In Progress: Sercen Manor – Ayleid Tree Village

It’s almost exactly three years since I mentioned that I was making a sequel to my Silorn Manor mod for Oblivion. I’ve started making it about three times, too. Yes, I have almost as many WIPs as I have completed mods, but I normally do get around to them  eventually.

After reinstalling the game again and yet again losing any progress, I suddenly knew how to make the mod work. You can blame Korana for this, because I got the modding itch while poking round her excellent Millstone Farm mod. I got the idea for this one from my Oasis house mod for Fallout 3 – the way to make the player feel like they are high up in a tree, whilst still allowing a stable, functional village base. I also knew where to set it, after falling in love with the Sercen ruin during regular Oblivion gameplay.

Silorn Manor

Silorn Manor is the manor of a living Ayleid Village, buried deep below Skingrad. The house itself is a six-bedroomed mansion with pool, servants’ quarters and many comforts and features. The village has services and fully-sheduled NPCs. There are 2 quests.

ORE competition winner

Note: You will need to ensure that your borders are switched off in order to use this mod (and many others). You can use a border removal mod like this or switch them off in the .ini file. Find bBorderRegionsEnabled in the .ini (in folder My Games) and change the value to 0.

• Large Ayleid manor house with six individually-themed bedrooms, sleeping 12
• Further servants’ quarters with recreation area and bathroom
• Private lounge quarters with alchemy facilities, training area, library, breakfast room/display area, and study
• Secret passage to evil necromancer’s lair and portals to the Shivering Isles gate and Skingrad with map-markers
• Large dining hall and kitchen:
  – the food on the dining table respawns after 24 hours
  – ditto the top quality wine, and various food/drink items around the house
  – bake your own bread in the oven
• Basement area with storage, food/drinks and interactive well
• Large swimming pool with poolside bar
• Alchemy garden with ‘welkynd dial’ with digital time display
• Bathrooms with interactive baths
• ‘Bins’ (respawning containers) in the bedrooms so that you can throw away any unwanted items. Trash is collected every three days
• Well decorated throughout with low-mid value items that you can put in the containers provided and replace with your own, if you choose
• Pets – a dog and a cat, for that feeling of ‘home’
• A full complement of servants providing various services such as repair, trade and recharge
• Visitors – two of the local residents will pop in to see you
• Surrounding village with services and residents
• Full ‘history of Silorn’ – books, notes, newspapers and journals
• Scripted lighting for light days/dark nights
• Two short fun quests