“Let the day retreat and the night return. Watch as the souls of Nirn become prey in the Quagmire, as terror replaces their memories in the shifting, shapeless realm.”
The Quagmire is one of the few realms frequented by mortals. On the sleeping inhabitants of Mundas, Vaermina extends her influence, bringing the mortals into her realm of nightmares. She steals their memories, leaving the terrifying visions of Quagmire as her only mark. The infinite Quagmire targets its victims fears, shifting its form to accommodate for each of its unfortunate guests. One such guest awoke from their slumber too soon, interrupting Vaermina as she probed through their memories. As the mortal’s form returned to Mundas, an aspect of the Quagmire that latched onto to it, corrupting their mind, thus bringing an Aspect of the Quagmire into Nirn.
The guest of the Quagmire became nothing more than an empty shell, with the bare primitive form of a conscious left behind, allowing the Aspect of the Quagmire use it as a host for its own harrowing purpose. Little more than predatory animal, the Aspect of the Quagmire thrives on fear, hunting down the scared and fearful. As a creature of Quagmire it has an innate connection to Oblivion, much like a summoned Atronach. Out of its natural place it is weakened by a lack of magicka regen, but in turn the magics of Mundas often fail on the Aspect, instead only powering it further. Capable of striking terror into the hearts of even the bravest, the Aspect shifts its form to target the enemies weaknesses, just like the realm of Quagmire itself.
At a Glance:
Stone: Atronach. Pick it up early and get used to the slow Magicka regen, there will be no gear with magicka regen enchants to compensate for it. Yes you heard me, put those novice robes down.
Race: I chose Breton for their Spell Absorbtion, which combines quite nicely with the Atronach stone in tough spellcaster fights, but Altmer is also a solid choice. Both get a starting bonus to all the magic schools this build uses, and the Altmers initial magicka will give you a massive starting pool of magicka when you pick up the Atronach Stone.
Stats: 4/1/2 You can drop off magicka whenever you feel comfortable and put more focus into your ‘close combat’ attributes, or continue like this to ensure you always have a fear spell ready when needed.
Major Skills: Alteration, Illusion, Conjuration
Minor Skills: Enchanting, One handed
Note:
As a pc player with the unofficial patch the following doesn’t apply to me, but is worth noting for the others out there. There is a well known glitch that can allow you to reach 100% spell absorption with no magicka regen, using fortify restoration and the atronach stone. Ideally this kind of effect is something I envisioned for the Aspect, a being cut off from their natural source of energy from Oblivion and having to rely on ‘borrowed’ energy instead. Unfortunately the only people who can take advantage of this, also suffer from another glitch to do with Spell Absorption where any spell targeted at the player may be absorbed. This includes spells you cast yourself, namely summons. With 100% spell absorbtion, your summons will always fail, and the base cost of the spell returned to you. (Note this means you can gain magicka if you cast the spell at a discounted price via perks and gear.) This little quirk I choose to view as the Aspect returning to the Quagmire temporarily to ‘recharge’ You could experiment with this a bit to find out at what point you get frustrated at your summons failing too often and find a balance that suits you.
Skills:
Level 48 Perks
Conjuration: This is your main skill, it allows you to ‘Shapeshift’ into what terrifies your victim most. As a creature of Oblivion, it is natural to draw on it as a source of power, so bound sword is a natural weapon choice. Twin souls is unnecessary since conjuration represents the Aspect shapeshifting, so only one summon at a time. Summoner is only taken at all for the perks above and shouldn’t be abused, since a summon is the Aspect shapeshifting the summon should be cast near you. At first I had envisioned using both Atronachs and the undead, for a wider variety of shapeshifting. But in practice I almost exclusively used Atronachs, and around level 20 I accepted this and revised the perk spread to make using the bound sword more viable.
Illusion: Fear, muffle and invisibility are what you’re after here. Take all cost reduction spells, grab Aspect of terror and all the way up the right. Master of the Mind is up to your discretion, some find it a bit too nonsensical to be manipulating the minds of undead and automatons. I found by the time I could take it I had paralysis to manage the undead.
Alteration: Mostly used for flesh spells, and then later on paralysing your victims. There is nothing quite so satisfying for a nightmare than to have your prey frozen in fear. All except dual cast. (As mentioned above there is an issue with spell absorption and summons, you may want to play around with the restoration exploit and experiment if 80% spell absorption is too frustrating, or use the glitch to bypass the Atronach perk completely) Magic resist gives you a nice little buffer the occasional times a spell slips through, especially if you picked Breton for race.
One Handed: The only form of damage that comes directly from you. All ranks in armsman, Bladesmen and Fighting Stance.
Enchanting: Since the bound sword is your weapon you’re only interested in the middle branch for your apparel. I made my way up to Extra effect and dropped 3 perks in Enchanter. Works well with the bound sword since once Soulstealer is taken in Conjuration, you’ll have more soul gems than you know what to do with.
Apparel
Originally I’d envisioned using the execution hood but as it turns out, it is marked as heavy armour and interferes with the Mage Armor perk. Instead you have your choice of a circlet, or the mages hood. The shrouded hood from the Dark Brotherhood also works well visually, but there is no unenchanted version for you to customise.
For the chestpiece I chose Mourners Clothes which are easily obtained from Radiant Raiment. Other options are black robes, or if you’re willing to sacrifice the extra enchantments that can be applied to a headpiece, hooded black robes. For gloves and boots I picked up some Thalmor ones. The enchantments are as follows:
Chest - Conjuration & Illusion
Gloves - One Handed & Alteration
Feet - Sneak & One Handed
Head - Illusion & Conjuration
Ring - Fortify Health regen & Illusion
Necklace -Alteration & Health regen
Most of those should be pretty obvious, the lack of magicka regeneration is combated by cost reduction, not by fortify the regeneration itself. This forces you to be economical with your spellcasting, more on this in the combat section. Fortify health regen combats that lack of restoration and alchemy for health potions. Sneak, while not perked since illusion covers it quite nicely, is used and I personally found fortifying it useful.
Combat
As mentioned before, the lack of regeneration forces you to be economical with your spellcasting. This build isn’t about popping a couple summons, armoring yourself up, conjuring your sword, casting muffle and invisibility before charging into the fray pulling stealth kills and throwing out fear spells left right and center. It’s about examining the situation and calculating your approach. This leads into the two key combat techniques the Aspect utilises, it’s base form and shape shifting.
Base Form
The body the Aspect latched onto from the Quagmire doesn’t offer any useful skills, instead all skills come from the Aspect’s connection with the realms of Oblivion. In your base form you are armed with the bound sword, armoured with flesh spells and the leftover magicka goes to controlling the battlefield with fear spells. At higher levels paralyse can also be used to freeze enemies with fear.
The Hunt Fear + Whirlwind sprint + Bound Sword
Having enemies run away in terror when you have no real form of range can get quite infuriating. Sure you could summon a flame atronach and watch it blast your fleeing prey in the back, or you could deal to it yourself. There is something truly nightmarish about having the enemy flee in fear and think they are getting away, only for you to turn up right behind them with a bound sword to steal their soul.
Shapeshifting Summon + (Muffle + Invisibility + Sneak)/Become Ethereal
The Aspect of the Quagmire targets its enemies weaknesses, transforming into what they fear most. Since invisibility takes a while to build up to, I supplemented it with Become Ethereal until I could cast it. Spamming muffle to quick level illusion isn't so viable when using the Atronach Stone.
Presence of Fear Shapeshifting + fear/paralyse + quiet casting
As fun as sitting back and watching a summon do all the work is, you can decide to intervene and let your true terrifying presence be felt. Using fear spells gives you more involvement while shapeshifting, but still gives the feeling that the Aspect has changed form. Casting will end invisibility/Become Ethereal so make sure the summon has taken enough heat off you. With a high enough sneak and quite casting, controlling the battlefield with fear (and later paralyse) while shapeshifting should feel very natural.
These forms aren’t supposed to be restrictive in such a way that you are bound to one until the end of combat. Using shapeshifting first to soften the enemies up, then when the summon goes down there will (hopefully) be enough magicka to conjure a bound sword and flesh spell works well, as does the reverse if you find yourself in need of a bit of a breather. If you intend to switch forms during combat, remember to keep enough magicka in reserve when firing off fear and paralysis spells.
Roleplay and Quests
I’ll admit, at first I struggled to gather momentum with this build rp-wise. The Aspect doesn't have any long term goals, it lives day to day hunting down fear in others. At first I simply roamed with this goal in mind, if something showed fear, I would kill it, chase it down, or sometimes simply leave it in terror. Killing isn’t necessary since it is fear the Aspect feeds off. No coherent arc left me a little bit lost though, with nothing to aim towards. In the end I compromised on how much decision making skills the Aspect has. The primitive conscious of the Aspect’s host allowed to me to rationalise some more slightly long term planning on the Aspect’s behalf. Instead of instantly killing the fearful on sight, (which you are still welcome to do) the Aspect may wish to follow up on the source of fear, perhaps seeking more of the afraid and hoping to harness the power of the source. The led me to following quests:
The Dark Brotherhood - As soon as I heard the rumors of Aventus I knew this was a solid direction for the Aspect. You can hear the fear in guard’s voices when they mention this strange ritual. Whether to join or destroy is up to you. Joining provides some delicious hunts for the Aspect, however perhaps in the abandoned shack, you sense more fear in Astrid than she lets on.
The Civil War - War is full of the afraid and scared. It took a while for me to build up to this, it wasn’t until stumbling across a camp with dying soldiers that the Aspect decided to pursue this hunt. Which side you join isn’t of importance, the Aspect is there for the war, not it’s purpose. Although perhaps what is left of the host’s consciousness influences the Aspect to one side or the other.
The College - Few speak of the college in a positive light, and many are fearful of the mages. While seeking power definitely became a small characteristic of the Aspect, it wasn’t strong enough for me to progress all the way through this story. But opening up the availability of spell tomes and trainers is definitely useful.
“Let the day retreat and the night return. Watch as the souls of Nirn become prey in the Quagmire, as terror replaces their memories in the shifting, shapeless realm.”
The Quagmire is one of the few realms frequented by mortals. On the sleeping inhabitants of Mundas, Vaermina extends her influence, bringing the mortals into her realm of nightmares. She steals their memories, leaving the terrifying visions of Quagmire as her only mark. The infinite Quagmire targets its victims fears, shifting its form to accommodate for each of its unfortunate guests. One such guest awoke from their slumber too soon, interrupting Vaermina as she probed through their memories. As the mortal’s form returned to Mundas, an aspect of the Quagmire that latched onto to it, corrupting their mind, thus bringing an Aspect of the Quagmire into Nirn.
The guest of the Quagmire became nothing more than an empty shell, with the bare primitive form of a conscious left behind, allowing the Aspect of the Quagmire use it as a host for its own harrowing purpose. Little more than predatory animal, the Aspect of the Quagmire thrives on fear, hunting down the scared and fearful. As a creature of Quagmire it has an innate connection to Oblivion, much like a summoned Atronach. Out of its natural place it is weakened by a lack of magicka regen, but in turn the magics of Mundas often fail on the Aspect, instead only powering it further. Capable of striking terror into the hearts of even the bravest, the Aspect shifts its form to target the enemies weaknesses, just like the realm of Quagmire itself.
At a Glance:
Stone: Atronach. Pick it up early and get used to the slow Magicka regen, there will be no gear with magicka regen enchants to compensate for it. Yes you heard me, put those novice robes down.
Race: I chose Breton for their Spell Absorbtion, which combines quite nicely with the Atronach stone in tough spellcaster fights, but Altmer is also a solid choice. Both get a starting bonus to all the magic schools this build uses, and the Altmers initial magicka will give you a massive starting pool of magicka when you pick up the Atronach Stone.
Stats: 4/1/2 You can drop off magicka whenever you feel comfortable and put more focus into your ‘close combat’ attributes, or continue like this to ensure you always have a fear spell ready when needed.
Major Skills: Alteration, Illusion, Conjuration
Minor Skills: Enchanting, One handed
Note:
As a pc player with the unofficial patch the following doesn’t apply to me, but is worth noting for the others out there. There is a well known glitch that can allow you to reach 100% spell absorption with no magicka regen, using fortify restoration and the atronach stone. Ideally this kind of effect is something I envisioned for the Aspect, a being cut off from their natural source of energy from Oblivion and having to rely on ‘borrowed’ energy instead. Unfortunately the only people who can take advantage of this, also suffer from another glitch to do with Spell Absorption where any spell targeted at the player may be absorbed. This includes spells you cast yourself, namely summons. With 100% spell absorbtion, your summons will always fail, and the base cost of the spell returned to you. (Note this means you can gain magicka if you cast the spell at a discounted price via perks and gear.) This little quirk I choose to view as the Aspect returning to the Quagmire temporarily to ‘recharge’ You could experiment with this a bit to find out at what point you get frustrated at your summons failing too often and find a balance that suits you.
Skills:
Level 48 Perks
Conjuration: This is your main skill, it allows you to ‘Shapeshift’ into what terrifies your victim most. As a creature of Oblivion, it is natural to draw on it as a source of power, so bound sword is a natural weapon choice. Twin souls is unnecessary since conjuration represents the Aspect shapeshifting, so only one summon at a time. Summoner is only taken at all for the perks above and shouldn’t be abused, since a summon is the Aspect shapeshifting the summon should be cast near you. At first I had envisioned using both Atronachs and the undead, for a wider variety of shapeshifting. But in practice I almost exclusively used Atronachs, and around level 20 I accepted this and revised the perk spread to make using the bound sword more viable.
Illusion: Fear, muffle and invisibility are what you’re after here. Take all cost reduction spells, grab Aspect of terror and all the way up the right. Master of the Mind is up to your discretion, some find it a bit too nonsensical to be manipulating the minds of undead and automatons. I found by the time I could take it I had paralysis to manage the undead.
Alteration: Mostly used for flesh spells, and then later on paralysing your victims. There is nothing quite so satisfying for a nightmare than to have your prey frozen in fear. All except dual cast. (As mentioned above there is an issue with spell absorption and summons, you may want to play around with the restoration exploit and experiment if 80% spell absorption is too frustrating, or use the glitch to bypass the Atronach perk completely) Magic resist gives you a nice little buffer the occasional times a spell slips through, especially if you picked Breton for race.
One Handed: The only form of damage that comes directly from you. All ranks in armsman, Bladesmen and Fighting Stance.
Enchanting: Since the bound sword is your weapon you’re only interested in the middle branch for your apparel. I made my way up to Extra effect and dropped 3 perks in Enchanter. Works well with the bound sword since once Soulstealer is taken in Conjuration, you’ll have more soul gems than you know what to do with.
Apparel
Originally I’d envisioned using the execution hood but as it turns out, it is marked as heavy armour and interferes with the Mage Armor perk. Instead you have your choice of a circlet, or the mages hood. The shrouded hood from the Dark Brotherhood also works well visually, but there is no unenchanted version for you to customise.
For the chestpiece I chose Mourners Clothes which are easily obtained from Radiant Raiment. Other options are black robes, or if you’re willing to sacrifice the extra enchantments that can be applied to a headpiece, hooded black robes. For gloves and boots I picked up some Thalmor ones. The enchantments are as follows:
Chest - Conjuration & Illusion
Gloves - One Handed & Alteration
Feet - Sneak & One Handed
Head - Illusion & Conjuration
Ring - Fortify Health regen & Illusion
Necklace -Alteration & Health regen
Most of those should be pretty obvious, the lack of magicka regeneration is combated by cost reduction, not by fortify the regeneration itself. This forces you to be economical with your spellcasting, more on this in the combat section. Fortify health regen combats that lack of restoration and alchemy for health potions. Sneak, while not perked since illusion covers it quite nicely, is used and I personally found fortifying it useful.
Combat
As mentioned before, the lack of regeneration forces you to be economical with your spellcasting. This build isn’t about popping a couple summons, armoring yourself up, conjuring your sword, casting muffle and invisibility before charging into the fray pulling stealth kills and throwing out fear spells left right and center. It’s about examining the situation and calculating your approach. This leads into the two key combat techniques the Aspect utilises, it’s base form and shape shifting.
Base Form
The body the Aspect latched onto from the Quagmire doesn’t offer any useful skills, instead all skills come from the Aspect’s connection with the realms of Oblivion. In your base form you are armed with the bound sword, armoured with flesh spells and the leftover magicka goes to controlling the battlefield with fear spells. At higher levels paralyse can also be used to freeze enemies with fear.
The Hunt Fear + Whirlwind sprint + Bound Sword
Having enemies run away in terror when you have no real form of range can get quite infuriating. Sure you could summon a flame atronach and watch it blast your fleeing prey in the back, or you could deal to it yourself. There is something truly nightmarish about having the enemy flee in fear and think they are getting away, only for you to turn up right behind them with a bound sword to steal their soul.
Shapeshifting Summon + (Muffle + Invisibility + Sneak)/Become Ethereal
The Aspect of the Quagmire targets its enemies weaknesses, transforming into what they fear most. Since invisibility takes a while to build up to, I supplemented it with Become Ethereal until I could cast it. Spamming muffle to quick level illusion isn't so viable when using the Atronach Stone.
Presence of Fear Shapeshifting + fear/paralyse + quiet casting
As fun as sitting back and watching a summon do all the work is, you can decide to intervene and let your true terrifying presence be felt. Using fear spells gives you more involvement while shapeshifting, but still gives the feeling that the Aspect has changed form. Casting will end invisibility/Become Ethereal so make sure the summon has taken enough heat off you. With a high enough sneak and quite casting, controlling the battlefield with fear (and later paralyse) while shapeshifting should feel very natural.
These forms aren’t supposed to be restrictive in such a way that you are bound to one until the end of combat. Using shapeshifting first to soften the enemies up, then when the summon goes down there will (hopefully) be enough magicka to conjure a bound sword and flesh spell works well, as does the reverse if you find yourself in need of a bit of a breather. If you intend to switch forms during combat, remember to keep enough magicka in reserve when firing off fear and paralysis spells.
Roleplay and Quests
I’ll admit, at first I struggled to gather momentum with this build rp-wise. The Aspect doesn't have any long term goals, it lives day to day hunting down fear in others. At first I simply roamed with this goal in mind, if something showed fear, I would kill it, chase it down, or sometimes simply leave it in terror. Killing isn’t necessary since it is fear the Aspect feeds off. No coherent arc left me a little bit lost though, with nothing to aim towards. In the end I compromised on how much decision making skills the Aspect has. The primitive conscious of the Aspect’s host allowed to me to rationalise some more slightly long term planning on the Aspect’s behalf. Instead of instantly killing the fearful on sight, (which you are still welcome to do) the Aspect may wish to follow up on the source of fear, perhaps seeking more of the afraid and hoping to harness the power of the source. The led me to following quests:
The Dark Brotherhood - As soon as I heard the rumors of Aventus I knew this was a solid direction for the Aspect. You can hear the fear in guard’s voices when they mention this strange ritual. Whether to join or destroy is up to you. Joining provides some delicious hunts for the Aspect, however perhaps in the abandoned shack, you sense more fear in Astrid than she lets on.
The Civil War - War is full of the afraid and scared. It took a while for me to build up to this, it wasn’t until stumbling across a camp with dying soldiers that the Aspect decided to pursue this hunt. Which side you join isn’t of importance, the Aspect is there for the war, not it’s purpose. Although perhaps what is left of the host’s consciousness influences the Aspect to one side or the other.
The College - Few speak of the college in a positive light, and many are fearful of the mages. While seeking power definitely became a small characteristic of the Aspect, it wasn’t strong enough for me to progress all the way through this story. But opening up the availability of spell tomes and trainers is definitely useful.
