Waking Nightmare

Overview

 * Prerequisite: None
 * Quest Giver: Erandur
 * Reward: Skull of Corruption OR Erandur as a Follower
 * Reputation Gain: N/A

Background
Erandur has assured me he can end the nightmares, the source of which seems to be within Nightcaller Temple, a place of worship for Vaermina. I have agreed to assist him in this endeavor and we are now on our way.

Walkthrough
This quest is given when you visit the Hold of Dawnstar and speak to Erandur who is in the Windpeak Inn. All the townsfolk are suffering the same nightmares and Erandur knows how to get rid of them. He wants you to travel with him to Nightcaller temple, which is just a short distance east of Dawnstar, to stop the nightmares.

Help him kill the mobs (according to your level) and the game will auto update the quest. He is revealed as a former priest of Vaermina who ran away during a long-ago attack on the Temple by revengeful orcs. He converted to become a priest of Mara and now wishes to resolve loose ends in the Temple.

Follow all the quest updates, defending yourself, until you reach the end scene as Erandur casts a spell to destroy the Skull of Corruption, a Daedric weapon which has been causing the nightmares.

Here you can kill Erandur as Vaermina commands and take the Skull to yourself, or let him complete his spell to destroy the Skull. In the latter case, he can be hired as a companion for no charge. If you kill Erandur you get the following Daedric artifact:


 * Skull of Corruption (Skyrim)

Bugs

 * There is a glitch associated with this quest (for the Xbox 360, also confirmed for ps3 and PC) where Erandur disappears when he enters Nightcaller Temple. A possible solution is to speak to him a second time outside Nightcaller Temple temple before he manages to enter the temple, then wait for 5 seconds before entering yourself. If nothing happens, go back to the inn and Erandur might be there. In case you're completely stuck and none of the above helps, go back into the temple, open the console and type this cheat: prid 0024280 moveto player


 * A more simple solution is to dismiss your follower before entering the temple (Dismiss at the Inn where you meet Erandur). The bug happens because you try to enter the temple with your follower. Don't try this and also don't let your follower wait somewhere else, the bug will also happen when you do this.


 * After the deactivating the barrier and clearing the first 2 rooms, Erandur will go ahead and trigger other baddies that will then look and wait for you in the rooms he passes through and wait for you in the final chamber to complete the quest. It is also possible for Erandur to disappear making the quest impossible to complete.