In Which Siobhan Has a Very Bad Ocean Journey

Welcome to my very first post ever for playing Enderal, the total conversion mod for Skyrim that transforms it into an entirely different game!

If you’ve never played Enderal before, suffice to say, this post will be full of spoilers, like any other playthrough post on my site.

And meet my character Siobhan, half-Nehrimese, half-Kiléan, who finds out right quick that maybe sneaking on board a boat to get to Enderal is maybe not the smartest thing she ever did….

Highlights

• Play date: 9/28/2025
• Session number in this run: 1
• Played through the initial nightmare (yikes)
• And re-did the intro video, which had pretty cool art
• Then the initial scene in the cargo hold of the ship, with the other fugitive, Sirius
• In good ol’ Elder Scrolls fashion this is the part where you set your character’s race and appearance, and OH HAI THERE RaceMenu
• First time through I tried the dialogue option that implied we’d used fraudulent means to sneak on board, and noted at the time that Sirius didn’t like that
• Second time through I took the other path, which he liked better
• Got opportunity while talking to Sirius to make a few other backstory decisions, such as how my character felt about the murders of her family and whether she blames herself
• Cargo hold was pretty damn dark, especially after my comrade made me turn off the lamp when some sailors came down into the hold, who we then had to overpower and tie up
• Which meant that I did not get a good look at the Veiled Woman who showed up and was all SORRY YOU TWO, I AM GOING TO FUCK THINGS UP FOR YOU NOW
• Got option to suggest to Sirius that we turn ourselves in after beating up the sailors, and he shot that down on the grounds of the captain being known as the “Blood Siren” (charming)
• Then the Veiled Woman showed up and everything asploded, and I passed out
• Woke up on deck to find the captain interrogating Sirius, and then running him through (YIKES)
• Then she gave orders to tie me to Sirius and throw us both overboard (YIKES ^ 2)
• Presumably while I was then drowing to death, had several flashes of a weird vision involving a bright light and dead bodies
• Saw an altar with a symbol on it that basically looked like the same asset as a Skyrim Amulet of Mara, only, y’know, bigger
• Also saw a decrepit ruined tunnel
• Then woke up in the last chargen room, a space with several tall stones similar to the Standing Stones in Skyrim, where I needed to choose some specialities for my character
• I went with Rogue, since that matches closest to the kinds of playstyles I usually do, light armor and bow and sneak and such
• Then hit RB to leave that space, and finally, woke up on the shore, not drowned, and also not tied to the late unfortunate Sirius
• Woke up on the shore in a place that turned out to mysteriously match stuff I saw in the vision, gosh, I wonder if this is plot relevant!
• Also got a message about feeling dizzy, and saw in my Active Effects that I had something labeled as a “Weird Fever”
• Nabbed a bunch of loot while searching the temple
• Found one spot which seemed to be magically active and which aggravated my fever
• Finally made it out of the temple after looking up some pointers, including determining that I had to sneak past the mud elemental waiting just beyond the final exit
• Then had to figure out how to get down the hillside and find my way to civilization
• Found a couple of alchemists camped out, one of whom did his best to treat me, even though his companion was super suspicious of me
• But then the camp got attacked by bandits, and both alchemists got killed, and I passed out
• Woke up in another nearby camp, tended to by a mercenary named Jespar, who’d seen what had happened
• Filled Jespar in on what had happened, and he believed me and agreed to help me out if I’d help him investigate the death of a prominent Keeper
• Agreed to do this, and after doing some investigation of the rest of the immediate territory (for more loot), proceeded towards Riverville
• Ran small side quest at Three River Watch to help a merchant recover her pet leor calf
• Finally reached Riverville and ran small side quest to help a kid get into a strongbox he’d found on the beach
• Picked up another side quest from Riverville’s alchemist, to recover a lost potion for her
• Saved there until next time

Some initial notes on notable mods

Emissaries of Tux uses Dear Diary, a Skyrim mod that turns the game UI into a paper-like style, complete with papery sounds when you change which bit of UI you’re looking at. I’d known about this mod already, but this was the first time I’ve actually used it!

So far, I like it.

Prologue and character creation

This is actually take two of starting Enderal; I’d actually started playing it the first time two days before. But as I got partway in on take 1, I basically got a huge vibe I was pushing it too quickly. Because here’s a thing I realized pretty quickly: Enderal is a little harder than Skyrim. Or at least, Enderal with the Emissaries of Tux modpack, since I cannot compare to mod-free Enderal.

It’s even a bit harder than Tuxborn, which is set up to be harder than Skyrim as well. And even with kicking Emissaries down to Novice level Difficulty, I was getting one-shotted by wolves. And that was just embarrassing.

So for take two, I set up essentially the same character, Siobhan, a half-Kiléan, although with minor tweaks to her appearance. I wasn’t really a fan of the available other options, or at least the presets on them. I went with half-Kiléan since that kinda gives me a Breton-type vibe, and the racial bonuses seemed to line up well with how I usually play Skyrim.

Which brings me to the second observation I want to make about this game: apparently, when you make an Enderal character, you’re going to be half Nehrimese and half something else. A character that’s 100% a single race does not appear to be an option. I certainly don’t object to this! It was just interesting to note, and I’m assuming it’s maybe tied into two things:

1. Enderal’s prologue action establishes certain aspects of your backstory that are clearly intended to be canon no matter what kind of character you’re playing
2. Since your opening action is establishing that you’re traveling into Enderal, this suggests by definition that you’re new to Enderal, and that therefore it’s intended for you to be of some sort of racial/ethnic mix for which being new to Enderal makes sense

Let me touch on the prologue part of this first. Elder Scrolls games have a long-running tradition of your character start making you a prisoner of some kind. Even though Enderal’s using Skyrim’s engine to run, it does vary that tradition up a bit, and I liked that.

The very first thing I was hit with out of the gate was a surreal and deceptively pastoral scene in which I had an objective to talk to my Daddy about something. Heavy implication here was that I was a child, and this was bolstered by my father’s height when I found him. The camera angle was such that I was clearly significantly shorter than he was. Also, the wiki for Enderal establishes that your father is supposed to be Nehrimese, even though the appearance he’s given is Endralean. In Emissaries of Tux, of course, your dad looks different than he does in vanilla. But I haven’t played vanilla Enderal yet, so again, no basis for comparison here.

I say “deceptively pastoral” because the situation escalated quickly. Dear old Dad asked me to go inside and help “Mommy and Sister” with making dinner. But when I did this, there was no sign of any other family member in the house. When Dad came back in, he started in with some disturbingly nonchalant commentary about how I murdered my mother and sister. (Yikes!) From there, he got angry as soon as I objected that I did no such thing, it was the “masked men from the temple”. In fact, I had three identical dialogue options with him establishing that very complaint.

Daddy refused to accept this. He got angry, and eventually included himself in the set of people I allegedly murdered, until the house burst into flames while my father kept screaming at me to bring him a crispy piece of meat. (YIKES!)

So holy crap, that was an effective and chilling start to the game.

From there, I went to the opening intro video that sets up Enderal’s world and several relevant history details. I liked this bit, and the stylized art used while it played through.

I woke up then in the cargo hold of a ship, accompanied by a man named Sirius. At this point, dialogue lines with Sirius established a bit more of the backstory: I’d apparently snuck on board with him in an attempt to make it to Enderal. In my take 1 attempt to start the game, I’d taken a dialogue line that Sirius didn’t like, which suggested that our motives had been dishonest. In take 2, I took the other option, just to vary it up a bit.

Sirius’ dialogue finally prompted me about where my mother had come from, and that dropped me into RaceMenu to set up my character. See above for how I did that.

And once out of RaceMenu, I got hit with the next round of story.

Sirius and I heard voices: a couple of the sailors of the crew, coming down into the hold to look for something. My companion freaked out and warned me to turn off our lamp. It soon became apparent that just hiding behind the crates shielding us from immediate view wasn’t going to be an option. We had to leap out of hiding and attack the sailors.

I found this a trifle difficult. Since Emissaries is running a lot of the same Skyrim mods that Tuxborn is, this seemed to mean that Emissaries skewed a trifle dark in lighting. Which made it a bit hard for me to make out the two sailors we were supposed to be brawling with!

But Sirius and I finally knocked them out. And I got another dialogue branch, in which my options were to suggest we turn ourselves in, or go straight to tying them up. In take 1, I’d suggested tying them up immediately. This time through, I suggested turning ourselves in, but Sirius shot that down immediately.

Not that either option would have helped.

Because then a mysterious Veiled Woman entered the scene, and dropped some ominous commentary that certain things now had to be set in motion, and she was going to have to intervene.

Which led to my passing out, and then waking up on deck to find my companion, tied up and on his knees before a very, very angry ship captain.

The captain refused to accept any of Sirius’ pleas and dismissed us as thieves abusing the honest work of her crew. And she promptly ran Sirius through with her sword, and ordered her men to tie me to Sirius’ dead body and throw us overboard. (YIKES!!)

I had some flashes of vision at that point, as noted in the highlights above.

Then the last round of chargen kicked in. I woke up in a mysterious place (helpfully called A Strange Place on the Enderal wiki) with several tall stones that looked vaguely like Skyrim’s Standing Stones, and got game instructions to make choices of these stones. I went with the path of the Rogue, again because that seemed a good match for how I typically play characters in Skyrim.

Overall, this was a long and rather involved character setup, but not unduly long compared to Skyrim’s, or even Morrowind or Oblivion. I liked it! It reminded me most of Oblivion’s setup sequence, I think, in terms of how well it integrated “set these things up about your character” with surrounding dialogue and the situation you were in.

Waking up on the mysterious shore

Then it was onward to waking up on the shore, and discovering several matches for stuff I’d just seen in the visions I’d had.

This entire part took me longer than I’d have liked, though. Here was where I started discovering I could get easily one-shotted by hostile things. And where I also confirmed, yet again, that I am not good at jumping! At least, not with Skyrim’s engine. Because there’s a part of this sequence where you have to put a particular key in a particular lock, which raises several columns of different heights that you have to use to get up to the main area of the Abandoned Temple.

I had a lot of trouble with this. Emissaries is hiding the crosshair, and as I’ve established in Skyrim, my aim does tend to be terrible. So “oh just look where you’re jumping” doesn’t really cut it for me. Especially if the game environment is also skewing dark.

But I finally made it up the columns and started exploring the rest of the place.

A few more worldbuilding details came to light as I did so:

• An area with magical gear in it also apparently had some of magical radiation that aggravated the fever I had
• I found several items referring to “metal of an ancient nation”, which seemed to be Enderal’s version of Dwemer stuff
• I also learned that you had to read books to level skills

At last, I found the same mysterious machine I’d seen in my vision. From there, though, at least in take 1 of this playthrough, I’d had no idea where to go. For take 2, since I’d already looked up the solution, I found the exit out of that chamber and got to the part where I had to flip a lever to raise a water wheel, so I could get out into the broader countryside.

Which would have been easy peasy if not for the big angry mud elemental hanging out in the immediate area.

Fortunately, I didn’t have to actually fight that mud elemental. Enderal advised me how to sneak at that point, making it clear that it was a good idea to sneak past that mud elemental. Which I was able to do.

When I got out of there into an open hillside, I got a couple more miscellaneous objectives to find restorative plants. The pumpkins I found quickly enough, though they were using the same assets as gourds in Skyrim, so they didn’t parse as “pumpkins” to me. The mana fungi I had trouble with, and I’m not sure why. (I was able to find those in later sessions.)

I learned about moon carrots, which apparently heal you instantly if you activate them. They’re using the same asset as canis root in Skyrim, so I found this visually distracting. And oh yes, I also learned about ice claws, little blue-topped mushrooms that make chiming noises, and which give you another point of Carry Weight when you eat them. I recognize pandering to the loot goblins when I see it, so om nom nom ice claws!

There was an Abandoned Tower to explore to get more loot, and another troll to take out–though this one I was able to dispatch by judicious use of a trap. Of note in this tower was the first of what apparently are 100 magical symbols all over the game, which you’re supposed to activate when you find them. Finding them all gives experience points and an achievement. Yes please I’ll have some.

This part of the action, though, was also where I kept getting one-shotted by wolves, and having to work out best strategies to take them out.

I did manage to level up, and learned about how Enderal handles that. As with Skyrim, you’re asked whether you want to raise Health, Mana (Enderal’s version of Magicka), or Stamina. You also get additional Learning Points and a Crafting Point to spend, and a Memory Point.

You have to meditate to spend Memory Points, and sure okay I’ll roll with that. Having to actively meditate to spend Memory Points so you can get back into the interstitial space with the tall stones in it isn’t much different from having to fill out skill trees in Skyrim.

I’m not sure if I’m down with having to read books to assign Learning and Crafting points, though. From what I’ve seen in the game so far, the books for that often appear as random loot, but you will probably also have to buy specific ones you want from vendors. I’d be annoyed about having to spend money on that, except that, well, you have to pay money to trainer characters in Skyrim. So Enderal isn’t hugely different in that regard either. I think I’m just side-eying it so far because I’m not quite used to it yet.

But I digress! Finally, finally, I made it to the alchemists at their camp.

Or, as Enderal referred to them, apothecarii. (Singular: apothecarius.) Which gave me a bit more info about the whole weird fever situation, though not much, as the two unfortunate gents were promptly slain by bandits a short time after I showed up.

Cue passing out and waking up again, this time in the company of yet another NPC: Jespar Dal’Varek.

Nice to meet you, Jespar

Let it be noted for the record: Jespar’s a hottie. It’s true.

I also found by wiki reading that this dude is one of two characters you can in fact romance in the game, so we’re talking Significant NPC^TM here. I filled him in on what was going on with me, which he believed (by virtue of my being the protagonist and exuding my aura of I Am Totally Not a Liar or Crazy at him), and I agreed to help him out with a mission he was on. Namely, investigating the recent death of a Keeper.

Which got me even more backstory, and info about the Red Madness sweeping across the countryside and making previously perfectly normal, rational citizens go batshit and start attacking people. Jespar had, it seemed, been tasked with figuring out what if anything might have triggered it. We agreed to meet up near Riverville.

Jespar also had lots of useful worldbuilding type stuff to tell me, tagged as (Knowledge) in dialogue. Actually, Finn the apothecarius had also had this, and I do rather like Enderal doing that. Since it’s clearly expected that your character is a newcomer to Enderal, this is a good mechanism for you to learn more about the game’s world. And it even rewards you for doing so, with an objective to fulfill.

The biggest thing Jespar had to tell me, though, pertained to the fever I had. He identified this as Arcane Fever, which is apparently a symptom of how magic works in this world. Arcane Fever is a symptom of magical talent emerging in someone. And gosh, would you look at that, it’s particularly virulent with me! Isn’t it fun to be the protagonist?

And the part I thought was coolest about this is, if left unchecked, the Arcane Fever would eventually turn me into a horrible thing called an Oorbaya. From Jespar’s description of this, it sound kind of like what happens if you get corprus in Morrowind! So in the interests of Not Doing That, I readily agreed to Jespar offering to take me to go see his employer about getting the fever under control, once I helped him with his mission.

Onward to Riverville

Ouroboros had written in the Emissaries Readme that going to Riverville should be one of your first objectives in the game, so cool cool, Riverville it is!

But I took a bit of time getting there, just trying not to get myself killed en route, since I was still a very low-level character. I found a door into something called Old Dam Lookout right between where the apothecarii had camped, and where Jespar had, so I went in there to explore. This took a few tries, because the spiders in there kept killing me.

Once I got past that part, I set out for Riverville properly. This led to a few small encounters with wild critters, but eventually, also a small side quest where I helped a merchant retrieve her pet leor calf from a nearby ruin. I rather liked Eshra, the merchant. She was friendly, and perky-looking, and an elf–or rather, an Aeterna, since that’s apparently what the elf-like race in Enderal is called. I’ll have to remind myself not to think of them as elves.

Additional worldbuilding note: leors are apparently Enderal’s typical cow-like beasts of burden? Though I’m not sure of the nomenclature here. The wiki calls them leorans but the game seems to call them leors. Not sure of the plural either. I’m running with leor/leors for now, anyway

At Old Three River Watch, I had to kill a vatyr to get the leor calf back. The vatyr was a minotaur-looking thing, but with a goat head. Note to self, do not confuse these with actual minotaurs, since Enderal contains those, too. Had to do this fight twice, too, since I got killed shortly after finishing it.

And finally, at last, I made it to Riverville.

With “River” in the name, I was expecting this to basically be Enderal’s version of Riverwood. Which, it sorta kinda is. But I found it to be a lot less like Riverwood than I was expecting. For one, the physical layout of the place was significantly different, a lot hillier, with multiple levels to it along the hillside. For another, it was a bit more populated than Riverwood, in general. It had multiple vendors selling things, a large house for the mayor, and even a temple.

I picked up a side quest from a farm kid who wanted me to help him break into a strongbox he’d found on the shore. Which turned out to be a scavenger hunt, yet another one of those quests where it didn’t feel arsed to give you quest markers and expected you to work stuff out from clues. And, well, I’ve already written about how I got no patience for that. 😆 So I cheerfully looked up how to solve the puzzle, did the thing, and did not stiff the kid on the promised amount of money from my findings. Because NO GAME NOT GONNA LIE TO THE KID what kind of monster do you think I am?

(Nightmare!Dad, don’t answer that. I DIDN’T ASK YOU.)

Also picked up a side quest from the town apothecary. Who sounded like she was supposed to be old, though honestly, at least around her face, she didn’t look it. This may just be a consequence of Emissaries running a lot of the same kind of NPC appearance overhaul mods that Tuxborn has? Because her hair was long and wild and white and looked like an old woman’s hair, but her face looked way too smooth and youthful.

(That said: don’t take that as complaining about the NPC appearances in this game, because I’m not. See previous commentary re: Jespar being a hottie!)

Also, Tarhutie the alchemist had an intriguing reaction to me in her dialogue. She was quite startled by my aura, which she informed me was indigo-blue, “the color of the dying”.

GEE I WONDER IF THAT’S PLOT-RELEVANT!

Right there was where I left off until next time!

But oh yeah one last thing about characters cursing

I noticed pretty quickly that characters use common RL curse words in their dialogue! Up to and including “fuck”. Skyrim does have a smattering of milder curse words in it, but it was definitely weird to hear characters in Enderal saying “fuck”. That one does not show up in Skyrim.

I suppose this is a matter of Enderal being a fan-produced conversion mod, and having a bit more leeway with its dialogue choices?

Especially given that I also heard Carbos say “for heck’s sake”, which landed really weird on the ear when I’m accustomed to that being “for fuck’s sake”. I’m not sure if this is a question of a translation error or what? Enderal was originally released in German, but I’m pretty confident that any competent translator would have a good idea of how cussing works in English. So I’d also be willing to chalk this up to a deliberate word choice as well.

Next time

Siobhan will venture out to retrieve Tarhulie’s missing potion! And also find an old gent in Riverville who apparently used to be best buds with the Magister that went bazonkers and killed himself.

Screenshots