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About this mod
Mysterious and ancient as time, the giant Snow Whales populate the most fantastic stories of the Nord people. These peaceful flying cetaceans were nearly extinct due to ruthless hunting by the ancient Nords, leaving only a small population today. If on the one hand they inspired reverence, hunting them brought prestige and respect to clan members.
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"Mysterious and ancient as time, the giant Snow Whales populate the most fantastic stories of the Norse people, since the latter arrived from Atmora, with some believing that even in Atmora these fantastic creatures were already known and part of the legends of the then Atmoran civilization. These peaceful flying cetaceans were nearly extinct due to ruthless hunting by the ancient Nords, leaving only a small population today. If on the one hand they inspired reverence, hunting them brought prestige and respect to clan members, leading to endless hunts in ancient ages.
For a long time, they lived in peace, flying over the tops of the highest mountains, singing in magical tones, diving among the clouds, scattering their snow of joy, gushed from their blowholes, a substance believed to be strongly psychoactive, and inducing a state of irrational, indescribable joy, but then the Atmorans arrived, and in a blind pursuit for glory they began to hunt them down, their best climbers climbed the highest snowy mountains, carrying ropes and huge spears and harpoons. The Snow Whales had a lot of meat, and blubber for lanterns, and also fluids that made paint, and rose water for the Norse women, but, the first hunters weren't lucky, spurts of joy snow came down from the clouds and made the men goofy: they giggled like happy toddlers, some getting so ticklish they rolled off the mountain and died, or started patting each other on the back or hugging each other to reassert their affection and camaraderie, like clueless drunks. In essence, the snow of joy got into their heads, and they just forgot what they were doing, nonetheless, this was short-lived, for the Dragons soon arrived, who hardened the hearts of the Nords again, who became ruthless and rational as an ancient Atmoran warrior should allways be. And with the help of their winged lords, they wiped out nearly all of the native Snow Whale population in Skyrim. The few that survived were concentrated in small groups flying over the most isolated peaks of the province's mountains, and into secret valleys, where they could breed in peace, away from the Nords, their draconian masters, and other aberrations such as basilisks or cockatrices, brought by men to haunt the hitherto peaceful skies.
According to ancient legends, Shor sympathized with the Snow Whales, transporting some couples to Sovngarde, where they proliferated, flying in the starry skies of that realm of Aetherius, spilling their snow-joy in the valleys and over the Hall of Valor, bringing constant happiness for those who enjoy the afterlife in the realm of the Atmoran/Nord Warrior-God. Legends say that every now and then, hunts are organized in Sovngarde, where the most powerful and honorable hunters challenge the biggest Snow Whale bulls that fly through the kingdom. It is also said that the first Snow Whale bull hunted in Sovngarde was killed by Stuhn, Shor's shield-thane and Tsun's brother, a whale that was the largest ever seen and that today has its giant skeleton serving as a bridge to the Hall of Valor. Despite this, most Snow Whales are barely larger than a dragon.
Some desert tales describe a closely related species known as the Sand Whale, native from Elsweyr. It has the same mythological status, and some Khajiit believe that the only way to be able to see them is through ingesting specific hallucinogens, a belief many Nords share regarding Snow Whales. However, this is not exactly true, because, according to several scholars, what the drugs ingested for this purpose cause is simply a thinning of the veil that separates the realities, allowing the being who ingested the substance to have a vision of other realms, a procedure especially practiced among the Khajiit, thus allowing a glimpse of Snow Whales residing in other realities. However, there are still small populations in the world we inhabit, which can be seen with the naked eye, without ingestion of any substance, despite being extremely rare."
by Beastmaster Mihail *
(*Who is Beastmaster Mihail? He is my avatar/persona within the universe composed of all my mods. He is the ingame author who writes the texts that are usually presented as descriptions for my mods. A former monster hunter, now a dedicated scholar, he is planned to be released as an NPC in late 2022/early 2023, doing the same job in-game as my descriptions do on Nexus.)
Technical info: Snow Whales are inserted as environmental creatures in this mod, they do not attack and can't be attacked, similar to my Silt Striders mod, for example.
THIS MOD HAS A SPECIAL REQUIREMENT: to avoid the whales to become invisible when you are very far away from them, you should have some specific resolution setting on your game. If you play in High or Ultra High quality, the settings are already correct for the good result. But if you play on Low or Medium, you can stay with the settings, but you need to go on Options > Advanced > View Distance, and put Object Fade and Actor Fade with at last lvl 7 and 6 respectively, to be able to see them properly
- 1 new creature: Snow Whale.
So far no incompatibilities have been found between this mod and other mods.
(OBS- If by chance when installing several of Mihail's mods at the same time you are asked about files overwriting those of other Mihail mods or other authors mods, don't worry because they are just the same files shared between mods. I recommend that on these occasions always give preference to the files contained in my mods, and among mine always give preference to the mod you are installing last.)
The Mihail Monsters and Animals series aims to create and make available to the community the most complete set of creatures for TES 5: Skyrim, implemented in an immersive and unique way, with respect to the pillars of lore. Instead of pathetically just throwing models and textures in the game reusing 100% vanilla mechanics, the creatures made by Mihail have uniqueness and extreme zeal in their idealization and implementation, which will provide you with an experience that you have never had before in this area.
- The last Skyrim Update
- DLC Dragonborn
- DLC Dawnguard
- DLC Hearthfire
Author:
Mihail- model, textures, animations, sounds, game implementation;
Some assets used on this mod belong to:
Phiit and Tamira (Phiit's Sheogorad Resource Part One)- i used the more complex
Hawk animations made by Phiit and converted/ported to skyrim by Tamira as
base when animating the Snow Whale model in order to give to the Whale proper
tail animations, in addition to the vanilla wing/flipper and body movement