Skyrim:The Affairs of Hagravens

After discovering an imprisoned hagraven, you must help her reclaim her lost tower. Quest Giver: Melka Location(s): Blind Cliff Cave Reward: Eye of Melka ID: dunBlindCliffQST Suggested Level: 14

Melka needs your help

Quick Walkthrough

1. Find Melka imprisoned in Blind Cliff Cave.
2. Protect her from Forsworn as you travel through the tower.
3. Kill Petra.

Detailed Walkthrough

A Hagraven in Need

Upon entering Blind Cliff Bastion you will see the hagraven Melka in a cage. As you approach her, she will ask you to free her and help her reclaim her tower from another hagraven, Petra. To release Melka, pull the chain near the cage. After leaving the cage she will then lead you through her tower. The first room displays a central stone slab adorned with three handles; Melka will tell you that the middle one is the correct one to use. Pull the handle and go through the gate it opens. Follow the short path into a room inhabited by a Forsworn. There will then be a gate with a tunnel full of swinging blades. Melka will mention a lever that will stop the blades: she will then pull a handle on the floor that lowers a section of a wall, revealing another lever to do just that.

Reclaiming the Tower

Move through the tunnel and go up the stairs. After the stairs you will pass a section of wall that moves away when the nearby handle is pulled. Through the newly cleared section of wall are some ingots and a chest. The next room has an alchemy lab, and is referred to by Melka as her "parlor". Follow the path past the quicksilver ore. The next room contains Petra and two Forsworn. Killing them and Petra will result in Melka rewarding you with the unique staff, Eye of Melka. If Melka died anywhere along the way you can simply loot the staff from her corpse.

Notes

• You can also just kill Melka for the staff, but you will still have the objective to kill Petra and you will have lost your guide.

Bugs

• If you kill Petra before freeing Melka, the quest does not complete and remains in your list of quests.
  • This bug is fixed by version 1.3.1 of the Unofficial Skyrim Patch.
• Killing Petra may not flag quest completion and her quest marker remains over her corpse. One possible solution is to load an earlier save, speak to Melka while she is still caged, clear the rest of the tower, then return to Melka to release her from the cage. Once Melka reaches the room with Petra's corpse, she will give the option to collect her unique staff. (Another possible solution for PC players is to resurrect Petra, set the stage to 15 while she's still alive, then kill her again with the console. This will cause the quest to update and allow you to claim the staff from Melka. A third possible solution for PC players is to use the console command setstage dunBlindCliffQST 100 to get your log to acknowledge that Petra has been killed and progress the quest with the dialogue in which Melka gives her staff as reward) ^?
• Killing Petra may fail to fully complete the quest in a second fashion: the audible quest completion sound will be heard and the marker removed from her corpse, but the quest is not truly complete; the quest remains incomplete in Miscellaneous, Melka remains idle in the middle of the final room (and will actually return to the center if you use a spell to pull her away from it) and will not offer her staff to you. One solution is the console command setobjectivecompleted dunBlindCliffQST 15 1, which forces the game to acknowledge what the player has already done and removes the quest from the Journal finally. That does not, however, restore the dialog that would cause Melka to give you her staff, so killing her will be necessary if the staff is desired. ^?
• Completing this quest counts towards the Sideways achievement, even though it is not a Side Quest, i.e., it does not have a separate entry in your quest log
  Mod Notes: Quest stage 100 of the quest calls AchievementsQuest.IncSideQuests(), even though the quest Type is "Miscellaneous" instead of "Side Quests"
  • This bug is fixed by version 2.0.4 of the Unofficial Skyrim Patch.

This quest may fail to update in SSE after killing Melka, leaving it impossible to complete and remove from your log even with console commands, but "setstage dunBlindCliffQST 100" may also work.

Quest Stages

{{ Template:FULLPAGENAME0/Line|!|The Affairs of Hagravens|dunBlindCliffQST}} {{Template:FULLPAGENAME0/Line|1=15|2=|3=

Objective 15: Kill the Hagraven Petra

}}{{Template:FULLPAGENAME0/Line|1=20|2=|3=

Objective 15: Kill the Hagraven Petra

}}{{Template:FULLPAGENAME0/Line|1=100|2=fin|3=}}{{Template:FULLPAGENAME0/Line|1=200|2=|3=The Hagraven Melka is dead. }}

Stage	Finishes Quest	Journal Entry

• The following empty quest stages were omitted from the table: 10, 11, 30, 40, 45, 50, 60, 256.

Notes

* Any text displayed in angle brackets (e.g., <Alias=LocationHold>) is dynamically set by the Radiant Quest system, and will be filled in with the appropriate word(s) when seen in game.

• Not all Journal Entries may appear in your journal; which entries appear and which entries do not depends on the manner in which the quest is done.
• Stages are not always in order of progress. This is usually the case with quests that have multiple possible outcomes or quests where certain tasks may be done in any order. Some stages may therefore repeat objectives seen in other stages.
• If an entry is marked as "Finishes Quest" it means the quest disappears from the Active Quest list, but you may still receive new entries for that quest.
• On the PC, it is possible to use the console to advance through the quest by entering setstage dunBlindCliffQST stage, where stage is the number of the stage you wish to complete. It is not possible to un-complete (i.e. go back) quest stages, but it is possible to clear all stages of the quest using resetquest dunBlindCliffQST.