Oblivion DLC – Fighter’s Stronghold
This post will be about the Fighter’s Stronghold plugin for Oblivion, which adds a player home suited for fighter characters.
When you start the game with the plugin installed, you get a journal update saying you heard a rumour about a siege at Battlehorn Castle. The lord of the castle has been killed, and the defenders are offering the castle itself as a reward for anyone who can help lift the siege. Battlehorn Castle is located at the end of the Black Road, west of the city of Chorrol. When you arrive there you should find four marauders and the besieged defenders battling it out. On the ground you’ll find the corpse of Lord Kelvyn, the previous owner. Once all the marauders have been defeated, talk to one of the remaining men-at-arms. They will present you with Lord Kevlyn’s will, which gives you legal ownership of the castle.
The will explains that Battlehorn Castle was built by remnants of the Knights of the True Horn, who were banished from Hammerfell when they failed to dethrone Baron Shrike of Lainlyn. Their leader, Lord Kain, ordered the Knights to split up into small groups until he called for them to regroup. Lord Kevlyn’s father, Lord Jaren, was part of the group to settle in Cyrodiil. All the others disbanded or passed on, and Lord Jaren came to be the leader of Battlehorn Castle. However, the Knights had fallen on hard times, and many of the furniture had to be sold to pay for castle maintenance. Lord Kelvyn recommends finding Nilphas Omellian, who may hold many of the original items. Of course, you’ll have to pay off the debts to get them back.
Without the upgrades, the castle is fairly bare. There are very few inhabitants: two men-at-arms to guard the castle, Niels the smith (he lives in a hut in the courtyard) who can repair your gear, and the smith’s pet wolf, Hjalti. There’s an altar to Julianos in the great hall, a dusty old hunting trophy (a stuffed black bear) in the east wing, a vat in the cellar containing 20 bottles of mead, a bed in the private quarters and a few hidden secrets (which I’ll talk about later). Nilphas can be found at The Merchants Inn in the Imperial City Market District. The upgrades you can buy from him are:
- A wine cellar upgrade. This adds wine racks, a second vat (with 20 bottles of cheap wine in it) and many smaller vats (for unique wine) to the cellar. It also hires a vintner named Talan, who is a brother of the famous winemaker Tamika of Skingrad. Given the right ingredients, he can make unique wines added by the plugin. These appear in the seven small vats (one for each new wine). Talan will also restock the two large vats with mead and cheap wine.
- A bedroom upgrade. This adds a larger bed, some much-needed furniture and a personal maid to your private quarters. The maid, Rona Benanius, can serve you any drinks the wine cellar has in stock, as well as cheese, grapes, sweetrolls, Shepard’s Pie, strawberies and mutton. She also sometimes knocks over items you have on display, and will take a weapon to defend herself with if attacked. She can be told to follow the player.
- A kitchen area upgrade, which adds some cupboards, tables and a dead deer to a room in the basement. It also hires Plautis Rusonius, a cook who used to work at the Tiber Septim Hotel in the Talos Plaza District of the Imperial City. He can provide you with the same stuff as your maid.
- A library upgrade, which adds a large amount of books to your private quarters.
- A trophy room upgrade. It hires Melisi Daren, a taxidermist, and transforms an empty room in the east wing into a taxidermy area. By giving her pelts or ingredients collected from dead enemies, she can create replicas and will put them on display in the great hall. She can create eight stuffed replicas: wolf, (brown) bear, lion, troll, ogre, minotaur, clannfear and daedroth. The daedroth replica is placed on a stand near the entrance, while the rest are in a room behind.
- A barracks upgrade, which adds two more men-at-arms and a captain called Castellan Athon. The men-at-arms respawn, but if the captain dies you can buy another (nameless) castellan from Nilphas.
- A training area upgrade. This adds several training dummies and archery targets to a room in the basement. It also hires a sparring partner, Shagrol gro-Uzug. Shagrol was once a famous Arena champion. When sparring, he uses special weapons which cause no damage (good for training block, but won’t help you train light or heavy armour). As he’s marked essential, he won’t die but will simply be knocked unconscious.
- A dining area upgrade, which turns to crappy benches and ceramics in the east wing into upper-class silverware and fancy tables and chairs.
- Once you’ve purchased at least one other upgrade, Nilphas will send a letter to Battlehorn Castle. It will be delivered to you by one of your men-at-arms. Nilphas has come into possession of an ancient Dwemer forge, and is wiling to sell it to you – even though by law you need an Imperial charter to trade Dwemer artifacts (although no merchants in either Vvardenfell or Cyrodiil really care). It will replace the generic forge in the courtyard once purchased, and standing near it will fortify your armourer skill by 15 points. Plus it looks awesome.
Once you’ve bought all the upgrades, a chest will be placed at the end of your bed. Inside you’ll find Lord Kelvyn’s Bulwark, an enchanted shield with the emblem of the Knights of the True Horn displayed on it (the same as the shields your men-at-arms have). But it doesn’t end there. Like all castles, Battlehorn has a few secret passages. One can be found by using the door at the back of the wine cellar. It will lead to a small, closed-off room. If you look carefully however, you will see a movable pillar on the wall. The wall will slide down and you’ll find yourself in the great hall. A second movable pillar can be found in your private quarters, which will reveal a secret storage room. Inside you’ll find the journal of Lord Jaren, Kelvyn’s father.
It tells of how, when only himself and his friend Garridan were in the castle, Lord Kain arrive. He was accompanied by Arielle Jurard – not the friendly battlemage from a Mages Guild quest, however. This Arielle was a necromancer. Lord Kain had trouble speaking and moved like an old man, and left a bad smell behind. Arielle explained that Lord Kain had died in battle shortly after the Knights split, but she had raised him again and planned to use him as an undead puppet once Baron Shrike was defeated. Lord Jaren was appalled, and he and Garridan sealed them into the ‘grotto’. He had planned to tell his son Kelvyn about it one day, but as explained in Lord Kelvyn’s will his father had a premature death and obviously never got around to it.
The journal hints that the entrance to the grotto was once in the training room. Behind the archery target you’ll find an unlit candelabra. Pulling it will open up a secret tunnel which leads down into the grotto. Inside you’ll find a skeleton and a nether lich. Arielle somehow transformed herself into a lich, and according to a scrap of paper found on her body the skeleton was the remains of Lord Kain. The resurrection hadn’t worked properly and his flesh had decomposed, but he still remained “alive”. Lord Kain holds two unique items: the Dragonsword of Lainlyn, an enchanted longsword which gives the player a special fire spell when equipped, and Lord Kain’s Shield, another enchanted shield of the True Horn, which gives off 10 feet of light. You can also find three varla stones and a loot chest in the grotto.
This plugin is my favourite player house. It adds a lot of unique items and has some interesting upgrades. Plus, you get your own castle. I also really enjoyed the references to The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall. Baron Shrike, Lord Kain, Lainlyn and the Knights of the True Horn all appear in Daggerfall. Baron Shrike was the leader of the Host of the Horn, the official military force in Lainlyn, Hammerfell. Lord Kain was his brother, but Shrike was a ruthless leader and Kain formed the Knights of the True Horn to dethrone him. This mod continues the story, and even though I never played much of Daggerfall I enjoyed reading about the lore. The altar to Julianos is also a nice touch, as Julianos is the main deity of Lainlyn.
The knight who helped Lord Jaren seal up the grotto, Garridan, can be met during the miscellaneous quest ‘Tears of the Savior’. He is frozen in a block of ice, and the quest is to collect his frozen tears which have been transformed into crystals. More can be learned from the ingame book Knightfall, which is written by a ‘Jaren Aethelweald’. The taxidermist you hire comes with a recommendation from her previous employer, a man named Baenlin. In a Dark Brotherhood quest you have to kill Baenlin by dropping a mounted minotaur head on him (which was probably made by Milisi). These easter eggs really make the mod more fun. However, this plugin was also the hardest to obtain, as it doesn’t come with any retail disc and the Bethesda online store doesn’t accept PayPal. >.> Buying Oblivion off Steam is probably the easiest way to get it, as well as the rest of the DLC and the Shivering Isles expansion pack.
Screenshots (click to enlarge):
Battlehorn Castle exterior.
A man-at-arms.
A few of the stuffed replicas on display.
The wine cellar. Talan is hiding in the corner drinking all the expensive stuff, but you can’t see him from this angle.
The Dwemer forge. To be honest I think they just used the textures from Morrowind.
The secret grotto.
Nilphas Omellian, open for business.
Lord Kelvyn’s Chest. If he had worn his magical shield into battle maybe he wouldn’t have died. “But it would get all dented!” 
My next post will be about the Knights of the Nine DLC (but it might take a while as this is the largest official plugin, and I’m back to school). To make sure you keep up-to-date on any new posts, you can follow me on Twitter or get notified by email by subscribing using the widget on the sidebar.
Other Oblivion Posts:
-legoless
Add comment August 30, 2010
Oblivion DLC – Spell Tomes
This post will be about the Spell Tomes official plugin for Oblivion.
This plugin adds a large amount of new books to the game. These books are called tomes, and opening them will give you the option of learning a spell specific to that book. It’s cheaper than buying them off spell merchants, but the tomes can only be found as random loot. A tome has a 25% chance of replacing a scroll, so you can find them anywhere you would find a scroll: chests in dungeons, mage enemies, etc. The only guaranteed place you can find a tome is on the body of a conjurer who is added by the plugin. He appears outside Fort Cedrian at the start of the game, and tracks down the player until he finds you and attacks. Killing him will yield a random spell tome.
The new tomes not only teach you hundreds of pre-existing spells (such as the Summon Dremora Lord spell, which usually becomes unavailable after a certain point in the Mages Guild questline), they also offer new spells which have some interesting effects. These effects, which were not previously available as spells, include Summon Bear (only available to spriggans), Stunted Magicka (usually only caused by disease or the Atronach birthsign), Sun Damage (an effect normally caused by vampirism), Fortify Skill and Resist Frost/Disease/Poison/Paralysis. A few tomes also teach spells which were only listen in the construction set, and weren’t available in-game.
The idea behind this plugin was to make dungeon diving more beneficial to mage characters. Fighter characters could get new armour and weapons in dungeons, and now mages can get new spells. After learning the spell, you can sell the tome to a merchant for some gold. I think that this mod makes a significant change to the game, and while it isn’t as obvious as a huge tower on top of a mountain it still makes a big difference. Other than the conjurer showing up in the middle of the night and trying to kill me and a slight bug which sometimes gives the player a spell upon loading, this plugin is great.
A spell tome (click to enlarge picture).
The next post will be about the Fighter’s Stronghold DLC. To make sure you keep up-to-date on any new posts, you can follow me on Twitter or get notified by email by subscribing using the widget on the sidebar.
Other Oblivion Posts:
-legoless
1 comment August 29, 2010
Oblivion DLC – The Vile Lair
This post will be about The Vile Lair official plugin, which adds a player home suited for a vampire character.
When you load up the game, a ‘bloodstained note’ will be added to your inventory. It’s from a murderous stalker who has been following you. He is dying and wants to leave his home, Deepscorn Hollow, to you. All he asks in return is for you to kill people. Creepy. Deepscorn Hollow is located on a marshy island in Topal Bay. Above ground it looks like a burned-out house sinking into the swamp, but there’s a hollow tree trunk underwater with a secret door inside it. Entering the door, you’ll end up in a cave-like room. At the water’s edge you’ll find a dead slaughterfish, a pearl and the stalker’s journal.
The stalker, Greywyn, was once a member of the Crimson Scars. It was originally a subsection of the Dark Brotherhood, only for vampires. They had planned to purge the Brotherhood of all non-vampires, but were betrayed and killed or driven away. Greywyn survived, and he retreated to Deepscorn Hollow. He prayed to Sithis (the Dark Brotherhood’s deity), and eventually learns that he has offended Sithis with his vampirism. So he sought the cure, and discovers that Purgeblood Salts are the answer. The journal ends there. Apart from historical information, it reveals the location of another Crimson Scar, a man named Rowley Eardwulf at the Wawnet Inn. He helped Greywyn fix up Deepscorn before, and he’ll sell you the upgrades to the lair.
Without upgrades, the lair has a Font of Renewal, Purgeblood Salt veins, an ‘Unusual Box’ beside the shrine to Sithis which contains a unique Daedric dagger – the ‘Crimson Eviscerator’, a bed, Greywyn’s four caches (sacks which are full of gems, gold and enchanted items), a pair of rare wrist irons, a bucket of gold hanging from the roof in the entrance area (you need an arrow or spell to knock the gold down), and a handy second entrance through a trap door.
The upgrades for this player home are, in my opinion, the best in the game:
- A bedroom area, which replaces the bed with a unique sleeping coffin and adds a respawning sample of Nirnroot (a rare ingredient needed for a quest, which never respawns normally).
- A Garden of Venomgrowth underneath the bucket of gold. It’s similar to the alchemy garden in Frostcrag Spire, but it includes only poisonous plants. It also has a unique plant found nowhere else – chokeberry vines. You can harvest chokeberries from the three vines, which are small berries which instantly kill anyone who eats them – including the player. They are similar to poison apples, but aren’t weightless so they can’t be reverse-pickpocketed.
- A dining area which adds better lighting, a small table of food and a few cupboards.
- A cattle cell which contains human cattle. The cattle is an unwakable man who can be used for feeding by vampire characters.
- A Dark Minion, a Dunmer vampire who you can order to murder people and take their treasure. He can fail his task, in which case he won’t bring home any treasure. If he succeeds he places the loot in a chest in his quarters. Either way you get one infamy point. When at home he can be found sleeping, painting with the blood from a decomposing torso, raking the garden of venomgrowth, eating, praying to Sithis and stealing your books.
- A study area which adds a large collection of books, including five skill books and two unique books added by the plugin (Manifesto Cyrodiil Vampyrum and Opusculus Lamae Bal ta Mezzamortie).
- A storage area, which adds a lot of chests and crates for storing items. It also adds ‘Greywyn’s Poison Supply’, a chest filled with a large collection of poisons.
- The ‘Ichor of Sithis’, an item needed to activate the Shrine to Sithis. Once you pour the ichor into the basin, you can pray to Sithis and receive blessings. This shrine is the equivalent to Chapel altars for infamous characters. Good characters won’t get a blessing. Your infamy must exceed your fame for the altar to work. The higher your infamy, the better the blessing, ending at 90+ infamy.
The Font of Renewal adds an easy way to cure yourself of vampirism. Usually you need to do a very long quest to obtain the cure. I like to do the quest anyway, but this cure is much simpler. All you need to do is take some purgeblood salt (an ingredient added by the plugin) from the nearby ‘purgeblood salt veins’, and activate the Shrine of Renewal in the pool below. Simple as that.
Once you’ve purchased all upgrades for Deepscorn Hollow, a cupboard called ‘Greywyn’s Armoire’ will appear in the bedroom area. Inside you’ll find the Raiment of the Crimson Scar, a unique set of Dark Brotherhood shrouded armour.
Screenshots (click to enlarge):
The underwater entrance.
The Garden of Venomgrowth.
The Dark Minion.
The coffin bed.
The prisoner.
The Font of Renewal.
Rowley Eardwulf in the Wawnet Inn, scaring off customers with his weird smile.
The Shrine to Sithis. You can see the Dark Minion praying at the bottom.
Greywyn’s Armoire.
The next post will be about the Spell Tomes plugin. To make sure you keep up-to-date on any new posts, you can follow me on Twitter or get notified by email by subscribing using the widget on the sidebar.
Other Oblivion Posts:
-legoless
4 comments August 23, 2010
Oblivion DLC – Mehrunes’ Razor
This post will be about the Mehrunes’ Razor official plugin for Oblivion, which adds a large dungeon and a new artifact to the game.
Upon loading you’ll hear a rumour about a lost Ayleid city called Varsa Baalim, where Mehrunes’ Razor is supposedly hidden. Mehrunes’ Razor is an artifact made by the Daedric Prince Mehrunes Dagon. You can receive other Prince’s artifacts by finding their shrines and doing tasks for them, but since the Main Quest in Oblivion is stopping Dagon’s evil plan, going to him looking for a quest sounds like a bad idea (plus, you destroy his shrine anyway). This plugin gives the player a way to obtain his artifact, a dagger which has the chance of instantly killing an enemy at random.
According to the rumour, the uncovered entrance to Varsa Baalim can be accessed from an old fort called Sundercliff Watch. A long way from civilisation, this abandoned fort used to be an outpost and iron mine. In fact, it has the largest iron ore deposit in the Valus Mountains (or anywhere else in the game for that matter, as iron ore is added by the plugin). When you enter the fort, you are attacked by some Dunmer mercenaries. According to a journal you find, an army is amassing here, lead by Frathen Drothan. Drothan is a rouge Telvanni (a Great House from Morrowind) wizard. The journal also kindly provides a password to explore further.
After killing the Dunmer defenders, you should find yourself in a small underground village. Locate Drothan’s cabin and read his journal (they should really stop taking notes of their evil plans). Drothan hates the Empire and wants to topple Imperial rule. He thinks the Razor and a giant army will do the job. He obviously hasn’t met the player. The journal also reveals he has sealed himself inside Varsa Baalim to look for the Razor (he had found a Morag Tong assassin and got all paranoid). To open the magical barrier, two bezoars cut from the stomach of an albino guar must be placed on the pedestals nearby. He has entrusted these to the forgemaster and the commander. The commander is right next door, but to get to the forgemaster you have to fight your way through the mines (which is filled with Argonian and Khajiit slaves who want to hit you with rakes) and the forge (where they make armour and weapons for the army out of the iron). Make sure to have a look around Drothan’s cabin, because you’ll find some interesting books and a varla stone, a few iron veins in his ‘basement’, a unique potion and some special scrolls which I’ll talk about later.
Once you have the two bezoars (which look like pearls), remove the barrier and enter Varsa Baalim. The macabre decorations (piles of skulls, red candles, etc.) are never a good sign. After a peaceful stroll through the excavated ruin, you’ll find yourself in the middle of a warzone. If you had read up on the city while in Drothan’s cabin, you would’ve known that Varsa Baalim is full of vampires. And now hostile Dunmer as well. They fight amongst themselves, so the best thing to do would be to hide till only one side remains and finish off the survivors. To get around the ruined city you need to use three small tunnels. Eventually you’ll reach the entrance to the Nefarivigum, the holding place of the Razor.
Inside, you’ll find dead bodies and red light. Descending the steps will lead to a room with a strange mix of Daedric and Ayleid architecture. Drothan is in here. You can kill him, or wait for him to get killed by the Razor’s guardian. You can also read his field journal, which explains what Dagon’s challenge is. The dead guy in the coffin who Drothan was looking at isn’t actually dead. He’s Msirae Faythung, once Dagon’s mortal champion. He failed Dagon, and now eternally guards his artifact. The Razor is behind a locked gate. To open it, you need to pull out Faythung’s still-beating heart and eat it. It will give you four points of infamy and infect you with vampirism and a new disease called ‘Cannibal’s Prion’, so having a cure disease potion ready will save you a lot of trouble.
Or if you’re gonna rub your ass in Dagon’s face again, you could defy his challenge and just force the gate open (you need a strength of 90+ to do it). Either way Faythung will wake up and attack, but if you’ve taken his heart out he drops dead after a few seconds (so you might as well take it anyway if you’re gonna force the gate and you don’t feel like a fight). Once dead, his body will fade away, and his weapon crumbles to dust of you touch it. Grab the Razor and a secret passage will open, which leads though a natural cave out into nearby Lake Canulus. Yay.
The Razor isn’t as deadly as it sounds. The ‘instant death’ is based on your luck attribute, and it can be reflected back at you due to a bug. It keeps a tally of the souls you send to Dagon. It’s only other enchantment is a ‘disintegrate armour’ effect. The huge dungeon and the new items make up for it though, and it looks awesome in a display case. The new items include unique enchanted gear off Drothan and the forgemaster, a full set of Morag Tong armour, hoes and rakes which can be used as weapons (courtesy of the slaves), random crap like an empty potion vial, iron ore and the Drothmeri tunic all the mercenaries wear, a new ingredient which gives the player an easy to become a vampire, and lots of new notes and books.
It also adds two new potions, and special scrolls with a new spell effect. Using these ‘Scrolls of Transmutation’ (found in Drothan’s cabin, on his desk and on a hidden shelf behind a fake wall) will transform iron ore nuggets into silver nuggets, silver nuggets into gold nuggets, and gold nuggets into 50 gold coins (one transmutation per scroll).
This plugin contains a lot of fun references to The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, such as the Morag Tong assassin (a joinable assassins guild) and his writ of execution, the receipt from ‘Jobasha’s Rare Books’ (a bookshop in Vivec city) and an amusing letter home from one of the forgemaster’s apprentices (his wife is working in a gentleman’s club called ‘Desele’s House of Earthly Delights’, unbeknown to him). If you explore Varsa Baalim, you will also find a dead Drothmeri recruit holding an undelivered letter he wrote when fatally injured.
My only complaint about the plugin is that it isn’t very lore-friendly. It makes out that the Razor has been resting in the Nefarivigum for centuries, but in Morrowind (which is set only a few years before Oblivion) the player retrieves it from an ancestral tomb for Mehrunes Dagon. And the vampires in Varsa Baalim are of all races, instead of Ayleid (or at least Altmer, if the developers weren’t bothered to make a new race). Other than that, I enjoyed it.
Screenshots:
Sundercliff Watch.
The underground village.
Varsa Baalim.
The Nefarivigum.
Mehrunes’ Razor. Image taken from the UESP, because all my screenshots turned out terrible.
Other Oblivion posts:
The next post will be about The Vile Lair. To make sure you keep up-to-date on any new posts, you can follow me on Twitter or get notified by email by subscribing using the widget on the sidebar.
-legoless
5 comments August 22, 2010
Oblivion DLC – Thieves Den
This post will be about the Thieves Den plugin, which adds another player home. But this time instead of being up the side of a mountain, it’s in a cave. By the sea. Under a castle. Oh, and it has a wrecked boat inside too.
When you load up the game you’ll “hear a rumour” (even if you’re at the bottom of Niben Bay or in the middle of fighting trolls in an abandoned mine) about the legendary Dunbarrow Cove being uncovered underneath Castle Anvil. Travelling to Smuggler’s Cave (which is in the vanilla game but doesn’t have anything in it except a skill book and a locked door) will reveal a new passage which leads into Dunbarrow Cove proper. It’s crawling with skeleton pirates (wut?). Kill them all, take their unique cutlasses, and then enter the Captain’s Quarters (which has somehow detached itself from the ship and ended up on a cliff overhanging an underground lagoon). Inside you’ll find Cap’n Dugal. He’s another skeleton with a cutlass. Kill him and read his diaries (he has four).
The skeletons were the remains of Torradan ap Dugal and his crew. You’ll have to read the diaries yourself to find out what happened, but basically they became trapped underground when a cliff collapsed over their ship during a battle with the first count of Anvil. Then they died and turned into walking skeletons. But now that they’re gone, you have a whole cave complex and a ruined ship to yourself. For some reason your character feels the need to live there. You need to visit Dahlia Rackham, a pirate added to a ship in Anvil harbour. She can sell you an upgrade to the captain’s quarters and can hire pirates to live in your new cave and provide you services. You can buy a supplier, a fence (who will buy stolen goods), a security expert (who has a special locked box which will never open, allowing you to train your security skill), a fletcher and a spymaster (who is glitched an likes to randomly attack everyone else). Some of the pirates sell unique items which can only be obtained with this plugin.
Once you hire enough pirates, more will join you for free. When you buy everything, you’ll have three ‘free’ pirates. You can then send them out to plunder. In about a week they’ll return, and place your share of the money in the captain’s quarters. You can do this indefinitely, with no negative consequences. When all the upgrades have been purchased, the key to that locked door in the Smuggler’s Cave will appear in a chest in the captain’s quarters. The door leads into a secret passage in Castle Anvil. Perfect for a thief to make a little money.
Screenshots:
Smuggler’s Cave with the new entrance to Dunbarrow Cove.
The fence, Khafiz, along with his pet boar Bacon.
The wrecked ship.
Your quarters.
Dahlia Rackham onboard The Sea Tub Clarabella, a pirate ship which is smuggling sheep.
Zedrick Green, a pirate who joins your crew after purchasing two upgrades.
The chest which contains the Smuggler’s Key and any gold your pirates bring back when plundering.
Secret video footage of what your crew does while you’re away.
The next post will be about the Mehrune’s Razor official plugin. And don’t forget to read my Oblivion, Horse Armour, Orrery and Wizard’s Tower posts as well!
-legoless
6 comments August 21, 2010
