The Soul Cairn (Dawnguard) is a plane of Oblivion where souls go after being trapped in black soul gems and burned up powering enchantments. You reach it through a portal in Castle Volkihar during and after Chasing Echoes. It is grey, gloomy and full of the undead – and it is where you will find Serana‘s mother Valerica, plus one of the Elder Scrolls.
What you’ll find
- A dry, lifeless landscape of dead trees and Soul Husks under a sunless sky with one moon, a vast black void and constant lightning.
- Hostile undead: bonemen, wrathmen, mistmen, the Keepers on the tallest spires and, if you summon it, the Reaper.
- A huge fortified wall splitting the realm, plus magical barriers sealing off certain areas.
- Glowing soul fissures in the ground that fill your biggest empty soul gem, and crystal circles that heal you once before going dim.
- Floating purple crystals that drain the health of anything living nearby – eating a Soul Husk counters the drain for a while.
- Four lightning attractors: feed one a greater or grand soul gem, and lightning turns it into a black soul gem while summoning undead to greet you.
- Locked rooms barred by metal poles, opened by hitting both glowing blue orbs on nearby obelisks with arrows, spells or shouts.
- Reaper’s Lair – put three reaper gem fragments (found in chests beneath the health-draining crystals) into the receptacle to summon the Reaper.
- Boneyard – opens once all three Keepers are dead; Valerica waits inside, and Durnehviir attacks soon after you enter.
Quests
- Beyond Death – kill the Keepers, survive Durnehviir and claim the Elder Scroll from Valerica. Afterwards Durnehviir teaches you a shout to call him.
- Impatience of a Saint – the soul of Jiub, in the northeast, wants the ten lost pages of his opus back.
- Find Arvak’s Skull – fetch the skull from a glowing pavilion near the big castle to free Arvak and earn a spell to summon him.
- Soul Husk Hunt – Morven Stroud, just east of the dividing wall, trades enchanted weapons, armor or spell tomes for every 25 Soul Husks. Repeatable, since husks respawn.
Notable items
- Spell tomes: Conjure Boneman, Conjure Mistman and Conjure Wrathman.
- Scroll of Storm Thrall.
- The local undead may drop Soul Husks and ectoplasm – the only respawning enemies that carry ectoplasm.
Tips
Only vampires or the partially soul-trapped can enter. The soul-trapped version comes with Weakened Soul, which cuts your health, magicka and stamina by 45 and slows their recovery – find the soul essence gem to undo it. Other followers stay home, so it is just you and Serana. Getting lost? Hug the edges of the map: almost everything worth seeing sits near them. And do not stash anything here – the whole realm resets every 10 in-game days, and the Ideal Masters do not do lost and found.
Good to know
Some souls tell you how they ended up here, and a few nod to earlier Elder Scrolls games – Jiub himself is a Morrowind cameo. One soul even borrows a line from Ghostbusters 2.
Details checked against community wiki articles and the Skyrim/Dawnguard game files, summarised in our own words.
