The History of the College of Winterhold >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Winterhold College is ancient but the substructure of the Midden is probably much older. It has a different architectural style and generally buildings grow from the underground up (This may not be true for magically made structures).
The infrastructure and installations of the Midden strongly suggests that this site may have a very dark past and indeed may be built upon a magical nexus which attracts those with an affinity for magic. This nexus or a channeling of it, may have also prevented destruction of Winterhold College during the Great Collapse.
The site of Winterhold College was probably originally a centre of operations for a powerful group of Necromancers until they caused enough trouble to precipitate their over-throw. However, this event proceeds the Necromancy Ban of 3E 431 probably by several eras, perhaps in the First Era in Arch-Mage Gauldur's time (Speculation).
The new guardians of Winterhold built the College as it is seen today, as they immediately realized the unique properties of this site. They initially made attempts to remodel the Midden according to the new style and aims of the College, but could not. The Midden would not be changed. Perhaps the Archmage at the time decided to leave the Midden as is as a reminder of what the lure of power could do to a men and women.
An unfortunate consequence of this is that some parts of the Midden that should have been torn down were not, including the Black Hand. Little is known about this statue except that many have died directly or due to peripheral consequences related to it. There have been several attempts to destroy it, all of which ended in failure.There has been some stories of it communicating people in its chamber, but all attempts to communicate with it have failed and anyone claiming to have talked with it died suddenly afterwards or were infirm of mind.
The most recent victims of the Hand were 4 students who were incinerated near by it. It is unclear whether the Hand was direct or peripheral in cause.
There are 4 rings associated with he Hand that by their style seem to come from the same time period. Attempts have been made to both use them and destroy them. The obvious answer of putting them on the fingers of the hand did nothing. Perhaps only a certain person can use them or a lost spell is required. Attempts to discard them into the depths of the Sea of Ghosts and the like ended in failure as the rings just appear back at the College sometimes, in very inconvenient locations. Similarly any attempts to close off the Midden end in failure.
It seems that some kind of pact between what was and what came after was made that still holds.
Calfurius pointed to some records that didn't play well with Cutting Room Floor. This is fixed in version 1.1 but Cutting Room Floor had to be added as a master so you will need it otherwise this mod will cause an immediate CTD. Sorry for missing this.
Delete version 1.0 and replace it with 1.1 and do a clean save. There are no scripts modified so there will be no issues.
What this MOD does: >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
"The Missing Apprentices" quest just makes no sense even after Cutting Room Floor restored some content. This fix makes the quest much more interesting and coherent.
This mod ties the missing apprentices to the Daedric Black Hand in the Midden. It only changes the content of one book and one quest description. It explains the fate of all 4 apprentices and why they all went missing off the college. No scripts Checked with SSEedit (again)
Spoiler:
Show
In the Midden there is a mysterious vanilla Daedric hand (see picture in the images section) = Vanilla Trapped inside this glove there is a nasty Dremora and you can release him if you are foolish or strong enough = Vanilla There is no backstory as to how or why he is there = Vanilla Much earlier, 4 apprentices were burned to death messing with this artifact and this is documented in the Investigators Report = Vanilla
There are currently another 4 NEW missing apprentices in the College = Vanilla
If you follow the Vannila quest you find out they die 4 random concurrent deaths in the outside areas of Winterhold. There is no tie ins and no reason why 4 students would die in 4 separate locations at the same time. This makes no sense.
In "Missing Apprentices Quset Fix" (my mod) the Dremora has been busy indeed. The four students found the Daedric Hand and manged to communicate with the Dremora inside. As they don't know whats inside they believed his sweet talk and promises of knowledge that would help their studies. The Dremora devised a plan to have each apprentice complete a ritual outside the college that would kill them, trap their souls in Oblivion and give the Dremora more power.
The students were desperate for knowledge to distinguish themselves and foolish enough to do the ritual and they all died. The Dremora had them leave the college to 4 separate locations so that there would be no chance they would see each other die and not complete the ritual.
When the player releases the Dremora the first thing he says is that the students are dead and their souls are in Oblivion (Vanilla).
At this point the player has really good reason to burn him to cinders or release him if they are playing a very evil character.
Necro - but should be no problem - if you happen to use the add-on mod Finding Velehk Sain realise that the patch will need to have its records adjusted for the compacted FormIDs (as long as it is installed when you do the processing it should be automatically updated - well, it does in SSEEdit anyway)
We learn from Phinis that it's been at least a month since the apprentices went missing, and that there was, "less than the necessary amount of oversight," so there's no reason to believe they all died concurrently. Illas was probably killed by her skeevers when she cast a frenzy spell, Ysra died when she miscast a flame cloak spell and exploded, Borvir was probably killed by the bandit that you find with him. Rundi is really the only one we don't know for sure, but there's plenty of dangerous wildlife around, including a wisp mother, and what appears to be a summoning circle, so there're plenty of potential options.
The sheer death count of the college is worrisome, to be sure, though; although it does help explain why Tolfdir is so concerned. Between two batches of apprentices, what happened to Aren's crew at Labrynthian, the Augur of Dunlain, and all of the hazards and dangers you go up against in the main college quest, it's clear that both Aren and Tolfdir are right to be concerned about "untimely deaths."
However, tying the two student questlines together does help create a bit more depth than just two unconnected side stories.
Obscure (somethingObscure) has made an add-on to this mod called Finding Velehk Sain - which has this as a master - and given Obscure's College is also made by Obscure, it would be pretty likely (ie yes)
Anyone know if I should load this after "RDO - CRF and USSEP Patches Final" (which is a patch from RDO)? LooT wants to load this before that one, contrary to the author's instructions.
I don't know what RDO is but I'm fairly certain it would be best to load this after anything having to do with CRF. You can of course load them up in SEEdit and see if anything in that patch conflicts with this, and then we can figure out if it's important.
I have come across an issue... I can find and collect all of them except Ysra. I can't find a place on the shoreline that looks burned out/Ysra's body. I have everything done as suggested an made sure of positioning via LOOT (which does have the correct setup of mod positioning), does anyone have any other suggestions?
Bit of a necro, but this was what I thought this mod might fix. One of the apprentices is bugged in that if you go near her body before starting this quest, for example if you explore around Ysgramor's tomb while doing the Companions quest, her body appears, but then with time the in-game corpse clean up event happens and she disappears forever. I even tried console commands to summon her back - an alive version can be summoned - but no ring even if you kill her.
56 comments
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Winterhold College is ancient but the substructure of the Midden is probably much older. It has a different architectural style and generally buildings grow from the underground up (This may not be true for magically made structures).
The infrastructure and installations of the Midden strongly suggests that this site may have a very dark past and indeed may be built upon a magical nexus which attracts those with an affinity for magic. This nexus or a channeling of it, may have also prevented destruction of Winterhold College during the Great Collapse.
The site of Winterhold College was probably originally a centre of operations for a powerful group of Necromancers until they caused enough trouble to precipitate their over-throw. However, this event proceeds the Necromancy Ban of 3E 431 probably by several eras, perhaps in the First Era in Arch-Mage Gauldur's time (Speculation).
The new guardians of Winterhold built the College as it is seen today, as they immediately realized the unique properties of this site. They initially made attempts to remodel the Midden according to the new style and aims of the College, but could not. The Midden would not be changed. Perhaps the Archmage at the time decided to leave the Midden as is as a reminder of what the lure of power could do to a men and women.
An unfortunate consequence of this is that some parts of the Midden that should have been torn down were not, including the Black Hand. Little is known about this statue except that many have died directly or due to peripheral consequences related to it. There have been several attempts to destroy it, all of which ended in failure.There has been some stories of it communicating people in its chamber, but all attempts to communicate with it have failed and anyone claiming to have talked with it died suddenly afterwards or were infirm of mind.
The most recent victims of the Hand were 4 students who were incinerated near by it. It is unclear whether the Hand was direct or peripheral in cause.
There are 4 rings associated with he Hand that by their style seem to come from the same time period. Attempts have been made to both use them and destroy them. The obvious answer of putting them on the fingers of the hand did nothing. Perhaps only a certain person can use them or a lost spell is required. Attempts to discard them into the depths of the Sea of Ghosts and the like ended in failure as the rings just appear back at the College sometimes, in very inconvenient locations. Similarly any attempts to close off the Midden end in failure.
It seems that some kind of pact between what was and what came after was made that still holds.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Calfurius pointed to some records that didn't play well with Cutting Room Floor. This is fixed in version 1.1 but Cutting Room Floor had to be added as a master so you will need it otherwise this mod will cause an immediate CTD. Sorry for missing this.
Delete version 1.0 and replace it with 1.1 and do a clean save. There are no scripts modified so there will be no issues.
What this MOD does:
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
"The Missing Apprentices" quest just makes no sense even after Cutting Room Floor restored some content. This fix makes the quest much more interesting and coherent.
Requirements
>>>>>>>>>>>>
Skyrim SE
USLEP (unofficial patch) (not directly dependent)
Cutting Room Floor (directly dependent)
SPOILERS
>>>>>>>>
What does this mod do?
This mod ties the missing apprentices to the Daedric Black Hand in the Midden. It only changes the content of one book and one quest description.
It explains the fate of all 4 apprentices and why they all went missing off the college.
No scripts
Checked with SSEedit (again)
In the Midden there is a mysterious vanilla Daedric hand (see picture in the images section) = Vanilla
Trapped inside this glove there is a nasty Dremora and you can release him if you are foolish or strong enough = Vanilla
There is no backstory as to how or why he is there = Vanilla
Much earlier, 4 apprentices were burned to death messing with this artifact and this is documented in the Investigators Report = Vanilla
There are currently another 4 NEW missing apprentices in the College = Vanilla
If you follow the Vannila quest you find out they die 4 random concurrent deaths in the outside areas of Winterhold. There is no tie ins and no reason why 4 students would die in 4 separate locations at the same time. This makes no sense.
In "Missing Apprentices Quset Fix" (my mod) the Dremora has been busy indeed. The four students found the Daedric Hand and manged to communicate with the Dremora inside. As they don't know whats inside they believed his sweet talk and promises of knowledge that would help their studies. The Dremora devised a plan to have each apprentice complete a ritual outside the college that would kill them, trap their souls in Oblivion and give the Dremora more power.
The students were desperate for knowledge to distinguish themselves and foolish enough to do the ritual and they all died. The Dremora had them leave the college to 4 separate locations so that there would be no chance they would see each other die and not complete the ritual.
When the player releases the Dremora the first thing he says is that the students are dead and their souls are in Oblivion (Vanilla).
At this point the player has really good reason to burn him to cinders or release him if they are playing a very evil character.
The sheer death count of the college is worrisome, to be sure, though; although it does help explain why Tolfdir is so concerned. Between two batches of apprentices, what happened to Aren's crew at Labrynthian, the Augur of Dunlain, and all of the hazards and dangers you go up against in the main college quest, it's clear that both Aren and Tolfdir are right to be concerned about "untimely deaths."
However, tying the two student questlines together does help create a bit more depth than just two unconnected side stories.