The Butcher of Armindale

From Oblivion Mod Wiki

Author:	Paul 'Simyaz' Thomson
Thread(s):	Bethesda Game Studios Forums, The Nexus Forums
Version:	1.0
Last Updated:	April 1st, 2007
Download(s):	TES Nexus

Outdated: Superseded by Tears of the Fiend.

Discontinued: The development of this mod has been discontinued. It is no longer being updated.

[edit] Information

[edit] Author's note

While this MOD is entirely playable, it is ultimately negated by Tears of the Fiend -which is a culmination of The Legacy and The Butcher of Armindale- and I STRONGLY suggest you download and play that MOD instead.

[edit] Features

The Companion:

• NPC Companion "Cleon, the Butcher of Armindale" (Imperial Warrior) who will follow you, fight, sneak, loot corpses and everything else you have come to expect from your Oblivion MOD companions.

The Story:

• Detailed character conversations/storyline. What the player says will directly affect Cleon's development as a character and an NPC, and determine the eventual outcome of his quest.

• Quest relating to the NPC - From the onset of the MOD, the player is required to begin a quest to acquire Cleon. He will not simply walk out of nowhere and offer you his services, he needs to be found and in your debt before he will side with you. Additionally, as the story progresses Cleon's quest becomes more involved, eventually leading to a final showdown of suitably epic proportions. The player can choose to take part in this (and develop the character further) or disregard it and use him as a "meatshield" NPC.

• New encounters/fights - Using some "different" encounter techniques that I've always wanted to try in Oblivion I've incorporated several new fights that add to the immersion of the story.

• Alternate endings - There are 3 possible endings which stem from 2 different final encounters, both of which are dependent on your ability to succeed or fail at the final fight, and more importantly the story path that the player chooses.

• Voice Acting - Voice acting for most of the new NPCs added by "The Butcher of Armindale" as MOD, as well as MOST of the conversations with Cleon.

[edit] Premise

To me Ruined-Tail's Tale was a success for numerous reasons. In one respect it demonstrated that there is a traditional RPG community within Oblivion, the likes of which can appreciate a story-driven companion who harbours a realistic personality. It also revealed to me that despite this dedicated community, it was greatly outnumbered by the masses who simply could not understand the appeal of a flawed a companion (in terms of personality). They wanted eye candy and a meatshield, and hence they looked elsewhere.

Armed now with a greater understanding of the Oblivion community, and more importantly being recognised amongst the RPG enthusiast community playing Oblivion as being one of their number (and perhaps as a producer of MODs that still maintained the spirit of games like Baldur's Gate and PlaneScape Torment) I began my new project. But rather that doing what had already been done over again and creating a character along the same lines of Ruined-Tail, this time I turned the story on its side and created a companion so completely different that he would stand out as being a unique individual when compared to Ruin. This companion would be malevolent, cold-hearted, and haunted by a metaphorical beast that spurred his every actions towards dire consequences. This companion would become the Butcher of Armindale.

The majority of the dialogue was written while at work (instead of working), and as a result of this I found that I had a complete project sooner than anticipated. With my new script in hand, and the knowledge earned from the whole Ruined-Tail's Tale debacle (or success, if you prefer), I began to plot out Cleon's MOD. I decided that I would start from a position in which voice acting was being developed in tandem with the main part of the MOD, and after a great deal of hunting (and trips to the Oblivion Voice-Actor's Guild - Thanks guys!) I came across BlueWolf, who seemed to be of a similar state of mind as myself, yet with the talent for voice acting. Between the two of us we came up with the personality of Cleon -which we designed to be eerily reminiscent of Serevok from Throne of Bhaal-, and knuckled down to the task of completing The Butcher of Armindale.

[edit] Update details

[edit] Update 1.0 changes

• Completely rewrote a large number of the core BUTCHER scripts, and reorganised all of the BUTCHER files (within the .esp) so that it has a more "professional" feel.

• Reworked a number of the sound files attached to the MOD. Created some new sound files. Deleted a few. Edited others. All for the sake of immersion.

• Updated The CompanionShare so that I'm using an "in-house" version developed and tested by AndyW (a very talented Modder) and myself. Also changed the way that Cleon's AI is handled within the MOD itself.

• Completely redesigned the "a glimpse of the Abyss" section of the MOD.

• Completely redesigned the "Nightmares of Armindale" section of the MOD.

• Completely redesigned the "Dream of Armindale" section of the MOD.

• Completely redesigned the "Dream of Cleon's Burial" section of the MOD.

• Completely redesigned "Cleon's Abyss" section of the MOD.

• Merged the book "The Butcher of Armindale" once the player has completed the task of piecing together the fragments.

• Removed the "Quest flag" on numerous items to stop players being lumped with unwanted items (after the quest is completed.)

• Added the ability to summon Cleon (in case he gets stuck.)

• Corrected a number of mistakes in the journal updates.

• Allowed the player to return to where he left off after each dream segment.

• Allowed the player to clear "Cleon's criminal record" when the player clears his own record.

• Made some changes to the Trigger that opens Cleon's grave.

• Changed the final "encounter" section of the MOD (in preparation for merging this MOD with The Legacy) and making it less ludicrously difficult.

• Corrected numerous spelling errors.

• Changes to the consistency of the 3 possible endings -to avoid certain bugs, and inconsistencies.

• Numerous other changes that don't necessarily warrant mentioning.

[edit] Update 0.51 changes

• Fixed a bug where Shann the Bandit was spawned prematurely. (He was actually already triggered to be enabled only after the player experienced the second dream sequence. But unfortunately he wasn't flagged for "initially disabled" so it was kind of pointless.)

• Changed the "abnormally loud" sound at the end of Dream Sequence 1. It should now match the rest of the sounds.

• Stopped Cleon's "Wait" function from trying to path him back to his original grave site.

• Changed the "Passive" conversations (as in, conversations that take place in which the PC is not on the receiving end) so that players with "Show passive subtitles" turned on no longer see the Dialogue notes I left there...

• Resolved the "Cleon's Armour is stolen" bug, and the "Cleon not equipping anything except his original items" bug. You can thank AndyW for that one entirely, I was too hung over to even ATTEMPT to fix it =P

[edit] Known bugs

[edit] MOD-specific bugs

• OTHER COMPANION MODS - This one is a BIG issue, if you try and E-mail me regarding this issue I will delete it immediately. IF you are using other companion MODS (Ariana, Garbrielle, Vir, Ruined-Tail) etc, you MUST have the NPCs stop following you (As in, make them WAIT) BEFORE you talk to Phintias to begin the quest, and up until you have Cleon in your party. The reason for this is because other Companions WILL interrupt several early quest-related sequences and will render the MOD unusable.

[edit] OBLIVION-specific bugs

• Pathing - There are some weird pathing bugs that occur occasionally (especially if you are running along with high SPEED over a long distance. If Cleon runs too slow and gets left behind, when you zone-into another area or quicktravel he should come back.

• Saved-Game Bug - It would appear that the infamous save game bug from Morrowind is back, where saves performed at certain crucial parts of the game will bug out the rest of it (Making a relative quest impossible to complete.) My chief beta tester had only one instance of this happening (where he quicksaved in the middle of the final "showdown" in the MOD) and this resulted in an NPC who was alive when the game was saved, playing dead every time it was loaded. Extensive testing of this has revealed that it is NOT a bug induced my the MOD itself, but rather it seems to be a random "chance to happen" bug that could affect any and all MODs (and indeed the original game itself) regardless of whether or not your have The Butcher of Armindale installed.