Posted by
Paul M May 25, 2014 -
421 views
We go see Alvor on Sundas morning, and he shows me the joys of smithing, while totally blanking Lydia. I figure the Gentleman's Guide to Whiterun must have bought him some grief from the mrs, and that's why he doesn't want to seem too interested in the fairer sex. The extra dagger I make means I can no longer run, so I pop to see Lavern and offload some items. Then I go back to the tavern and mix up the ingredients I have collected so far, which feels productive even though Delphine decides to come over at one point and tell me I don't look so good. Must be the dose of brain rot I picked up. I should maybe give some thought to sorting that one out.
There's only so much fun to be had in Riverwood, and eventually Lydia and I take an uneventful trip back to Whiterun. My vague plan is to progress the nettlebane matter and then find the keep where the Grey-Mane boy is being held. On the way in I find a smithing area, and turn my iron ore into ingots, and then forge some iron armour, which appears to be the best return on my investment. I pop inside and sell my unwanted goods before heading on a sight seeing tour of the city. Mining and smithing is okay, but it doesn't grab me quite like the alchemy does.
I try Arcadia for a cure for brain rot, but aside from telling me I look ill she is no use. She does eventually provide me some ingredients to allow me to crack out some more alchemy. It's only when I'm selling some of my potions to her I see I've made one that cures all diseases. Sure enough as soon as I down the potion I'm right once more. Stepping outside the world has turned again, and it is now 8:30pm. I decide my last task for the day will be to find the nettlebane lady and finish up whatever her previous chatter was about. She's not by her beloved tree though, so I take a trip to the Bannered Mare and have some dinner instead.
It turns out dinner is more interesting than I'd thought it would be. The dinner lady Sadia is the red guard woman I was tasked to find. She has a counter offer to kill the people looking for her. I've always quite enjoyed Sadia's cooking so I decide to throw in with her. I'll sleep on it in any case, and I take my usual room at the tavern.
It's the first of Heartfire when I wake. I eventually find Danica, who was the lady who wanted the nettlebane, in a temple near the mad priest plaza. She says I now need to head east to a grove to collect some plant based commodity. I agree to be her drug mule, and in doing so pick up a lackey called Maurice. On the way out of town I have a look round the halls of the dead, where a priest asks me to go into the Whiterun catacombs to find his lost necklace. I agree to do it, and I mean to, but just not right now.
Lydia, Maurice and I step outside: a mighty Nord warrior, an armoured battle mage, and whatever it is Maurice does. Our first mission together will be to try and find this grove to the east, so I look at the in game map to see if I can figure where we're meant to be heading. I decide having Maurice with us makes setting the task as the active quest feel a little less like cheating, and doing so lets me use my clairvoyance spell so we can set off in what I'm certain is the right direction.
We head east without incident, passing bandit bridge at about 1.15pm. I carry on collecting ingredients as we go, and use my magical abilities now and again to confirm we're on the right track. We descend a hill past a waterfall, and I take a moment to explore some piled rocks at a bend in the river. The water looks lovely, and the view back to the waterfall is very pretty. There is some sort of man-made structure back towards that way, and I decide a little diversion is in order to see what it is about. We have to swim across the river to get there but when we do we find a gold mine called Darkshade. A former gold mine I should say, as the bloodied remains of three Nords outside suggest that the enterprise here has hit a snag. There is a long dead troll skull which I pocket, but also note as an indicator of the likely cause of these peoples' woes. Remembering our last encounter with a troll, Lydia and I decide to press on with the tree sap quest.
The path turns south, and we continue for a while through the crisp Morndas afternoon. The tone of our journey takes a drastic turn though, as something swoops overhead and lands on the path in front of us. A dragon has flown out of the mountains and down to our riverside party of three. I prepare my weapons with some poison and drink some resistance tonics. But then it turns out that we aren't the only prey the dragon is interested in, and he swoops and wheels between us and a bridge further up in the mountains. I cut through the forest to find some cover while I work my way up to the area the dragon is attacking. As I do a feisty Spraggan jumps out and attacks me, taking a considerable amount of punishment before dying.
Catching my breath for a moment I note a large number of dead animals and a dead hunter. I search them all, and find the hunter was like a one woman genocide on bears and sabre cats in this area. She also has a woodcutter axe which I take, feeling a sense of connection with the item that I am named for. I decide the Spraggan has taken too much out of me to chance it with the dragon, and he clearly has other things to be doing with his time anyway. I turn downhill, vaguely following the river, and eventually come to the lost knives hideout. There are bodies on spikes outside a cave, and my clairvoyance tells me this isn't the way we want to go, but on the other hand it is away from the dragon. I also see what looks like a keep on the other side of the river, no doubt used by bandits or something equally murderous. It's a hell of a choice, but I eventually decide we'll go for the keep, vaguely hoping the dragon will be drawn to this spot and that we will be the victors of any three way confrontation.
The place is called Fort Amol, and it seems to be inhabited by dead Stormcloak soldiers and my old friends the novice mages. Heading inside there is an adept fire mage who nearly puts me down, but I manage to dash back outside and use my healing spell to recover. Lydia follows but Maurice is nowhere to be seen. We return to the fight and Lydia takes a beating which allows me to finally finish the mage off. Looking around, I use an enchanting table and reach level 32 in enchanting, and level 11 overall. There is no sign of Maurice, or any bodies of the mages we took down before the adept fire mage showed up, but I have to assume the worst.
Lydia and I take a lap around the walls of the fort and dispatch the remaining novice mages, before we make use of the beds here. Tomorrow I reckon we'll head on towards the glade with the tree sap, and see if we can find Maurice if he still lives. I'm hoping that by then the dragon in our way will have moved on to a new hunting ground, and all we will have to contend with are the corpses of whatever it was attacking today.
