Heroic Spirit Guide – Azhidal

Azhidal’s life is defined by Enchanting, Hatred and Madness. He was a Nordic Man who was brilliant, creative, perhaps even a prodigy in the field of Enchanting, discovering the secrets of Elven Enchanting, Ayelid Magic, Dwemer Crafting, discovering everything that the Elves knew before finally turning it against them after years of patient learning.

Truly he was a man defined by his craft, and his hatred, who would learn and master anything in order to more effectively murder Elves for the sacking of Saarthal and the murders of his wife and child. This knowledge is what eventually drove him mad, seeking deals with Daedric Princes, Dragons and anyone else who could offer him knowledge, power and even Miraak, the First Dragonborn. His legend is relatively obscure, but the impact he had on the World of Man is as impressive as even Ysgramor himself.

Qualified Servant Classes

Note 1: All Heroic Spirits are summoned into a specific ‘class container’ which dictates many of their skills, parameters and even personality. While they’re often most suited for a particular class, there are many heroes that qualify for multiple classes and thus could theoretically be summoned under any of those classes. An easy example is Almalexia. She is well known for both her swordsmanship and magical abilities and would commonly be summonable under the classes of Saber or Caster.

Potential Classes: Caster, Archer and Berserker

Azhidal can be summoned under three different Classes, that all focus around his primary power of Enchanting. For those that don’t know, Azhidal is perhaps most famous for his original feat of enchanting the arms and armour of Ysgramor’s Army. This is the core concept of the guide and what I’m using as a definition for two of the three classes he can be summoned under. The third, Berserker is still quite similar, but based more on his madness spurred on by the Daedric Princes and Azhidal’s desire for power. Regardless, the core for Azhidal is his Enchanting.

Class for this Guide: Archer

Parameters

Note 2: Parameters are defined both by the individual and the class they’re summoned under. For example, all Caster’s have a base Mana of A, but there are individuals who have specific restrictions that may reduce their Mana to B or are incredibly powerful and thus could have a rating of A+. The system is hardly a way to judge a servant fully, just because an individual has higher stats doesn’t mean they’ll automatically defeat someone with lower stats, but it would mean that (for example) a Servant with a Strength of A will be naturally stronger than one with a Strength of B.

Note 3: The ranking is E, D, C, B, A, EX. Ranks E through A can also have a modifier (either + or -) that designates that their skill has certain restrictions or increases in certain situations. Essentially a + or – means that their highest level isn’t stable or permanent, with a B+ being normally weaker than an A but being stronger than an A in certain circumstances. Examples – fighting a specific foe, being blessed or cursed, having a spell cast on you, etc

Note 4: A servant is more powerful than a normal mortal by default (or the average human). E is 10x more powerful than an average human. D is 20x more powerful and so on and so forth. EX is theoretically 100x more powerful, but the scale is ambiguous.

Strength: D

Endurance: D

Agility: C-

Mana: D

Luck: C

Noble Phantasm: EX

Class Skills:

Note 5: Class Skills are the skills that all Servants summoned under that class have access to, but to a varying degree based on the individuals. These are very general skills, but everyone will have different ranks in each skill based on certain aspects of their legend which are popular. If a Saber Class Servant was well known for fighting Mages, then they may receive a higher Magic Resistance than another Saber Servant who was known for being killed by a Mage.

Magic Resistance (Frost): B+

Azhidal is a Heroic Spirit whose Nordic Background seeps into his legend, boosting his Magic Resistance but transforming it to only protect him from Frost based attacks.

Personal Skills:

Note 6: Personal Skills are unique to everyone…mostly. Two Servants may have Personal Skills with the same name, but they’ll have unique differences based on their own personal life and legend (for example, two Servants may have the ‘Charisma’ skill at the exact same rank, but one of them may be more charismatic when talking to military leaders while the other is more charismatic when talking to commoners.

 Pioneer of the Stars: A- -

Azhidal is credited with being the first man to discover Elven methods of Enchanting as well as being an incredibly important figure in early Nordic Magic in general. Pioneer of the Stars is a unique skill that is granted to heroes who became incredibly well known for their technological (or magical) discoveries. For Servants with this ability, all difficult voyages and challenges which are considered "impossible" turn into "events that can be realized”. Or in other words, literally nothing is impossible for them.

However, Azhidal’s rank is lowered massively by the lack of attention he receives for his discoveries. Modern Nordic Culture not only  spurns magic in general, but they’re a culture that has focused more on Warrior Heroes for so long that Mages like Azhidal suffer for it. His ability is essentially restricted to fighting Elves or those of Elvish descent.

Natural Born Enchanter: EX

Natural Born Enchanter allows Azhidal to benefit from any Enchanting or Item Creation skills regardless of his class. Despite being summoned under the Archer Class (and thus not usually having Item Creation), he receives Item Creation at the EX rank.

Magecraft: C+

Azhidal can utilize some Magecraft from his life, primarily this allows him to access his Fire Mysteries, but at a much lower level than if he were summoned under the Caster Class.

Eye of the Mind (True): B

Azhidal is not a highly skilled warrior, but he is excellent at observing the world around him and discovering things. In combat, Eye of the Mind (True) allows him to discern any possibility of him winning the fight, though it doesn’t guarantee he can execute it.

Noble Phantasms:

Note 7: Noble Phantasms are unique to each Servant completely and is a notable part of their legend. For some heroes, these may be unique weapons or a set of armour that they wielded in their life, for others it may be a concept that is closely related to the Servant’s legend. For example, Morihaus is likely to be summoned with The Lord’s Mail as a set of armour while Tiber Septim may have a Noble Phantasm connected to his role of Emperor or Dragonborn.

Seven Metals, Runes of Dragon, Elf and Man: The Genius Mastermind of the Nords: A+

 

Azhidal’s knowledge far surpasses any of the ancient Nords, possessing a unique affiliation with all types of crafting. All Weapons and Pieces of Armour created by Azhidal count as mid-tier Noble Phantasms and have the unique ability of maintaining any alterations that Azhidal decides to make on them. This can mean he can create Noble Phantasms that rival or even surpass some of the most powerful weapons in history, almost casually.

Armory of Azhidal: EX

The Armory of Azhidal is a somewhat unique Noble Phantasm because it provides next to no benefit to Azhidal himself but allows him to gift others any items that he creates permanently. This allows him to outfit entire armies in Noble Phantasms, but he has to craft them first rather than just having access to them at all times.

Translation to Skyrim

Fuck yes, this is the part that I’m super excited for. To be honest there’s something about designing Azhidal that I’ve really enjoyed so I’m going to talk quite a bit about that before I delve any further. My idea for him was to create a Heroic Spirit that is both incredibly powerful and fairly weak. As you may notice, he has terrible Parameters with the exception of his Noble Phantasms, and even then, they’re not exactly straight up overpowering, more utility based than anything. However the benefits they provide are really fascinating, and fit the lore to a tee. I’ll delve more into them in the Skills and Noble Phantasms section but uh yeah they’re kind of perfect in my opinion.

What might be confusing is that Azhidal is an Archer here. While I have decided to use a Bow (Bound Bow), the reason is rather simply that all his attacks are projectile based (with the exception of Cloaks and Runes) so it's very much a fitting class. If I had to say, Caster would be a more powerful class for Azhidal to be summoned under, he'd have access to all of his magic which, honestly is kind of insane. As an Archer I'm probably only going up to Adept, so the sheer power level would be immense (especially if you were running Ordinator).

It was honestly a challenge, but a fun one. Anyway, here we gooooo.

Skills and Stats:

Primary Skills: Archery, Alchemy, Enchanting and Smithing

Secondary Skills: Destruction, Illusion and Conjuration

Optional/Tertiary Skills: Light Armour or Heavy Armour

Stats: 3 Magicka, 3 Health and 4 Stamina per 10 levels.

Required Perks and Equipment:

Archery: Overdraw 5/5 and Eagle Eye 1/2

Alchemy: Alchemist 5/5 and Benefactor

Enchanting: All Perks

Smithing: All Perks

Equipment: Nothing is Required.

Spells: Bound Bow, Firebolt, Firebolt, Fire Rune, Flame Cloak, Frost Rune, Shock Rune, Poison Rune, Necromancy Spells (Raise Dead etc.), Atronach Spells and Fear Spells.

Roleplaying and Other Information:

This is where this character becomes somewhat fascinating to discuss. Well ridiculously awesome in my opinion. Azhidal is an interesting character because what we see from him as a Dragon Priest is essentially the most boring thing about him, as a historical character it isn’t unfair to suggests that he’s (arguably) as important as Ysgramor regarding the modern state of the Nords (existing an all that). Because I’ve decided to go with a form of Azhidal that isn’t technically a Dragon Priest, or at least we’re running with the Nordic Form of him (yes that means you have to play as a Nord) because it provides something a bit more interesting. At the moment, he’s perfectly sane but has a very specific purpose in Skyrim. He loves his people, hates Elves so he’ll do anything he can to fuck them over (and eventually kill them). The Civil War is an obvious questline, but I think it can be completed with either faction, the Stormcloaks and Imperials make enough sense considering both are possibly good for the Races of Men, as long as you end up killing a bunch of Thalmor. Dragonborn and The Main Quest are in my opinion perfectly fine options, personally I’d run them after discovering Azhidal (The Dragon Priest) and our version wanting to discover more on Dragon Magic in a more…simple way. Killing Miraak is actually something we won’t be doing, because Azhidal has seen what bargaining with Daedric Princes turned him into, and he has no interest in trying again. So yeah, no Daedric quests unless you can screw over the Prince in some manner (so you can’t end up with the rewards at any point. At that point I consider you the Champion of a Daedric Prince and Azhidal no longer has interest in that). Anything else is more or less fine, but make sure to kill Elves.

Replicating Servant Skills is really kind of tricky. Well, okay Magic Resistance (Frost) is obviously easy as shit. Your going to want to aim for 50% and…oh Nords start with that, so you know, yay? But the Personal Skills are a lot harder. Wait, are they? Magecraft is obviously easy (use magic) and Natural Born Enchanter is easy as well…just enchant things. But Pioneer of the Stars and Eye of the Mind (True) are a bit trickier. First I want to explain what these skills mean to me. Pioneer of the Stars is kind of awesome because it allows servants with them to always have a chance to complete their goal. It doesn’t matter if it should be impossible, they can technically complete it. It generally manifests as luck, creating opportunities based on seemingly random actions (like tripping over a rock) that can help Azhidal win a fight. He won’t always be able to capitalize on it, and I’d argue that Divine Beings can counter it in some way, because it is a very Mortal skill. Eye of the Mind (True) is where it gets really interesting, because it allows anyone with it to see any chance of success that they have, meaning that no matter how unlikely their defeat is, they can at least see a way around it. They’re somewhat similar skills, but they combine to give Azhidal a way to defeat any opponent or complete any goal. It is not a guarantee, just a chance but it’s a fascinating pairing of skills. Replicating them…Hmm I’m honestly not sure if you can do anything but use Roleplay. Avoid Death could theoretically be a good solution I suppose. Hmm, no really it’s something that I think comes from being able to pause, save and just generally play the game.

Noble Phantasms…Lets discuss these fellas because their easy. You can craft stuff (like you can in Skyrim) and then give them to followers/others (like you can in Skyrim). They’d be insanely fascinating in a proper setting, having a Servant that can legitimately craft some of the strongest weapons in existence, and actually give them to others means you can essentially create an army of near-Servant level fighters, which is both ridiculous and underpowered at the same time.

Closing Notes:

Whoo, Closing Notes time. So this guide is something a bit different for me because it's not a build *gasp* but it's something I wanted to do kind of, experiment with a bit. I think Trekster has really set the way for really delving into expanding Character Building so that it's not just your typical builds. This is still a guide on how to play the game, it's just got a different take. Hmm what else do I have to talk about? Not much to be honest, I really enjoyed this particular guide, and I'm planning on playing Azhidal when I get the chance. I'm currently going through an Ada'Soom Build (who was my last guide) which is turning out really well, 

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Lore Article for Azhidal (Including all Lore-Friendly Sources)

More Information on the Archer Class

Fate - Parameter Rules    |    Fate - Servant Definition    |    Fate - Noble Phantasms    |    Fate - Full List of Skills

As a final note, I just wanted to thank Trekster for inspiring these guides. Obviously we've got really different takes and inspirations for the series and they're honestly really different, but there's so much of his work that inspired mine. Check Out His Guides because they really are awesome, and a bit more suited to just plugging a build into the Guide and playing with it. Hope these are interesting, I tried really hard to balance the combination of Skyrim and Fate, though I'll freely admit to focusing more on the latter.

This is very nice, Deebs, I'm really liking your take on a Heroic Spirit of Ahzidal :) I've been thinking about it and, for me, this idea would be an excuse to get outside the box. It's hard to explain what I'm thinking, but in terms of lore, it's possible Ahzidal perfected Enchanting as we know it long before Raven Direnni. Or, more excitingly, had perfected that and was also master of the the other forms of Enchanting used prior - which in itself is interesting as we see Potency Runes, Essence Runes and Aspect Runes in ESO; we see the idea of the ancient Nords using the tongues of enemies to bind enchanments; Sigil Stones in TES IV which were far and away more potent than any traditional enchantment; and Sigil Geodes in ESO.

My understanding is that Vastarie discovered Molag Bal's secrets and refined the use of Sigil Geodes. That's quite interesting as it might hold implications as to which Daedric Prince Ahzidal turned to in his quest for knowledge.

So I guess what I'm saying is that you made me think. In terms of gameplay, Ahzidal is like the prefect character and excuse to dive into mods for those that can, and in terms of story, he's an excuse to do all sorts of shit in-game. I mean, in theory this dude could put on a specific set of items and be a master swordsman without perking any martial skills, or the archery perks could be reinterpreted as being enchantment-based. Ie, he doesn't know these skills like an archer would, but his enchantments have given him insights. No matter how he's played, there is an explanaition :D

Good stuff dude, enjoyed reading!

This is very nice, Deebs, I'm really liking your take on a Heroic Spirit of Ahzidal :) I've been thinking about it and, for me, this idea would be an excuse to get outside the box. It's hard to explain what I'm thinking, but in terms of lore, it's possible Ahzidal perfected Enchanting as we know it long before Raven Direnni. Or, more excitingly, had perfected that and was also master of the the other forms of Enchanting used prior - which in itself is interesting as we see Potency Runes, Essence Runes and Aspect Runes in ESO; we see the idea of the ancient Nords using the tongues of enemies to bind enchanments; Sigil Stones in TES IV which were far and away more potent than any traditional enchantment; and Sigil Geodes in ESO.

My understanding is that Vastarie discovered Molag Bal's secrets and refined the use of Sigil Geodes. That's quite interesting as it might hold implications as to which Daedric Prince Ahzidal turned to in his quest for knowledge.

So I guess what I'm saying is that you made me think. In terms of gameplay, Ahzidal is like the prefect character and excuse to dive into mods for those that can, and in terms of story, he's an excuse to do all sorts of shit in-game. I mean, in theory this dude could put on a specific set of items and be a master swordsman without perking any martial skills, or the archery perks could be reinterpreted as being enchantment-based. Ie, he doesn't know these skills like an archer would, but his enchantments have given him insights. No matter how he's played, there is an explanaition :D

Good stuff dude, enjoyed reading!

That's sort of where I was trying to go with the guide so I'm glad it's worked out that way :D The main thrust of the build was to focus on how important Enchanting (and to a lesser extent the other crafting skills) are to the character, you could feasibly drop everything else and shove in Heavy Armour, Two-Handed and Block, and that'd work fairly well, or Sneak, Lockpicking and Pickpocket or whatever set of skills or items or whatever that you wanted. Azhidal is brilliant, not because of his pure power, but his overwhelming knowledge and focus on so many forms of Enchanting/Crafting. 

But yeah, a huge part of these guides to me is that the second half is relatively unimportant. It's there for inspiration but there's no real reason to follow it to create as pure a representaiton of how I see Azhidal, but it's there to provide a framework for those that want it. If that works well for Azhidal than I'm really glad :D 

Haha, that's awesome mate, didn't really expect anyone to play it so you kind of just made my day :D Arcane Archer is definitely fitting and the use of Lions Arrow with Fireball (or you know...you could not add explosions to the character I guess) would work awesomely. As for the armour set...hmmm I'd say that the Konahriik's Accoutrements set would probably be a more logical fit. I did build it with the Vanilla set in mind (Xbox at best so I don't have the Konahriik mod) but the nodded set would provide a few more useful bonuses, and honestly fits the general idea of the build better.

Haha, that's awesome mate, didn't really expect anyone to play it so you kind of just made my day :D Arcane Archer is definitely fitting and the use of Lions Arrow with Fireball (or you know...you could not add explosions to the character I guess) would work awesomely. As for the armour set...hmmm I'd say that the Konahriik's Accoutrements set would probably be a more logical fit. I did build it with the Vanilla set in mind (Xbox at best so I don't have the Konahriik mod) but the nodded set would provide a few more useful bonuses, and honestly fits the general idea of the build better.

Great. and good news, the konahrik mod is now on xbox so you can try it~

Ah, that's awesome, I remember giving it a quick try back in the day (Oldrim on a shitty Laptop) so it'll be good to give it a proper run through when I can.