It has been many late nights and many hours but I finally published my falconry mod. This mod is a preview of a larger mod that I have been working on for the last year. Overall, I am happy with how this turned out and plan on having a hawk companion on all my future play-throughs.

I was driven to build this mod and this mod was one of the main reasons why I started to learn to mod in the first place.  A long- long time ago in the years gone and past that were known as the nineties, I used to play a MUD. A MUD is a text based role playing game and a precursor to all MMORPGs.  Players would log in to this MUD and basically role play and interact with text based rooms and locations and NPCs and our shared story would evolve. Muds were either PK (player killing) or non-PK and there was always a debate on which was better. Those who embraced the PK lifestyle reveled in it.  They would keep logs of their battles and deaths called PK logs and post them on their "Geocities" websites as text trophies of their carnage and kills.  During the height of my game's popularity there could be up to 90+ players with other players at their keyboards trying over and over desperately to grab an open spot and login once someone else logged out.

My younger me started out as a Ranger and immediately fell in love with the class.  One of the key features of the Ranger Guild  was the ability to control a bird in the MUD and have it as a companion. I had a forest hawk in the game but since it was text based I could only see her in my imagination. In my mind my hawk was a she and she was majestic, soaring through the skies and ruling the winds. It would be me treking through the forest while my hawk with her keen eyes and piercing cries kept watch overhead. Other times we would be sneaking up on a guard watch tower with my hawk flying before me to scout and take off some easy to kill sentries.

As games and my RPG experiences evolved I was always looking to recreate my hawk companion from my early RPG gaming days. The thrill I felt when I first summoned her to me on my text based cliff face was replaced with disappointments as most games did not have hawks or falconry systems. I wanted to watch my bird companion come to life once again and go on adventures. The MUD where I first got my hawk had long since faded away. Once I learned how to mod Skyrim, I started to build a large continent mod to recreate the MUD.  I wanted to bring my bird and my memories of the game back to life in 3D and now in VR. My MUD mod is still in process and it is a huge undertaking and was taking so much longer than expected. A year in and I was able to build the bird companions with a hawk (of course), eagle, falcon and raven. I had to work around the mechanics of dragon follower framework and work around some weird behaviors, like completely blocking the Player when traveling to a city. Are they perfect? No...but I am happy so far. I have been testing these birds and enjoyed having my hawk companion in Skyrim so much.  I would go about exploring and have her hover flying nearby and when I need aerial help, I would summon her. I had some some epic experiences of my hawk swooping down and surprising me and saving me. I loved it so much and wanted to share so I decided to release a preview of the mod with some of the birds that will be included for others to experience and enjoy.