March 26, 2003 - Due to my renewed vigour in working on my GDR ruin, Fire of Ashurnibanipal is on hold indefinitely. I really hope to come back to it; I like what I've done so far, and want to keep working on it. Just not now, okay? Okay.

The Fire of Ashurnibanipal is a plugin I started working on a few weeks ago. I work in a bookstore/cafe, you see, and I bought a new HP Lovecraft book that we got in. Except it wasn't Lovecraft; it was Lovecraft-inspired tales. And one of the stories is called "The Fire of Asshurbanipal", written by Robert E. Howard. I said to myself, while on my lunchbreak, "that sounds like the name of a Daedric ruin". Because it does (those ruins have names like Ashurnibitashpi, Ashurnibibi, Zaintiraris). So I whipped up a story (similar to the one in the printed story, but don't expect it to end the same way) and fixed the name up a little bit.

It is geared towards higher-level players - anyone who can handle the main quest of Tribunal or Bloodmoon (especially Bloodmoon) can certainly make their way through. It begins with hearing rumours in Suran about an Altmer sorceror who has lately wandered through town. When you speak with him, he reveals that he has been researching a Daedric site called Ashurnibanipal for some time, in his search to find something called the Fire of Ashurnibanipal. He's found several obscure legends and stories that reference the Fire, but no clue as to what it actually is. The site itself was buried long ago, and he has but a few vague ideas as to where it could have been.

Naturally, you, as Vvardenfell's premier Finder-and-Deliverer of Lost Items (among such other notable occupations as Escorter of Weak and Scared Persons and Slayer of Assorted Men, Mer and Other Creatures) are asked to find the ruin, and then find the Fire.

Where do you go? I'm not saying. What is the Fire? I'm not saying that, either. What happens along the way? I will say that some of it will be a bit unexpected. But you can expect some tough fights. Yes you can.

More information: there are two custom levelled creature lists (no modifications to any existing levelled list), with various stronger incarnations of some beings you may encounter on Vvardenfell. There is some light retexturing, but for download sizes and my lack of time to retexture each new level of creature, most appear the same. Sometimes there are size variations; sometimes not. Just don't assume that the skeleton you see down the hall is going to go down without a fight, okay?

Several planned quests require interaction with prominent NPC's. Don't worry, they won't be Mr. Nobody Dunmer or Ms. Forgettable Outlander; you'll have heard of them before. There are alternate paths for most quests involving pre-existing NPC's, so if you've killed one or two people here and there, there's still a pretty good chance that you'll be able to complete the quest. If all the NPC's who are relevant to the quests are dead, you can't do a thing. Speaking to the quest-giver about this will close the quest so that you don't have open quests in your journal.

There are few new weapons and no new armour. One of the new weapons is on par with an existing Morrowind artifact, and is a retextured version of that artifact. Another new weapon already exists in the game, but it's already enchanted. This one has been added to a custom levelled item list which is practically identical to an existing levelled item list.

Here is a picture for you to look at and think about. Taken while in the editor, not the game.