Calcelmo’s Laboratory is the living and research quarters of the court wizard Calcelmo and his nephew Aicantar, reached through the Dwemer Museum in Understone Keep, Markarth. The two usually hang around the keep near the Nchuand-Zel entrance, but this is where the secrets live. Most of it stays locked until the Thieves Guild sends you in during Hard Answers.
What you’ll find
- Wizard’s Guards on patrol – if spotted you get a 5 gold bounty and they attack without offering a chance to pay.
- Entry Room: oil on the floor, a dart trap, and a side room with a Dwarven Spider plus the Spider Control Rod that lets you steer it into the guards.
- Throne Chamber with a raised throne, traps and Calcelmo’s bedroom (apprentice-locked display cases, scrolls).
- Aicantar’s bedroom, the Steam Hall (a valve fires floor threshers; poison gas trap too) and the Statue Room flanked by two Dwarven Spheres, leading to a workroom whose valve triggers ballista, thresher and flamethrower traps.
- Markarth Wizard’s Balcony, with a lovely city view, linking to Calcelmo’s Tower and its stone slab bearing Dwemer and Falmer text side by side.
Quests
Hard Answers – you need a rubbing of the stone in the tower. Aicantar’s part of the lab can’t be bypassed until the quest is active.
Notable items
- Dwemer Puzzle Cube (larceny target) in the Statue Room, just past the arcane enchanter.
- Chimarvamidium (Heavy Armor) in the tower, left after the first inner door.
- Twin Secrets (Enchanting) on the table opposite the enchanter.
- Spider Control Rod in the small room left of the first chamber.
Tips
Use the guards’ patrols: wait for one to step away from a door, then slip through. Valves are your friends – lure pursuers onto the threshers and let Dwemer engineering do the work. The control rod is great fun when it works, but reportedly the spider sometimes isn’t there at all, so have a plan B. The balcony’s broken wall opens onto a cliffside path ending at a waterfall if you need a scenic escape.
Details checked against community wiki articles and the Skyrim game files, summarised in our own words.
