Cast Soul Mark onto living, unique NPCs - no Whiterun Guards, Bandit Chiefs, or the like. The spell will initially be inactive.

Then kill them to trigger reanimation.

If they're unkillable (due to essential status), there's a quest keeping them that way, as the spell attempts to make them non-essential. However, there's a toggle in the MCM menu to allow essential characters deaths, if needed.

Cast on the target again to toggle it off. You can have up to 100 NPCs affected by Soul Mark at any given time.

When they're killed by the player, they'll reanimate in the Zombie state.


Zombies can be treated as if they were reanimated by 'Dead Thrall'. If they are slain, they'll be reanimated once more under their killer. If they die to a non-specific cause, they'll reanimate under the player.

As one might expect, enemy-reanimated units will be hostile to the player.

In this state:

- Activating (not sneaking, hands not raised) will open their inventory.
- Sneak activating with hands down will toggle equipment memorization. The activated NPC will unequip any existing items - then will remember & equip any armor/gear (up to 15 pieces) the player adds into their inventory. Sneak activating again toggles this off, although any memorized equipment will stay equipped. Memorized gear can be removed to 'forget' them.

NOTE: This will remove their existing default outfit until you toggle the 'Soul Mark' spell off the NPC.

- Activating them with hands raised/weapons drawn (sneaking or not) will make them go into Mannequin state.
- Doing the above with a shield equipped will make them face towards you before going into Mannequin state.

Soul Marked NPCs in the Zombie state can be turned into an impromptu mannequin at any time. They will stop their movements and remain posed wherever they are. This mod comes with 5 base poses that can be cycled through, and other poses/animations can be swapped or added in.

In this state:

- Activating them (not sneaking, hands not raised) will advance them to the next pose.
- Sneak activating will rewind one pose.
- Activating with hands up will return them to the Zombie state.
- Sneak activating with hands up will open their inventory.
- Activating them from a 90 degree cone directly behind them will toggle on/off the equipment memorization previously noted.
- Activating them with a torch equipped will trigger Soul-Separation and convert them into a 'Vessel'. They will record their current position and subsequently follow you.

- Added in 2.10: Activating with a shield equipped (regardless of sneaking & hands state) will change their direction to face you.


The Soul-Separated state is mostly the same as the Zombie state, used in order to get those in the Mannequin state to follow you; it additionally allows you to send them back to their Mannequin position once their services are no longer needed.

- Activating them with a torch equipped will return them to their original position in the Mannequin state.
- Killed by an NPC (or you), they'll reanimate under their killer.

Soul Marked units have a debuff to detection ability - they can possibly lose their target in combat. Likewise, they are prone to walking and may show up after a delay when fast traveling - however, they will follow the player to the best of their ability. These issues are rectified if they're the player's teammate though.

Speaking of teammate, giving a soul husk over to a Soul Marked target can make them a teammate - however, on death, they will revert their teammate status.

Additionally, this mod attempts to keep affected targets alive and in action. If you run away from a fight when enemy-reanimated Soul Marked targets are hostile, they'll eventually unload and die, as part of Skyrim's engine that dispels magic effects on unloaded NPCs.

But they will be revived as vengeful targets and pursue you - you must finish them off yourself. However, they will remain vengeful, and if they ever are revived (not reanimated) again, they will once again be hostile and require you to end them.


There are also buffs granted to Soul Marked targets if you add filled Soul Gems to their inventory:

Petty - Grants muffled footsteps
Lesser - Increases speed in combat
Common - Enables slow passive healing out of combat
Greater - Increased Lockpicking ability to pick up to Master level
Grand - Grants armor and spell absorption chance in combat
Black - Nothing by itself, but in combination with all the other soul gems, will make the target Soulbound. Soulbound units will always reanimate under the player and maintain any teammate status. Soulbound characters will also be unable to start combat with the player, as they will instantly die on doing so.

Soulbound targets in the Mannequin state are synchronized with each other and will all play the same pose.

---- Misc. ----

Soul Husks - Giving a soul husk to a NPC affected by Soul Mark will toggle their teammate status, as well as 'cleansing' vengeful targets.

'Infuse Vessel' - A spell that gives one of each type of filled soul gem to the targeted unit, provided you have them. MCM tweak can be toggled to also move a few lockpicks over.

'Recall Soulbound' - Spell that teleports all active 'Soulbound' units over to the player character.

'Command Soul' - Allows you to command NPCs under Soul Mark as if they were followers.

With the power of OAR, you can alter or add to the animations Mannequins play. The default five that come with the mod are located in the below path:

From your Skyrim 'Data' folder, "Meshes\actors\character\animations\OpenAnimationReplacer\Soul Separation v2"

In any of the sub-directories, replace the existing 'mt_walkingcamera.hkx' with any animation file, making sure to rename it to 'mt_walkingcamera.hkx' as well.

Alternatively, to add more poses, just duplicate an existing folder, replace the 'mt_walkingcamera.hkx' file similar to above, and be sure to update the folder's config.json file by incrementing the value above 5.0 (existing values for the 5 default animations are 1.0 to 5.0, so start at 6.0 and go up by 1.0 each - make sure to keep the decimal and all):

IE if the above was an added pose, increment value to 6.0 and so on.

Finally, be sure to update the 'No. of Animations' in the mod's MCM menu to match your number of animations/poses.

Q: How does this work?
A: Papyrus scripting! A good chunk of it. In game, the player character will receive Spell Tomes for the spells mentioned on load.

Q: Are there any options for the mod?
A: See below for the MCM menu.



Q: My game crashed!
A: Skyrim.
In all realness though, this mod should not be causing any crashes by itself - however, if you have greater than 20~ characters following you and starting combat, crashes/freezes can potentially occur. I haven't implemented a limit on the number of NPCs that can follow you, but just know that moderation is key, depending on what mods you're running and the specs of your computer.

Q: This mod is overriding other quests.
A: It assigns packages through a quest with a priority of 99, which should beat out every quest not at priority 100. Notably, this will conflict with custom followers that have a whole questline and framework built into them. You can go through the creation kit and lower the priority of the quest if you want other quests to override it at times.

Q: Why a torch for certain things?
A: I... couldn't really figure out a better approach, so a torch it was.

Q: Soul Mark isn't able to be cast on this NPC?
A: Try selecting them in console and confirming if 'isUnique' returns a value of 1. If it doesn't, that NPC is ineligible. This is unfortunately a workaround to restrict who can be affected by Soul Mark, as many non-unique NPCs have a 'Respawnable' flag that really messes up how things work (but this flag is basically only on non-unique NPCs anyways).

This does however mean that you can use PlaceAtMe to add copies of any NPC and apply Soul Mark to them, provided the base NPC is considered unique.

Q: These goons are blocking my way.
A: For SE, I recommend Disable Follower Collision (AE Alternative: I'm walkin' here NG, although it still seemingly has a good amount of collision...)

Q: These goons are disappearing from where I put em.
A: NPC Lookup for SE - AE alternative Where Are You to track NPCs.

Q: AE/SE?
A: While SE is the version I run and officially support, this is simply scripts + ESL'd ESP file, so it should have no issues for AE as well.

• This mod by default increases the global amount of iMaxSummonedCreatures to... you guessed it, 100. While that is to support the extremely rare case of an enemy destroying all 100 Soul Marked targets, it does mean that they can also cast that many summons as well - in my local game though, I've never seen them do any more than 2 though, so it likely won't happen without some combat AI overhaul, assumedly. This also does mean anything that overrides this value will diminish the effect of enemies reanimating Soul Marked targets, as they'll have the chance to hit the summon cap early.
• This also means the player has the side effect of having up to 100 summons (technically more), but if you're using this mod, I assume you'll handle gameplay balance on your end.
• As Soul Marked targets are handled by a quest, you should be careful not to uninstall a follower mod that's been added to the Soul Mark handler before toggling Soul Mark off of the follower.
• From a technical perspective, this mod sets the reanimated targets as 'Alive' to have quest packages take effect. You may find them to not respond to things such as Turn/Heal Undead, and Detect Life will show them as well (unless they're vampires, but w/e).
• Illusion spells, even with Master of the Mind, will not take effect on Soul Marked targets due to an oversight in how the conditions are set in Skyrim.
  Patch released to fix vanilla illusion spells to work with Soul Marked targets. Check under Miscellaneous files.
• Soul Mark will attempt to remove Essential/Protected/Invulnerable flags on the target, and never re-implements them, so keep that in mind.