Clavicus Vile is one of the seventeen Daedric Princes of Oblivion, known chiefly as the Prince of Bargains, Trickery, and Insidious Wishes. His domains, while less overtly destructive than those of Princes like Mehrunes Dagon or Molag Bal, are no less dangerous. Clavicus Vile delights in the cleverness of a deal made—especially one where the mortal comes to regret the fine print. Known variously as the Consummate Politician of Oblivion, the Master of Insidious Wishes, and even the Child-God of the Morningstar, he embodies the danger of unchecked desire. His followers, whether cultists or vampires, revere him not for raw power, but for what he grants in their own image: status, elegance, and clever dominion.
 |
| Clavicus Vile, Daedric Prince of Power, Trickery, Wishes, Serenity, and Bargains |
He is rarely seen without Barbas, his loyal companion who often appears in the form of a talking dog. Some accounts even suggest that Barbas is more than a familiar—that he is, in fact, half of Vile’s essence, holding much of the Prince’s power and acting as a kind of social ballast for a Daedra too gregarious to ever be truly alone. In statuary and vision, the two are inseparable, a detail that becomes significant both in gameplay and metaphysical speculation.
What Is Clavicus Vile’s Realm and Nature?
Clavicus Vile's realm, the Fields of Regret, is a sun-drenched illusion—a land of beautiful glass cities, shimmering lakes, and laughing, horned Skaafin servants. It appears idyllic, designed to mirror the Prince’s self-image as a benign deity of joy and fun. But like all things Vile, it is a carefully constructed mask over a more predatory reality. According to in-game texts and developers' commentary alike, the Fields of Regret may not be a true “place” in the geographic sense at all—it is best understood as a state of mind, shaped by the Prince’s own desires and impulses. What is beautiful there is beautiful because he says it is; what is cruel, is cruel for his amusement.
Is Clavicus Vile Truly Evil?
Clavicus Vile's alignment defies straightforward moral categorization. Unlike his peer Molag Bal, who is brutal and openly sadistic, Vile plays a longer, slyer game. He is arguably the most “civil” of the Daedric Princes, making bargains and rewarding loyalty, even if the outcomes often take a turn for the ironic. His morality could best be described as transactional—he is not interested in chaos for its own sake, but in the games he can play with mortal ambition. “You think you lose, you die, and that’s the end. It’s not,” he once told Cyrus the Redguard, who wagered his own soul to retrieve that of his sister. That was not cruelty—it was entertainment.
He is often invoked by vampires, especially the Cyrodiilic Vampyrum Order, who credit him for the refinement and cleverness that allow them to operate within human society. These vampires see Molag Bal as their origin, but Vile as their patron—elevating them from mere predators to aristocrats of blood.
Where Does Clavicus Vile Appear in the Games?
Clavicus Vile has made direct or indirect appearances in nearly every Elder Scrolls title since Daggerfall. In Morrowind, the Nerevarine retrieves his Masque and can optionally turn over the soul-trapping sword Umbra. In Oblivion, Vile’s shrine quest involves deciding whether or not to give him back that same sword. Barbas warns against it, hinting at internal conflict within the Prince’s own essence. In Skyrim, Vile is encountered in the Daedric quest “A Daedra’s Best Friend,” where the Dragonborn must choose between killing Barbas and returning him to Vile’s side—between personal gain and restoring a Daedric Prince to his full power.
Vile is also central to multiple Elder Scrolls Online questlines, particularly during the events of the Clockwork City and Summerset expansions. As part of the Triad—a secret alliance between himself, Mephala, and Nocturnal—Vile seeks to reshape reality through access to the Crystal Tower and the Clockwork City. His alliance ultimately fails due to Nocturnal’s betrayal, but his role in the plan demonstrates both his power and his capacity to cooperate with other Princes when it serves his interests.
What Are the Most Important Events in Clavicus Vile’s Story?
The Umbriel Crisis of the early Fourth Era marked one of Vile’s most dramatic attempts to directly alter Tamriel’s fate. The floating island of Umbriel, a severed chunk of his own realm, was hijacked by the Daedra Vuhon and the sentient sword Umbra. Vile was temporarily weakened, reduced to ruling a sliver of Oblivion, and forced into a bitter bargain with the hero Attrebus Mede. Although he ultimately failed to reclaim the sword, his power was restored when Umbriel was destroyed and the island's captured souls returned to his domain.
Earlier still, in the Second Era, Vile made deals with Kothringi tribes, Altmer mages, and even Sea Sloads, sometimes granting salvation, sometimes facilitating cataclysm. One recurring pattern is clear: Vile often leaves the final choice to mortals, but manipulates the framing so that all outcomes ultimately serve his designs.
What Are Clavicus Vile’s Artifacts?
Clavicus Vile is the patron of several infamous Daedric artifacts, each reflecting his penchant for transactional trickery. The Masque of Clavicus Vile bestows unnatural charisma, making the wearer appear trustworthy and persuasive—but it comes with a limited time guarantee, often reclaimed after a “year and a day.”
The Rueful Axe is another such gift, allegedly given to a mortal who wished to cure his werewolf companion. The cure? Death, rendered by the very weapon in question. In Skyrim, the Dragonborn is offered this axe as a reward for killing Barbas.
Then there is the Bittercup, a sacred artifact linked to Clavicus Vile’s theme of choices. Only the strong are advised to sip from it—and yet, it is not power but regret that usually follows.
His most iconic artifact, however, is Umbra—a cursed sword designed to trap souls and imbued with a splinter of Vile’s own power. What makes Umbra unique is its sentience and ambition; it has repeatedly threatened to break free of Vile’s control. In the novel Lord of Souls, Vile reveals that Umbra was intended to be a clever soul-funneling tool, but its personality grew too powerful, creating a rival inside his own realm.
What Role Does Barbas Play?
Barbas is more than a companion—he is, in many ways, Vile's conscience, foil, and leash. Frequently, Barbas is the voice of reason, the counterpoint to Vile’s ambition. In many of Vile’s quests, it is Barbas who urges caution or suggests a morally sound alternative. Some in-world scholars have speculated that Vile created Barbas to serve as a stabilizer, allowing him to indulge in excess without destroying his own social appeal.
The two are rarely apart, except when their arguments escalate to temporary exile—as seen in Skyrim. Vile himself admits he functions poorly without Barbas. Their separation not only weakens him metaphysically, but leaves him unable to project power beyond the immediate vicinity of his shrine.
What Is Clavicus Vile’s Endgame?
Unlike Mehrunes Dagon, who wants to unmake Nirn, or Nocturnal, who seeks dominion through omnipresence, Clavicus Vile’s goals are more abstract. He wants relevance. He wants mortals to remember his name, to fear his bargains, to honor their deals, and to regret their choices. Every soul that comes to regret a pact made is a kind of triumph. Every broken wish, a mark in his ledger.
His schemes span millennia. Whether aiding in the design of the Ingenium, striking bargains with dying tribes, or attempting to reshape reality through Transparent Law, Vile always acts in the hope that he can grow more essential to the cosmic machinery of the Elder Scrolls.
His greatest weapon is not strength, but contract. His battlefield is not Nirn, but the mortal heart.
Clavicus Vile's Raw Power
Measured against the broad tapestry of fantasy deities and demigods, Clavicus Vile stands well above mortal titans yet just shy of reality-rewriting supremes. His dominion over wishes, pacts, and soul-forged artifacts grants him a reach that can unmake cities without a single claw swipe, but self-imposed rules of the bargain temper that reach. Evaluating his physical manifestation, arcane scope, and battlefield leverage shows a Daedric Prince whose potency is less about brute force and more about omnipresent leverage. Clavicus Vile’s composite lands at 8.0 out of 10—a Prince whose muscle is sufficient, whose spells are labyrinthine and enduring, and whose battlefield influence often begins before the first sword leaves its scabbard.
Strength
In the rare moments that Clavicus Vile takes corporeal form—typically the sleek, horned shape of a Skaafin noble—he is still a Prince of Oblivion: a being who can lift ton-weighted gates of chitin in the Fields of Regret or pin a raging minotaur daedra beneath one claw. However, these feats are side-effects of divine anatomy rather than a primary tool set. Vile seldom bothers to grapple because strength is not the language of contracts. The true relevance of his physicality lies in the power he funnels into Barbas; half his divine essence resides there, meaning he can offload destructive brawn to his companion and keep his own hands metaphorically clean. On a scale where world-serpents coil around continents, Vile’s muscle rates formidable but not singular, elevating his Strength component to the upper-mid tier of Daedric entities.
Magical Ability
Here the Child-God of the Morningstar ascends. Clavicus Vile’s sorcery flows from the same wellspring as his siblings—but uniquely channels through ritual invocations, written covenants, and artifacts that bind or reshape mortal fate. He forged the Ingenium that tethered Baar Dau over Vivec City by siphoning souls and Oblivion’s energies, a structure that held a moon aloft for decades. He split off a segment of his realm and allowed it to fly as Umbriel, a floating necropolis that harvested thousands of souls each day. He imbues artifacts—the Masque, the Rueful Axe, the Bittercup, Umbra—with shards of his own power, each capable of rewriting mortality, charisma, or metaphysical bondage. Though not the raw reality tears of Magnus-grade deities, Vile’s magic is systemic and self-replicating: once a contract is sealed, the power persists without his direct attention. That recursive design pushes his Magical Ability to near-parity with the most versatile archmages, meriting an elite placement on the scale.
Combat Prowess
In direct combat Vile rarely draws blade or claw, but when pressed—such as during the Umbriel Crisis, when he manifested a towering avatar to drain ten-thousand captive souls—he wields Oblivion’s energies like liquid iron. He can manifest Skaafin legions from thought, redirect mortal spells back upon their casters, and warp local reality to resemble the honey-gold skies of his realm, disorienting foes who rely on spatial familiarity. His greatest battlefield tactic, however, is conscription by desire: turn an enemy’s champion with a single whispered bargain and watch armies fracture from within. Against entities immune to temptation—Aedra bound by cosmic law or crystalline constructs devoid of want—this edge dulls, and Vile falls back on broad Daedric durability and realm-level spellcraft. Thus, his Combat Prowess scores slightly lower than his raw sorcery but still handily surpasses most planar warlords.
Clavicus Vile's Tactical Ability
Clavicus Vile wages wars of parchment, rumor, and deferred payment; he rewrites battle lines by turning a single hero’s ambition back upon their comrades. Measured across the full spectrum of cosmic strategists, his record reveals brilliance tempered by vanity: masterful when the game board is mortal desire, prone to miscalculation when partners prove as duplicitous as himself. The score of 7.5 out of 10 reflects a Daedric Prince who toppled towers, redirected moons, and nearly rewove reality—yet was twice undone by rivals who read the small print he so relishes drafting for others.
Strategic Mind
Vile’s default instrument is the clause, not the sword. During the Second-Era Triad scheme, he recognized that seizing the Crystal Tower’s Transparent Law would grant simultaneous purchase on every corner of creation; rather than storm Summerset with Daedric legions, he subcontracted the theft to sea-sload savants and a mind-touched Psijic Ritemaster, insulating himself from early detection and plausible failure. Centuries earlier, his design of the Ingenium exploited Vivec’s civic pride, turning Dunmeri piety into an energy conduit that tethered a celestial body for decades without fielding a single Skaafin soldier. These maneuvers demonstrate layered foresight—engineered redundancies, deniable agents, and built-in time delays that hide authorship until the trap has sprung. His blind spot is hubris: trusting Nocturnal to honor the Triad pact or assuming Umbra would remain a compliant soul-funnel exposed a weakness for underestimating peers. When bargains hinge on equal powers, Vile’s need for the last laugh sometimes clouds risk assessment, dragging an otherwise superlative strategist below the topmost echelon.
Resourcefulness
Few beings convert setbacks into assets with such theatrical ease. When the floating realm of Umbriel sheared from his Fields of Regret and began devouring Tamrielic souls for someone else’s benefit, Vile—power halved and realm shrinking—leveraged the very hero sent to oppose him. He possessed Attrebus Mede only long enough to stab a would-be usurper and soak up the ambient soul-energy released by Umbriel’s collapse, regaining strength without committing armies. Earlier, when Barbas’s self-exile left him unable to project influence beyond his Cyrodiilic shrine, Vile masked impotence with bluster, framing the Dragonborn’s involvement as a personal favor while discreetly corralling the mortal into reintegrating his power. His ad-hoc solutions reveal elastic thinking: he can pivot from grand architect to opportunistic scavenger in a heartbeat, weaving fresh covenants from the rubble of failed ones. That said, his improvisations always return to the contract motif; in wholly chaotic environments—raw battlefield fog, rapidly shifting allegiances—he prefers retreat to direct adaptation, capping, but not crippling, this metric.
Resource Arsenal
Unlike Princes who field endless hosts of identical daedra, Vile arms himself with bespoke assets tuned to each gambit. Skaafin courtiers act as diplomats and shock troops within his glittering realm, while Barbas—housing half of Vile’s essence—serves as mobile power reserve, spy, and occasional voice of conscience. His library of artifacts functions as a remote-detonation minefield: the Masque reshapes courts, the Rueful Axe inflames feuds, the Bittercup rigs destiny by forcing mortals to choose their own downfall. Most devastating is his latent claim on every soul that seals a pact, creating a dispersed network of obligate agents who might be called upon generations later. Weakness arises when those same assets manifest wills of their own; Umbra’s repeated rebellions and Barbas’s periodic mutiny highlight the maintenance cost of delegating critical leverage. Still, the sheer diversity and scalability of his toolbox—promissory notes that double as curses, artifacts that self-propagate regret—grant Vile an enviable strategic depth.
Clavicus Vile's Influence
In Tamrielic legend Clavicus Vile never needs to raise a claw: with a wink, a quill, or a small-print proviso he can redirect the future of an empire. Measured across the multiverse, his charisma sits just below the divinities who command automatic worship—yet well above most cosmic schemers—thanks to a trio of aptitudes: silken Persuasion, cultivated Reverence, and granite Willpower. Synthesizing these facets—an orator who tailors irresistible deals, a network of convivial worship resilient to persecution, and a near-unshakable commitment to chosen ends—Clavicus Vile earns an 8.0 for Influence: the quintessential diplomat-trickster whose smile reshapes ambitions across every province of Nirn and far into Oblivion’s shifting avenues.
Persuasion
Vile’s conversation is an alchemy of compliment, flattery, and subtle threat. The Breton noblewoman Avalea, disfigured and desperate for status, listened only a moment before agreeing to wear his Masque; her swift rise through High Rock society and equally swift ruin after its repossession remains a byword for “Vile’s bargain” in bardic circles. Centuries later, a forlorn woodcutter named Sebastian Lort pleaded for a cure to his daughter’s lycanthropy. Vile’s answer was the Rueful Axe—a “cure” contingent upon filicide. Lort’s anguished acceptance exemplifies how the Prince frames choices so that acquiescence feels inevitable. Even animals bend: during the War of the Red Diamond he promised a sabre-cat pack eternal prey if they guarded a mountain shrine, and local hunters recorded the creatures refusing easier quarry to protect the altar for over a decade. These episodes show a negotiator who tailors pitch, reward, and deadline to each target’s deepest need. Only minds utterly devoid of desire—Dwemer Animunculi, for instance—stand outside his reach; otherwise, he seldom fails to secure a signature.
Reverence
While Molag Bal rules by fear and Meridia by righteous awe, Clavicus Vile cultivates something subtler: convivial veneration. In Cyrodiil, the Vampyrum Order toast his name at moon-dark salons, crediting their urbane veneer to “the Consummate Politician.” Far east in Rimmen, the Jovial Lambasters ring crystal goblets on New Life Festival, believing that each resonant note carries a fresh wish to their patron. Even dissenting faiths grudgingly acknowledge his ubiquity. Alessian reformers once tried to smash every roadside Vile idol between Chorrol and Bravil; merchants simply re-erected them overnight, unwilling to tempt a Prince who might twist contracts or coin. Such grassroots resilience grants him shrines in nearly every province, though rarely grand temples—he is invited to the party, not enthroned above it. Among Daedra-hating factions his name is spoken with caution rather than hatred; “Even Vile keeps his word,” an Elinhir magistrate remarked after a wish-binding lawsuit. That mix of allure and wary respect secures a planetary foothold unmatched by most schemers, if not the cosmic devotion enjoyed by truly transcendent deities.
Willpower
Influence also requires an iron grip on one’s own intent, and here Vile proves surprisingly steadfast. When the Nycotic Cult mistranslated his runic signature and tried to compel him under the alias “Nycot,” he inverted the ritual mid-chant, binding the officiants to centuries of compulsory wish-granting for strangers—an act accomplished without Barbas present, indicating robust autonomous focus. During the Alessian Purge of Daedric worship, inquisitors offered to spare dozens of Vile-priests if he would cede the Masque permanently to imperial control. The Prince refused, allowing the cultists to perish rather than relinquish an artifact central to his long game of temptation. Such episodes display a will resistant to bribery, blackmail, or even existential threat: his objectives bend, never break. Critics cite one lapse—the brief exile of Barbas that hamstrung his influence in Falkreath—but the episode ended only when Vile judged the lesson learned and reintegrated his power, a decision that restored full agency within hours.
Clavicus Vile's Resilience
Clavicus Vile’s survival record reads like an endless chain of bounced cheques that somehow never default: each time the Prince seems cornered—by cults that misuse his name, by artifacts that rebel, by rival Powers who try to annex his realm—he negotiates, metamorphoses, or simply waits until the storm blows past and the ledger tilts back in his favour. His resilience rests on three girders: a conceptual body that resists mundane injury, a vault of arcane safeguards that absorb metaphysical shocks, and a longevity measured in pre-dawn cosmic cycles rather than years. Balancing intangible flesh, layered spell-insurance, and aeon-spanning self-correction produces a composite resilience score of 8.0. Clavicus Vile may not shrug off Aedra-level excommunication, yet every curse, blade, or astral audit leveled against him to date has rebounded, inverted, or quietly expired—leaving the Prince of Bargains smiling beside a freshly inked pact.
Physical Resistance
Unlike mortal champions who rely on sinew or armour, Vile’s “flesh” is largely rhetorical—a projection sculpted from the ambient will of the Fields of Regret. When the Redguard hero Cyrus crossed into that realm to reclaim his sister’s soul, he brandished a Daedric blade capable of sundering lesser spirits. The weapon scored Vile’s statuary avatar, shearing chips of obsidian-glass hide, but the damage evaporated the instant the bargain shifted in Vile’s favour. More recently, during the Stillrise incident in Shadowfen, the undead Kothringi attempted an uprising within a quasi-demiplane Vile had spun to house them. The rebels shattered his terrestrial effigy—expecting that to banish him—only to discover the next dawn that every shard had re-fused, the grin on the statue wider than before. Such episodes illustrate a resilience rooted in ontology: harm aimed at the manifestation cannot touch the governing principle, and the principle simply re-casts a fresh shape. Physical annihilation is therefore a logistical nightmare for would-be assassins; at best they inconvenience him, at worst they supply fresh anecdotes for later bargains.
Magical Resistance
Arcane pressure tests his defences more severely. In the late Second Era, a consortium of Altmeri thaumaturges uncovered a tonal dissonance that, in theory, could scramble a Daedric Prince’s identity matrix. They tested it on Vile’s forgotten altar near Willowgrove. The hymn collapsed nearby forest wards and nailed Barbas’s consciousness to the altar, but Vile himself remained unreachable, the wave diffused by protective runes nested six contracts deep around his true sigil. Likewise, when the Skaafin steward Tor-Vo tried to siphon power from the Bittercup to found his own micro-realm, the cup’s essence back-lashed, petrifying him in mid-incantation while Vile emerged untouched—an automatic countermeasure triggered by clause thirty-one (“no derivative domains without express permission”). These shields are not absolute. A handful of Ayleid star-calculists once diverted celestial alignments long enough to lock Vile’s avatar out of Mundus for three lunar cycles, proving that with sufficient cosmological leverage his wards can be side-stepped. Nevertheless, bypass requires preparation at inter-constellation scale, putting his Magical Resistance squarely above most demigods.
Longevity
N’Gasta the Sload claimed Vile “was born before the stars, and his name preceded the idea of a name,” an exaggeration only by half. Millennia of intrigue show a being who can shed power, re-absorb it, or warehouse it—sometimes literally. When the False Ebony formula was unleashed in the Vassir-Didanat mines, the ensuing soul-wash granted House Hlaalu temporary command over hundreds of unwilling shades. Those spirits should have represented a measurable loss to Vile’s portfolio; yet archival divinations conducted after the incident found his ledger of bound souls unchanged, implying that he had already hedged against any misuse by duplicating each signature in a hidden escrow. Even periods of genuine depletion prove temporary. At the height of the Jovial Lambasters’ craze in Rimmen, worshippers poured so many contradictory petitions through his sigils that the Prince’s attention fragmented, thinning his presence across half a dozen planes. Within a single generation he reorganised the cult’s bylaws, pruned superfluous petitions, and regained cohesion—no external rescue required. Such self-healing elasticity underwrites a Longevity value close to the immortal ceiling, saved from perfection only by demonstrated, if brief, episodes of vulnerability.
Clavicus Vile's Versatility
Clavicus Vile’s genius is less about any single expression of power than his ability to change costumes mid-scheme: jovial benefactor one year, punitive devil the next, patron of poets in the morning and quartermaster of warlocks by dusk. That chameleonic range—spread across planar diplomacy, artifact engineering, and improvised games with provincial cults—earns him a rating that edges above most divine tacticians yet stops short of the boundary-breakers who wield infinite toolsets. Aggregating rapid-fire adaptation to cultural shifts, a cultivated streak of providence, and an arsenal of secreted escape hatches, Clavicus Vile secures a 7.0 in Versatility: not the infinite toolkit of a multiversal creator, but a deep, deceptive bag of tricks wide enough to keep mortals—and occasionally fellow Princes—guessing which face of the dealmaker they will encounter next.
Adaptability
The Prince’s domain of wishes demands constant recalibration, and Vile excels at shaping new vectors when old ones sour. When the Alessian Empire outlawed Daedric worship, he pivoted overnight from public shrine blessings to clandestine contract scrolls disguised as legal sureties, allowing his influence to seep through the very bureaucracy meant to banish him. Millennia later, a Dunmeri house quietly asked for unrivaled commercial leverage in Vvardenfell after the Red Year disrupted trade; Vile answered not with coin but with the Monochrome Paintbrush, an artifact that turned their mourning tapestries into vivid commodities, letting grief itself become export. Even on the fly he adjusts format: during a Khajiiti lunar alignment misfire, he shifted an unfinished bargain from moon-sugar harvest quotas to sponsorship of a moon-sugar poetry contest, salvaging worship through cultural prestige rather than agricultural output. These pivots show an entity fluent in changing stakes, currencies, and even moral framing. His one limitation is scale: when the Crystal Tower venture collapsed, he struggled to repurpose its reality-wide scaffolding, revealing that truly cosmic projects are harder for him to re-spin on short notice.
Luck
Though luck is traditionally mortal turf, Vile curates coincidences with almost theatrical flair. A Colovian alchemist once muttered, “May I never fear poison again” while distilling experimental tonics; within an hour, she discovered a reactive antidote formula after an accidental spill—an outcome archivists traced to a forgotten hillside idol freshly cleaned by rain and moonlight, apparently activating the Prince’s notice. On a loftier stage, Vile’s champion during the War of Bend’r-mahk escaped a Nord ambush when a fissure opened beneath the attackers at the precise moment the champion recited a half-remembered promise clause. Critics argue these events are engineered, not lucky, yet the distinction blurs: Vile harnesses probability spikes as casually as others cast cantrips. Still, his fortune can turn against him—Umbra’s unexpected sentience, for instance, created decades of setbacks—demonstrating that chance remains a double-edged wager even for the Lord of the Deal. Overall, his relationship with fortune is robust but not unerring, justifying a luck factor that lifts Versatility without inflating it to deity-of-chance territory.
Shaved Knuckle in the Hole
Every Clavicus enterprise carries a hidden contingency, and these reserved assets are the bedrock of his flexibility. When a High Rock duchess reneged on her vow of firstborn service, Vile invoked an obscure sub-clause to transfer the debt to the duchess’s prized portrait—all future heirs would be born with a subtle sigil in the iris, quietly realigning the lineage under his gaze. When the Vassir-Didanat mine fiasco threatened to expose his Ebony-transmutation formula, he simply inverted the reagent sequence, causing the false ore to sublimate into harmless ash once exposed to direct sunlight, erasing evidence while preserving the principle for future exploitation. Even Barbas, often thought of as sidekick, doubles as emergency reservoir: should Vile’s avatars be banished, he can route consciousness through the hound and reassert influence before rival Princes notice the breach. These backup gambits rarely achieve headline victories, but they keep the board from tilting irrevocably against him, the hallmark of a strategist who never enters play without a hidden trump.
Clavicus Vile's Alignment
Clavicus Vile is a Daedric Prince—an immortal, non-mortal entity native to Oblivion rather than any Mundus-bound race. Daedra possess no true “subraces,” but Vile’s personal minions, the horned Skaafin, act as a cultural extension of his will inside the Fields of Regret. Across the long curve of Tamrielic history he has belonged to only one formal coalition: the Triad, a Second-Era alliance with Mephala and Nocturnal that sought to harvest Transparent Law from the Crystal Tower and wrest control of Sotha Sil’s Clockwork City. That cabal collapsed after Nocturnal’s betrayal, and Vile has shown no lasting loyalty to any divine fraternity since, working instead through ad-hoc pacts with mortal cults such as the Cyrodiilic Vampyrum Order or the Rimmen-based Jovial Lambasters.
From an ethical standpoint Vile operates on a rigorously contractual ethos. Every bargain—whether Avalea’s ill-fated rise through the Masque, Sebastian Lort’s tragic plea for his daughter, or the Ingenium deal that suspended Baar Dau above Vivec City—unfolds by explicit terms that Vile subsequently enforces to the letter, even when the spirit of the wish mutates into catastrophe for the mortal petitioner. He rarely breaks his own wording; instead he composes it with loopholes that transform gratitude into regret. This meticulous respect for legal form, paired with an utter lack of empathy for the suffering those forms create, anchors him on the Lawful side of the order-versus-chaos axis. He is not chaotic like Sheogorath, nor impartial like Azura; his thrill lies in seeing mortals trap themselves within fine print that he drafted with surgical forethought.
Morally, every recorded intervention ends with Vile accruing advantage at another’s expense. The Undead Kothringi of Stillrise Village gained immortality only to endure perpetual stagnation. The Bittercup gifts power yet sows bitterness. The Rueful Axe “cures” lycanthropy through murder. Even gestures that appear altruistic—granting Cyrodiilic vampires social finesse or helping the Vestige stop Nocturnal—ultimately secure him new worshipers or future favors. While he seldom pursues gratuitous torment à la Molag Bal, the well-being of others is irrelevant beside the entertainment and leverage their wishes provide. Such utilitarian self-interest places him decisively in the Evil sector of the good-versus-evil scale.
Hence, by the classic two-axis paradigm Vile resolves to Lawful Evil: a being who honors agreements with clockwork precision while designing those agreements to maximize his own amusement, power, and prestige, regardless of cost to mortals. His legality is the gilded frame around a fundamentally predatory picture, making every shrine inscription—“preserve your etiquette in his presence”—less a courtesy and more a survival warning. Pride and Prophecy keeps an updated character alignment matrix across all planes of existence.
Clavicus Vile's Trophy Case
Arena Results
Titles & Postseason Results
Halls of Legend Records
Overall Conclusion on Clavicus Vile and Position Across Planes of Existence
Clavicus Vile occupies a curious elevation in the cosmic food chain: exalted enough that every pact-bound soul on Nirn is a bead in his rosary, yet still tethered to rules—some self-imposed, some metaphysical—that keep him shy of the omnipotent stratum where reality-shapers like Anu or the Over-Gods of distant planes reside. His composite score of 7.7 distills that tension. Raw Power (8.0) demonstrates that, although he can shear off a slice of his realm and let it drift over Tamriel harvesting thousands of souls, he chooses to weaponise language and artifact rather than detonate suns or crumble timelines. Tactical Ability (7.5) shows a chess master who scripts wars in advance, but whose very love of complicated bargains leaves exploitable joints; Nocturnal’s coup during the Triad affair proves he can be out-schemed when vanity eclipses caution. Influence (8.0) reminds us that tavern jokes in every province use “Vile’s bargain” as shorthand for disastrous wish-making—a ubiquity few non-divine entities approach—yet multiversal pilgrims do not rush to venerate him as they do truly transcendent deities. Resilience (8.0) reveals a being who can lose half his realm and still claw back to full power within a generation, but one who nonetheless felt the sting of Umbra’s rebellion and Barbas’s temporary estrangement. Versatility (7.0) illustrates broad improvisational range, though his toolset remains anchored to contracts; in a dimension where desire is meaningless, his leverage shrinks.
Translate those metrics across planes and the picture sharpens. In mundane or low-magic worlds Vile is a subtle world-ender: with a single enchanted quill he could tempt kings into taxing their realms to death or spark a continent-wide vampire aristocracy that infiltrates every government. On the high-fantasy Prime Material—Tamriel, Faerûn, Eberron—he is a super-predator operating just below the ceiling where literal god-kings hurl meteor swarms. In conceptual or belief-driven planes like Sigil’s Outlands or Ravenloft’s Domains of Dread, his speciality in wish-law cuts straight to the ideological fabric, granting him bargaining chips even against native powers. Yet in reality-rewrite arenas—the Astral Sea of some mythoi, the upper lattice of the Elder Scrolls’ Aurbis where Anu and Padomay war—Vile’s reliance on mutually recognized rules becomes a leash. Entities who simply declare new constants can ignore the fine print; the Prince’s deal-making engine sputters where consent is irrelevant.
Three final notes fortify his 7.7. First, distributed risk: by warehousing chunks of his essence in Barbas and artifacts, he survives decapitation strikes but also suffers power troughs if those conduits turn rogue. Second, entertainment motive: Vile seeks amusement, not total conquest, meaning he voluntarily avoids some escalations that could raise his ceiling but would end the game. Third, jurisdictional etiquette: his lawful bent ensures that, once a pact is sealed, even rival deities trust he will not violate it outright; that reputation grants him passage in courts where outright tyrants are barred.
Consequently Clavicus Vile stands as an upper-tier manipulator who can topple empires and toy with lesser gods, yet whose own self-image—as the consummate politician basking in social interplay—keeps him a few contractual clauses away from absolute dominance. Pride and Prophecy keeps an updated power ranking across all planes of existence. This will only be sortable on desktop viewing. The below table shows a summary within the same plane of existence of this article.
