Skyrim 100% Maximized Legendary Playthrough - 283. Speaking with Silence

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40/30 Gaming

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Published on June 26, 2023 2:02:05 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfDlfbbhSUU

Game:

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (2011)

Category:

Let's Play

Duration: 1:17:36

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We start today off by heading back to the Thieves Guild to tell Mercer what we found out from Gullum-Ei. He tells us who Karliah is - a former high-ranking thief in the Guild who supposedly murdered the previous Guildmaster. Mercer claims after taking over the Guild's leadership he spent years trying to track her down, but she vanished. Now he says she's coming after him, because he's the only person who knows her well enough to take her down. From the other clue Gullum-Ei told us, he also divines that she's waiting for him at Snow Veil Sanctum, the place where she murdered Gallus, so that's where we're off to to hunt her down.

Sadly, this is the point in the Thieves Guild questline where the writing really falls off a cliff. Fortunately, as long as you turn your brain off and don't think about it, the quests themselves are quite fun, making for one of the better questlines in the game. But let's take a moment to talk about things stop making sense here.

So the premise so far is that the Guild has some sort of shadowy enemy that is trying to take them down. They start by purchasing Goldenglow Estate and funding rival startup meadery Honningbrew in order to hurt Maven Black-Briar's own meadery business and drive a wedge between her and the Guild. That all checks out and makes sense. But now that we learn who the enemy is and hear Mercer's explanation of it all, nothing really does anymore.

First, Mercer's explanation of why she's coming after the Guild doesn't make sense. He says that Karliah is coming after him so she can disappear for good, as he is the only person who knows her well enough to track her down. But it certainly appears that Karliah already successfully disappeared. Mercer claims he spent a lot of time and resources trying to track her down after he became Guildmaster, but in his own words, it was like she just vanished. It certainly seems like he's moved on at this point, so it really doesn't make sense for Karliah to come back after him now, 25 years later. Well, maybe the fact that his story doesn't really hold water is supposed to tip us off that he's not telling the truth. We'll give the writers that.

Second, Karliah's whole plan starts to not make sense at this point. The whole Goldenglow / Honningbrew thing is logical if someone is trying to hurt the Guild as a whole, but Karliah's motive is just to draw Mercer out so he can pay for his crimes. If that's the case, just send him a letter saying, "Hey, I'm back, and I'll be waiting for you at Snow Veil Sanctum." I don't know, maybe she thought she had to make him mad first?

Speaking of Snow Veil Sanctum, the only reason we know she's there is because Gullum-Ei just happened to ask her where she was going, to which she muttered a reply that sounded more like she was talking to herself than him. Yet it's clear that Karliah is clearly setting a trap for Mercer there. That's not really a reliable way to communicate a clue that you want your enemy to find.

And are we really supposed to believe that Karliah has been hanging out at this ruin this entire time? The sale of Goldenglow, where she dropped the clue where she was going, must have been at least weeks, if not months, in the past at this point (ignoring all the in-game time that has passed between when we first got Loud and Clear and now). Has she really been camping out at this Nordic ruin the entire time waiting for Mercer? And is this really the best way to set a trap for him? Mercer could have ordered the entire Guild to mount up and head to the ruin with him, brining a small army to hunt her down. You could argue that he was hoping to take care of both her and us quietly at the same time, I guess.

And finally we of course have the whole issue of why Karliah shot us instead of Mercer. She claims after the fact that she "never had a clear shot". Really? We didn't know as we came into that room that she was waiting to shoot at us, so she couldn't have waited a few moments for us to move around a bit where she likely could have shot him? The first virtue of a sniper is patience, Karliah.

Anyway, we're just going to sweep all that under the rug and enjoy the questline. Now we've got to get Gallus' journal translated, which starts Hard Answers, and we'll pick up there next time.

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