Morrowind's Ridiculous Easter Egg (Eltonbrand)

It just sunk to me that "To upgrade my magical sword, which I got from an ancient demon, I first must talk to a Mudcrab Merchant, as I hope he is willing to talk to me as a vampire." is the kind of nonsense I love this game so much for!

I remember reading about Eltonbrand on early 2000s "cheat" websites and thinking it was the dumbest fake rumor ever, on par with Mew being under the truck in Pokemon. Then I found Eltonbrand in the Morrowind Construction Set data and was totally shocked.

I remember bringing up how crazy this secret was as a kid to my step-dad who instantly was like "Wait, Elton Brand? The basketball player?" and sure enough I found he's why it's called that. When being into nerd stuff and jock stuff crosses over!

"Vampire Dust Has No Effect On You" "Yeah, I'm gonna reload. I have no idea why, but I'm going to reload". I have never related to something so hard in my life

The further back you go, the more obscure the secrets become. They weren't really meant to be discovered, maybe that 1 in a million player. Especially before the internet.

"How did people figure this out?" What probably happened is someone found Eltonbrand in the construction set, and dug into the scripts that cause it to spawn. If not, it could have just been happenstance after someone talked to half the NPC's in the game to find one that'll actually talk to you.

Eltonbrand is a reference to basketball actually, named after NBA player Elton Brand. Taken from UESP: The odd nature of this sword seems to stem from Bethesda developer Mark Nelson. The NBA basketball player Elton Brand was a member of his favorite team in college, the Duke Blue Devils (itself referred to by his nickname "BlueDev", and the object ID of the sword), whose most bitter rivals are the North Carolina Tar Heels. The number "11171" is thought to be a reference to Nelson's birthday, 11/1/1971. The name of the quest, "Shashev's Key", is also a reference to the long-time coach of the Blue Devils, Mike Krzyzewski, whose last name is pronounced "shə-SHEF-ski".

The "go to hell Carolina" was referencing North Carolina Tar Heels. The elf that fell from the sky at the start was also a part of this... This dev hated the tar heels and left a few eastereggs in the game to voice their hate.

Ok so the dude who falls in front of you at Seydaneen is Tar Heil, a play on the name Carolina Tarheels. Elton Brand was a player for the Duke, their rivals. One of the programmers went to Duke.

fOuL bEaST aWaY wItH YoU

I like how you can here the difference in the confidence of Mickeys goofiness from a year ago to now. It’s subtle but I can hear it for sure. Happy for his success.

Fun fact: you don't have to be a vampire to get shashev's key. Though it is how you find out about it naturally

"Go to hell Carolina." Refers to the North Carolina Tar Heels, and I can confirm it was in the Strategy Guide.

For anyone wanting to be a Vampire, the Dwermer ruins west of the Ashlander camp wich name I dont remember correctly (but it starts with "E") is FILLED with Vampires and cattle. In fact is possibly the ONLY dungeon in Morrowind that trully was constructed to scare the shit out of you, due to the amount of time those vampire assholes jump from the dark corners.

Alright Mike? So there's 3 Vamp clans in Morrowind. Aundae - Magicky Berne - Sneaky Quarra - Flighty Guess which one you visited 🙈

Another perk of having and completing the Master Index quest: while all conventional fast travel options and services are banned, because of the special nature of the Master Index teleportation (it is through dialogue topics not the "travel" option), you can still use it as vampire. So you can still have 10 fast travel locations (the forts) + what ever place you have marked for recall. Makes life as a vampire just that much easier.

The name, "Shashev's Key", Is a reference to one of the developers favorite basketball teams coach Mike Krzyzewski(its polish). Elton Brand was also a player for the team(Duke Blue Devils.)

When we were kids I had a good friend that this was very much a "my dad works at Nintendo" moment for me when he told me about this particular sword and I vehemently didn't believe his shit until he actually showed me it in game.

One of the Artifact items is only accessible if you a vampire: the Spellbreaker shield. It is a quest you can only do as a vampire (doesn't matter which clan, this is generic vampire quest). Also there is a unique item the Blacksun Shield (or something like that) that only spawns to the world when you are doing a particular Aundae clan quest.

"That's how people respond to me in real life." Classic.