Elder Scrolls Online: Murkmire DLC

This DLC has an interesting background story. The same zone called Murkmire was actually under development back in 2014 and was originally planned to be another adventure zone like Craglorn - group based end game PvE content. But Craglorn wasn't very positively received and so the idea for Murkmire was scrapped until now.

You can pick up a prologue quest in your Alliance's first big city as with all story-driven DLCs since Morrowind. In this prologue quest you help a group of Imperial treasure hunters find an old Argonian relic before the person that betrayed the group can use it for evil. This prologue turns out to be two quests which then turns into six daily quests.

Then we get into the DLC proper!

The whole main questline is a long string of quests to find an ancient relic called the Remnant of Argon. It takes you all over the map where I kept getting side-tracked doing side quests. Until you get to the ancient Xanmeer (temple) of Xul-Thuxis it's mostly a quest through the swamps and different Xanmeers. On the way to Xul-Thuxis there's a quest where you go through a dreamstate and find out that the ancient Ayleids once attacked and invaded an ancient village and that they somehow saved themselves by using the Remnant of Argon, after you get through Xul-Thuxis you find out how, by going through a long string of portals full of echoes from the past. The portal realm actually reminded me a lot of the realm of Eluvians in Dragon Age Inquisition. As usual the main quest is kind of meh until the very end where it's just holy shit upon holy shit in classic Bethesda fashion. But that's the way I like it :) That way you know there's something amazing coming if you just keep at it.

 Murkmire portal realm to the left, DAI portal realm to the right.

The Argonians and Black Marsh are far from my favourite race and area in the Tamrielic universe, which meant that I wasn't overly excited for Murkmire, but it proved very interesting and so worth it. Looking back on the sidequests I really liked the quest in Bright-Throat village where you find out that someone has been experimenting on eggs and their hatchlings and you get to decide whether the last survivor of these experiments live or die. This last hatchling experiment looks like a fully grown woman, but she doesn't act like it and the other Argonians are concerned because the Hist doesn't speak to her, which means this Argonian woman is basically born outside of the hive mind that all Argonians share. She seems severely autistic, which imho is an amazing inclusion in the Elder Scrolls verse.

I also really enjoyed discovering the other version of Argonians in Dead-Water village. A version of Argonian that's more fish-like than lizard-like. All in all this DLC proved a lot more interesting than I originally thought it would be.