Characters
Soren Lantern-Heart - Nord Sorcerer (Master Wizard)
- The reclusive guildmaster of the Markarth chapter is one of the most individually powerful mages in western Skyrim, but has little interest in politics, other guild chapters, or even the activities of his own members. Soren rarely leaves his underground chambers in the guildhall, and prefers to concern himself with his own affairs.
- The experienced leader of the vaunted Mages Guild expeditionary team and deputy of the Markarth chapter.
- Other members of the Mages Guild expeditionary team. Tough and competent.
- Steward of the MK guildhall, and the questgiver for the earlier part of the questline. Runs the day-to-day at the hall.
Denegal - Wood Elf Battlemage (Apprentice) and Cassia Vitilia - Imperial Alchemist (Journeyman)
- Younger guild members. Cassia provides modest Alchemy services.
The Guild in Markarth Side is the oldest in the Reach, and the only Nord-built guildhall in the kingdom (the guildhalls at Karthwasten and Dragonstar were built originally by the Hammerfell Mages Guild, and the Dragonstar chapter is still operated by them). Though the Markarth Side and Karthwasten guildhalls report in theory to Arch-Mage Hesta at Haafingar, they are generally granted a high degree of autonomy while Hesta pursues other agendas. The Markarth Side chapter is best known as the headquarters of the Skyrim Mages Guild's crack expeditionary squad, led by the chapter deputy Cyslandra. The expeditionary team has members throughout the province, and routinely organizes high-profile sojourns into highly dangerous ruins and remote location, often joined by members of the Fighters Guild and the Imperial Archaeological Society.
Recently, a much-heralded expedition into a colossal ruin in Falkheim (Helsgard Deep) went badly awry. A cave-in stranded several members of the expeditionary team, and they are presumed dead. While Cyslandra and most of the Mages Guild cohort survived, two of the victims were members of the Fighters Guild, which has strained relations with the Guild's sister organization next door. (Quest content to investigate the Helsgard Deep disaster will be appended to this questline as high-level content when the Falkheim release enters quest development.)
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Markarth Side release content - main questline
Quest I - The Lady and the Lake
- Emmandic has received a contract from a woman named Haeli who lives in Markarth Side. Haeli has evidently lost a prized enchanted ring while strolling out on the docks, and would like the Guild to come find it for her. The player can find the ring in the harbor using Detect Enhantment and return it to Haeli, who seems a bit disappointed that Emmandic did not come himself.
- The player is next asked by Emmandic to visit the Lugrash tribe of Orcs. The Lugrash are a nomadic and mostly peaceable folk, and they have somewhat unusually reached out to the Mages Guild for assistance. Emmandic hopes that good relations with the Lugrash might prove valuable for future Guild interests, so the player is encouraged to solve their problems however possible. Upon arrival, the player is asked for a number of potions of cure disease in order to eradicate a sickness that's spread throughout the tribe. The player can simply fulfill the Lugrash's request and return home, or stick around to investigate and root out the cause (an aggrieved witch living in a nearby cave).
- Things have been going missing from the catacombs beneath (outside?) the city, and tombs have been disturbed. The tomb is actively used by the residents of Markarth Side, so these thefts have been noticed. In response, someone seems to have placed an curse on the tomb, causing everyone who enters to emerge feeling ill. The cityfolk are no closer to finding the thief, but now are more concerned with removing the nasty enchantment on their ancestors' burial place. The player, upon entering, is immediately stricken with Brown Rot. The player can find evidence within the tomb of an amateurish attempt to create a bonewalker - a strangely out-of-place sight here in Skyrim. Investigating further will lead the player to the local Dark Elf hostel of Vadas Marvani, where a newly-arrived Dunmer named Trayna Resvalyn admits to summoning the bonewalker, but strenuously denies being the thief. Trayna claims she saw a Nord woman - Haeli - repeatedly exiting the tomb with trinkets. Trayna (hoping to impress her Nord neighbors by protecting their tomb from the bandit) placed the curse to ward off further thievery. She thanks the player for removing her overzealous curse and asks them not to reveal her part in the scheme. Confronting Haeli requires a speech check, but she will eventually admit to having stolen enchanted items from the tomb in order to "lose" them again (as in quest I) in order to get Emmandic's attention. The player can either turn her in to the guards, pin the crime on Trayna, or claim to have killed the thief outside town. Either way, Emmandic is a bit embarrassed by the whole situation.
- The player is directed to Cyslandra for this quest. Cyslandra asks the player to head to Beorinhal to speak with Eran Fog-Breath, a Clever-Man who resides in Beorinhal. Cyslandra asks the player to deliver a sealed scroll to the Clever-Man, and to bring her the mage's reply. Upon arrival, it quickly becomes clear that there is something of a cultural gulf between Cyslandra and the Nords whose ruins she studies; the Clever-Man refuses to read the scroll, insisting that "true things can only be shared by a tongue". The player is forced to open the sealed scroll and read it aloud or return shamefaced to Cyslandra. If opened, the scroll contains several questions about the nature of the Underworld, as well as Nord beliefs on death. Cyslandra is particularly open-minded for a High Elf, but she will still express some cynicism when the player relays the Clever-Man's cryptic, vague answers to her straightforward questions.
- The Mages Guild's recent failure at Helsgard Deep has put its other expeditionary projects at risk. The player is asked to speak with the kingdom's Imperial Magistrate at the Commission next door for more details. The Magistrate informs the player that Jarl Horir has retracted his approval for the Guild to investigate the tomb of Queen Liode, an ancient Reachman queen buried just west of the Granite Hall. The Magistrate says that while the Empire could in theory intervene on the Guild's behalf, the Proconsul does not view the excavation as an important enough project to risk upsetting the fragile politics keeping Horir docile. Emmandic recommends that the player again speak with Cyslandra, who is incensed. She urges the player to make an "independent" sweep through the tomb, and to search for a grand artifact that can restore the reputation of the expeditionary squad. The tomb should be full of traps and difficult enemies, but ultimately the player should be able to find an ornate crown belonging to the ancient queen of Fodhla. The player can either bring the artifact to Jarl Horir as a gift, which will net the Guild a hefty reward and mend the relationship, or bring it back to be displayed at the Mages Guild (in the future, the Karthwasten IAS museum), in which case the Jarl will be incensed.
- Relations with the Fighters Guild have been strained since the Helsgard Deep expedition went missing. Emmandic wants to fix that by aiding the FG with a difficult contract, free of charge. The Fighters Guild has run into some kind of magical barrier while clearing a band of highwaymen from the Direnni ruin Amrothal - they were able to clear the upper levels of the ruin (this should be a FG quest), but can't penetrate past some kind of magical barrier in the depths, nor do they have the means to navigate the huge vertical mineshaft. Emmandic charges the player with delivering some potions of levitation to the FG. The Fighters ask for help opening the magical barrier, which seems to be impervious to magical or physical attack. Emmandic recommends speaking with Calcelmo, a High Elf Alchemist who serves as the court wizard for King Barda. Calcelmo, an expert on the Direnni and their magic, informs the player that he believes Amrothal to have once been a Direnni attempt to physically drill into the Nordic Underworld. He suggests that the barrier likely requires a certain potion to be consumed before passing through it. He will provide the player with this potion if the player brings him some alchemical ingredients. Drinking the potion indeed allows the player to pass the barrier, revealing (after a bit more exploration in lower Amrothal) a caved-in passageway. A bit of digging about will reveal the body of Narin Sunken-Grove, a member of the Helsgard Deep expedition from the Fighters Guild. The Fighter's Guild rewards the player (via Emmandic) for discovering Narin's body.
Quest VII - The Doorstep of Death
- Emmandic now wants you to head to Helsgard Deep and attempt to find some trace of Cyslandra, who has ventured back into the ruin in search of her party. Helsgard Deep is an enormous dungeon crawl, with many treasures to find and enemies to fight, but a thorough player will indeed find the remnants of a campsite deep in the complex. No trace of Cyslandra can be found, but one passageway leads to a great stone wall with runes carved upon it. Blood is on the floor, along with an ornate knife, and the player recovers a journal penned by Grisdir, which describes being attacked by eyeless globs of magical flesh, which dragged several of his comrades through a breach in the carved wall. Attempting to step through this breach results in a messagebox and a strong force pushing the player back. Back in Markarth, Emmandic accepts the journal, gives a reward, and asks the player to speak with Soren.
- Soren explains that the wall is the legendary Fence of the Fallen, a ritual barrier between the worlds of life and death. He asks the player to again speak with a Clever-Man (Narin Sunken-Grove or any other Clever-Man will do), who explains that crossing the Fence requires one to have been slain in battle - only the soul of one who has sustained mortal injury may pass the wall. While Soren has no idea what could have dragged the members of the expedition through the breach, he suspected that they are likely dead, or the magic would not have let them cross. But Cyslandra's letter (from Quest III) shared her solution: to cross the Fence, one must die - but only temporarily. Cyslandra discovered that a mortal wound from the ritual knife would be healed once the subject passed the barrier, so she cut her own head off, walked through, and re-attached it. The cave leading to Amrothal was found further down, so Cyslandra sent Narin back in the hopes of finding a way out. The player returns to the Fence of the Fallen, and in a scripted sequence, cuts off their own head. Following a succession of pop-up-boxes, the player fumbles their way through the breach in the Fence before recapitating themselves. Beyond the barrier lies an extensive cave system lined by strangely pulsing biological growths, which launch magical attacks at the player until destroyed. An immense, ancient stone door blocks the path forward, but in an adjacent antechamber, the player finds a ragged-looking Cyslandra and Tarug gro-Dular.
- Cyslandra, grievously wounded but alive, breathlessly informs the player that the expedition members were abducted one by one by the monstrous offspring of some ancient Direnni experiment, an alchemical creature the elves had bred specifically for the purposes of bypassing the Fence of the Fallen. She and Tarug attempted to follow and rescue them, but the other expedition members were already all dead. Cyslandra mentions that before she trapped the creature in the main cavern, she saw several more of the half-biological "nodes" grown into the walls. She believes that the monster, having grown powerful for millennia by caching magical power from the threshold of the Underworld, can be weakened and killed by destroying these nodes. The player must enter the final chamber of Helsgard Deep - the Chasm, a narrow bridge above a bottomless abyss, and fend off the creature's alchemical blasts while using levitation or ranged attacks to reach the nodes. When all the nodes have been destroyed, the alchemical leviathan (implemented as an activator, most likely) will finally die, opening the passage to the Underworld. Returning to the Guildhall, Soren asks the player to keep the discovery a secret. Alternatively, the player can return to King Barda's court and inform Calcelmo.