Hi

I am on the PC and doing the Discerning the Transmudane quest. I have no mods or DLC installed. I went to Septimus's Outpost and gave him the inscribed Lexicon and he told me he needed me to harvest the blood samples.

The way out was blocked by the Wretched Abyss and although the Speak function shows nothing happened. The only way I could leave the room was to console command tcl and this allowed me to harvest the blood. So I harvested the blood and went back to the outpost and had to tcl again to get in and speak to Septimus. So we had our conversation and he died and I have taken the Ohgma Infinium and the Wretched Abyss blocked my way out of the chamber again. So again a tcl command was used, but I can't complete the quest or get the WA to speak.

Any help appreciated?

You must activate the wretched thing so that it talks to you.

Activate how? The only option given is speak?

Yes, speak. If it doesn't work, reload the save that was made when you entered the cave. Given the fact that you used console commands, you would have to load a save that was made before even entering that cave the first time. Right now your game is broken. I suppose you are using mods? Any of them modifying the daedric quests?

I've went back several saves even before I got the Lexicon Inscribed. Once I speak to Septimus and he asks me to Harvest Blood I am trapped in his outpost by the Wretched Abyss. So I haven't consoled out of the Outpost. The WA doesn't speak so what else can I do?

Do you have the Unofficial Skyrim patch ???

I suggest you, to load a previous save, and make a new save.

After install the patch, load that save and make another one.

Load that last save and make the quest again. !!!