Skyrim:Rescue Mission

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Fulfill a contract given to the Companions to rescue a kidnapped citizen. Quest Giver: Skjor or Vilkas Location(s): Whiterun, Jorrvaskr Prerequisite Quest: Take Up Arms Reward: Leveled Gold ID: CR08

Quick WalkthroughEdit

1. Speak to Skjor or Vilkas in Jorrvaskr.
2. Travel to the randomly-determined location.
3. Rescue the citizen from the location's enemies.
4. Escort the citizen back to their hometown.
5. Return to Skjor or Vilkas for your reward.

Detailed WalkthroughEdit

Either Vilkas or Skjor has received notice that someone has been kidnapped, and the Companions have been asked to attempt a rescue. He will send you to the location of the kidnapped individual and tell you to free them from the location and then escort them to their nearby home. See Radiant Options below for possible variations of this quest.

Note that this is a repeating quest: each time you go to Vilkas or Skjor (when told to ask a Companion for work), he will give a different version of the quest.

Radiant OptionsEdit

This quest has several radiant options. The criteria used to select victims for this quest are:

• The victim must live in one of the marked habitation areas listed below.
• Must not have unique voice acting.
• Must not be a part of the following factions: PlayerHousecarlFaction, The Companions, CurrentHireling, JobJarlFaction, or CurrentFollowerFaction.
• Must not be marked as an Essential NPC.
• The victim's faction can not be related to you.
• Must be a unique character (excludes guards, etc.).

NPC ResidencesEdit

The victim can be randomly selected from over 200 potential NPCs residing in one of the areas listed below:

Eastmarch	Falkreath Hold	Haafingar	Hjaalmarch	The Pale	The Reach	The Rift	Whiterun Hold	Winterhold	SolstheimDB
Brandy-Mug Farm Darkwater Crossing Gloombound Mine Hlaalu Farm Hollyfrost Farm Kynesgrove Mixwater Mill Narzulbur Windhelm	Falkreath Half-moon Mill	Dragon Bridge Katla's Farm Solitude Solitude Sawmill	Abandoned Shack Morthal Stonehills	Anga's Mill Dawnstar Loreius Farm Nightgate Inn	Dushnikh Yal Karthwasten Kolskeggr Mine Left Hand Mine Markarth Mor Khazgur Old Hroldan Inn Salvius Farm Soljund's Sinkhole	Heartwood Mill Ivarstead Largashbur Merryfair Farm Riften Sarethi Farm Shor's Stone Snow-Shod Farm	Battle-Born Farm Chillfurrow Farm Honningbrew Meadery Pelagia Farm Riverwood Rorikstead Whiterun	College of Winterhold Deekus Camp Whistling Mine Winterhold	Raven Rock Skaal Village Tel Mithryn

Quest LocationsEdit

The radiant location is randomly chosen from 50 possible locations, amounting to a large fraction of the dungeons that contain boss-type enemies and have a place where a captive can be locked up. The location will be limited to holds that you have previously visited, so early in the game you may only receive destinations within Whiterun Hold, but later in the game there are many more possible destinations. All possible locations are listed in the table below.

Eastmarch	Falkreath Hold	Haafingar	Hjaalmarch	The Pale	The Reach	The Rift	Whiterun Hold	Winterhold	SolstheimDB
A Bandit Camp or Bandit-occupied fort (21 possible locations)
Cragslane Cavern Gallows Rock Lost Knife Hideout Uttering Hills Camp	Bilegulch Mine Cracked Tusk Keep Embershard Mine Knifepoint Ridge		Orotheim Robber's Gorge	Frostmere Crypt		Broken Helm Hollow Faldar's Tooth Treva's Watch	Halted Stream Camp Redoran's Retreat Silent Moons Camp Valtheim Towers White River Watch	Fort Fellhammer Wreck of the Winter War	Bloodskal Barrow
A Falmer Hive (9 possible locations):
		Lost Echo Cave	Chillwind Depths		Gloomreach Liar's Retreat	Darkwater Pass Tolvald's Cave	Shimmermist Cave	Frostflow Lighthouse Stillborn Cave
A Hagraven Nest (6 possible locations):
	Orphan Rock	Ravenscar Hollow			Blind Cliff Cave Hag's End Lost Valley Redoubt		Serpent's Bluff Redoubt
A Vampire Lair (3 possible locations):
Mara's Eye Pond		Pinemoon Cave					Broken Fang Cave Moldering RuinsDG
A Warlock Lair (11 possible locations):
Cragwallow Slope Morvunskar	Brittleshin Pass Ilinalta's Deep Sunderstone (Greywater) Gorge	Northwatch Keep				Darklight Tower	Brittleshin Pass Fellglow Keep Rannveig's Fast	Hob's Fall Cave Yngvild

• Note that the categories for each of the location types above will list all locations with the given type of occupant, including locations that do not have a boss-type enemy or do not have place to lock up captives; therefore, some of the locations listed in the categories are not possible destinations for this quest.

RewardEdit

Levels	Reward	USLEEP Reward
1–9	100	100
10–19	150	150
20–29	300	200
30–39	300	250
40+	300	300

†Level is based on when the player completed the previous quest (or level one for the first quest), not the player's level when receiving the quest or its reward.

‡The reward amounts for radiant Companions quests do not progress as intended.

• The Unofficial Skyrim Legendary Edition Patch, version 3.0.3, fixes this bug. (details)

NotesEdit

• If Dragonborn is installed, some radiant locations may be on Solstheim. If you are in Skyrim, you will not receive a quest marker pointing you to the quest location, but must travel to Solstheim first (at which point any quest markers you have to quests in Skyrim will disappear).
• If you complete this quest successfully, then the citizen you rescue becomes a friend of yours. This may affect thane quests and other aspects of the game.
• Unlike most other radiant Companions quests, this quest starts immediately when it is offered, giving you no chance to refuse it.

BugsEdit

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• The hostage may not follow you when you've saved them. Arriving at their hometown should update the quest, though you may have to talk to them afterwards. ^?
  • You can use the console by targeting them and using moveto player.
• The hostage may be at their village/town instead of the area the quest says to go to.
  • This might be resolved by entering their home, then leaving immediately. This fix is reported to not work for Heimskr. Heimskr might not spawn at the hostage point and will stay at the shrine, however, this might be resolved by fast traveling to outside Whiterun where he may actually be making his way to his hostage point where he can then be rescued and taken home.
• The hostage may be an NPC who has already died. In this case, the corpse will be found in the radiant location.
  • The Unofficial Skyrim Patch, version 1.2.6, fixes this bug.
• The person you are supposed to rescue is invisible (not game invisible, they are NOT there). You can't complete the quest because you can't initiate them to follow you to safety. ^?
  • The missing NPC might appear to be in an undefined spot that hovers over the map. If this is the case, it might be resolved by using the "jump over the wall" glitch in Whiterun. Follow the instructions found here to exit the city, and run towards the marker. If successful, you should be able to find the target NPC in a glitched area. Talk to them and then fast travel back to Whiterun.
  • In Whiterun the compass pointer might show that the person you are looking for is within the city (pointer without a gate), however on the map it shows them outside the city. Open the console in Whiterun and type in: "tcl" and run towards the target beyond the city walls. The target may be hovering in the sky, so check all directions once you reach the marker. Talk to them and then fast travel back to Whiterun. Open the console and type in: "tcl" again.
  • Open the game console and type this in to force the next quest line: setstage cr08 21. That will have them follow you (even though they do not exist) and fast travel to the location you are asked to go to, or somewhere nearby.
• It says "take your leave of (name)", which again, since (name) does not exist, you can't. ^?
  • Open the console again and type in: "setstage cr08 25" again without quotes. It will tell you to go back to Vilkas and end the quest (which he will accept as complete).
• The civilian may not yet have been captured or may just be walking around. The NPC will not follow you and just walks around and is either busy or gives you default scripting.
• You may complete the rescue mission and escort the civilian back to their home, but the quest will not recognize you have brought them home. Following rescue of Wilhem from Ilinalta's deep, a successful return to Iverstead was accomplished. The marker shows the correct location in front of Vilemyr Inn. However, regardless of where you go in town, Wilhelm fails to recognize he is home and simply repeats -- "Please, get me home!" Based on the Quest Stages below, the quest is stuck in Stage 21. In this case it may help to enter and exit the NPC's home.
• If those don't work, you can find the civilian again and simply kill the person failing the mission ^?
• If the targeted civilian is part of a scripted scene that the player hasn't witnessed yet, they will not be moved to the target dungeon. They will still have the appropriate dialogue but the quest will be rendered unfinishable without console commands. ^?
• The quest objective to talk to the victim may appear after you're already escorting them home, in which case it will remain incomplete until the end of the quest.

Quest StagesEdit

Rescue Mission (CR08)
Stage	Finishes Quest	Journal Entry
10		<Alias=Victim> has been kidnapped and taken to <Alias=Lair>. I need to get <Alias.PronounObj=Victim> back to <Alias=VictimHome>. Objective 10: Rescue <Alias=Victim> from <Alias=Lair>
20		Objective 20: Talk to <Alias=Victim>
21		Objective 21: Escort <Alias=Victim> back to <Alias=VictimHome>
22		Objective 22: Take your leave of <Alias=Victim>
25		I rescued <Alias=Victim> from <Alias=Lair> and escorted <Alias.PronounObj=Victim> back to <Alias=VictimHome>. Objective 25: Return to <Alias.ShortName=Questgiver>
50		I found <Alias=Victim> in <Alias=Lair> but <Alias.Pronoun=Victim> died. Objective 25: Return to <Alias.ShortName=Questgiver>
100	Finishes quest
150	Fails quest
250	Fails quest

• The following empty quest stages were omitted from the table: 0, 1, 200.

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 CR08 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 CR08.