I figure it’s probably a good time to introduce the Kenzeft project. I call it that because I don’t quite have a final name for it, but it’s a culmination of several ideas I’ve had and wanted to implement in Oblivion, but never found the time due to college or other real life stuff. Skyrim has made it easier to create dynamic, interesting NPCs, and so I moved my ideas to Skyrim.

My original inspiration came from wanting to bring a new level of live to an NPC in Oblivion, sort of like Ruin-Tail’s Tale but on a higher level, where the character will interact with not just a personal questline, but also offer opinions and experiences on current quests. I have plans to include commentary on all the major quest lines and most of the base Skyrim quests. Right now, I’m flipflopping on whether or not I should make the mod dependent on Dawnguard or Dragonborn, or just have patches for them.

Well, starting from that, the ideas mounted up and the Kenzeft is a pretty large project already. Several new NPCs, a major questline, several smaller questlines, new locations, a new home for the player, and a few marriageable NPCs.

Of course, I’m trying to keep it all very lore-friendly, and I’ve been doing a lot of research into the lore, like just how old is the College of Winterhold? The answer was “Nobody really knows, but there’s some allusions Serana makes that gives it a sort-of ballpark figure.” It certainly pre-dates the First Allessian Empire and the Uprising since Serana also seems to pre-date it, as she seems surprised that there’s an empire at all.

My thought is, how the heck do I get a voice cast for all these NPCs? I mean, I could probably do one, maybe two, but I’m not a very good actor in the first place and my microphone is of the less-than-stellar quality. I have another person willing to do another several voices. That leaves about a dozen different roles to fill.

Now, as to what the Kenzeft Project is about… well, I sort of want to keep the specifics a secret just yet. But let’s just say that Divayth Fyr and Yagrum Bagarn play a somewhat minor role in it. And let me tell you, It’s been incredibly frustrating trying to find out if Divayth Fyr and Yagrum Bagarn survived the Red Year. If you’re even somewhat familiar with the lore you’ll probably understand why it’s frustrating. Sure, Marcurio in Skyrim mentions that they found “the last living Dwemer in Morrowind.” But it’s still kind of vague. That’s actually all I have to go on, and it seems to imply they are still alive for one reason or another, so that is how I’m going to proceed. It sort of makes sense in a way, if Divayth Fyr is about 4000 years old and an incredibly powerful wizard-lord of Telvanni, his town could very well have been spared much of the desolation. Either that, or he had prior warning, as mentioned elsewhere in the lore some few were warned, and moved his tower as Neloth did. In that case, Yagrum being alive is still a good bet.

All in all, I’m very excited about the project. Have a teaser screen cap of one of the new locations.