At one time, you were happy. Content to dance among the tall trees and shaded pools of the Green among family and friends. For you, that is now but a distant memory brought about by the Thalmor, a murderous traitor, and the insidious curse of lycanthropy.
On the hunt for vengeance, you find yourself in Skyrim. Striving to hold onto your faith in Y’ffre through the pulling hunger as one of Hircine’s werebeasts.
Overview
Race: Bosmer. You once lived in Valenwood among the graht-oaks. Followed the tenants of Y’ffre and the Green Pact. You become a werebeast (see backstory and roleplay) and choose either werewolf or werebear. You could also choose to play this as an Orsimer, being that wood orcs also live in Valenwood and much of the backstory elements would still apply.
Skills: Archery, Light Armor, Lockpicking, One Handed will have major perk investments. Alchemy, Blacksmithing, Speech, and Stealth will have skill increases but some or no perk investment. You will be hunting your own food and using the ingredients harvested from those killed. And you will often be replacing your armor and weapons after transformations. If you go Orsimer you might drop Archery in place of thrown axes (Thrown Weapons Lite). Enchanting can also be a minor skill later on.
Attributes: 2/2/0. You will focus on Health and Stamina. With a combat mod installed stamina drains quickly in combat swinging weapons, drawing a bow, and sprinting to the next enemy. Injuries can happen at certain health percentages and death is a constant threat, so a higher health is also needed.
Standing Stone: The Warrior Stone initially, and then move to the Shadow Stone as soon as you find yourself nearby Riften. This assumes the use of Andromeda – Unique Standing Stones of Skyrim mod. Warrior is an easy one to get early but you will want to get Shadow which bumps combat movement speed by 20% which will play a large role in keeping you alive and in your skirmisher combat style.
Shouts: Elemental Fury mainly. Unrelenting Force and Whirlwind sprint also have good uses.
Gear: When you start you will mainly clad yourself in furs and whatever weapons you can fashion for yourself from bones. Eventually you will want to find or make a set of Bosmer Armor, a Bosmer Bow, and Bosmer Short Blades (Assuming you leverage the Bosmer Armor Pack listed below). Don’t get attached to your gear though as certain house rules for RP come into play with your transformations. You will mainly want to always keep some Ragged Trousers or another Ragged body slot item in your inventory. Making an Amulet of the Buck Moon (Skrimshaw mod) will boost your speed by 5%. Fishing up the Ring of Wind will benefit the builds speed, but you are better off storing this away until you have control of your transformations or are cured.
Perks
This assumes the use of the Ordinator – Perks of Skyrim mod listed below. You can use the 20% or the 50% perk increase mods as well, but you might instead use the Perk Points and More Gold for Bounties, A Dragon Soul to Perk Point mod, Perks at 50, 75, and 100% Skill mod, and Skyshards. These will give you more than enough too, while actively exploring and playing.
With just base perks from levels, by level 10 you should have filled in the basic damage boosts to both one handed and archery. Boosted your proficiency in light armor to better protect yourself and acquired Bear Traps through Lockpicking. You can achieve this base much faster with the various perk mods though and the skill-ups you get while in beast form will help with gaining levels early.
By level 20 you will want to begin looking for the perk paths that will gain you movement speed but will largely be governed by what skills you have been able to raise in this time. Continue Light Armor through toward both Unhindered and Windrunner, these remove the armor weight penalty to movement and increases your movement speed by 10% respectively.
By level 30 you want to gain access to Bosmer armor and weapons through Smithing perks. You should have more than enough skill in Smithing from just converting pelts into stuff. Archery and One-handed gain a few more perks that increase your speed with a bow and broaden your hit and run ability with small blades. You will be moving 50-65% faster than anyone else in combat.
Higher Levels
In the later levels, continue to max out Light Armor, Archery, One-Handed for Dual Wielding and Daggers, and Bear Trap Lockpicking. The unarmed perks in Light Armor will apply to your Beast Form and may be worth investment but will go nearly unused once you cure yourself.
Backstory
You were born and raised in the Green of Valenwood. Happily living your days hunting, fishing, and dancing under canopy of Y’ffre’s gaze with your family and tribe. All of that abruptly ended the day the Aldmeri Dominion sent the Thalmor to your home for a purge. Returning from a hunting trip, to find the Graht-oak your village lived in burning and the corpses of family and friends alike littering the ground.
The survivors, yourself included, formed a resistance. Actively working against the Thalmor, you struck at them in ambushes or helped smuggle others out of Valenwood to avoid death. Others flocked to your cause as well. One of these newcomers was a Bosmer with a strange red hand painted in blood across his face and a stranger taste for inflicting pain and suffering. You never fully trusted him but he was effective fighting the Thalmor. Eventually, your ambushes became less successful, and your group’s movements and basecamps are found more quickly. Your numbers slowly whittled away from these losses.
Then came the fateful day of that final ambush. Your remaining numbers, led by Peregorn the Red Hand, were to hit a cave holding political prisoners but instead found it was filled with Werebears. Most of your group were torn down. You suffered a grievous wound, but before you passed out, you saw the Red Hand’s face from the shadows, smiling with glee at his final betrayal.
When you came to, the werebeasts were feeding on your companions and you slipped away, mostly dragging yourself along. Surviving those first days was a struggle but deeper was your dread when during one of the following nights, an immense hunger overtook you. The pain in your chest excruciating. The last thing you remember is your vision turning blood red and your skin tearing away.
You awoke the next morning, and every morning after such a transformation happens, with fleeting memory of the night before. The screams of those dying under your teeth and claws, the insatiable hunger. The dread after every time you change, that you are falling further from Y’ffre’s grace and ever closer toward a possible return to the Ooze to be forgotten by all. But equally burning in you is a vengeance against those that wronged you.
You began to hunt down this Red Hand. After years, and many miles of travel across numerous provinces, his trail has gone cold. The closest you came was when he popped up with a group of bandits that were rumored to have attacked an Imperial patrol. The lone survivor, an Orsimer woman, was gone from the Imperial fort once you arrive but eventually you heard she was in Skyrim and figuring she may have found the Red Hand there, you began the trek.
In the foothills before the Jerral Mountains, a group of Lycanthrope Hunters found your camp. Gravely wounded in their sudden attack, forced a transformation and you barreled off into the mountains. You don’t know how many miles you covered that night, but when you came to, you were in a cabin, on a bed by a warm fire. Your wounded leg had been cleaned and bandaged. Outside you could hear someone scrapping at a pelt strung across a tanning rack.
Gameplay and Roleplay
You will begin in Angi’s Camp, through the Alt Start and New Beginnings mods. You wont be able to select a Werebeast form until your first night sleeping there if it’s a clear night sky.
I have played this way several times. It is best enjoyed as a very long-play, with organically creating the opportunities of taking certain quests or followers and makes use a few RP house rules and mods to help things along.
Gameplay Primary Goals
- Seek to subvert the Thalmor at every opportunity.
- Seek Thogra Gra-Mugur to help find the Red Hand.
- Kill the Red Hand for working with the Thalmor, betraying your kin, and leading to your cursed state.
- Set up hunter’s caches in each hold (made with Skrimshaw, though without the mod just finding safe storage), with supplies to start fresh post transformation. Bones and Ivory, a hunting Knife, kindling, pelts/leathers for new gear, food that doesn’t spoil like Troll or Mammoth Jerky.
- Seek a cure for your Lycanthropic Curse and return to Y’ffre’s favor.
House Rules
- Werebeast transformations do not happen voluntarily.
- Growl or other werebeast mods have a chance for you to turn automatically at night based on the moons built into it.
- I also make use an change on death mod or you can use the Beast Form power when I have low health and an injury. Think the Hulk changing when injured of under extreme duress.
- Share the Beastblood perk is available once taken but only share blood with a follower you injured during a transformation
- Bury the Beast perk is locked until you gain 100% favor with Hircine
- Werebeast transformations destroys or loses most worn and carried gear.
- When you change back simply discard armor, weapons, jewelry and other inventory items into a nearby barrel/crate or throw on the ground or nearby river and start fresh with just ragged trousers or a fur kilt
- Hircine blessed objects are kept. So the Ring of Hircine or any Skrimshaw made with the Engraved Bone of Hircine.
- Walking speed for almost all travel and no fast travel
- Frostfall disables fast travel and Sensible Travel takes out the UI compass.
- When traveling, use a sensible walking speed. Only run or sprint when the situation demands it. Mainly enjoy the scenery as you go.
- Map is unavailable until you obtain the Map of Skyrim from one of the Jarls homes. Which I don’t pick up until I am Thane there.
- Do not retrieve the Map of Skyrim until you are a Thane of that hold.
- Everything takes time to complete.
- If a mod doesn’t already advance time for a particular task then you use the wait function after performing something to signify the time it takes.
- Cooking something takes about an hour for most searing, roasting and cooking of meats. Two for stews and soups. You don’t cook more than you and your followers will consume in the next day or two. Jerky and Pemmican can be made in bulk in advance though.
- Making leather or treating hides takes 1 hour per (historically this process takes way longer but this is a good compromise).
- Making armor and weapons takes time. Body slot items will take 8 hours, head, foot, and hand slots take 2 hours each. Weapons take 8 hours. So be prepared to spend a few days some place.
- Reading a skill book or training with an NPC takes 1 hour per skill point.
- For Alchemy, I wait one hour per type of potion being brewed.
- Learning an Enchant takes 2 hours while enchanting takes 4 hours.
- Level Up only after sleeping for a night or after training with someone
- Also consider not applying perks to a skill until you are in the presence of a trainer in that skill
- Quiver limit
- Never carry more than 100 arrows total. Normally carrying 60 of the best damage arrows that can be made, 5-10 each of water, noisemaker, and fire arrows (from sneak tools mod), and a few of each of the arcane arrows (fire, lightning, and ice) looted during travels.
- Followers cant have more than 100 arrows as well.
- Followers are very helpful and having several has its pluses and minuses (I use the Underwhelming Multiple Followers Mod to get multiple and RDO to make some NPCs who aren’t usually followers into followers. Anoriath and Angi are good examples)
- Reduce the time some tasks take by the number of followers you have. Since some activities can be assumed to be taken on by them at the same time.
- Followers will be fed too. Share a Meal mod allows of this. Simply consume the food to be sated yourself and then share an equal amount with each follower.
- Followers must have room in your tent or their own tent to join you.
- With Fatality, I start out on Novice and up the difficulty settings every 10-15 levels.
As for play itself, take a meandering approach to picking up questlines and followers. The Missives mod gives good reasons for visiting other holds initially. Space out picking up quests in each city over a couple visits. For instance, I may pick up Auri on my first visit to Falkreath and then on my second or third visit to Falkreath hold begin Ill Met by Moonlight.
Run your werebeast rampages like a separate character. As a normal person your generally helpful and good, but as a werebeast you are a killing machine (think Jekyll and Hyde or Hulk and Banner). Kill anything friend or foe that gets in your way. I often will have my followers wait on nights with a high percentage chance to change so they aren’t killed. Though having them following, running to catch up will save you on more than one occasion as well from biting off more than you can chew. Though when you do hit a follower and don’t kill them, later on give them Werebeast blood and have them join in on your curse. When you are going to transform back near day light hours or the power fully Is running its course, try to end near a cave or secluded spot and to rest and dump gear.
If you run the Wintersun mod, start off following Y’ffre (Jephre in the mod) and the green pact. If a Wood Orc you can follow Malacath. At the heart of this playthrough is Hircine’s influence on you. Eventually you complete Ill Met by Moonlight and be following Hircine. Many of the same tenants apply to both so you shouldn’t lose favor with Hircine. Upon 100% favor with Hircine you can unlock perking Bury the Beast which allows you to control your transformations.
After curing your Lycanthropic curse, you can return to Y’ffre after visiting one of their shrines. As for the Greenpact, and wood use. Campfire/Frostfall doesn’t have any alternative fuels for fires, chopping fallen deadwood is certainly acceptable here and any recipes that may call for firewood just handwave that you are using bone (Bosmer Armors has firewood for the bow and swords).
Combat
You are a multi role combat ranger or scout. Incorporating archery, dual blades, poison, traps, movement, and some stealth into a complete form unto itself. At the start of any combat encounter, always take a potion like Fortify Health (Divine Enhanced Alchemy has some really good potions for buffs as well) to benefit from Stimulants and, if you have a shout, use it to gain Windbourne. Elemental Fury works well often since your weapons will not usually contain enchantments. But judicious use of Unrelenting Force to stagger or Whirlwind Sprint to close distance or create time and space can be helpful.
The situation will define what you use. Disable sentries around a bandit camp or fort with a stealthy shot from afar or sneak in to lay a trap in their path. Facing multiple enemies with a mix of ranged and close weapons, drop a trap in front of you, focus on the archer with your ranged attacks, and then after the brutes close and trigger you trap flip to your blades and move around stinging them with bite marks and poison. Facing mages or all ranged attackers, sprint in close quickly and hit them as they charge their spells or draw bows for the staggering effect.
Dropping to below 15% health when using the auto transformation on death mod, will heal you back to full. Roar using Growl of Terror (Speech perks from shout tree apply to Growls roars) to send everyone fleeing. Focus down one nearby NPC and eat them which may be a follower even.
A note on Bear Traps. They can be finicky. There are times where, if you are on an incline or shoreline, the ground will just swallow them up and you can’t get them back. Tall grasses can hide the ones you dropped. Your followers and animal companions like to run over them before enemies do. Going into it with this understanding though can make it more fun. If you lose a bear trap to the world just assume it broke upon dropping it down. It helps to begin stockpiling them as well. You have a limit of two in your inventory, but followers and containers can also now hold up to two. For the follower problem, simply stay between the followers and the trap and they usually go around, or back your followers far enough off that they don’t hit it.
Special Moves
Lure of Jaws and Claws. Drop a bear trap, drink potion of fortify health and potion of fortify one-hand, Elemental Fury shout, Bosmer Short Blades poisoned with a damage poison. As the enemy runs toward you into the trap they are staggered, and you speed to them and unleash your blade attacks on them.
Leaping Hoervor. Drink potion of fortify health and potion of fortify one-hand, Whirlwind Sprint shout to the target and double standing power attack with Bosmer Short Blades poisoned with a damage poison.
“Have you seen a Hoervor? They are like ticks, but enormous. It hunts its prey by leaping on them and burying its jaws in their chest.” – Auri, Song of the Green.
Bosmeri Ambush. One or more followers wait at a safe distance. You grab the attention of one or more enemies and run them back toward your waiting followers to slay with a barrage of arrows. Bonus points for funneling the enemies down a narrow tunnel or pathway through bear traps first.
Relevant Questlines
Missives – Radiant type quests from the Missives mod are a great way to facilitate moving from Hold to Hold to get into other quests
Thogra Gra-Mugur – She and you share a common enemy. Find her, help her, and get to know her, and she will help you enact your revenge.
Ill Met by Moonlight – Start this one after you reach 100%+ favor with Y’ffre and find yourself back in Falkreath. Choose to follow Hircine when the option pops up here. You choose Sinding’s fate as you will, either serves Hircine’s sinister purpose. You keep either Hircine item you gain through any transformation later.
Companions Questline – If you help with the initial giant, then feel free to join them right away but do not progress it much beyond the initial radiant quest. You don’t want to find out the inner circles true nature until later on. If you don’t help with the giant then feel free to seek to join later on, perhaps after finding vengeance with Thogra. Spread out their quest though and do other things in between.
Thieves’ Guild Questline - “Two Bosmer in a city of Theives? Riften doesn’t stand a chance!” – Auri, Song of the Green. There is a tradition of theft in Bosmer culture. Helping Brynjolf with his scheme’s would be in line, but you likely wouldn’t want to live in the ratway.
Angular Aquintence – the fishing quest can be of use for further organic adventuring across Skyrim, but you can also land the Ring of Wind while fishing which will boost your speed.
Kyne’s Sacred Trials – While you don’t worship Kyne, you can certainly respect the Nord Hunting tradition. Plus it opens up the Bosmer Hearthfire and has you trek all across Skyrim and takes me 3 weeks to a month of game time using the house rules
Hunterborn’s Rites of Hircine – reach a certain level in the hunterborn skills and you will get special recipes for rings. When equipped will begin unmarked and untracked quest of sorts. Begin this once you have good enough Hunterborn skills and follow Hircine.
Main Quest, Civil War, Dragonborn, and Dawnguard – Proceed with these as you would normally. Being Dragonborn and gaining shouts helps the build. You are more likely to side with the Empire than Stormcloak’s but you can certainly feel that the Empire was complicit in your family’s purge or you can side with the Empire but still work against any Thalmor. Dragons make the ultimate hunt but just be thankful you don’t have to consume them within three days of bringing them down.
Mods
This is a modded experience. Below are the mods I use to enhance the playthrough. If vanilla it may take some more house rules and imagination to get to. The mods below are not in any order of how they actually appear, please use a logical load order when building out your own game’s order.
Campfire, Frostfall, Hunterborn, Skrimshaw , iNeed Extended, iNeed Continued, iNeed Dangerous Diseases, iNeed Dangerous Diseases Plus, Skyrim Outfitters AIO – Facilitates a survival playthrough with considerable depth and provides a means to replace your gear through materials found in the wilds. I set Frostfall to Hardcore and iNeed consumption rates to max and remove excess food laying around. iNeed has options for Cannibalism which helps with both immediate consumption of an enemy and harvesting some for later
Growl, Edmond's Cursed - An Alternate Death Werewolf and Vampire Mod: Growl Version, Ordinator, 20% or 50% More Perks, Imperious, Wintersun, Andromeda – I run the entire suite of Enai-rim mods in two bundles on xbox. Growl gives you good Werebeast options while staying light on scripting. Wintersun gives you the depth of various faiths.
EMILI, Gold has weight, Honor the Dead, Sensible Horses and Travel, Lootable Things, Smeltdown Updated, craft everything, L.V.X magics fish anywhere, and L.V.X magics Boats– Mainly immersion, economy, and crafting mods mods. Between these and Bushcraft they add in experience gain for Smithing on the Tanning Rack and Smelter, a small amount Alchemy exp for cooking, and a small amount of alchemy and one handed exp for fishing. EMILI does a nice job shifting the economy based on time of year and progress in the civil war as stuff becomes scarce and more expensive.
Thogra Gra-Mugur (New revoiced), Song of the Green, Whisper and Echo, Hazelwood, Adopt Any Child, Marry Almost Anyone, Multiple Marriages, Immersive Speech, Realistic Dialog Overhaul, Underwhelming Multiple Followers - The Thogra’s follower questline is kinda built into this characters backstory. Auri in Song of the Green is amazing and has a good questline. Whisper, Echo, and Hazelwood are vanilla voiced Bosmer followers and nice to bring along. RDO will allow you to add the follower dialog option to other NPCs which opens a range of possibilities as well. So feel free to join Anoriath on that extended hunt beyond Whiterun’s borders, and escort Ysolda to Riften to offload all that sap she bought from you. Or bring Faendal and Sven along with you to Bleak Falls Barrow to prove to Camilla who is braver, only to have her ditch them both and be swept away by you on an adventure after returning the claw.
Instinct is an animal training mod and will base off your speech skill.
Hero- A Fort Takeover And Bounty Hunter Bundle, Perks and More Gold for Bounties, Dragon Soulds for Perks – The bundle contains Missives and Lawbringer mods along with an assortment of updates to bandit locations. Use these jobs as a way to drive moving to different holds and pick up nearby followers or quests.
IA92’s Warzone (or Real Armies and Immersive Patrols if you have the space), Traveling Merchants, Kahjit Caravan Kittens and Argonian hatchlings, Kidmer, Improved Bandits – Adds a number of NPCs on the roads and outside cities. IA92’s Warzone adds more Stormcloak and Imperial patrols which fight each other, but also adds in travelers and bandit’s called Marauders. Travelling Merchants add in small merchant groups that move between Inns and Cities which is helpful for trading when you want to avoid major settlements.
Bosmer Armor Pack, Bosmeri Cuisine, Bosmer Hearthfire – Good for any Bosmer playthrough.
Alternate Start – Live Another Life, New Beginnings, and Humble Beginnings. All part of the Alt Start allowing you to begin in Angi’s Camp. Humble Beginnings adds some character backgrounds that give some more flavor and some additional starting stuff (that I subsequently dump in a crate) but the stamina bump is nice early with the combat mods.
Fatality – Using this instead of Wildcat or other combat mods due to its more robust Injury system while still staying light on scripting. Stamina is way more important with this combat mod installed. You can be killed even on Novice. Combat is fast and deadly and the quicker you are the better.
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Excelletnt work
Thanks