While the original version ofSkyrimhad dozens of hours of content and was a fantastic experience for players, modders took the experience and elevated it to an entirely different level. Bethesda recognized the improvements modders made toSkyrimand chose to support them for the tenth anniversary with the release of theSkyrim Anniversary Editionin 2021 that included the Creation Club: mods officially supported by Bethesda.
The Creation Club brought with it a massive amount of new content created by modders that include new storylines, weapons, armor, places, gameplay, and enemies,drawing on the lore ofSkyrimand previousElder Scrollsgames as inspiration. One of the mods featured wasSaints and Seducers, which added a new quest line, enemies, and a plethora of powerful new items available to the Last Dragonborn.
RELATED:Skyrim: How to Get The Spell Knight Armor
What The Elder Scrolls 6 Can Learn From Thoron
Saints and Seducers draws onThe Elder Scrolls: Oblivion: The Shivering Islesas inspirationfor its content, particularly its items and enemies. The Shivering Isles are a plane of Oblivion ruled by Sheogorath, the Daedric Prince of Madness; while Sheogorath doesn’t make an appearance in Saints and Seducers, his servants and various trinkets from the Shivering Isles have somehow found their way to Tamriel. The titular Golden Saints and Dark Seducers are Sheogorath’s guards from the Shivering Isles; utterly loyal to the Prince of Madness, the two factions are rivals in their service but are united in their cause.
The Golden Saints and Dark Seducers serve as the starting point of the quest as a Khajiit trader makes a plea for help for someone to stop the bandits robbing his caravan near Whiterun. The bandits turn out to be the Golden Saints and Dark Seducers who are stealing mundane junk and sending it on to their mysterious master. Intel from their respective camps leads the Last Dragonborn to the Solitude sewers, where the player encounters a startling amount of vegetation andcreatures lifted straight from the Shivering Isles.
At the end of the sewer, the player encounters the source of all the trouble: Thoron, a mage. Taking him down isn’t so easy; he readily summons one Golden Saint and one Dark Seducer which he replaces upon their defeat, heals readily, has a very hardy health bar, and he’s equipped with a magical shield plus an enchanted helm that increases magicka regeneration by 100%. It’s a very difficult fight and shouldn’t be attempted at lower difficulties without a lot of preparation and strategy. One of the rewards is the Sword of Jyggalag,another reference toThe Shivering Isles.
It’s this combination of lore from a fan-favorite previous game combined with an enemy that needs more strategy than aggressive damage-dealing that makes Thoron more interesting than most of the enemies inSkyrim,and issomethingThe Elder Scrolls 6could use more of. WhileSkyrimisn’t a strategy game, its fights could benefit from being more complicated than hitting the enemy as hard as possible, especially when every enemy is susceptible to the same strategy.
Saints and Seducersisn’t a perfect quest line and suffers from many of the same faults as other content from the Creation Club, but the tons of content for crafting all-new armor and weapons and lore that connects to Sheogorath’s appearance in theSkyrimbase game makes this a better quest line than many. While it would have been better to have gotten insight from Thoron himself, figuring out his motivations from the notes between his minions and his own diaries makes the quest a puzzle to put together, and something on-brand for the Prince of Madness.
