Turns Out the Hagravens Were Planning Something...

boo did i scare you sorry i'm trying to be more exciting anyway how's it going guys it's nate here and welcome back to another elder scrolls investigation and let me just say forget everything you know about ulfric or ellis if the fair there's another monarch the people of this province should worry about indeed skyrim has a secret queen no one ever told us of well kinda you see there's this mysterious powerful female character known only as the matriarch that we can read about in various notes scattered across the map the letters suggest this matriarch lady is leading a handful of bandit as well as for sworn tribes and clearly using them to work towards some sort of goal that we'll talk about later all things considered she may very well be the third most powerful individual in all of skyrim behind general tullius and ulfric stormcloak respectively now despite making the matriarch such an influential figure bethesda's writers clearly wanted there to be a lot of mystique and uncertainty behind her again she's only mentioned in a couple of letters and never brought up in any quests or dialogue and the matriarch's true identity is ultimately a secret the dragonborn doesn't ever meet her or do we spoiler alert we do and she's not a human not only that well since 2011 when skyrim first came out this character has been the subject of an interesting mystery and discussion nine years later in 2020 the elder scrolls online's most recent expansion has added some new information that answers some of the original questions we had about the matriarch alas ladies and gentlemen today we are going to embark on a hunt for the truth and take it upon ourselves to unravel what we'll soon discover is a more fascinating story than many of the game's actual quest lines we'll start by going over absolutely everything there is to know in the elder scrolls 5 and then we'll move on to see what eso has to say before we start drawing some conclusions anyway without any further ado let's do further and figure out who the heck the matriarch really is alrighty so beginning with the notes we can find remember there's no real dialogue or quests that make mention of this matriarch fellow so these papers are all that there are to prove her existence in total there are three notes spread across tamriel that reference this character we'll start with the one located at serpent's bluff redout a small force-worn encampment on whiterun's eastern border here inside one of the tents lying atop a table is the force worn letter it reads as follows quote the matriarch grows weary of your hesitation our people control the entire eastern slope of the reach all save sun guard take it and the invaders will be cut off from all retreat but we must move now while its defenses are still weak summon the tribes do what you must but if you do not act she shall find someone who will end quote huh not many words on this paper but they still say a lot immediately we can identify the matriarch is some kind of leader amongst the force worn possibly the leader and she's frustrated with one of her underliens who's not behaving as bold as she believes they need to be this is already quite interesting given what we know about the force warn and mysterious nature of their leadership and history you see the force horn are a bandit like faction of primitive people who live in camps across the reach they're like bandits in the sense that they attack and harass innocent civilians however they're uniquely brutal and savage while a normal group of bandits may raid a village for loot and plunder the force worn burn villages and commit crimes just for the pleasure it brings them and the terror it inflicts on the local populace the force warrants origins date back thousands of years ago to the 4th century of the first era you see at this point in time the lands of the reach were independent of a skyrim and ruled by no king or empire at all instead it was inhabited by an amalgamation of various autonomous clans and tribes that lived in its rolling hills and valleys sometime in the year 440 of the first era though a famous high king of skyrim known as olaf onei invaded and conquered the region permanently making it a part of his kingdom well sort of while olaf had destroyed most of the reaches tribes or forced them into obedience some managed to survive and refused to submit the remaining ones waged a guerrilla war and made masterful use of the mountainous local terrain to evade and outflank the large conventional army sent after them and no king or jarl was ever able to successfully defeat these stubborn clans thus over 4 000 years later during the events of the elder scrolls v the reachmen are still resisting we now call these people the force warn as for sworn literally means to have refused to give up now what's so weird is that the letter we just read seems to imply this matriarch character is leading the force warn and the other two notes which we'll look at in just a second also point towards the same conclusion but if that is the case then how come we've never heard of this matriarch lady before the forcebourne have supposedly always been divided between a bunch of independent clans with their own leaders how did this matriarch lady somehow unify all or so many of these distinct forces and why doesn't anyone outside the force warren seem to know about her also what the heck is she planning well we'll answer all those questions soon however first we should probably look at the other two letters conveniently both are at deepwood redoubt a massive force worn stronghold slash former nord ruin on the northern edges of the reach deepwood redoubt is seriously one of the most remarkable locations in the game despite having literally no role in any notable quests this place is home to the largest force-worn encampment in the entire game by far it's almost like its own force-worn city and because it's surrounded by mountains the only way inside is by fighting your way through an underground cave system that's closely guarded nonetheless in one tent here beneath a dresser we can find a note titled force worn misib it reads quote alaric do not presume we have grown fat and complacent here in the north our matriarch was wise to bring us here our camp is secure and our numbers grow we will not skulk in the shadows with you making petty plots with rabble and psychophones when we strike we will do it with cunning and power and the occupiers will fall before us that is the way of true reachmen end quote the next letter is titled for sworn note and it also lies in a tent its contents are eerily similar to the one we just read quote matriarch we await your orders our blades are honed our quivers full our will stealed for battle the time of our waiting has ended the time for battle is at hand you have but to speak the word and the occupiers shall fall like wheat before the reaper end quote huh okay so both these final texts indicate the force worn at deepwood were led here by the matriarch and she's expected to give them an order to launch quite an attack sometime soon we're done with letters now that's it those three were all there were and at this point you might be wondering okay well what's next i mentioned earlier in the video that we could actually meet this matriarch lady and there was eso related content well there's something else here at deepwood that's really gonna light up this investigation overlooking the city is a large ancient nord temple also occupied by the foresworn called hag's end and when we enter it we'll immediately be attacked by a number of human witches and a single hagraven this hagraven has a particularly high amount of hp more than double the average all the witches can immediately be killed but when you get the hagraven to around half health it'll suddenly disappear and teleport away as you continue fighting through the dungeon the hagraven will reappear at various points and attack you before teleporting away a few more times after you've damaged it a good bit clearly there's something special about this npc as no other hagraven in the game teleports like this eventually after making it to the top of the dungeon and reaching its outdoor porch the bird will appear one final time and can be defeated for reals in this instant the game never explicitly confirms this but it seems like this hagraven was probably the matriarch that all the notes were talking about forsworn and hagravens have long been known to work together they're commonly in each other's company at dungeons and camps and there's even one book called a life barbaric and brutal which was written by a woman who was captured by a force-worn clan that was led by a hagraven so the idea that such a creature could be the matriarch in charge of all of the foresworn or significant chunk of them isn't far-thatched at all furthermore who else could it have been the letters state the matriarch led the reachmen to deepwood and it seemed to indicate she's still here so who are our other suspects it gets even weirder as in skyrim's game files there's actually a unique unused sound file that would have played somewhere in the hagzen dungeon called hags and harp sld take a listen to what this sound file sounds like [Music] i can't stress enough this sound file is very unique and in fact seems to be the only place in the game where a harp instrument could have been heard suggesting bethesda put a bit of thought into it unfortunately because it was left unused and is just a sound file with no discernible triggers we're not exactly sure when it would have played or for how long it would have it might have just played on loop in the background as additional music or there might have been a specific moment when we heard it go off only once we're unsure personally i think all of the contextual information we've just gone over is already enough to convince me that the hagraven we met here is the matriarch however there's one last thing i'd like to point out before we start discussing what exactly the matriarch was doing and what eso has to say about everything you see there's this dark brotherhood quest called breach insecurity in which the player has to assassinate a certain penatus oculatus agent because the brotherhood told you to well when you're given this mission one assassin named gabrielle tells us that she'll give us a special reward if we hide the person we kill's a body and make him hard to discover to earn your bonus do not kill gaius morrow in dragon bridge or on the road kill him in one of the other major cities he'll be visiting there the body will be discovered quickly as will the letter implicating gaius morrow in the plot to assassinate the emperor do that and astrid has authorized me to grant you a rather unique bonus it is a special token to be given to a lava the feeble in whiterun olava is an old and dear friend and a powerful seer the token entitles you to a reading of your future it's an opportunity one should not pass up it's a completely optional and we don't necessarily have to do it but if we do fulfill that portion of the mission and go back to gabriela she'll reward us with a unique token and tell us to give it to an elderly woman named olava the feeble in whiterun whom she claims will be able to deliver us with a psychic reading essentially what's happening here is if we fulfill that extra side objective and hid the body we'll be rewarded with the ability to see a psychic when we go to olava and show her the token she'll well she'll say this and you are not alone there are others a child of night a stalker of the sands oh but before you are family there will be blood such blood wait there's something else a potential for adventure and wealth it is a ruin ripe for the plunder deep wood readout far to the north west through there is end the last resting place of an assassin of old a dark brother who bequeaths his ancient earthly possessions to you yeah obviously it's the last part of her statement that interests us because after she tells us all of that we'll be given an objective marker to go visit hag's end in deep wood readout yeah i know earlier i said the location wasn't associated with any quests at all and i i guess i lied this minor quest is affiliated with the location but anyway when we visit hag's end with the lava's quest active we'll find a small little closet-like room opened that normally isn't with the body of a dead dark brotherhood assassin inside whose armor we can loot there will also be a nearby chest with some random level loot inside as well after locating this corpse the quest completely ends and there's literally nothing more for us to do but one theory is that maybe this assassin is found in hag's end because he was originally sent here to assassinate the matriarch but failed in his objective and was caught somehow the assassin is referred to as the dark brotherhood assassin of old and olava even refers to him as an ancient assassin a couple of times which implies he must have came here long long ago however his corpse isn't decomposed at all which would suggest that he recently passed away so we can't be sure on the dates nonetheless it's just one more thing to consider now all this evidence aside we still have no idea what exactly this matriarch's plans are or just how powerful she is i mean we don't know if she's in charge of all of the force warren or just certain groups of them and this is where eso finally comes in you see on that great porch of hag's end where we finally faced off against and permanently got to defeat the matriarch raven there was a small altar with a dead woman lying on top of it no doubt some sort of human sacrifice to the witch's dark gods however next to the body is also a unique steel dagger called bloodthorn which has unique enchantment that allows it to soul trap any enemies that die within 3 seconds of being hit by it now this unique weapon may not seem like much and for a while it seemed like an ordinary dungeon reward with no significance but when eso released in 2014 we were able to meet a new clan of reachmen called the bloodthorne cult who inhabited far western high rock the bloodthorne cult was particularly renowned for their strong proficiency with magic compared to the other reached tribes and they had loads of hagravens and witches within their ranks to me it seems like by including the bloodthorne dagger at hag's end bethesda may have been implying that the tribe in this location and the matriarch were members of or at very least affiliated with the old bloodthorne cult themselves now you might be thinking oh maybe it's just a coincidence nate well no we can actually get the very same bloodthorne dagger as a quest reward for completing one of the bloodthorn colts quests in eso hail you return what did you learn of the bloodthorn plans the fools did they succeed the dangers that face us become clearer i will try to convince chief tasgol of this though i doubt he will accept the word of an outsider your efforts on our behalf bring you honor [Music] now the issue is that eso took place around a thousand years prior to the events of skyrim and the bloodthorne cult wasn't actually in the reach but in far western high rock and in that game we may have gotten to destroy them too you see the big problem with the bloodthorne cult and eso was that they were creating a lot of werewolves and lycanthropes and trying to overthrow the regional government we ultimately defeated their leader and cleared out their headquarters however never completely destroyed them here's what i think remember how one of those notes in deepwood veil specifically said the matriarch led the force warn here i think this force warned group in the matriarch came from high rock and were in some way associated with the bloodthorne cult before they arrived perhaps they're actual members of the organization or some sort of splinter group of them nonetheless a connection seems obvious i think this is a pretty solid theory that all the evidence substantiates but there's one problem in eso there is already a different group of reachmen at deepwood vale back in may of this year 2020 the elder scrolls online got a new expansion that unlocked the north western region of skyrim specifically the holds of hothingara hillmarch and the northern sliver of the reach it wasn't anywhere close to all of skyrim or anything just a chunk of its northwestern region but within this chunk of new land we could visit again was the deepwood veil from skyrim and believe it or not it was still populated by force warn and witches the problem is that the witches and reachmen in deepwood veil in eso aren't a part of the bloodthorn cult but instead a coven of which is called the ice reach coven the ice reach coven is well again a coven of witches and reachmen operating in skyrim around a thousand years ago in eso we'd find out these guys were responsible for creating massive giant red storms called hero storms that were terrorizing the sea of ghosts and province of skyrim the ice reach coven was also a part of something called the grey host the grey host is western skyrim's primary antagonist it's not really a single faction but an alliance of all sorts of darkened evil independent factions who were teaming up to try and take over the world these include the ice reach coven other witch covens multiple werewolf packs some vampire clans a whole shebang of dark forces basically now sadly and i've talked about this before on my channel we're not really sure what happened to the grey host or the ice reach coven for that matter in eso you see the way the western skyrim eso expansion works is that over the entire year of 2020 its main quest line slowly gets more and more added onto it and more quests are released which reveal more and more of the story because the year's not over yet though we don't really know how everything ends and the exact fate of the grey host and the ice reach coven remain a mystery we did however definitely get to clear out the ice reach from deepwood veil and kill all of their members in this location so unless eso unveils some sort of plot twist or there's some sort of further development it seems like they were all gone by the end of the expansion which of course provided the opening for the matriarch and her potentially bloodthorne cult affiliated force warn to move in during the events of skyrim so the timelines still seem to add up so long as eso doesn't throw us any more curveballs all that said though even if we assumed the matriarch was affiliated with the bloodthorns how did she come into power over all these force-worn tribes in the reach well that is something eso doesn't provide us any answers with at least not yet anyway i'd bet she's not in control over all of the force worn but instead just her tribe and maybe a couple other loyal tribes there are still probably force worn in the area that don't recognize her some of you may recall in markarth's prison of sydney mine there's a character we can meet named madanak who calls himself the king of all foresworn and we can complete a small quest where he allows us to quote unquote join the force warn and we can help him escape his prison and get back to his clan but after we do that it becomes blatantly obvious that madden axe not actually the king of all forsworn just his small group of forcemorn so i suspect the matriarch may be in a similar position she leads her clan and a couple more but she's not necessarily in charge of all of the force worn if you catch my meaning either way though this would still make her one of the most powerful characters in the entire game leading the largest force behind the stormcloaks and imperial army respectively and that is definitely something to brag about anyway on that note we are going to wrap up thanks so much for stopping by everybody what do you think was going on with the matriarch do you think she descends from the bloodthorne colton is leaving a few separate clans together or maybe do you believe that she's in charge of all of the force worn or heck maybe do you think the matriarch wasn't even this hagraven to begin with that we got it all wrong leave a comment down below as always like readings are very much appreciated again thanks for watching and hope to catch you all in my next video peace out everyone

Channel: TheEpicNate315

Views: 463,387

Rating: 4.9321437 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: wAFb-A5AneE

Length: 24min 31sec (1471 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 19 2020