Harrowhark Playthrough
| Harrowhark | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Playthrough Info | |
| Game | Skyrim Anniversary Edition |
| Race | Imperial |
| Playthrough Dates | Started 11/19/2022, ended 6/18/2023 |
| Platform | PC, Steam Deck |
| Language | English |
| Difficulty | Adept |
This is the page for my seventh Skyrim playthrough, for the character Harrowhark, renegade Imperial, necromancer, erstwhile vampire, and assassin.
I began this playthrough on 11/19/2022, and it alternated between my Win11 VM on my M1 MacBook Pro, and my Steam Deck. This was also my first Skyrim playthrough to use a full set of mods (as opposed to just the USSEP, which is what I had with Shenner).
The playthrough unexpectedly ended in early July 2023, because I broke it partly due to too much rearranging of her mods, and partly from a disastrous attempt to fix it that lost me three+ months’ worth of saves.
A writeup of all the mods I used in this playthrough can be found here.
As with Shenner’s playthrough, this one used the Anniversary Edition.
Harrowhark breaks my personal character naming scheme of “characters who appear in books I’ve written, whether or not those books are released”. Instead, she is named after Harrowhark Nonagesimus in Tamsyn Muir’s splendid Locked Tomb series. And as with that character in those books, I will frequently be referring to this character as Harrow for short.
Harrowhark’s Backstory
This is kind of the part where I regret forgetting to install Alternate Start – Live Another Life before starting Harrow’s playthrough, because starting her off as a vampire out of the gate would have been an excellent excuse for her to be arrested and sent to Helgen.
I decided instead that she’ll have fought off a rape attempt. And that she killed the guy–only, in blind fury, raised him. Just so that she could stab him again.
And she got caught doing that. Given that necromancy is extremely frowned upon in most of Tamriel, that is what got her sent to Helgen for execution.
She carried a massive grudge about this, because she was under no circumstances sorry that she killed the guy, or that she raised him. Because he absolutely deserved being stabbed twice.
This contributed to her into joining the Dark Brotherhood, not to mention learning more about how to control her necromancy. And made her willing to accept being a vampire once it happened to her.
Playthrough Posts
Here are all the posts about Harrowhark’s playthrough! These are dynamically updated, so a new post should appear here when it goes up. They’re listed in descending date order, so the newest posts should always appear first. Also, note the pagination controls after the first five posts. You can page through to see the older ones.
- Final thoughts on Harrowhark’s Skyrim Run - 07/10/2023The obligatory final thoughts post on Harrowhark's Skyrim run, tragically cut short by her player losing a bunch her saves!
- Mods review for Harrowhark’s run - 07/10/2023A writeup of final thoughts on the various mods I ran in Harrowhark's now canceled playthrough, calling out which ones I want to keep for the future, which ones I'm ambivalent about, and which ones I'm definitely ditching.
- In Which Harrowhark Becomes Guildmaster, Fights Mudcrabs, and Takes Contracts - 07/09/2023In which Harrowhark wins Windhelm for the Thieves Guild, and becomes Guildmaster; retrieves the final Aetherium shards and finds the Aetherium Forge with Katria's ghost; kills Alain Dufont, Hern, and Lurbuk for the Dark Brotherhood; is revealed as the new Listener of the Brotherhood; and slays an infestation of frenzied mudcrabs in Dawnstar.
- Canceling Harrowhark’s Playthrough - 07/09/2023Thanks to a disastrous attempt to fix Harrowhark's broken playthrough in Skyrim, I only wound up losing the last several months of her run. So I'm going to have to cancel that playthrough. AUGH.
- In Which Harrowhark Learns Dragonrend and Saves Dawnstar - 05/20/2023In which Harrowhark faces Alduin on the Throat of the World; plots with Paarthurnax to trap one of Alduin's allies; returns the Lexicon to Septimus Signus; meets Hermaeus Mora; save Dawnstar from nightmares; buys land for and builds Heljarchen Hall; slays the dragon at Autumnwatch Tower; and becomes Thane of the Pale.