Online:The Coven Conundrum

Quick Walkthrough
#Travel to the Grinning Horker in Eastmarch.
#Look for signs of the missing workers and the Icereach Coven.
#Explore underground passage.
#Search Blackreach for signs of the Icereach Coven.
#Look for Sister Balra at the Kagalthar ruins.
#Speak with Lyris Titanborn and Sentry Darfal.
#Travel to Windhelm and enter the Palace of Kings.
#Search the palace for Jorunn the Skald-King.
#Defeat Sister Balra and rescue the Skald-King.
#Talk with Jorunn and Lyris in Throne Room.

Detailed Walkthrough
A Lucrative Opportunity at the Grinning Horker
thumb|left|Search the inn for clues
Board the cart with Lyris Titanborn and head on over to Eastmarch. You'll be dropped off beside Voljar's Meadery. Head west then north up the path, and you'll end up at The Grinning Horker, the inn mentioned in the pamphlet you found on Goharth Ironbelly. Enter the facility, which you find empty. Lyris finds this suspicious, and suggests that you look around. There's an unfinished meal on one of the tables, and some used bedrolls upstairs. Head back downstairs and enter the side room. You'll find a trail of blood near a trap door that leads to the basement. It looks like whoever came here for the job opportunity was dragged down into the basement. Continue your search down there.

The basement is also empty, save for several cabinets. Lyris thinks it strange. There's clearly a bloodstain outside the basement. The prospectors' captors must have a secret passage down here somewhere. The cabinet in the back on the left is the one with the secret passage behind it. The furthest cabinet on the right contains an  . The cabinet next to it contains a  . The right-side cabinet closest to the entrance contains  . The small barrel in the back of the room is holding an  . Enter the secret passage and traverse the tunnel. Not too far in, you'll encounter a hysterical Nord named Hrolt. Speak with him while Lyris scouts ahead.
 

The World Below Skyrim
thumb|right|Search Blackreach
Hrolt tells you that while he and the other prospectors were waiting in the inn, the people running the inn walked up and ordered them to go to the basement. One of the job-seekers refused, so the witches sliced him up pretty badly, hence the trail of blood from earlier. When the captives saw the witches from the Reach, some of them tried to fight back. Hrolt slipped away while they were distracted. Hrolt says that the witches are doing something horrific down in the tunnels, and tells you to destroy their infernal pikes. Catch up with Lyris further down. She's standing on a ledge overlooking a massive, mushroom-filled cave. Speak with her.

Lyris claims this place is Blackreach, a cave she didn't even realize existed. Blackreach has been spoken about in Nord folktales for a good long while, painted as a fantastic world that stretched beneath all of Skyrim. Lyris asks you to investigate further while she escorts Hrolt up out of the cave. Head down the path and cross the bridge onto the stretch of Dwarven ruins below. A Witch Pike lies east of your starting location. Destroy it and head north. You'll find several cages containing harrowfiends and a table covered in arcane trinkets. A letter lies upon the table. Read it. Apparently, the harrowfiends are created by perverse storms conjured by the Icereach witches at the behest of their benefactor.

Make your way west. You'll find a large cage here. Lo and behold, the captives are trapped inside. Open the cage for them, and Amberic Daigre beckons you over. He tells you that the witches tied several prisoners to a pike and summoned a strange storm. The magic killed some of them, but turned most of the victims into harrowfiends. He informs you that Sister Balra may be in the Dwarven ruin west of here, which she's been using as her personal domain. Head up the hill towards the Dwemer ruin. As you approach the ruin, you'll see Lyris Titanborn killing a vampire. Speak with her for a moment. Tell her what you found and enter Kagalthar Ruins.

Sister Balra's Plot
thumb|rleft|Speak with the sentry
Inside the hall is a gravely wounded Windhelm sentry. Talk to him. He says that Balra stabbed him and left. He made a deal with her, exchanging information about how to sneak into the Palace of Kings for gold. Sentry Darfal believes that the Skald-King is now in danger. He mentions that Balra said she has plans for the King, killing Darfal was just her tying up loose ends. Lyris tells you that you need to get back to Windhelm immediately.  Follow her back to the surface and take the cart back to the city. Once you arrive, bolt for the palace. Before you can enter the palace, Housecarl Vaer stops you. Lyris demands to be let inside, but Vaer refuses, citing security protocol. At first, she denies that the Skald-King is in any danger, but when you tell her that Sentry Darfal accepted a bribe and told the witches how to enter the palace, she loosens up a bit. She finally allows you in when you mention the Icereach Coven's involvement.
thumb|left|Save King Jorunn
Enter the palace, which is filled to the brim with witches and death hounds. You're going to have to kill them if you want to get through. Sift through the corpses of the witches you kill. One of them is carrying several  . You're also free to examine the nearby Skyrim Reconnaissance Map in the next room over. Lyris notes that this map contains information about troop positions in Haafingar, and points out that the western holds have been torn off. You'll find the corpses of slaughtered palace personnel scattered throughout the building. You'll need to continue through the palace, passing through the kitchen and the lower chambers. Here, Sentry Alma lies dead. Take the   off of Sentry Alma's corpse and head down into the Palace Dungeons. Sister Balra has King Jorunn, and is performing a ritual. You'll need to kill her to save the Skald-King. 

Sister Balra wields powerful frost spells and a greatsword. She doesn't do much with the blade, but she will cause quite a bit of damage with her freezing gales. When her health gets low, she will transform into a werewolf behemoth. Now, she attacks with powerful claw strikes, devastating swings and a howl that chills you to the bone. When she is defeated King Jorunn will be freed and will head out to the throne room upstairs.
 
An Audience with the Skald-King
Talking with Jorunn and Lyris|thumb|right
When you arrive in the throne room, Lyris will have just finished her report to the king. You can then present your own findings.
:''"Held captive in my own dungeon! If word gets out, I'd be laughed off my rebuilt throne—and rightly so! On to business. I heard Lyris's report. Now tell me, what did you uncover?"
:The Icereach Coven developed a ritual that turns people into a new kind of bloodfiend.
:"Yes, so Lyris mentioned. Harrowfiends, she called them. An ominous name. And that Sister Balra claimed she was turning me into a monster. What else did you learn about the Icereach Coven?"
:The coven appears to be allied with vampires.
:"Vampires? I've known both decent and terrible folk burdened by that curse. I take it the ones working with the coven fall into the latter category. Anything else?"
:The coven seems interested in the Haafingar hold.
:"Haafingar? High-King Svargrim rules that hold from the city of Solitude. We don't see eye-to-eye, especially since neither of us will openly acknowledge the other's reign. Still, he should be warned. Talk to Lyris. I have much to think about."
:Yes, Skald-King.
:"You have given me much to consider. If these Reach witches really do plan to attack Haafingar, I need to inform Svargrim at once. I fear that this plot against Skyrim is only the beginning."

Jorunn will direct you back to Lyris, who will agree with the king about the need to help Western Skyrim. Though she will caution that due to politics you cannot head there immediately.
:"Svargrim and the people of Western Skyrim can be real pains in the arse, but they're still Nords. Despite the differences between their holds and ours, we won't abandon them to the coven's conspiracy."
:So let's go to Haafingar and deal with the coven.
:"Not so fast, friend. Western Skyrim doesn't exactly get along with Eastern Skyrim. Politics can be a tricky business, so I tend to leave that to the politicians. When King Jorunn gives the word, then we go. Not before."
:So what happens now?
:"Now we celebrate our victory and let Jorunn's scouts do what they do best. Meanwhile, I'll work with the Skald-King to figure out how to approach Svargrim with this news. In the meantime, take this. You earned it. I'll be in touch soon."''

You will then receive the Chains of the Ice Witch and a portfolio which contains pieces from the Windhelm Scale Tunic Style.
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