A mystical mod for Heroes 5.

Some of the hardcore Morrowind players still remember the hype caused several years ago by one strange mod. The file was named jvk1166z.esp and was never published in any of the major player communities, occasionally popping up on small forums and in roleplay groups. I heard that some received it in a mailing list for the "chosen few," but it seems it only lasted for a few days.

The hype was caused by the fact that this mod was considered a virus or, at the very least, resembled one. If you try to launch the game with it, you will see nothing but the loading screen for an hour, after which the application will close and throw you back to the desktop, and the game client and all save files will be corrupted. Absolutely no one knew what this mod was trying to do, as it was impossible to open it in the Construction Set. Players warned each other that it was a virus, and everything died down.

About a year later, it reappeared on a forum I used to read. The author of the post said he received a private message with the mod from an account named Lurker, which was deleted immediately after sending. The author also reported that the sender advised him to run the mod via DOSbox. For some inexplicable reason, it worked... partially. The game lagged noticeably, and you couldn't access the settings, the load menu, or the console — nowhere except the Gameplay itself. However, quick load and quick save worked via hotkeys, but the save file remained somewhere inside the client, which is why it couldn't be extracted. Some suggested that the mod used graphics packages from the oldest versions, without which it was impossible to run the game outside of DOSbox. At first glance, there were absolutely no differences in the graphics.

Next — a bit of personal experience. You start a new game in JVK (that's what the forum decided to call this mod), go through the usual registration procedure at the office, and are set free. The first thing you see is that same message: "With the death of this character, the thread of your fate is severed." The reason quickly becomes obvious. All NPCs involved in the main quest are dead. The only exception was Yagrum Bagarn, the last of the Dwemer. Their corpses never disappear, and at any point in the game, you can check their presence in their spots. Thus, you begin in a world where there is no beginning.

The second thing you'll notice is a gradual loss of health. Just a tiny bit, but not that infrequently. It seems that health points begin to deplete faster if you stand still. If you let this kill you, you'll discover the cause: a creature we dubbed the Assassin because of its armor, which closely resembles the Dark Brotherhood armor from Tribunal, although no expansions work in JVK. It is completely black, absolutely without textures, and looks like a hole in space. The way it moves... I first saw THIS next to my dead body. It crawls in an absolutely inhuman way, limbs splayed out like a giant spider. Usually, you will see it after your death before the loading window appears. But sometimes its figure can be glimpsed around a corner, crawling along a wall or even the ceiling. It's because of this that playing at night becomes much harder.

Besides this, there is only one noticeable difference in the game at night — at random intervals, all NPCs go outside for a few minutes. The only thing you can hear from them during this time is "Look at the sky." Then they all return to their usual activities.

Shortly after, one player on the forum discovered a new character named Tieras, a male Dunmer in the temple near Ghostgate. Two things distinguish him from the others: a completely unique piece of clothing, a robe with shimmering stars on the fabric, making it look like a torn piece of the night sky. The second difference is that all his phrases were accompanied by a voice, in addition to the usual text in the dialogue box. You might not notice this, as his voice is very similar to a normal male Dunmer voice. Some noticed that the voice differed slightly, as if it were a very high-quality imitation.

I won't go into details, but through the quest line, he sends you to a dungeon simply called the "Stronghold." The tasks themselves were equally simple — "uncover the secrets of the ancients." The entrance to the dungeon is on a small island far to the west of Morrowind itself. Eventually, I discovered that using the Scroll of Icarian Flight from the westernmost point of the mainland and jumping exactly west would lead you almost to the exact location of the islet.

Although the dungeon is called a Stronghold, the corridors lead deep underground. It surpasses all other similar places in size and complexity. From naturally occurring caves, you first enter an area resembling an ancient tomb, then ruins of the Daedra and Dwemer. I managed to reach the Dwemer ruins before I left. The creatures here are very strong and dangerous even for a level 20 character, the console is unavailable, and your only tools are quick save and quick load. It is very easy to perish here, finding yourself in a situation where survival is impossible. After death, I no longer had the strength to start all over again.

The few who managed to descend further reported that after the Dwemer ruins, you reach a level similar to the previous one, but darker. Instead of ordinary bronze, all surfaces and creatures turn black. The sounds of machinery are much louder here. Also, something like steam or fog limits your vision to a distance of about 10 feet. If you manage to survive, you will reach a place they called the Room of Portraits.

Similar to the fire in torches or other effects from early 3D games, this room contains frames that are always turned toward you, no matter which side you look from. The images inside the frames are chosen randomly from the "My Pictures" folder. Several funny screenshots of the Room of Portraits were posted on the forum with all sorts of pictures in the frames (of course, most often it was porn).

At the end of the corridor, you will see a locked door. When all attempts to open it fail and you, admitting defeat, return to Tieras, all he will say in his raspy voice is "Look at the sky." Moreover, now no one in the game will tell you ANYTHING. You will see only a completely empty dialogue box, without even the usual greetings. The only exception is nighttime, when NPCs go outside. "Look at the sky." And only then did one of the players (my friend from the forum) notice that the sky above him was no longer the usual night sky of Tamriel. It had been replaced by an image of the real night sky. And it changes.

Everything I tell you next is based on the words of only one person. Eventually, he left our forum, but I tried to keep in contact with him for as long as possible. According to him, the Earth's sky as of February 2005 begins to be displayed above the character. If you die, load, or return to the Stronghold — the cycle starts again. During the day, the sky looks absolutely normal, but at night the movement continues. In one night, it changes by about two months.

This player hypothesized that the door would open simultaneously with some stellar event. Obviously, to wait, you need to keep the game running, and thanks to our old friend the Assassin, it cannot be left unattended. My friend decided to spend a whole day just to find out exactly what would happen. This happened about a year after the movement of the sky began. Here is the message he wrote at the end of his experiment:

"I loaded into Seyda Neen, where it all began. It wasn't too hard; I just had to constantly move and heal my wounds so as not to die. I had to check what was there! And exactly 24 hours later, the Assassin did something new. HE SCREAMED LOUDLY!!!! I swear, that insane scream almost made me shit my pants. It was crazier than in a horror movie! I saw him crouch right in front of me. As soon as I moved, he ran away. I rushed to the Room of Portraits and saw that the door was still closed. F**K, F**K, F**K!"

Later, my acquaintance decided that he would have to wait three days — three years, since the private message with the advice to try DOSbox arrived in February 2008.

"After the first scream, the Assassin stops attacking you from nowhere, taking tiny bits of health. Now he screams, and if you don't move for a few seconds, he attacks you. I think the mod creator was trying to help this way. At night, I put on headphones and dozed... as soon as he woke me with a scream, I moved the mouse and continued to live!"

Here is the message he sent from his laptop two days later. When everything was already over...

"F**K F**K F**K F**K F**K! F**KED UP! This is F**KING fucked! So, for three days I waited until the Assassin started screaming even after I had just moved. I looked around and saw that all the characters were standing outside saying 'Look at the sky.' I don't see anything special until it gets dark in the game... REALLY dark. I turned the monitor brightness to the maximum, and I still could barely see anything. The only things visible were small figures running at a distance from me. If I try to approach them, they run away. With the lights off and a dark monitor screen, it was very creepy, but I didn't want to miss anything. But NOTHING, f**k, changed. Eventually, I returned to the Stronghold... it's still dark around, and I'm swimming, watching how these guys swim around me. Inside the Stronghold, the light returned, and I got excited. And of course, the F**KING Portrait Door is STILL CLOSED. I went outside, and EVERYTHING STARTED OVER. Enough. I'm f**king tired and I'm going to sleep. End."

Then two more things happened. First, some players who reached the Room of Portraits claimed that the Assassin began appearing in regular Morrowind (To clarify, a second Morrowind installed in a different folder allows having both versions on one computer). Of course, it's most likely that the guys were influenced by their own overactive imaginations, but one of them described the black figure he saw right in front of him in far too much detail. The second said he wasn't sure if it was the Assassin, because he always saw the black figure at a great distance and for a couple of seconds, after which it disappeared.

Meanwhile, my friend began receiving many threatening messages because he stopped talking about JVK. This forced him to leave the forum and not appear for some time, but after a few weeks, I wrote to his email anyway. Here is part of his reply:

"I know I was wrong, but with the holidays, I've had some free time, and I tried again to complete JVK. It was almost 2011... and I think I'm starting to hallucinate from lack of sleep. But something is happening! It's still dark outside and doesn't get lighter. The darkness is just as oppressive. All the residents of Seyda Neen took shelter in a small cave nearby a few months ago. They killed all the bandits inside and are just standing in one place. Now they don't say absolutely anything; they don't even react if you try to click on them. I saved and killed one — he offered no resistance and stood there until he died.

And now it's like this everywhere. If you try to explore the world, you can see that all the cities are empty, and their residents have descended into the nearest caves and tombs. Those who lived in Vivec are now standing in the sewers. Now I'm heading to Ghostgate... I want to see Tieras. I'll write to you when I get his answer!"

I replied to him and asked for the continuation, then again — for a day he didn't answer. But then, after my next reminder, a few hours later I received a message:

"Sorry, I completely forgot. It's now 2014, eternal night reigns around, and the stars don't stop moving. The screen is completely black, but you can still make out the brightest stars. Tieras is gone... Everyone who was at Ghostgate is gone. I have no idea where they went, because they aren't in any of the nearby caves. But something has changed... people are still silent, but now their eyes have started to bleed. Because of the darkness, you have to stand right next to them and use a light spell, then for a short time you'll notice dark streams flowing from their eyes. I think I need to wait further. I realize I'm acting like an idiot and that the result might not justify all the effort I've put into the game, but I must, I just must find out how it all ends!"

The next night I received another letter from him:

"Some of the planets are no longer moving correctly. This scares me... because this way I might lose the last chance to track the flow of time. It seems it's almost 2015 now. F**k. You know, I just noticed that not a single monster is left. I'm completely alone outside, although the corpses of the NPCs from the main quest are still lying in their places. I specifically went to check them.

I don't need headphones anymore, so I just took them off. It feels like his screams are echoing right in my ear. Probably because I can predict in advance at what moment the next scream will occur. Now he crawls much closer to me. This is how he differs from those figures that started appearing back then, long ago. Remember? They are always around me, but I can't see them everywhere. I must admit that I'm getting more and more scared. Sometimes, when I go to the bathroom, I constantly notice some movements out of the corner of my eye. Now the lights are constantly on throughout the apartment."

In my reply, I wrote to him, joking that he had dreamed it all. Two days later, a new letter landed in my inbox. This was the last thing I received from my friend. After that, he never answered again:

"I just had a total f**k-up of a dream. I was trying to rest on the bed when the Assassin's scream rang out right in my ear. I opened my eyes and saw his figure looming over me. His arms and legs were even longer than usual, which made him look like a spider more than ever. I tried to push him away, but my hands got stuck in something like resin.

I woke up; the Assassin wasn't there, of course. But, looking at the monitor, I saw that I wasn't where I was before. Now I'm in the Corpusarium, and next to me is Yagrum. It's more or less light around, and I can clearly see his mechanical limbs, so similar to spider legs. I sat down at the computer, and he spoke to me. Not in the game, but to me at the monitor. In Tieras's voice. He knew everything about me. He told me things I had never told anyone and had already begun to forget. He said that almost no one had managed to progress as far as I had. He said that very soon the door would open. Only a little more waiting is left, and I (according to him) would be the first to find out what is hidden behind it.

Then I woke up. Again. Sitting at the computer. And in the game, I'm again in a completely different place than before. Now I was swimming as far as possible from the Stronghold. I constantly hear a faint tapping. It's right outside my window, to my left. The laptop is on the sofa, which is to the right. The only sounds are tap-tap-tap... as if someone is drumming their fingers on the glass. I think I'm still sleeping."

That is the end of the story I can tell. A few other facts about JVK are known, but only this one am I sure of. After reading my friend's last letter, I deleted my copy of the mod, but now I wouldn't mind finding it again. Maybe someone still has a copy of that file? I want to see it all for myself.