The Way of the Voice

Overview

 * Prerequisite: Dragon Rising
 * Quest Giver: Jarl Balgruuf the Greater
 * Reward: N/A
 * Reputation Gain: N/A

Background
''The Greybeards have summoned me to their monastery of High Hrothgar on the slopes of the Throat of the World. They seem to have learned of the mysterious power I gained when I killed the Dragon out side of Whiterun.''

The Shout
After the completion of Dragon Rising you will hear a shout from High Hrothgar. Your character will think nothing of it until he talks to Jarl Balgruuf who informs him that the shout was from the Greybeards who reside upon the Throat of the World. The Jarl tells you that you must go to their monastery High Hrothgar and speak to them.

7000 Steps
Travel to the town of Ivarstead and cross the bridge to the start of the infamous 7000 steps of the Throat of the World. Be careful when going up these stairs there is an Ice Troll and leveled enemies such as Frost Wolves and Ice Wraiths. There is also a Dragon that may attack. Providing you don't attack it first or hang around too long, it should leave you alone; however, you might have no choice here since the other enemies force you to stay in that area for a while.

Tip: There are several tactics of use against the Ice Troll (which seems to be non-levelscaled) on the way to High Hrothgar:

- Buy or steal a horse and run right next to him. Ice Trolls (and trolls in general) are not particularly fast.

- Fire damage is a weakness of trolls, and this one is no exception.

- Alternatively you can buy or steal a horse and scale the south side of the mountain which contains no monsters but is very steep (but still possible to scale).

- You can avoid the troll entirely by staying to the left of the road. Be careful not to fall off cliffs! Or you can make your way up on the mountain on the right and kill the troll. (can only be done by range attacks)

- Trolls can deal a lot of damage, but most of it can be avoided by tactically falling back when you see the troll raising his arms or preparing a power attack. If you need to heal, you can sprint away; the troll will not generally outrun you.

- When you are a nord, you can use battle cry to make the ice troll flee for 30 seconds. That is enough time to run to High Hrothgar.

- Low level mages can summon a fire atronach and then run like the wind. The Fire Atronach will not last long, but it will give the player enough time to get away.

- The rocks just before the Ice Troll can be climbed. These put you out of reach of the Troll. From there you can use your bow to slowly kill the Troll. If you have eagle eye perk this will be easier as you can get high enough on the rocks that in medium settings the Troll will not be seen.

High Hrothgar
Once you have made it up the 7000 steps you will be at High Hrothgar. Go inside and you will aproached by four members of the Greybeards, but only one can talk; Arngeir. He will ask you to demonstrate your abilities. Use your shout on Arngeir, don't worry your shouts cannot hurt them. Once you have done this Arngeir will welcome you as "Dragon Born", all the greybeard will shout at you three times(the amount of words needed to do a full shout). You will then be taught the second word of Unrelenting force and a new shout called Whirlwind Sprint.

Bugs
You might experience a minor bug where the objective "Speak to Arngeir" does not register as complete. If you have spoken to Arngeir, make sure you exit out of the small door down the stairs in front of Arngeir out into Skyrim. Sometimes when you turn around and exit out the big double doors, it will not register as completed. This can be easily fixed by re-entering the building and using the other exit (some players report this does not work either). Also may not register as complete if you climb the south side of the mountain, and do not enter through the front of the building.

Shouts can be used after a recharge. Only major Powers can be used once a day.

There's also another bug you might encounter right after when you've learned Ro. When you are going to test it, the greybeards are summoning targets for you by shouting Ik Lo Sah. The bug lies in the targets, as they do not appear. To fix this, right after they've shouted Ik Lo Sah, you should open your item menu and close it again. When you close the item menu the target should be there. If run into these bugs on the PC you can use the console to finish the quest by typing setstage mq105 140 which will complete it.

Trivia

 * The Way of the Voice is a lifestyle practiced by the Greybeards. They spend their entire life meditating and practicing to use power words.
 * Apart from the dragon born, who is born able to easly pick up the voice.

Der_Weg_der_Stimme