Skyrim Walkthrough: Discerning the Transmundane / Elder Knowledge

This quest combination most often begins with Paarthurnax telling you that you need to go find out about the Elder Scroll from the people at the College of Winterhold. Go talk to Urag and he will show you two books to read, one of which is nonsense.

The first thing you need to do after reading the book Ruminations is tell Urag that the "Ruminations" book is incomprehensible. He will tell you that probably the only person who can help you figure out what it means is Septimus Signus, who wrote the book. Keep talking to him and Urag will tell you that Septimus was obsessed with Dwemer artifacts and is now somewhere in the ice fields north of the college. Your objective will now be changed to find Septimus Signus and a quest marker will be placed at his location (in the ice fields north of the College of Winterhold). Go find him.

Once you find him, just talk to him. He will sound completely crazy and he it turns out that he knows he's crazy. He apparently has read and Elder Scroll and it messed up his mind. Just talk to him about everything you can and you will learn a lot from him. He will end up telling you that he also needs the Elder Scroll (or information from it rather) to get the Dwemer Lockbox open. He will give you a Lexicon that will need to be transcribed and an Attunement Sphere that will get you inside the the place where the Elder Scroll is kept. He will mention that he wants you to go deep within somewhere and when you talk to him more about it he will mention the Tower Mzark. The place deep within is Blackreach.


Your quest log will be updated during your conversation so that your goal is now to transcribe the Lexicon. For the Elder Knowledge quest, you should aslo have goal relating to recovering the Elder Scroll. You should now leave the outpost, head to Winterhold, then go SW to Alftand using the path behind the Jarl's Longhouse. As you leave the outpost, you will meet the Daedric Prince, Hermaeus Mora. You have no choice but to have a conversation and if you want a really cool reward, you should agree to help.

If you have already been to Saarthal, you can fast travel there first to save some travel time, but either way, just keep heading SW until you get to Alftand. Once you get there, go down the little wooden bridge thing until you get to the entrance of Alftand Glacial Ruins and head inside.

Once you are inside here, there is really only one path you can possibly take that doesn't dead-end very quickly - just keep going. Watch out for dwarven machines and Falmer throughout this whole quest. Throughout the whole quest, keep an eye out for rooms with locked doors - there are a number of them and many have some good loot in them.

Once you kill the Khajiit named J'darr, read his journal and then continue past the room where the spheres attack you to a room with a novice level locked gate. You'll want the treasure behind this gate. From here, go through the door to the NW and again keep an eye out for treasure behind locked doors (like the golden door not too far away).

Head into the Alftand Animonculory when you get to the door for it. Be careful of the pistons as you come in and then be careful of the trap a little later on. When you get to the gate that you don't have the option to open, you need to pull the lever to open it. Head down the big spiraling ramp and then when it ends, you just need to jump down to the platform, but be careful not to hur yourself by jumping too far. Then keep working your way down more spiraling ramp. There are a lot of Falmer through this part of the quest so just be careful not to get ganged up on by too many of them.

Soon, you should reach a door to the Alftand Cathedral - go through it. Head West into a grotto area, climb the stairs to the platform with the chests and lever, and activate the lever. Through the door that just opened you will meet a Dwarven Centurion - kill him and take the key from him.

Go up the stairs and open the gate behind which are two thieves named Sulla and Umana - kill them and open the master locked gate to the SW (your key will open it). Activate the Dwarven Mechanism which will use the Attunement Sphere from Septimus and unlock a stairway to Blackreach - go there.

As soon as you enter the area, look for the big crossbow in front of you on the platform - use the lever next to it to shoot it and kill the Centurion Sphere down below. Feel free to explore the area as much as you want, but watch out for Falmer and Chaurus. Eventually, head to the lake area with the stairs up to the little fort place. There are a bunch of Falmer so be careful as you cross the little bridge to get there. Then leave that area out the other side and ahead to the tomb thing marked with the quest marker. When you go in, there will be a lever that will take you to the Tower of Mzark - use it. Go through the door to the SW and enter the Oculory wehre you will find the puzzle.

Tower of Mzark Puzzle Solution:


There are 5 pedestals in front of you, 4 of which have buttons. from left to right, we'll call the buttons A, B, C, and D. To begin with, you should only have the C and D buttons active to use.

Before messing with the buttons, put the Blank Lexicon into the little stand thing to the right of the buttons. All you need to do is hit the C button 4 times in a row (this will make the B button active and make the Lexicon start to glow and rotate), then hit the B button twice (which will make the A button active), then the A button once.

This will cause the crystals to come down in the middle of the room. Pick up the Runed Lexicon from the stand, and head to the lowered crystals in the middle of the room. Grab the Elder Scroll from it's location in the crystal thing, leave via the door to the East, and use the lever  to leave to Skyrim. This will end the Elder Knowledge quest and will begin the Alduin's Bane quest. For these quests, you now need to head back to Paarthurnax at the Throat of the World.

To continue the Discerning the Transmundane quest, head back to Septimus Signus at his outpost North of The College of Winterhold. Go inside and talk to Septimus - follow the general conversation line and he will give you another task. This further work is to collect blood from every race of character alive in the world. Basically, you just need to go kill or find bodies of people of each race. Then when you click on them to search their bodies, you can choose to harvest their blood instead of searching them. Once you've done this head back and talk to Septimus.

When you get back there, tell him you've got the blood he wanted. He will take it from you and use it to open the Dwemer Lockbox. Follow him inside and he will die at the bottom of the stairs and Hermaeus Mora will appear again and your quest log is updated to tell you to take the book that is on the pedestal. Once you take it, you can read it and you will be given a choice between warrior, magic, and shadow (or something along those lines). Depending on which one you choose, you will be given a level increase in each skill from that skill type. For instance, if you choose, shadow, your light armor, sneak, lockpicking, pickpocket, and speech skills will all gain a level. Once you have chosen what skill set to increase, the book will be removed from your inventory and disappears. This concludes the quests.

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