Hours 32 & 33: What's Yours is Mined

I enter what appears to be a frozen ice-castle infested with hostile Rieklings, called Castle Karstaag. In the central courtyard there's a glacial throne with a skeleton on it:

I enter the 'caverns' of the castle itself and wipe out all the resident Rieklings. I believe there's a quest to do with this place, but that will require me to venture further north to the Glacial Cave, and I think I'll save that for another time. I return to Raven Rock, but not before clearing out a bunch of bandits from the Wreck of the Strident Squall, which I've managed to studiously avoid up until now, in which I find a book which one of the residents of Raven Rock asked me to retrieve.

Back in town, Glover Mallory asks me to get his 'Ancient Nord pickaxe' back from the old miner who I helped a few hours earlier. I visit the mine and he gives it up after I insist. I then speak to him some more and he tells me I'm free to mine as much ebony ore as I can carry from the mine! As each ingot will fetch me about 20 gold, I decide to make the most of it and spend quite a while roaming the mine looking for ebony veins. I end up digging up a good bit of ebony which I later sell for about 300 gold. Delving further into the previously-explored and therefore Draugr-free depths of the tomb below the mine, I find deposits of Stahlrim - magical icy stone that's extremely rare and expensive and can only be mined with an Ancient Nord pickaxe (?), so I mine this too, although I later try to sell it but don't seem to be able to.

Glover lets me keep the pickaxe, so I'll be able to mine more if I find it - to what end, I have no idea, but it's more trinkets for my growing collection back at Severin Manor.

I then spend some time roaming around a bit. leveling up my Enchanting and training with Neloth (my coffers are getting very low now). I remember I bought the Summon Lurker spell, so I try it out at Tel Mithryn. I'm able to finally get a good look at one of these gigantic beasts, as the shadowy realm of Apocrypha in which they usually dwell makes it difficult to actually make out any details:

I'm looking forward to pitting one of these against a Giant! Also present is a Flame Atronach, as I purchased a spell which makes them stick around much longer (like my skeletons did) and with their fireball attack they're just a bit handier than pure melee summons like my Dremora Lords. Plus, the Dremora Lords just won't shut up and constantly yell and shout challenges every time there's an enemy nearby, which is funny at first but does start to wear thin after the 10,000th time, especially when you have 10 of them.

Tharon-Zul has spent more than enough time on Solstheim, his adoptive home, for now. I plan to return in the near future to defeat Miraak and complete all the Black Books, but to do this I need to return to the mainland and start the main quest. I head to the dock and pay for passage back to Windhelm (sans my summons - don't want to freak the locals out straight away - but the little Riekling fellow joins me).