Nightgate Inn sits on the main road between Dawnstar and Windhelm, west of Forsaken Cave, beside a small frozen lake with a sheltered pier. Owner Hadring will tell you his great-grandfather built the place. It’s a bleak, quiet spot – cold weather outside, hardly any customers inside – which makes it the perfect hideaway for someone who doesn’t want to be found.
What you’ll find
- A classic Skyrim inn layout: a big common room with a central fire pit and the bar at one end, three bedrooms on the main floor and a large cellar below.
- Hadring, the innkeeper, who also hands out bounty quests.
- Balagog gro-Nolob, an Orc renting the cellar room long-term.
- Fultheim, the only regular, who drinks here because, as he points out, where else would he go?
- Two orichalcum ore veins just south of the inn and three clay deposits by the lake (Hearthfire).
Quests
- Recipe for Disaster – as the Listener of the Dark Brotherhood, you’re sent to kill the Gourmet – who turns out to be none other than Balagog in the cellar.
- A False Front (Imperial side) – a Stormcloak courier may stop here, and you need to rob or kill him to get the documents.
- Ask Hadring for rumors and he may share something that sets you on the road toward the Dark Brotherhood.
Notable items
- Sneak skill book Legend of Krately House on a bedside table in the cellar.
- The book Report: Disaster at Ionith.
- Fultheim carries a Blades sword.
- A Dawnguard cache at the foot of the pier once Saliah has been found (Dawnguard).
Tips
The ore veins and clay make this a nice stop if you’re building a house or smithing on the way to Windhelm. Don’t count on a carriage, though: even a driver hired for your homestead will never bring you here, so you’ll be walking or fast-travelling. If you pick a fight with Balagog outdoors and drag him into the pond, the water turns red – a grim little detail the developers clearly enjoyed.
Good to know
The game files hold cut content for this spot, including containers, keys and a griefstricken chef, all tagged with the name “Heljarchen” – a name later reused for an unrelated location.
Nearby
Closest places covered on TamrielSaga: Bronze Water Cave, Great Lift at Alftand, Ironbind Barrow, Forsaken Cave, Shrouded Grove.
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.
