Wow, it's been almost 10 years, but I'm finally back to updating Secret of the Glyphs! See the change log below for the minor changes to this version.

I've made progress on expanding this mod's quest for a future update, but am honestly hung up on the Fort Interior tileset meshes I've edited that my ideas are pretty dependent on. I can generally make stuff in blender, but optimizing static meshes is my weakness. When loaded in the game, these meshes seem to really cause lag and I'm not sure what I'm missing. If anyone is more proficient and willing to help, I'd greatly appreciate a Direct Message. You'd get credit in this mod and my enduring appreciation :)


Secret of the Glyphs adds numerous secret passageways inside the Imperial City and a short quest to obtain the ability to use them, while explaining the history behind them in a lore-friendly manner.

There are passageways connecting the various districts around Green Emperor Way to each other and one in each district leading to outside the city. These secret passageways are meant to be a way for the character to covertly travel about the city districts without having to resort to the guarded main gates. This should be perfect for those role-playing a stealthy character!

The quest can be started two ways: First, there is a letter in a portion of the tutorial dungeon (the Imperial Subterrane, to be specific) that starts off the quest. For those who use main quest delayer mods (like me!) the quest can also be triggered by simply walking closely past the new apartment building in the Elven Gardens District. Once the quest has been completed, the secret passageway Glyph Stones become visible and usable. One working stone is inside the Elven Gardens apartment complex. There are two blank stones in the mod. These are unusable, but this is explained during the quest. I placed them there as placeholders for the sequel mod I hope to release, which will expand upon this humble mod's story and potential.

Those who have played any of the Thief series of games originally by Looking Glass Studios (and especially Thief: Deadly Shadows by Ion Storm) will recognize that the concept of these passageways is strongly based on Thief Lore. As a huge fan of the series, I was inspired by these games and other Oblivion mods which were as well when creating Secret of the Glyphs.

I hope you enjoy playing Secret of the Glyphs!!


A Note on Mod Images: I am currently playing with the MOFAM load order mod (credited below) so meshes and textures for vanilla objects do not reflect what this mod may look like in your game. An example being the Ayleid chest model for the lockpicking practice chest is the vanilla model, but I use a texture mod recommended by MOFAM that makes it appear more colorful in my mod screenshots.


Requirements
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This mod is stand-alone and does not require anything special, including Shivering Isles. It will work with vanilla Oblivion.


Compatibility
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The placement of the passageways was designed around the wonderful ImpeREAL City - Unique Districts by SilentResident: http://oblivion.nexusmods.com/mods/19589/?

There is a version of the SecretOfTheGlyphs esp inside the Optional folder that is compatible with ImpeREAL City - Unique Districts. Namely, it does not place a building that can already be found in Unique Districts. If you have this mod activated use this version of my esp instead otherwise you will see a duplicate of the building.

Thank you to ysne58 for pointing out that there were conflicts with Better Cities IC Market District and for taking the time to send screenshots and recommend better Glyph Stone placement.
The optional esp should also be used along with Better Cities project: http://oblivion.nexusmods.com/mods/16513/?

Ultimate Leveling - The lockpicking practice chest will increase your Security skill when used even if you are using the experience based leveling system of Ultimate Leveling. This doesn't bother me because I consider Security to be a fluff skill anyway. I've used Ultimate Leveling for a few years, but am only recently giving experience based leveling a chance. I hate 'wasting' skill points per level to beef up Security, but it's also very annoying to have low Security proficiency that makes opening chests and doors a real pain. So I don't really mind that my practice chest gets around this. The way the practice chest script works is it advances game time by 1 hour until you've reached 25 points in Security, 2 hours until 50, 3 hours until 75 and 4 hours until 100. So I consider the time commitment/sacrifice to be worth it to level up this kind of annoying skill. If enough people feel differently, I might try to figure out how to make a version that grants XP instead (potentially by choosing an alternate version option in LINK or something). It's just a lot of effort for something I'm not personally enthused about... Granting XP may still be cheaty, though, so we'll see.


Version History
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Jan 03 2025 - Modified most of the books and notes to make the plot clearer and fix some typos. Changed a quest pop up for the apartment to make exploring it more fun and to minimize the quest updates bombarding you a little too frequently at the beginning. Added extra Door Glyphs into the Arcane University and Prison so you can sneak past the normally locked doors and inside of the normally restricted parts of the University or the Prison. Changed the practice lockpicking chest script to function similarly to a trainer.
 
Dec 18 2015 - Added Imperial Prison and Arcane University Glyph Passages and fix the Glyph Stone glow.

May 25 2013 - Fixed the lockbox script to only advance the quest after it is unlocked, added Better Cities IC Market District compatible version esp.

May 13 2013 - Made the apartment key a little more conspicuous, removed some excess objects and fixed a non-working Glyph Passage.

May 12 2013 - Initial version 1.0 release


Permissions
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Custom meshes and textures used in the mod are modder's resources and subject to the author(s) terms of usage.

The mod itself may be updated and changed for personal use, but please request permission from me before uploading any changed version of this mod or any patches using this mod here or on any other site. If a request for permission is not given by me within a month's time, consider permission to be given.


Thanks
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First of all, a HUGE thank you to the immensely talented Stroti. All of the custom meshes in this mod are his creation and were a great inspiration for this mod. His hard work and great sense of humor have made my Oblivion experience very enjoyable over the years, so I simply cannot thank him enough!

Thanks also to Mortvent, author of the Assassin's Abode ( http://oblivion.nexusmods.com/mods/9731/? ) mod who inspired the original practice lockpick chests in this mod before it was changed for this latest version.

Thank you also to Jog and Scruggs for their mods (Thievery in the Imperial City and Thieves Arsenal, respectively), which were also an inspiration for my mod.

I strongly recommend using their mods as well:

Thievery in the Imperial City: http://oblivion.nexusmods.com/mods/5156/?
Thieves Arsenal: http://oblivion.nexusmods.com/mods/9655/?

Thank you to Grodofraggins for inspiring me to release the long-overdue update that happened back on Dec 18 2015.

An EMPHATIC THANK YOU to MasterLix1982, durbinh and the contributors to the amazing MOFAM - An Advanced Guide and Modlist for Oblivion: https://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/52949 Durbinh, in particular, patiently and extensively helped me troubleshoot getting the MOFAM tools working on my system. Really appreciated. This list and the support I received on the Discord server have brought me back to the game I love so very much and motivated me to revisit my older mods (like this one, nearly a decade later!) - and release some new ones :) The constant crashing of Oblivion, despite my best efforts to mod a stable game, finally drove me to other things a few years back, but MOFAM has virtually obliterated that issue for me so that I can enjoy a beautiful and stable version of the game. Something I could previously only /dream/ of. Again THANK YOU!

Lastly, many thanks to the talented Oblivion modding community for all the other great mods I have enjoyed over the years and the friends I've made in the Oblivion Nexus community! Love you all!


Credits
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All custom meshes and textures for the objects mentioned below were created by the immensely talented Stroti and were a strong inspiration for this mod.

Originally from the Stroti New Furniture set: http://oblivion.nexusmods.com/mods/34664//?
newFurniture\palDesk01
newFurniture\palTable02
newFurniture\paltableround01
newFurniture\palChair04as (mesh edited by me)

Originally from the Stroti Castle Furniture II set: http://oblivion.nexusmods.com/mods/37878/?
stroti\castleFurnitureII\chest05

Originally from the Stroti Castle Furniture III set: http://oblivion.nexusmods.com/mods/37974/?
ASGlyphs\clutter\Strotichair07 (texture changed by me)

Originally from the Stroti Ayleid Clutter set: http://oblivion.nexusmods.com/mods/41558/?
ASGlyphs\clutter\StrotiKey

Originally from the Stroti New Dungeon Meshes set: http://oblivion.nexusmods.com/mods/41376//?
stroti\crypt\misc\cathedralcrypttomb01Stand
AsGlyphs\clutter\StrotiKeeperStand (textures changed by me)