The Fang Lair

Rihad, Southern Hammerfell

The smell of salt washes over Talin with the cool breeze from the Abecean Sea, a touch of relief from the tropical heat gripping the port city of Rihad. Even with the eldritch knowledge granted to him by the Oghma Infinium, he’d been unable to locate the Fang Lair amongst the countless rolling dunes of the Hammerfell deserts, so he had journeyed south, following rumors of strange happenings in the city.

Amidst the hustle and bustle of the harbor, hood pulled high for protection from the blazing sun, he slinks through the crowd like a great cat on the prowl. He feels… changed by the ancient tome of Xarxes. The dreadful sense of panic and the constant wash of foreign images in his mind has faded, and what is left is an almost predatory sense of awareness. Every muscle stands on edge. No subtle movement or trace whisper from one passerby to another goes unnoticed by his heightened senses. He’s not sure how, but he knows that he will find what he is looking for here.

After travelling across Hammerfell in search of the Fang Lair, our hero has found himself in the city of Rihad, nestled on the Abecean Coast on the south side of the province. Upon arriving, we are greeted with a new desert city environment and some new music, in contrast to what we’ve seen and heard with the cities we’ve visited in High Rock and Skyrim. After asking around for some time with the local populace, a Redguard woman consults Talin to inquire at the palace, where the ruler of Rihad, Queen Blubamka, is said to possess scrolls and maps which will point to the ancient fortress.

At the Rihad Palace, he receives some bad news. The palace has been recently attacked by a goblin warband and many valuables were stolen. Among them, a certain parchment with keys to decipher the passages from the Elder Scrolls which reveal the location of the Fang Lair. The queen promises to consult the titular scrolls and point Talin to the dungeon if he will recover the parchment from the goblin lair, the long abandoned Stonekeep. With little fanfare, he departs for the keep.

Stonekeep

Upon arriving at Stonekeep, we’re immediately greeted with a dungeon that feels distinct and logical as opposed to the procedurally generated dungeons we’ve been mostly exploring so far.

Foreboding ambient text greets us as we enter a reception hall filled with dusty skeletons and signs of battles long ago.

Scrawled messages and signs on the wall give a little bit of backstory to the dungeon, which was overrun with goblins who had broken into the fort by tunneling through the walls from their caves nearby. The effort in making this dungeon feel like a place that was once lived in is very apparent, as you explore you can find prison cells, bedrooms, a larder, a kitchen, and other rooms of the sort. The messages left behind by the former residents get increasingly desperate as you get further in, with a final message indicating a suicidal last stand within the goblin caves themselves.

Talin battles his way through giant spiders, skeletons, bandits of various shapes of sizes, and of course, many goblins on his way through the keep and then the goblin caves. At the far end of the caverns, he at last discovers the requested parchment along with the bodies of a few other unfortunate souls undoubtedly sent by Blubamka. He returns to the palace with his prize and is finally rewarded with the location of the Fang Lair. He wastes no time in setting out.

The Fang Lair

Clad in the loose white garments worn by the desert tribes, Talin leads Godric over the ridge of a great dune, and at last looks upon the Fang Lair after months of toil and uncertainty. A great stone tower rises from the clutches of rocky cliffs, and a cast of a dragon, carved from black stone, leers down at Talin with a hunger that feels uncomfortably real.

On the southern cliff-face beneath the tower, he discovers a carved tunnel leading down to unknown depths. Strange runes, unknown to him, stand in sharp relief upon the lintel stone otherwise worn smooth by untold millennia of sandstorms. In a shaded alcove nearby, he waters Godric before hobbling the stallion and donning his mail. Returning to the tunnel, Talin draws his sword and follows the steps down into the Fang Lair.

The time has come for us to find the first piece of the Staff of Chaos. Despite how it is depicted in the image above, the interior of the Fang Lair is a sprawling collection of tunnels and mine shafts. Each shaft is labeled with a letter, and progress in ascending order as you get deeper in. Most of the dungeon interior is nondescript beyond resembling a mine, however one corner of the dungeon is home to an ancient temple structure with a very evil-looking idol in the center, whose significance is a mystery.

After navigating the many confusing tunnels and mine shafts, Talin discovers the first of what will become a staple of the main Arena dungeons, riddles. He discovers a room with six cells filled with spiders, and three more cells on the far wall which appear to be empty. Upon approaching the three empty cells, the player is greeted with this test of logic.

I had to break out paper and pencil for this one and draw a chart to figure it out. For those confused, this old UESP forum post does a better job explaining the logic of the puzzle than I possibly can. Long story short, cell two holds the key.

After retrieving the gold key, a metal door down a short corridor on the east end of the cell room can be unlocked. Behind it lies a ladder leading to the lower level.

As he descends the rickety wooden ladder into the bowels of the Earth, waves of oppressive heat begin to wash over him, hotter and hotter as he descends. When he reaches the bottom, he discovers a narrow stone walkway that leads across a bubbling lake of lava to a stone tower in the center, a massive gate of black metal at its base, beckoning him forward. The heat is already unbearable, he removes his chainmail coif and helm and tosses them to the side, his sweat damp hair sticking and pulling as he does so. Steeling his resolve, he presses on.

When he reaches the door, a booming disembodied voice challenges him with one last riddle.

He thinks, the heat from the molten rock surrounding him nearly driving him to his knees. Sweat beads down his face. As he mops his brow with his coarse leather gauntlet, the answer dawns on him. Looking to the door, he states clearly “a glove.”

A moment of uncertainty, then the booming voice answers.

The door grinds open into blackness. His jubilation is cut short as two pairs of burning red eyes awaken in the murk. His sword leaps into his hand as if by its own accord, and not a moment too soon, as a great wolf, black as the darkness behind it, pounces upon the warrior. The silver blade of his sword stabs through the wolf as the full weight of the beast comes crashing down on it, forcing Talin onto his back as it does so. Fueled by pain and rage, the beast snaps at him again and again with sharp yellow teeth, missing his face by a hair’s breadth, its foul sulfurous breath nearly making him gag. Knowing he only has moments before the second wolf is upon him, he holds the beast by the throat with one gauntleted hand while the other fumbles for his dagger at his waist. His fingers curl around the grip of the ebony dagger. He unsheathes the blade, and stabs upward through the lower jaws of the wolf, the blade pierces through, punching through the top of the snout and snapping its jaws shut in a burst of burning blood.

Throwing the dead beast aside, he leaps to his feet and moves to pull his sword free just as a burst of flame erupts to his right as the second wolf, truly not a wolf at all, but a hellhound, emits a gout of fire from its jaws. Talin staggers just out of reach of the flaming breath. He unleashes a crackle of lightning from his fingertips which arc towards the hellhound, stunning the creature for just a moment as it howls in pain. The warrior dashes towards the first fallen creature and finally manages to rip his sword free, pivoting and slashing diagonally through the air behind him just as the second wolf, now recovered, pounces. The beast, unable to stop its momentum, is cleaved in twain. Its still kicking hind legs roll to a stop as the upper half sinks into the lava behind the panting warrior.

Vision blackening from exhaustion on top of the already unyielding heat, he staggers towards the chamber from which the hellhounds emerged. As he crosses the threshold, the darkness gives way to a pulsing magenta glow before him, intensifying as he draws closer. Within the center of the glow floats a golden metal component resembling a spearhead, the first piece of the Staff of Chaos. Power jolts through his arm as he snatches the piece from the air, the glow snuffs out. Turning from the chamber, Talin leaves the Fang Lair behind him.

With his acquisition of the first piece of the Staff of Chaos, seven more remain, and Talin’s journey has only just begun. When he finally succumbs to exhaustion in the safety of a small village many miles from the Fang Lair, he is visited again by Ria in his dreams. She tells him the next piece of the staff can be found far to the north in the fabled Labyrinthian, built long ago by the Archmagus Shalidor to guard what he called “Glamorill,” the secret of life. The great wizard made his home in the Fortress of Ice, and it is surely there that the way to the great maze can be found. Skyrim awaits.