Morrowind

About this mod

Caldera Priory has been overrun by the Undead. Do you have the courage and the will to venture into the Depths of Blood and Bone and vanquish the ancient Evil that has taken hold of the lands above?

Requirements
Permissions and credits
Changelogs




It begins in blood. It ends in bone.

Caldera Priory has been overrun by the Undead, and you are asked to go in and destroy them. However, things aren’t quite that simple. You learn that the Undead didn’t come alone. They were led by a vile creature that slaughtered many of the priory’s inhabitants itself. And yet, it does not seem to be the true master …
 
Caldera Priory and the Depths of Blood and Bone is a dungeon and quest mod with a focus on horror. You will walk through dark corridors full of blood, gore, and bone, you will fight against horrific creatures, and you will witness scenes of pure agony. And all the while you traverse ever deeper and deeper into the hellish realm that the Undead clawed their way out of …


Features include:

  • A new location in the game world: Caldera Priory. First in ruins after the Undead attack, you will later have the opportunity to see it restored.
  • A new, vast dungeon complex for you to explore and fight through, made out of 14 cells
  • A creepy and claustrophobic atmosphere in some areas, and overhelmingly huge chambers with epic vistas in others
  • Five brandnew quests for you to embark upon
  • Two new and unique boss encounters, each with their own bit of voice acting. One of them comes with an epic scripted introductory scene.
  • Completely new and unique items for you to loot, including three new artifact weapons and two new armor sets
  • Many new assets for you to marvel about as you progress through the dungeon: animated corpses hanging from chains, giant lava falls, statues, an extension of OAAB’s infernace set, and a certain huge, red crystal
  • Custom music tracks throughout the dungeon, including an epic boss theme that plays during the final boss fight
  • Nine new NPCs, who all have their own take on the events, as well as on each other


The mod is inspired by the Diablo games, as Diablo fans will no doubt quickly realize. There are a few very direct appearances from those games, but it is all kept grounded in Elder Scrolls lore so that it fits into Morrowind's game world. Being a huge fan of Diablo I and II's atmosphere, I have always felt that someone should make a Diablo game in first person. Lacking the skills to create my own game, I opted for the next best thing: modding! This mod is my attempt to translate Diablo's atmosphere to Morrowind.


Go to Caldera and talk to someone about "Caldera Priory". I recommend you be at least level 20.

Two words of advice:
  1. Use torches. The dungeon is dark, but Night-Eye will only ruin your immersion.
  2. Bring levitation. You can play through the dungeon without it, but if you want to find everything, you will need it.


Extract the contents of 00 Core into your Data Files folder, then activate the mod in your Morrowind Launcher. Regenerate Distant Land and make sure to enable the „Include large interiors“ option!
 
If you’re using the vanilla engine, you will have to activate the „Scripted music uninterruptible“ patch from Morrowind Code Patch. OpenMW might be able to handle the custom music of this mod by default.

There are optional downloads for HD textures and HD Normal Maps for OpenMW. If you like, you can use either of these to override the default textures that come with the main archive.


Compatible with OpenMW
Compatible with BCOM
 
Patches for the following mods are included:

  • Remiros‘ Groundcover
  • Aesthesia Groundcover
  • Rocky West Gash
  • BCOM Rocky West Gash
  • Rocky West Gash Aggressively Compatible Version
 
All of these come as replacer ESPs for the respective mod. Use them instead of the original. You still need to
download and install the original mods first, or the patches are pointless.

BCOM users don’t need to install any extra grass patches. BCOM’s grass patches are already compatible with Caldera
Priory, courtesy of RandomPal. 


Regarding your load order:
It is advised to place Caldera Priory towards the bottom of your load order to make sure that it loads after everything that might edit the same exterior cell (West Gash Region -3,3). This is because Caldera Priory changes that exterior cell's name, and if another mod that edits the same cell loads after Caldera Priory, it will revert the name back to its original. This will make one of Caldera Priory's scripts break, and you will get an error message. That is why, if you use one of the Rocky West Gash Patches, you must load it before Caldera Priory. Else, it will break the aforementioned script.


Let There Be Darkness (lets you adjust the radius of light sources, very handy for your torches, requires MWSE)
MCP Actor Collision Box fix (to better navigate some tight spots)
Jammings Off (the same thing but for OpenMW)

I don’t really want to recommend this, because it would make parts of the dungeon less creepy and less challenging, but if you really, absolutely cannot handle spiders at all, even digital ones, then there is this: Arachnophobia Patch


I would like to thank my minions … I mean, these wonderful people, who all made significant contributions, without which the mod would be very different, and much poorer for it.
 
Lamb Shark created the Butcher and the Skeleton King from scratch for the Morrowind engine so that they could take their rightful place as boss encounters. He also made the weapons that you can loot off their corpses.
 
RuffinVangarr made the two armor sets in this mod, one of which is based on the Skeleton King’s armor. He also lent his voice to both bosses.
 
Melchior Dahrk was not only helpful as ever when I had questions regarding scripting or other modding related issues, but he also provided me with new assets that I extensively used throughout the dungeon, including additional architecture pieces of OAAB’s infernace set (bridges, walls, columns), giant lava falls, giant bone piles, and more.
 
Vegetto made a bunch of very special new assets. It started with animated corpses hanging from chains that are actually swinging, and went on to include a modification to one of TD’s bone assets, a statue based on Lamb Shark’s Skeleton King, and a giant, red crystal that Diablo fans will recognize. He also made the optional HD textures and Normal Maps.
 
Scipio provided the music for the mod. Some of the tracks he had already made for a personal project of his, which you can find here. But he also wrote two completely new tracks specifically for this mod. You can listen to them in the final two cells of the dungeon, and one of them is the boss theme.
 
Greatness7 did a lot towards the end of the production. He not only designed, scripted and made the animations for the final boss fight, but he also made several key optimizations to certain assets in order to improve performance throughout the dungeon. He also tweaked several scripts and did some troubleshooting. Last but not least, he playtested an earlier version of the mod and provided me with some very valuable feedback.
 
Stripes wrote several scripts that proved too complicated for myself, including the ones that make sure that the custom music tracks are played within their respective cells.
 
A Raven of Many Hats made the amazing title banner for the mod.
 
Ctroost playtested the mod, provided me with feedback and did what he does best: take amazing screenshots, some of which you can see in the gallery (the ultra wide ones).
 
Hrnchamd used his coding expertise to do some vital troubleshooting, specifically in regards to distant land scrolling.
 
Additionally, I would also like to thank the teams behind OAAB_Data and Tamriel_Data, for without these two asset repositories this mod would not have been possible.
 
And finally a huge shoutout to the wizards behind CSSE for making every Morrowind modder’s life so much easier: NullCascade, Hrnchamd and Greatness7

Ahhh, fresh meat!