Liar's Retreat, South West of Dragon Bridge
Libertion of Skyrim is a quest, or a revolution, that is only available if the Dragonborn decides to join the Stormcloak rebellion.
It consists of taking over Imperial controlled towns in the name of the Stormcloaks.
Order of Towns Liberated:
- Whiterun
- Falkreath Hold
- The Reach
- The Rift (Only if the Dragonborn neogotiated for the Imperials to control the Rift for the truce during the dragon crisis)
- Haafingar
- Solitude
- Hjaalmarch
When first starting "Liberating the Reach" step, if Galmar Stone-Fist will not give you the quest initiating dialog simply type "SetStage CWMission07 10" in the console to forward past his dialog and start the Compelling Tribute (Stormcloak) quest.
If you talk to Galmar Stone-Fist and he does not give you the conversation option "Reporting In" in order to start the quests, you can try the following: kill him, shethe your weapons and try to talk to him again. You will get a 40 bounty, but it goes away saying 'last witness killed'. This seems like a hit or miss solution.
If the above simple solution doesn't work, I came up with a alternative solution after many hours of trying. It worked 100% of the times I tried it. If you mess up one step, the whole thing won't work.
- Move your horse far away from camp
- Hit Galmar until he is on his knees. Then keep hitting him so he takes a long time to get up. Make sure no other guards aggro you.
- While Galmar is down, use beast form to transform into a werewolf. You should get no bounty for doing this. If you get a 1000 bounty, it means Galmar got up before you finished transforming or someone else saw you transform.
- Wait until Galmar Aggros you.
- Kill Galmar again
- Run far away (in the opposite direction of your horse -- if your horse aggros, the whole thing doesn't work)
- Wait 1 hour until beast form ends and fast travel back to camp
- Reporting In option should now be available. If its not available on the first try, exit the conversation and try again.
The quest can also bug at the "Report to Ulfric Stormcloack" after you take over The Rift. No Fix is known at this moment, please edit if you can find a fix. (PC) -- The method of striking Ulfric until he falls to his knees seems to fix this bug for PS3. Worth trying for PC.
Another way the quest can bug is that when you first accept the freelance missions after taking Whiterun, Galmar seems to cease to exist. He leaves Windhelm for the camp near Falkreath and is no longer in the Palace of Kings, but when you travel to the Falkreath Stormcloak Camp only the default commander is there and the quest tracking icon is centered a few feet off the ground in the middle of camp. Obviously without Galmar there you can't report in to him. Still looking for a fix on this one. (PS3)
Note: Trying to kill Thorygg Sun-Killer, the default commander for the camp in the above bug, does not work. As with most of the camp commanders he still counts as "quest essential" and is therefore invincible. When I tried to kill him he just looked at me and demanded to know what I was doing, and after he got up from the initial hit he just kept trying to go back to sleep and my attacks stopped affecting him. the rest of the stormcloaks did become hostile at that point though, so I would not recommend trying this.
NOTE: to methods above, simply knocking him to his knees one time will make the "repoting in" option available. this can be done from sneak mode, or standing, you can continue to knock him to his knees without bounty, but one time should make it work.