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So I had successfully invaded the Thalmor Embassy, purloined all dossiers of interest (the one on Ulfric corroborated Sylvaine's deep hatred of the man) and got Malborn out alive (IIRC for the first time in all my characters) by summoning a Dremora Lord next to him to keep his captors occupied till I got up the stairs to finish them off. Met up with Delphine (who hadn't exactly endeared herself any further to Sylvaine by forcing her to cross half of Skyrim to retrieve her gear & goods; seriously, Delphine, what would it have cost you to wait in Solitude for a day? Oh I forgot, you have an inn to run... ) and informed her of my discoveries, then set forth to find Esbern.

Remembering I still had a job from the College to do, I decided to make for Winterhold first and come to Riften from the north. Stopped at Fellglow Keep, talked the Caller into letting me have the stolen books (Sylvaine's generally on friendly terms with warlocks, and Orthorn is of no use to her) and returned them to Urag. After another annoying visit by one of those meddling Psijic monks and a few friendly chats with Tolfdir, the Augur and Savos Aren, Mirabelle told me that I would have to investigate a Dwarven ruin by the name of Mzuft. Now Sylvaine deeply loathes the godless, Daedra-deriding Dwemer, their blasphemous constructs and everything else to do with them, but seeing that Mzulft was about half the way south to Riften where we were going anyway, yeah, well, fine.

Except, as we all know (and if you didn't you had no business clicking on the spoiler ), I found out that the Staff of Magnus seemed to be in Labyrinthian, and Sylvaine had already been there once and tried in vain to get in. After a brief debate with herself, she resolved to report to Aren first and then double back south to Riften, hoping the Thalmor wouldn't find Esbern before she got there.

Unfortunately, things had turned to the worse at the College: Ancano had gone haywire, Aren was dead, and Winterhold was under attack from a horde of flying zigzagging magic energy baseballs in a bloody blizzard. (For some reason it's always snowing heavily for me when the anomalies attack, making it difficult to see the buggers properly, let alone kill them. I so hate that quest.) It was a drawn-out fight which continued into the late evening, and I had quite forgotten that it was that time of the month again; not being keen on getting into a fight with innocent bystanders the guards, I made it out of town just in time before the transformation kicked in.

Several digested bears, bandits, horkers and a mage later I discovered Journeyman's Nook (another first time, I think – can't remember ever having been there) where I breakfasted on poor Borvir's corpse and awaited the dawn. Back in human form, I returned to Winterhold, finished the remaining anomalies and, having received the torques of Labyrinthian from Mirabelle, decided I'd had just about enough of all these academic mages, power-crazy Thalmor and manipulating Psijics and they could well sort out their own mess by themselves. As a sort of farewell statement to the College, I killed J'zargo for nearly killing me with his doctored flamecloak scrolls. (Sylvaine is convinced he knew exactly what he was doing, trying to get rid of competition so his own star would shine the brighter, the fool; she never was competition for him, having no ambitions whatsoever for a college career – she just came there for the master spells, everything else was coincidence - , but she doesn't forgive an attempt on her life.)

After a short stop in Windhelm for selling and brewing purposes, another full moon rose and I found out you can run from Windhelm to Riften in a single night in beast form and still have spare time left to check out any promising caves on the way; ended up in Broken Helm Hollow and staid there for a little sleep in the early morning hours. In Riften I circumvented the whole Brynjolf thing by talking to Keerava at the Bee & Barb, who directed me to the Ragged Flagon, and Dirge, who told me Esbern was hiding down in the Warrens.

Now the way Tamriel's celestial mechanics work (according to Tales of Lycanthropy), I had another full moon night ahead of me and a premonition that Esbern wouldn't take kindly to having his travelling companion turn into a raving beast on the way, so I was forced to spend the time otherwise until it was safe to talk to him. I made the best of it by setting a few people to nonessential, waiting for dusk in the Flagon and binge-eating about every soul down there who wasn't hiding behind a heavily barred door (it's a mystery to me how Sylvaine is keeping her slim human figure with that kinda diet; I suppose she burns all the calories with sprinting and power attacks while in wereform). Too sad Mjoll the Lioness will never know that her dream has come true...