Skyrim 100% Maximized Legendary Playthrough - 294. Blood on the Ice
1Today we're off to Windhelm to finish up the quest Blood on the Ice. This quest is really annoying for a couple of reasons. First, it rather demands your attention - it triggers automatically the third or fourth time (I forget which) that you visit Windhelm, and will leave a few NPCs of the city just standing around the crime scene until you engage with it. Second, it's a rather buggy mess. Now thankfully the USLEEP mod takes care of a large number of the bugs, but even then it's still a bit of a finicky quest.
The reason we're finishing it is that part of the quest involves talking to Tova Shatter-Shield. Spoiler alert, but as part of the Dark Brotherhood questline we're going to murder her last remaining daughter, Nilsine. Her other daughter, Friga, doesn't appear in the game, but we're informed that she was previously murdered by the Butcher, who is the target of Blood on the Ice. After you murder Nilsine Tova commits suicide. You never would know it unless you just happen to visit the House of Clan Shatter-Shield after the event, so it makes a great realistic touch.
Now Tova's suicide technically doesn't cause problems with Blood on the Ice. Her involvement with the quest involves getting the key to Hjerim from her, but if she's dead you can just pick it up from her body. But of course that bypasses the dialogue you can have with her as part of the quest. As minimal as that is, getting all dialogue is part of the 100% aspect of this playthrough, as we talked about in the last video.
So we're back in Windhelm to finish it up. When we last engaged with the quest we had talked to all the witnesses and were at the point where we needed to get Jorleif's permission to investigate. After we do so our next steps are to talk to Helgird in the Hall of the Dead, then follow the bloodstains on the ground back to Hjerim. This is rather amusing from a meta-game perspective, considering that the amount of in-game time that has passed at this point between the murder occurring and us following the bloody trail on the ground is months if not years.
Once we determine we need to get into Hjerim we enter into Tova's portion of the quest, as her daughter Friga owned the place and she now has the key. It's just a bit of persuasion to get her to hand it over, and after investigating the place we find a hidden room where the Butcher has been practicing some strange necromancy on his victims. We also find a "strange amulet".
Our leads now are to talk to Calixto and Viola, respectively, and this is one of those instances where I just don't like Skyrim's hand-holding. How am I supposed to feel like I'm really solving a murder when my quest journal is always telling me exactly what step to take next? Anyways, Calixto claims the strange amulet belongs to Wuunferth and offers to buy it from us, and choosing to sell it to him is actually the critical step in the quest, as that is what turns it into the Necromancer's Amulet at the end. As for Viola, once we tell her we've discovered necromancy is involved, she accuses Wuunferth.
This is where the quest design goes a bit awry. According to the quest journal, our next step is to talk to Jorleif about our suspicions of Wuunferth. If you go this route, Wuunferth will be arrested, but ultimately another murder will take place, at which point you can resume solving the quest. However, if you don't want another random NPC to die, you actually have to go talk to Wuunferth directly, which you are not told is an option but just have to figure out. It's one thing for a quest journal to hand-hold you through a quest, but it's another when it makes you feel that it's not reliable.
In any case, if you talk to Wuunferth directly you skip straight to the end where you can catch the Butcher. He tells you the next murder will happen tomorrow night, but actually it happens the very next night - assuming it isn't too late in the day already, which is part of the finickiness of the quest.
It's here that we run into a little snag. We want to collect the Butcher's soul, but we forgot to bring a black soul gem with us. It's about 11 in the morning and the next murder will take place that night. If we fast travel to Whiterun and back too much time will pass. So we take advantage of the fact that less in-game time passes when you travel to a destination manually versus fast travel there. So we run about half the length of Skyrim from Windhelm back to Whiterun to pick up an empty black soul gem, then run back again.
Fortunately we make it back in time, and as evening falls we find Calixto following Arivanya around town. Shadowing both of them to the Stone Quarter, we're able to intercept and kill Calixto before he can do the deed. Afterwards we raid his house to discover he was trying to bring his dead sister back to life. All we get from Jorleif is a polite "thank you", which feels like a slap in the face. The real reward is the Necromancer's Amulet we get off Calixto.
Other Videos By 40/30 Gaming
Other Statistics
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Statistics For 40/30 Gaming
There are 70,921 views in 595 videos for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. His channel uploaded over 19 days worth of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim videos, roughly 39.39% of the content that 40/30 Gaming has uploaded to YouTube.