User:Nephele

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Hi, I'm Nephele. I joined this site in May 2006, and have since become a regular contributor on the site (typically #2 on the list of Active Users), and one of the site administrators.

If you would like to contact me, any of the following should work:

Flag United States of America.png This user is from the United States.
User-userbox-Admin.png This user is an Administrator on the wiki.
User-userbox-Oblivion.png This user is knowledgeable about Oblivion.
Flag UK.png This user is from Great Britain.
User-userbox-Patroller.jpg This user is a Recent Changes Patroller.
OB-icon-Knights of the Nine.png This user is knowledgeable about Knights of the Nine.
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User-userbox-Shivering Isles.png This user is knowledgeable about Shivering Isles.
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FemaleIcon.png This user is female.

Nephele[edit]

Nephele (nef e le) was a nymph and the ancient greek goddess of clouds. She was also mother of the Centaurs. A small handful of people may recognize the name as the root of "nephelometer" which is a modern scientific instrument used to study clouds.

As the woman behind the name, I can't claim to be able to control clouds, but I do know a lot about them: I'm a scientist who studies the atmosphere. My husband and I live in Santa Cruz, California. Contrary to public opinion, I really do have a life outside the wiki ;) I keep busy remodeling our house, gardening, skiing, hiking with Guinness (my dog), and occasionally playing this game called "Oblivion"....

My Current Status[edit]

In short, yes, I'm still alive and, yes, I'm still interested in UESP... but I'm not going to be able to return to my previous level of involvement here. UESP can only be, at most, a casual hobby for me.

I didn't intend to disappear for months. At first I just needed to take a couple weeks to focus exclusively on work. But by then I realized how much more I enjoyed work now if I wasn't trying to juggle both UESP and work, and realized that I had to rethink my UESP involvement before starting to contribute again.

I think I'm ready to experiment with whether I can balance UESP with my current life; try helping out with one or two tasks that can be completed when I have a few spare minutes. But I can only make occasional contributions to the site if I can do it out without UESP then being a distraction when I don't have time for UESP. In other words, when I need to put all my energy elsewhere, I need to be free to disappear for as long as necessary, without warning or explanation, and without leaving anyone at UESP in the lurch waiting on me to do something. So I won't be making plans to do any specific tasks and I won't be making any commitments; I doubt I'll even be getting involved in discussions or interacting much with the community. Obviously I'm not an anonymous editor, but I won't be much more reliable or involved than an anonymous editor.

One request I have for the community is: please don't start making requests on my talk page or turning it into a todo list. I'm fully aware that there are tasks at UESP that can't be done by other admins. But I have enough todo lists elsewhere in my life -- I can only enjoy UESP if it's a place where I'm getting away from pressure. If UESP is another source of stress, I'll continue to avoid the site in my free time and instead find other ways to relax. I feel that if I'm making minor contributions to UESP, I'm at least helping out a bit -- which is better than not contributing at all. Start with baby steps, and then see where they lead.

Wiki Information[edit]

Why am I contributing?[edit]

First and foremost is that I really enjoy playing Oblivion. Or at least I used to, until I became wiki-addicted; now I rarely find any time to play :| . I also really like to figure out the details of the game: what all those unusual spells do; how to make powerful potions; how to survive as I keep pushing the difficulty slider a little bit further to the right. This site is a great place to learn from everyone else and share some of the tidbits I've figured out: I think the collaborative nature of the wiki makes it easy for us to all combine our various insights and make it a much more comprehensive site.

What I can help with[edit]

Feel free to ask on my talk page if you have questions about the wiki and how to get things done. I'm pretty familiar with most aspects of wiki editing at this point, including some of the more complicated features such as tables, templates, and CSS styles.

As for game questions, I'm still Oblivion-only (OK, yes, I have bought Morrowind and installed it, but that's still as far as I've gotten). I typically play on Xbox 360, but I do also have the PC version and I've fiddled some with PC-only features such as the construction set and the console.

Why did I mess with your edit?[edit]

I spend a lot of my time on the wiki patrolling the hundreds of new edits made to the site every day. As part of that process, I clean up a lot of the changes made by other editors and delete redundant contributions. My main motivation is to maintain the overall quality and style of the site. Trying to make sure that all changes to the site are improvements is one way that I can ensure that UESPWiki is constantly evolving into a better, more useful site for all readers.

If I radically altered or reverted a good-faith edit that you made, please understand that I didn't do it to be mean-spirited or to discourage you in any way from continuing to contribute. If you're new to the site you might want to read over Getting Started for some general pointers about editing. If you don't understand the reason for any edit I've made, I'd be happy to discuss it with you in more detail: post a question on the page's talk page, post a question on my talk page, or email me. I admit that I don't really know everything about Oblivion and I know I've been wrong about changes that I've made in the past ;)

What I've done so far[edit]

I've fiddled on lots of pages. Some of my more substantial contributions have been:

Skyrim Notes[edit]

The videos I've watched so far haven't contained some of the info I'll need to test data extraction from the Skyrim game files. Specifically I'm missing:

  • Enchanted weapons:
    • 'Charge/Cost = Uses' information for a few weapons
    • Gold values of a few enchanted weapons (ideally both fully charged and empty of charge)
  • Gold values of some enchanted armor (and ideally, for some enchanted clothes more valuable than the Apprentice Hood of Magicka)
  • Armor rating of one piece of armor at a few different armor skill levels
  • Gold values for some scrolls
  • Gold values of soul gems (empty and filled)
  • Gold values of some non-potion beverages (wine, beer)
  • Magicka costs of a few spells at a few different magic skill levels
  • Skills of a few skill books
  • Alchemy effects for some ingredients (ideally all 4 effects for at least one ingredient)
  • Names of some spells/potions/enchanted items that affect skills (fortify/damage/drain/restore/etc)
  • Data (values, weights) for some keys -- in particular non-zero values
  • Data (values, weights) for some torches or other lights, plus duration of torch. Again, non-zero values preferred
  • Some recipes used for cooking (may also be used for smithing?)

My Oblivion Characters[edit]

So far I've created four full-fledged Oblivion characters, all on Xbox 360. It's my way of trying out different types of characters, and each character has tackled different parts of the game. I also have one bizarre character I've created on the PC who is used exclusively for testing and taking screenshots.

Nephele: A carefree Dunmer born under the sign of the Shadow, who blindly accepted her assigned class of Agent. Back when she explored Cyrodiil, life was much easier (i.e. the difficulty slider was set to minimum) so she never had to work too hard to get by. She wandered from town talking to townspeople and doing various odd jobs to help them out. She naturally developed a lot of personality from all her chatting, but never put any effort into training any useful skills. She decided to try joining a couple of guilds for the fun of it, but kept getting too distracted by other requests to ever make any real progress in the guilds (Bandit in the Thieves Guild and Apprentice in the Fighters Guild).

Recently, she's noticed that all the monsters in Cyrodiil have become a lot harder to kill. Since she can't even take on two goblins at the same time any more, she's decided to go into semi-retirement. She spends most of her time riding her Black Horse around Cheydinhal.

Level: 16; 65 hours play time.

Kharag gro-Aruk: A male Orc Warrior of a custom Orc Warrior class. He always tries to do the right thing (he thinks he's found a soulmate in Mazoga the Orc). He believes in fighting his enemies face-to-face: he is pretty deadly with a warhammer and lately has been training his sword skills too. He disdains using bows or flare spells (he never learnt any more powerful Destruction spells!) except as training tools.

He is Grand Champion of the Arena and Master of the Fighters Guild. He's taken up residence in Arborwatch to be close to the Fighters Guild headquarters and spends most of time resting on his laurels. He occasionally enjoys rescuing hapless guards from Oblivion gates: at level 30, it's pretty hard to prevent those Kvatch guards from getting killed. His desire to create the ultimate alchemy workroom at Frostcrag Spire has become a bit of an obsession. In a desperate search for his only missing piece (a master-level calcinator) he has criss-crossed Cyrodiil several times following any leads of possible necromancer or conjurer lairs. He isn't particularly interested in making useful potions, but instead spends more time testing out bizarre combinations from his extensive collection of ingredients.

Level: 33; 165 hours play time.

Nenya: A female Altmer custom-class mage born under the sign of the Thief. She specializes in blasting enemies with Destruction spells, but always wears a solid suit of heavy armor just to be safe; luckily she's so used to wearing the armor that she doesn't even notice the weight any more (because otherwise she definitely wouldn't be strong enough to carry it!). Her training sessions with a dagger have let her build up a few more muscles and be less dependent on Feather spells, but the sessions have left her hating weapons even more than she already did. She refuses to ever travel with any weapons. Her friendship with the unicorn also helped to convince her that all weapons are thorougly evil.

After becoming Archmage of the Mages Guild she developed a strong interest in Daedric cults. She spent a lot of time wandering the countryside looking for new Daedric shrines and was finally able to find every known shrine and Daedric artifact. Her curiosity exploring caves and forts (especially ones overlooked by other explorers) got her into some trouble when she caught porphyric hemophilia. Since she refused to ever feed she quickly became a full-fledged vampire and nearly died a few times from exposure to sunlight. She blames Hircine for inspiring the fit of vampire-induced madness that caused her to tragically kill the unicorn. The incident convinced her that she had to track down a cure for vampirism and has since had a full recovery.

To atone for betraying the unicorn she has now set out to rescue the empire from the Oblivion crisis. Between missions to help Martin and Jauffre she relaxes at her house in Cheydinhal (after buying and fully furnishing property in all the cities in Cyrodiil she decided that the Cheydinhal house is her favorite because of its open layout, great storage, and the convenience of vaulting over the second floor balcony when she's in a rush to leave). She has also started to hear rumors about some evil events in Anvil that she may investigate when she gets a chance (she's hoping the Oblivion crisis may soon be over, having just entered Paradise).

Level: 22; 306 hours play time

Phoebe Aurielle: A female Breton Atronach custom-class thief/assassin. She rebelled against her parents at an early age and completely rejected their love of magic. So despite her strong magical abilities she avoids magic spells as much as possible (but does enchant items occasionally). She loves dabbling in potions and always carries a wide range of nasty poisons that she applies liberally to her daggers and swords. She happened upon Dunbarrow Cove soon after moving to Cyrodiil and set up base there.

She's a city girl (hates the outdoors and all its dangerous animals and bandits) who spends all her time sneaking around towns and going places that she's told not to go. When bored she's been known to break into random houses and loot everything of value in the place. Her goal in life is to break into and fully explore every house in Tamriel, but she's still young and has a lot of work to do to reach that goal. She's met up with some members of the Thieves Guild and occasionally does odd jobs for them.

Although she doesn't believe in senseless murders, she's not squeamish about killing when she thinks she needs to. After an encounter with Glarthir in his house went sour, she was visited by Lucien Lachance and decided to check out the Dark Brotherhood. She's done a few contracts for her new friends and found that they were kind of fun (and gave her a great chance to fill her Black Soul Gems). She particularly likes the comfy shrouded armor and hood that they gave her and finds herself throwing it on whenever she runs out to do an errand.

Level: 6; 48 hours play time

J'Qwhamd (PC): A male Khajiit who had a bizarre catastrophe when he first emerged from the Imperial Sewers. He found himself stripped of his birthsign, racial powers, and all spells, but yet had 130 skill in all spell-casting schools. In order to better understand this freakish event, the Mages Guild automatically granted him full membership (with access to the Arcane University). He spends most of his time in the Praxographical Center undergoing extensive testing to examine whether he can be taught how to create spells. Random enchanted objects often seem to appear in his inventory for no reason; he typically examines them (in particular to find out how much they seem to be worth) then discards them.

He at times suffers from god-like delusions and wanders around the countryside taunting creatures and taking photographs of them. Amazingly enough the creatures never seem to be able to harm him, so he spends hours casually taking photos of the attacking creatures from every possible angle.

Level: meaningless

Sandboxes[edit]

A list of my ever-growing list of sandboxes. Most of these contain data dumps of information that is intended to be used on other wiki articles (generally with a small amount of additional formatting). Feel free to move information you find here to the appropriate articles; delete the information from my sandboxes once it's been used.

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