Hermaeus Mora

Location: quite a ways west of Cloud Ruler Temple (link goes to the Daedric Shrines Map at UESP)

Minimum Level: none, but figure on 20+

Offering: complete all other Daedric Quests

Reward: Oghma Infinium

Objective: soul trap one of each of the ten races

Aside from the fact that most gamers love the Oghma Infinium, this quest is here as a protection for gamers who don't mess with the Main Quest immediately. So they may have already completed all of the other Daedric artifact quests and disposed of the artifacts somehow. Then, in the "Blood of the Daedra" quest, Martin asks for a Daedric artifact and there aren't any to he had. Wrong-o. There's this one because you can't start this quest until the "Blood of the Daedra" quest is active. It's a sorry use for such a nifty artifact, but them's the breaks. Additionally, you must have completed all of the other Daedric quests (you can still do this one if you kept Umbra in Clavicus Vile's quest). Since you have to be level 20 to get Hircine's quest, that's probably the earliest practical timeframe for starting this one.

When all of the conditions are met, you'll be approached by Casta Flavus with Mora's quest: soul trap one of each of the races. You'll get Hermaeus Mora's Soul Gem and a 120-second Soul Trap spell to go with it. You can also go directly to the shrine - just follow the road behind Cloud Ruler.

So where to come up with all of these souls? There are a few possibilities that won't get you in trouble with the law:

• Bandits: hoof it along the roads and you'll get jumped by bandits. You should be able to find one of each race if you get attacked enough times. How to insure that you get attacked? Well, if you're 20th level, you probably have a lot of camps showing on your map. Just go to each one and you should get jumped.
• Bandit/Marauder Lairs: same idea. Both of these groups have a wide variety of members and their lairs should respawn after a while, so go back and revisit some of your old conquests.
• The Arena: you'll fight at least one of each race in the Arena quests. Of course, if you're already Grand Champion, it's not a workable idea.
• The Daedric shrines: You'll find at least one of each race scattered out among all of them.

Be very careful with this quest so that you never have more than one soul trap spell running at a time (this includes casting it twice on the same NPC before the spell duration expires). There's a serious hiccup that can cause the quest to fail. One at a time, please.

Your reward at completion is the Oghma Infinium. If you waited until too late to start the "Blood of the Daedra" quest and don't have another artifact that you're willing or able to sacrifice, this will have to be it. When you use the Oghma, you get to choose one of three paths: Steel, Shadows or Spirits.

• Path of Steel
  • +10 (permanent) to Blade, Blunt and Heavy Armor
  • +10 (permanent) to Strength and Endurance (you can go over 100 with this)
• Path of Shadows
  • +10 (permanent) to Light Armor, Security and Sneak
  • +10 (permanent) to Agility and Speed (you can go over 100 with this)
• Path of Spirits
  • +10 (permanent) to Conjuration, Destruction and Restoration
  • +10 (permanent) to Intelligence and Willpower (you can go over 100 with this)
  • note that Willpower is wacked - the game tries to raise it as if it were a skill and this has not been fixed by the patch - if you're playing on a PC, you can open the console and use "modpca willpower 10" (no quotes) to compensate
  • XBox players, you're on your own

Once you use the Oghma, it disappears. So if you have no other artifact to give Martin and use the Oghma, you're, like, totally hozed for the Main Quest and will not be able to complete it without cheating.