Read Me - Dragon Blade V.1
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Introduction and general details.
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Due to limited modelling time but the need to push on with my Requiem Sword resource, I decided to update and release my personal version of Requiem. The Dragon Blade is a much higher polygon mesh than Requiem, coming in at just under 60,000 polygons. As this is a personal blade there is no compromise since it was designed to work with my PC which is not particularly grand, but does the job!

The sheathing system has been improved since Requiem though it may need a kick start for some by using the startscript command via the console - more details further down.

I've thrown in a pauldron that only takes one slot and also a personal shield that I retextured to suit the sword. The shield is animated but does have a one small problem. The first person timeframes seem to equate to the third person idle postion, this means that if worn without a weapon the animations will repeat, what should happen is that the shield kicks out a defensive fire wall with the blocking animation. With this in mind, I've made the shield autoequip with the one handed version of the sword, sheathing the sword discards the shield. I do not recommend using the shield with other weapons unless using a similar script and I do not recommend hot swapping weapons during play.

Dropping the sword will drop an activator which is basically a sword sheathed mesh. The script will remove all remaining scabbards/ shields from the player. Picking up the activator will then change the sword to two handed. Dropping again then collecting will switch to the one hand version. Dropping the scabbards is not possible as they are not processed and are deleted from the game, this helps to maintain immersion and cuts down on CPU/ GPU usage.

These meshes use reflection maps and as such should not be enchanted as this may destroy some of the effects. The only areas that are affected if using 'no glo' mods are the shield front and the scabbard as these use layered meshes to add small amounts of reflective textural detail, I haven't actually tried without 'no glo', so have no idea how it will look.

All that stuff aside, the sword and pauldrons can be found in the lower level of the Ancient Shipwreck, which is located South East of Dagon Fel. I'm not one for making quests as they are beyond me, so please do not complain!

Installation
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Unpack using Tesmu2 or a straight forward extraction to the data files folder should do the trick. If doing a manual install, drop all textures into the main Morrowind Texture folder, if asked to overwrite any files say 'yes to all'. I do re-use and occasionally update my textures from time to time but these are mostly new.

The Phijama meshes folder drops inside Morrowinds meshes folder. If you already have a Phijama subfolder, then simply cut and paste the DRG subfolder into your Phijama folder.

The Phijama icons folder drops straight into Morrowinds Icon folder, again if a Phijama folder exists just cut and paste my DRG subfolder into the Phijama Icons folder.

That's all there is to it!

Known issues
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The meshes will clip with some characters, this is unavoidable. I've done the best I can to maintain visual effect and minimise clipping but the meshes will clip with some animations and races. The worst offenders are Khajiit and Argonians since they have a different animation base file. The meshes were designed around a female dunmer character and are best suited to similarly sized/ weighted characters. Morrwoind does horrible things to meshes with wider/ taller characters, this is not a fault of the mesh it is simply how the game engine works.

The sheathes use the neck body part. If using BB bodies, then there will be no loss of bodyparts as the BB mesh has two necks, one of which is part of the chest mesh. If a clothing/ armor or other item uses the chest slot, then the neck will be lost altogether. I have placed a small 'dummy' neck and neck band on my sheathed meshes to distract the eye but these are not perfect. Physique does not support reflection maps which I use extensively so that's that!
'Vanilla' Morrowind players will see the dummy neck regardless. For those who want to get rid of my neckpost and just keep the neck band, you need to alter the following texture.

1bw_DRA_NECK

I've added another texture that is the masked version (alpha enabled), just rename the texture 1bw_DRA_NECK(M) to the one above.

As mentioned at the start, these meshes are high polygon and can slow down older machines. There may be a slight pause when sheathing and unsheathing the swords for some, this is unavoidable. These swords were designed by me, for me so as I said before there is no compromise!

The sword should be kept as a unique item and there should only be one instance of the sword in game at a time. To help achieve this and reduce the risk of item replication, dropped swords are deleted and replaced with an activator which renews the sword when activated. When first picked up the sword is in the one hand position and should be sheathable, drop it and recollect to set to two hand. If at any point the sheathing scripts do not trigger then you may need to enter the console and type the following commands;

Startscript 1Phil_RQ2_sheathescript

Startscript 1Phil_RQ3_sheathescript

Feel free to adapt the script.I had intended to add the sheathed sword to the script cycle as a blunt weapon but couldn't find the time.

Contact
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I can be found on the Official Forums and go under the username of Phijama.
I have no intention of altering the meshes in any way, unless I become 'picky' which is a possibility. Please do not contact me to inform me of things I've already mentioned, but please do let me know of any major bugs or errors that do not fall into the any of the above categories.

Credits
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I'd like to thank the Morrowind modding community in general. The official forums have been a place of respite for me over the past two years and I am indebted to the lot of you!
I'd also like personally thank Monica21 and Elric for hosting my work at elricm.com and also to all at planetelderscrolls, in particular APY.
Special thanks go to VA for being a good mate (cheers Chris) and to Rogue Shadow, Skinjack and Mireneye for the same.
The last thank you goes to Bethesda, without them none of this would be possible. Cheers for a great game and the tools and support to extend its life!

Usage
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In the event that the host site goes down and I cannot be contacted, please feel free to upload this plugin to a new host. This plugin is for free use and all textures and meshes can be picked apart and played with if you can be bothered to experiment. I do update textures from time to time so please rename if using in your own mod to avoid conflict and just give me a little mention in your credits if using any aspect of my work, that's all I ask.

Thats all

Kind regards,

Phil (Phijama)