Through the Eyes of Oblivion

I heavily mod my PC games, and starting up TES4 Oblivion to find that none of the NPCs had eyes didn't come as a surprise to me. I roamed around the Imperial City for a while before getting tired of being able to see straight through the characters’ empty eye sockets. I closed the game and searched the internet for a solution. Sure enough one of my mods was conflicting with another, so I removed it. Opening the game again proved I had solved the problem, however something was still wrong. There was one NPC, dressed like a beggar, standing beside a gravestone by the Imperial City Palace. His head followed me as I moved my character, now, I know this is normal, if you stand quite close to any NPC they will track your movements. But I was no where near this beggar, I walked up to him to see if he was there for any specific quest. When I reached him I found myself in a state of confusion, I could see the trees and stonework behind him, through his empty eye sockets. I was certain I had fixed that issue, all the other NPCs had eyes, why didn’t he? I moved my crosshair to the characters body, no name appeared but I had the option to talk to him. I wanted to find out who he was, and why I had never seen him before (I am a member of the thieves guild and I always use the beggars for information). Once I interacted with him, he didn’t speak and there were no dialogue options, but the subtitles stated ‘I HAVE NO GREETING’. Once again, I know that this is a known problem with the Shivering Isles DLC for the game, but this only occurs if a Shivering Isles character is taken out of the realm, or they have no specific dialogue at that particular point. This beggar I knew for a fact was not part of that DLC.

I backed out of the interaction with this beggar and continued to where I was headed before I spotted him, but, he followed me. Constantly spinning my character around as he tried to engage in a conversation with me, this got pretty annoying so I reloaded the autosave before I spoke to him. I looked over to the tombstone he was standing by, and I could see him getting closer to me, he was running towards my character. But I reloaded the save… He didn’t do this the first time, I had to walk over to him. Sure enough though he tried to talk to my character, silently saying the same thing every time, ‘I HAVE NO GREETING’. I closed the game and once again searched the internet for a solution, maybe one of my other mods was playing up and I hadn’t noticed this before. But I couldn’t find anything, there was no record of anyone else encountering a strange beggar with no name or eyes. I booted the game a third time, to see if I could remove him with console commands. I clicked on him and first tried the command ‘kill’ to stop him from talking to me every 5 seconds, but he didn’t die. He disappeared then reappeared so quickly I barely saw it, and his face changed. He still had no eyes, though his expression was neutral to begin with, he now looked pretty angry as his eyebrows were angled downwards and his mouth curled in the same way. He once again tried engaging in conversation with me, this time however saying ‘YOUR EFFORTS ARE IN VAIN’, I stared blankly at my screen for a moment, wondering what to do. I backed out of the conversation and used the ‘disable’ command, once again he quickly disappeared to reappear just as fast. His face changed again, but this time his eyes changed. It wasn’t the bright green grass of Cyrodiil I could see through to, it was instead the deep red lava pools of Oblivion.

Okay, now I was insanely confused. Looking through his eyes before I could see everything that was behind him, as if the back of his head was missing too, though running behind him I saw it was still there. I tried to evade this beggar, by quickly passing through a door to the Market District of the city. He continued to follow me, so I unsheathed my sword and attacked him. If I couldn’t use the console to kill him, I would try the old fashioned way. But again, this didn’t work, he was taking no damage whatsoever. He just stood there, the flames of Oblivion raging in his empty skull. He tried to converse with me again, saying ‘YOU CANNOT ESCAPE ME’. I was getting pretty unnerved at this point, I didn’t know anything about him and couldn’t find anything. He equipped a dagger, and unknowing of his strength I toggled god mode. One swift swing of the dagger killed my character, I was in god mode, how was that possible?! There was a minute or so before the menu came up to reload my save, he stood there, staring at my character’s lifeless body. And the first time I heard his voice, instead of reading the text. He laughed, it wasn’t the vanilla Oblivion laugh. No, this was a demonic, hysteric laugh. And as I watched him waiting for the menu to appear, he turned his head so quickly it just seemed to pop into its new position. He was looking at me, not my character… ME! He was smiling, a huge and unnatural smile baring all his teeth. And his head was tilted to the left, so far that he had surely broken his neck. He was frozen in that position as the menu finally popped up.

I reloaded the save hoping that he would be gone, but I knew he wouldn’t be. The image of that smile was printed in my mind, accompanied by that, horrible laugh. I was shaking in my chair, as the loading screen vanished and I was greeted by that twisted, smiling face. Something was pouring out of his eyes… not blood, it was the lava from Oblivion. But the way his head was tilted, it streamed across his face to his ear. Always smiling. I tried to back out of the conversation but, it wouldnt let me. I clicked the ‘X’ multiple times, with the beggar constantly repeating ‘YOU CANNOT ESCAPE ME’, but after clicking for a substantial amount of time it changed. Only slightly though, he spoke one more word. When I read this I was paralysed with fear, again he was talking directly to me. Cracking his neck further to the left so his head was practically upside down and he laughed again, sending shivers down my spine. The text read ‘YOU CANNOT NOT ESCAPE ME CHARLOTTE’. My heart raced and I frantically clicked the ‘X’ to get away from him. But it was no use, he just stood there smiling, laughing louder and louder with each click.

Suddenly the screen went black, I could hear roaring flames and crackling wood. An image slowly materialised in front of my eyes. It was blurry to begin with, and it was hard to tell what was there, but I knew I wasn’t in Cyrodiil anymore. As it came into focus I could see my character, in the Oblivion realm, her body was strewn across the floor in an awkward position. But her head wasn’t attached, and the beggar was standing over her. He looked normal again, though his eyes were still missing, but the image of Oblivion in their place was replaced by an image of Cyrodiil. To the left of him was my characters head, fixed to a wooden pike as the flames lapped at her chin from the fire raging below. He remained still, staring at me, then my game crashed.