Watch Out at Night - by MaskedTerminator

It all started in the spring of 2006, I had gotten a copy of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion for my home PC, I finished the main quest and guild quests in approximately a week. After finishing the most important quests in the game I uninstalled it and started playing other games. In 2008 I decided to re-install it, this time with the expansion packs and all that. After I finished the expansions I decided I should start getting mods, I got the most popular quest mods out there and a few overhauls because I loved having big amounts of weapons and armor in the game. That's when my friend Kevin pointed me to a mod named "TKN MOD". I searched for the mod for the period of two months, that's when I found a topic on a Russian forum dedicated to Oblivion, I didn't understand a thing they said but I noticed the download link was on the last page of the thread. The strange thing was that the link to the mod was in the last post in the thread and the last post in the forum. The name of the user that posted it was "Telloras", which sounded very elven to me. I downloaded the mod, it was very small compared to other mods, it had around three megabytes uncompressed. Besides the actual data of the mod there was a small text file in the zip, the only things inside were: (pasted from the actual readme)

 

"DISABLE ANY MODS INCLUDING EXPANSION PACKS

START A NEW GAME

DO NOT WAIT OR SLEEP. IN 30 DAYS YOU WILL FIND OUT THE TRUTH"

 

 I was awfully curious about it, so I decided to disable all my mods and expansion packs and run the mod, the last part of the text was kind of strange, why did it tell me to avoid sleeping and waiting? I turned Oblivion on, starting from a new game, it spawned me in the usual prison cell, but Valen Dreth was dead, his dialogue being removed. Then the scene with Uriel arriving came, but there was a very strange thing about it: Uriel was alone, and he was dressed in his usual Emperor robes, except they were red like the Mythic Dawn robes. I shrugged this off and proceeded in the sewers with Uriel. That's when the strangest thing until then happened: The Mythic Dawn agents were replaced with Blades, I thought this was supposed to be some kind of a joke and shrugged it off as well. I was never prompted to choose a birth sign or class, which was kind of strange. Then Uriel's assassination scene started, I was very shocked to see who was coming out of the hole; It was Baurus, Uriel's guard. After Baurus slayed Uriel the dialogue that he started in the normal game prompted, but instead of pointing me to go to Jauffre he pointed me towards a new location known as the "Temple of Thraex". I figured the temple would have been a dangerous place so I decided to visit the Imperial City so I can get some gear. As soon as I entered the Imperial City I spawned in front of the White-Gold tower instead of one of the districts, the area around it was empty and there was only one NPC inside the tower - a dark elf with the name "Dalen Vreth" which was obviously Valen Dreth with the first letters swapped. I initiated a dialogue with Dalen, he said "Go to the Temple.", the dialogue closed itself after this, his voice was not the default Dark Elf voice, but it didn't seem like amateur work either, the sound quality of his voice was very good, even better than the actual voices in the "vanilla" game.

 

 I checked my map to see where the Temple was, it was outside the normal map and it was very far away, taking at least 25 in game days to get there by foot. I also noticed that all the other locations were gone, every city or house being replaced by forests. I tried fast traveling to the temple but it prompted me with a rather peculiar message: "You cannot hurry the ritual." I decided to walk to the temple, observing that every single entrance was replaced with a dense forest. I was at the beginning of the road when I found an unlocked chest in the middle of the road, it was named "Relics" and it contained a silver sword and a set of elven armor retextured to look like silver armor. I equipped the gear and continued down the road, the day seemed very long, at least twice as long as the normal one. I continued walking and the sun started going down, I found yet another chest, this time there were four different food items inside, named WATCH, OUT, AT and NIGHT. I realized it was a message saying "WATCH OUT AT NIGHT", I just shrugged it off because I thought it was a joke. The night came, the game seemed way darker than usual and I could barely make my way through, as it was almost impossible to see due to the absence of torches, I felt very uneasy.

 

 I realized that the night wasn't passing, looking like time had frozen. After 10 ingame days I started hearing steps behind me, like someone was following me. They weren't my steps, they were a different walking sound, like the echo of a hammer hitting the anvil. I looked back from time to time, but there was nothing behind me, whenever I stopped I heard a breathing sound, like someone was breathing in my ear, it was a very eerie atmosphere, the uneasy feeling from earlier coming back. I decided the night was too dangerous and tried the waiting function, when I pressed the button it said "Cannot wait for the truth.", I tried taking my sword out just to be prepared, but right when I did an extremely loud shriek was heard and I died instantly, a bird's eye view of my dead body popped up, a message appeared saying "The ritual needs to continue.", ten men wearing black robes carrying torches started walking towards my body from all directions, they did an incantation in some strange language and I was revived, before I could talk to any of them I heard the shriek again and they started dying one by one, none of them fleeing from the attacker. I tried looking for the attacker, but he was nowhere to be seen, which was rather strange, as invisibility spells make the enemy slightly visible. I looted the bodies, taking their torches, I had 10 torches, my fear was gone, I tried equipping one torch, but it extinguished instantly, this happened with the 9 other torches, leaving me empty handed in the dark again. I started walking towards the temple again, hoping it was safe for me. After 5 days of constant walking I finally found the temple, it was an unique structure, it had a huge front gate, almost as big as Mehrunes Dagon, I tried entering but a message prompted up saying "You are not worthy.", the game then crashed, I contacted my friend Kevin and told him about what happened and he told me about a friend of his that is playing through the mod as well. I contacted the guy and I told him about what happened to me, he seemed rather surprised, saying that he got in the temple easily, he also warned me that I don't want to go in the temple, as it's a very unnerving place. He asked me if I ate the four food items, I said that I didn't and he told me that I had to eat the items to get inside.

 

 I prepared myself, turning the game on again, spawning in front of the temple, I opened my inventory and ate the four food items, each of them giving me a "BAIT" bonus. I entered the temple, as soon as it loaded I heard the same shriek I heard when I was attacked by the invisible assailant, I froze for a few seconds and continued my way in the temple, it was a very long corridor with a red light at the end, there were no lights in it, I kept hearing the breathing and steps I heard before, this time they were louder and more distorted. I walked through the corridor, from time to time I heard a very faint female-sounding voice say "He's watching." or "What is he waiting for?". As I was walking through the corridor I started seeing a creature, it only appeared for the fraction of a second, it appeared more often the further I went down the corridor, it looked like a normal human wearing Sheogorath's suit walking on all fours, it was also retextured to be completely black. Every time the Seeker (as I call it and will refer to as from now on) appeared I heard a faint laugh, barely audible with max volume on. I was approaching the end of the corridor, the red light was becoming dimmer and dimmer, it was invisible by the time I reached the end of the corridor, the only thing at the end of the corridor was a small door, I opened it, revealing a large spherical room with red figures on the walls, in the center of it was the Seeker, as I approached him he became harder to see, disappearing completely by the time I reached him. My character froze and the camera turned back to the door, a man wearing Uriel's Mythic Dawn-ish robes came to me, his name was "Telloras", the presumed creator of the mod. He initiated a dialogue with me.

 

Transcript of the dialogue: (What my character said were the only available dialogue choices.)

Telloras (T): Why are you here?

Me: The traitor sent me here.

T: You must wait five days for the judgement.

Me: Very well, master.

 

 Telloras then disappeared and my character was unfrozen, a portal opening in front of me, I walked through it, being teleported outside the sewer from the beginning of the game, I checked my map for the temple, it had disappeared. Everything was normal again, the game was just like the normal game, the sword and armor I had found disappeared, there was only one quest in my quest tab, it said "I must wait five days.". I tried waiting five days in-game, but nothing happened, the game was the same, I figured I had to wait five actual days. I started doing random quests and gathering items, preparing myself for what was to come. After five days I had built a strong warrior that easily defeated the strongest enemies. At exactly midnight the loud shriek was heard and my character was teleported back to the temple, this time the Seeker was waiting for me, I was prepared to fight him. I took my sword out and started fighting him, I had a few hundred health potions to keep myself alive, as one of his hits easily took half of my life. After around one hour of fighting I finally slew him, the same shriek being heard. My character froze in place again, Telloras approached me with an angry expression and started a dialogue.

 

Transcript:

T: What have you done?!

Me: He betrayed us.

T: Watch out at night.

 

 Telloras disappeared like before and my character was teleported at the White-Gold tower, Dalen Vreth was there, he walked up to me and started saying something in a strange language, the shriek was heard again, I was teleported to a dungeon in a prison cell with all my items removed, a very unnerving creature was on the other side. It looked like a naked human male with broken bones and messed up textures, the only noticeable thing was it had a very big smile on its face. He stared at my character smiling at me. I tried to move, every time I moved I died, the shriek was heard and I was revived. I noticed the horrifying things that were behind the smiling creature: dead children, which was amazingly strange as there were no children in Oblivion, the children were severely mutilated and all of them had smiles on their faces, the cell I was in slowly opened and the creature left, I got out of the cell and was teleported in a room with pictures on it, there were pictures of the smiling creature, all of them staring at me. I gave up playing, being too afraid to go on. I started exchanging e-mails with Kevin's friend, as he hadn't finished the mod yet. I asked him what the mod was about and he said a rumor is that it was made by a developer for the actual game that got kicked from the team for his disturbing ideas, the developers at Bethesda were running out of time and were coming close to the date they were given to give the game to the publisher so they only locked the disturbing content away instead of actually removing it. The mod just unlocked the hidden content.

 

 Kevin's friend had given up playing after he reached the temple, I convinced him to play again, as I had given up. From time to time he would send me e-mails about what he found, but some of them were very strange because almost nothing he said happened to me. For example the Seeker never appeared for him and Telloras gave him a quest to slay a few bears, he waited five days like I did and nothing happened, Telloras kept giving him simple and usual quests. He sent me an e-mail weekly, but after a while he stopped sending me e-mails. Two months had passed since his last e-mail when he sent me a very strange e-mail, it only contained one video.

 

 I was horrified, the video was very disturbing, this is a description of it:

 

 Kevin's friend is in front of the camera, his PC is behind him, the monitor shows the loading screen of Oblivion, he explains that he has reached Telloras' last quest and he wants to film it, he is playing through the quest normally, nothing strange is happening. That is until he finishes the quest and goes back to the temple, Telloras is gone and he is teleported to the same room I was teleported in at the end, the one with the pictures of the creature, the sound starts distorting and the shriek is heard, he turns to the camera, looking horrified, he gets up and leaves, the video continues, the creature approaching the character on the monitor, smiling at him, a strange sound is heard and the video closes. The sound I heard in the video had a peculiar thing about it, I decided to play it backwards and raise the volume, I was shocked at what I heard, it was a female voice, like the one I had heard in the corridor. This time the voice only said "Watch out at night.", I was scared about this and I shut down the video, it was named SMILE.wav. I removed the video from my PC and also uninstalled the mod, I ran Oblivion again and it seemed completely normal, but from time to time I still hear the breathing, the faint screaming, the steps and the breathing and I still catch a glimpse of the Seeker appearing and disappearing in the fraction of second or a glimpse of the smiling creature appearing and disappearing just like the Seeker. Sometimes instead of their usual dialog lines people say "Watch out at night.", I try to ignore this but I'm sure this mod infested my core game with its disturbing content.

 

 I sent an e-mail to Kevin's friend asking him what the hell the video was about, I waited for a response, after a few weeks I gave up, thinking he didn't read it. Soon after, I received an e-mail, it was from him, I was glad he sent me a message, but my face turned white when I saw what it said:

 

Watch out at night.