In my last Skyrim post, Iselia had claimed the Dawnbreaker - a powerful Daedric weapon - and had become Meridia's champion! Then she had been informed that the cultist ritual she had disrupted a few days ago had actually been partially successful.
Now she had to go into the old catacombs beneath the city and find the remains of the Wolf Queen so her spirit couldn't reclaim her bones.
At first Iselia had been quite interested about this turn of events - she needed to go into ancient catacombs beneath the city! Surely there'd be plenty of loot down there.
But alas, it was like no other tomb she had been in. It held the living dead, vampires, and more living dead... but there were no burial urns. No riches.
When the draugr weren't attacking her, the vampires did instead.
Iselia was grateful to have Cure Disease potions in her satchel... but thankfully didn't need them. None of the vampires infected her with their sanguine disease.
Even when she fought her way to the main chamber where the Wolf Queen's remains sat upon a great throne, there were no urns or treasures about. She fought more undead and then the spirit herself! Dawnbreaker cleaved through them all with ease!
But while Iselia was impressed with Dawnbreaker's abilities, she was disappointed with this lacklustre tomb and its negligible riches.
Even the spirit herself didn't drop anything worth mentioning.
Grabbing the bones, she returned to the Hall of the Dead and dumped them in front of the priest.
Then stalked off back to the Blue Palace to tell Falk that the deed was done.
In thanks, he named her Protector of Solitude and gave her 1000 gold! Finally. A worthy amount for a quest undertaken. Too bad she had found no riches in the tomb, but, she supposed, she still had a huge amount to vendor and only so many merchants to sell to.
While she was downhearted by the lack of loot in those catacombs, she remembered that there were hundreds of burial chambers all around Skyrim and surely most of those would have treasure.
She'd heard that the city of Whiterun had some burial tombs around it, so chose that as her next destination. Plus, there would be more merchants to vendor to!
Taking a horse and carriage to the gates of Whiterun, she arrived in the middle of the night, cold and tired, and hastened to the tavern to get a good night's rest before setting out once more.
Just to the south of Whiterun was a little village called Riverwood. It looked peaceful. Tranquil. An ideal place to live.
Apparently theft was rampant though.
Iselia visited the local merchant to unload some more of her gems and jewelry, only to walk in on the shopkeep and his sister arguing over some stolen golden statue of a claw.
Apparently the thieves ran in the direction of a nearby tomb...
Iselia's ears perked up. Sure! She would help retrieve this artifact from the thieves. And loot everything in the tomb too.
Making sure she had all supplies necessary for a tomb trawl, Iselia raced up the mountain to where the tomb stood ominously in the snow.
Bandits were situated all around the outskirts. Obviously they had been the thieves. One of them might have this golden statue she could return to the shopkeep, and then she could focus on looting all the burial urns inside.
She fought valiantly! None of these bandits had anything golden on them and she chopped off one's head in a rage.
Though her rage lessened after entering the tomb and discovering more burial urns filled with all the treasures she would expect.
It appeared that she would not be experiencing another disappointment like in the old Solitude catacombs. Here, at least, there was reward for her efforts!
Even if she didn't find a golden claw statue, at least this wouldn't be a waste of time.
There were many more bandits and still no golden claw, though, before she killed a couple, she overheard them talking about how another of their group had run off with it deeper into the tomb. How they needed to find him before he took all of the treasure for himself.
They didn't need to worry about that - Iselia would be taking all of the treasure!
She took care of the bandits and continued through the crypt, wrinkling her nose as spider web soon encased all before her.
Iselia stayed alert, expecting to be set upon by spiders at any moment.
It wasn't long before a giant beast fell from the ceiling and attacked. Thankfully it was already quite wounded, so she took it down with ease and then siphoned some of its venom for her own use... all the while a voice called out for her to help him.
Cocooned in some spider web, ready for a spider's feast, was a dark elf bandit. He had been the one to take the golden claw, he was the one seeking to take all the treasure for himself.
Iselia promised to cut him down out of the web... and then killed him too. She wasn't trusting a bandit, and besides, she wanted all the treasure!
She wrangled the golden claw from his corpse, pleased to have fulfilled her promise to Riverwood's shopkeep, and continued on through the tomb.
There was more loot to take and treasure to discover!
Until next time! 😊⚔️❄️