• Dawnguard,  Merawen Playthrough

    In Which Merawen Returns to the Main Dawnguard Plot

    This session finally saw the last of the Dawnguard side quests I wanted to do, i.e., acquiring the Dawnguard Rune Axe. Which meant I was also finally able to rendezvous with Serana and proceed with the next phase of the main Dawnguard plot: infiltrating Castle Volkihar in an attempt to find Serana’s long-lost mother Valerica.

    And getting into one of my favorite bits of the Dawnguard plotline: the Soul Cairn!

  • Alarrah Playthrough,  Dawnguard

    In Which the Dragonborn Continues to Aid the Dawnguard

    So far i’m finding that the plot for Dawnguard does not lend itself well to pausing and coming back to it later, the way Skyrim’s main plotline does. This may be because Serana is a required follower for a good chunk of this storyline, and if she’s immediately on hand urging you to do the next necessary thing, it does not seem narratively appropriate to blip back to Whiterun to hunt or craft or sell things!

    Which means: I’ve made pretty fast progress through the main quests of this storyline. As of last night it looks like I have only three quests left in the main Dawnguard plot, though there are apparently side quests I could also do? We’ll have to see if the opportunity to do those arises.

    Highlights and details behind the fold!

  • Alarrah Playthrough

    Adventures in Skyrim Up Till Now

    I’ve been posting play by play updates of my adventures in Skyrim, a thing that folks are telling me on both Twitter and Facebook that they enjoy reading. It has, however, occurred to me that it might actually be nice to post that stuff to the blog! Not only for the sake of new actual content, but also for the sake of anybody who actually reads my blog (or the Dreamwidth mirror), and who might be entertained by my Skyrim adventures.

    I’m not going to re-post all the play by plays up to this point, just because redoing them is work I don’t feel like doing. But to bring everybody who doesn’t follow me on social media up to speed, here’s where I am in the game so far. (And while this is primarily a summary of in-game activity, I’m also throwing in periodic in-character commentary, just because this is so immersive a game that it really does feel like my old MUSHing days.)

    Lots of gaming geekery behind the fold!

    Alarrah the Wood-Elf is now level 21, and has established herself as a Thane of Whiterun, with her loyal housecarl Lydia tromping with her all over the countryside killing assorted dragons, bandits, undead, and other beasties; righting assorted wrongs; and just generally collecting a lot of shiny loot while the Skyrim Civil War builds around her.