Skyrim Secondaries

As you traipse around the mountain home of the Nords, you'll find yourself running across quest after quest (after quest after quest after quest), and the quests all have varying sizes.  There are tiny quests to run from one end of town to the other with a note or an item, middling quests that may involve delving into a single dungeon or rooting out the animals or bandits in a single area.

And then there are the major questlines.  The Thieves' Guild, the College of Winterhold, even the Imperial-Stormcloak war itself.  These trains of quests have a major effect on how your experience in Skyrim goes not just during them but afterwards, leaving you as the leader of a faction or part of some greater event that changes even which Jarls are holding court.

Since these quest groups all occupy considerable time and involve a lot of different goals you will be aimed at from one or two central locations, I've opted to call these Skyrim Secondaries- they're less vital than the main questline, but they're not just sidelines you wander off on to come back to what you were doing.  Each of these quest groups will have its own series of articles, and be mentioned by the overall quest name that is used in your Journal. 

Although some of the Sidelines quests do have separate entries in your Journal listing, these usually have a very short number of goals in sequence- four or five in most cases.  The Secondaries will have multiple entries in your Journal, some under General Quests and some under their own names.  Those that form a single line of quests will wind up with often more quest goals than your Journal can handle without a separate scrollbar, and may be a right pain to keep track of.

The main reason for separating the Secondaries from the Sidelines may be that they are larger and have more of a lasting impact, but along with this is the fact that each of these quest chains will result in some extraordinary item- or more often multiple unique items- coming into your hands, and opportunities that you may well not anticipate given their difference from the rewards you get out of most quests.

With that, welcome to Skyrim Secondaries.