First let me say hello!! I know I've been gone for a few years, but I'm finally back!! Here to present you with one of my favorite builds to date!! Enter: The Scholar
First let's start with the basics:
Race: Breton
Standing Stone: Mage/Lover/Atronach
Stat spread: 2 Magicka, 1 Health, 0 Stamina
Major Skills:
Destruction
Restoration
Conjuration
Heavy Armor
One Handed (Optional)
Minor Skills:
Alteration
Speech
Smithing (Optional)
Alchemy (optional)
Enchanting (optional)
Now, on to the backstory:
It all began in the city of High Rock, a young Breton meeting and falling in love with a strong Nord man. The young woman belonged to a once noble family who's namesake now lost to time. Once, the family was well renowned for their knowledge and power. However, one fateful night changed everything. As night settled in, bandits attacked and ransacked their ancestral castle killing and destroying everything in their path in search of riches. What these bandits had not known was that the only riches to be found was knowledge. The family were archivists, librarians, scholars. They owned one of the most vast collections of books known in all of Tamriel. The night of the attack the man and his wife managed to escape with their lives albeit barely, along with their still very young babe close in hand. They ran and ran for days until they reached a dense copse of forest nearing the border of Skyrim where they happened upon a long abandoned cottage where they decided to hunker down. After weeks and no sign of the bandits the two lovers decided to settle down in their raggedy shack. The husband chopped wood from surrounding trees spending his time rebuilding the shack or hunting for food while the wife looked after their still young child and after months of hard work he finally finished. Over the years the child grew and the mother taught her daughter to read from the few books that they had found in a local town not too far off. Once the child grew into a young woman she loved the books and was always excited any time she and her mother would read them together. Remembering the stories her mother told her of their family's once vast collection she asked her mother what became of such a collection learning of that frightful night so many years ago and mourning the loss of both her family and the knowledge they once held wishing that such a vast collectionhad not been lost. As time passed she also heard stories from her father of his once great adventures back in his homeland of Skyrim and also of tales of great warriors. The tales gave her a sense of wonder and excitement hoping someday to have her own adventures and perhaps building her own collection and library someday. As the years passed on her mother and father grew old and eventually passed on. Leaving the still young girl with nothing but a small cottage in a forest what what few books she and her mother had collected. Grieving she closed herself off to the world. Months passed by. Then one day as she was reading one of her favorite books, a story about a young mage who traveled the continent and telling of his adventures into dangerous crypts and of finding lost artifacts the young girl decided it was time for her to set out on her own quest. One that she had wanted more than anything in the world: to set out and see the world. To visit such places herself but also to search and collect and build her own collection. To try and restore her family's legacy of great collectors of knowledge. Packing a few small things the young girl sets out heading for her father's homeland of Skyrim hoping to find answers in a place she had never seen and only heard tales of. She crosses the border only to be captured along with a band of Stormcloaks she had only heard the townsfolk whisper of with the Imperials mistaking her for one of them, and this is where her true story begins:
After crossing the border, being arrested, and carted to Helgen she will decide to flee with Ralof fearing to be captured once again and her death at the hands of the Imperials if she had sided with Hadvar. As she is escaping she will have to fight the Imperials trying to stop their escape and equiping some heavy Imperial gauntlets and boots while exploring the area to the left she will find some gold and the book "Mixed Unit Tactics" and heading down to the cells she will be grabbing the mages robes and hood off the corpse in the cells as well as learning a new spell: Sparks and grabbing an interesting book she finds on a table nearby next to a knapsack titled "Legacy of the Dragonborn" as well as too more resting across the room in a large metal guard station titled "A brief History of the Empire" parts 1 and 2. After escaping through the cave she will head straight to Riverwood and decide to help Lucan recover his golden claw and head to Bleak Falls Barrow seeing it as a great opportunity to uncover the knowledge within such a place. After this however she will put off heading to Dragonsreach straightaway believing the Jarl must have surely heard of the Dragon attack already and instead will head to the stables after hearing of the Mages College in Winterhold. Hearing how it is a place full of knowledge this will be her main motivation. However she learns she must first join this college and become a student to be allowed to enter and reach their fabled library. Her primary goal should be to seek out and obtain every book in Skyrim (and beyond in Solstheim later on) whether being found by book sellers like Urag at the college
For a full immersive experience I highly suggest actually physically reading all of the books you obtain in the game as well as building a library to store them in one of the Hearthfire homes, the Archmages room once you complete the collages questline, or if you have Myrwatch it has plenty of bookshelves as well and makes for a great player home also.
Now for the reason I chose to use heavy armor as opposed to use mage armor is simply more for convenience early on as unless you are power leveling Alteration it will be some time before you get the necessary perks as well as it felt fitting for a half Nord half Breton character. You could turn this into more of a spell sword with putting points into one handed as well if you wish adding in that her father trained her in the art of swordplay/using an axe as well. Feel free to change the skills to your liking as to fit your play style!!
For other factions you could argue the companions as she wishes to learn about Lycanthropy, the Thieves Guild to earn money in order to buy more books, you could even argue the Dark Brotherhood in order to learn about Sithis, you can seek out the Daedric artifacts if you so choose, You may side with either the Volkihar Vampres or the Dawnguard. The great thing about this character is her primary trait is she is inquisitive. She's curious about the world, history, and the mysteries of it all. She can be kindhearted and take the lighter path or she can take on a darker road with her lust for knowledge cause her to seek more power especially after learning she is Dragonborn. One of my favorite things was seeking out all of the Dragon Priests and Word Walls, obtaining Khonariik and all words of power and learning more about the history of the Dragonpriests. Also she would 100% feel at home in Apocraphya and seeking to learn and serve Hermaeus Mora to gain access to his vast collection, especially all of the Black Books especially if you wish to take on a darker side of things.
I built this character for those who want to have an immersive and fun experience especially for those who love reading as much as I do but could also take on and explore everything that Skyrim has to offer without any restrictions as to alignment. After all you can search for knowledge both for enlightenment and teaching or simply for your own gain and power. It's up to you the player.
With everything said, I truly hope you all enjoy and find this build to be both a fun, and immersive experience!! Please feel free to leave me any comments about your experiences you had while playing this character and what you enjoyed or even critiques you may have about this build. I'd love to hear all your stories!! I hope to provide more builds like this in the future and maybe for some other games as well
Oh!! One last side note before I forget!!: This build can work fantastic with Oblivion/Oblivion remastered as well!!
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