While not as steeped in horror elements as the games that bookend it —Morrowind and Skyrim— Oblivion has a large amount of scary and unsettling locations, creatures, characters, and items spread across the landscape of Cyrodiil. While the verdant forests of Cyrodiil look beautiful f🐲rom a distance, the most postcard-worthy area of the series, those deep dark woods are home to snarling wolves, aggressive bears, and worse: scaly Clannfear, chitinous Dremora, and other monsters tore from the depths of Oblivion. While the main quest will send you to literal, actual Heck, over and over again, there are plenty of things off the beaten path that most players would never see.

Every Elder Scrolls game is a massive undertaking, with dozens of square kilometres of land, hundreds of interiors like caves, dungeons, castles, and manors. Some of them are your basic bandit hideouts and animal caverns. Others, cloaked in mist and the stench of death, are the sanctums of depraved necromancers and eldritch cultsꦰ, whose dread incantations infect the mossy walls of caves not tread by human foot in centuries. The ghostly spirits of long-gone human settlers called Ayleids still haunt the impossible caverns of their underground metropolises, hiding great treasure behind wicked traps. Also, there's a bunch of straight-up fun stuff in the world, big ol' animals and cute little messages left behind by the developers. It's not all bad!

Big thanks to at gamefaqs.com who compile𒈔d a lot of ꦛthese secrets!

25 T𒁏he Tower Of A Mage Forever Dr♒eaming Darkly

Appropriately for the first item on our list of creepy locations in an Elder Scrolls game, Arkved's Tower is accessible only on a quest given by a Daedric Prince. The mage Arkved has stolen the Orb of Vaermina, and the Prince tasks the Hero ꧒of Kvatch with retrieving it for them. Arkved's Tower has been transformed🍰 into a manifestation of his nightmare, and the relatively intact exterior of the tower belies the mysteries within.

Upside down rooms, portals to Obliv🐻ion, patrolling Umbra, and Dark Welkynd Stones that teleport you at random are just some of the mind-bending hazards you'll encounter in the halls of Arkved's mind. The final chambers are straigh🃏t out of the classic poetic interpretation of Heck, with boiling lakes of lava and jutting rock spires. Grab the Orb and get out of there, then hasten your return to Vaermina before they punish you too.

24 An Unexpected Tenant Of A Common♛ꦓ Cave

Greenmead Cave, northeast of Skingrad, seems like a totally normal hole in the ground, just like the dozens that dot Cyrodiil's Wheel of Time-book cover landscape. There are some proper terrifying monsters inside, though, like Minotaurs and Spriggans, making you think that maybe there is more to Greenmead than meets the eye. The loot isn't bad either, with some prꦦoper rare enchanted items and weapons to wield or sell for gold.

Mmm, Giant Crab Legs.

At the back though, ruling over a pile of skeletons, is the most terrifying enemy in the game: The horrid and feared Giant Mudcrab. Perhaps seeking on vengeance on you for attacking so many of its kin, or even seeking respect for all the times the Hero has laughed off the aggressive actions of the mudcrabs of Cyrodiil, the Ur Mudcrab will properly 😼mess you up.

23 Your Secret, Hidden Admirer 🦂

Well this one is kind of a bummer. Right at the beginning of the game, in the waters surrounding the Imperial City, the Hero will find some erstwhile human floating in t𒆙he water. Well, maybe corpse is a bit generous: the body of Nath Dyer has been reduced to ... not much at all.

Whisper sweet nothings to your...oh

On his body is a love letter, signed "Unknown", to someone in the City that Nath was in love w▨ith from a distance. Unfortunately for our star-crossed l🎉over, something got in the way of him and his secret admirer/stalking victim, and the young man has been left to rot in the water. His letter even says he'll be carrying a Primrose, which you can also find on his corpse.

22 Fishy𝓡 Helmet

With so many underwater locations in the land of Cyrodiil, it sure would be handy if you ha🧔nd a glass helmet that allows you to breathe underwater indefinitely. Good news: there is! Plus, thanks to Oblivion's open-world nature, you can snag it for yourself pretty much as soon as you boot up the game.

Maybe not the most stylish way to swim

The helmet with the jaunty name of "Fin Gleam" is just sitting on the bottom of the bay near Anvil, which is a common location for hidden 🍨things in Oblivion. It's not the easiest thing to spot, being underwater and all, but downing a nighteye potion will make its finny gleam a lot easier to pick out of the murky depths.

21 👍 Why Is Everyone In This Town A Jerk?

You know those places that just seem off? You walk into a store and the owners are rude to you for no reason? People talk to you just to get you to leave them 🐻alone as fast as possible? That's Hackdirt. The wikia page says "Outsiders are not welcome in Hackdirt" and♛ there's a good reason for that.

Not Exactly A Family Gathering

Sent to investigate the disappearance of a young Argonian, ꦿthe Hero can break into the room she rented at the Inn and discover her journal. Following the clues will lead the Hero to the caverns underneath the town, where Dar-Ma is being held as part of a ritual called The Gathering. Free her and sneak out while the townspeople are occupied, or wipe them out and remove the threat to Cyrodiil.

20 ✨ The Secret Of Dive Rock

The people of Cheydinhal and Bruma speak in hushed tones about a monster who hunts in the wilderness of Dive Rock. If you go nan investigate as all good Heroes should, you'll come across a small camp and a journal. The journal tells the tale of Agnar the Unwavering whose home in Solstheim, Thirsk, had previously been marauded by a beast called Udyrfrykte which had been given a dirt nap by a passing adventurer (actually the player in the Bloodmoon expansion for Morrowind.)

The Elder Scrolls Cinematic Universe

Agnar and his wife had travelled from Solstheim to end the mother of Udyrfrykte, the Matron, but after Ragnar's wife is ended in the battle, Agnar flees and writes in his journal that he must attack the Matron to maintain his title as The Unwavering. Well, Agnar, wavering might have been the right call: you find his corp🔯se not far from the Matron's lair.

19 Sid🌟eways Cave

Unfortunately, not a c💟ave that has been turned on its side, the Sideways Cave has a very intriguing secret provided you hunt down all the tablets located inside. The cave, littered with skeletons, eventually gives way to an unexpected secret: ancient ruins.

The ancient civilization unique to Cyrodiil, the Ayleid, once had a city on the same spot💧 as the now horizontally challenged cave. During the course of their expansion, they uncovered a shrine to Meridia, the Daedric Prince, and disturbed it in some way. Meridia, in true Daedric fashion, buried the city in the earth. Like many of these locations, Sideways Cave appears in Elder Scrolls Online and gives up a bit more information about the former residents, mainly that they were worshippers of Molag Bal.

18 Bring🃏ing A New Meaning To Impress🅷ionism

I absolutely love this quest, I think it's o🔴ne of the most unique RPꦅG storylines ever and it's so easy to miss that I didn't find it until my second playthrough of Oblivion way back in 2007. In the city of Cheydinhal, you'll pick up a quest called A Brush With Death, in which a woman is distraught over the disappearance of her husband, a famous local painter. Go into the painter's studio and you'll find his latest work, a beautiful landscape.

The image really draws you in

Using bottles of turpentine that yoꦯu're given by the painter, you can defeat the various 'painted trolls' that guard the watercolour landscape. (The trolls also drop little globs of painted troll fat, a unique item that does nothing but I carried around with me for the rest of the game🃏.)

17 🗹 🉐 Starbucks Would Be Proud

I guess it's not surpris🐲ing that, given that Oblivion is one of the most direct translations of traditional Western European fantasy in the Elder Scrolls universe, that there would be a Unicorn 𝔉somewhere in the game world. What isn't as surprising is what a tough beast this majestic lil guy can be!

Yes, You Can Ride It

Another objective of a Daedric Prince, this time Hircine, the Hero is tasked with ending the unique, beautiful creature for its horn. The beast can be ridden, and it's as fast as the other white horses in the game, but the one thing setting i💦t apart from the other horses is that it will absolutely wrec♌k anything that comes at it in it its pristine grove, including you. You can even use it to fight battles for you, if you kite the ivory white dream horse to dangerous areas.

16 Guess Who's Com✃ing To Dinner

Every Elder Scrolls game has a sort of running internal competition: which of the option Guild quest lines will be the best, and will it be better than the main story? Morrowind's ꦑNoble House quests won that one hands down, while Skyrim's Thieves Guild plot was a highlight. For my money, the best questline in the whole franchise is the Dark Brotherhood story from Oblivion

Did someone say party?

The Player is invited to a party full of enemies of the client. It's a murder mystery party, so the guests are suspicious 𓆏of everyone in the best way, but no one suspects that a real Dark Brotherhood assassin is among them. The door locks behind you, so there's no reason not to blast everyone with Destruction magic from the word go, but it's more fun to play along and pick everyone off one-by-one.