Hour 18: Enter Labyrinthian

I've decided that, after all the anticipation, I don't particularly like Dwemer ruins. They're annoyingly dark, requiring constant Candlelight use, full of traps, the automatons hide and jump out at you, and worst of all they're infested with wretched, hideous Falmer. The Falmer are pathetic degenerations of a once-proud Elven race, too feeble to resist the twisted predilections of the Dwemer, whilst the Dwemer themselves were yet another branch of Elves who were not strong enough to survive the repercussions of whatever foolish experiments they undertook. Curse them, curse them all, but most of all curse that wretch Paratus from the Synod. If I ever catch sight of anyone else from the Synod they shall be immolated immediately.

Upon returning to the College with information gleaned from Paratus, I find the arrogant Thalmar mage Ancano unleashing some kind of magical maelstrom, which kills the Archmage (!) and unleashes strange magical beasts upon the nearby town of Winterhold. After easily defeating them, Mirabelle tells me to go to Labyrinthian to search for the Staff of Magnus. Finally! Why do you think I came all this way...

I head back there and am finally able to enter this time, thanks to a special amulet bestowed by the Archmage before he died. Inside is a sprawling Ancient Nord dungeon of impressive length. Most of the areas were laid out completely differently to other Draugr dungeons I've visited, and most of the enemies were new too. I even had to fight a skeletal dragon near the entrance...!

Along the way I stumbled across this awesome 'Official Skyrim' chamber. I was able to loot both the helmet and the sword on which it hung.

I got the sense that there were some other areas I could have explored had I so chosen, but I made my way by the most straightforward path, through to the end of the many-layered dungeon, where I found a Dragon-Priest called Morokei, being contained by some kind of barrier by two ghostly wizards.

This last part is the only part of the quest I found underwhelming. Having been tainted by Morokei's ghostly voice at various points throughout the previous dungeon, he had no dialogue or cut-scene for me at the end. Likewise, there seemed to be no option of engaging the presumably well-intentioned wizards in conversation - I had to kill them in order free Morokei, so that I could kill him and steal the Staff of Magnus from him. It was all a bit confusing and seemed to lack logic. Moreover, the actual fight against Morokei was over extremely quickly as for some reason he was very weak against my skeleton horde, who quickly cornered him and beat him to death without much difficulty. Odd, because there were high-level Draugr earlier in the dungeon against whom they seemed to struggle more. 

As I leave the dungeon, a Thalmar agent, seemingly in league with Ancano, approaches me and asks for the staff. When I refuse, he laughs that I "don't stand a chance". No sooner have the words left his lips than seven of my skeleton thugs rush in and brutally beat him to death where he stands. The fool.

Afterwards, I get this awesome view across the exterior ruins of the Labyrinthian. It might be one of my favourite views in the whole game:

There are more secrets within the Labyrinthian waiting to be explored, but for now I shall return to the College to continue with the quest storyline.