RUSTIC DAEDRA

RUSTIC DAEDRA is a high resolution retexture of Skyrim's daedra. This includes the elemental daedra (the flame, frost, and storm atronachs), as well as the Dragonborn daedra, the lurker and seeker. Also included are the Dawnguard ancient frost atronach, and the Dragonborn ash guardian.

This mod was formerly known as RUSTIC ATRONACHS, but with the inclusion of the last two Dragonborn daedra, all the daedric creatures are now covered, so it seemed more appropriate to rename the mod to RUSTIC DAEDRA.

These lesser daedra are supposed to be highly intelligent according to lore, but their appearance lacks any real evidence of that being true. Eyes are the window to the soul, as the saying goes, and these creatures all lack them. The design of the flame atronach head precludes having any, but at least it has the animated flame effect which adds visual interest. The frost atronach has depressions that indicate eye sockets, but lacks any other features. The storm atronach has an animated mouth, a semblance of a nose, what looks like a squinting eye and a deep depression where a eye could've been, but it's all just stone.

It seemed to me that if there are places for eyes to exist, then why not make actual eyes? As with the frostbite spiders, Bethesda's artists didn't give any attention to the eyes, when detailed eyes give personality and a sense that there's an intelligence behind them. For obvious reasons, I didn't add any eyes for the flame atronach, but I did make a new hi-res texture for the animated fire effect.

Adding eyes for the frost atronach gives it a sense of menace that was lacking before. Unfortunately, if you are using a mod that makes the frost atronach more transparent, you won't see the eyes properly. You'll only get the shape of the eyes, but refracting meshes make the outer texture too transparent to see the eyes clearly in game. Therefore, the textures work best with the vanilla mesh. The Dawnguard ancient frost atronach has a different mesh, so the appearance is different beyond just the textures themselves.

The storm atronach now has an eye where it squints, as the hole side of the head breaks up, and it didn't make sense to have an eye in that location. Still, having the one eye gives the storm daedra more personality. I revised the two lighting effect textures as well, since the originals were a bit crude.

The Dragonborn ash guardian is based off the storm atronach, but it lacks any effects other than the dust cloud it makes. I didn't make any eyes for this creature, since the mesh repeats sections of the texture making that impractical. Normally, I try to stick to just texture changes to make my mods as universal as possible. I only alter meshes when absolutely necessary, but that was the case with the ash guardian. For some unknown reason, Bethesda didn't give this creature a matching norm