I've only played a little of Morrowind, but the Telvanni always appealed to me. So when I think about what kind of character my first Dunmer in Skyrim will be, I naturally think a mage from that House.

But I'd like some advice, especially from those who are better at the lore than I am. I understand there have been some .... ah .... *changes* in Morrowind in the past few centuries. It's highly unlikely, I guess, that there *are* any Telvanni running around. Which is fine - this guy I'm making can still be a descendant of them, one who is learning about his ancestral traditions.

From what I understand, the Telvanni are scheming power-grabbers who value wisdom/intelligence as a means to an end. So (without spoilers!) what quests and general activities might be appropriate for a character like that? Daedra seem an obvious choice, but the College of Winterhold and the Dark Brotherhood are probably unacceptable to a true Telvanni. So I need some ideas on what this guy can *do* in the game world.

Now, the Dunmer racial bonuses in Skyrim point strongly to a stealthy mage hybrid character: +10 Destruction, and +5s in Light Armor, Sneak, Alteration, Illusion, and Alchemy. Maybe it's just me, but I pictured the Telvanni mages as "pure" mages, not nightblades or spellswords or what have you. Is that an incorrect assumption?

Anyway, the big question: what would your Telvanni mage build look like?

Li'l bump. Any ideas?

Telvanni mages, to the best of my knowledge are very pure mage builds. I wouldn't be afraid to take advantage of the inherent Dunmer nature to be sly and sneaky, however. More Telvanni aspirants died from a rival's knife in the back than a spell, I'd bet. The Telvanni were known for being underhanded and VERY competitive.

I think a Telvanni wizard would jump at the opportunity to study at the college of Winterhold, even if his motives had to be hidden behind a veil of "I'm not trying to destroy you all". The DB though unlikely, could be accomplished with a focus on illusion magic and would make sense under that pretense.

I think all the main Telvanni mages in Morrowind had some quirck, one was fascinated by everything dwemer, another with daedric summonings, another with wierd alchemical concoctions. They are also very political and will assassinate their opponents.
So I would go with a pure mage heavy on the destruction magic with something on the side like a fascination with alchemy poisons, or dwemer artifacts (have a bodyguard companion decked out in the best dwemer stuff you can track down), or daedric rites and summoning.

Destruction, alchemy, summoning. There almost like the antimage. The ones everyone fears. Telvanni were badass and judging by the way they do things ide say they are still in morrowind. Ide compare them to the thalmore almost.

Thanks for the replies.

The College... I dunno. I did that questline once and rushed through it; they seemed like a bunch of goody-two-shoes(es?). But there's definitely power there that could be exploited, so that's a good point. Maybe I could ignore the questline and just use them for their cool stuff.

Great idea with the companion in Dwemer armor! I'll need to figure which companion would make the most sense...

I guess the other thing to do might be to unlock the MQ and dragons, if only for the cool fights. I don't think this guy would use Shouts (too Nordic!), but absorbing dragon souls is at least thematically ... interesting.

I also like to set up a base of operations. Which city would make the most sense? Not WIndhelm for obvious reasons. I'm thinking Markarth, for the research potential.

As for skills, I can't ignore that +10 in Destruction, so that will be a main skill. Probably use Illusion too, as it seems to fit the "controller" type. Alteration would be nice, but a pure mage would stay out of melee anyway, and the school doesn't get really fun until Paralyze, which is a long way off... Alchemy would be good, but if I'm not using a weapon poisons are out.

Hmm. Maybe a pure mage with a poisoned dagger? But that would require Sneak to be truly effective, plus some One-handed skill, and then we're into Nightblade/assassin territory and the magic becomes pretty much pointless.

I was exploring with my conjurer mage yesterday, when I found a couple of shipwrecks near the Mages College.

Both vessels had crashed and broken in half in storms while being battered on the rocks. Both wrecks were populated with bandits that I killed, and then did some searching/looking around.

I found a journal in/near one of them that detailed the beginning life of a Telvanni child whose caretakers where on the run from the House Telvanni which had been overrun by enemies, and the child was smuggled out of the house - if I remember correctly - while the childs parents we being killed, along with the others in that house - trying to defend themselves.

There was a foreword by a female who had taken care of the child for some time, wishing the child the best and regretted not being able to meet him/her in real life - my memory is not the best so this could be slightly different from what I remember.

I kept the journal because I want to do some investigating and see if there's anymore background on this story. I find it interesting because it brought back memories from the previous TES games, I had joined one of the other houses there, and remembered Telvanni was one of the houses I entered and stole stuff from.

I am still in the middle of the Telvanni mage quests with my Morrowind mage. Taking a break from Morrowind to play Skyrim. My impression of the Telvanni wizards is that they would never wear armor (I have never seen one in armor at any rate) and they would not let anyone get close enough to them to make armor in any way necessary. They don't seem like the kind of folk who like to get their hands dirty, preferring to do things from a distance, preferably by manipulating others into doing things for them.

If I were going to build a Telvanni mage, I would focus most on Illusion, Conjuration and Enchanting. Personally, I never put any perks into Enchanting because I find it a bit OP, but a Telvanni would have no qualms about leveling Enchanting quickly and to their advantage. With a good enchant suit that allowed free casting of Illusion and Destruction, your Telvanni could go invisible and with quiet casting could take the time needed to cast the high level Destruction spells that everyone complains take too long to cast and use up too much magic, then go invisible and do it again.

Since he would have a free cast Destruction suit, he would not need to put that many perks into the Destruction tree, though he would probably pick up dual casting and impact as well as the increased damage from one of the three elements, probably shock, since it is more universal.

I would probably try to level sneak too and perk to get the Master sneak perk because that combined with invisibility spells and the Quiet Casting perk from the Illusion tree would let your Telvanni easily disappear into the shadows after casting a master level Destruction spell, so he could cast another one without being seen or heard. Telvanni would not wear armor, but I don't think they would have a problem sneaking.

That's how I would do it anyway, if I were to build a Telvanni mage . . .

Good ideas!

I think I want to avoid Conjuration with this particular build, as I used it with my last mage. I'll probably make use of staves/scrolls of summoning, though. But definitely Illusion. I only wonder how successful Invisibility/Muffle will be if I'm using Destruction spells... but I guess the Destruction spells are what I want to use *last* in a fight, when I've already "handled" most of my opponents. Sneak does have a certain attractiveness to it, I admit; the ability to start a fight when I want is important for any mage. Only problem, I guess, is that with no weapons I'm not taking advantage of sneak attacks... but I can live with that, I think.

Enchanting... you know, I've avoided "spamming" Enchanting with my characters so far. Didn't want to make things OP. But you're absolutely right - a Telvanni wizard would have no such qualms! This will probably be the character where I go nuts with Enchanting, then.

Alright, so "major" skills would be:

Destruction
Illusion
Enchanting
Sneak

Support skills would be:

Alchemy
Alteration (the aim is to get to Paralyze... eventually).

Maybe, *maybe* I'll carry around a dagger, to take advantage of poisons and sneak attacks... but I'm still undecided on that. Seems like that would be "getting my hands dirty" too much.

I'm talking to you though a portal my good friend Divayth Fyr has opened up for me for the purposes of betting in the arena tommorow. It seems he's gone a little bit past and forwards of where I wanted to go and I seem to be inside some kind of electrical device, not of Dwemer origin. Not enough steam for that, though I can see something called Steam in this thing, I think I'll call a forum, since its a place where people seem to meet.

Anyway, I think I'm hearing a discussion (yes, I'm hearing words. I drank a potion Divayth gave me saying it was supposed to cure something, what I don't know and now I hear written language. Now I can't even look at Daedric...) about our nice cozy family. To the person that says we don't wear armour, tell that to Divayth. He's head to toe in Daedric (though thankfully the writing is obscured by the scarf Therana had made for him out of her cat) and the guards that patrol my dungeon are firmly clad in armour, though they are also firmly clad in bits of Outlander as well after a small incident that I don't want to discuss. In fact we all wear various forms of armour under our robes. How else are we going to prevent sharp things poking into our backs when we meet with our fellows?

Now I don't want to hear any talk that we are devious, sly, deceitful, or vengeful. Any more talk like that and you'll wake up one morning to find your insides have got out of the bed before the rest of you. It is true that we will kill you before you can blink, but that's for your own benefit. You really wouldn't want to live after we'd been playing with you, oh the screaming. It's just very inconsiderate of you.

Now I'm hearing that things aren't the same with some guilds where you are. A wise Telvanni far from home might use that to his advantage. Especially if said guild consists of assasins and/or thieves. What an increadibly useful thing to have under your command, not to mention how much fun it would be to actually go out into the world disguised as one. Pretending to do their bidding. Why that sounds positively delightful!

And Dragons! For a Telvanni not to use the power of Dragons (what's this nord nonsense that shouts have anything to do with them? Men with meaningful power? Bah! One of you had that power once and he wasted it by creating an empire for himself. What's the point in that? You only end up stuck on a throne while others have all the fun.) well that would be... UNTHINKABLE! For you to even question this, how far our house must have fallen... I think I'd better do something about that. Time for some cleansing of the family. Too many Outsiders getting in these days. Why one even had the NERVE to ask me for my permission to be our Hortator! Can you imagine?

Oh, the portals closing. Somebody is trying to stab Divayth with an iron dagger. His laughing is distracting his portal summoning. Signal fading...




Edit:

5 out of 7 of the top people of all House Telvanni were (Morrowind) Sorcerers. The skills then were the following.

• Major Skills:

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Enchant
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Conjuration
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Mysticism
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Destruction
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Alteration

• Minor Skills:

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Illusion
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Medium_Armor
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Heavy_Armor
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Marksman
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Short_Blade

Now I'm not suggesting you should be picking up a bow, but you can see both armour and blades are favoured along with magic. Certainly they are as important as Illusion.

I could certainly see a Telvanni delivering poison through any means necessary. A bound weapon would be the most elegant, but I am sure a dagger would do in a pinch.

Very entertaining post, and I admit that I have not gotten far enough along in the House Telvanni to come into contact with Divayth Fyr, although I cannot help but wonder whether he wears the Daedric armor as a way of showing off, since he has just about the only set in all of Morrowind (only in Oblivion does every other bandit sport a suit of Daedric) and you need a strength of at least 60 just to wear the stuff without being overencumbered. I don't remember seeing any of the Council wearing armor, although you may be right, they may have hid it under their robes. I cannot see a Telvanni standing there and getting beat on to level heavy armor, but I suppose a Telvanni wizard could pay for heavy armor training and take the perks that allow movement unencumbered and then create a suit of Daedric at a magical forge. I wonder where you could find such a forge . . .

Excellent post, Farlington! Thanks for pointing me to the Morrowind Sorcerer build, and for the RP tips wrt guilds.

Odd, for some reason I assumed you couldn't apply poison to bound weapons...

One difference between a Telvanni build in Skyrim vs the Morrowind sorcerer build is that Destruction was an incredibly powerful skill in Morrowind, due to the ability to craft your own spells and the existance of spell effects such as weakness to magic and weakness to elements which could be stacked together with a fire/frost/shock damage effect.

The Telvanni are all about power and in Skyrim, Destruction is not the powerhouse skill it was in Morrowind and Oblivion. But the Skyrim Illusion skill remains potent, if properly perked and the power of Illusion spells is not effected by moving the difficulty slider to the right. This is the primary reason I suggested Illusion, over Destruction for a Telvanni build in Skyrim.


Yeah, I was surprised myself the first time I tried to poison a bound weapon and it worked. You can poison bound weapons but if the spell wears off before you use the poison, then the poison evaporates into the ether.

Why not poison your dagger with a paralyzing poison just in case of emergency? That way you'd keep the one-handed skill advance at a minimum and avoid the alteration tree, though I don't know how you'd get along without cloak-spells.

@Farlington - great post. I wouldn't have thought to look that up.

@OP: there's another member of house telvanni who's a student at the college of winterhold.. Personally, I wouldn't go with sneak and maybe not even poison, but that's your call. I think there's room in the House for different types, as long as you can prove your fitness...