Grits, I'm so happy to see the concept of great green noble knights alive and well in Skyrim. The Orsimer of Skyrim definitely got a boost in the looks department compared to their southern ancestors.

How does he get Atronach? Are you putting it in via mods or console, or actually finding the Standing Stone? I wanna make a character who's got this I think, but I can't remember where this stone is in vanilla game.



Lolz you're starting to sound like me!

The Atronach Standing Stone is on the volcanic tundra near Darkwater Crossing. It sits up a little high and there’s a bandit tower sort of to the right as you’re facing it. The vanilla stone gives 50% spell absorption, 50% damage to magicka regeneration, and +50 magicka. I changed it in the Creation Kit to match Oblivion’s Birthsign, but it’s still a fun way to play even with the vanilla magicka regen still working. I played PS3 Jerric for hundreds of hours that way. He still ran out of magicka during the fights, he just always had some to start with. Or it’s an easy change in the Creation Kit when you’re ready to start fooling around with it. Folks here have been so incredibly helpful with such things.


Lol, the whole time I kept thinking about Glargg’s vegetarian orc something gro-Lettuce and your Sir Tanley. That was not helping me think of a name!

Galen, my Dunmer assassin, just did the Civil War quest line on the legion side, so that he could finally get to kill Ulfric. He'd wanted to so that ever since he found out how his people were treated in Windhelm, but Ulfric's only killable if you go that way.

Now he's annoyed that Maven's got the Jarl's job in Riften. Still, she was running most of the action anyway.

Meeko has joined the family at Windstad Manor, and I've noticed that everyone is stuck in a rut, saying "stupid dog" at every opportunity. I hope the kids find another pet to change their dialog a bit. It's bad enough that Brelyna keeps spouting the same line about the "current" quest for the college. She's supposed to be my steward now, not an apprentice mage who's concerned about college matters. Jenassa has a range of spouse lines, so they're not quite as much of a stuck record, and Aranea repeats the same Azura/Twilight stuff in heavy rotation, but at least there are several in her list. I almost wish Brelyna would vary her dialog with "stupid dog" from time to time, or just wait a bit longer before repeating herself.

Of course, none of this would be so irritating if I could get Sephia's hair aligned with her head properly. It's good in the CK, but shifted back a few inches in the game, leaving her with a bald band at the hairline. (That even happens if I load up another character with the mod newly added).

Galen will just have to take it out on another Dark Brotherhood victim!

Today was busy, verging on crazy.

It started with Theudebald and his new pal taking their pilgrimage up the Seven Thousand Steps to see the Greybeards. When they got there, my Breton was trained in the second shout in Unrelenting Force, the ever-entertaining Whirlwind Sprint and was sent off to find the Horn of Jurgen Windcaller from the cave called Ustengrav. Along the way, he and Uthgerd stopped in Whiterun in order to stock up on their dwindling supply of potions, only to have a pair of Dunmer (with hilariously awful Cockney accents) accost them and try and murder them. Whoever dispatched the assassins did so from Solstheim, and Theudebald has made a note to go and investigate there once he's sorted out this whole Dragonborn business.

My goal this session was to grab the Horn and get past that second big dragon fight where Alduin raises up one of his chums from the dead. I did this, but not without getting magnificently sidetracked.

On the way between Whiterun and Ustengrav, there I saw a mountain pass on the map which I decided would be as a good a shortcut as any for Theudebald and Uthgerd to take. What I didn't realise was that this was Labyrinthian, and thanks to the Civil War mod I'd downloaded, this was the site of a battle between a Stormcloak patrol and a small army of skeletons, draugr and corrupted shades. The Stormcloaks were wiped out in minutes, and so Theudebald and Uthgerd had to deal with the undead all on their own, a battle which completely wiped out my potion supply. Immediately after they were dealt with, two Frost Trolls appeared out of one of the small side buildings in Labyrinthian and set upon the pair. Theudebald sprinted for it and managed to avoid the trolls only to be set upon by a Dark Brotherhood assassin.

By this point, I was completely wiped out on health and stamina potions, but luckily Morthal was nearby so I decided to stop off and pay a visit there. I grabbed what ones I could (not many) and while I was there got involved in investigating a house fire which had killed a young girl and her mother. That in turn got into investigating a vampire plot to take the place over (the quest was briefly interrupted by a dragon attack at one point) and finally the killing of Morvarth, the master vampire, in his lair. Once again, I was completely cleaned out of potions.

So I went hopping around Whiterun, Riverwood and finally back to Morthal as I restocked on potions again. Along the way I made a Superior Dwarven Warhammer with an Absorb Health enchantment, a good step up on my former weapon, a Steel Warhammer with a rather useless Frost Damage enchantment, and finally got around to hitting Ustengrav. Ironically enough, Ustengrav was pretty easy, and so packed with potions that I ended up coming out with more than I went in with.

Still, at this point the Horn of Jurgen Windcaller was still not in Theudebald's hands thanks to Delphine taking it, so off he goes to Riverwood to meet with her. He gets the horn, agrees to help stop the dragon being raised in Kynesgrove and off they trot. One dead dragon later, Delphine admits Theudebald is truly the Dragonborn.

In the spirit of further Dragonbornyness, Theudebald heads over to High Hrothgar to return the horn and learns the last word of Unrelenting Force. That done, he finally hits up Windhelm to grab some more supplies and do a bit of smithing at the forge there and gets the White Phial from the Forsaken Cave for the guy who runs the Alchemist's there, and thanks to a glitch gets rewarded twice for the quest for a total of 1000 gold. Hurrah!

So next session it's going to be hitting the Thalmor Embassy with Delphine. Fun quest, if I remember correctly, and I'm looking forward to it.

Congrats to Galen. My Stormcloak war hero would like to kill Ulfric now, too, but she made the wrong choice for that a long time ago.

Mustard, what an adventure with Theudebald! I love it when things go off in unexpected directions.

Jensa (on the PS3) has defeated Alduin and returned to Solstheim to deal with this Miraak fetcher. Her experience in Sovngarde can only be addressed in a future short (lol) fanfic. She saw some familiar faces there that are not present in the game.

She is now approaching the Skaal village bearing hope in the form of a very bad deal with a Daedra. As ever Stenvar has her back. These are dark days for his sweet lass from the high passes. He’s watched her find her way through war, lycanthropy, marriage, and a trip to the land of the dead. The coming storm is also at least partially of her making, but this may be the one that she can’t weather.

I hope to get a Skyrim disc to replace my broken one for Crizzy, so I've been obsessively planning Khan's holiday festivites.

Jensa challenged Miraak on the Summit of Apocrypha. Here’s a page from her journal, written rather unusually by Stenvar.

She returned in the small hours after the moons had set. None of the Skaal kept watch with me. Too full of their grief to bother with an old man’s hope, I suppose. It was out of their hands and so out of their minds. I have no blame for them.

Starlight on the snow made it easy to read her. There was no madness in her eyes, but no lightness either. Just a hollow look like she didn’t really see me. “It’s done,” was all she said.

I took her to Thirsk. Thought the fires and the noise and all of their stink might reach her, but she lay like a stone in my arms for a day and another night. Not sleeping. Not speaking. She’d healed her wounds before she came back. I could see the scars like burns on her already fading.

Then the morning light came in and she turned and ran her nails through my beard in that way she has that makes me stand up like a Dwarven centurion. Only after all of that time in the bed I needed to take the longest piss of my life. Given what she’d just been through, I didn’t see fit to mention my troubles of the moment.

“We need to go back to Skyrim,” she told me. “Remember that giant who called himself the Ebony Warrior? I’m going to find his Last Vigil, and one of us is going to give the other peace.”

“All right,” I said, because this is a woman that you should just agree with.

“If I forget, will you make sure Bera’s necklace gets delivered to Runil? In Falkreath?”

Well I didn’t know what the hells she was talking about, but I gave her a nod anyway.

Then she got up and found a piss pot which thank the gods is not difficult in a mead hall, and we went back to bed. Now old Hermaeus Mora has the secret knowledge of how many hairs are on this Nords backside, if he’s still watching. I hope he went half blind counting.

After we determined that she hadn’t killed me this time which is always a surprise, I took her face in my hands and told her, “Now and forever, kid. That’s what we both said.” I figured a reminder wouldn’t hurt since she keeps going where I can’t follow.

“I know, Stenvar. That was the last time.”

And that’s when I got my peace. If this Ebony fetcher is the end of her, he’ll be the end of me too.

But first I’d better write a note to put with that damned necklace. Or maybe give it to a courier just in case. That’s something I’d rather not have to hear about in Sovngarde.

Hooray, Miraak is defeated and Jensa lives! Who's this Ebony Warrior type, though? Never heard of him before.

Anyway, another eventful (read: chaotic) day in Skyrim for Theudebald.

Started off with him infiltrating the Thalmor Embassy on behalf of the Blades, in order to see if they had any intelligence on the dragons coming back. For those of you haven't played this mission, it involved you donning a Cunning Disguise and posing as a guest at the party; as you can't come to the party heavily armed, you leave any equipment you want for your mission with a Blades agent who returns it to you in the embassy. You only get one chance to stash your equipment, so Theudebald stashed his armor, amulets and rings and his bow, and I forgot to hand over the hammer that he's so damn good at fighting with.

So the entire mission was done using either the bow and arrow or a hastily stolen Steel Sword and Banded Iron Shield (and Theudebald's One-Handed skill is not good at all). It was a rather cack-handed infiltration, all things considered. But it was completed successfully, with Theudebald learning that the Thalmor were just as in the dark on why the dragons were back as he was, and that they were gunning for a Blades agent by the name of Esbern.

Once he had reported in to Delphine, Theudebauld was intercepted by a courier informing him that Jarl Sidgeir of Falkreath had a plot of land for sale; one dead bandit chief and 5000 Septims later, and Theudebald had his very own plot of land! So far, his house is one room with a table and bed, but there will be more editions in future.

DIY done, Theudebald headed off to Riften to go pick up Esbern. Just as he got into town, he was invited by an old man to check out a cave, and placed that on his to-do list. After doing a few favours for Beirund and the Thieves Guild, and picking up Marcurio (Uthgerd, unstoppable juggernaut of awesomeness that she is, had to be dismissed for the infiltration mission and Theudebald hadn't picked her back up yet, and going on the stuff Renee's posted, Marcurio's a good follower to have) Theudebald found Esbern and was informed that Alduin the World Eater was returned; egad!

Again, there was a brief soiree with Delphine, and he agreed to meet her and Esbern at what may be the site of Alduin's Wall, a record of history and prophecy that may hold the key to defeating Alduin. However, before he did htat, Theudebald decided to take Marcurio down to the cave the old man in Riften had mentioned; there he discovered bandits in a mine that lead to Dwemer ruins, and in the Dwemer ruins a mysterious cube which opened a mysterious portal. Through the portal he went, and he emerged into...

Falskaar, a huge area I'd downloaded in a mod!

I actually had no idea that this dungeon lead to the mod world (the old man I spoke to was so well voice-acted I'd assumed he was part of the game I just hadn't run across before) and right now I'm stuck on this side of the portal and have no way back, for now. Interesting times are ahead, certainly.



Also, I discovered that all my old Skyrim saves have synced up to my new machine via Steam, and that means I still have the saved games from my completely insane Dark Elf mage, so you may well get an update from her in the future. Watch this space. Or maybe avoid it.

Probably a good idea to avoid it.

Oh neat, getting to Falskaar was a surprise! That’s hard to do.

The Ebony Warrior will find you once you hit level 80 or so. Jensa is at level 81. I’ve been playing her for two years and I’d say close to 400 hours now. My first post about her was on Dec. 7, 2011! That game is on the PS3, whose fate in our household is uncertain. I’m wrapping up some things with my PS3 characters while I still have the chance.

Like riding dragons. Jensa has Shouted down two of them so far, and I think we’re missing something. They seem to fly around in circles regardless of which way you try to point them. Anyone know how to do this?

Of course she also has a new game on my laptop. Jensa is in the future of Jerric’s world.

Congrats on Jensa smiting Miraak. Hopefully she does as well against the Ebony Dude. I have never seen him, and I am sure never well. By the time my characters get to 40th level or so they are so powerful that playing them is no challenge any more, and I get bored.

Glad to hear that Jensa migrated to the laptop! Does that mean she is going to have Jerric and company tagging along behind her everywhere she goes?

This post has been edited by SubRosa: Dec 22 2013, 11:52 PM

That would be quite a scene! No, I put most of my Grits NPCs out of the way to avoid running into them with the wrong characters since I keep the same mods loaded in all of my games. Most of Jerric’s crew is long dead by Jensa’s time. She already met Jerric face-to-face, but not in Skyrim.

I’ve turned up the difficulty and gone back to mundane weapons and armor for PS3 Jensa. No more summonings, either. Thankfully I prefer the early-game gear, so returning to fur, hide, and steel after hours of stalhrim and ebony was a joy. Also she has a LOT of unused perks and a vast well of stamina that makes her a delight on open ground. Sprinting power attacks! Fun! She is a real barbarian. Plus, no potions in combat, and she only gets off the first shot with poison. Even in the vanilla game I’ve found a sweet spot. But yeah, frost trolls do not get to touch her. She’s pretty much a dragon hunter now.



ADDED:

So it turns out that Jensa was riding boring dragons. She just rode an ancient dragon over the Northwind cliffs as the sun was coming up, and it was beautiful. (She does need a little more practice picking targets for them to fight. They accidentally locked on to Stenvar and had to execute an abrupt landing. He did not look amused.)

“Hail thuri. Shall we fly together?”

OH HELL YES!!


This post has been edited by Grits: Dec 23 2013, 02:06 AM

Gritsy: That's cool how Stenvar writes about what your character is up to! So inspiring!



Oh wow, CM, is that vanilla or a modded quest?

It's a vanilla part of the Main Quest, and I'd probably say it's the most memorable one after Blackreach.

Sweet! So my Thalmor character will be able to make it into the Thalmor embassy, somehow. Possibly. Actually, hmm. You say your quest involves the Blades, so I'm not sure how that'll work, but I wasn't sure if the embassy was able to be entered. At least the embassy isn't just for show, is what I mean to say.

If you're not doing the main quest, then I don't think you can go into the embassy; the only way you can get in, as far as I can tell, is in that one quest.

If you are on the PC, you can get into the Thalmor embassy just by using the command console. All you have to do is open the console, click on the front door, and type in unlock. Viola!

You might want to do some extra things like add your character to the Thalmor Faction. That is simple enough to do with the console as well. Just open it, and type in player addfac 39f26 0

Ahh, Master Baytor is on Xbox. So the Colonel's advice stands because MB is doing the MQ.

I'll have some future Skyrim characters on PC though, no doubt.

From Abiene’s Skyrim Journal

24 Evening Star, Lakeview Manor, nine bells of the morning watch (one imagines)

The morning post came after breakfast. We had scattered to complete what I supposed was each person’s final tasks before setting off for Whiterun. I was in the upper chambers adjusting my pack when the courier found me.

He is a local lad called “Jaako the Post.” I expect it is because he carries the mail, but he is not overly bright so the moniker may hold a dual meaning. It is not the custom in Skyrim to wander through a household when delivering mail any more than it is in the more settled parts of the Empire. Hand-to-hand service is unique to our Jaako.

Among the bills (reserved for Darnand), advertisements (consigned to the fire), and seasonal greetings (tucked into my pack to share when we had gathered again), I found a mead-stained, rumpled, and coarsely-lettered missive for Jerric.

Of course I was curious. But I brought it to him unopened anyway.

He was in the kitchen armed and armored and occupied with some sort of cookery.

“Read it to me,” he said, sliding something into the oven.

I did not protest.

“ ‘Old man,’ ” I read aloud, “ ‘Come get me at The Frozen Hearth. Bring gold. Don’t tell Abiene about, you know.’ ”

Jerric’s eyebrows attempted to escape his face. “I have no idea what she means,” he lied.

If I had remained silent no doubt a series of confessions would have emerged, but it is the Eve of Saturalia and I was feeling magnanimous. Also somewhat pushed for time.

“It’s from Valdi,” I told him.

“Yeah, I guessed.” He leaned on the oven peel and scratched his beard. “I took care of those skeevers in the basement,” he added.

At this I noted his attire and weapons. A concern began to form in my mind about the contents of his baked goods. But I was not distracted.

“We decided to celebrate Saturalia at Breezehome,” I reminded him. “I took a shift at the Temple of Kynareth tonight. So that the priestesses can be home with their children. We talked about this! We’re leaving within the hour.”

Jerric examined the ceiling and then the floor. “Uh, yeah, I know. I’m, uh, packed.” He checked the sword on his hip and hooked a thumb at his back, indicating the oversized blade there. “I didn’t forget,” he lied again.

Honestly, why does he bother? “Good,” I told him, slapping the note against his chestplate. “I’m nearly ready to go. I suppose we’ll go straight to Winterhold after Whiterun. On the way you can tell me what she’s gotten herself into this time. Have you seen..?”

Lildereth chose that moment to appear in the greenhouse doorway, cloaked and armed for the road. Darnand cleared his throat in the main hall.

Jerric looked far too pleased with himself. “We’re all ready,” he grinned. I could hear Ulfe scratch to go out.

It would have been uncharitable to point out that he had just started cooking. Besides, then we might have had to eat it. I changed into my walking clothes, and we headed out the door.

Our Saturalia to New Life Festival adventure has begun! This all takes place in Abiene’s game, and I plan to present the events as her journal entries. We’ll see what happens as we go. Things like the courier coming into the house, the dog knocking something over in the front hall, Jerric mysteriously equipping two blades at the same time (you can see in the picture) and the actual presence of all of the characters really did happen, for those who wonder about such things. Of course I totally made up the letter. But Valdi really is waiting at The Frozen Hearth.

Ooh, Grits! Abiene's personality really shines through in every paragraph! Off for their Saturadventure!