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The NPCs on this list are considered "Essential" by the game. If any of them are killed at any time, you will receive a message stating:

"With this character's death, the thread of prophecy is severed. Restore a saved game to restore the weave of fate, or persist in the doomed world you have created."

In most cases, this means that you will be unable to complete the Main Quest without resorting to Killing Vivec. In the case of the [House] Hortator and [Clan] Nerevarine quests, however, you can bypass them by gaining level 21 or above and 50 or more reputation.

Note that, even after their part in the Main Quest is over (or, indeed, the Main Quest is complete), all these characters are still marked as essential and killing them will still give the above message. This will prevent any further gain of reputation via the quest Sleepers Awake, but is otherwise not a problem.

This list does not include NPCs who are essential to various side quests that are not part of the Main Quest scripting.

*Killing any of these NPCs will make Caius Cosades unwilling to talk to you, even after their part in the Main Quest is over. They must stay alive until Caius gives his final quest, Mehra Milo and the Lost Prophecies. In case you accidentally kill one of these before that, the only way around Caius's auto-goodbye is to have a bounty of 1000 or more.

Unofficial Essential NPCs [ edit ]

These NPCs are not marked as essential in the game, but killing them will still prevent you from completing the Main Quest normally; note that the vast majority of these are only important for the Nerevarine quests in the Fifth Trial, which means they can be bypassed by waiting during the fourth and fifth trials as described above.