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Eagle Pack Adult Reduced Fat Formula for Overweight or Less Active Dogs
Date of last review
Mon March 6, 2006
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No recommendations
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Ground Yellow Corn, Pork Meal, Brown Rice, Mixed Feed Oats, Dried Beet Pulp, Chicken Meal, Poultry Fat (preserved with Natural Mixed Tocopherols, Citric Acid and Rosemary Extract) Dried Egg Product, Flaxseed, Fish Meal, Brewers Dried Yeast, Poultry Digest, Salt, Potassium Chloride, Chicory Root Extract, DL-Methionine, Vitamin A Acetate, d-Activated Animal Sterol (source of Vitamin D), Vitamin E Supplement, Riboflavin Supplement, Vitamin B12 Supplement, d-Pantothenic Acid, Niacin Supplement, Choline Chloride, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride, Thiamine Mononitrate, Folic Acid, Ascorbic Acid, Biotin, Inositol, Dehydrated Kelp, SQM (Polysaccharide Complexes of Zinc, Iron Manganese, Copper and Cobalt), Potassium Iodate, Sodium Selenite, Yucca Schidigera Extract, Enzymes (Aspergillus Oryzac Fermentation Solubles, Bacillus Subtillus Fermentation Solubles); and DEMs (Enterococcus Faccium and Lactobacillus Acidophilus).
Guaranteed Analysis:
Protein 19%
Moisture 10%
Fat 9%
Fiber 4.3%
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Registered: October 2005
Posts: 3953
Review Date:
Mon March 6, 2006
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Second ingredient is a named meat product.
Insufficient meat content, use of low quality grains and controversial filler, fat of unidentifiable origin.
The primary ingredient in the food is corn. Corn is a problematic grain that is difficult for dogs to digest and thought to be the cause of a great many allergy and yeast infection problems. We prefer not to see this used in dog food, yet it is the primary grain in this food.
The second and sixth ingredients are named meat products, both in meal form. There is a further meat meal ingredient (fish meal) 10th on the ingredient list, but this is too far down to make up a significant portion of the food.We note that the manufacturer does not claim to use ethoxyquin-free sources (ethoxyquin is a chemical preservative commonly added to fish destined for meal, and is believed to be carcinogenic).
Rice and oats are decent quality grains, but beet pulp is further filler and a controversial ingredient it is a by-product, being dried residue from sugar beets which has been cleaned and extracted in the process of manufacturing sugar. It is a controversial ingredient in dog food, claimed by some manufacturers to be a good source of fibre, and derided by others as an ingredient added to slow down the transition of rancid animal fats and causing stress to kidney and liver in the process. We note that beet pulp is an ingredient that commonly causes problems for dogs, including allergies and ear infections, and prefer not to see it used in dog food. There are less controversial products around if additional fibre is required.
Poultry fat is a further low quality ingredient and is impossible to determine the source. Unidentified ingredients are usually very low quality. AAFCO define this as "obtained from the tissues of poultry in the commercial processes of rendering or extracting. It consists predominantly of glyceride esters of fatty acids and contains no additions of free fatty acids. If an antioxidant is used, the common name or names must be indicated, followed by the words "used as a preservative".
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Learn how to contact each ARDA department.
Click here to view ARDA's staff by name.
On January 31st Project:Time Off is hosting its first national "Plan for Vacation Day" encouraging Americans to declare their vacation days for the rest of the year…at the start of the year. National Plan for Vacation Day encourages families to sit down together and map out their vacation plans for the coming year. This is a great concept that we believe many timeshare owners embrace already.
Why is planning so important?
In our culture of packed schedules, hyper-connectivity and work martyrdom, American workers are in serious need of a break. But as a whole, Americans leave 658 million vacation days unused each year!
We understand the value of vacation time for our relationships, personal well-being, and professional success. Yet, 51% of Americans skip out on planning, which is the single-most important step workers can take to ensure they are using their vacation time each year.
The power of planning is evident. Individuals who plan are more likely to use all of their time off, take more vacation days at once and report greater levels of happiness in every category measured. In-depth research proves that the Americans who take time to plan ahead are happier with their health and well-being, their financial situation, their marriage, and even their overall mood. Research also shows that simply having something to look forward to—like a vacation—improves happiness.
Why don't workers take time off?
Nearly two-thirds (65%) of employees report that they hear nothing, mixed messages, or discouraging messages about taking time off, which leads to them choose not taking any vacation. Yet, 80 percent of employees said if they felt fully supported and encouraged by their boss, they would be likely to take more time off.
It is clear that workers who plan reap the rewards:
It's time to start being intentional about how we spend our days. Americans need a wake-up call to take back their calendars and #PlanForVacation.
ARDA has supported, and will continue to support, this initiative – I encourage you to ask yourselves how you can engage with your owners to assist them with planning for their time off. Remember that happy owners are our industries best advocates.
By Howard C. Nusbaum, RRP, President & CEO ARDA
It's already mid-January – how are your resolutions coming
along? If you're anything like me, it may be better to take on a resolution
that won't be painful and offers a big ROI: becoming more engaged in ARDA and
your industry.
Hopefully, you have seen the ARDA "Proud" ad, featuring
three strong actions: "Protect, Connect, and Affect." These three simple words
stand for various ways ARDA can enhance both the overall industry community and
your personal career and business at the same time.
ARDA works to help enhance and protect our industry
through government affairs at the local, state, and federal level. As a member,
you participate in this important work through one of the many ARDA
advocacy-related committees.
Another key mission of ARDA is connecting each of you through meetings and
events. Helping us plan an educational forum or participating in a networking
event at Convention, Fall Conference, or a regional meeting are easy ways to
dive into a community of resources. It may be a journey that leads to a new
business partner or just the chance to share a best practice or even solve a
And finally, get your hands in the clay with us and actually
affect the industry you work within. Again, committees are a great
starting place, as are various volunteer opportunities with the AIF or a
similar outreach program. I encourage you to be selfish and have a vested interest—be
involved in a way that helps your business, fills a need, plugs a hole, or just
rounds out your career.
So, in 2017 become more involved in ARDA and see a great
return on your investment of time. Start today by registering for ARDA World in
New Orleans registration opened December 1. Happy New Year!
By Odilia Guiant, Senior Vice
President, ResortCom International
If you are like most
developers today, your goal is to deliver on the promise of your product,
provide great vacation experiences, and create brand loyalty. Your success is
based on and measured
customer satisfaction. A major factor in delivering and staying competitive in the industry is the ability
to handle your customers with ease throughout their entire membership
lifecycle. Your infrastructure of systems and people is paramount in the daily
execution of every touch-point.
So, what system should you
choose? With so many software options in the marketplace, the decision becomes
a difficult one. What about servicing companies—do you use them or not?
Many developers task their
executives with finding a cost-effective solution that covers the majority of
the business needs today. More than a solution, however, the focus should be
geared toward finding
"strategic partner" that can scale your business growth plans, who understands
your priorities and the demands of the vacation industry.
Mega-hospitality giants may
rely on in-house IT departments to develop and maintain customer engagement
systems, while small- and mid-size companies often reach out to third party
providers to shore up portions of their platform. A viable vendor should be
able to provide a suite of components and/or the entire system as a solution.
Ultimately, great emphasis
should be placed on finding a partnership and collaboration rather than
engaging a third party vendor who simply provides the services requested. And
sometimes, cheaper is not always better.
To gain more knowledge on making
the right expense choices and to learn about choosing the right partner and
building and maintaining relationships with them be sure to read the full
article in the November/December 2016 edition of Developments.
Copyright 2014. American Resort Development Assoc. All rights reserved.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
At first, the townspeople couldn't believe it. And they didn't want to talk about it. It is, after all, the heart of their community, the only flat spot in the canyon where people can walk their dogs, the only place where kids can play safely away from the highway that runs smack through the middle of Jamestown.
Elysian Park, like the Elysian fields of Greek mythology, is tranquil. Mountains surround it, a walking path circles it, and James Creek flows alongside it. Every July 4, most of the 205 residents of this old mining town northwest of Boulder gather there to barbecue, play horseshoes and watch the annual dog contest, in which every entrant takes home a prize. Two years ago, Steve Edelstein's dog, Tootsie, a rescued stray, was named "most improved dog." Last year, Tootsie didn't attend the celebration because it was too hot, which led to her being honored as the "most pampered dog." This year, the festivities were set to continue in the same high-spirited tradition.
No, the townspeople didn't want to acknowledge the fact that their beloved park might become a Superfund site.
Read more Westword coverage of the Superfund Site
The Arapahoe Indians were the first residents of Jamestown, but they were displaced in the 1860s, when newcomers discovered that there was gold in the hills. Miners set up camp along "Jim" Creek and incorporated "Jimtown" in 1863. But when the United States Postal Service opened an office there three years later, it renamed the small settlement "Jamestown" to give it a more dignified air.
Jamestown experienced its share of booms and busts over the next century, but for the most part, it prospered. Gold, lead, silver, fluorspar and uranium were extracted from numerous mines in the 36-square-mile Golden Age Mining District, which included the Burlington, Golden Age, Argo and Emmit mines, all of which were outside the city limits in what is now Roosevelt National Forest. Some of the ore, however, was milled in town near what is now Elysian Park.
Since mining ended, Jamestown has become a bedroom community for Boulder and Longmont; the commuters don't mind the fifteen-minute ride through James Canyon, which turns into Left Hand Canyon before intersecting U.S. Highway 36. When they return to Jamestown in the evening, it still feels, in some ways, like the 1800s; there's no grocery store, shopping mall, hospital or movie theater -- just a fifteen-student elementary school, a post office, a church, a town hall and the Mercantile Cafe, better known as the Merc, where people gather for burgers and beer. Residents like the quiet way of life, and they have the miners to thank for it.
But the miners gave them more than just a romantic piece of Colorado's past -- they also left behind polluted streams and land.
Contamination from the mines and mills above Jamestown has killed all the aquatic life in the Little James Creek and, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, could someday pose a health risk to the 14,000 people who get their water from the Left Hand Water District downstream.
Although milling ceased in Jamestown sometime in the middle of the last century, a huge pond containing waste rock remained. After ore is crushed, it is chemically treated in water and then transferred to a settling pond, where the gold or other precious metals are separated out. Fine, sandlike residue, called tailings, is left over and, with it, toxic metals that were extracted in the mining process. No one at the EPA, in the state or county health departments, or in the town itself is exactly sure who covered up the tailings pond or when, but at some point it was capped, re-vegetated and made into the twenty-acre park that is there today (according to local lore, the Army Corps of Engineers did the work in the 1970s). Some tailings are still visible in areas where grass hasn't grown, however, and a recent influx of pocket gophers has disturbed the tailings that are buried.
EPA officials want to clean up the mines and mills, as well as the mess underneath Elysian Park, but they say the only way to get the necessary money is to put the sites on the EPA's National Priorities List (NPL). That would give the agency access to Superfund, a multibillion-dollar trust fund that was established by the United States Congress in 1980 to pay for the cleanup of hazardous waste sites.
While the townspeople understand that the mines need to be dealt with, they are more skeptical about whether the nominal testing at Elysian Park -- only five soil samples have been taken -- proves that it qualifies for the NPL. And they don't think the EPA has given them enough information to decide whether to support an effort that could disrupt their lives for years and give their town the stigma that comes with being a Superfund site. The EPA, which was prepared to take steps that would add the sites to the NPL, has now given the town six months to a year of breathing room to figure out how to get the sites cleaned up without Superfund.
But as the townspeople have gathered occasionally to talk it over in the last few months, they've begun to realize that most of their questions may not be answered until after they've been burdened with the Superfund label.
People have been complaining about contaminated water in Left Hand Canyon since the early mining days; in the 1860s, farmers who relied on Left Hand Creek noticed murky water that was likely the result of mine tailings from the Big Five Mill near Ward, another old mining town west of Boulder, and in 1906, the issue of polluted creek water came before the county commissioners.
Left Hand Creek is fed by James Creek, which in turn is fed by Little James Creek, which, right now, poses the greatest environmental problem of the three. Located above Jamestown, the Little James is the recipient of acidic and metallic water that runs off the nearby Burlington Mine, where fluorspar was extracted as recently as the 1970s (the mineral was mined for the production of hydrofluoric acid, a corrosive liquid used to etch glass).
All that's left of the Burlington is a giant pit; soft soil caused the mine to collapse in on itself. The shaft is long gone, and the rusty equipment often found at old mine sites has disappeared. Down a steep incline from the mine is a stagnant pond where contaminated groundwater has seeped up. The pond changes color depending on the concentration of metals in the water; on some days it's a gooey green, on others it's a deep orange.
High levels of arsenic, beryllium, copper, iron, lead, manganese and zinc, all products of the mine, have been found in the Little James, which is devoid of life. By the time the Little James meets James Creek about a mile away in town, most of the metals have settled out, and James Creek isn't currently considered a health hazard to fish. (Jamestown residents get their drinking water from wells or other creeks.) By the time the James meets Left Hand Creek further down the canyon, the water is even cleaner, but before the confluence of the two, Left Hand Creek, whose headwaters are located near the Captain Jack Mill southeast of Ward, receives polluted runoff from that mill as well as from the Big Five.
The EPA first got involved in Left Hand Canyon in the mid-1980s, when the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) reported the owners of the Captain Jack Mill, which had started processing ores from nearby mines in the late '70s or early '80s; MSHA had discovered that the mill operators were improperly storing drums of cyanide, acid and other chemicals. The EPA answered this complaint by sending an emergency-response team up the small valley and removing the drums. It then began testing Left Hand Creek.
In October 1992, the Colorado Mined Land Reclamation Division received reports that the mill was now dumping waste directly into the creek; that same month, a Boulder County Health Department official noticed a milky substance in the water and alerted the EPA. "Tailings-like material was observed entering Left Hand Creek from the unlined tailings pond, turning Left Hand Creek a milky gray color for approximately six miles downstream," the official's report read; water samples turned up high levels of zinc, cadmium, copper and lead.
The Left Hand Water District, which treats the creek water for residents in rural Boulder County, Weld County and the southern part of Longmont, had to shut off its intake valve while the EPA cleaned up. The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment issued the mill operator a cease-and-desist order and later shut down the mill for good. The EPA continued testing Left Hand Creek over the next few years, and in the mid-'90s, it began analyzing Little James and James Creeks as well (the state health department had started sampling those two creeks even earlier).
As the population that relies on Left Hand Creek for drinking water grew rapidly over the next decade, the EPA determined that even though there was no immediate threat to the water supply, it might someday become contaminated if nothing was done to clean up the abandoned mines (the number of water users is expected to double to 28,000 over the next twenty years). In the event of a flood, the tailings that have accumulated along the creek beds could erode into the water and taint the drinking supply, not to mention the groundwater used for wells.
David Williams, NPL coordinator for EPA Region 8, which includes Colorado, Montana, Wyoming, Utah and the Dakotas, says his agency is now trying to determine who's responsible for the pollution. But it appears that most of the mine operators have either gone out of business or left the state.
The United States Forest Service, which owns the land underneath the Golden Age Mine, has agreed to pay for its clean up, however, and Boulder County, which bought the Argo Mine to preserve as open space last fall, may have to pitch in, too, Williams says. At a recent community meeting in Jamestown, it was announced that Honeywell Inc. is interested in voluntarily cleaning up the Burlington Mine, which it owns through a merger with AlliedSignal Inc., (formerly Allied Chemical), the company that once operated the Burlington Mine.
But Williams says he won't know the full extent of the former mining and milling operators' culpability or how much, if anything, they'll have to pay, until the EPA has done a lot more investigating. And that, like many of the other details of cleaning up contamination, won't get done until after the sites around Jamestown have been placed on the NPL.
Nearly two years ago, EPA officials started meeting, informally, with residents in Jamestown and Ward; last July, EPA and county health officials gave them a tour of ten to fourteen mines and mills and said they'd like to remove the waste.
"There was no sense at that point that there was anything imminently planned by the EPA," says Steve Edelstein, a newcomer to Jamestown who has emerged as a town spokesman on the matter. "There was no mention of Superfund."
In fact, it wasn't until early this year that the locals realized the EPA was serious about Superfund. In December, the county health department held a meeting in Jamestown along with a nonprofit organization called the Western Center for Environmental Decision-making. The county had received a $20,000 grant from the EPA to hire the firm to mediate discussions and survey residents on their opinions about the cleanup. Only a few residents attended.
"It wasn't billed as a meeting about Superfund, but as a fact-finding meeting about mine cleanup," Edelstein says. "They said they were exploring options and that just one was Superfund. There was also no mention of the park. It only came up when someone asked a question about it, and they said they had no interest in the park."
Another meeting was held in Jamestown in January, and this time, the small group of locals in attendance asked more pointed questions. In response, EPA officials finally admitted how serious they were about Superfund and said they were planning to send a letter to Governor Bill Owens asking for his approval -- a required step before a site can be placed on the NPL. They also mentioned that they wanted to take a closer look at Elysian Park.
Initial testing had shown that lead levels in the park are higher than normal, particularly around second base of the ball field, where lead measures 2,000 parts per million. State health department officials, who may be involved in the cleanup, say they usually remove lead from contaminated soil sites that contain more than 400 parts per million of the metal, which, if ingested or inhaled, can cause myriad health problems ranging from brain and kidney damage to nerve disorders and muscle pain. Lead is especially dangerous to children, because they are likely to play in dirt, put their fingers in their mouths and eat without washing their hands -- and because their growing bodies absorb lead like sponges.
But Jamestown residents aren't too worried about health risks in the park. "The park is covered with grass, and people have very little exposure to what lies underneath," Edelstein says. "You don't get contaminated by walking around on the grass. If there are any signs of lead poisoning, they're not showing up in the town."
After the January meeting, Edelstein asked the county health department to urge the EPA to hold off on sending the letter to Owens until locals had more information about the situation, and the EPA agreed. "We decided we needed to tell the others in town," says Edelstein, an information-technology consultant who works in Lakewood.
So the county posted fliers advertising the next meeting, in February, as an explanation of Superfund. That meeting drew between twenty and thirty people -- a big turnout for a small town where many people keep to themselves. Representatives from the county showed slides of the mines, gave a history of the area and handed out a Superfund information sheet. Then an EPA official announced that the agency wanted to include the park in the listing.
"I came away from the meeting feeling like I didn't have enough information. I had lots of questions and I felt there was no justification for the park listing, given the data they had," says JaVayne Metzger, a Jamestown resident and environmental consultant who happens to have worked on Superfund sites in the past; she's currently studying an underground plume of pollution that is seeping into water wells at an industrial Superfund site in Virginia. "They had done sampling measurements up and down Little James Creek, which we all know is dead, but they took very few surface soil samples in the park."
"We concluded that we should get organized," Edelstein adds. "There was no discussion then about whether to oppose it or not; we just wanted to collect information." He and about a dozen other residents formed the Citizen's Advisory Group for the Environment, or CAGE, which set about reviewing the data, researching how other Colorado towns had handled the Superfund process and formulating more questions for the EPA.
Many of their questions revolved around their homes. Would their property values go down? How long would the cleanup take? If any of the contamination was discovered on private land, would those homeowners be forced to pay for the cleanup? "One thing we'd heard was that when an area becomes a Superfund site, the EPA's enforcement people come in and try to recover money for the work that's done," Edelstein says. "The EPA has brochures that say they don't go after individual homeowners, but I've heard that that doesn't mean much."
CAGE invited members of the EPA's enforcement division, which is responsible for identifying polluters, and, if possible, making them pay, to a meeting to answer some of these questions, but they declined. NPL coordinator Williams says the enforcement division isn't allowed to talk to the public about liability during an investigation. But he adds that "homeowners are not likely to be liable. There are residential property exclusions in the law."
And Williams insists that the EPA didn't spring Superfund on the communities; people like Edelstein and his wife, Nancy, who moved to Jamestown two years ago from New Jersey, simply weren't around when the agency first started talking about it, and he says he has the documentation to prove it.
In February 1997, the James Creek Watershed Initiative, a nonprofit organization that works to improve the area's water quality, wrote a letter to EPA site assessment manager Pat Smith confirming her attendance at an upcoming public meeting regarding mining's impact on the creek. "You are going to kick off the evening with quick-and-dirty policy discussion of why the EPA chooses to support watershed initiatives. Of special interest to the community will be your concerns with local water quality and the potential for areas within our watershed to become 'listed,' and the ramifications if they are," wrote Mark Williams, a Jamestown resident, Watershed Initiative boardmember and water quality program coordinator for the Boulder County health department. Smith recalls attending that meeting and discussing Superfund.
The EPA also met with the town council in Ward, says David Williams, and the members seemed to support the cleanup. Although there is no impact on Ward's drinking water, because the nearest mine sites are located south of town, some of its residents, like town councilmember Peter Gleichman, worry that the Superfund boundary could include Ward and that the town could be charged for cleanup costs. "The issue isn't that we don't want this cleaned up -- everyone who lives in the mountains has great respect for the environment. We just want to know what it means for us."
David Williams blames the county for not doing a good job of communicating the possibility of Superfund with Jamestown and Ward residents, and Mark Williams, who's been acting as the liaison between the county and the mountain communities, agrees. "It was initially framed as a mine-site cleanup issue," he concedes. "When we talked to the Western Center for Environmental Decision-making about how to frame the issue, we thought, at the time, that we didn't want to talk about Superfund initially because we didn't want it to look like we were pushing an agenda. We didn't want it to look like there weren't other options, but as it turns out, Superfund may be the most viable one."
Once it appeared that Superfund was a serious possibility, the EPA assured townspeople that the sites wouldn't be listed without their support. But CAGE members and Ward residents, who hold a townwide vote on every controversial issue before deciding whether to support or oppose it, say they can't get community consensus without knowing more. They admit that David Williams and people from the state and county health departments have been receptive to them -- officials have shared data when asked, talked freely to residents on the phone and come to town for additional meetings -- but they still don't know what to expect if the sites make it onto the NPL. And people in both towns say they haven't had enough time to inform their neighbors about what they do know.
"We feel this whole process has been railroaded," says David Patterson, who's part of CAGE and serves on the Jamestown board of trustees.
Jamestown residents worry about the effects of big trucks coming to haul out waste. The roads may not be able to withstand the increased traffic, and the town may not have enough money to maintain them. More traffic also poses a safety concern: There are no sidewalks in town, and crossing the main street is already dangerous. The trucks will also stir up dirt on the unpaved road leading to the park, and since homes line both sides of the street, people aren't too keen on what could be years of dust and noise in their quiet neighborhood. The park is in the middle of town, so homeowners are also worried about their property values declining.
"There may be a short period of time where residents will see a flattening of property values," David Williams acknowledges. "But someday the property may be more attractive because there are no tailings left. We just have to continue on with our remedial investigation, which may show that nothing needs to be done to the park." Or, he says, the studies may show that the park needs only slight remediation, like additional vegetation or a barrier to prevent tailings-laden water from seeping into the creek.
The fact that those things won't be known until after the town is listed as a Superfund site doesn't make sense to CAGE members. "That's like performing surgery on someone, opening them up and looking at their organs and then saying they need a haircut," Edelstein says.
Also worrisome is the fact that the boundaries of the Superfund site are unknown; they could extend beyond the park and into residential areas if further testing shows high levels of lead or other metals outside the park's perimeter. And once the mines and the park are listed, the EPA might not have enough money to clean them up; they could just sit there for months, or even years, while the community lives with the stigma that Superfund brings.
Kathy Peterson, general manager of the Left Hand Water District, wonders if upsetting the soil to remove the contamination could release toxic metals into the creek; if that were to happen, her company could shut off its intake valve and rely solely on reservoir water for a couple of months, but she hasn't received any assurance from the EPA or the state health department that the creek water would only be off limits for short periods of time. Right now, Peterson is just trying to calm her customers' fears about their future drinking-water quality, but even she doesn't know what to expect.
"It's hard to develop a trusting relationship with the EPA if they don't give you the whole picture up front; it's hard to buy into it on blind faith," says Colleen Williams, Mark Williams's wife, a CAGE member and the director of the James Creek Watershed Initiative; she's quick to point out that her nonprofit isn't taking a stand on the potential listing, however. "Because it's such a hot issue, it could hurt our organization. I've heard in local gossip that I brought the EPA to town!"
The Ward Town Council shares many of the same concerns, and both towns have written letters to the EPA, Governor Owens, the Boulder County Commissioners and state representatives requesting a delay. The Boulder County government is planning to assemble a panel of six to ten residents in hopes of gathering more information.
"With all due respect to the EPA and the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, we have had a difficult time trying to pry the information we need out of them," the Ward town councilmembers wrote in their letter. "Specific information that was requested months ago has only been provided to us recently. Information provided by the EPA has been contradicted by information we are receiving from other communities in Colorado that have been through the Superfund process... The town council is left with a huge task of reading and digesting (sometimes conflicting) information, identifying issues and getting word out to the community. It takes time... Holding a couple of public meetings (as is required by federal law) in the mountain communities should not be the end of the process. It is a good start."
David Williams speaks slowly and patiently while explaining why he can't describe exactly what to expect: He doesn't know all the answers himself. It's just not how the process works. Still, he's used to getting asked the same questions over and over again, and the answer is always the same: There is no money to clean up all of the abandoned mines and mills without Superfund (although Honeywell, Boulder County and the U.S. Forest Service may pay for some of the cost). And there is no money available to conduct the kind of comprehensive tests needed to determine if these sites even need to be on the NPL until they are actually on the list.
The United States Congress passed the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA), known simply as Superfund, on December 11, 1980. The law established cleanup requirements for hazardous waste sites and allowed the federal government to hold responsible parties liable for the costs. The law also created a tax, on chemical and petroleum companies, that was put into a trust fund to pay for the cleanup of hazardous-waste sites "when no responsible party could be identified."
There are only two ways to get Superfund dollars: When there is an emergency situation in which human or environmental health is at risk, such as an oil spill or chemical explosion, or by getting on the NPL. To get a site listed, the EPA has to take preliminary air, water and soil samples, depending on the type of contamination; once the samples are analyzed, the EPA assigns the area a hazard ranking, and if the ranking is high enough, the site qualifies for the NPL.
Williams says the hazard-ranking score of Elysian Park and the mines won't become public record until the sites are listed, but he says the factors that are weighed in determining the score include the volume of waste, the population that's exposed and the likelihood of the waste being released into the greater environment.
"It doesn't take a lot of data to determine if a listing is needed; it just has to be extensive enough to stand up to challenges," says Williams, who believes that the early tests on the mines and park clearly indicate that there is a need for further investigation. "The tests show that the town park is contributing metals to the creek. The size of the park, along with the loading going into the creek, is enough to justify its inclusion."
Once a site is on the NPL, money is freed to do more thorough testing, which determines how much, if any, cleanup is needed. Approximately 9,000 hazardous-waste sites have been identified in the U.S., but only 1,420 are on the National Priorities List. There are currently fifteen active Superfund sites in Colorado, including Rocky Mountain Arsenal, Rocky Flats and Lowry Landfill.
Although the inactive mines and mills near Jamestown and Ward are nowhere near as hazardous as places like Rocky Flats, Williams says that the potential impact on drinking water warrants a place on the NPL. "Right now there is no risk to water users, but Left Hand Creek is a critical watershed since so many people rely on it for their drinking water. We want to assure them that it will be safe in the long term," he explains. "We feel like it's a good opportunity to use Superfund to get in there and clean it up. This is the way Superfund is supposed to work; in too many cases we go in and do emergency response and then put the site on the NPL. That's reactive. This is preventative."
In the past, the EPA has decided not to pursue Superfund listings because of community opposition. Barry Levene, director of the Colorado unit of Superfund Region 8, can recall two such instances in Colorado. About five years ago, the EPA looked into listing sites in Creede because of mine tailings that had seeped into Willow Creek, a tributary to the Rio Grande River, where high levels of zinc, lead and cadmium were showing up. But locals didn't want the stigma of Superfund, so they convinced the EPA to let them take care of it themselves. Creede has since formed the Willow Creek Reclamation Committee and secured a grant from the EPA; the group is currently trying to raise more money from federal agencies and private sources to clean up the creek. "We discussed, for years, what should be done there and we decided to let them take care of it, and they've been pretty successful, but we left the door open for them to come back to us," Levene says.
Durango and Silverton also convinced the EPA to back off. Ten years later, they're still trying to raise money and find other agencies to clean up the Animas River without resorting to Superfund. "They haven't made a huge amount of progress," Levene says. "They're taking baby steps."
But what separates Creede, Durango and Silverton from Jamestown and Ward, David Williams says, "is that we have a drinking-water intake here that supplies 14,000 people. Both towns want to clean up the sites, they are just not sure they want Superfund to do that. On the other hand, there is the community of north Boulder, and they need to be able to rely on their drinking water. Our responsibitly to make sure they have a long-term clean water supply."
The EPA is also eyeing more mines in Left Hand Canyon than just those around Jamestown and Ward. The agency is only beginning to test the Slide Mine's impacts on Left Hand Creek; the mine is near the town of Rowena, located east of Ward and south of Jamestown, and it, too, could someday be a candidate for Superfund.
If the EPA does eventually send its letter to Governor Owens requesting that the sites near Jamestown and Ward be listed on the NPL, and the Governor approves the request, only then will the real community-involvement process begin. After a site is placed on a preliminary list, the EPA is required to hold a sixty-day public comment period, in which anyone -- whether they live in Jamestown, Colorado, or Jamestown, Virginia -- can submit written feedback. EPA officials must respond, in writing, to every negative comment they receive, and that can take anywhere from six months to a year; the responses are published in a register of hazardous-waste sites. At that time, the site goes on the final NPL. If no negative comments come in, the site can be listed immediately.
When Congress first passed the Superfund law, the government was given the authority to collect $1.6 billion in taxes from chemical and petroleum companies; in 1986, Congress authorized the amount of the trust fund to increase to $8.5 billion. About three years ago, the government stopped collecting the tax, however, and Superfund money is expected to run out in another two years, according to Levene. He isn't sure how much remains in the trust fund, but for the last three years, the money needed for environmental cleanup has been supplemented by the federal government's general fund. The EPA gets approximately $1.3 billion a year for Superfund projects, he says, but only about $400 million goes toward the actual cleanup; the rest is spent on research and administrative costs.
After money for Superfund projects is doled out by Congress, the head EPA office in Washington, D.C., divides the money among various sites around the nation according to need, with the most contaminated ones getting the first cut. Then a committee that includes representatives from all ten EPA regions evaluates the remaining Superfund sites; those that present the greatest risk to human or environmental health get the rest of the money.
When the money for a certain fiscal year is gone, some sites have to wait until the next year to get funding. "None so far have been postponed indefinitely," Levene says. "Usually a site that doesn't get funded in one fiscal year is just delayed until the next year."
If the Jamestown and Ward sites make it onto the final NPL, the EPA's Williams says it will take a year or two to complete the intensive testing. After that, the cleanup begins. "The money should be there to clean them up, but we can't guarantee that, because funding is at the whim of Congress. I don't know how much funding it would take yet." He adds that the EPA spent less than $100,000 on the preliminary tests.
"To the citizens, it may sound like a convoluted process, but with 9,000 [hazardous-waste] sites, we can't afford to go into every one and do a high-level investigation."
The EPA stopped listing sites in the Rocky Mountain region in the early 1990s in the hopes of finding alternatives to Superfund, but few materialized. In 1998, Williams was hired to coordinate listings, and the push to list sites resumed. "We don't want to come in and blow our way into the area, but we do have a responsibility to the citizens who want us to clean it up," he says, citing a September 2000 survey of James and Left Hand Canyon residents, which showed that the majority of people support the Superfund effort. "We realize that we're going to be up there for years, and we want to make sure everyone's voice is heard. We don't ever expect unanimous support, but we feel we have majority support."
Although 58 percent of the 65 survey respondents indicated that they support some form of government intervention, most residents were ill-informed about the cleanup options. "Only six respondents (9 percent) were aware of Superfund as an option to remedy the contamination of the creeks," the survey report reads. "Superfund is the most high-profile policy solution for cleaning up the situation, but very few residents were aware of its existence or purpose. The data provided by the EPA for the purposes of this survey were limited, and residents often were concerned about different mines and contaminants than those expressed in the EPA document. There is, for example, little data on domestic wells or uses of Left Hand and James Creeks for recreation. The major problems in the Left Hand Watershed appear to be ecological in nature, yet ecological information is lacking, too."
People are scared not only because of what they don't know, but because of what they do know. Although Williams says the EPA has learned from its past mistakes, those in Jamestown and Ward fear that what's happened in other Colorado communities can happen to them.
Bob Jones remembers when the EPA first came to Idaho Springs and Central City in the early 1980s to begin testing on the more than 1,000 abandoned mines in Clear Creek and Gilpin Counties. "They came in a little heavy-handed. They told people, 'This is what's going to happen, and if you don't like it, so what?' They were telling people who owned property with mines on them that they'd be liable for the cleanup. Why, they told one guy it would cost him $220,000 to clean up his property. He was in his late seventies or early eighties and probably had no more than $1,000 in the bank," says Jones, who lives in Idaho Springs. "The way they were handling it was like an IRS collector coming in."
The locals didn't take too kindly to that approach. One day, when a scientist was on someone's land taking samples, the property owner chased him off with a gun, Jones recalls. He knew something needed to change if the EPA was going to be in the small communities off I-70 for more than a decade, so he helped form the TAG Team, which stands for Technical Advisory Group, to act as an intermediary between the locals and the EPA. The team was made up of Jones, a chemical and electrical engineer; a water scientist; and a hydrogeologist.
"We got the lawyers to go home and the scientists to come in," he says. "We reviewed the EPA's studies, and they listened to us. We have an active watershed group up here that had done some water analysis, and we convinced [the EPA] to look at what they'd done. When what they proposed seemed unreasonable, we stomped on feet until it was reasonable. In short, we were trying to make sure people on both sides knew what was going on."
Once the EPA's enforcement people left and the TAG Team started working with scientists from the EPA and the state health department, the process worked more smoothly. The mines and mills that contributed the most to the contamination of Clear Creek have been cleaned up, Jones says, although the area isn't scheduled to be taken off the NPL until 2006. "We were able to run a very productive operation and work cooperatively," says Jones, adding that a museum in Idaho Springs has a display chronicling the Superfund effort.
Not every town has adapted so well to the EPA's presence, though. When the agency identified California Gulch, in Leadville, as a Superfund site in 1983, residents were furious. Many received letters informing them that they might have to pay to clean up the mines that had polluted the Arkansas River. People who tried to sell their homes couldn't find buyers, and local businesses had a hard time getting loans. State Representative Ken Chlouber, a Leadville resident, was quoted in newspapers as saying, "My suggestion is simply to hang one (EPA worker) at each end of town."
But they didn't have to pay after all; the EPA eventually reached agreements with two mining operators to clean up the sites, and most of the reclamation will be done in the next couple of years.
Then there's the Smuggler Mine in Aspen. To clean up the lead the mine had left behind, the EPA originally proposed digging down four feet into the entire Superfund area, which included residential property. "You can imagine how people must have felt. How would you like a bulldozer to dig down four feet into your backyard?" says Doug Young, who is now the district policy director for Representative Mark Udall, but who, as a policy advisor on environmental issues for Senator Tim Wirth in the early '90s, worked on behalf of Aspen residents, urging the EPA to conduct more studies and alter its plans.
The residents in the mostly low-income section of Aspen that fell within the Superfund boundary couldn't sell their homes or get second mortgages. Locals insisted that the lead levels in their neighborhood weren't high enough to warrant such an intrusive cleanup plan, and after much uproar, the EPA finally backed down. Caps were installed on some areas to contain what was already underground, and the EPA established covenants so that future property owners and developers wouldn't be allowed to dig too deep. The EPA finally took the area off the NPL in 1999, thirteen years after it first became a Superfund site.
"By its very nature, Superfund poses a chicken-and-egg kind of problem," Young says. "On the one hand, the EPA has enough information to know that there's a potential health issue, but to get the funds to find out the extent of it, it needs to get listed. The real issue for those in Left Hand Canyon is where the boundary will be drawn. It could be drawn so that it doesn't include a residential area; if they're outside the boundary, they're not liable. But they could be stigmatized by living next to it. I'm just hoping that the EPA will carry forward the lessons learned from Smuggler to Left Hand Canyon."
The EPA had originally planned to send its letter to Governor Owens, seeking his approval on the Left Hand Canyon listings, in June so that the proposal could be submitted before the beginning of the next fiscal year, which begins in September. But because of the pressure from the community, David Williams decided in late June to delay the listing until the Jamestown and Ward residents have a better understanding of Superfund's possible impacts. (On June 1, Williams led another tour of the contaminated sites for state representatives Bill Swenson and Alice Madden, state senator Joan Fitz-Gerald and a staffer from the governor's office).
"Out of respect for the residents, we're going to go ahead and delay it," Williams says, explaining that they will have six months to a year to figure things out. "A lot of things can develop during that period of time, in terms of other parties offering to help clean. A lot of times, when we start discussing an NPL, folks start coming out of the woodwork to volunteer to clean up. We want to let the communities work through their issues."
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Steve Edelstein, JaVayne Metzger and David Patterson haven't paid for their drinks yet, but they decide to make their way over to Elysian Park, glasses in hand; the owners of the Merc trust they'll come back to settle the bill. As they cross the bridge that straddles James Creek, which is flowing high with spring runoff, Metzger remarks on how clean the water is. The dirt road leading to the park is riddled with potholes, and the locals doubt it could tolerate the comings and goings of large trucks. A little boy riding his bike down the road does a good job maneuvering around the deep depressions.
Edelstein waves to "Fast Eddie," a white-haired man who sells hotdogs on Boulder's Pearl Street Mall. Metzger wonders aloud about the thousands of mines across Colorado that could someday come under EPA scrutiny.
"Where will it stop?" she asks.
When the three reach the park, the sun is just beginning to set, and the day's last light catches the leaves on the giant cottonwoods along the creek bed, making them shimmer. Two dogs chase each other through the grass, no owners in sight. Patterson stops and lets out an incredulous laugh. Shaking his head, he says, "This hardly looks like a Superfund site."


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Joseph Claver Richardson, a retired teacher and World War II veteran who was the patriarch of a family of nearly 60 children and grandchildren, died of cardiac arrest related to asthma Jan. 8 at Sinai Hospital. He was 89 and lived in Walbrook Junction.
Born in Baltimore and raised on Madison Avenue, he attended St. Peter Claver and St. Pius V schools. According to a 1944 Afro-American article, he had been recommended for ordination to the Roman Catholic priesthood by Archbishop Michael J. Curley. He was sent to the St. Augustine Seminary in Bay St. Louis, Mo. He spent four years there and later studied at St. Mary's Mission House in Techny, Ill. The article said he excelled in Latin.
He returned to Baltimore in 1943 for additional study in math and English at Morgan State University. He was then drafted into military service during World War II. He served in a medical unit in New Guinea and the Philippines.
After his discharge he studied for the priesthood in the Josephite Seminary in Washington, D.C. Earlier, he had been a student with the Benedictine and Society of Divine Word religious orders.
"My father was a devout Catholic and recognized he had a call from God," said his son, Frank Richardson of Baltimore. "He entered the seminary at 15. He was never ordained and was urged by his seminarian leaders to try teaching. In the days of segregation, they did not know where they could put him."
His pastor, the Rev. Donald Sterling of the New All Saints Roman Catholic Church in Forest Park, recalled Mr. Richardson as a "faith-filled man" who "wouldn't let the devil have the upper hand." He called him "hardworking, a committed contributor."
He also said that when Mr. Richardson brought his family to services, "They were so large, I called them the nation of Richardsons."
After earning a bachelor of arts at the Catholic University of America, he joined the Baltimore City Department of Education and taught at the Windsor Hills, Martin Luther King and William Lemmel schools. He also sold real estate and insurance in Walbrook.
"He was decked out in one of his many three-piece suits," said his daughter, Marisstella Vismale of Baltimore. "He was topped with a rugged cowboy hat. Claver was happy and energetic and always greeted people, even strangers, with jokes and smiles. His motto was 'Trust God.'"
As a young man he visited Africa and taught in Liberia and Ghana and taught religion at local churches. He also studied at Loyola University of Maryland.
"My father would always say that the spiritual training for the priesthood was his most important preparation and tool for a successful marriage and family life," his son said.
Mr. Richardson wrote religious plays, including one called "Christmas in Hell," inspired by his service in the Army. He also wrote another drama, "The Many Faces of Mary," which was also performed in his church.
"He was totally committed to his faith and family," said the Rev. Sy Peterka, pastor of St. Cecilia's Church.
Family members said he and his wife took their children to visit the old Kenesaw Nursing Home to pray, sing and greet the sick. He also assisted the homeless in West Baltimore.
Mr. Richardson was a member of the Knights of Columbus and the Legion of Mary. On Fridays, he and his wife visited prisons.
In addition to his son and daughter, survivors include his wife of nearly 52 years, the former Ann Elizabeth Sewell; four other sons, Jude Richardson, Joseph Richardson, Benedict Richardson and Raymond Richardson; nine other daughters, Martina Efeyini-Richardson, Anna McClain-Howell, Cecilia Parker, Michelle Richardson, Catherine Richardson, Angela Richardson, Mary Palmer, Maria Tates and Carmelita Richardson; 43 grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren. The survivors are all from the Baltimore area.
A Mass was offered Friday at the New All Saints Roman Catholic Church.


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Minecraft "Demo Pack" (Texture and World)
This small pack contains the cow texture from the PC Gamer Demo of Minecraft, as well as the demo map. This is not my work, I simply took the files from the demo. This texture pack is just a curiosity for those who want the PC Gamer-branded cows in the standard game.
The texture should work on all versions of Minecraft, as it only alters the cow texture. The save is a clean world as it would appear at the beginning of the demo (a starting chest and a giant PC Gamer logo being two points of interest). The save folder and the texture zip are contained within the linked zip file:
To install, just drop the two files into their relevant folders (which can be accessed from the Minecraft menu). The pack has its own thread on the Minecraft forums.
Screenshots (click to enlarge):
Skyrim Full Trailer Released
Bethesda have released the full trailer for the upcoming Elder Scrolls game, Skyrim. You can see it on their official website, Game Informer or YouTube:
It was definitely worth the wait. In the video you can see the new Dragon Shout powers, the dual-wielding option and the advanced graphics in action. What are your opinions? Leave them below in the comments!
Oblivion DLC – Knights of the Nine
This post will be about the Knights of the Nine official DLC for Oblivion, which adds a new questline and powerful new artifacts to the game.
Upon loading, you should start to hear people talking about an attack on the Chapel of Dibella in Anvil. All the priestesses were murdered, and now a prophet is ranting about the start of an attack on the Church itself. Visiting Anvil, you'll find the chapel has been desecrated with the blood of the priestesses. By talking to the Prophet outside, you'll discover that Umaril the Unfeathered, an ancient Ayleid king, has risen again and seeks revenge on the Gods. Umaril was killed long ago by the champion of men, Pelinal Whitestrake, using weapons and armour given to him by the Gods. But Umaril joined himself with the Daedra. Like the Daedra his spirit can't be killed, and now he has returned. The only way to defeat Umaril is to find the Crusader's Relics. But the Relics have been lost in time. Only by admitting to the Prophet that you are not a worthy knight will he tell you how to find them: you have to pray at the wayshrines of the Nine Divines.
Wayshrines are circular altars out in the wilderness that you may have come across before. This plugin changes how they function a bit. After praying at a wayshrine to each of the Nine you would usually receive a Greater Power called Pilgrim's Grace, but to get that now you have to complete this quest and then do the pilgrimage again with no infamy. But during the quest you will be cleared of infamy and then given a vision of Pelinal Whitestrake, up in the clouds above the Imperial City. He tells you that after his death, his friends built him a shrine in the old Ayleid settlement of Vanua. Vanua has since sunk into Lake Rumare, but can still be accessed after a short swim.
Vanua has a strange mix of Ayleid and Imperial fort architecture, with a few natural caves thrown in as well. It's filled with undead, but it has a good number of welkynd stones. Eventually you'll reach a dead end, with two locked doors. On the ground you'll find the skeleton of Sir Amiel. Take his ring, his journal and his key. The journal explains that he was a Knight of the Nine, a holy order dedicated to finding and protecting the Crusader's Relics. The ring will be needed later. The key opens up both locked doors (one leads up to the shrine, the other is a shortcut to the entrance). The Crusader's shrine can be seen on a balcony overhead, and you can skip a lot more enemies if you can jump up to it. Otherwise go through the caves. Once you reach the shrine, take the Helm of the Crusader. It was created by Dibella, and fortifies your restoration and personality, as well as adding the 'Serene Beauty' calm spell when equipped. Note that you need an infamy of under 2 to wear any of the Relics, so if you've picked up more you'll need to do the whole pilgrimage again.
Your only other lead on the Relics is the skeleton below you. His journal marks the Priory of the Nine on your map, which is in the West Weald. Going there you'll find an abandoned priory house and chapel. But if you look around the priory house you should find a symbol on the floor, which you can fit Sir Amiel's ring into. This will cause the symbol to sink down into the ground, creating a stairway and revealing the door to the basement. In the basement you'll find the entrance to the crypt, which is the final resting place for most of the old Knights. Inside you'll find the Cuirass of the Crusader, but before you can take it the ghost of Sir Amiel appears. He explains that you have to fight each of the Knights (who also appear around you) in single combat. Once you do, he'll attack you himself. By defeating him you will earn his respect, and can take the cuirass. It fortifies your health and restoration, and has a chance of resisting normal weapons (unenchanted weapons, not counting silver or Daedric). You can use the stand it was on to display the Relics when not in use, and putting them on it repairs, recharges and levels them.
You can talk to the rest of the knights to gain clues about the location of some of the Relics. You can do the quests in any order, but I recommend getting the gauntlets last.
To retrieve the Boots of the Crusader, you need to visit the Shrine of Kynareth. Instead of a chapel, the followers of Kynareth worship her outdoors "in the chapel of Her creation". Talking to Avita Vesnia will reveal the location of the Grove of Trials, an unmarked cave nearby. Once there you get attacked by a giant bear called the Forest Guardian. Don't attack it. Doing so will fail the quest and possibly add infamy. Eventually the bear will stop attacking and walk away, and the door into Kynareth's Grotto will appear. Inside you'll find two friendly spriggans (don't kill them or you get infamy) and the Boots. Wearing them will fortify your restoration and give you the Woodland Grace ability, which means that natural animals won't attack you. When you return to the priory you'll find Avita there, asking to become a Knight of the Nine. Granting her request will change her name to Sir Avita, and she will be equipped with a Knights of the Nine cuirass and shield, as well as chainmail armour. Also, the Chapel of Mara in Bravil will be desecrated after this quest (although you won't hear it from anyone other than your knights, and the townspeople don't seem bothered). One of the advanced restoration trainers, Marz, will be killed along with the rest of the priests and priestesses.
After you recruit your first knight, two Nord brothers named Geimund and Gukimar will show up at the priory on their horses. They served in the Legion for a while, and came all the way from Skyrim to join your Crusade.
To retrieve the Mace of the Crusader, you have to go to the Chapel of Zenithar in Leyawiin. The priests there don't like your quest for the Relics, but you'll meet Carodus Oholin who is friendly towards you. He's there to protect the priests, who fear another attack. To get the mace you need to go into the undercroft and pray at the tomb of Saint Kaladas. You will be transported to a void, with the Mace in the distance. To get to it you must equip the Boots of the Crusader, which will create a glowing blue path over to the Mace. Grab it to be teleported back to the undercroft. When you enter the chapel you will find it being attacked by strange golden creatures called Aurorans. These are in fact Daedra, and are the servants of the Daedric Prince Meridia (who is Umaril's ally). The priests and even random citizens can be killed during the battle. If you're any good with blunt weapons, you should use the Mace as Auroran's are weak to fire magic. (The Mace will also turn undead, which will be handy later on, and it adds the Crusader's Arm effect which fortifies your blunt skill.) By searching the Aurorans' bodies you can find gems, jewellery, enchanted Ayleid battle axes which deal shock damage and even some welkynd stones if you're lucky. After the attack the priests will be a lot more sympathetic to your holy quest, and Carodus will ask to become a Knight of the Nine.
To receive the Shield of the Crusader you need to go to Fort Bulwark, which was built by Sir Henrik and his friends to keep the Shield safe. The abandoned fort has recently been taken over by a group of conjurers who seek the Shield as well. In the first area you need to find a turn handle to open a gate needed to proceed. (You can also find a conjurer's note which hints at a puzzle further on.) Follow the path behind the gate and you'll come to a balcony with another handle. Turning it will lower two drawbridges in front of you. Backtrack to the drawbridges to come to a room with panels on the floor. You need to stand on the panels according to the candles on the wall (which were placed there by the conjurers, according to the note). The proper sequence is left panel, right panel, middle panel, left panel. This will open up the gate in front of you, giving access to the next zone.
The next area is being used as a torture area. Inside a cell you'll find Sir Thedret, a knight also seeking the shield. Free him and he will give you another clue to a puzzle, and will then exit the fort claiming he'll see you again. Continuing on, you'll reach a large amount of dart traps on the roof, over a set of drawbridges. The darts fall in sequence, so if you watch carefully you can make it through unharmed. Or you could just run like hell. In the next room you'll find four statues and a large statue of Julianos. These are the guardians Sir Thedret told you about. You need to use the turn handles located on these statues to make them face the circle on the floor. This will open up a door into the final zone.
In this zone you'll find a large room with many chests around the wall, and one chest in the middle. By watching the chests you'll notice that items appear over them. Remember these items and step on the panel in front of the middle chest to receive one of them. Your goal is to place each item from the chest into the proper chest along the wall. Once you do the statue above will light up. When all statues are lit up the wall behind the middle chest will move, revealing the Shield. It has a chance of reflecting spells cast at the player. Use one of the side passages to the right or left to take a shortcut back to the first zone. Return to the priory to be greeted by Sir Thedret, who will join the Knights of the Nine (without asking for your permission) and become your second-in-command. As long as this isn't the last quest (because if it is you will be greeted by Lathon upon your return) then a smith named Sergius Turrianus will appear in the basement, saying Thedret and him go "way back" and he said there was need of a smith. There isn't actually, as all the Relics are repaired for free when put on the display dummy in the priory undercroft and NPCs never use smiths, but it's a nice touch.
To get the Gauntlets of the Crusader you need to go to the Chapel of Stendarr in Chorrol. Sir Casimir, the ghost who tells you about them, had killed a beggar by striking him while wearing the Gauntlets of the God of Mercy. Because of this, him and his entire lineage was cursed, and the gauntlets fell to the floor. They became unnaturally heavy, and no mortal man could lift them. By going to the chapel in Chorrol, a priest there tells you that an ancestor of Sir Casimir, Kellan, came to the chapel to see if his curse could be lifted. The curse makes the bearer constantly weary. By talking to Kellen, you learn that he suspects the priest you talked to (Areldur) knows how to lift the curse. Areldur admits that he could lift the curse, but it would mean taking it on himself. You need to do it, so pray at the altar to receive the 'Lay Hands' lesser power. Use it on Kellen and he will start running around, thanking you. For the rest of the game he will run from city to city. Now you can lift the gauntlets, but your fatigue has been badly damaged. The Gauntlets fortify your restoration skill, and help you resist disease. They also add the 'Merciful Touch' spell, which allows you to heal others at a stupidly low magicka cost. Areldur will wander off to rethink his calling, and will eventually show up at the priory wanting to become a Knight.
Once you've completed all four of the ghosts' quests, a squire named Lathon will show up at the priory. You may have met Lathon and Sir Roderic of Wayrest while on your pilgrimage, as Sir Roderic also wanted to become a Crusader. But it seems when Roderic finished his pilgrimage, he recieved a terrible vision from Sir Berich. Sir Berich was once a Knight of the Nine, but was corrupted by the War of the Red Diamond and killed Sir Caius with the Sword of the Crusader. Sir Caius admits that it was he who first drew his sword, however. Anyway, Sir Roderic became convinced he had to free Sir Berich from evil. He eventually found the tomb of Lord Vlindrel (Sir Berich) in Underpall Cave, which is actually an underground burial site. Inside they recovered the Greaves of the Crusader, but Sir Roderic was slain by the wraith of Lord Vlindrel who wielded the Sword of the Crusader. Lathon ran away with them, and now will give them to you. The Greaves fortify your restoration and destruction magic, and give you the Blessing of the Eight spell, which shields your allies. Lathon also requests to become a Knight of the Nine and wants to accompany you Underpall Cave to avenge Sir Roderic.
Underpall Cave is in the vanilla game, but this mod adds Lord Berich's tomb to the last zone, and also replaces the necromancer boss at the end with Lord Vlindrel's ghost during this quest. The dungeon is filled with undead, so the Mace of the Crusader will be useful here. There's also a vampire in there somewhere, if you're looking for vampire dust. Sir Lathon usually gets himself killed inside, so it might be smart to leave him outside if you think you can handle it yourself. Once you reach the area with the underground lake, look for Lord Vlindrel. He looks like a Gloom Wraith, but has the same glowing effect as a Nether Lich. Kill it and take the Sword (but don't equip it, because you'll get cursed for the rest of the quest). The Sword has been turned to evil, so you need to go to the Chapel of Arkay (it's creator) in Cheydinhal and reconsecrate it. When you arrive you'll find the chapel under attack from Aurorans. Kill them off. It's too late to save Arkay's living saint and the last advanced restoration trainer, however. That means that if you ever wanted to get the restoration master training quest you just missed your chance. Activate the altar to reconsecrate the Sword, and then head back to the priory. The Sword does fire damage and drains an enemy's magicka, and gives you the Crusader's Arm effect (which fortifies blade this time). When you equip all the Relics, you gain the Holy Aura, Umaril's Bane and Crusader's Bane effects.
When you arrive at the priory you'll meet Sir Thedret, who says that the Prophet is preaching in the chapel. Inside you'll find your Knights and Brellin (a Bosmer from Silvenar, Valenwood, who worships Akatosh and wants to join the Crusade) listening to the Prophet. Talk to the Prophet, who will congratulate you on gathering all the Relics and claim that you are Pelinal Whitestrake reborn. He will then tell you that your quest was pointless because Umaril's spirit will simply return to Oblivion when killed. However, in Pelinal's time there were only Eight Divines, because Tiber Septim hadn't ascended to become Talos yet. The Prophet grants you Talos' blessing, which will allow you to follow Umaril's spirit and destroy him once and for all. The Blessing of Talos is a lesser power with zero magicka cost. It drains your speed an agility while fortifying your strength and endurance. It also has a script effect, which only has an effect when following Umaril's spirit.
The Prophet says that Garlas Malatar, an old Ayleid ruin, is Umaril's stronghold. Your knights set off at once, and if they survive the journey there will be waiting outside the ruin for you. A lot of the knights may die inside, and if they do they will be replaced with generic, unnamed 'Knights of the Nine' at the end of the questline. When you launch the attack, Aurorans will come out of the ruin to attack. Be careful when attacking them, because it's possible to hit one of your knights by mistake when they swarm around them. Inside the ruins you'll find more Aurorans and some welkynd stones. Your knights will gather around three locked gates. This would be a good time to rest for a while or heal them with magic. Once you're ready to continue, activate the push block to open the gates. Both paths are filled with Aurorans and whichever path you don't follow will probably have multiple fatalities. Your knights will rush into the second zone, but feel free to explore a little before you continue.
In the second zone your knights will be trapped behind gates again, so make sure to heal them as there's a battle ahead. Activate the push block, but ignore the Aurorans as they can't die in this zone. You need to rush past them and get up to the area with the Dark Orb. This is what's keeping the Aurorans alive. Activate it to shatter it. This will cause your knights and the attacking Aurorans to disappear. Go back for any loot you missed if you want, and then continue on alone into the third zone. There aren't many enemies in this area, but at the end of it you'll find Umaril. He has some nasty shock spells, but should be easy enough to kill. Take the two varla stones and Umaril's sword and have a look in the boss chest before you cast the Blessing of Talos. Once you do a dense fog will appear and you'll be transported into the spiritual plane once again (the same place you met Pelinal). Kill Umaril again (it should be easier this time), and you'll begin falling towards the Imperial City below.
You wake up in the priory undercroft, were you are congratulated by the ghost of Sir Amiel. You might want to turn on subtitles though, because he speaks way too quietly. He says that he and the rest of the ghosts can now depart, but you can activate their tombs for blessings. I always activate Sir Amiel's tomb because he gives the blessing of Akatosh, which fortifies strength. (Although I don't know why he has a tomb since his skeleton is in Vanua.) All the ghosts disappear then, except for one. The ghost of Sir Berich thanks you for freeing him from the evil that had corrupted his soul, before following his companions. Upon walking out of the undercroft, Sir Thedret shows up. He says that after the battle they found your body, and thought you had had the same fate as Pelinal. Follow him outside where the rest of the knights had gathered and listen to his speech (but don't interrupt anything because there are a lot of glitches associated with this). After the celebrations, the knights will resume their usual schedules and the questline is over. You get a shiny new set of armour and the knights can be used as companions. The priory is also fully repaired by now.
Any priests who die during the questline will usually be replaced at the end. However, the replacements for Mars and Ohtesse cannot give you the recommendation needed to get master restoration training. Several books are also added by this plugin, which can be found in chapels or bought from Southern Books in Leyawiin. By starting the pilgrimage you become a Pilgrim of the Nine Divines faction, which allows you into all areas of a chapel and lets you take things from them without stealing. This makes the Thieves Guild quest The Elven Maiden especially easy, as the undercroft guard won't even attack you. An abandoned fort named Lord Vlindrel's Tower, located southwest of Chorrol is added by this plugin. It was probably the original site of Sir Berich's tomb, but now it doesn't even have a dungeon and serves little purpose ingame.
A mod this size will have its fair share of bugs (the biggest ones for me being the stupid Anvil chapel attack rumours appearing on NPCs which shouldn't have it and all the new icons being fuzzy unless the graphics are on high) but all are avoidable or unnoticeable so I won't include them. This plugin adds a lot more hours of play to the game, and not only does it prove that the Nine Divines actually do stuff but it also continues on the story of Pelinal Whitestrake who was only ever mentioned in books before. The Aurorans are cool too, and since infamy has mostly negative effects on gameplay, it's good to be able to get rid of it. I also like the Prophet, because it seems like he's an avatar of Talos. Note the similarities between him and Uriel/Martin Septim (both direct descendants of Tiber Septim), the fact that he refers to the gods as the Eight and One (which is old-fashioned) and the way he casually gives you the Blessing of Talos. It wouldn't be the first time Talos appeared as an avatar, either (Wulf from Morrowind, for example). Overall, I think this questline is fun to play but a bit too dominating on the rest of the game.
Screenshots (click to enlarge):
The Prophet in Anvil.
The desecrated chapel in Anvil.
One of the wayshrines to the Nine Divines.
Speaking with the legendary Pelinal Whitestrake in the skies above the Imperial City.
The helm of the Crusader on the altar in Vanua.
Fighting the ghosts of the original Knights of the Nine as they protect the cuirass of the Crusader.
A stained glass window above the priory crypt, depicting the battle between Pelinal Whitestrake and Umaril the Unfeathered.
The gauntlets of the Crusader and their caretaker, Areldur, in the chapel in Chorrol.
The Shrine of Kynareth, located in the heart of the Great Forest.
Sergius Turrianus, a blacksmith invited to the priory by Sir Thedret.
Knights of the Nine training in the priory basement.
The fully-restored Priory of the Nine.
The entrance to Kynareth's Grotto, location of the boots of the Crusader.
Garlas Malatar, an Ayleid ruin being used as a base by Umaril. Also contains the only respawning Aurorans.
An Auroran, servant of Meridia.
Fighting Umaril for the first time in Garlas Malatar. After you defeat his physical body, you need to follow his spirit before it escapes back to Oblivion, and fight him a second time.
The Crusader's Relics on display on the armour stand in the priory crypt.
My next post will be a review of the Main Quest in Oblivion. To make sure you keep up-to-date on any new posts, you can follow me on Twitter or get notified by email by subscribing using the widget on the sidebar.
Other Oblivion Posts:
- Oblivion
- Horse Armour
- Orrery
- Wizard's Tower
- Thieves Den
- Mehrunes' Razor
- The Vile Lair
- Spell Tomes
- Fighter's Stronghold
Oblivion DLC – Fighter's Stronghold
This post will be about the Fighter's Stronghold plugin for Oblivion, which adds a player home suited for fighter characters.
When you start the game with the plugin installed, you get a journal update saying you heard a rumour about a siege at Battlehorn Castle. The lord of the castle has been killed, and the defenders are offering the castle itself as a reward for anyone who can help lift the siege. Battlehorn Castle is located at the end of the Black Road, west of the city of Chorrol. When you arrive there you should find four marauders and the besieged defenders battling it out. On the ground you'll find the corpse of Lord Kelvyn, the previous owner. Once all the marauders have been defeated, talk to one of the remaining men-at-arms. They will present you with Lord Kevlyn's will, which gives you legal ownership of the castle.
The will explains that Battlehorn Castle was built by remnants of the Knights of the True Horn, who were banished from Hammerfell when they failed to dethrone Baron Shrike of Lainlyn. Their leader, Lord Kain, ordered the Knights to split up into small groups until he called for them to regroup. Lord Kevlyn's father, Lord Jaren, was part of the group to settle in Cyrodiil. All the others disbanded or passed on, and Lord Jaren came to be the leader of Battlehorn Castle. However, the Knights had fallen on hard times, and many of the furniture had to be sold to pay for castle maintenance. Lord Kelvyn recommends finding Nilphas Omellian, who may hold many of the original items. Of course, you'll have to pay off the debts to get them back.
Without the upgrades, the castle is fairly bare. There are very few inhabitants: two men-at-arms to guard the castle, Niels the smith (he lives in a hut in the courtyard) who can repair your gear, and the smith's pet wolf, Hjalti. There's an altar to Julianos in the great hall, a dusty old hunting trophy (a stuffed black bear) in the east wing, a vat in the cellar containing 20 bottles of mead, a bed in the private quarters and a few hidden secrets (which I'll talk about later). Nilphas can be found at The Merchants Inn in the Imperial City Market District. The upgrades you can buy from him are:
- A wine cellar upgrade. This adds wine racks, a second vat (with 20 bottles of cheap wine in it) and many smaller vats (for unique wine) to the cellar. It also hires a vintner named Talan, who is a brother of the famous winemaker Tamika of Skingrad. Given the right ingredients, he can make unique wines added by the plugin. These appear in the seven small vats (one for each new wine). Talan will also restock the two large vats with mead and cheap wine.
- A bedroom upgrade. This adds a larger bed, some much-needed furniture and a personal maid to your private quarters. The maid, Rona Benanius, can serve you any drinks the wine cellar has in stock, as well as cheese, grapes, sweetrolls, Shepard's Pie, strawberies and mutton. She also sometimes knocks over items you have on display, and will take a weapon to defend herself with if attacked. She can be told to follow the player.
- A kitchen area upgrade, which adds some cupboards, tables and a dead deer to a room in the basement. It also hires Plautis Rusonius, a cook who used to work at the Tiber Septim Hotel in the Talos Plaza District of the Imperial City. He can provide you with the same stuff as your maid.
- A library upgrade, which adds a large amount of books to your private quarters.
- A trophy room upgrade. It hires Melisi Daren, a taxidermist, and transforms an empty room in the east wing into a taxidermy area. By giving her pelts or ingredients collected from dead enemies, she can create replicas and will put them on display in the great hall. She can create eight stuffed replicas: wolf, (brown) bear, lion, troll, ogre, minotaur, clannfear and daedroth. The daedroth replica is placed on a stand near the entrance, while the rest are in a room behind.
- A barracks upgrade, which adds two more men-at-arms and a captain called Castellan Athon. The men-at-arms respawn, but if the captain dies you can buy another (nameless) castellan from Nilphas.
- A training area upgrade. This adds several training dummies and archery targets to a room in the basement. It also hires a sparring partner, Shagrol gro-Uzug. Shagrol was once a famous Arena champion. When sparring, he uses special weapons which cause no damage (good for training block, but won't help you train light or heavy armour). As he's marked essential, he won't die but will simply be knocked unconscious.
- A dining area upgrade, which turns the crappy benches and ceramics in the east wing into upper-class silverware and fancy tables and chairs.
- Once you've purchased at least one other upgrade, Nilphas will send a letter to Battlehorn Castle. It will be delivered to you by one of your men-at-arms. Nilphas has come into possession of an ancient Dwemer forge, and is wiling to sell it to you – even though by law you need an Imperial charter to trade Dwemer artifacts (although no merchants in either Vvardenfell nor Cyrodiil really care). It will replace the generic forge in the courtyard once purchased, and standing near it will fortify your armourer skill by 15 points. Plus it looks awesome.
Once you've bought all the upgrades, a chest will be placed at the end of your bed. Inside you'll find Lord Kelvyn's Bulwark, an enchanted shield with the emblem of the Knights of the True Horn displayed on it (the same as the shields your men-at-arms have). But it doesn't end there. Like all castles, Battlehorn has a few secret passages. One can be found by using the door at the back of the wine cellar. It will lead to a small, closed-off room. If you look carefully however, you will see a movable pillar on the wall. The wall will slide down and you'll find yourself in the great hall. A second movable pillar can be found in your private quarters, which will reveal a secret storage room. Inside you'll find the journal of Lord Jaren, Kelvyn's father.
It tells of how, when only himself and his friend Garridan were in the castle, Lord Kain arrive. He was accompanied by Arielle Jurard – not the friendly battlemage from a Mages Guild quest, however. This Arielle was a necromancer. Lord Kain had trouble speaking and moved like an old man, and left a bad smell behind. Arielle explained that Lord Kain had died in battle shortly after the Knights split, but she had raised him again and planned to use him as an undead puppet once Baron Shrike was defeated. Lord Jaren was appalled, and he and Garridan sealed them into the 'grotto'. He had planned to tell his son Kelvyn about it one day, but as explained in Lord Kelvyn's will his father had a premature death and obviously never got around to it.
The journal hints that the entrance to the grotto was once in the training room. Behind the archery target you'll find an unlit candelabra. Pulling it will open up a secret tunnel which leads down into the grotto. Inside you'll find a skeleton and a nether lich. Arielle somehow transformed herself into a lich, and according to a scrap of paper found on her body the skeleton was the remains of Lord Kain. The resurrection hadn't worked properly and his flesh had decomposed, but he still remained "alive". Lord Kain holds two unique items: the Dragonsword of Lainlyn, an enchanted longsword which gives the player a special fire spell when equipped, and Lord Kain's Shield, another enchanted shield of the True Horn, which gives off 10 feet of light. You can also find three varla stones and a loot chest in the grotto.
This plugin is my favourite player house. It adds a lot of unique items and has some interesting upgrades. Plus, you get your own castle. I also really enjoyed the references to The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall. Baron Shrike, Lord Kain, Lainlyn and the Knights of the True Horn all appear in Daggerfall. Baron Shrike was the leader of the Host of the Horn, the official military force in Lainlyn, Hammerfell. Lord Kain was his brother, but Shrike was a ruthless leader and Kain formed the Knights of the True Horn to dethrone him. This mod continues the story, and even though I never played much of Daggerfall I enjoyed reading about the lore. The altar to Julianos is also a nice touch, as Julianos is the main deity of Lainlyn.
The knight who helped Lord Jaren seal up the grotto, Garridan, can be met during the miscellaneous quest 'Tears of the Savior'. He is frozen in a block of ice, and the quest is to collect his frozen tears which have been transformed into crystals. More can be learned from the ingame book Knightfall, which is written by a 'Jaren Aethelweald'. The taxidermist you hire comes with a recommendation from her previous employer, a man named Baenlin. In a Dark Brotherhood quest you have to kill Baenlin by dropping a mounted minotaur head on him (which was probably made by Milisi). These easter eggs really make the mod more fun. However, this plugin was also the hardest to obtain, as it doesn't come with any retail disc and the Bethesda online store doesn't accept PayPal. >.> Buying Oblivion off Steam is probably the easiest way to get it, as well as the rest of the DLC and the Shivering Isles expansion pack.
Screenshots (click to enlarge):
Battlehorn Castle exterior.
A man-at-arms.
A few of the stuffed replicas on display.
The wine cellar. Talan is hiding in the corner drinking all the expensive stuff, but you can't see him from this angle.
The Dwemer forge. To be honest I think they just used the textures from Morrowind.
The secret grotto.
Nilphas Omellian, open for business.
Lord Kelvyn's Chest. If he had worn his magical shield into battle maybe he wouldn't have died. "But it would get all dented!" 🙄
My next post will be about the Knights of the Nine DLC (but it might take a while as this is the largest official plugin, and I'm back to school). To make sure you keep up-to-date on any new posts, you can follow me on Twitter or get notified by email by subscribing using the widget on the sidebar.
Other Oblivion Posts:
Oblivion DLC – Spell Tomes
This post will be about the Spell Tomes official plugin for Oblivion.
This plugin adds a large amount of new books to the game. These books are called tomes, and opening them will give you the option of learning a spell specific to that book. It's cheaper than buying them off spell merchants, but the tomes can only be found as random loot. A tome has a 25% chance of replacing a scroll, so you can find them anywhere you would find a scroll: chests in dungeons, mage enemies, etc. The only guaranteed place you can find a tome is on the body of a conjurer who is added by the plugin. He appears outside Fort Cedrian at the start of the game, and tracks down the player until he finds you and attacks. Killing him will yield a random spell tome.
The new tomes not only teach you hundreds of pre-existing spells (such as the Summon Dremora Lord spell, which usually becomes unavailable after a certain point in the Mages Guild questline), they also offer new spells which have some interesting effects. These effects, which were not previously available as spells, include Summon Bear (only available to spriggans), Stunted Magicka (usually only caused by disease or the Atronach birthsign), Sun Damage (an effect normally caused by vampirism), Fortify Skill and Resist Frost/Disease/Poison/Paralysis. A few tomes also teach spells which were only listen in the construction set, and weren't available in-game.
The idea behind this plugin was to make dungeon diving more beneficial to mage characters. Fighter characters could get new armour and weapons in dungeons, and now mages can get new spells. After learning the spell, you can sell the tome to a merchant for some gold. I think that this mod makes a significant change to the game, and while it isn't as obvious as a huge tower on top of a mountain it still makes a big difference. Other than the conjurer showing up in the middle of the night and trying to kill me and a slight bug which sometimes gives the player a spell upon loading, this plugin is great.
A spell tome (click to enlarge picture).
The next post will be about the Fighter's Stronghold DLC. To make sure you keep up-to-date on any new posts, you can follow me on Twitter or get notified by email by subscribing using the widget on the sidebar.
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Oblivion DLC – The Vile Lair
This post will be about The Vile Lair official plugin, which adds a player home suited for a vampire character.
When you load up the game, a 'bloodstained note' will be added to your inventory. It's from a murderous stalker who has been following you. He is dying and wants to leave his home, Deepscorn Hollow, to you. All he asks in return is for you to kill people. Creepy. Deepscorn Hollow is located on a marshy island in Topal Bay. Above ground it looks like a burned-out house sinking into the swamp, but there's a hollow tree trunk underwater with a secret door inside it. Entering the door, you'll end up in a cave-like room. At the water's edge you'll find a dead slaughterfish, a pearl and the stalker's journal.
The stalker, Greywyn, was once a member of the Crimson Scars. It was originally a subsection of the Dark Brotherhood, only for vampires. They had planned to purge the Brotherhood of all non-vampires, but were betrayed and killed or driven away. Greywyn survived, and he retreated to Deepscorn Hollow. He prayed to Sithis (the Dark Brotherhood's deity), and eventually learns that he has offended Sithis with his vampirism. So he sought the cure, and discovers that Purgeblood Salts are the answer. The journal ends there. Apart from historical information, it reveals the location of another Crimson Scar, a man named Rowley Eardwulf at the Wawnet Inn. He helped Greywyn fix up Deepscorn before, and he'll sell you the upgrades to the lair.
Without upgrades, the lair has a Font of Renewal, Purgeblood Salt veins, an 'Unusual Box' beside the shrine to Sithis which contains a unique Daedric dagger – the 'Crimson Eviscerator', a bed, Greywyn's four caches (sacks which are full of gems, gold and enchanted items), a pair of rare wrist irons, a bucket of gold hanging from the roof in the entrance area (you need an arrow or spell to knock the gold down), and a handy second entrance through a trap door.
The upgrades for this player home are, in my opinion, the best in the game:
- A bedroom area, which replaces the bed with a unique sleeping coffin and adds a respawning sample of Nirnroot (a rare ingredient needed for a quest, which never respawns normally).
- A Garden of Venomgrowth underneath the bucket of gold. It's similar to the alchemy garden in Frostcrag Spire, but it includes only poisonous plants. It also has a unique plant found nowhere else – chokeberry vines. You can harvest chokeberries from the three vines, which are small berries which instantly kill anyone who eats them – including the player. They are similar to poison apples, but aren't weightless so they can't be reverse-pickpocketed.
- A dining area which adds better lighting, a small table of food and a few cupboards.
- A cattle cell which contains human cattle. The cattle is an unwakable man who can be used for feeding by vampire characters.
- A Dark Minion, a Dunmer vampire who you can order to murder people and take their treasure. He can fail his task, in which case he won't bring home any treasure. If he succeeds he places the loot in a chest in his quarters. Either way you get one infamy point. When at home he can be found sleeping, painting with the blood from a decomposing torso, raking the garden of venomgrowth, eating, praying to Sithis and stealing your books.
- A study area which adds a large collection of books, including five skill books and two unique books added by the plugin (Manifesto Cyrodiil Vampyrum and Opusculus Lamae Bal ta Mezzamortie).
- A storage area, which adds a lot of chests and crates for storing items. It also adds 'Greywyn's Poison Supply', a chest filled with a large collection of poisons.
- The 'Ichor of Sithis', an item needed to activate the Shrine to Sithis. Once you pour the ichor into the basin, you can pray to Sithis and receive blessings. This shrine is the equivalent to Chapel altars for infamous characters. Good characters won't get a blessing. Your infamy must exceed your fame for the altar to work. The higher your infamy, the better the blessing, ending at 90+ infamy.
The Font of Renewal adds an easy way to cure yourself of vampirism. Usually you need to do a very long quest to obtain the cure. I like to do the quest anyway, but this cure is much simpler. All you need to do is take some purgeblood salt (an ingredient added by the plugin) from the nearby 'purgeblood salt veins', and activate the Shrine of Renewal in the pool below. Simple as that.
Once you've purchased all upgrades for Deepscorn Hollow, a cupboard called 'Greywyn's Armoire' will appear in the bedroom area. Inside you'll find the Raiment of the Crimson Scar, a unique set of Dark Brotherhood shrouded armour.
Screenshots (click to enlarge):
The underwater entrance.
The Garden of Venomgrowth.
The Dark Minion.
The coffin bed.
The prisoner.
The Font of Renewal.
Rowley Eardwulf in the Wawnet Inn, scaring off customers with his weird smile.
The Shrine to Sithis. You can see the Dark Minion praying at the bottom.
Greywyn's Armoire.
The next post will be about the Spell Tomes plugin. To make sure you keep up-to-date on any new posts, you can follow me on Twitter or get notified by email by subscribing using the widget on the sidebar.
Other Oblivion Posts:


text:
Lyman homeowner confronted by burglar in yard
LYMAN, N.H. (AP) � Police say a man was confronted by a burglar in his yard as he arrived home in Lyman, N.H.
The homeowner saw a strange vehicle in his yard and discovered a window screen had been ripped open Wednesday afternoon.
Police said a man then left the house through the front door, carrying a jewelry box and a revolver from the home. The man reportedly said to the homeowner not to do anything foolish before running to his car and leaving.
A state trooper later spotted the vehicle in Lyman, but an attempt to catch up with it was unsuccessful.
Police said the vehicle was found abandoned a short time later in a wooded area in Lyman. It was stolen out of Littleton. Police are still looking for the suspect.