CHAPTER 32: CHASING REFLECTED SOUNDWAVES
In which our hero refuses to get bitten. Again.
Previous: Chapter 31, Vampires and Death Hounds and Gargoyles, Oh My!

So, here we are again at Castle Volkihar. After a shortish interlude where Serana talks about her childhood yet again, we walk around the castle's left side to the old docks. Apparently not unguarded, as I had thought... there are some skeletons here. These are the "tough" versions, too - none of that wussy held-together-with-string-and-gum kind you find in most places in Skyrim. It's nice to see my expectations thwarted. Let's hope this quest doesn't devolve into a trap-laden treck through some narrow corridors or anything while Serana continually blurts out stuff about her childhood.

Once inside - and I have no idea where we actually are, maybe sewers, I'm going to just call it the castle's basement - once inside, I get another healthy dose of exposition and reminiscences from Serana and we begin the (sigh) tunnel crawling. You know, I'd be fine with the constant tunnel crawling and exposition-slash-reminiscences, if only... uh, if only... huh. Nope, guess I wouldn't be fine with it no matter what. Oh well.

After killing off a couple of demon dogs, a big spider, and a feral vampire, and making our way past a diabolically clever constructed set of traps and progress blockers (not one, but two pressure plates that lower bridges! Genius!), we make it to the courtyard. Ack! Serana, what the hell happened to the tempered and enchanted glass armor I gave you? Why are you wearing that old vampire crap? I mean, nice cleavage and all, but the protection level is shit.

Immediate wardrobe changes and poor fashion choices aside, Serana begins another bout of expositional rambling. She's just so damn eager to tell her story, I really hope she saves some for later, so she doesn't run through the whole batch, and later on we're forced to journey around in complete silence while we kill a bunch of Falmer in a snowy wasteland or something.

Anydangway, there's a moondial here, that's... hang on, moondial? Moondial? Oh, yes. Vampires, anti-day, pro-night, uh-huh. Very clever. My sides are splitting. I don't really care about that, because I'm busy caring about why in the hell Harkon destroyed the entire place because Valerica loved it, but didn't bother to touch the damn moondial. Like, he thought to himself "I am going to destroy what Valerica loved, but not that piece, because it's just so awesome." I hereby rescind my opinion of Harkon as being the dumbest dumbass in the world. He's the dumbest dumbass in all the worlds because, in his destructive rampage, he didn't bother to even look at the damn thing.

The game dev contractor who built the thing seems to have momentarily forgotten that Nirn has more than one moon. Oops... like Hiemskr calling this place "Earth," (_*) it's a simple accident that any continuity director should have caught. The contractor also obviously took inspiration from Nord puzzle traps, because apparently removing three of the sigils causes the moondial to spin around and block the stairs going down. What an ingenious way to block progress! Le sigh.

Down again, and through another secret passage. Serana (who inexplicably has chosen to wear the glass armor again) and I wend our way through this castle's super-secret places. Gods know why Harkon or, really, anyone else never bothered to search an entire half of their home for Valerica. It's not important. We travel through the place, undoing secret walls, killing skeletons and gargoyles. Are these Valerica's skeletons? If so, why are they here? Gods know they're tough for skeletons, but not that tough... Harkon, from whom she is ostensibly hiding, could rip right through them in vampire lord form, I'm sure. The gargoyles put up a tougher fight, but after Dimhollow Crypt, it's not exactly a surprise when one bursts out. Just lay down a couple of fire runes, and the thing is halfway dead as soon as it emerges. Oh, yes, there are several more gargoyle statues here. It's like traps in a draugr ruin - on the one hand, it's painfully obvious, but on the other, it's goddamn stupid. I can't decide which I dislike more - the painfully obvious, or the GODDAMN STUPID.

Serana says her mother likes gargoyles, and proceeds to hand me a double entendre... actually, it's more of a single entendre, and unhappy with its existence as such. Her dialog with me so far has been laced with the occasional innuendo, and I just feel sorry for those poor innuendos, all sad and alone amidst a sea of otherwise fairly stock dialog. I fear that next she's going to say something like: "Yeah, I like swords. Because you can stick them into people. Like penises into vaginas. You know, sex! Get it? Should I say it again? You're not responding!" It's just so painfully obvious and contrived it's kind of embarrassing. Her recently reanimated thrall and I share a glance, and then we do our best to ignore her.

Thinly veiled sexual references aside, Serana isn't that bad a companion through here. She's absolutely shit on the offensive, but she does tend to distract enemies, allowing me to get in a few free shots while they proceed a-thwacking on her. I wish Stenvar was here, he's better at this whole killing-shit thing than Serana, but honestly, I'm sort of worried that the same thing will happen to him that happened to Belrand, considering the dangerous waters I'm entering now.

Because apparently we're about to enter another dimension. The devs are really hitting the "many and varied planes of Oblivion" pretty hard. This place we're going into is full of the souls of people who've been trapped in black soul gems. This makes me nervous. I've trapped a lot of people in black soulgems over the last few months, and I'm not looking forward to meeting them again. Not because I feel they're a threat, or anything like that, but because the meeting would just be so damn awkward. "Oh, hey there, Estormo. Nice to see you again. Too bad the author didn't have Do You Know Who I Am installed, you might've gotten through this in better shape, hey?" Blatant self-plugs that break the fourth wall in a story are comedy gold, says my agent.

Anyway, the other dimension thing. After "we" search the place, and "we" read Valerica's journal, and "we" gather up the necessary ingredients, "we" open the portal by slicing Serana's wrist and dumping blood into the bowl. Or at least, that's what's supposed to happen. Nothing actually does. The bowl looks like it just has a bit of powder in it, not soul gems or blood. I wander around a bit, and prod at Serana, going through all the dialogue options again, and nothing happens. Finally I break down and use the "dlc1vq04 75" dragon shout because stupid Serana won't advance the damn quest.

Finally the portal opens, and we make Dante proud. We try, anyway. I guess Valerica forgot to put up a "you must be this soulless to enter the underworld" sign next to the portal, because it burns us, precious. Apparently I need to be either soultrapped, which would weaken me, or turned into a vampire, which would strengthen me, in order to go inside. I'm honestly liking the whole "become stronger" thing, but there are two reasons I wouldn't want to do that. One is that the Dawnguard might be slightly irritated at me. It wouldn't change their letting me, a newly-minted vampire lord, into their super-defended stronghold, because fucking Isran's idea of security is a little wooden fence and not, you know, keeping vampires like me or Serana out... but it might hurt my chances of getting some more sweet retrieve-the-fancy-loot quests from Florentius. That's not the major concern, though, because the second reason is that the screen whiteout and sound effect that plays whenever a vampire enters the sun is a hell of a lot more irritating than, oh, say, actual sun damage would be. Sometimes I really miss TES 4.

Anyway, I opt for the soul trap, because even weakened I'm still a badass warrior, and I'm backed by the raw unholy power of a little girl with daddy issues. She soultraps me and we head down the weird staircase again.

As we emerge into the eldritch violet-tinted twilight of the Soul Cairn, I can't help but wonder how the hell Valerica got into this place at all. Yes, yes, I know, the blood, soul gems, bone powder, etcetera, but I'm talking more prosaically than that. I mean, how did she trigger those two bridges to go up again after she went through? If removing the moondial sigils makes the stairs spin 'round and hide the passage, then how the hell did she remove them and still manage to get inside? And then, how did she manage to get the fireplace secret passages to lock behind her? Can she reach through stone? Did she trip the lever and then do a quick dive through the closing aperture? Did she hire, and then subsequently erase the memory of, that feral vampire? How the hell did she close this portal behind her? I didn't see any W. Heath Robinson contraptions in the study that would have emptied the bowl and put the ingredients back on the shelves. How, in short, did she fucking get into this place without leaving all the doors opened behind her? I'd have to say that it's fairly obvious that this whole place was the devs were going for some demonic version of a Rube Goldberg-esque castle. Spoiler alert: They failed.

Bah. Irrelevant. Let's go find mommy, shall we?

NEXT: Chapter 33, Lost and Found
Start at Chapter 1

(_*) - Apparently he isn't actually talking about Earth, just... the dirt they're all standing on. So it's okay after all. My bad.