If you wish to find survivors and resisters in Tamriel, the first place you should always look is in its Inns and taverns.  Thus it was no surprise in Northpoint that we discover a band of townspeople hiding from the Montclair’s preternatural incursion in the Sloshing Tankard.

We learn from Qariar, the Blademaster of House Dorell, that there are in fact many survivors hidden about the city under the protection of the Northpoint Guard.  He warns though that the Baron’s son, Ellic Dorell, is now so completely under Lleraya Montclair’s influence, that he was fully compliant in the Lady’s wicked deeds.

S.K

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It is said in Northpoint that a person’s worth is not measured by the weight of coins in their pockets, but by the weight of the ambitions in their hearts.

Founded in the First Era by an enterprising trader to take advantage of the deep waters of the Boralis coastlines and create a waypoint on the maritime trade route between the great cities of Daggerfall and Solitude.  That merchant was eventually to take the name Dorell, after the Dore Elard heights, upon which he founded his walled city.

Not so long ago this was still a bustling hub full of tradesman and brokers, of pioneers and pirates, and of the ambitious and the resourceful, all seeking to claim a slice of the wealth that flowed daily through the Northpoint docks.  The city’s marketplace was a theatre of trade and commerce, with House Dorell for generations acting as puppeteers from behind the curtains.  The current ruler, Baron Alard Dorell, spent most of his days in the regions capital Shornhelm serving as part of Rivenspire’s ruling triumvirate, leaving the everyday running of his city to his son Lord Ellic Dorell.

But everything changed with the arrival of the daughter of House Montclair.   Utilizing the power of the Lightless Remnant, Lady Lleraya Montclair manipulated the young Dorell and his Breton nobles to take control over the entire city.  And just as she did in Moira’s Hope, turned many of the citizens into the feral bloodfiends that now roam the city’s avenues making feast upon the corpses of their former friends and neighbours.

A stench of blood and carrion hangs heavily over the laconic streets, which are held easily against the once vaunted Northpoint guard by the giant roaming gargoyles.  Meanwhile Lleraya’s vampire troops search building to building, sniffing hound-like for any living that remain.  It is surely only a matter of time before this once dynamic city is little more than a cadaver.

Now the only ambition of any worth for the people of Northpoint is to survive the day.

S.K

An old smugglers tunnels hidden in a small cove beneath the Northpoint lighthouse appears to offer our only way into the captured city.  First however we need to retrieve the gate key from the shipwrecked Lagra’s Pearl, stranded further down the beach.

S.K

Whilst I spent a cold night scouting behind enemy lines, fighting soldiers both live and undead, crouched in filthy ditch and muddy field, searching in vain for a way into the walled city, Darien Gautier was busy in the Officer’s cabin, carrying out his own reconnaissance… in his own way.

What irks me most is not that I got the Guar’s end of the deal, nor that the Breton proved far more successful in learning of a smugglers tunnel into the heart of the city, what really, really irks me the most… is that smug smile.

S.K