on the game at least in Stros M’Kai, but it doesn’t as far as I know. At least, I haven’t seen any sign of the status of the place changing, now that Gyllerah’s played through that intro plot.

Betnikh

The Daggerfall Covenant, like the Ebonheart Pact, has two starter zones, not just one. Stros M’Kai led me over to Betnikh, and there things got rather more interesting.

Most of the plot there involved having to help the Betnikh Orcs fight off attacks by Bloodtalon cultists. All well and good. The interesting part for me though was the bit where I had to decide what to do with the Ayleid relic MacGuffin: turn it over to the Daggerfall Covenant, or destroy it.

And when I opted to destroy it, boy howdy, was Captain Kaleen pissed at me. She flat out refused to believe that the artifact was too dangerous to be in anyone’s hands, and acted like I’d personally stabbed High King Emeric in the back. Welp, sucks to be her, I guess, because Gyllerah had no patience for allowing an artifact powered by trapped souls to continue to exist.

Out of curiosity I doublechecked the wiki on this, and discovered that if I had allowed the Covenant to take possession of the thing, the Mages Guild would have found a safe way to drain it of its power. Which is all well and good, I suppose, but my character could not have known this at the time. And I don’t see any way that Gyllerah could have elected to turn the thing over to the Covenant.

I mean, at this point she’s already seen the Three Banners War from the standpoint of both her own home alliance and that of the Ebonheart Pact. Now she’s seeing it from the standpoint of the Covenant. And if she’s learning anything from all of this, it’s that all three alliances have a rather shitty track record in dealing with each other, including her own people. So yeah, at this point she doesn’t trust anybody to get their mitts on a powerful relic.

(Kaleen does seem to get over being pissy at me, as I’ve run into her since this session and she was willing to talk to me. More on this to come later.)

Daggerfall

After Betnikh, I finally made it to Daggerfall. Pissed at me though she was, Kaleen did at least take me to Daggerfall so that I could deliver the Orc chieftain’s petition to join the Covenant.

After that, though, I ran into another situation of the local plotline being confused because I’d already done some of it: namely, saving the king of Daggerfall from assassination. So I had to hit the zone guide again, which gave me the objective to go see what was going on in Deleyn’s Mill.

This, this right here, is part of why I’ve resolved to try to keep further ESO play as linear as I can. It’s a pain in the ass to have to regularly doublecheck the wiki to see if I should do a thing yet–but for me as a player, that’s less annoying than getting through part of a zone quest, and being confused as fuck as to why I can’t find an obvious way to proceed.

I know from the couple of years now that I’ve been playing this game that at least to some degree, ESO does try to allow for players missing certain parts of zone quests. I’ve seen on the UESP wiki, as well as in the game itself, that certain NPCs exist entirely to help guide you along a plotline.

But I also know from my years in the tech industry, even without ever working directly on games, that it would be a nightmare to try to code in enough logic to account for the myriad ways that players could play stuff out of order.

Helping out Azandar some more

Returning to Azandar’s personal quest, and in particular accompanying him to the area of Stonefalls right around Vivec’s Antlers, let me learn a bit more about this grizzled Arcanist. He was adamant about bullshitting our way past the Ebonheart Pact troops still hanging out at Vivec’s Antlers, to which I kinda had to giggle a bit.

Gyllerah: “Uh, Azandar, just so you know, these guys actually know me. I sorta kinda helped them save the Ebonheart Pact and stuff. It’s cool.”

Heh. I also noted that he apparently really hates dreugh? He sounded rather phobic about them.

I liked that this leg of his plot gave me a reason to set foot in Nchuleftingth, the public dungeon in Vvardenfell. Even if the place’s name totally sounds like a vicious sneeze!

I was surprised and pleased to discover that it had sort of the same aesthetic that the Autumn wing of the Dwemer dungeon in Skyrim near Hendraheim does, where the place was overrun with plants. And a lot of butterflies as well, which was cool.

I didn’t find a skyshard in there, but I don’t think I ran enough of the place at the time–a thing I confirmed later when I returned there with Marwyth. I was in there only long enough to do Azandar’s plot, and didn’t pick up any local plots to the place.

Quires Wind, on the other hand, continued the pattern I’d started seeing of dungeons in Apocrypha being a lot more complex than I’d been accustomed to, even the delves.