Shor’s Watchtower is a stone guard tower along the road northeast of Shor’s Stone, north of Riften. Nobody is on watch any more. The four guards who held it are all dead, a letter on site explains how, and the local trolls treat the area as their personal hunting ground.
What you’ll find
- Four dead soldiers – by default they are hold guards, killed in an Imperial ambush. If the Empire takes the region back, they are Imperial soldiers instead.
- A letter explaining what happened: the Watchtower Guard’s Letter, or the Imperial Letter if the Legion holds the area.
- Trolls wandering the surroundings at random.
- An Imperial camp a little to the north.
- A fallen tree trunk south of the tower with a skill book inside.
Notable items
- Three Thieves (Sneak skill book), in the huge trunk lying south of the tower.
Tips
Trolls roam here at random, so approach carefully and come ready for a proper fight rather than a sightseeing trip. Don’t forget the hollow trunk on your way out – a free Sneak boost is a decent consolation for climbing over corpses.
If the letter on the first floor refuses to open, save and reload. It may also be lying on the table rather than the floor. Occasionally the dead soldiers are seen standing and swaying as if alive; they are still lootable, just deeply unsettling.
Good to know
The guards and items may respawn about once a week, so the tower keeps re-staging its own tragedy. The letters name people who never actually appear here: the guards’ letter mentions an “Akar” in charge, and the Imperial version a “Lieutenant Armiger”. Neither is among the bodies. Under Imperial control, a female legionnaire may be among the dead, which is rare to see in the Legion’s ranks.
The tower also makes a handy landmark for nearby spots: Tolvald’s Cave lies to the east, and with Dawnguard, Ruunvald Excavation is directly east as well.
Nearby
Closest places covered on TamrielSaga: Shor’s Stone, Tolvald’s Cave, Ruunvald Excavation, Northwind Summit, Northwind Mine.
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.
