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Draugr:
Undead enemies are a staple in any self-respecting fantasy-themed video game, and I can count on one hand the amount of fantasy games that I've played that didn't feature undead in some way. Instead of zombies, though, the nordic-themed Skyrim features draugr, which are based on actual phantom-revenants from Norse mythology. While Skyrim does admittedly contradict itself a couple of times by having some necromancers creating draugrs, for the most part, draugr are consistently shown as mummified, dessicated living corpses of the ancient Nordic warriors. Some of them are followers of the ancient dragon cult, which is why the dragons' return brought them back to life, but a good amount of them are just, well, the corpses in Nordic barrows that have been reanimated in some way or another.
The most common sort of dungeon variant in Skyrim are the Nordic barrows -- understandable, considering the large Nordic presence in the continent, so you will meet a lot of these undead folk. And while they're relatively simple, they're definitely well-crafted undead mummy-wight-knight things. I do love their glowing blue eyes and the attention given to making sure they do look like a mummified, petrified corpse instead of just a freshly-killed fleshy zombie. Throw in some unique armour sets that only the draugr use, and they do have a certain identity to them.
I also like how a lot of them basically hide in alcoves or sacrophagi, waiting until you pass them and disturb them, causing them to step out from their hiding. More horrifying is that not all the corpses in a nordic barrow are actually draugr enemies, and some are just actual corpses, but you don't really know until you get close enough. The variants are Draugr Thrall, Draugr, Restless Draugr (those three basically are very lightly armoured), Draugr Overlord, Draugr Wight, Draugr Wight Lord, Draugr Scourge, Draugr Scourge Lord, Draugr Deathlord and Draugr Death Overlord.
Despite being generic faceless mooks, the draugr are actually very varied. You can find draugrs that use bow and arrows, summon ice golems, wield two-handed axes and more all over the dungeons, and these humanoid enemies basically work off similar stats to the other NPC's in the world. The more powerful ones -- the Overlords and Wight Lords and Scourge Lords and Death Lords -- are actually able to use dragon shots, which makes sense considering, well, they're part of the dragon cult. Granted, their shouts tend to be pretty simple ones, basically just Unrelenting Force, Frost Breath and Disarm... but that's basically as much variation as the dragons themselves, and I honestly find Disarm to be far, far more disorienting and damaging than anything the actual dragons ever use.
Anyway, they're pretty neat ambulatory corpses.
Skeleton:
Actual, normal, bona-fide skeletons actually still do exist in Skyrim, and tend to be the absolute weakest of all undead. They can potentially hit hard, but they tend to fall down very easily. Skeletons tended to be found alongside draugr and necromancers, and.... well, they're skeletons! There's not much for me to say here. Skeleton enemies are neat, and definitely add some variation to the undead enemies in a draugr dungeon. Honestly, I do wish they had added more variations to the undead.
I do love the fact that your Unrelenting Force shout just doesn't affect the Skeleton, though, with the force of the air just going through the Skeleton's ribcages harmlessly. That is hilarious.
"Zombie"/"Revenant"
In previous games like Oblivion, the most common sort of base undead, other than skeleton, are just straight-up zombies, which use a unique model and have their own stats. In Skyrim, though, necromancy just straight-up resurrects the dead corpse you point at and brings them back to life as an unthinking meat shield for a period of time -- the spells that you (or an enemy necromancer) cast on the corpse basically does a check for the corpse's power level when it's still a living thing, and depending on the power of the spell, it may or may not work.
It's honestly one of the more interesting ways to deal with necromancy from an in-game mechanic, because most other fantasy games basically just turns corpses into a pre-existing zombie or skeleton template. This actually makes it matter if you bring back the life of some random farmer or one of the more powerful draugr warriors or bears. Yes, you can reanimate draugr, too -- you're basically infusing them with a different sort of necromantic magic, I think. And these "zombies" or "revenants" or "thralls" will basically disintegrate into dust after the magic has ran their course. Pretty simple overall, but at the same time, I'm a huge fan of how this works. Definitely adds some spice to actual battle against necromancers where they will straight-up resurrect their fallen allies and keeping the same original power they had.
Also, sometimes it'll lead to hilarious "silly AI" moments, especially if you travel with Serana or any other companion that can cast necromancy spells, where instead of resurrecting more powerful bandits or draugr they'll choose to resurrect the corpse of the Skeever nearby.
Ghost:
I genuinely forgot these guys exist, actually, until I took a list of all enemies from Skyrim and went "oh, right, ghosts." Significantly more rare than the skeletons and draugrs, ghosts are only found in specific undead or neccromancer dungeons, and are basically just your regular NPC's with some ghostly dialogue and they drop some ghost-specific loot. I think they're also 100% immune to non-magical weaponry? I've never ran into this problem in Skyrim myself (I did in Oblivion, where ghosts show up a lot earlier and a lot more frequently). It's neat, although I really wished they had done more with the ghosts instead of doing the same old "regular NPCs put through a filter" deal like they did with the revenant/zombies. Oblivion straight-up gave ghosts a distinct, separate model! That's one of my bigger problems with Skyrim's undead. The first couple of times you delve into a draugr dungeon it's cool as all hell, but after your fifth or sixth you basically have seen them all.
Corrupted Shade
See, Skyrim? Unique-looking undead aren't that hard to make! Except these Corrupted Shades only appear in exactly one dungeon in original Skyrim (and a second one in a DLC), despite being so, so much cooler than the "transparent human" ghost. Look at this thing! It's a skeleton with glowing eyes, with its body covered in mist, and some models not even having legs. It's a shame that these are apparently unique undead that are created by a quest-specific villain in Meridia's Daedric Quest, and using this model, in my opinion, could've spiced up a lot of the undead dungeons that dot the land.
Dragon Priest
Basically the 'bosses' of the undead, the Dragon Priests are basically the Liches of the setting, taking over from, well, Liches in all previous Elder Scroll games. The Dragon Priests, as you'll find out in exploring some of the larger nordic tombs, are the servitors of the ancient, cruel dragon overlords, and are powerful magicians that are heavily implied to be behind why all the corpses in Nordic ruins walk up and attack trespassers. In the original Skyrim game, there are eight particularly powerful Dragon Priests -- Hevnoraak, Krosis, Morokei, Nahkriin, Rahgot, Otar, Volsung and Vokun -- spread all over the land of Skyrim. Some of them, like Morokei and Nahkriin, are part of larger questlines and you will encounter them, while it takes some work finding the others. Each of these named Dragon Priests cover their skeletal faces with magical masks, which honestly looks quite cool!
The various lore in their tombs tell us that these Dragon Priests have basically done profane rituals to keep their intelligence and personalities even beyond death. Some of them sacrificed the entire cult following them, some of them create draugr with the express purpose of siphoning away their energies to feed their undead state... and I really do love that the dragon priests tend to be pretty difficult fights. They are powerful spellcasters that unleash insanely destructive magical attacks, can buff themselves, and that's when they're not placed in a room with multiple Draugr Deathlords ready to fuck you up and act as the dragon priest's tanks. The combination of lore and general coolness of their design easily makes the Dragon Priets one of my favourite enemies in the game.
Vampire;
Ah, vampires! A staple of the Elder Scrolls game, vampirism is something that you, the character, can acquire after fighting a vampire and suffering from a disease that slowly progresses over time until you transform into a vampire. And vampirism is a unique mechanic in Skyrim. It depends on how much you've fed, and the hungrier you are, the more vampiric powers you have access too... but at the same time, the more a vampire's weaknesses will affect you.
The enemy vampires are basically just, again, the same sort of humanoid enemies, just given equipment and some additional health-draining and invisibility spells that are thematic to vampires. And, of course, the whole "can pass on vampirism" deal. It's a bit of a shame, honestly, that they ended up being so boring, although at least Skyrim's level designers never miss a chance to make vampire dungeons be as gore-filled as possible. Variants include Vampire Fledgling, Blooded Vampire, Vampire Mistwalker, Vampire Nightstalker, Ancient Vampire, Volkihar Vampire and Master Vampire. That "Volkihar" moniker ends up being a bit of a nice foreshadowing to Skyrim's first expansion pack, which greatly expands on the lore of the vampires! Which we'll cover later.
Also, actual vampires are often accompanied with Vampire Thralls, which are basically just random bandit schmucks they have, well, enthralled. It's a neat, clever way to throw in some weaker enemies into the mix while having flavour. Some vampires even keep spiders as pet, which is charming!
Flame Atroanchs
Daedra now! So the Daedra are the Elder Scrolls' universe version of demons, although they work on their own unique mythology -- Daedra all come from a realm outside of Nirn, the mortal plane, and are summoned onto this world with conjuration magic and the like. Sometimes they break free of their summoner's control and can just do whatever they please in the mortal plane, sometimes they are just summoned for a brief bit. It's more akin to elementals in D&D or Warcraft more than actual demons -- it's just that some Daedra behave a lot like demons. Daedra are a huge portion of the previous game, Oblivion, where the daedric prince Mehrunes Dagon's attempted destruction and invasion of Nirn is the main plotline of the story.
Anyway, this is the Flame Atronach, one of the three Atronach variants, and are the most commonly found enemy for magician enemies to summon. You can find Flame Atronachs in the wild, but they're rare. I really do love the look of Skyrim's Flame Atronach. The body is humanoid and female, yes, but the way the features are outlined with a combination of burning flame and molten slag, with an awesome eyeless face that still has a nose and mouth moulded into that black slag-like thing for some reason... pretty cool design! They also float over the ground, which is cool. Flame Atronachs are basically the "speedy cannon" of the three Atronachs, being the cheapest to summon, but also the most fragile and weakest of the three. Overall, though? Easily one of my favourite designs, and comparing Skyrim's redesign of the Flame Atronach to previous versions of the Atronach? There's no contest.
Frost Atronach
In contrast to their fiery sisters, Frost Atronachs are slow, lumbering, but insanely durable. They fight on close range, whacking people with their arms while emitting an aura that slows them down. I'm also a huge, huge design of the Frost Atronach here, looking like a chunk of an icy mountain or an iceberg just decided to get up and walk. From the vaguely humanoid body and the lack of a face, to the two gigantic, crude club-like hands, to the stumpy legs, there's just something so utterly charming about the Frost Atronachs. In most of my Skyrim runs, I always tended to have "Conjure Frost Atronach" hotkeyed as one of my favourite spells -- the Frost Atronach doesn't just make for a good tank, but its huge size just straight-up blocks a lot of arrows and spells that could've gone your way.
Pretty cool giant ice dude! Also, all three Atronachs come in three variants -- Atronach, Potent Atronach and Thrall -- which basically are the same thing with differing stats.
Storm Atronach
Sadly, the most powerful of the Atronach trio, the Storm Atronach... looks pretty dumb. I kind of get what they're going for here, this spinning embodiment of a tornado or a storm, with a bunch of rocks floating in the middle to approximate a humanoid torso and a head (with a carved face), but I honestly wished they had gone through with either making this look more storm-like, or more humanoid. It's especially galling when comparing Skyrim's pretty pitiful-looking Storm Atronach to its Flame and Frost siblings, which look distinctive and cool. And comparing it to Bethesda's other takes on the Storm Atronach -- Oblivion's electrified stone golem that can split apart into a tornado of rocks, Online's far more badass take on a humanoid golem-like figure or even Morrowind's simple electrified golem, I really do think that Skyrim dropped the ball here.
Fortunately, Storm Atronachs are pretty rare in the game, so unless you want to summon one of your own, you won't be seeing this dude a whole lot.
Dremora:
Dremora are one of the most common enemies seen in Skyrim's predecessor, Oblivion, but are extremely rare in Skyrim. Some are found as enemies in specific Daedric Lord quests -- I distinctively remember some being involved in Mehrunes Dagon, Sanguine and Azura's quest, and you certainly can summon them, but they're pretty rare. They look pretty badass, though, revamped from their honestly kind of ugly model in Oblivion, trading in their old pixelated armour for some badass-looking spiky plated armour. Their faces also look a lot smoother, looking less like a snarling, angry man who's hit their head on a wall and more like Darth Maul's less-spiky cousins.
The voice acting for the Dremoras are also especially charming in their intense hamminess, and I love them. "A CHALLENGER IS NEAR!" For what's essentially just humanoids with face tattoos, horns and armour, these are admittedly pretty cool demon-men.
Werewolf
I could've included werewolves with the monsters, but since they're just flat-out transformed humans, I'll add them here. Whereas vampirism is a pretty annoyingly complex affair where you have to manage the pros and cons of your hunger and your abilities, as well as staying out of the sun at times, werewolves just give you a huge boost to your attack and defense and speed at the cost of disabling the use of items. The two are, of course, mutually exclusive. The werewolf storyline ends up being a huge, huge quest line for the Companions, taking the place of the Fighter's Guild of previoous games.
Werewolves as enemies are a wee bit more rare, although they certainly do show up a fair bit here and there. Non-plot-relevant werewolves actually do have some pretty badass names -- Werewolf Savage, Werewolf Brute, Werewolf Skinwalker, Werewolf Beastmaster and Werewolf Vargr. Enemy werewolves are programmed to show up a bit more often with the two DLC's. Anyway, I do like the werewolf model. It's not the best-looking wolf-man out there, but it certainly is monstrous, capturing the savagery of the wolf side while having the gangly proportions and musculature of the human side.
Bandits:
We're going to blaze through these humanoid enemies pretty quickly, because I don't have much to say about them. One of the most common enemy types in Skyrim are the Bandits and their variants (Bandit Outlaw, Bandit Thug, Bandit Highwayman, Bandit Plunderer, Bandit Marauder, Bandit Chief) which just hang out in forts, camps and random streets, and some of the most common ones that respawn. They can be of any race, can be of any specialty, and tend to just have whatever sort of armour is the most appropriate for your levels at that time. Some even try to shake you down for money!
Anyway, a neat aspect of the game for sure, but not one that leaves me a lot to talk about.
Forsworn:
The Forsworn are a group of witch-men that are found on the Western side of Skyrim, basically being a bunch of savage, shamanistic people that worship the 'old gods' and just terrorize the good people of the Reach, intending to reclaim the land for themselves. They would've been just another batch of angry terrorists, but damn if they have some style! The fur armour and deer antlers they have, as well as the clearly patched-together-from-bones weaponry look pretty damn distinctive.
But the Forsworn would just be basically a bunch of shaman/cannibal-flavoured bandits if not for one specific part of their lore -- they actually work with Hagravens and seem to venerate them, and the Hagravens have transformed some their most powerful warriors into Forsworn Briarhearts, which are insanely powerful warrior-mages, and, as their name suggests, have had their hearts replaced with a "Briarheart", which looks like a weird heart-shaped flower. Interestingly, the game actually classifies these Briarhearts as undead, despite still looking pretty flesh-and-bone. Definitely a pretty cool, if underutilized, aspect of the Forsworn culture. These witch-men are definitely pretty neat, honestly, and while I was pretty annoyed with them at first, I've definitely grown to appreciate them as enemies with a distinct flavour.
Mages:
The other sort of common enemies are the mages, coming in five different flavours -- conjurers, which tend to summon atronachs and just attack from a distance; ice mages; fire mages; storm mages (all three do what you expect them to do) and Necromancers, who raise the dead. Out of them, the necromancers are obviously the most numerous in Skyrim, acting as enemies alongside the undead or vampires. All five mage variants come in Novice, Apprentice, Adept, regular, Master and Arch subtypes depending on what level you meet them at.
Not much to say again, here, I'm only including them here due to the relatively large amount of them in Skyrim as enemies. There are a lot of other humanoid enemies I'm not going to even cover here, by the way. Generic Thieves, hags, witches, hunters, the afflicted... just quest-specific enemies. And that's not even taking into consideration bosses and named enemies!
Stormcloak & Empire
One of the more memorable aspects of Skyrim is the addition of the political Civil War, and the insanely gray area in just who is in the right and who is in the wrong. I can go all day defending and condemning both sides, and I'm not going to. Both Stormcloak and Imperial soldiers tend to just exist in melee warrior and archer variants. I'm a huge, huge fan of the quasi-roman leather armour of the Imperials, as well as the pretty badass full-face mask and that fancy sash that the Stormcloaks have. If nothing else, at least their armour all look pretty cool!
Thalmor:
Acting as the greater-scope villain of Skyrim, the Thalmor isn't an organization that you actually fight -- you disrupt some of their schemes, and end up killing a fair amount of their agents in Skyrim, but that's like killing a small regiment of a huge army. Long story short, it's the Thalmor's war against a weakened Empire that basically forces the Empire to do some political decisions that ended up alienating a huge amount of Skyrim's residents. Damn elves!
The Thalmor tend to be magic-wielders, and have some very distinguishable black-and-gold robes. Melee versions exist, too, wearing a unique variant of elven armour, but they also fight with magical swords. Not much to say about their design here. The armour pieces look pleasant.
And... and that's it for now. There's a lot of other humanoid enemies, yes, but considering I have pretty much nothing else to say about most of them, we'll just smile and move along. We'll cover Dawnguard next time,
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