Hours 55 & 56: Stoneseeker III

Last 4 stones now. The stone in Reeking Cave is a doddle, as is finding the one in the Blue Palace in Solitude. The next one requires me to own Proudspire Manor, and to do that I have to complete a couple of quests for the Jarl's steward. The main one is to clear out Wolfskull. I love this mission, as the final part of the cave system involves battling through a towering subterranean ruin whilst a gigantic summoning ritual is taking place:

As usual, it turns out there's very little that a horde of Dremora Lords can't sort out. After this mission I undertake one more simple one and I'm then allowed to purchase Proudspire Manor, for 25,000 gold. I do this, not bothering to furnish it, and grab the penultimate stone.

The final stone is in Astrid's room in the Dark Brotherhood Sanctuary, and to access this I need to join the Brotherhood. So, I do that (when it comes to killing a prisoner in the abandoned shack, I immolate them all; Tharon-Zul has no time for petty interrogations.

Now that I finally have all the stones, I need to speak to Vex in the Thieves Guild to prompt the quest to search for the crown of Barenziah. Only problem is, she won't speak to me until I'm a fully-fledged member of the Guild, so that takes up some more time doing a few missions for Brynjolf. Ugh.

I completely forgot about this awesome 'Cistern' area of the Thieves Guild HQ. I haven't been here since my last assassin character in 2012.

Once I've completed a few trivial tasks (seriously, for one of them I have to collect about 300 gold of debts for the Guild - whereas even after purchasing Proudspire Manor I'm still walking around with over 40,000 gold... also, is this a Thieves Guild or some kind of mini-Mafia?) I finally get to talk to Vex. She tells me to head for Tolvald's Cave, north of Riften, to search for the lost crown.