A modder named VIIVII has created three mods to memorialize his deceased Elder Scrolls-loving mother. The mods "In Memory of my Mom" (opens in new tab) for Skyrim, Oblivion (opens in new tab), and Morrowind (opens in new tab) add a protective shrine to each game and give some buffs to health, magicka, stamina, and status. They are trivial indeed, but I am not exaggerating when I say that their emotional impact, especially on me, is comparable to a meteorite impact.

"My mother Tenniel passed away in January," they write on all three mod pages. As one way to do so, they decided to honor her memory with some of the "games she introduced me to."

VIIVII had made a few mods before, but they turned to the Elder Scrolls mod forums for help in finding a way to do what they wanted to do properly. Once they figured it out, they added shrines to the starting area of the game, each accompanied by a tablet that said "Every time I adventure Tamriel, she can stay alive." The placement of the shrines is very intentional: VIIVII says, "I placed a shrine near the start of each game because my mother always suffered from severe restartitis."

By itself, this mod is incredibly inspiring, but it might be even more amazing to see how the mod community helped VIIVII: a modder named Sovrath created a Skyrim shrine for them, another modder-Arcarias created a cleaned up version of Morrowind's mod. Of course, it was the mod forums that made it possible to create the mod in the first place.

Yesterday was Mother's Day in the UK, so we may be more sensitive to these things than usual, but it is really nice to see people coming together like this to help someone mourn their mother. Furthermore, the mod has been downloaded over 200 times in all, and it seems that VIIVII's mother will live on in more games than just their own. Their advice is: "Call your parents and tell them you love them. You never know how much time you will have with your parents". I'm not crying. I'm just dust from Red Mountain