Battlespire Manual
"I don't think we're in Tamriel anymore, Toto."
Veterans of Arena and Daggerfall! Warning! Battlespire is Extra Not Like Arena and Daggerfall, for one thing, and Battlespire takes place in a place Not At All Like Tamriel.
Arena and Daggerfall are Huge, Sprawling Persistent Worlds. There are towns with guilds for training and quests, and places to sell loot and buy equipment. When you run low on health and spell points, you sleep, and voila! Back to 100%.
In Battlespire, the only ways to increase skills are to use them, or spend build points between levels. There is only one quest -- Find your companion, and get out alive. There's no place to sell any loot you can't use, and there's a limit to what you can carry from level to level. Use it, or lose it. And you can't sleep to heal. You CAN often find nice blue gems which restore health and spell points when you click on them or run into them. [These blue gems kinda disappear for a while as they recharge, but they return. Honest.] And you will be Very Glad to find Cure Health and Restoration potions, or magic items with Healing or Magica Resartus powers.
Furthermore, your poor character is stranded in the Daedric Realms. This is not very much like the comparatively benign and picturesque lands of Tamriel.
The Daedric Realms are populated by immortal Daedra, not mortal beings. When you destroy their forms, they are cast into Oblivion for a while. This is No Fun, but it isn't like dying, and it makes Daedra kinda casual about wading into a dustup. And the Daedric Realms are weird. There's plenty of magical energy around, and this makes for a rather strange geography. Also, Daedric architecture and workmanship are fairly eccentric, mostly because Daedra are, by and large, crazy as rats in a drainpipe.
So. This is the World of the Elder Scrolls, and much of what you see will be familiar, but much will be not at all familiar, and sometimes bewildering. We're sorry. But it's just those darned Daedra. Really.
Game Introduction
I recall of the story of the recovery of the Battlespire; as it was told to me by a son of the old Chimere these many years ago. How a legion of Daedra Lord Mehrunes Dagon overran the spire aided by betrayal. How a young hero from obscure origin entered the Battlespire, proving ground and testing facility for the shadow legion, the imperial guard and finding his test was more than he bargained for. Thinking this was only a harmless test to his skills, he enters the spire through the pillar of light and finds the hell created by betrayal of the legion and perfidy of Jagar Tharn arch-traitor to the empire.
And so our story begins.
