Ysani Demers Playthrough

Ysani Demers
Playthrough Info
Game Skyrim Special Edition
Race Breton
Playthrough Dates January to May 2022
Platform Nintendo Switch
Language French
Difficulty Expert

This is the page for my fourth Skyrim playthrough, for the character Ysani Demers, Breton mage.

I began this playthrough immediately concluding the one for Delga, on 1/25/2022, with the following goals:

  1. Play the game in French to practice my skill with that language and also just to see what the translated experience is like!
  2. Revisit the Thieves Guild because I had huge fun with that as Merawen
  3. Even more emphasis on magic this time through
  4. And back to sneaking and archery!

In terms of character concept, Ysani is the diametric opposite of Delga. She’s a slender little wisp of a thing, ideally suited for sneakiness. And as a Breton, she packed an excellent amount of magical firepower right out of the gate, which I have taken heavy advantage of throughout her run.

Ysani’s first name comes from the soulname of my character Wayfound, played during my years on the Elfquest themed MUSH Two Moons. Her last name comes from Olivier Demers, one of the two fiddle players in my favorite band, Le Vent du Nord–who are Quebecois! I figured that since Bretons are heavily French-like in Skyrim, a French surname would be very appropriate for her.

Ysani’s Backstory

Out of all my playthroughs to date, Ysani arguably has the most traumatic backstory of the lot–and that’s saying something, given Merawen’s backstory!

Ysani’s backstory starts when she is targeted by the Thalmor in High Rock–because her father, a secret Thalmor agent, decides to have her taken into custody in order to blackmail her mother into going along with Thalmor demands. Already a budding mage, Ysani eludes capture and hurries home, only to discover her parents in pitched battle with one another. As additional Thalmor soldiers close in their home, she sees her mother screaming for her to flee, just as she kills her husband.

The last Ysani sees of her mother, she’s falling in a hail of lightning from additional mages showing up on the scene.

Ysani runs like hell and finally reaches Skyrim, only to be captured by the Imperials. And cue the start of the game.

I suspect her family also had a copy of Nightingales: Fact or Fiction? in the house, which leads Ysani to choose Skyrim as her destination–in a desperate bid to find out whether the Nightingales are real, and whether she can gain the skills necessary to fight against the Thalmor by joining the Thieves Guild and pledging herself to Nocturnal.

Playthrough Posts

Here are all the posts about Ysani’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 Ysani Helps Repair the White Phial and Rescues Florentius - 03/27/2022
    In which Ysani helps repair the White Phial, though not in time to prevent Nurelion's death; in which she retrieves another schematic; and in which she saves Florentius from the doomed Ruunvald Excavation.
  • In Which Ysani Escapes Alftand With the Dragon Scroll - 03/26/2022
    In which Ysani and Serana venture down through Alftand, and make it to Blackreach; find the Elder Scroll they seek at Mzark; and return to Fort Dawnguard only to discover Dexion Evicus has gone blind.
  • In Which Ysani Searches for the Dragon Scroll - 03/25/2022
    In which Ysani battles a Revered Dragon at the College of Winterhold; in which she finds the mad mage Septimus Signus, and learns from him where to find another Elder Scroll; and in which she and Serana venture into Alftand.
  • In Which Ysani Escapes the Soul Cairn - 03/24/2022
    In which Ysani quests through the Soul Cairn; slays the Keepers and the dragon Durnehviir; assists the ghost of Jiub in finding the lost pages of his book; and finds Serana's mother Valerica, from whom she retrieves an Elder Scroll.
  • In Which Ysani Quests into the Soul Cairn - 03/22/2022
    In which Ysani accompanies the vampire Serana into the long-abandoned ruined back corridors of Castle Volkihar--and finds a portal into the Soul Cairn in the laboratory created by Serana's mother Valerica.

Screenshots

Ysani’s screenshot galleries can be found on the Ysani Demers Screenshots page.