Hour 4: A Dwemer Dilemma

And so I head to Whiterun for the first time. If there's one thing I don't miss, it's the overly-long winding path that leads to the front gate. But, it's worth it:

Is there a more splendid and welcoming sight in all of gaming?

Travelling first via Honingbrew Meadery, I arrive at night and make my way to Dragonsreach. Ignoring the Jarl for now, I purchase a few spells from Farengar before hesitantly looking through the Phenderix Magic chest in his room (a mod). It contains an ungodly list of spells of every kind imaginable, but I don't want to be greedy and ruin the gameplay experience - I just want something a bit more powerful than my current repertoire. I settle for a few skeletal summons and a ghost warrior summon, and some more powerful fire-based spells. From Farengar I purchase some ward spells as I don't think I've ever used these before.

Feeling more confident now, I fast-travel back to Alftand and invade the exterior ruins with my skeleton horde (I'm level 4 now):

I enter the 'ruined tower' from before and fight my way through a few more Dwemer spider-things, but it turns out to be a fairly small location and I exit at a lower lever. After checking online I learn that I can't enter the dungeon proper until completing a certain quest. Not to be deterred, I decide to try those other ruins I saw from the Nightgate Inn. I trek across to them from the inn and they turn out to be Irkngthand. Another skirmish with bandits camping in the ruins ensues. I do love how they have bedraggled squatters camping out amongst the mighty ruins of the Dwemer - it helps to create a sense of the extreme age of the ruins, and brings to mind peasants taking refuge in the Colosseum in the years after the fall of the Roman Empire.

Before long I discover that Irkngthand too is quest-locked and I can't explore it without doing some Thieves Guild quests. Dejected that my quest for ultimate power is being denied, I cast my eyes further afield. Solstheim! For all the time I've spent in Skyrim previously, I've never completed the Solstheim storyline and have barely spent any time at all on the island - it's practically unknown to me. I don't intend to do the main quests, but it could certainly prove an interesting diversion instead of traipsing around the same old places. I head to the Windhelm docks and seek out a captain willing to take me to Raven Rock: