Scattered Stones - A Standing Stones Mod

"Long have I waited at the Guardians. I must know: are the stories true? Surely you've heard them. Tales of the stones granting powers to Heroes of old, those special few being able to choose any stone to rewrite his fate. Of course you've heard them, that's why you touch the stones as you pass by. You've heard they

bring luck, or a sign from the gods. But you think little of the action. It has no true meaning for you. I see it in your eyes as you pass. You do not believe. But I have always believed. Always felt that I was one of the few whose fate was not sealed at birth by the stars overhead. One of the few who could use these stones, draw on the power of the gods to change my life, change my future. I have always felt it."

Scattered Stones

This mod disables all vanilla Standing Stones, including the Guardian Stones, and adds 13 new copies throughout Skyrim, with their own map markers, that the player must find to use them.  Vanilla standing stones are inert and cannot be activated.

However, any of the new stones function normally, and do NOT touch any vanilla perks.  Therefore, any mod that you have (such as Ordinator, Andromeda, and Aurora) will be fully functional!  Yay!

But the physical stones themselves will be deactivated, and new ones placed everywhere.

Why?

It allows you to to breathe a bit of new life into a fresh Skyrim playthrough, and adds a bit more challenge.  On a new character, you'd know where to go to find those buffs, right?  Your new Khajiit thief who just got off the boat in Solitude knows exactly where that tasty thief buff is and can travel there immediately.  Well no more!   With both .esp (esl-flagged) plugins checked, now you have to explore to find them.  It makes the early game a bit more challenging, since you'll have one less buff for quite a while.

Or perhaps you're even on a hardcore, non-Dragonborn playthrough and you don't wish to have any Standing Stone buff?  If you've read Watcher of Stones, you know that only a chosen few can actually tap into their power to influence their fate.  Maybe your Khajiit is just a good-for-nothing runt who wants to trick people and take their money?  Why would the gods favour you?  If that's the case, then you can optionally uncheck the second plugin, "New Standing Stones.esp", and just leave "Inert Standing Stones" checked.  No perk for you!

Where are the new stones?

You'll just have to find them!

I didn't make them excruciatingly difficult to find.  You should stumble upon them as you adventure regularly, and their map markers function exactly as vanilla... with your compass enabled, you'll see an inactive