Sunderstone Gorge is a medium-sized cave tucked between Moss Mother Cavern to the south and Gjukar’s Monument to the north. It’s a mage hangout – mostly fire mages, with necromancers and skeletons mixed in – and someone spent a lot of effort on booby traps. The reward is a Word Wall for Fire Breath, a Stone of Barenziah and a decent haul of silver ore.
What you’ll find
- Leveled mages and necromancers, usually with one master-level caster posted outside the entrance.
- Skeletons and a Flame Atronach that appears when you climb the first steps in the final chamber.
- Traps galore: a fire trap, a spiked gate, a soul gem fire trap, a poison dart door and spear gates worked by pull chains.
- Two alchemy labs, an arcane enchanter and a combined cooking and sleeping area.
- Four silver ore veins, three of them on the wall you can’t climb near the start.
Quests
- No Stone Unturned: a Stone of Barenziah sits on a table with two bodies in front of the Word Wall.
- One possible location of the Staff of Tandil, wanted by Enthir.
- Discerning the Transmundane: the dead Wood Elf you need lies in the Word Wall room.
Notable items
- Word Wall – one word of Fire Breath.
- Conjuration skill book 2920, Frostfall (v10) on the lectern before the wall.
- Chests of every lock tier – apprentice, adept and a half-buried master chest – plus a leveled chest by the enchanter.
- A human heart in a cast iron pot on a shelf beside the Word Wall room.
Tips
Leave your horse a good distance away – the mage at the door is perfectly happy to roast it. You can trigger the first fire trap by shooting the skeleton on the right. In a hurry? At the oil-and-pressure-plate trap, turn right into the skeever alley, hop onto the half-buried urn to climb the ledge, then use the alchemy lab by the gate to pop out on the other side. Patient archers can also snipe the mages through the spike barriers before they notice anything.
Good to know
The Greybeards, Urag gro-Shub‘s notes and Letter from a Friend may call this place “Greywater Gorge” when pointing you to its Word of Power.
Nearby
Closest places covered on TamrielSaga: Moss Mother Cavern, Falkreath Imperial Camp, Hunter’s Rest, Bilegulch Mine, Fort Sungard.
Location data (hold, map position, editor ID) read from the Skyrim game files; details checked against community wiki articles and summarised in our own words.