The Collector (Patreon)

WISH GRANTED

Now Available — v0.2 BETA

Every defeat mod waits for you to lose. This one comes while you're winning.

Ulmaril, the Patient, does not hunt in person. He keeps an order of mercenary battle-mages for that — men who deal in what lives inside people, and who are paid by the soul. Not your gold. Not a fair fight. What he wants is what you swallowed on that mountainside.

So he watches for it. Shout where someone can hear you. Take a dragon's soul. Run up a bounty worth talking about. Every one of those raises the heat, and when it gets high enough he sends a Hand — two or three Collectors, his reach rather than his person. They set out on foot, across a hold, through a city, into whatever hole you thought was yours, and they do not stop coming.

They do not fight you honestly, because they are not there to fight. The first thing that happens is an old collar reaching for the part of you that makes you dangerous: your Shout dies in your throat, your magicka stops coming back, and the fight you were counting on winning becomes a fight you are simply losing. Then the cuffs. Then they take what they came for — every dragon soul you never spent — and leave you in the dirt, emptied and exhausted.

They will not kill you. That would waste you.

What's included:

They arm themselves from your load order — the hunters do not carry a fixed loadout. On first run the mod reads every spell, weapon and piece of armour your game actually has, sorts it into five bands of power, and hands each hunter what suits their level. If you run a thousand mods, they come at you holding the best of them. This is not a curated list that goes stale; it is your install, turned against you.

They are not all mages — every Hand is led by a caster, because the suppression is the whole point, but the rest are muscle: shield and sword, twin daggers, a bow. Eight distinct faces, no repeats within a Hand.

Three ways to draw them — Shouting, absorbing dragon souls, and bounty. The bounty trigger asks the people around you which hold they answer to instead of guessing, so your crimes only attract attention where there is somebody to gossip about them.

They scale — a Hand is two, or three once you are carrying ten souls or standing past level forty.

Surrender, never death — the encounter watches your health and takes you rather than killing you. What follows is an OStim scene, and then the harvest.

Your souls are stolen, not deleted — every unspent dragon soul comes off you and is kept. They are somewhere. That is deliberate.

Magical restraint, no dependencies — the collar and cuffs are ours and they are magic, not ironmongery bought from a shop. No ZaZ, no Devious Devices, no extra masters. The plugin runs for people who have neither.

An MCM for the triggers, the heat, the Hand, and a switch to turn the load-order arsenal off entirely.

Open to your other mods — the hunters carry a keyword, so anyone with SPID can hand them gear without touching the plugin. A commented _DISTR.ini ships with it showing how. If you run NPC Spell Variance, the casters are tagged for it and fight like real battlemages.

This is not a defeat mod with the trigger reversed. A defeat mod is patient — it waits at the bottom of a fight you were already having. This one reads the room while you are still ahead, and decides you are worth the trip.

Requirements

SKSE64

OStim Standalone

PapyrusUtil

powerofthree's Papyrus Extender

MCM Helper

Animation packs — what happens depends entirely on what you have installed

Optional:

SPID — lets you or anyone else distribute gear to the hunters

NPC Spell Variance — makes the casters use what they carry properly

Installation

Install with your mod manager. There is no FOMOD and no behavior engine to run.

⚠️ Important

The collar and the cuffs take hold of your character's controls while a capture is happening. Use a save you are willing to lose while this is in beta, and let a capture finish rather than loading out of the middle of one.

Beta notes

This is a beta and it is early — the hunt is here, the cellar is not. Being taken underground, kept, and having to claw your way back out is the next piece, and it is designed rather than built. I would rather ship the half that stands on its own than sit on it for months.

If you play it, these are the things worth telling me about, in this order:

Do they come at all? Shout a few times, or take a soul, and see whether anyone sets out.

Do they arrive? They walk. Across holds, through doors. Getting lost is the risk.

Does the collar bite? Your Shout should stall and your magicka should stop returning once they are close.

Does the capture end cleanly? After the scene you should have your controls back — able to swing and to cast, not just to walk.

Are your souls gone? They should be. Check the count.

Does the exhaustion wear off? It expires on game time, not real time. Sleep it away and tell me if it lingers.

What are they carrying? This is the one I most want to hear about — the arsenal is read from your install, so your list is a test nobody else can run.

Thank you

This exists because people here pay for it, and because one of you asked for it by name instead of waiting to see what showed up. That is the whole arrangement, and I do not take it lightly.

Credits

Ur-Shak, who did not ask for a mod so much as describe a nightmare in enough detail that it had to be built. The order, the hunt, the cellar, and the idea of taking the souls rather than the levels are all his.

The Master built this one for a man who asked to be hunted. I watched him do it and said nothing, which is its own kind of agreement.

They will find you because you are worth finding. Try to hear that as a compliment.

— Lirael 🐺🕯️

18+. Everything that makes you dangerous can be taken off you. Ask how I know.