nymphgirlsofskyrim

[nymphgirlsofskyrim]

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays, from the Nymph girls to you!

[nymphgirlsofskyrim]

I had a little extra time this weekend, so I started working on the High Nymph race.  I decided I wanted to give them a unique skin texture like some of the other Nymph races, and that’s what I ended up working on.  

I might need to adjust the saturation/contrast a tiny bit, but I think it came out pretty well.  

The body texture is made from about 18 different 8k layers composited together to give it the right combination of flawlessly smooth skin, life-like skin details, shading and skin tone.  

[nymphgirlsofskyrim]

Version 1.9 has officially been published.  I hope you enjoy it!

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/95002

Here is an updated map with the locations of followers.

[nymphgirlsofskyrim]

I had LITERALLY just finished everything, tested four separate installs to make sure I had every asset accounted for, got everything packaged, when I went back to grab a couple more Follower Ultimate screenshots (seen above).  

In the process of doing so, a huge and completely un-explainable AI bug showed up that I spent all evening trying unsuccessfully to fix.  No idea what happened.  

I’m not sure why I’m surprised, either.  Wouldn’t be the first time something like this happened right when I think I’m done.  Or even the fifth time.

At least the screenshots are nice.  

I should have a little time this week so I don’t have to postpone everything until next weekend.

[nymphgirlsofskyrim]

I am still working on stuff unfortunately.  I have spent pretty much every waking moment trying to finish things up this weekend.  Still not quite ready to publish it.  I only have a couple things left to finish, but they are incredibly time-consuming.  Next week will be really busy, and it’s looking like I might not finish this week.

In between the massive amount of text-editing I have been doing all weekend, I decided the Black Opals needed a pirate flag.  I made a quick tweak of the mod “Northern Cardinal” so I could see what the flag looked like in-game on an actual ship, and it looks a lot better than I was expecting.  

I also tweaked the Opal pauldron/circlet set so they fit on male characters too, and if any of you lads want to take up the mark o’ the New pirate queen, ye’ now be free to do so.

Landlubbers like ye may not be knowin' but a pirate flag gots a tale it tells to any sailors unlucky enough ‘ta spy it comin’ up o’er tha’ horizon.  Any sailor worth his salt could tell ya’ what any of ‘em flags be sayin’.  Take the flag o’ the Queen.  Tha’ big skull mark represent tha’ Black Opal pirates as a group, n’ tha’ two smaller ones be personal marks o’ tha’ New-Pirate-Queen herself.  ‘Tis a’fore my time lad, but way back when I hears tha’ Opals sailed wif’ a whole fleet, so’s each ship had tha’ same mark 'pon tha’ middle but each Cap’n would add their own on tha’ sides, saavy?  These days ye’ not likely ta’ come ‘pon tha’ Barge naught but by its lonesome.  

Now ‘fer her marks, many a pirate uses an hourglass ta say “yer time is almost up, matey.”  Or when a skeleton holds it tha’ meanin’ be “ye has only a short time left to surrender and save yerself from death.”  But not so wif’ tha’ Queen.  ‘Pon her flag be a tilted hourglass: tha’ queen stopped aging once she put on that cursed ring o’ hers, so her flag says time has little meanin' for her now.  I figures it be her way o’ sayin’ she haves all tha’ time in tha’ world to hunt ye down, should ye try ta’ flee.

Next be a red dragon: not so straightforward this.  A red skeleton mean ta’ say ye’ will die bloody or be tortured ‘ta death if ye resist, but ya can see it ain’t no skeleton and I never heard none of ‘em nord legends ‘bout dragons bein’ red.  So tell me, lad, ye ever hear any swashbucklin’ stories ‘o the Queen, in particulars tha’ ones ‘bout her painting the decks o’ enemy ships wif’ sailor’s blood?  Aye, clever lad, if tha’ dragon be a symbol o’ bein’ ageless, she must be referrin’ ta’ herself, and since it look to be covered in blood that weren’t its own, ye can surely guess how it happened.

The big mark in tha’ center what speaks for ‘dem pirates should be proper obvious, even ta’ landlubbers.  What’s that, lad? Ye don’t know what skull ‘n crossed bones mean, nor why it wears a crown, and ye also askin’ why’s it got that gem in its eye? Blow me down! Has ye even got yer sea legs yet?  

All right bucko, now listen well: 'Tis a grave warning issued by tha’ pirates, to any and all; whether they be sailors or kings: if ye crosses us, then a Black Opal is sure ta’ be the last thing in this life ye lays eyes upon a’fore dyin’.

If ye mean ta’ sail round these parts take me advice, lad: best to heed that warning.

[nymphgirlsofskyrim]

I have been trying to put in the time I can whenever I get a chance but it has been very slow going, and I apologize for that.  I am just about ready to hand the update off to some testers to make sure everything is working.

After much playtesting, I have finalized Nai’yari and her powerset.  It has proven more difficult than I expected, since many of her powers became far too strong in some situations, and it was easy to break the delicate balance I was striving for.   I toned down some of the powers, added a few extra tweaks for flavor, and she’s finally finished.  

I also polished up her head mesh in blender, built her a new face normal map, made her some new boots and gloves out of re-textured pieces of goma’s Black Widow set (thanks goma!), and tweaked the multi-layer parallax effect on her Opalescent equipment.  I have probably spent more time on her than any individual part of this mod, and I hope you will enjoy playing with her!

I also went through and checked every single mesh nif and creation kit entry, double checked every texture path, and made sure I had all of the necessary assets linked correctly.  It was an extremely tedious process that took many, many hours, but it needed to be done, because I found at least half a dozen mis-linked entries.  

I can safely say I didn’t miss anything this time around.

Nai’Yari

Race: Desert Nymph

Combat Style: Swashbuckling! Yarr!

Special Talent(s): 

The Opal Scar Cutlass

Absorbs health on hit and grows in power as she levels and increases her one handed melee skill.

Starts at 2hp/hit

Over 30 1 hand skill absorbs 4hp/hit

Over 50 1 hand skill absorbs 7hp/hit

Over 70 1 hand skill absorbs 11hp/hit

Over 90 1 hand skill absorbs 16hp/hit

At 100 1 hand skill absorbs 20hp/hit

This might sound like a very small amount, but at her lowest health threshold she will be swinging almost 5 times per second, and the absorb adds significantly to her survivability.

Blood Opal Bloodletting 

Not only is her cutlass exceptionally sharp, Nai'yari has inhuman dexterity, and has mastered swordcraft with her chosen weapon.  While wielding it, she has the uncanny ability to cause minor injuries that continue to bleed long after they are inflicted.  

Those who have fought alongside her say that this is a latent instict borne of her desire to savor combat: her swings are guided towards vulnerable locations, but she subconciously avoids lethal strokes.  It is also suggested that if she did not desire to prolong a fight, she could inflict grevious or even fatal wounds without much effort.

As long as she is wielding her cutlass, she causes a stacking bleed that grows in strength as she levels

Initially it does 2hp/second and lasts 30 seconds

Once she is over level 20, this increases to 5hp/second for 30 seconds

Once she is over level 40, this increases again to 9hp/second for 30 seconds

This bleed is applied for every swing, and there is no limit to how many bleeds she can apply to any given enemy.

A considerable amount of her killing power comes from the damage dealt by dozens of bleeds applied in succession, rather than her weapon itself.

Fire Opal Frenzy

Reduces stagger based on how injured she is.  

Once below 60% health, all staggers are reduced to 50%.  

Below 30% health, all staggers are reduced to 25%.

Gains a burst of melee strength every time she is hit

Every time she is attacked, she gains an effect that increases her melee damage is increased by 12.5%

Each effect lasts for 12 seconds and she can have an unlimited number of these effects active.

Her cutlass has a rather low base damage, being somewhere between a sword and a dagger, but it becomes quite lethal once she builds enough frenzy.

Nai'Yari, like all Nymphii, is a hedonist at heart.  Unlike most other Nymphii, she is drawn to the thrill of danger and above all the excitement of battle.  Quite often, her behavior suggests she has a death wish or cares little for her own life or safety.  

This is not strictly the case; she simply finds herself drawn to the sheer joy of battle, and in order to experience this elation she will dive headlong into odds that look impossible.  Still, were it not for her natural gift at arms, and ability to astutely evaluate any situation, she would probably have gotten herself killed dozens of times over.  

Fortunately, she thrives in these situations, and seems to grow in strength and speed to match the odds she faces.  It takes some time for her excitement to approach its peak, but after her battle-lust fully infuses her, she moves with such speed and strikes with such force so as to completely defy rational explanation.  

No one knows what the limits to her strength are since her power quickly goes dormant once the thrill of battle wears off, and few foes are powerful enough to stand against her once her combat frenzy begins to heat up. If she actually gets pushed the true limits of her strength, it is possible that no creature or force in all of Tamriel could stand against her.

Supreme Swashbuckling

As long as she is wearing a shield in her left hand and a sword in her right hand she has the following ability

10% faster attack speed, blocks 5% more with her shield.

Her attack speed, movement speed and the amount of damage she can block with her shield increase based on her percent of current health, so she moves/swings faster and blocks more as she gets injured.

Below 90% health, her attack speed increases by 80%, her movespeed increases 10%, and she can block 10% more damage with her shield.

Below 60% health, attack speed increases 170%, movement speed increases 20%, and she can block 15% more damage with her shield.

Below 30%, attack speed increases by 320%, movement speed increases 30%, and she can block 25% more damage with her shield.

Combat Description

Her combat prowess is heavily tied to her mastery of a particular fighting style.  She is extremely skilled at fighting with a traditional pirate's "swashbuckling" style: a longsword or cutlass along with a buckler or similar light shield.

This fighting style has become second nature to her. Her ability to accelerate and move with inhuman speed depends on this "natural" feeling of pure, honed reflexes, so she cannot move nearly as fast if she fights with any other style.

Most creatures begin to feel a growing sense of dread as they are injured and experience intense fear as they threatened by a challenge that brings them close to death.  

Nai'Yari has a very different response.  Rather than feeling panic or dread, she becomes more excited, more focused, and feels more alive as she approaches death. 

While such a response could lead a normal person to a pattern of incredibly irrational risk taking in pursuit of this state of heightened arousal; a pattern that will inevitably lead to their premature demise, she is sensible enough not to let thrill-seeking control her. 

Indeed, most who have heard the stories before they meet her are shocked to discover that the "mad pirate queen" is actually quite prudent and level-headed.  

While often bold, and some would say reckless, she is neither foolish nor careless, and does not deliberately engage in actions that threaten her safety or the safety of her crew just to satisfy her lust for excitement.  

Her crew have learned to trust that, no matter how insane her plans seem to be, she won’t get them involved in any fight that they have no chance of winning.

There’s a only thin line between adventurous bravado and madness...  So heave to, raise the sails and cast off, lads!

[nymphgirlsofskyrim]

I have a few things I wanted to share in terms of my progress and plans going forward.

With my real life responsibilities out of the way, I’m currently finishing up the last few things for the update.  I expect to have the rest of it completed in the next two or three weeks.  

I have put together an updated logo in preparation for the update!

I also wanted to mention that I reworked the custom face normal maps for all of the followers to enhance the shadowing and accentuate the fine details in their faces.  The effect is pretty lifelike for skyrim, I think.

After that, I have another content update planned.  I am adding a 6th playable nymph race along with another follower of that race.  The coy and playful Nymph race of High Rock: the Bretoniic High Nymph, will finally make her appearance.  

They are essentially designed to be the equivalent to the Nymph monsters that you sometimes find in daggerfall: they have a more powerful form of the normal nymph protection, a power that drains stamina, as well as a unique special ability that lets them perform a special super attack if they have enough stamina.  I hope you look forward to it!

I considered holding off on the current update to package it all together, but decided it would be better to release these things in stages so as not to keep people waiting any longer for the stuff like bug fixes and lore content.  

I would like to say that I can finish both of these updates by the end of the summer, but if I have learned anything while working on this project, it’s that I can’t plan timelines based on the assumption that unexpected issues or real life demands will be minimal.

[nymphgirlsofskyrim]

Nymph Follower Ultimate Abilities

Yulia’s Ultimate Ability is called "Saint Sword"

It is in reference to this lore: https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Sword-singers#The_Ansei.

After she is level 50 or higher, Yulia has perfected her sword skills so much that she has tapped into the discipline of the ancient Yokuda and become one of the Ansei, the saints of the sword, capable of forming her Shehai, a spirit sword, to use in battle.  

Her Shehai is similar in shape to her normal blade, but has a fancy shader and a new texture.  It hits harder than her regular sword, gets the same massive critical hits, swings much faster, and banishes Daedra.  

Currently her voice line when casting it is "I feel like I’m alive again," and her sword has a faint humming sound.

Yulia can use this ability without any limits, and it essentially replaces her normal sword as her combat style.

Synne’s Ultimate Ability is called “THE DOOM OF TAMRIEL”

THE DOOM OF TAMRIEL is a very large radius flamecloak type ability that ignores line of sight restrictions, and is unresistable, just like “Flames of Sin”

This cloak does good damage by itself, but the first time an enemy comes into range THE DOOM generates a “Flames of Sin” firewall under their feet.  This Sin-firewall does an extreme amount of damage, and if they don’t move away from it almost anything will die within seconds.

This is a super powerful spell, so it has some restrictions.

The spell lasts roughly 35 seconds.  It starts out with a huge radius, but that radius slowly shrinks over the course of the spell, is less than half by 15 seconds, and after this point it starts quickly shrinking down to nothing.

Synne has to be level 50 or higher to cast this, and she can only use it once every 10 minutes (real time).

It has some fancy audioFX that are a combination of a Polish-Catholic “Bitter Lamentations” Hymnal, “Ave Satani” from the movie The Omen, and an intense sounding fireFX from an actual California brushfire.  It sounds very dramatic, to say the least.

Synne’s voiceline when casting is “Yeah... Don’t worry about it... BWA HA HA HA HA”.  About halfway through she will also add “You’re nothing but a joke!” which is the point when the radius is tapering off sharply.

You can see a short clip of it in action here.

I will update this post as I add the other 4 follower Ultimates.

[nymphgirlsofskyrim]

Version 2.0 Update Info

I am currently working on a new version of NGoS that will be ready in roughly a month or so.  I had originally planned on releasing this in March, but my schedule became too crowded and I didn't have as much time to devote to it as I had hoped.

The new update has numerous bug fixes, as well as new content and a few new features.

Bug Fixes

Bug Fixes are pretty numerous, mostly small stuff, but here are some examples

I defined a nymph specific skeleton to conclusively resolve feet deformity issues caused by having an out-of-date XPMSE skeleton

Fixed a lot of mismapped texture paths on meshes that caused them to show up solid purple.

A few meshes had the normal maps generated upside down.  This is because OpenGL and Direct3D have different conventions for lighting direction, openGL is Y+ for up whereas Direct3D is Y- for up.  On some of the older textures I generated normals for I accidentally baked them with the OpenGL directions.  This causes areas that should look recessed to actually stick out.  The most noticeable example of this is Kayellie’s Sword.  The Glyphs on her sword are supposed to be engravings, but they actually look like they are protruding in most lighting.

Bodyslide generated body meshes had the wrong .tri file specified so it wouldn’t work with in game uunp morphs

The followers were not correctly using some of the Nymph Racial abilities which applied their effects through perks.  This affected all of the followers to some degree (they didn’t get the default Nymph iron/steel protection) but it affected Kayellie and Mystra more, since they weren’t getting the Blended Nymph protection either.  Mystra is a lot sturdier now that both of those are working (as she should be!)

Synne’s Flames of Sin was not correctly scaling.  

This also includes the bug fixes from the hotfix updates I posted back in January, so you will only need to download 1 file.  There are a few other minor bugs I have fixed, and I intend to go through and examine each and every part of this before I release the update to make sure I didn't miss anything.

New Features

As for new features, the biggest one is that I am adding “Ultimate Abilities” to each follower.  

These are powers that they can only use once they are level 50 or higher, and these abilities are either a super powerful spell that can only be used once every 10 minutes, or a permanent upgrade to their basic fighting style.  

These abilities have very elaborate shaders that I have put a lot of work into, special audioFX, and a voiceline that each follower will say when they cast it.

Right now I have two of these completed, Yulia and Synne.  I will make another post to showcase these as well as give updates as I complete the other 4 follower ultimates.

The other big feature I am adding is preset placement.  A lot of people were asking for this, as well as Nymph world encounters, so I ended up creating a kind of scavenger hunt with the Nymph presets.

There are 22 in total, randomly scattered all over Skyrim.  There are more presets than this, but several of them ended up becoming crew members of the new follower, who I will get to next.

There are a variety of locations you can find them in, ranging from caves, ponds, rural inns to big city taverns, and they are placed according to their subtype.

You are most likely to find a Blended Nymph at a small Rural Inn, such as “Old Hroldan Inn”

The best place to find a Night Nymph is a major city, as you might expect.  They are part of the normal populace, but fortunately the perception-altering magic of the Night Nymph doesn't work on the Dragonborn, so you should be able to spot them easily.

While the two previous subtypes generally stay dressed and live discreetly alongside humans, the other three subtypes are encountered naked in the Wilderness, in typical Nymph form.

Most of time you can find a Wood Nymph at a glen or grove, just like you would find a spriggan.  Good thing Nymphii get along with spriggans!

The easiest place to find a Desert Nymph is in a Grotto type cave.  Frequently they get in territory disputes with the local bears or horkers, but wildlife aren’t a match for the warrior prowess of your average Desert Nymph.

Since there are no jungles in Skyrim, and the few swamplands tend to be shallow and lack sufficient foliage to suit a Beast Nymph, most of them live in caves.  

There are a couple Khajiit Nymphii that have claimed abandoned housing due to the particularly appealing treasures within: one has discovered a shack full of fish, while the other has found a house full of mice.

Each of these 22 Nymphii has been given a distinct class, combat-style, and spell-list, along with appropriate class-perks and the same leveling perks that the Nymph Followers possess.  I tried to make each one of them unique, and they run the range of magic, stealth, and different styles of combat, so that none of them is quite the same.  A few even have unique powers, but they will be harder to find!

New Content

The big addition is the inclusion of Nai’Yari, the new Desert Nymph Follower.  I have described her already in other posts, so I won’t go into a whole lot of detail here.  

The biggest thing I have to add is that I have made her crewmates into potential followers as well, and given them unique equipment and a special ability.

Currently she has 2 crew members that are camped out with her in Skyrim, a Desert Nymph and a Blended Nymph, but I am planning on adding at least one more, possibly two, a Bretoniic Nymph (!!!) and a Nord woman.

Besides the new follower I have already shown on this blog, I am also in the process of finishing up the lore updates that I have been working on.  

This is pretty extensive, and I don’t think I will be able to include it all with this update.  For now, here’s a teaser of some of the tidbits that have come up in questions I have received.

Nymphii have a mating selection process that is based almost 100% on some innate ability to sense the compatibility of any mortal's "magical essence" with the Nymph’s own magical composition.  

Most Nymph subtypes have almost no interest in status, wealth, power, or any other kind of social advantages or material resources.  A prince or a pauper makes very little difference to her.

The Nymph, like any humanoid creature, will obviously have some sense of aesthetics.  However, since all Nymphii are inhumanly beautiful, regardless of the father’s appearance, this is not a major factor in her selection process.  Whether a man is handsome or ugly is only relevant if they have equally compatible “Magical Essence.”

The result is that the Nymph may display strong preferences for one person over another that make very little sense, and her preferences may often seem incomprehensible to mortals.  

For example, a Nymph may show an irresistible attraction to the one-eyed beggar of solitude, and be completely disinterested or even repulsed by the wealthy, charming, and handsome nobleman.

Two males of the same race can still have hugely different patterns of essence.  

A Desert Nymph, whose composition generally favors Redguards, can be highly compatible with the essence of one Redguard man but may be totally incompatible with the essence of another.  

Every mortal has a unique pattern of “Magical Essence” that a Nymph can intuitively read.  Call this perception something like "Magical Pheromones" if that helps to explain it.  

This pattern of “Magical Essence” is usually something only a Nymph can sense, though it may be possible to "read" a person's essence with powerful divination magic.  

Every Nymph can perceive this essence this upon reaching maturity.  It is part of the basic reproductive behavior of every subtype, even the Blended Nymph, for whom selection is not quite so necessary. 

“Magical Essence" is contained primarily within mortal reproductive cells, male and female.  Similar to how a Succubus obtains whatever it is that keeps her alive from semen, the Nymph requires the "Magical Essence" housed within functional humanoid reproductive cells in order to reproduce, which she eventually uses to start an arcane catalytic reaction that generates a new Nymph.

She can gather “Magical Essence” from both men and women, but due to the great difference in number of cells produced (billions of sperm vs. a single ova), it is almost impossible for her to obtain enough essence from a woman to reproduce.  Her strong preference for males as mates is based on this fact, rather than on any anatomical reason.

Human males possess significantly more essence per cell to account for their shorter lifespans, and this helps to account for why Nymphii generally do not prefer Mer over Human except by specific Nymph subtype.

An egg will have thousands of times the quantity of essence per cell, but this is rarely enough to make a difference.

The only situation in which she might obtain enough essence from a woman would be a relationship with a Mer woman that persists for more than five centuries.  It is not impossible, but very nearly so.

It is next to impossible for a Nymph to get pregnant the first time she has sex with any given person.

Most Nymphii are aware of this fact, and it contributes somewhat to the “promiscuous” reputation that the Nymph species has.

They are also generally immune to most sexually transmitted diseases that affect mortals, though with the exception of the Wood Nymph, they are not immune to magical diseases. 

There may be a few diseases that only affect the Nymph which are carried by mortals...

Basically, there is very little risk or consequence for the Nymph if she chooses to indulge her desires.

The genes of the male are totally and completely irrelevant in terms of the composition of the new Nymph: she does NOT reproduce through genetic inheritance.

The “Nymph Generating Reaction” proceeds more quickly based on the amount of "Magical Essence" that she can use as building blocks: the more times she has had sex with the same person, the shorter her pregnancy will be.  

A Nymph could conceive with a mate she has only slept with a few dozen times, but her resulting pregnancy will last decades.  

Comparably, a Nymph who has been in a relationship with a Human man for his entire lifespan may have a pregnancy that lasts only a few weeks.

The building blocks of different individuals are wholly incompatible with each other and cannot be used to fuel the same reaction; each person has a unique variant of "essence" and she cannot further this reaction by sleeping with many different people.

A Nymph might be quite promiscuous normally, but once she has taken a mate she thus has a very strong incentive to be monogamous.

The essence of incompatible mates does not necessarily disrupt the reaction, but it does not provide any benefit either.  Since a Nymph pursuing reproduction is always engaging in a deliberate and conscious decision, it does not make much sense for her to sustain an interest in other mates until after she has conceived.

There’s a lot more, but that’s part of what I consider the “essential” basics of Nymph reproduction, and it should help you get an idea of the life-cycle and motivations of the Nymph.

That’s all so far.  I hope you look forward to it!

[nymphgirlsofskyrim]

Nai'yari is a Desert Nymph. She is a pirate captain who sails and plunders the Iliac bay with her saucy band of lady pirates, the "Black Opal Pirates"! Yarr!   Why is she in Skyrim? You'll have to wait and find out! Expect a lot of silly pirate puns. She has a very unique combat style quite different from most anything I've seen in Skyrim. Rather than casting spells, I decided I want to give her DOTA-style mechanics with unique combat abilities. She is built so that she starts out pretty weak in a fight since her sword is slower than a mace and only hits a little harder than a steel dagger, plus she doesn't have much armor. However, the more she is attacked and the longer she is in combat, the stronger she gets! This is how she works: 1. Every time she gets hit she gains a 10% damage buff that lasts ~10 seconds. Small at first but it adds up. 2. Her attack speed increases exponentially as she gets injured. When at 15% or less HP she has a 500% attack speed increase. 3. She applies a small stacking bleed that gets stronger as she levels. It lasts 30 seconds and there is no limit to how many times she can apply it to a single enemy. It only does 2-3 damage per second, but after she has applied it 20 times to the same enemy they start to die very fast. 4. Her cutlass has an unlimited charge lifesteal/health absorption enchantment that grows stronger as she levels. Most of the time she will look like she is losing a fight very badly, but then her attack speed goes through the roof as her health drops and she stabilizes at 20-30% hp thanks to her lifesteal, and shortly afterwards she stacks up enough damage bonuses that she becomes an unstoppable killing machine, demolishing everything that stands in her way. Her outfit is a slight edit of https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/95370 (thanks to zaitama for your armor!) Since she's the captain of the "Black Opal Pirates," I modified parts of it with opal textures and added an opal circlet I made to the hat; opals are sort of her "theme." All of her equipment has a kind of "opalescent sheen" that is hard to show in screenshots. She's supposed to be a fairly infamous pirate queen, so I had to come up with a reason why nobody knew she was a Nymph. Short version of the story is that she is pretending to be a redguard human woman who has found a cursed ring, the legendary "black-water-opal" ring. 

The legend says that whoever wears this ring will stay young and beautiful for as long as they wear it, but if they ever take it off they will die. Spoiler: she made the legend up and she's really just an immortal Nymph, but best ye keep such counsel to yourself land lubber! It took me a while to get the balance just right on her abilities so she wasn't super weak or super strong but I've just about got it down. The only thing left to do is tweak her face sculpt a little bit, she looks too much like one of the current desert Nymph presets and I want her to look a bit more unique.

[nymphgirlsofskyrim]

The mod has officially been published.  Sorry for all the delays, I hope you enjoy it!

[nymphgirlsofskyrim]

Updates and Changes

As of 12-14-2018 I have re-done several of the mod logos and added a few extra screenshots.  My time is very limited at the moment, and these were made in between real-life demands on my time.  

I have a group of testers who are currently working to help me track down the last few bugs left, and I have almost finished my mod page for publishing, but at the present moment my schedule is too crowded to give any sort of date when this will be.  Soon/when it’s done.  Not a very satisfying answer, I know, but that’s where we are.

As of 12-6-2018 I have updated a number of posts on this blog with more recent screenshots, adding some new ones and replacing many of the outdated screenshots of some of the followers

Due to a number of setbacks that have occured recently while preparing for release, I am unfortunately going to have to delay this for another week.

As of 11-28-2018 I am planning on a Dec 1st-2nd release

As of 11-28-2018 I have done some final re-evaluating of the overall powersets and have made a modest amount of balance changes.

Every Nymph race has had their starting skill bonuses reduced by 10 total points.

The original design had weaker racial powers and high starting stats, but as I have added and improved the racial powers, the races had been growing in power beyond what I intended.  Rather than weaken the abilities, which are by far the most fun part of the racial skillsets, I felt the best solution was to simply reduce the starting bonuses.

Three races have had their racial powers improved slightly.

After reducing the starting skillsets by a flat amount some of the races needed to be re-tuned to line up better while still keeping their relative starting bonuses the same. 

Night Nymph

The Night Nymph has had her normal and naked powers switched since Arcane Polarity now proved to be the most interesting part of her kit.  

High Polarity is now only active at 22% or less magicka (down from 25%)

Arcane Flow’s positive benefit now only functions while naked, adds equal magicka and magicka regen rate, and doubles in strength after your alteration skill is 75 or higher.  This is so it stays roughly equal with wearing a robe for your given level.  The shock weakness is still always on.

Desert Nymph

The Desert Nymph Armored balance naked power now increases armor worn on limbs, head, and shield by 35% (up from 25%)

Blended Nymph 

Equipment mastery now adds 15% to the armor rating of any armor (up from 10%)

As of 11-22-2018 I have expanded the powers, description, and lore for the Night Nymph, and I have updated their powerset to reflect these changes.

Night Nymphii have a new power, Arcane Polarity.  In exchange for this power, they no longer have a resistance to poison or disease and can no longer reduce their weakness to shock by remaining unclothed.

As of 11-18-2018 I have expanded the descriptions and lore for the wood nymph and desert nymph, as well as made numerous small grammar corrections to other posts on this page.

As of 11-12-2018 I have updated several of the posts on this blog to reflect the small tweaks and changes I have made while doing balance testing.  

Four races, the Desert Nymph, Beast Nymph, Wood Nymph, and Blended Nymph got several changes to their existing powers, and both the Blended Nymph and Desert Nymph received new powers. 

For the followers, Lykaea and Yulia have had their powers changed and improved slightly, Mystra has had a new power added to her Pox Golem familiar, and Synne recieved a new level-restricted power, similar to Arborea.

The new descriptions should reflect the current pre-release powerset and I will update this post to make note of further pre-release changes.

[nymphgirlsofskyrim]

The Nymph Girls of Skyrim

This is a Custom Race and Follower Mod for Skyrim Legendary edition.  It is composed of two parts.

1. The first is a series of five custom races, the Nymph Races, each possessing a variety of powerful abilities along with a set of one or more serious drawbacks.  Each race has 4-6 hand built presets based on a carefully sculpted racial .trishape morph that allows the player to easily customize a character that resembles a beautiful Nymph, with a total of 24 presets.  These Nymph Races are all unique and distinct from each other, but share two things in common.  

The first is a special power that hearkens back to the days of Daggerfall where magical creatures could only be hurt with magical weapons.  This power makes them nearly invulnerable to weapons that are made of iron or steel.  While this may sound over-powered at first, you might be surprised to find out what happens when you expect to face enemies who cannot hurt you only to ignore the one enemy carrying an elven sword!  Additionally, this power does not apply to any creature attacks, such as wolves, trolls, or dragons, and it does not apply to the weapons used by either Draugr or Falmer.  

It has been carefully mathematically modeled using Skyrim’s armor/damage resistance formula and it is essentially balanced to give you an incredible amount of strength early in the game that weakens and eventually disappears as your foes will not only grow past its protection, but will also start to use weapons that you are no longer protected from.

The second thing all Nymph races share in common is a drawback, which comes in the form of an experience penalty.  Just like the early elder scrolls games when one could design a character with great starting advantages in exchange for an extra amount of experience required per level, the Nymph Races are much stronger than vanilla races, but they will take a lot more time to level-up their skills.

Additionally, four of these races possess a unique extra power that is only active when they remain unclothed, a “Naked Power”.  This is a flavor ability for the most part, it is a way to justify the compulsion towards nudity of the Nymph beyond the fact that they have no need for clothing.  Quite simply, the magical essence of the Nymph is at its strongest when they do not have their bodies covered by any fabrics, metals, or animal skins.  The races have been balanced so that this special power is not a major factor in their relative strengths.  Any Nymph will be quite effective even without this power, so if you do not like the idea of playing a naked female character, you certainly do not have to.  But playing an authentic Nymph and staying true to your Nymph nature will give a little something extra that will make this choice viable for most of the game.

The fifth race, the Blended Nymph, does not have such a power, because they represent the race closest to a mortal human whilst still being a magical Nymph, and in return they are blessed with a talent for using and improving armor that no other Nymph race has.

Every Nymph Race uses a different set of textures and every race has a different base headshape, derived from her blender-sculpted racial .trishape morph.  Thus, a Wood Nymph looks quite different from either a Night Nymph or a Desert Nymph.

2. The second aspect of this mod is a set of six very carefully designed, sculpted, and otherwise unique followers who are all representatives of one of the Nymph Races.  

Each follower possesses one or more special spells or abilities that is entirely unique, with hand crafted effects, gradients, and shaders, and a personality-driven approach that these powers were designed around.  

They also possess a series of perks that allow them to level with the player, functioning as though they have taken the same series of perks the player can as they level up and their skill becomes sufficient for it, and they are all designed to scale the power of their special abilities based on level without the use of outside mods.  

All of this is in addition to carefully designed custom classes and highly tuned combat styles that ensure each girl fights quite differently from the others and that her behavior reflects her personality.

Three of these followers utilize custom texture sets that were built using a variety of image compositing methods and are unique to this mod.

All six followers have a unique body normal map that gives them different levels of muscle tone and appearance.  

All six possess a hand built mesh-mapped face normal generated specifically for that girl’s head mesh.  These normals are then layered with a transparent detail map of the underlying diffuse skin texture to allow light and shadow based on the texture and gives them a very lifelike appearance in almost any lighting.

If you don’t know what any of the texture jargon means, that’s ok.  Just know that a considerable amount of time and effort went into customizing their personal appearances as well as their play-style, and they should stand up as unique individuals both by looks and by function.

3. Finally, all of the presets, and all the followers, will be included as the original racemenu preset slots for users that are familiar with the usage of such files, so you can build your character to be identical to any of them, if you desire. Each of the 24 total unique presets also has an NPC version that is fully functional as a vanilla-style follower, though they do not possess the overall depth and design put into the six unique Nymph followers, but you can, if you wish, build yourself an army of up to thirty Nymph Girls.  

Though this mod is built for Skyrim Legendary edition, one of the key design points has been not to change any vanilla assets in any way, while also avoiding any sort of heavy script load, both to spare papyrus power in heavy mod environments and make it easy to port to different versions, and the entire mod has been built with only a single lightweight script to manage the racial assets.  Thus, it is relatively easy to port to Special Edition, or Skyrim VR, should the interest arise.

[nymphgirlsofskyrim]

The Nymph Races

All Nymph races have the following abilities.

Magical Body

The Nymph is a creature of magical being, she is composed of magic just as much as flesh and blood.  As a consequence, weapons whose materials do not contain some magical essence will have little ability to harm her flesh.

This grants a very large resistance to any damage caused by weapons that are made of iron or steel.  This will completely negate the damage caused by weaker enemies with smaller weapons, such as iron arrows or daggers.  A very strong enemy with an iron two-handed weapon will still be able to make a dent in the Nymph, but this damage will be greatly reduced, even without armor.

This includes Riekling weapons, Imperial weapons, and Forsworn weapons.

It does not provide any protection whatsoever against draugr, falmer, elven, dwarven, orcish, nord-steel, glass, dragonbone, daedric, or ebony weapons.

It also does not provide any protection against attacks from animals such as wolves, trolls, or dragons.

This does offer a significant benefit during the Civil War part of the story, since all soldiers use some type of steel, iron, or imperial weaponry.  However, depending on your level, these soldiers already get a very large damage bonus as part of the vanilla game, and your Nymph protection alone will likely not be enough to prevent them from injuring you.

Whimsical Mind

The Nymph is a flighty and carefree creature that, once fully grown, will never grow old nor ever die of natural causes.  She has all the time in the world to do whatever strikes her fancy, and there is little pressure to grow and learn new things. She thus has a harder time focusing her mind in order to improve her skills.  

This results in a 25% penalty on all experience gained.  

Which technically means she requires 33% more experience to increase her skills than normal, since all experience is multiplied by 0.75, and this is how the in-game description reads.

Keep this in mind when spending money on trainers, as they will not grant a full skill level per session.

It will also keep skillbooks from providing a full level, though you will still get the experience.

Even with the relevant Guardian stone, you will still have a 10% penalty (0.75 * 1.2 = 0.9) and require 11.1% more experience to increase your skills.  If you are also well rested, you will gain experience at 99% of normal for the skills boosted by the Guardian stone (0.75 * 1.2 *1.1 = 0.99).  Lover’s comfort instead of well rested, results in a net 3% bonus (0.75 * 1.2 * 1.15 = 1.035).

Thus, this number was both mathematically and thematically chosen to enhance the flavor of the Nymph and her desire to find a mate, by ensuring that Lover’s Comfort combined with a Guardian stone is the only way to negate the penalty using vanilla modifiers.

This might sound like a fairly small penalty in exchange for the great power the Nymph races have to offer, but it will slow down leveling far more than it would seem at first glance, and should have quite a noticeable impact on gameplay.

“Naked Abilities”

Four of the subtype-races possess one or more powers that is only active active while they qualify as naked, according the game definition and the criteria the game uses to determine if NPCs will comment “You’re naked!” upon seeing you.  This means no equipment in the main torso slot, whether armor or clothing.  

The relative strength and diversity of this “naked power” depends on the Nymph subtype-race, and it relates to the background and behavior of that subtype.  

You can think of it as a hierarchy, with the Wood Nymph having the strongest predisposition towards the “natural state,” followed by the Beast Nymph, then the Desert Nymph, and lastly the Night Nymph, who almost always lives discreetly within city environments, and so has the smallest benefit, as it is rather difficult to conceal your true nature if you regularly stroll naked through a city.

*Due to how the game scales damage by difficulty level,  it is strongly recommended that you do not attempt to play a Nymph on any difficulty setting below Adept, unless you are also using another mod which changes combat damage calculations.*

The Blended Nymph

A blended Nymph is a Nymph whose ancestors have mated with enough different species of males that they lack particular distinct characteristics of any nymph subtype, being blessed with a mixture of minor magical traits.  Besides possessing inhuman Nymph beauty, Blend Nymphii are virtually identical to mortal races in appearance, and many live secretly in mortal society.  Some may even be unaware of their true nature and simply believe themselves mortals that are "special" or "gifted" in some way.

They have as their racial trait a mild protection to just about everything: a small resistance to every form of damage, along with a special ability that reduces all damage of every kind, and of course the universal Nymph protection from iron and steel.  

The overall theme here is that they represent the most complete dilution of magical essence that Nymphii obtain from mortal males, looking and acting for the most part just like mortal women.  It is hard to define this subtype as having any particular background or tendencies.  They run the full range of behavior of any of the mortal races, and very often they behave just like the mortal race they most closely resemble.  They are the only Nymph race that has an armor skill as a racial bonus, and unlike just about every other kind of Nymph imaginable, they don't have an instinctual tendency to go prancing around naked wherever they travel.

That's not to suggest they are less sexual creatures than other Nymphii however.  Nearly all Nymph subtypes would be considered "hyper-sexual" by human standards, with the caveat being that they are extremely selective in choosing mates, in order to ensure the most potent magical essences will pass to their offspring.  Blended Nymphii share this same powerful drive, but they do not possess nearly as much selective instinct.  A quirk of the Blended Nymph pedigree means that just about any male she chooses will contribute positively to the magical energy of her offspring and the offspring will not be weakened by any racial or individual essence, there are no wrong choices!  

Add this to the fact that these “Highly Motivated” Nymphii will very often live within human or mer society, sometimes believing they are a human or mer woman, and the results are best left to your imagination.

Though it might sound like the Blended Nymph is an overly-diluted and thus weaker form of Nymph, they possess a unique property borne of variety.  In the Blended Nymph’s case, the whole really is greater than the sum of its parts, for in her being all of these different types of magical essences become woven together like threads in an intricate tapestry, or perhaps like an unbreakable mesh-work layered from thousands of individually fragile fibers.  This property makes her significantly more durable than any other kind of Nymph, and she takes less damage from everything, no matter whether blade or magic.  

As mentioned above, they are one of the only Nymph Race sub-types that does not have a strong instinctual preference for nudity. Think of it as a mental reflection of the intertwining of their many magical essences.  They tend to look at things in terms of layering of different components, armor over skin, metal over cloth, plates, chain-links, and padding, and thus they get more benefit out of armor than almost any Nymph subtype or even mortal race.  They also have a greater proficiency for working materials into weapons or armor, and have a slight bonus to smithing improvements.  

The Blended Nymph has a natural aptitude for both the path of the Warrior or the Mage, though she might be slightly more suited for Combat.  The followers Mystra and Kayellie are both examples of the Blended Nymph, and are a good representation of how diverse this subtype can be.

The Blended Nymph has the following skill bonuses

One-Handed 10

Smithing 10

Light Armor 5

Heavy Armor 5

Alteration 5

Destruction 5

Restoration 5

For a total of 45, the lowest of any Nymph Race, due to the significant number of combat-related skills she starts with.

The Blended Nymph has the following as her racial abilties, in addition to Magical Body and Whimsical Mind

Blend Nymph Poly-Resist

10% resistance to fire

10% resistance to frost

10% resistance to magic

10% resistance to disease

10% resistance to poison

10% resistance to shock

Equipment Mastery

All weapons and armor can be improved 10% more with smithing

All armor provides 15% more armor rating

and finally Woven Magical Threads

a 7% reduction in all damage taken from melee or magic

[nymphgirlsofskyrim]

The Nymph Races

The Night Nymph

Night Nymphii are a Cyrodilic/Dunmer hybrid Nymph race.  Though they have Dunmerii essence as part of their magical being, they did not inherit Azura’s curse along with it, so they rarely have ashen skin or red eyes.  Your average Night Nymph will appear more like Chimer or Human than Dunmer, and thus have a range of pale, lightly tinted skin tones, ranging from golden, slightly purple, slightly orange, to more fair skinned human colors.  Hair color like most Nymphii includes a floral palette of many colors, but Night Nymphii typically favor blue or red tones (purple pink etc), almost never blonde.  

This subtype used to live exclusively in Morrowind, but many have migrated after Red Mountain.  Night Nymphii are unusual in that they strongly prefer to live in the civilized world and most conceal their true nature.  You can think of the Night Nymph as a "City Nymph."  

Night Nymphii look quite distinct, far more "supernatural" than some types of Nymph, which begs the question as to how they manage to blend in to society.  It is a perceptual trick unique to this subtype and part of what lets them favor urban environments, those who observe her simply do not actively process these unusual characteristics, they see and are aware of them, the odd shaped ears, hair the color of deathbell or lavender, but are compelled to disregard them. 

While this might seem like illusion magic; manipulation of the senses, or mind control, it is a form of alteration magic intrinsic to her magical flesh that causes it her appearance to be processed differently by the brains of sentients.  Think of it like a unique color that is within our visual spectrum which our eyes can see but the mind can't translate.  Don't think for a second this lets her pass unnoticed or unseen!  Indeed, a quirk of this magic, combined with inhuman Nymph beauty, makes her stand out all the more and quite memorable, seen either as a heart-stoppingly beautiful Dunmer or Imperial woman, depending which side her appearance favors.

Synne, who is a Night Nymph herself, may have earned her infamous reputation in no small part thanks to this trait.  It is much easier to offend and upset people when they are compelled to pay attention to you!

Another part of what allows the Night Nymph to blend in to seemingly different cultures so easily is a strong subtype instinct for empathy or “reading” others.  Like many Nymphii, the Night Nymph finds many aspects of mortal behavior, and mortals in general, to be confusing and silly.  Unlike most Nymphii, she has an instinctual talent for mimicking these behaviors, even if she doesn’t really understand why she is doing something.  She can effortlessly interact with mortals of many different backgrounds and cultures as though she were one of them and spent her entire life immersed in that culture.  

This doesn’t necessarily mean she is more persuasive than your average Nymph;  A large part of persuasion is intentional or deliberate, whereas the talents of the Night Nymph are more automatic, functioning primarily to help her blend in to whatever society she is a part of.  Compare this to the Wood Nymph, who often has a great deal of difficulty “fitting in” and often has to learn some rather obvious rules of mortal behavior like “don’t walk through the middle of town naked” through trial and error.  Although as a hybrid subtype they have, until recently, primarily resided in Morrowind, this empathic ability makes it quite easy for the Night Nymph to travel abroad, and made it easier for them to migrate alongside their Dunmer neighbors fleeing from the eruption of Red Mountain and the “Red Year.”

As with the other trait, this ability may play a part in the strange personality of the Night Nymph Synne.  Like most Night Nymphii, Synne instinctively knows how to act or speak to blend in with mortals, and thus has a good understanding of how to avoid upsetting people.  Unlike most Night Nymphii, she compulsively chooses to do the opposite, and instead she draws upon her instincts to pinpoint the exact way in which to offend just about anybody.

While the Night Nymph tends to follow the rules of civilized society for the most part, and does not regularly wander through cityscapes completely nude, she still has the Nymph instinct for keeping her body uncovered.  This will usually manifest through a preference for revealing outfits, what mortals would view as “provocative” or "skimpy.”  Fortunately for the Nymph, young Dunmer women tend to be almost as “hyper-sexual” in their behavior (by human standards), and revealing attire rarely draws undue attention to the Nymph.  

Compared to many other Nymph subtypes, the Night Nymph also has a greater willingness for “body modification,” and it is not unusual for her to have tattoos or piercings.  Lastly, it is very rare for a Night Nymph to not wear jewelry; even the humblest Night Nymphii will have some kind of silver or gold bracelets, necklaces, or rings, though they will not wear these things in excess for fear of drawing too much attention.

As a hybrid nymph subtype, they have lower powered but wider scope subtype abilities.  Think of it as a dilution of the magical properties of whatever magic essence they integrate from the male parent into the offspring.  The Night Nymph has a mild resistance to both thermal elements, along with good magic resistance, but she has a weakness to shock, so watch out for those storm mages!

Night Nymphii have a powerful connection to the Arcane forms of magic, with strong bonuses to destruction, conjuration, and most of all alteration. She regenerates magicka faster than other races, and if she keeps her body exposed, she has a larger starting pool, too. Lastly, she has a unique talent for spellcasting that causes her spells to have considerably more power after she has depleted most of her Magicka.

Night Nymphii have the following skill bonuses

Alteration 15

Destruction 10

Conjuration 5

Enchanting 5

Illusion 5

Speech 5

Lockpicking 5

For a total of 50

Her Racial abilities include the following, in addition to Magical Body and Whimsical Mind

Night Nymph Chromatic Resistance

20% resistance to fire

20% resistance to frost

15% resistance to magic

Arcane Polarity

Increased base magicka regen (5%, instead of 3%)

     Low Polarity (Active while you have more than 22% magicka)

Increased base magicka regen +1% (6% base)

    High Polarity (Active while you have 22% or less magicka)

Increased base magicka regen +3% (8% base)

All spell magnitudes are multiplied by your magicka regen rate

Basically what this ability does is give the Night Nymph an incentive for burning through her Magicka.    It gives a slight benefit that is always active, which triples as she drops below 22%.  The base rate means % of magicka recovered per second, so 6% normally, and 8% while below 22% remaining magicka.  

More importantly, as soon as she drops below 22%, her spellpower is greatly increased, since all spells she cast have a magnitude multiplied by her magicka regen rate.  Without any bonuses from equipment or from her naked power, this part doesn’t do anything (it will be multiplied by 1).  

However, any improvement adds linearly to this effect. As you can imagine, it is possible to massively improve her high-polar power by wearing equipment that increases her magicka regen rate, such as a robe or enchanted jewelry.  The obvious counterbalance to this is that as you increase your regen rate, it becomes considerably harder to keep her magicka below 22%, and this provides a unique cost/benefit relationship that both discourages anything that reduces spell costs and rewards aggressive spellcasting.

If she keeps her body uncovered she gains the following ability (the weakness is always active, however)

Arcane Flow

Increased magicka regen rate +50% (150% of normal, amplifying her high polar state)

Bonus +50 starting Magicka

25% shock weakness

Once above 75 alteration skill, both the regen rate and bonus magicka improve from +50/+50% to +100/+100%

The Beast Nymph

Beast Nymphii are of beast-race blood, commonly Khajiit or Argonian, but there exist others such as Tsaesci, Dreugh, or possibly even a vulpine Lilmothiit blooded Nymph, although such a creature would be rare.  Beast Nymphii are extremely resilient and appear only slightly beast-like, inheriting minor traits such as ears, tails, patches of fur or scales.  Imperial Scholars speculate that rather than magical creatures all Nymphii are a part of the beast-races.  Nymphii generally take offense at this.

Beast Nymphii are a fairly rare subtype of Nymph, and as you might expect with their unusual hybrid appearance they do not fit in well into civilized places. Unlike Night Nymphii, who have an inherent form of magic that allows their supernatural traits to be remain unnoticed, Beast Nymphii have nothing like this, and they only vaguely resemble any known mortal race, even the very rare beast/human hybrids.  Thus, they rarely, if ever, attempt to live near civilized settlements.  Likewise, there is little reason for them to conceal their Nymph heritage.

One of the reasons they are rare is that while most pure subtype Nymphii mothers who no longer have pure-subtype offspring (i.e. a wood nymph mating with a non-bosmer) generally retain whatever appearance they have that becomes gradually less distinct over subsequent generations, Beast Nymphii will immediately lose their beast characteristics as soon as their magical makeup no longer favors the Beast races.  

Interestingly, if the offspring remains a pure sub-type it does not seem to matter which Beast race the father was, an Argonian Nymph mating with a Khajiit will still produce an Argonian trait Nymph, until enough subsequent generations alter the magical essence enough that her offspring begin to add Khajiit traits to their appearance, and eventually those offspring lose their Argonian traits.  

Thus, it is entirely possible for a Beast Nymph to have everything from fur, scales, a lizard tail, and cat ears, all at the same time, but if such a creature exists, no one has yet reported it.

The Beast Nymph almost exclusively lives in jungles, marshes, caverns, or other places far from civilization.  They typically do not wear clothes, but they also do not share the Wood Nymph’s desire to remain perpetually nude. They will often adorn themselves with bones, teeth, vines, or animal skins, though these things rarely cover much of her body. 

She is naturally very stealthy, and her approach towards males is comparable to the Wood Nymph with one key difference; Rather than seduction, she will instead tend to stalk her male of choice like a predator until finally "attacking” and claiming him. If any male finding himself “attacked” in such a way actually objects to this treatment, it is unheard of.  Beast Nymphii can be very possessive of their chosen mates, and those fortunate (or unfortunate) enough to be claimed by a Beast Nymph often disappear into the wilds, never to be seen or heard from again.  They will spend the rest of their lives being lavished with attention and cared for by an affectionate and energetic Nymph.  It is even rumored that Beast Nymphii occasionally live clustered in small groups and they will sometimes capture a single male to be shared amongst all members of this group.

The greatest strength of the Beast Nymph lies with her recovery.  She heals extremely quickly both in terms of wounds and fatigue.  She is a natural fighter, but would also make a reasonably strong mage, since she also recovers Magicka quickly.  However, despite this talent for battle, like most Nymphii, she tends to avoid conflict and danger, and would make an excellent thief. 

Beast Nymphii have the following skill bonuses

Sneak 15

One-Handed 10

Conjuration 8

Illusion 7

Lockpicking 5

Pickpocket 5

Archery 5

For a total of 55

They possess the following racial ability

Blood Healing

Increased base health regen 0.7% -> 1.5%

this also causes her to heal exponentially faster as she becomes more wounded.  

1.5% +1% base rate when above 60% health (2.5%/s total)

1.5% + 2% base rate when under 60% health  (3.5%/s total)

1.5% + 4% base rate when under 30% health  (5.5%/s total)

1.5%  +8% base rate when under 15% health  (9.5%/s total)

These percentages mean % of total health healed per second, and they are multiplied by whatever increased health regen potions or enchantments you have, so with the right equipment a Beast Nymph can heal extraordinarily fast and any blow which brings her near to death without killing her will likely be fully recovered in a few seconds.  It also allows her to utilize the equilibrium spell to generate huge amounts of Magicka unlike any other race.

As long as they remain unclothed, Beast Nymphii get the following special abilities

Combat Healing 

she recovers health just as fast in combat

Rapid Recovery

Increased bonus health regen rate +100% (200% of base rate)

Increased bonus stamina regen rate +75% (175% of base rate)

Increased bonus magicka regen rate +50% (150% of base rate)

The Beast Nymph requires the mentioning of one other feature.

When creating a Beast Nymph, you can choose from a number of Beast Traits to customize your appearance, which you can find in the Hair Tab under “Hair Additional”.  These traits are fully integrated and function identically to their representative race, so a Khajiit tail will move and animate the same as it does on a Khajiit, likewise as will an Argonian tail.  There are a number of combinations that include tints based on your skin or hair color, and offer a wide range of customization for your Nymph.  Currently this is limited to Khajiit or Argonian parts, but I may expand this at some point after release.

[nymphgirlsofskyrim]

The Wood Nymph

Wood Nymphii are a predominantly Bosmer-blood subtype of Nymph and are the stereotypical subtype that most imagine when they think of a Nymph.  They tend not to conceal their magical heritage, and are normally reclusive, shunning society and living in forested areas.  Wood Nymphii almost never wear clothing, and have a powerful connection to nature and magic.  They are almost totally resistant to poison or disease, the dangers of the natural world.  

The Wood Nymph is a creature of nature.  She loves forests, woodlands, streams and meadows, and is most at home in places lush with greenery or flowers.  She does not typically feel at home in caves, and most Wood Nymphii will find any deep underground chasm, such as a mineshaft, to cause them to feel quite distressed or out of sorts.  She will rarely, if ever, venture into the mortal world, instead preferring to seduce those Bosmer men that stray near her chosen home grove.  She will often adorn herself with plants on her limbs or flowers in her hair but is otherwise a rather strict naturist, and will strongly prefer to keep her body in its most beautiful natural state.  They are equally adverse to clothing as they are tattooing, along with any other sorts of body manipulation, like piercing.

The Wood Nymph has a somewhat unusual understanding of death and the passage of time.  She does not often attempt to keep track of things that happened more than a year ago, and before reaching maturity she rarely understands the concept of non-existence.  This is not uncommon for most Nymphii to struggle with at first: they view themselves as existing, care little for what existed before, and, unlike mortals with deeply ingrained survival instincts, young Nymphii have a hard time even comprehending the possibility of no longer existing, which goes doubly for the disease-immune Wood Nymph subtype.  

Because of this, Wood Nymph mothers tend to universally over-emphasize the concept of death in order to protect their offspring. In a strange twist, the one humanoid creature in all of Nirn who may have the least to fear from death thus tends to fear death the most. She will view the rest of existence as transient and changing, flowing like a river from life and growth to death and decay, and she will try very hard not to get swept up and become a part of that flow.  It is also very common for the Wood Nymph to have a strong superstition against telling anyone how long she has lived.    

A rather common misconception amongst scholars is that the Wood Nymph, as a lover of nature, with her strong connection to nature, is therefore a protector of nature, and that she will risk her life to defend her forest or her home grove.  The truth is that the average Wood Nymph does not give a brass-septim about deforestation as a concept, and will most definitely not risk her own immortal life to save a few trees from being chopped down.  She is not a Spriggan, and is far closer to a “tourist” of nature than a protector or defender.  The Wood Nymph will obviously be quite upset if her own home is threatened, and encroaching civilization will certainly concern her, but she can always find someplace else to live.  Like most Nymphii, she views her own life as irreplaceable, and takes a very “big picture” or “long term” view of worldly events; As a consequence, she tends not to get too emotionally invested in what is happening in the here and now.  Given enough time, she is quite sure that forests will eventually grow back and if she lives long enough, she will get to see it happen, too.

On rare occasions when a Wood Nymph becomes particularly adventurous and wishes to know more about the Mortal World, she will reluctantly cover her body, but will do so primarily with plant materials or very thin plant-based fabrics.  Often, the curious and naive Wood Nymph will initially be unaware of how disruptive and shocking her nudity is to mortals. She may even make several unsuccessful attempts of entering mortal settlements without clothing before she discovers why they keep getting upset.  When she does finally figure it out, she will almost always find these reactions amusing, and some may persist in nakedness despite the trouble it causes.  Even when she does cover herself, it is almost unheard of for a Wood Nymph to wear metal armor for any reason.  

The Wood Nymph is a natural when it comes to alchemy, and possesses a great deal of knowledge about plants and animals, as well as an instinctual understanding of how to weave magic into an object. They get strong racial bonuses to alchemy, enchanting, speech, and restoration, which reflects the non-aggressive nature of your average Wood Nymph.  

Wood Nymphii have the highest base skill bonuses of any Nymph Race, primarily because they get no direct combat skill bonuses, although this can make initial play more challenging.

Wood Nymphii have the following skill bonuses

Enchanting 15

Alchemy 15

Restoration 10

Speech 10

Alteration 5

Sneak 5

For a total of 60

The Wood Nymph has the following racial abilities in addition to Magical Body and Whimsical Mind

Natural Immunity

90% resistance to poison

90% resistance to disease

Natural Vitality

all potions and poisons created are 15% stronger

all beneficial potions last 50% longer

Wood Nymphii, true to their background, are significantly rewarded for remaining naked, possessing the largest set of bonuses of any Nymph Race.

While unclothed, the Wood Nymph receives the following abilities

Full Immunity

90% resistance to poison and disease becomes a full 100% immunity

Naturism

+65 improved carry weight

all enchantments she makes are +15% stronger

she gathers two additional alchemy ingredient from plants

The Desert Nymph

As a pure Redguard-Nymph subtype, the Desert Nymph is a creature built for survival in extremes.  She possesses a unique physiology adapted to a climate with both extreme heat by day and extreme cold by night.  As she circulates blood, her arteries will reabsorb heat from veins, preventing heat loss, even in freezing water.  She also does not sweat, cooled by a thin film of oily wax, which melts at high temperatures and vaporizes.  As a consequence, if she does not leave sufficient skin exposed to air she has much more difficulty regulating body temperature.  An added benefit of this waxy film coating is that she is impervious to ultraviolet radiation, and she will never get sunburned. 

The wax that coats her skin also has what nearly all mortals would describe as a "very pleasing aroma," a scent that typically smells of equal parts cinnamon, incense, and sandalwood.  It is normally too faint to be perceptible except when very close to her, but when her coating sublimes after absorbing heat, it affords her a kind of natural perfume.  Without going into too much detail, any intense "indoor activity" that would require a lot of "physical exertion" will inevitably result in this fragrance filling the entire room.  

Visiting the local merchant's bazaar in the towns of Hammerfell one can often find those claiming to sell vials with "Essence of Nymph" (rather than "Desert Nymph", since most mortals are generally unaware that there are many kinds of Nymph) as a fragrant oil perfume or an aphrodisiac.  Whether or not these vials actually contain the aroma of a Desert Nymph depends on the reputation of the individual merchant and the price being charged, but it is not unheard of for a Nymph to trade a small amount of her wax as a favor, or for those who wish to procure it to do so without her consent.  

Even a few drops of her wax melted within a glass vial to contain the vapor will imbue any other oils within the vial with a long lasting fragrance, and the genuine perfume commands a very hefty price.  There are even rumors that some of the wealthy female perfume merchants of Abah's landing and Rihad are actually enterprising Desert Nymphii posing as aristocratic Redguard women and profiting immensely from their own natural products.  However, these may just be tavern stories, or, more likely, rumors started by jealous male competitors.

The Desert Nymph has extremely powerful protection to cold, and would be well suited to adventuring in Skyrim.  She also possesses incredible resistance to fire, but this depends on her keeping her skin exposed.   She can easily withstand temperatures such as those found submerged deep within glacial waters and as long as enough skin is exposed to the air so that the film coating her body is continually produced, absorbs heat, and sublimes into a vapor, she can also remain comfortable immersed in the intense heat of a volcanic crater.

Desert Nymphii, besides being inhumanly beautiful, do not look particularly supernatural when compared to many other subtypes, appearing to most observers simply as beautiful human women, and thus are able to blend in with society and conceal their true nature, if they so desire.  Many choose to either live amongst Redguard society in secret, or live openly in the desert wastelands of Alik'r.  Consider her the compromise between the Wood or Beast Nymph, who almost always lives far from civilization and rarely conceals her nature, and the Night Nymph, who almost always lives discreetly within mortal society.  

The Desert Nymph will pick one of these lifestyles and then tends to stick with that behavior until a generation of mortals has come and gone, at which point she may choose to try something different.  Though it is extremely rare for any Nymph to take up the life of the adventurer, inevitably some do, out of boredom, curiosity, or any number of reasons, and the Desert Nymph, due to the transitional nature of her lifestyle (a pattern quite unusual for a Nymph) thus tends to be somewhat more adventurous than other Nymphii.

Like the Reguard whose essence they derive, Desert Nymphii also tend to have a strong martial background.  Many times a young Desert Nymph will begin practicing with a chosen weapon at an early age, purely as instinct. By the time they reach maturity, it will often be treated like an extension of her own body, and the Desert Nymph is a gifted natural when it comes to parrying or using weapons for defense.  This is fortunate, since she does not have any particular skill with armor, and tends to rely on this parrying defense.

This is not to say that the Desert Nymph prefers to stay completely nude, or does not wear armor.  She will often adorn her body with jewelry fashioned from metals and precious stones and some will even get piercings, but rarely will she have tattoos.  Nearly all will tend to wear sandals of some sort, since walking barefoot on scorching hot sand can be uncomfortable, and it is impossible for this part of her body to cool itself as effectively as the rest: One cannot keep the bottom of one’s feet exposed to air while standing!  

Additionally, the more adventurous sorts of Desert Nymph have the tendency to wear armor on her limbs, particularly heavy greaves or boots, while keeping her torso bare.

Desert Nymphii have the following skill bonuses

Block 15

Two-Handed 10

One-Handed 5

Restoration 5

Smithing 5

Speech 5

Sneak 5

For a Total of 50

In addition to Magical Body and Whimsical Mind, Desert Nymphii have the following racial ability

Thermal Protection

70% Frost Resistance

15% Fire Resistance

If the Desert Nymph leaves her skin exposed, she gains the following abilities

Thermal Regulation

Fire resistance increases from 15% to 80%

Perfect Balance

+20 natural Armor

A percentage of your block skill is added to your critical hit chance with every weapon.  This adds 0.15% per 1 block skill, so the minimum Desert Nymph skill of 30 will add 4.5% crit chance, up to 15% at 100 skill.  This will stack with the vanilla sword/greatsword perks.

Bashing an enemy will make them more vulnerable, reducing armor by 250 and magic resist by 50, but only for one second.  Against unarmored enemies, this will result in the equivalent of a 30% increase in damage.

[nymphgirlsofskyrim]

The Lore of the Skyrim Nymph

So what exactly is a Nymph in Elder Scrolls lore?

http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/Nymph_(Creature)

A Nymph is a magical creature that looks like a beautiful naked female, and is essentially just a monster type in Daggerfall, much like Orcs were.  They can't be hurt by mundane weapons (iron or steel), and can drain fatigue.  They have their own language, and if you know how to communicate with them, they are less likely to be hostile.

A side-note and my explanation why I have not given any similar stamina draining powers to the Nymph Races: Fatigue is similar to stamina, but if you run out, you collapse.  I can't help but wonder whether this was deliberate innuendo on the part of the developers: the other creature that drains fatigue on touch with the same spell is the Daedra seducer (equivalent to a succubus and also appearing as a naked woman). Think for a second, what activity with a naked woman would cause someone to use up a great deal of energy and then pass out? 

Nevertheless, I have been quite surprised that in all the time Skyrim has been out and people have been modding it, no one has touched on this part of the lore that is so definitely full of potential, both for flavor and depth, and, let’s be honest, also for sexiness.

So here's where I come in.  I have built up a foundation for "fleshing out" the Nymph as a playable race, and deliberately left some aspects unexplored in the hopes that other modders will eventually be interested in adding their own kinds of Nymph.  Hopefully it will seem reasonable, both as a rational argument, and as a framework that fits with the overall Elder Scrolls Lore.

If you have no interest in the background lore or maintaining the cohesiveness of a "lore-friendly" world, feel free to skip over this.  There aren’t any in-game details about the mod in this post.

What follows is a rational attempt to expand upon a part of the elder scrolls canon to introduce new possibilities relating to one particular creature only briefly appearing in Daggerfall, the Nymph 

(sidenote: for the purposes of this mod we are defining the plural of Nymph as “Nymphii” similar to elven races, Aldmer -> Aldmeri, despite the real world plural being either the English “Nymphs” or Greek “Nymphoi”, to designate this specifically as an Elder Scrolls Race instead of the Greek mythological creature)

The argument is quite simple, but the supposition that follows can seem somewhat convoluted.  

Based on the following four canon elder scrolls facts

1. Nymphii are naturally existing creatures rather than supernatural creatures created or controlled by some Divine or Daedric force 2. Nymphii are all female 3. Nymphii are very sexual creatures 4. Nymphii can be killed

It is therefore logical and reasonable to conclude: that since as a species 

Nymphii were not willed into existence by oblivion, have a distinct female gender but no males, are sexual creatures, and can die 

They must reproduce somehow, since there would be no reason for sexual behavior in a mono-gender species, and without reproduction or spontaneous generation through Daedric Will, there eventually will be none left.

   a. Therefore, the theory this discussion is based upon presupposes that a Nymph will mate with a male of another species to produce offspring, though just like with any other species, this may not always be the explicit purpose for mating.    b. Since there are no recorded instances of Nymph/Mortal half breeds of other races, and the fact that they possess a different material composition than mortal races, it is reasonable to assume that all resulting offspring of this mating must exclusively be Nymphii, given that the concept of “Demi-Gods” or half-immortals, is not present in the Elder Scrolls lore.    c. Since Nymphii apparently mate with males of any sentient species and maintain long term relationships with these males, are highly selective in choosing mates, and ultimately exhibit the social concept of courtship behavior, they must have some purpose or reason for selective mating.      d. Thus, it seems logical and reasonable to conclude that since there must be a reason to distinguish between mates, this reason would come in the form of traits or properties inherited, else selective mating is meaningless.  Stated another way: If every Nymph that results from a mortal/Nymph pairing is an identical Nymph who does not inherit any traits or properties from the male, it does not matter who or what that mortal is, and the documented examples of courtship behavior and pair-bonding make very little sense.

e. Finally, despite every resulting offspring being a Nymph, they must differ from each other in relatively small ways based on the traits inherited from the male parent, and if these traits are consistent amongst specific groups of mortals, there will eventually emerge distinct categories of Nymph relative to the group of males she is descended from.

First, a couple disclaimers

 I admit, this is an attempt to apply scientific reasoning to the fantastical and fictional, which is a concept some people naturally resist, so please keep an open mind and do not read this as any kind of gender/sexuality bias, purely as a rational conclusion driven by the principles underlying biology in our own world.

   Additionally, while it is possible to propose alternative non-biology explanations to this conclusion, none of those allow for a similar expansion of the lore, which sort of defeats the purpose of exploring the subject at all. Stated another way: if any given Nymph can magically wish a new fully grown Nymph into existence, there's nothing new to add to the topic in this regard, so please keep that in mind.

Therefore we are presenting our "unofficial Nymphii lore" as follows:

   1. Similar to the Asari from the Mass Effect series (another all female fictional species), Nymph/mortal pairings will produce a new Nymph that is phenotypically a Nymph but integrates some characteristic, trait, or essence, of the mortal race.  

This characteristic may not be any kind of inherent property of the mortal race itself (ie it is not genetic inheritance), but is a trait that the Nymph acquires when integrating some part of that race into her magical being.  Therefore, a Nymph with a Nord father may not necessarily inherit her father’s racial resistance to cold and frost.

This characteristic may even be seemingly totally unrelated to the male in question, but comes from some racial magical essence that influences the composition of the new Nymph.  Therefore, a Nymph may inherit properties seemingly unrelated to her father, and a Nymph could in theory, inherit a property of “heat tolerance” or fire resistance from a male parent who possesses no such property.

Whatever it is or wherever the trait comes from, it is universally consistent amongst all Nymphii that result from this pairing of Nymph + Race of Male, thus, any given member of a race that produces “Heat tolerant” Nymphii should produce a similar Nymph.  

Most, if not all, variations of this inheritance will be the result of mixing of different kinds of magical essences.  So a Nymph who is composed of 50% of one race and 50% of another may have completely unique traits as a result of this mixing, but all Nymphii that are within a range of 80-90% of one race will inherit identical traits.

   2. Unlike the Asari from Mass Effect, there is no such thing as a “pure-blooded” Nymph, as they presumably cannot reproduce with each other, nor have they developed in isolation from other species, thus all Nymphii MUST be the result of Nymph + non-Nymph mating

The sole canon scholar writing on this subject does mention the lack of any other writers reporting a Nymph seeking out "him or her," at the very least suggesting that Nymphii may form relationships with female mortals, and we are not implying that this be ruled out as it may manifest through social behavior.

Simply, if they could reproduce with each other through conventional anatomical sexual intercourse (in whatever way that may occur), as opposed to a direct genetic exchange, it would make very little sense for Nymphii, as a mono-gendered species, to mate with males at all.

  3. Given the centralized distribution of indigenous racial populations in Tamriel, distinct subtypes will exist based upon the region they live in and what race or species of males they have access to 

for example, after mating with males from hammerfall for many generations eventually there will be few Nymphii in this area that are not essentially Redguard-Nymphii

the proposal elaborates on this distinction by declaring this a full subtype of Nymph, the Desert Nymph

 comparatively, Nymphii that have many generations of Nymph-bosmer pairings become the Wood Nymph

given the typical "fey" description of both mer and Nymph, we suggest the possibility that some fey traits (pointed ears, dainty features) are actually mer inherited traits, not specific to the Nymph herself

In terms of appearance, the ratio proposed for this subtyping would be something like 95% Nymph, 5% subtype race, although some traits may be highly exaggerated (long pointy fae ears on a Nymph vs. pointed humanoid ears on the woodelf source)

It is likely that the more “mono-racial” subtype of Nymph will display some sort of mild to moderate preference for males of her dominant race, and a Wood Nymph will accordingly prefer Bosmer males over others.  This is not to suggest she will ONLY be interested in Bosmer males, merely that she would view a Bosmer man as being more her “preferred type” than an Orsimer male would be.

Sidenote: it also seems reasonable to assume that there may be a distinct difference in dunmer-Nymphii (dark Nymph?) and the rarer chimer-Nymphii (elder Nymph?), although as we have described under the Night Nymph race details, it does not make much sense for a Nymph to directly inherit Azura’s curse in terms of appearance.

   4. Additionally, in the transition between one major subtype and another, there will exist hybrid Nymphii

These hybrids represent the blending of two major racial sub-types through successive generations of mating with males of different races or species

The phenotypic ratio proposed here is then 95% Nymph, 2.5% subtype A, 2.5% subtype B, making both subtypes very subtle individually, and she may favor one over the other in appearance, or even have a completely unique appearance as the result of this hybridization.

Consider - in Skyrim, both Bretons and Nords have co-existed for a long time.  Nymphii in this region will have established a medium between the Nordic Nymphii (for now, let's call her a tundra Nymph) and the Bretonic Nymphii (high rock is the only region with established in-game Nymph appearances so for now we will call her a "common" Nymph) the result will be what may be termed the "Sky Nymph."

other examples may be Cyrodillic/Dunmeric Nymphii in Morrowind (which we term the Night Nymph, rather than using the awkward sounding "Morrow" Nymph)

These hybrid Nymphii will essentially be indigenous to these multiple race regions, unlikely to exist elsewhere except as migrating individuals.

Sky Nymphii would thus not be commonly found outside Skyrim since each successive generation that is not a Nord or Breton pairing alters the evenly split balance  

thus, they should only exist in regions that have maintained multiple population bases for hundreds of generations, long enough to produce precise 50/50 traits

               A. so while skyrim has had both bretons and nords since before the first era and would have Nymphii hybrids                               B. The Summerset isles has only had any significant non-Altmer presence living there for a few hundred years, brief in the lifespan of a Mer, let alone a Nymph, and would likely not have hybrids.              C. One must keep in mind that given the unlimited lifespan of the Nymph, and the tendency for solitary habitation (ie although they have a shared language, they don’t form Nymph societies or build Nymph cities), it is entirely possible to encounter an individual Nymph in a region that would not support her, but encounters should be limited to these unique individuals.

   5. Finally, there should exist points of diffuse characteristics such that the Nymph resembles none specifically, or all of them blended together (the following contains the largest logical jump of this "lore", so pardon my suppositions)

These "blended" Nymphii are probably indigenous to metropolitan regions such as Cyrodiil that has many races/species living together 

We are also suggesting the idea that due to the very similar appearance and behavior these Blended Nymphii would have to mortal races, it is therefore conceivable that some of these “Blended” Nymph girls may not know that they are a Nymph

These Nymphii ignorant of their own backgrounds may have been separated from child rearing mothers, but given the great lengths the Nymph species goes through to select a mate, it is highly unlikely that these mothers would ever abandon their offspring in normal situations.

Additionally, given the “supernatural” properties of the Nymph species, this ignorance seems unlikely unless the Nymph believes herself to be a member of a particularly long lived race and/or is still young enough that she would not be aware of her immortality.  Put another way: although the Mer have far longer lifespans relative to Humans, they still go through visible stages of aging, whereas the Nymph does not, and once fully matured she will stay youthful in appearance indefinitely.

These unaware Nymphii would also require some way to explain the magical nature of their background.  Possibly as divine favor, or Daedric Curse, or simply a belief that they are "special" or "different" in some way.  The longer they live the more difficult this belief may be to maintain, so it seems reasonable to conclude that this state of being unaware of what they are will not exist perpetually.

To conclude, we are attempting to establish with a "lore-friendly" background the concept of types of Nymphii that are not heretofore known in elder scrolls canon as well as the possibility of both "secret" Nymphii living amongst mortals, and of women who are Nymphii but do not know it.

The extent of this mod's exploration of this topic is to introduce the framework and define the subtypes relevant to the characters present in the mod itself, not to produce a comprehensive list of everything related to the Nymph, this includes

the Wood Nymph (Bosmer-Nymph)

the Night Nymph (Imperial/Dunmer Nymph Hybrid)

the Desert Nymph (Redguard-Nymph)

the Beast Nymph (Beast Race Nymph)

and the Blended Nymph (the mixed or all-race Nymph)

***This, the exploration of the Elder Scrolls Nymph, was never meant to be a project of which I am the Sole Author, nor do I intend to be the Authority on all things Nymph, I am only interested in creating a starting point to inspire the modding community to explore the topic more fully using the groundwork that has been laid out.***

   We will invite other members of the modding community to eventually take it upon themselves to flesh out other unexplored subtypes of Nymph so long as it makes sense within the argument presented here and the overall elder scrolls lore.  

Truly, I hope you find this concept and the framework described here to be engaging enough that you might want to design your own Nymph Race, and I will encourage you to do so!  This, to me, is the most important part of this project.

The discussion was fairly lengthy, but hopefully it seemed reasonable.

Ultimately what this boils down to is a way that lets you add Nymphii of all sorts to your game that still fits within the game.

If you're like me, you may have a hard time adding supposedly "lore-friendly" content to a cohesive world that takes an idea based in lore but then turns it into something that requires a Deific/"extreme magical" explanation (you are the chosen of Dibella or Mara or Sanguine or Molag Bal, ad naseum), excessive suspension of disbelief (it’s magic so it just happens), or simply makes no sense.

Thanks for reading!