Playing Skyrim quest mods: The Forgotten City (again)

The last time I made a venture into Skyrim's quest mods I played this one. But when I decided to head into it again I redownloaded the few I had already completed to play them again. The Forgotten City is the first of those.

Last time I played this I was mostly confused by the whole thing, mainly, I think, because I went too fast. This time I resolved to really take my time and that decision made the whole mod a lot better.

By taking my time I got to know the characters. I got to know what led each of them there and how they felt about the Dwarves' Law, but also what they were hoping for for their futures.

In the beginning after the leap of faith you find Altrius' suicide note which basically encourages the player to keep failing by letting you know that Altrius decided to take his life after not being able to change things and he just went mad with having to go back to the lakehouse over and over again. The quest is actually set up so that you have to "fail" to reach the good ending.

So what I did is that I talked to everybody, went into everybody's house and read every single letter I could find. I went down into the underground tunnels via Ulrin's house and discovered everything down there and then I climbed my way into the Palace and discovered everything in there. I found every single part of the Immaculate Dwarven Armor needed to pass through the radiation in the Underground tunnels proper except for the chestplate. The only one who had the chestplate was Rykas and he refused to let go of it. And here's where it's set up to force you to "fail" to succeed. You need to kill Rykas to get the chestplate, but when you kill him you activate the Dwarves' Law which annihilates everyone in the city. The Jarl opens the time portal and back you go. Except you retain every piece of knowledge and everything in your inventory - including the chestplate. So equipping all of the Immaculate Dwarven Armor you can just ignore everything this time around and go straight into the Underground Tunnel. Fight your way through and you end up face to face with the Arbiter. An actual, real, 2000 year old, Dwemer, who acts as the Judge and watches over everyone and everything that happens in the city. Here you have two options. If your Speech skill is high enough you can just persuade him to stop and abolish the Dwarves' Law. The other option is to fight the Arbiter and when you kill him the Dwarves' Law will be no more. With the Arbiter defeated you'll be returned to your own timeline and meet Altrius. You'll also discover that the City is thriving. The Jarl was replaced after the citizens found out what he did to Ulrin's wife and everybody's happy.

There is another way to get back to your timeline and that's by having the Jarl killed so that he can't create the time portal. Either by killing him yourself (either unprovoked or by accusing him of being the threat to the city), or by telling Ulrin what the Jarl has done to his wife, or by discovering and releasing Ulrin's wife and have her do it. That's what I did the last time I played. I let her kill him.

This mod is amazing in its replayability and I love it's intricacy. It also tickles my love for the Dwemer.