In Which Gyllerah Accepts a New Contract with Hermaeus Mora

Here’s another Gyllerah post where I’m making it only four days, in the name of trying to keep the post shorter! Main action here is finally starting the plot in the Necrom DLC, but also finishing the Shadowfen leg of the Ebonheart Pact plot for Cadwell’s Silver.

Play by play

Play dates: 1/4-1/7/2024
Session numbers in this run: 324-327

January 4th

Writs; also ran a Jewelry master writ since I got one out of the writ rewards
Made some invisibility + speed potions for Marwyth
Summoned Mirri to get her some XP, and boinged to Auridon for a bit of antiquity hunting
Also ran a side plot involving Auridon legionaries having to fight off a Maormer pirate invasion
This involved me having to rescue various members of the legionary crew, and also sabotage what the pirates had done to the lighthouse
Then ran the Iluvamir Dolmen near Vulkhel Guard; that one fired off like three times while I was playing in the area, that one fires off a lot apparently?
Then ran more antiquities action on Summerset and then in Shadowfen; wound up with a nice Maormer serpent shrine which I placed in Kelesan’ruhn
Boinged briefly to Artaeum to do some fishing
And also to take Mirri to see the Vault of Moawita because she apparently really likes that, to build rapport with her
Made some additional invisibility potions with a speed bump to give to Marwyth for heist use
Then started running more Ebonheart Pact action with Gyllerah
Picked up at the Hatching Pools, played through that more or less similar to Marwyth, with the exception that I told the assistant to go report back to the Keeper this time
Still had to kill the guy she was pissed off at, though
Also ran the side plot with the alchemist’s device that was poisoning the trees
Then headed to Loriasel
Went by Hissmir on the way and saw a few quest givers, but did not engage
Reached Lorisasel and also played through to the end of that, again mostly similar to Marwyth
This time though I explicitly told the vicecanon to let the Khajiit soldier go
Mirri came into the Hist dream with me, and that had to be interesting to her, I expect
Played through to taking the ship to Skyrim so Gyllerah could proceed to run Eastmarch
Picked up a couple more skill points doing all of this, and distributed those across Gyllerah’s three builds

January 4th addendum (taken from screenshots 3/20)

Boinged to Necrom Outskirts Wayshrine to find Leramil and get the Necrom plot underway
Got objective to talk to Hermaeus Mora, which required me to go to the Menos Cistern
On the way to that, found Retainer Balver out by the road and he called out to me for help
Balver asked me to help him out by collecting ingredients for a medical tincture, to help out an Oathman of House Telvanni with his headaches
Then he asked me to give the tincture to Oathman Llaro, at which point I got a dialogue option to note that I knew the ingredients were toxic (which makes sense as Gyllerah’s Alchemy is maxed out)
He fessed up and claimed that the Oathman was a horrible bully and unfit for his station
Took the tincture to Llaro, and had the option to warn him it was poison, or just blithely hand it over
I opted to not warn him, at which point Balver got a surprise promotion to Oathman in the house
Then proceeded to go talk to Hermaeus Mora, and sign his contract
Mora sent me back to Necrom to talk to Leramil some more
And she gave me three places I needed to check out: the Necrom Necropolis, the town of Alavelis, and the tower of Tel Rendys
Opted to go to Alavelis
Met the watchling Scruut there, and then began investigating what was going on in the glass mine by the town
Searched the mine for survivors to learn more about what was happening, and spoke to Sadalas, who clued me in that the place had been taken over by Daedric cultists
Worked with Scruut to determine that we had to go to Apocrypha
Met Cipher Mukeesh who told me about the Tranquil Catalog being invaded by devotees of Peryite and Vaermina
Took out Kynreeve Ryl, and concluded quest by getting reward from Scruut

January 5th

Headed back to Necrom and ran more of that plot
Left off with two of the three plots I had to run with Leramil still pending, including one where she was supposed to accompany me
Decided to hit the other one first, which led me back to the city of Necrom
Got to explore more of it as I went looking for its necropolis
Discovered the necropolis had been closed to the public
Gadayn, a young curate, told me a bit of what was going on
He pointed me at a ship that had brought in a party of people who claimed to be led by one of their abbots
Went over to check it out and persuaded the dockmaster to let me on board
Discovered that it was filled with skeevers and dead crew, and had a suspicious ritual circle down in the hold
Incriminating letters and an incriminating logbook lying around explained that SHOCKER the ship had been boarded by Peryite cultists determined to infiltrate the necropolis
So headed back over there and found Gadayn again
He guided me to a way to get in through the underways beneath the necropolis
So we got in there and found other members of the order being poisoned by censers spewing out contagion
Destroyed those censers, along with one poisoning Gadayn’s superior
Had to make my way further in to find a particular tomb, and killed a few hostiles on the way
Discovered the main baddies going after a relic
They made off with a piece of it while I had to kill a monster they left behind, and I did at least recover a piece of the relic
Reported back to the monks and found the real abbot recovering from what had been done to him
He told Gadayn to provide me further assistance, and I told him to meet me at the bindery
Meanwhile, boinged off to meet Leramil at the third location to investigate
This was more complex and required us to check out a ruined mage tower at Tel Rendys
Discovered the place being combed by Dusksabers, last seen in the prologue quest to Necrom, and they were being led by a magister who very deliberately dodged a lot of my questions
Bullshat my way into investigating the place anyway
Was addressed by the spirit of the tower’s former owner, Meln the Mouthless
Soon discovered his dead body and his very active and cranky (although not hostile) spirit
Meln told me he’d been murdered by the magister I’d confronted, but she interfered and soul-trapped him, then vanished
So Leramil sent me off to go find an underling of that magister to find out where she might have gone
Talked the Khajiit underling into letting me have his official seal in order to get through the wards into her tower
So went down into a large cavern to get to that, and fought a lot more hostiles on the way
Took down four wards with the Khajiit’s insignia, and then got into the tower
Recovered Meln’s soul gem and got out again
Got objective to return to Leramil, but paused there for now
Research finally finished on my pending master writ for a staff, so finally turned that in

January 6th

Big group action today!
Ran trials with Swamp Haven, Sanctum Ophelia and then Aetherian Archive–in vet mode even 😀
Racked up three new colors for the dye station
Also got a style sheet for Celestial legs
Then later in the day ran some Undaunted pledges as Gyllerah
We did Spindleclutch and City of Ash, and I got a lot of new loot off of that
Got a whole pile of loot and assorted transmute crystals and Undaunted keys
Tried buying coffers to see if I could get Symphony of Blades shoulders, but two tries and nope
But did get a few random other pieces 😀

January 7th

Spent some money on Snugpod and several remaining inn rooms, to make it easier to bounce around the map
Grabbed inn rooms in Necrom, Vivec City, and Daggerfall

Action in Shadowfen

The session I ran on 1/4 was the point at which Gyllerah got actively appalled at her own forces. Because she is part of the Aldmeri Dominion, even if Meridia’s arranged things to make all the Ebonheart Pact people think she’s one of them.

And here’s her own forces killing unborn Argonian children. Gyllerah was not pleased about this. Not that there’s a damned thing she can actually do about it. Except, well, save the unborn Argonian children. And then stand up for them to Queen Ayrenn later, if anybody ever actually finds out that the “hero of the Ebonheart Pact” that blocked Ruuvitar’s plans was in fact a Dominion citizen and an Eye of the Queen. 😉

I tweaked things slightly when I played Loriasel this time, in comparison to how I ran it as Marwyth, too. This time through, I had Gyllerah explicitly tell the vicecanon to let the Khajiit soldier Kazdi go, because she’d earned her freedom by helping her. I figure this was not only Gyllerah already being partial to Khajiit, but also doing her part to counteract some of her own forces doing some clearly reprehensible things.

I noticed that Mirri came through into the Hist dream with me, so apparently that was a thing you could in fact take a Companion into. No doubt Gyllerah and Mirri had some rather interesting conversation about that after!

Mirri: “Does this kind of thing happen to you all the time?”

Gyllerah, chuckling: “You have no idea. Just be glad you met me after I had to go into Coldharbour.”

Mirri: “You what now?!”

Early rumblings of rearranging my Armory builds

As per my original notes for these sessions, this was the point where I started reconsidering having three builds in the Armory for Gyllerah. I did in fact, as I’ve mentioned, punt her down to two and repurposed the third Armory slot I have as a free reset one. So now Gyllerah’s only got two Armory builds, but I have two variations of each that I can invoke via Dressing Room. This working out for me so far.

Action in Necrom

It turns out to be a good thing that I take copious screenshots even if those screenshots don’t make it into the final post–because given the usual lag time between when I play any session and when the post for it goes up, the screenshots help a lot to remind me what the hell I actually did.

Especially if I completely forget to take notes for part of or all of a session, like I apparently did for the session on 1/4. Because I looked at the beginning of the notes for the session on 1/5, saw that it said I went back to Necrom and picked up in the middle of tasks given me by Leramil… but there was no sign of the previous giving of those tasks in my notes.

So finally I checked my screenshots and realized oh okay, I’d just forgotten to take notes for that on the tail end of the 1/4 session. Damn good thing, therefore, I had screenshots to refer to, as well as the wiki to remind myself of anything not covered by those screenshots.

Because yeah, this was the set of sessions where I started running the Necrom plot in earnest.

And heh. I think Gyllerah finds it slightly strange that a Daedric Prince actually had her sign a contract to work with him. Which makes her kind of a glorified mercenary, really. But there’s also something refreshingly straightforward to her about the situation, too. I mean, this is not Gyllerah’s first rodeo–but after previous encounters with Daedric Princes, wherein the crisis was so often buried in subterfuge and conspiracy, it’s a refreshing change of pace to have Mora go “okay, Apocrypha is in danger and so is Nirn, go find out what’s causing it, and stop it.”

Gyllerah has no particular fucks to give about Hermaeus Mora per se. But saving the world? Again? Can do.

Also, as a player, it’s a refreshing change of pace to see different sets of Daedric cultists involved this time. I’ve seen Vaermina cultists active before, but not so much Peryite cultists! Having them be any kind of threat at all has a measure of whut to it, but still! And they were effective in the plot I had to do in the Necrom Necropolis, where several of the NPCs there had been subjected to disease-dealing censers, and on board the ship I had to check out as well.

(Those contagion-spewing censers apparently didn’t bother me or Mirri, by virtue of plot armor. LOL. Aren’t you glad you’re hanging out with the Vestige, Mirri?)

And in general, I enjoyed exploring Necrom properly!

I was amused as well that the place where they keep the dead is the Necropolis, not the Hall of the Dead. No matter how strong the Skyrim-induced habit is to call it that.

And I like Meln the Mouthless as a character. Which just goes to show that if you’re a Dunmer, even more than any other race of NPC in this franchise, a little thing like death doesn’t slow you down for an instant for participating in a plot!

Housing acquisition

By the sage advice of Swamp Haven guildmates, I spent a little gold to finally get myself Snugpod, right by Elden Root. Which makes it a lot easier to turn in master writs as well as get dailies, that’s for sure.

(I think it’s weird to get in there as my alts who aren’t Gyllerah, mind you, since they’re not Dominion. But it’s still awfully damned convenient, especially given that there aren’t similarly priced player houses in Wayrest or Mournhold.)

While I was at it, I picked up three more inn rooms. I keep thinking that I ought to actually furnish all these various inn rooms, not to mention Snugpod… but so far, I have yet to bother. Mostly, they’re just shortcuts to letting me fast travel without having to bother with a wayshrine. And I’m fine with that.

Next time

Gyllerah’s next post will feature my first forays into the Infinite Archive; some activity in a public dungeon in the Rift which turned out to be pre-emptively running part of the Rift’s zone quest; and rearranging Gyllerah’s build to better take on the Archive!