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.
- Spoiler-free short review of the Forgotten City mod - 02/05/2023What this says on the tin: a short spoiler-free review of the excellent Forgotten City mod for Skyrim, which I have now played in Harrowhark's run. If you think you might want to run this mod at all, look at this post FIRST before you look at the next full post I put up for Harrow!
- In Which Harrowhark Gains a Star and a Horn, and Also Slays Some Dragons - 02/02/2023In which Harrowhark slays Malyn Varen and purifies Azura's Star; discovers an agent of the Blades, and accompanies her to Kynesgrove to slay the dragon Sahloknir; slays another dragon at the Western Watchtower; slays Forsworn at Lost Valley Redoubt and Red Eagle Redoubt; and acquires Red Eagle's sword.
- In Which Harrowhark Investigates the Ruins of Winterhold - 01/28/2023In which Harrowdark explores long-hidden ruins of the parts of Winterhold destroyed in the Great Collapse; and fights and slays the dragon priest Beinaarkh and the dragon Kahvozein.
- In Which Harrowhark Becomes Arch-Mage and is Kidnapped by the Brotherhood - 01/23/2023In which Harrowhark recovers the Staff of Magnus from Labyrinthian; uses it to break Ancano's control of the Eye of Magnus, and saves the College of Winterhold; and receives a very special invitation from the Dark Brotherhood to join their ranks.
- In Which Harrowhark Learns the Location of the Staff of Magnus - 01/19/2023In which Harrowhark quests into Mzulft and learns the location of the Staff of Magnus; returns to the college, only to witness the death of Savos Aren; defends Winterhold from an eruption of magical anomalies; and prepares to go to Labyrinthian to retrieve the Staff.