The Elder Scrolls XVIII: "What's So Civil About War, Anyway?"

[veti]

Doesn't the buff Paarthunax gives you make you resistant to Unrelenting Force?

But part of me thinks, serves you right for swanking about on dragonback in Skyrim...

[Imbalance]

It's the only way to fly.

[Vinyadan]

In Morrowind and Skyrim there are plenty of "necromancers"; they just don't call themselves such. They will just casually DO it as part of their normal spellcasting routine in combat.

There is exactly one peaceful necromancer who will openly call himself one in the main Morrowind game, at least as far as I know, and that's one guy in Vivec, Dedaenc. He's easy to spot because he has a rare face with black hair and an orange beard.
And apparently there's also only one aggressive necromancer, a guy called "The Maggot King" (I mean, if we restrict the definition to the NPC class; it's pretty rare, with only these two users).

But more people are said to be necromancers, especially if you listen to Ranis in Balmora.

[Spore]

There is exactly one peaceful necromancer who will openly call himself one in the main Morrowind game, at least as far as I know, and that's one guy in Vivec, Dedaenc. He's easy to spot because he has a rare face with black hair and an orange beard.
And apparently there's also only one aggressive necromancer, a guy called "The Maggot King" (I mean, if we restrict the definition to the NPC class; it's pretty rare, with only these two users).

But more people are said to be necromancers, especially if you listen to Ranis in Balmora.

Necromancy is always a part of conjuration education for one, I assume. Scholarly it is never directly divided. In Morrowind necromancy is even expected I feel like. For one the dead taking care of their crypts themselves - be it against intruders and caretaking - is very useful. For another, I think I remember Dunmer lore wrong, but didnt the Dark Elves explicitly allow the use of necromancy because their reverence of their deceased?

It is a contested topic I am sure, both in-universe and out. And the theme of "arrogant sorcerers" is alive and well with the Telvanni.

[Fyraltari]

For another, I think I remember Dunmer lore wrong, but didnt the Dark Elves explicitly allow the use of necromancy because their reverence of their deceased?

Of course not! Necromancy is a foul act that is punishable to the fullest extant of the law in Morrowind.

Now, using magic to help the spirits of one's ancestors to commune with their descendants, power ghostgates or defend their legacy is a sacred and holy religious practice. Just because they happen to work by manipulating magicka in the same way, according to the same theoretical principles an, in fact, using the exact same spells, doesn't mean they are the same or that there is anything hypocritical about the Temple's stance on those matters, but you can't expect filfthy N'wahs to understand that.

In the Empire, necromancy is a legitimate discipline, though body and spirit are protected property, and may not be used without permission of the owner. But in Morrowind, the Dunmer loathe necromancers, and put them to death. That's absurd, of course, since the Dunmer summon their OWN dead to guard tombs and defend the family. Sacred necromancy is righteous, while philosophical necromancy is evil. It's primitive superstition, that's all.

[Kareeah_Indaga]

Of course not! Necromancy is a foul act that is punishable to the fullest extant of the law in Morrowind.

Now, using magic to help the spirits of one's ancestors to commune with their descendants, power ghostgates or defend their legacy is a sacred and holy religious practice. Just because they happen to work by manipulating magicka in the same way, according to the same theoretical principles an, in fact, using the exact same spells, doesn't mean they are the same or that there is anything hypocritical about the Temple's stance on those matters, but you can't expect filfthy N'wahs to understand that.

I had gathered the dividing line was that of consent: Dunmer ancestral spirits come back because they have vested interest in their descendants, where spirits bound by necromancy come back because the necromancer compelled them, and have no say in the matter.

To put it another way: say one of your parents dies and leaves you the keys to their car in their will. The keys are now yours, this is legal and ethical. That’s Dunmer ancestral magic. Necromancy is when the necromancer steals the keys off your parent’s corpse.

[Spore]

Sounds sensible, Kareeah, but then again the dead cannot complain, can they? They may haunt the people who disturb their graves, yes, and cause ironic narratively satisfying deaths, but priests can always interpret their deaths as completely natural and not at all linked to the disturbance of death!

[Kareeah_Indaga]

Sounds sensible, Kareeah, but then again the dead cannot complain, can they? They may haunt the people who disturb their graves, yes, and cause ironic narratively satisfying deaths, but priests can always interpret their deaths as completely natural and not at all linked to the disturbance of death!

We can actually talk to them though; there's an early quest in Vvardenfell in ESO where we do so, and one of the companions has an ancestor we call up. And there's another one near Skar where we talk to some ancestor spirits.

Spoiler: Minor spoilers for Telvanni Peninsula

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There's also a lady whose spirit we talk to as part of the main quest, though I gather the circumstances of that were at best an edge case.

[Spore]

We can actually talk to them though; there's an early quest in Vvardenfell in ESO where we do so, and one of the companions has an ancestor we call up. And there's another one near Skar where we talk to some ancestor spirits.

That's nonsense! The dead cannot talk!

*gets haunted like a boss* LeEaaVe this place!!!!

No, sire. Intelligible.

[Fyraltari]

I had gathered the dividing line was that of consent

Except that's also (mostly) the dividing line in the Empire. Body and soul are considered someone's property and may only be used by necromancers if that's allowed by the deceased's will. There's an exception for the remains of criminals who can be handed over to Imperial necromancers, though.

[Spore]

Except that's also (mostly) the dividing line in the Empire. Body and soul are considered someone's property and may only be used by necromancers if that's allowed by the deceased's will. There's an exception for the remains of criminals who can be handed over to Imperial necromancers, though.

The urge to play a "dark accountant" that just falsifies people's wills to allow them for necromancy rises. We need a suitably epic name for this concept.

Can Dark Elves be named Bob? I know Bolor is a major dunmer npc necromancer, but .... damn it. This is now my headcanon. Thank you very much.

[Vinyadan]

There's also the Dunmer who turns into a ghost after having been murdered by an Imperial Legion Orc in the Gnisis mine. I think it's far away from a tomb.

Can Dark Elves be named Bob? I know Bolor is a major dunmer npc necromancer, but .... damn it. This is now my headcanon. Thank you very much.

Sure, it's actually a shortening for Bobshuralpishini.

There's a Telvanni called Edd "Fast Eddie" Theman.

[GloatingSwine]

Sounds sensible, Kareeah, but then again the dead cannot complain, can they? They may haunt the people who disturb their graves, yes, and cause ironic narratively satisfying deaths, but priests can always interpret their deaths as completely natural and not at all linked to the disturbance of death!

The entire plot of Daggerfall happens because of a dead guy persistently complaining.

[LibraryOgre]

Can Dark Elves be named Bob? I know Bolor is a major dunmer npc necromancer, but .... damn it. This is now my headcanon. Thank you very much.

All Dark Elves come from Bob.

[Grim Portent]

Having spoken to more than a few dunmer ghosts in ESO, all they do is complain. Well sometimes they also give useful information, but it's like a 90/10 split in favour of complaining.

The skeleton guards don't, they just seem to be omnicidal. Might be something to think about there. Perhaps the skeletons are made of unimportant family members, while the actually honoured ones are bound as ghosts and get to be crotchety at people.

[GloatingSwine]

There being a sharp disconnect between the body and the soul is somewhat relevant to the entire deal of ESO...

Ancestor ghosts are the souls of Dunmer, who don't appear to have an afterlife otherwise*. Skeletons are just bodies animated by literally any source of Magicka.

* In fact I think the only mer afterlife we know about is the Ouze and that's not a particularly nice one, it being for those who break the Green Pact. Presumably the altmer afterlife is a permanent smug-off between every altmer that ever lived and is therefore indistinguishable from hell for any other being.

[Kareeah_Indaga]

* In fact I think the only mer afterlife we know about is the Ouze and that's not a particularly nice one, it being for those who break the Green Pact. Presumably the altmer afterlife is a permanent smug-off between every altmer that ever lived and is therefore indistinguishable from hell for any other being.

I don't know if the Altmer have a default afterlife either, there are an awful lot of ancestor spirits floating around Tanzelwil in ESO.

[Grim Portent]

Given that the mer faiths tend to portray Mundus as a cage of sorts, it's possible their orthodox beliefs don't generally have an idea of going to Aetherius after death and their funerary practices in turn trap the spirit on Nirn because they worry about what other fate may befall them. Kind of like how argonians in Black Marsh don't go to Aetherius, they go to the Hist and get reincarnated later on.

Do we know what bretons and imperials believe the afterlife is like?

[Fyraltari]

The entire plot of Daggerfall happens because of a dead guy persistently complaining.

The misplaced letter was more important.

* In fact I think the only mer afterlife we know about is the Ouze and that's not a particularly nice one, it being for those who break the Green Pact. Presumably the altmer afterlife is a permanent smug-off between every altmer that ever lived and is therefore indistinguishable from hell for any other being.

The Orsimer afterlife sounds pretty interesting, if we're being honest.

Given that the mer faiths tend to portray Mundus as a cage of sorts, it's possible their orthodox beliefs don't generally have an idea of going to Aetherius after death and their funerary practices in turn trap the spirit on Nirn because they worry about what other fate may befall them. Kind of like how argonians in Black Marsh don't go to Aetherius, they go to the Hist and get reincarnated later on.

Do we know what bretons and imperials believe the afterlife is like?

The High Elves do believe their dead go to Aetherius. The Wood Elves presumably also do since they also think the Dunmeri rituals prevent passage into the next world.

Dark Elves ghosts mention an "otherworld" they reside in when not manifesting on Mundus. Moonshadow, perhaps?

Here's a pretty good text about that.

Imperials and Bretons also believe their dead go to Aetherius, but they sometime call it Heaven. And refuse to elaborate.

[veti]

Amazingly, the flow of decent quality mods for Skyrim still shows no sign of dying out. Even in the venerable "follower" section, there are still new gems appearing from time to time. What I look for in a follower is (1) a custom voice, because there's no point having a new face to repeat the same old lines I've already heard a thousand times, and (2) at least some element of a new quest or adventure.

And in the past couple of years, I've had fun with Thogra gra-Mugur, Xelzaz, and Remiel. High quality productions all.

But you can't win them all, and if you insist on trying them, you're going to get some... not so great mods in the mix. Wheel of Time was pretty dire, so really I've got nobody but myself to blame for my experience with Lyssia, from the same author.

Lyssia: a gratingly conceited mage with an AI-generated voice, in an accent that is clearly meant to be Posh British, whatever the heck that translates to in Tamriel. The voice work, actually, is pretty good, and I could stand the accent. But the writing...

Her adventure consists of three very short, very linear dungeons with not so much as a hint of a puzzle or challenge between them. There's no lore, no atmosphere, no bosses, no backstory, not even any interesting loot or spells. There's a guest appearance by Lyssia's estranged father, and for almost five minutes he had me thinking that he might have bucked the cliche by *not* being a twofaced murderous evil plotter, but that proved to be false hope. The plot is as hackneyed as it is thin.

But that's not the worst, not by a long chalk. There's Lyssia's dialogue, which is stilted and arch and sometimes tries to be funny, with less success than it hopes. She talks a lot to Adrianne, and Adrianne seems to make gentle fun of her in return - I'd rate this part as pretty decent writing if I thought the mockery was intentional, but nothing about the mod makes me think that the banter is any less than one hundred and ten percent sincere. If you don't stop and talk to her frequently enough, Lyssia gets quite sarcastic at you. And if you do stop and talk to her, she takes forever to tell you something that's not nearly as interesting as she seems to think it is.

But even that's not the worst.

No, the worst is... you know how many custom-voiced followers sing? Most of them are actually pretty decent. Turns out, a lot of voice actors can carry a tune pretty well. I doubt you can do that easily with an AI voice, so the author of Lyssia didn't try. Instead, she writes... poetry.

There's a long and painful tradition of bad poetry in high fantasy. JRR Tolkien himself couldn't resist the temptation to sprinkle his works with poetry, which ranged from passable to awful. But Lyssia... she took Tolkien's correspondence course, then went on to advanced postgraduate study at the William McGonagal School of Making Your Listeners Wish They Could Drive Nails Into Their Ears. Her poetry is *dreadful*. She is oblivious to imagery, deaf to rhythm and dead to creativity. I would rather listen to a permanent loop of "Ragnar the Red" performed as a duet between Karita and Nazeem, than sit through another of Lyssia's poems. And there's no telling when she'll feel inspired to deliver one.

I recommend giving this one a miss.

[Imbalance]

Lyssia is a Vogon?

[Fyraltari]

Lyssia is a Vogon?

Sload follower mod?

[Grim Portent]

The High Elves do believe their dead go to Aetherius. The Wood Elves presumably also do since they also think the Dunmeri rituals prevent passage into the next world.

Dark Elves ghosts mention an "otherworld" they reside in when not manifesting on Mundus. Moonshadow, perhaps?

I kind of got the impression from ESO's Valenwood stuff that the Bosmer might believe in some sort of reincarnation, but I suppose it's more accurate to say they believe history is cyclical and that likely doesn't extend to individual people. Girnalin seems to imply that the Bosmer are at least familiar with Aetherius as the destination of most souls, but doesn't exactly say Bosmer go there themselves.

Dark Elves could be referring to a liminal space in Mundus like the spirit realm, in which case they would still be bound to the mortal realm, just in a position where they are normally imperceptible. It would make more sense to me that way, the ghosts of the dead aren't all proclaiming the Tribunal as false gods whenever communed with, which you'd think would happen if they were living with Azura/Boethiah/Mephala in the afterlife.

[veti]

Hot take: modders who add custom followers need to get over this whole "custom framework" bullpoop. Seems like every follower with aspirations to be more than just another pointless waifu skin has to have one, nowadays. Why?

The problem is - whatever you're going for with this "custom framework", it's going to break things. You may think you've covered all the things a follower needs to do, but Skyrim is a buggy game and the chances that you're going to be the first modder in history not to stumble over anything are basically nonexistent. So, the less you try to do with your one mod, the better.

My most recent experience was with Nessa. This is a good mod, Nessa is a fine follower with cool backstory, fun personality and terrific voice acting (for the main character, at least - a couple of walk-on parts are voiced by XVASynth, and hoo boy are they ropey, but they're a very small part of the whole). Her quest is - not bad, but it takes too long to develop. There's a timer, and it has to count over 20 days before you reach the final stage of her quest. That's enough time to gain 30 levels and save the world at least four times over, and also incidentally enough time to get fairly tired of her limited pool of voice lines, good as the delivery is. I appreciate the wish to take one's time and smell the flowers on the way, but Skyrim just doesn't support that playstyle.

And, inevitably, she has a custom framework. Why? Why?

Okay, sometimes modders want their follower to be part of a larger group than just the two of us. Or maybe they have special behaviours that can't be handled as ordinary idles and scripts. Or custom spells, whatever. But - all of these things have mods developed especially for them, and the more successful of these have been maintained and tweaked enough times to iron out the more glaring issues. Nessa, for instance, suffers from the same lousy pathfinding as most every other follower, and tends to get left far behind. How many times I wished to import her to NFF, to give her the speed boost and catchup teleport abilities...

But the worst was when I finally decided I'd seen the mod, I'd had the fun, and it was time to dispense with her and her endlessly recycling lines. So I dismissed her, and she wandered off ostensibly to her starting point. So far, fine. Until I reloaded the save, and - there she was again, standing right in front of me.

New character time. I can't be haunted like this.

To any modders who may be reading this: make a follower using the vanilla framework. Recommend any other mods you think would complement them, but please don't try to force them on us unnecessarily, and for Akatosh's sake don't try to build their features into your own mod, because that's a recipe for endless frustration.

[Fyraltari]

Kurt Kuhlmann, aka Hasphat Antabolis, no longer works for Bethesda Softworks.

If you don't know, Kuhlmann has been with the studio since the last parts of the development of Daggerfall was one of the main writers of Redguard, had a strong influence on the early design of Morrowind, wrote the main quest of Oblivion, was lead designer for Knights of the Nine, co-Lead Designer of Skyrim and, alongside Michael Kirkbride, authored the Pocket Guide to the Empire, 1st Edition which massively overhauled the lore of the series.

All in all, it's fair to say that, with Kirbride and Todd Howard, Kuhlmann is one of the person most responsible for making the Tamriel we know and love.

I can only thank him for his work and wish him success in all he does next.

[Imbalance]

Legendary. I shall slay 100 dremora in his honor.

[Starlit Dragon]

No, the worst is... you know how many custom-voiced followers sing? Most of them are actually pretty decent. Turns out, a lot of voice actors can carry a tune pretty well. I doubt you can do that easily with an AI voice, so the author of Lyssia didn't try. Instead, she writes... poetry.

There's a long and painful tradition of bad poetry in high fantasy. JRR Tolkien himself couldn't resist the temptation to sprinkle his works with poetry, which ranged from passable to awful. But Lyssia... she took Tolkien's correspondence course, then went on to advanced postgraduate study at the William McGonagal School of Making Your Listeners Wish They Could Drive Nails Into Their Ears. Her poetry is *dreadful*. She is oblivious to imagery, deaf to rhythm and dead to creativity. I would rather listen to a permanent loop of "Ragnar the Red" performed as a duet between Karita and Nazeem, than sit through another of Lyssia's poems. And there's no telling when she'll feel inspired to deliver one.

I recommend giving this one a miss.

Well, now I'm curious. Don't suppose they're written anywhere?

[veti]

Well, now I'm curious. Don't suppose they're written anywhere?

If you really must know, I suggest downloading the mod and viewing it in Creation Kit.

Or play it if you must, but don't say you weren't warned.

[LibraryOgre]

We were looking for free Switch games and the Eldest encountered Blades. I'd played it a bit on the phone, so now they're grinding away at killing goblins.

[Kareeah_Indaga]

We were looking for free Switch games and the Eldest encountered Blades. I'd played it a bit on the phone, so now they're grinding away at killing goblins.

I hope they enjoy it more than I did; I found it to be sadly shallow.