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About this mod
Using powerful magic in ways that are morally questionable to most of those dedicated to the arcane arts, it is possible to create a Guardian Spectre: a ghostly entity with magically heightened powers, designed to perform guardian functions, whether willingly, or against its will and forced by a higher power.
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In the general definition, a Spectre and a Wraith are synonyms that define the same type of haunting: the last phase corruption of a soul bound to the mortal plane by unfinished business, when it no more has memories or sense of self, but only pain, anger and guilt. In this stage, they are no more souls or ghosts, just hollow revenants, remains of what one day was a person.
Naturally, because the process involves contact with the dead, and even their subjugation in some cases, the use of Guardian Spectres is often viewed with suspicion and is often mixed with necromancy, although it often involves strong elemental magic as well. It's even believed that among mages more connected to the control of the elements, and averse to pure necromancy, the creation of Guardian Spectres is done only by using former members of their covenants who volunteered to have this function in death, but this theory is questioned by many due to the tumultuous and fragmented nature of the mind in the spectres themselves.
Many types of Guardian Spectres exist, and the list includes anything from Penitents to Dwemer Spectres, also Bonelords and Ancestor Ghosts, or even some Rotten Maidens, but the most frequently documented are those enhanced by elemental magic of ice, fire and shock, and also those spirits of ancestors who volunteered to guard the tombs of their families.
These most common types can then be cataloged as:
Chilling Spectres, Flaming Specters, and Sparkling Specters are Guardian Spectres enhanced by elemental magic, respectively, ice, fire, and shock. They tend to guard places where cryomancers, pyromancers, and electromancers carry out their studies and experiments. They have high elemental power, are skilled in the use of Silence, thus being able to quickly leave a mage temporarily depleted of their magic, and can summon lesser Enthralled Wraiths, imbued with the same element as themselves. They wear long robes covering their floating torsos, arms and skeletal heads, adorned with magical symbols. A large rune of the element that permeates them manifests on their backs, serving as the source of their mighty power. The level of sanity and sentience of these wraiths is very low, being close to machines, fulfilling mechanical functions and a sense of purpose artificially imbued in them by their creators. Wraiths are already naturally devoid of much sense of identity or rationality left, so after the transformation into Guardian Spectre it becomes even more reduced.
While also generally cataloged as a Guardian Spectre, a Vigilant Ancestor is often a sentient, stable ghost who has willingly committed to become a ghostly guardian of a place, item, or person, a promise that has been made, in many cases, while it was still alive. The practice is particularly attributed in its creation to ancient clan mages of High Rock, Cyrodiil and Skyrim, as a way to protect their loved ones and arcane treasures, from nefarious forces. Generally, these sentient and free spirits choose to continue guarding the places and people to which they dedicated their mortal lives in the afterlife, often even becoming guardians of the burial places of their clans, ensuring the eternal rest of the mortal remains of their ancestors and descendants. After death, the willing spirit goes through an arcane process in which it is imbued with powerful magic and becomes a formidable guardian, in addition to maintaining its reasoning and decision-making capacity as mentioned, thus being one of the few cases in which even the scholars and mages most opposed to necromancy are forced to consider twice before condemning the practice. Due to the routes used, similar to the Dunmer's Holy Necromancy, the Vigilant Ancestors tend to be somewhat less powerful than their more mindless and darker counterparts, such as a Chilling, Flaming or Sparkling Spectre, who are just a vessel for arcane powers, continually imbued on them to often lesser ends, and without concern for the welfare of the undead guardian, and its ability to withstand this constant stream of power, which can quickly deteriorate the creature further if the process is done recklessly.
Unlike the Guardian Spectre type noted above, a Vigilant Ancestor is unable to summon and control Enthralled Wraiths,
but instead they can summon the reminiscences of those it sacrificed its existence to ensure their eternal rest.
Generally, the Vigilant Ancestors use ice magic, hardly being seen using other types of elements, even due to
the fragility of corpses to the fire or shock element, which could easily incinerate an entire tomb.
A Hemonculous is a curious creation: firstly, it is important to differentiate a Hemonculous from a Homonculus. A Homonculus is a red-winged Imp-like creature created via alchemy, being a relatively simple chimerical creature, and possessing no remarkable power. A Hemonculous is in turn named after the word Hemo, a combining form meaning "blood", used in the formation of compound words, and Homonculus, an alchemical creation, as noted earlier, so, basically, a Hemonculous is a chimera made with blood magic. Vampires use Vigilant Ancestors, who are then victimized by the vampire thralling and through blood magic are corrupted, becoming guardians of these clans. This happens when vampires invade tombs to make their hiding places there and among them there are vampire masters powerful enough to carry out this process of blood enchantment and alchemy. A Hemonculous retains its sanity and intelligence, but finds itself the victim of a powerful vampiric delusional spell, which leads it to believe that the bloodsuckers are its masters and that its new function is to protect them, like any person or creature victimized by the vampire charm. Also commonly the ghostly reminiscences of the deceased that the Ancestral Guardians protect become corrupted as well, acting as guardians of the vampires too. These corrupted Ancestor Guardians and their skeletal minions are reddish in color, shrouded in blood magic, and their attacks drain life.
Enthralled Wraiths are nothing more than newly captured Wraiths who are in the early stages of becoming Guardian Spectres against their will. This is evidenced by the gradual loss of human appearance, such as the skin and flesh on their heads dissolving and falling off, where in the future there will only be bones, as seen in Spectres such as the Flaming, Chilling and Sparkling ones, all of which originated and were corrupted from imprisoned Wraiths. Obviously, these human traits are just the remnant of the entity's residual self-image, being neither real flesh nor bones, but it shows that they are in fact losing the rest of their humanity and basically turning into empty husks. Guardian Spectres summon these enchanted phantoms to their aid, and they are embodied in the same magic as their summoners, but with less power and more modest arcane attributes, as well as being smaller in size and posing much less danger."
by Beastmaster Mihail *
(*Who is Beastmaster Mihail? He is my avatar/persona within the universe composed of all my mods. He is the ingame author who writes the texts that are usually presented as descriptions for my mods. A former monster hunter, now a dedicated scholar, he is planned to be released as an NPC in late 2022/early 2023, doing the same job in-game as my descriptions do on Nexus.)
Technical info:
- Both Guardian Specters and Vigilant Ancestors are area summons, that is, they stay in the place where they were summoned, attacking the area and enemies around them, not moving from the point where they were summoned. The spells to summon them can be looted from the bosses added by this mod, inside the new areas;
- Although rare, a bug can occur in which a creature rigged on the Vampire Lord animations (Vigilant Ancestor and Hemonculous) does not enter magic combat mode. In some cases, it goes into magic combat mode after a few seconds, but in others, it just doesn't react. However, this is very rare, and is due to the fact that the Vampire Lords' AI was not programmed for enemies, but only for a highly scripted battle (Harkon) and for player use.
- 10 new creatures: Chilling Spectre, Flaming Spectre, Sparkling Spectre, Vigilant Ancestor, Hemonculous, Enthralled Wraith (frost variant), Enthralled Wraith (fire variant), Enthralled Wraith (shock variant), Silver Hand Remains, Corrupted Dawnguard Remains;
- 1 new ingredient and 4 new potions: Blooded Vampire Dust, Potent Potion of Blood, Refined Elixir of Resist Fire,
Refined Elixir of Resist Cold, Refined Elixir of Resist Shock;
- 5 new spells (marked as powers): Summon Ancestor Guardian, Conjure Hemonculous, Conjure Flaming Spectre, Conjure Chilling Spectre, Conjure Sparkling Spectre;
- 5 new areas: Ancient Dawnguard Tomb (close to Broken Helm Hollow/ Rift), Pyromancers Lookout (close to Ragnvald/ Reach), Cryomancers Hideout (close to the Winterhold College/ Winterhold Hold), Electromancers Lodge (close to Mor Khazgur/ Haafingar), Silver Tear Keep (close to Gallows Rock/ Eastmarch).
So far no incompatibilities have been found between this mod and other mods.
(OBS- If by chance when installing several of Mihail's mods at the same time you are asked about files overwriting those of other Mihail mods or other authors mods, don't worry because they are just the same files shared between mods. I recommend that on these occasions always give preference to the files contained in my mods, and among mine always give preference to the mod you are installing last.)
The Mihail Monsters and Animals series aims to create and make available to the community the most complete set of creatures for TES 5: Skyrim, implemented in an immersive and unique way, with respect to the pillars of lore. Instead of pathetically just throwing models and textures in the game reusing 100% vanilla mechanics, the creatures made by Mihail have uniqueness and extreme zeal in their idealization and implementation, which will provide you with an experience that you have never had before in this area.
- The last Skyrim Update
- DLC Dragonborn
- DLC Dawnguard
- DLC Hearthfire
Authors:
Mihail- Chilling Spectre, Flaming Spectre and Sparking Spectre models, textures, animations, effects, spells and sounds;
Enthralled Wraiths models, textures, animations, effects, spells and sounds; Vigilant Ancestor and Hemonculous effects, spells and sounds; skeletal minions effects; new areas; scripts; game implementation;
SoN6of6TrediS- Vigilant Ancestor/ Hemonculous models, textures and animations;
Some assets used on this mod belong to:
Powerofthree- for the animated magic runes models and textures attached to the back of the Guardian Spectres;
CD PROJEKT RED- for the track "Witch Hunters", used on the new boss battles.