INTRODUCTION:
Imagine, you’re sitting in the dark corner there, waiting for that lone bandit to turn his back. You quietly sneak up on him from behind, weapon readied for striking death. As you take a couple of silent steps, something catches your eye to the left of you, a faint glimmer of metal upon light, but nothing is there. Could one of those assassins have found you again? No way. Going back to what you were doing, you make your strike, ending the bandit’s foul life, and stand up with a smile over your successful sneak attack. Then suddenly from the left, a sword’s blade is swung at you from out of nowhere. . . .


DESCRIPTION:
After reading through Reneer's Sneak Mod I got to reminiscing about my days with the MMORPG Dark Ages of Camelot (DAoC) and the stealth wars that would occur there with stealthy players. Reneer's mod adds an element of surprise by making NPCs have a sort of invisibility to them if your sneak skill was below theirs. Anyways, in DAoC while an assassin was on the prowl hunting or setting up an attack on an unsuspecting player, there was always the chance that another stealther was nearby, possibly hunting you, or after seeing you attack someone while they were waiting, ambush the ambusher (so to speak).

While it would be hard to completely recreate that experience, this mod seeks to do so as much as it can. There are a total of 15 different assassins, all of which have unique armor and weaponry, all who have only one goal . . . to kill you. They will track and hunt you down and catch you off guard quite often. They will be quite a challenge at any level, so be prepared for some rough fights. There will also be a chance for more than one to appear, even up to four a time, but just one of these guys will be more than enough. Further, there is even a chance that they will have back up hidden from your sight that will attack you when you least expect it. You may even want a companion with you at times. Depending on your stealth skill, you may see them coming and you can hide from their sights and try to get the jump on them instead. If they have a greater stealth skill than you, you will not see them coming, but don’t fret because their skill will vary at times. Sometimes their sneak level will be higher, other times it’ll be much lower. Why? Because sometimes an assassin can mess up and reveal his/her position.

Obviously, having permanent or long term life detection on all the time would spoil the fun in being caught by surprise when the assassins attempt to get the jump on you. I would discourage you from using such enchantments, but it also wouldn’t be a bad idea to use a temporary spell every so often if you think you’re about to be attacked.

To start the mod, seek out Artueus in the Imperial City Talos Plaza. If you can’t find him, he should seek you out after a few minutes of being there.

Also, as a warning, there are some heavy poly counts and high resolution textures on some of the models and could affect the performance of your computer. The benefit of course is a high quality looking weapon or armor. For comparison, I run a 2.33GHz Quad Core Intel PC with 4gb ram and with a Geforce 8800 GTS 512mb video card on a 64bit Vista OS and do not see a frame rate issue at all.


OTHER MOD REQUIREMENTS AND SUGGESTIONS:
-Latest patch for Oblivion.
-OBSE – latest version.
-OBSE -Elys- Universal Silent Voice

-SDR-Sneaking Detection Recalibrated- for keeping the assassin NPCs invisible when they are searching for you, as well as many other beneficial changes to the game's stealth system (it's simply the best stealth overhaul out there). This mod is really required, but Stealth Wars will still run without this. But without it, this mod would be sort of pointless. The Stealth Wars mod also has it where you have a chance to spot them, like in the screenshot.
-NPC Friendly Fire - for keeping chaos within the cities at bay. Because of my mod, there may be some fighting within the city. Sometimes, you’ll get help from the citizens and guards; sometimes they hit each other accidently. Once that happens, chaos ensues and everyone begins killing each other. This mod should help prevent that. Also keep in mind that this mod can cause issues with certain quests (vanilla or modded) where NPCs actually need to kill each other. You'll have to deactivate it for quests like that.
-Unnecessary Violence - for dual wielding action, since a lot of the assassins will be DW’ing. It is not required, but makes NPC’s a little bit more versatile with their offhand weaponry.
-There is also now a UV3 version , which is a better upgrade obviously.
-A companion of some sort is suggested, especially for the times when more than one assassin shows up.Too many mods to list here for that. Do a search.
-Companion Compatiblity - if you use a companion. This wonderful little mod causes anything that is attacking you to switch targets on occasion with you and your companion/pet/mount instead of ignoring you altogether and heading straight for them. Stickier Enemy Targeting makes it so that enemies stick to the player only, ignoring your companion completely.


VERSION History:
-Future versions/releases – background history of each assassin and a quest. Future fleshing out of a plotline.
-V0.9b - beta. Fixed several missing variables including the spawn timer, and AI mistakes missed from alpha release. Also toned down difficulty of NPCs by lowering levels by 5. Boss NPCs still remain at 10 above player level however. Special thanks to nenina on Bethsoft forums and Sticz from TESNexus.
-V0.9a - bug fixes.
-V0.8a – initial alpha release.


INSTALLATION:
Simply copy the Data folder into the Oblivion folder, merge the folders when asked, and activate the esp with OBMM or the likes. When installing the updated .esp, copy into the data folder and overwrite version 0.8b

As always, it is a good idea to keep a back up of both your save files and the Oblivion.esm. It’s only precautionary because this mod does nothing to the esm, but it just makes good general sense when using mods anyways.

UNINSTALLING:
Deactivate the Stealth Wars esp, do a clean save, then delete the associated Stealth Wars BSA and the esp itself.

BUGS/CONFLICTS:
-Bug: Scripts on the assassins’ weapons are supposed to disable them if they are dropped. On occasion, they do not kick in and an assassin may leave a weapon behind when they leave after being defeated. If this occurs, you could pick it up and do what you want, but really, you should disable it in the console.Otherwise, you’ll be holding a duplicate once the assassin is enabled again. If you don’t want to do that, you could consider it a “trophy” if you will and display it in one of your houses.

-Bug: There were instances during my testing when the mod "stalls" and the assassin NPCs won’t look for you. This occurred most often when Fast Traveling. It might be due to my load order and other mods interfering or it may be a flaw with the Oblivion AI engine, which I suspect it is, but whatever the case may be, usually travelling to Weye will reset it, and you may find yourself being ambushed there as well. Of course, restarting the mod will also work. I also may have fixed the problem entirely with version 0.9b due to missed AI functions on some of the NPCs. Feed back wanted for this please. (UPDATE: I've corrected this particular problem in version 9b but will leave this report here just in case it still occurs and needs to be reported again.)

-Conflict: during testing, Adrenaline Fueled Combat v2 was acting strange by displaying odd messages in game mode and I had to disable it. I'm guessing it has something to do with my scripts running at the same time as AFC2. Therefore, it is possible this mod conflicts with AFC2.If you use AFC2, I’d like to know your experience with using it and my mod.

-Please report anything else you may find.

CREDITS:
This is going to be a huge list because there are many resources used from other mods put into this one, thus this is a team work project put together by me, thus the author name: Wolfpack Productions. The credit listing is in mixed or no particular order. There are many meshes and textures with edits/alterations that were done by me personally. (Also foremost, check the Legal section for using parts of this mod for your own mods or for uploading elsewhere. This is critical!)

First, special acknowledgment to the following people who, although have no single (file) part in the mod, have helped me quite a bit and in a sense have their hands in the mod’s construction. They were very instrumental in the mod’s development and I would not have been able to pull this off without them.

-The Vyper, DaMage, vometia, InsantiySorrow – for advice and sharing your knowledge of AI package, scripting, and the CS inner workings.
-Alithelord, CDM_, ghastley, JDFan, JRoush, LHammonds, Phitt, showler, ThumperZ, utumno – for scripting advice, info, or other relevant help.
-Corethian – for mesh alteration advice.
-An especially grateful thank you to DaMage!

A very special thank you to everyone listed here for your support and advice!



Second, the actual meshes and textures or other tools from other mods (listed as their respective mod names)used in this mod are as follows:

Armors and clothing:
-Nightshade by skeleton K
-Underdark: Drow Armor by AlienSlof
-Andragorn Weapons and Armor by Andragorn
-Stealth Armor by Taylorsd
-Shdw Armor Pack1 and 2 by Andragorn
-Frostleaf Leather Armor by Spindrift
-Sneak Gear by Alex Scorpian
-Druid Armors and Weapons by tumbajamba
-Hashshashin Armor by Dimitri Mazieres
-Ranger Armor and Light Daedric Armor by Dimitri Mazieres
-Battlemage Armory by Eryen
-Chitin Armor by Hel Borne
-Gray Fox Leather by Gwydeon
-Werewolf Hunter by DreadNaught/Jcarl904
-Weapon Tool Belts by Lonewolf_kai
-Hemingwey Capes by Hemingwey
-Forestheart by klarre
-Armamentarium by Trollf

Weapons and offhanders(left handed weapons):
-Slitterblade by Gizmodian
-Raizan by ant_4everlove
-Nicos Scimitars by Nicoroshi
-Copperthorn by Gizmodian
-Blackluster by hide
-texture fix by Sociop
-True Ayleid Armor by Iomir
-The Sword of Lightning with Sound by electionis
-Angel Slayerr by Jured
-Caliburn by soifon
-Edocs Serpent Dagger Resource by Edocsil
-Nepher and Bepher by Plipo
-Myths and Legends2 by templargfx/GrimDeath
-Razorponys Fatalis Sword by Razorpony
-Vicious Heart by Gizmodian
-Assassins Blade by Hobbs/Nicoroshi
-The Relics of Fire and Ice by Gizmodian
-Coolmans Dagger Collection by Coolman
-The Heretic Blade by ArrenMog
-Heretic Reavers and Mithril Sentinels by Dominick Cyromonde
-Dragon Bow by Mr Smiles aka Lamayo
-Dread Knight Armor and Weapons by jojjo
-pale_riders Armory of the Divine Guardian by pale_rider
-Nexon Armory by Nexon
-The Forgotten Signs: Pegasus by Gorgonzola3000
-Arcan Ice Claymore by Sterlock
-Pure Steel Blade by EuGenius
-sparkle effect by amnes
-Talon of Akatosh by Nicoroshi
-Frostmourne and Lich Kings Armor by jojjo
-Dragon Claw Sword and Shield by jojjo
-Romuska Fantasy Store by VanillaBeans
-Haelia Latta Sword by Ancestral Ghost
-Alonso and Lexx Armory by Alonso and Lexx
-Gizmodians Blades by Gizmodian

And finally, Misc credits:
-LHammonds for the Readme Generator, which this readme is based on.
-Bethsoft for textures, meshes, the CS, and the game.
-GIMP, Nifscope, and Blender for the wonderful tools.
-Dark Ages of Camelot and Reneer for the inspiration.
-All else who lent ideas and support.
-God for being the Ultimate Modder!

If I missed something specific as far as credit goes please inform me so that I may give due credit.

LEGAL/LICENSING/ETC.
You may NOT modify, use in other mods, or redistribute any part of this mod without prior permission given by me. Otherwise such actions are strictly prohibited. Again, you MUST contact me if you wish to use anything within this mod or if you wish to upload the mod on another site. Several of the authors of the meshes/textures used have explicit rules governing their work that are featured in this mod, including any alterations or mods of my own. If I do give permission for any of the above, you must also ask permission of the original authors for their base work. Many of the listed meshes/textures have modifications done by me, so even if you have permission for the original work by the base author, you must have my permission for the alterations I have done. If there are any deviations from the above, I will not hesitate to pull this mod from public use and take punitive action with administration where necessary.

AUTHOR’S NOTES
You can contact me on the TESNexus website with the user name Lonewolf_kai if you have questions, concerns, comments, etc. I would prefer you to use the commenting section for troubleshooting or reporting any bugs. Sorry about the wall of text for the description/readme, but it was necessary.

I encourage you to make comments about the mod. Tell everyone who your favorite assassin is or anything exciting that happened while playing the game (with this mod active, there are bound to be WTH moments). Post pictures too! I personally have a tie for my favorite assassin. Can you guess which ones?

Also, it wouldn’t hurt to look at the works done by those in the credit listing and give them thanks for their work as well. I personally am very grateful that they have made them.

I hope you enjoy this, and, if you think it great, don’t forget to endorse it; of course, Kudos are always welcomed as well. A vote for file of the month is nice too. :D

-Lonewolf


“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for Thou art with me….”
Psalm 23:4