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.
- In Which Harrowhark Meets Paarthurnax and Hunts for an Elder Scroll - 04/27/2023In which Harrowhark and her companions meet the master of the Greybeards; and venture to the outpost of a mad scholar and then into the depths of Blackreach to find an Elder Scroll.
- In Which Harrowhark Has a Bit of a Reset - 04/13/2023In which Harrowhark's player re-runs a bunch of things, including Moonpath to Elsweyr while trying to diagnose why this playthrough keeps crashing on the Steam Deck right now; and in which Inigo's dismissal is also retconned.
- Giving Inigo another chance - 04/13/2023I decided to give Inigo another chance, after I rolled back to an earlier save that put me back before I dismissed him as a follower. This is a writeup of the conversation I think Harrowhark, Inigo, and Lucien had about the whole question of her taking dragon souls.
- In Which Harrowhark Takes a Moonpath to Elsweyr - 04/06/2023In which Harrowhark ventures down to Elsweyr to help rebel Khajiit resisting their Thalmor overlords; reaches a contact in Markarth about a Dark Brotherhood contract; and quests into Arkngthamz to investigate what treasure can be found there. Features commentary on the Moonpath to Elsweyr mod, and why I am reluctantly deciding to give up Inigo as a follower.
- In Which Harrowhark Opens an Oblivion Gate - 04/02/2023In which Harrowhark raids the Dainty Sload to plant contraband on board for the Thieves Guild; robs Wintersand Manor, the home of Nazeem; buys Tundra Homestead; discovers the Oblivion gate at Red Scar Cavern, and ventures through it into the Deadlands; and helps the Vigilants of Stendarr defeat the Mythic Dawn and take control of the caverns.