Profane Awakening – Skyrim

Level Summary

Profane Awakening is a single player mod for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim that adds content to the city of Markarth, an expedition encampment outside the city, as well as a new dungeon with two new puzzles and a multi-stage boss encounter. The player must recover a Dwemer artifact from a Breton noble and then use it to open a portal to a lost Dwemer city. After entering the portal the player is stranded on the other side and must find another way out of the city. The city is home to an artifact from the realm of Apocrypha, a Black Book. In order to exit the city, the player must recover the book and defeat the spirit of a dragon held within the tome. The player’s actions in the recovery of the original artifact influence the reception she receives upon exiting the ruined city.

Design Goals

Player Agency

Skyrim is, at its core, an open world game where the player decides what she wants to do. I wanted to allow the player to experience Profane Awakening in whatever manner they chose to. The player can use all the dialogue options (Intimidate, Persuade) available in their interactions with the quest NPCs, or is free to pickpocket essential items, or simply kill them and be on their way. The player can even proceed down an avenue in order to get rewards from NPCs before deciding to double cross them if they are so inclined. The decisions of the player impact the outcome of various actors at the end of the quest and lead to a pair of distinct endings.

The player can, via an optional side quest, afflict the holder of the Dwemer artifact with a ring that turns him into a rabbit. Depending on how the player dealt with the woman that the quest giver ordered dead, she can stride in to defuse the situation, or the quest giver’s guards will attack the player. Having small permutations of player decisions matter was something I wanted to pursue when making this module.

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Grand Transition

Halfway through the module, the player opens a gateway to the dungeon section, the city of Tzalche. Considering the Dwemer are known for their technological savvy, they might have constructed some elaborate ways to travel to their far flung cities. Using existing assets, I put together a portal sequence to transport the player from Skyrim proper to the lost city. This sequence provides a memorable moment in the module’s experience, as well as setting a tone for the further Dwemer wonders to be found later in the module.

New Puzzles

Skyrim has its stock puzzles, but I wanted to extend and create my own puzzles. I chose lightning as a theme within my dungeon, as a manner of power to supplement the normal steam power associated with the Dwemer. I designed two different lightning based puzzles, one which takes a mechanic in Skyrim and extends it and one that implements a new one.

The first sees the player activating terminal and spinning them in order to connect to the next terminal in order to progress along the main path of the dungeon. There is both an introductory version of this puzzle and a more advanced one, punctuated by combat, later in the dungeon.

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The second has the player create a pattern of activated buttons corresponding to lit up meters on the wall. The player needs to devise the manner in which pressing the buttons affects which buttons are active in order to succeed at the puzzle. There are two stages to this puzzle, one that serves as a tutorial and then a more advanced pattern. The player can at any time switch off the puzzle in order to restart from the beginning of the current stage.

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Below you can find an HTML5 implementation of the second puzzle’s base logic:

New Abilities

Whenever a player finds a Black Book in Dragonborn they can choose from three unique abilities upon completing the dungeon associated with the book. So it made sense for me to create three abilities for my book as well. I decided to tailor the abilities to the three archetypal playstyles in role-playing game: Mage, Warrior, and Thief. This way each player receives something that complements their playstyle that won’t be outgrown like a weapon.

Above is of one of the abilities, the adorable fire bear named Gustave. This is a spell that summons the companion to accompany the player until he meets his demise, akin to the Spectral Assassin spell in the base game. I modified the existing bear model in Skyrim and changed the vertex coloring to get Gustave into shape.