Raising the dead in Oblivion Remastered is "actually illegal" now thanks to this necromancy mod

Necromancy is a dark art, forbidden by the mages guild in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered. At least, that's what characters in the open world RPG will tell you, before selling you a spell that lets you raise skellingtons from the dirt. You can be promoted to the head of the Mages Guild, in spite of all those corpses you keep bringing back to life. Necromancy banned? Seems like no one cares.

Well, one modder has fixed that. The mod, simply titled "Necromancy Is Actually Banned", will see you expelled from the Mages Guild if you perform any necrotic abracadabras in sight of a fellow member. You can also get fined by the guards.

"Necromancy has been banned by the Mages Guild yet nobody cares if you use undead summons. This mod fixes that," reads a description for the mod on Nexus Mods. "In addition, while not illegal in the lore, optionally you can choose to have summoning undead result in a 100-gold bounty if done near a guard. This makes Necromancy feel like something you really need to hide."

The mod adds one other touch to make necromancy feel more like an underground act of scumbaggery. Spells that let you summon the undead can no longer be bought from Mages Guild vendors, but you'll still find them sold by other, less reputable, magic users (hello Shady Sam, one tome of Headless Zombie, please). Or you can find them on necromancer corpses. Which I'm sure you won't reanimate - it's illegal.

Considering a lot of righteous quests involve hunting down necromancers and zombie-raising ill-doers, there is definitely a sense that this practice is seen as disgusting, immoral, and wrong in the Elder Scrolls world. That so few characters care if you do it near them is arguably just another one of Oblivion's silly charms, like becoming so good at crouching it renders you immediately invisible in broad daylight. But it's nice to have a mod that makes characters react in the way you might expect.

You will need to use another mod called NL-Tag Remover to make certain changes to character dialogue work with this one, though, says the creator of the necromod "MadAborModding".

"Necromancy may be legal in Cyrodiil," a random NPC will often tell you in Oblivion, "but few will openly admit to practicing it now that the Mages Guild has banned it." At least now, with this mod, that statement will feel a little more accurate. Modding for the Oblivion Remastered has not received any official support, but it's booming nonetheless, with nearly 2000 mods uploaded to Nexus Mods so far. Even some old mods for the original 2008 game still work.