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Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

Drake's Guardian Equipment

by Drake the Dragon

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# DESCRIPTION
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All content from this mod is added in 3 respawning chests (unlimited supply, might need to wait for a cell reset though). Those can be found in front of the Arcane University left of the stairs to the Arch Mage's Tower and the locked entry gates.

I needed some unique clothing/armor for my personal character Drake, the Little Dragon and got the idea to create the equipment he uses in the stories I make up of him (since 2 years actually, long before I started with Oblivion).
I had a basic idea of their appearance but needed to detail it further before I could even consider creating specific items. It was always intended looking close to the SeeD uniforms from Final Fantasy VIII,
and stumbling across a thread on the Nexus forums depicting some soldiers and other chars from Final Fantasy, I got immediately reminded of the time when I was playing FF7 and FF8. I always loved their designs.
Those pictures now became my main inspiration and I started thinking about how to best... start it. I created only a few meshes totally from scratch yet, so I was first looking for existing mods with interesting and fitting contents
I could use to reshape and retexture them so they become the realization of my vision.

These are Guardian Uniforms and Armor parts, Guardians being the members of a fictional faction in the stories of Drake, the knightly Guardian Order from Ancient Earth, sworn protectors of order and peace in mystical times long before human history.
The armor parts shouldn't be overly powerful apart from the Dragon-Scaled Shirts (also worn below any upperbody armor item from this mod). But in my stories a dragon's scales are almost indestructible by normal means, so it had to fit in somehow.
They're Light Armor for maximum freedom of movement in and light to be worn.
The pauldrons are worn in a Ring slot due to the lack of free slots for the different combinations.

The mods I mainly took from (base meshes to be heavily reshaped and bases for the re-textures):
- AlienSlof's Male Clothing : Hussar Uniform, base for the sleeveless (dragonscale-armored) shirt (the collar was from Vanilla, remember Count Hassildor of Skingrad's coat? I also took many parts from Slof's Robe Trader's textures due to their high artistic quality)
- MystikHybrid's Dragon Skin (Akatosh Mount textures) : previously the base for Drake's scales, now only used for the scales on the shirt
- The short vest was created from a Vanilla upperclass shirt (the blue one, if I remember right), ornaments taken from Vanilla mithril textures, the little dragon emblem's origin I can't remember anymore (was on the hilt of a katana)
- ShokkiiMonkii's DMC Dante's Clothes : pants almost unaltered apart from the crotch, coat heavily modified to open wide and stay behind the legs, textures mostly only recolored (matched my vision too well already)
- Andragorn's Shadow Armor Set Sotonhorian : many reshaped and adapted parts you will recognize, textures mainly recolored/layer-blended/multiple-effects-applied and also re-used elsewhere


Additional information for users of my Scripted Argonian Feet:

This mod comes completely ArgonianFeet-ready. All items have ArgonianFeet adapted NIF files present following my simple naming scheme.
My SAF scripts will recognize and use them automagically, just as intended.

If you're NOT a user of my SAF and are fighting for every single KB of free disk space,
you can simply and safely remove all NIF files ending on "_ABfeet.nif" and "_ABffc.nif" from my folders inside the "clothing" and "armor" folders.

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# REQUIRED PLUGINS
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Robert's Seamless Male Body V4 (muscular) - though V3.X should do as well and it doesn't necessarily have to be muscular either, just so you won't wonder when your char suddenly gets some muscles while wearing my shirts

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# MORE INFORMATION AND INSTALLATION
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---Manual Install:

Simply move the "meshes" folder, the "textures" folder and the "DrakeGuardianEquipment.esp" into your "data" folder.
If prompted to overwrite anything, just state "yes". (It won't "replace" your whole folders with empty ones but just "add" in my new folders.)

---Manual Uninstall:

You can safely remove the following folders without causing any issues with other mods or your Oblivion:
"meshes/armor/DrakeGuardianEquipment"
"meshes/clothes/DrakeGuardianEquipment"
"textures/armor/DrakeGuardianEquipment"
"textures/menus/icons/armor/DrakeGuardianEquipment"
Then remove "DrakeGuardianEquipment.esp" from your "data" folder and you're done.

---OBMM OMOD conversion:

The archive comes OMOD-ready with OMOD conversion data. In OBMM just click "create" in the bottom row of buttons and select "Add archive".
If you're asked to import the information from the conversion data, answer yes, and after this is finished and you see the fields filled in, click "Create omod".
Then you can activate it as usual by double-clicking the new entry in your list of OMODs on the right.

---General notice:

If I use anything YOU created without your permission, it's definitely not on purpose. Just tell me if you want to get credits or if I even should remove your work from my compilation immediately.

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# UPDATES
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v1.0 initial release, for Robert's Male Bodies only

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# CONTACT
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If you have questions, comments or suggestions about this or my other projects, you can reach me by sending a PM to Drake the Dragon at the Bethesda Game Studios forums (http://www.bethsoft.com/bgsforums/index.php).

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# CREDITS
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AlienSlof - for the use of parts of her textures from Slof's Robe Trader and the meshes of her Hussar Uniform from Slof's Male Clothing I reshaped to the (dragon-scaled) sleeveless shirts
MystikHybrid - for the base textures I made the scales on the armored shirts from
ShokkiiMonkii - for the pants meshes from DMC Dante's Clothes I only reshaped little, the coat meshes I heavily reshaped around the front to open more widely, the collar and the lower half to flow behind the legs, and the original textures I mostly only recolored to fit the color schemes
Andragorn - for the armor parts taken from Shadow Armor Set Sotonhorian and reshaped to fit everywhere and for the original textures I mainly recolored/layer-blended/applied-multiple-effects-on to create the silver and the golden set

Anybody I might have forgotten - if you see me using parts of your mods in my mod without giving you proper credit, it definitely only happened because I forgot I based some of my creations on your's, not on purpose!
Contact me and tell me if you want to get mentioned in the credits or if I rather should remove the parts from your mods from my mod.