Oblivion’s Cut Content: The Imperial Express
Have you ever wanted to play a Bethesda-published game where you could play as a courier, but didn’t want to get a bullet (or two) lodged in your head? Then you’ll be sad to learn that you missed your chance, albeit just barely.
Like so many other cases of cut content before it, Oblivion’s Imperial Express has some threads that are still woven into the final game. In this particular case, one might notice a message pop up when first entering the Imperial City’s Market District. It reads; “New Topic: Do you need couriers?” and that’s where our story really starts. The message in itself isn’t all that noteworthy, and the topic can’t be discussed with any NPCs, so what’s it all about? Well, when looking at the topic in the Construction Set, we can see that it’s internally referred to as “ImpExWork”. The “ImpEx” part being shorthand for “Imperial Express”. There are four other topics with this prefix; “ImpExAccept”, “ImpExReject”, “ImpExGiveLetter” and “ImpExDeliveredLetter”. All five ImpEx topics have a couple of things in common, not only their internal naming scheme. They all have to do with work, and despite not specifying the conversation partner, it’s very likely that these lines would’ve been said to one of the three local Khajiit brothers.
Who are they? Well, their names are Ra’jiradh, Hassiri and Urjabhi, and they operate the only newspaper, the Black Horse Courier, out of the namesake building in… you guessed it, the Market District. It seems that upon overhearing the news that they were in need of more couriers, the player could ask the aforementioned question of the brothers, or maybe just Ra’jiradh, since he seems to be the one actually in charge. Once he explained the job to you, you could then reply with either the aforementioned accept or reject prompts. They would’ve read as “I’ll take the job.” and “Not for tha paltry sum.” respectively, and yes, that typo was included in the game. But what would this work exactly entail? Well, that’s difficult to say, but we can make an educated guess, as the relevant script still exists under the name of “ImperialExpressScript”. This script holds variables for many things; namely checks for if the player character is a courier, if the player opened a letter, if the player delivered a letter, and if the player’s delivery is late. It also holds tracking variables checking for when the delivery started and when it ended. Besides those variables, it also holds 14 different recipients, all listed by city. All of them are the cities’ local innkeepers, and the list is just overflowing with typo’s. Even for a script that wouldn’t be seen by the player’s eye normally, it’s still noticeable how many errors are present.
So, as of now, we know that the “Imperial Express” would’ve had the player delivering letters as a courier from the Black Horse Courier to many different recipients from all over Cyrodiil. But where would these letters come from? Well, that’s where the AI packages come in. These are by far the biggest chunk of leftovers from the whole Imperial Express setup, and there are a whopping 42 packages to be found that have the ImpEx prefix. The majority of these are request packages, which make citizens of the Imperial City head over to the Courier’s office building in the Market District. Exactly 31 of these unused AI packages are of the request type. How exactly would they have worked? That’s quite simple, actually. Let’s use the first one “ImpExRequest01”, as an example. This package is still used by Sevarius Atius, and it makes him head down to the office on the first day of each month, as long as innkeeper Hafid Hollowleg is still alive. All other packages work the same. The number they’re suffixed with indicates the date of which a recipient will “drop off” a letter, and all packages are tied to a particular innkeeper.
Each city has two innkeepers and both innkeepers will receive letters from two different people, with the exception of Hafid, who receives from four different people instead. Like everything with this game, there are also some bugs that affect these packages. Package number 6 is accidentally set up to work on day 5, and package number 24 has Gilen Norvalo set as a target, rather than Gilgondorin, who is alphabetically right next to him, an actual innkeeper, and coincidentally missing his second recipient. Packages 15 and 19 are also unused, and package 30 is in possession of a completely unused NPC, but otherwise all these packages still function “as intended” in the final game, making their respective NPCs move to drop off their mail. One other oddity, though; when accounting all the normal numbered packages from 1 to 30, we still only have 30 packages. What’s the 31st? That package is actually in possession of Othrelos, and it’s called “OthrelosImpExRequest15”. As you might’ve guessed, it’s completely identical to unused package 15 in everything but name. And yes, Othrelos is the only NPC that has a personalized package mentioning him by name. No, I don’t know why either.
But, with 31 of 42 packages being request types, what are the other 11? Those are all tied to the Khajiit brothers. Four of these packages are still used in the final game, they control their delivery behavior. Three of them are actual delivery packages; they cause the brothers to armor up and venture into the wilderness. The first package, “ImpEx01HassiriDeliver”, makes Hassiri break off his routine at 4pm on the 1st, 10th and 20th of each month. He will then equip his chainmail cuirass and go to Anvil with his target being the innkeeper of The Count’s Arms, Wilbur. The package is conditioned to only work when Hassiri is in the Black Horse Courier building, but not in the same cell as one of his brothers, and it won’t activate if Wilbur is dead. The second package, “ImpEx01UrjabhiDeliver”, has Urjabhi break off his routine at 4pm on the 7th, 16th and 26th of each month. He will equip his chainmail cuirass and will go to Bruma with his target being the innkeeper of the Jerall View Inn, Hafid Hollowleg. However, his package has some weird conditions attached to it. Similar to the previous package, this one will only activate if Urjabhi is in the Black Horse Courier building, but this one differs in the fact that it won’t activate if either Wilbur or Sevarius Atius are dead. Meaning that it will still work even if Hafid is dead. And finally, “ImpEx01Rajiradh01Deliver” has Ra’jiradh break off his routine at; you guessed it, 4pm on the 4th, 13th and 23rd of each month. He too, will equip his chainmail cuirass and will venture to Leyawiin with his target being Witseidutsei, the innkeeper of Five Claws Lodge. The conditions on this package are slightly less nonsensical. It will not activate if Witseidutsei is dead and will only activate if Ra’jiradh is in the Black Horse Courier building, but not if Urjabhi is in the same cell as him. There is no such condition for Hassiri though. All three brothers also possess a package called “ImpExReturn”. This package is just to make sure that they return to the Imperial City after a so-called delivery.
The 7 remaining packages are related to the days of the week where the brothers would have offered “services”. It is unknown what kind of services they would’ve offered, but my guess is that these packages would’ve made it possible to for them to offer you a delivery job. Let’s take a look at four packages called “ImpExProvideServicesTue”, “ImpExProvideServicesSun”, “ImpExProvideServicesWed”, and “ImpExProvideServicesThu”. These are pretty self-explanatory; the Khajiit who possessed them would’ve been able to offer services to the player from 7am to 8pm on Tirdas, Sundas, Middas and Turdas, respectively, but only as long as the respective Khajiit was in the Black Horse Courier building. However, these packages seem to have gotten replaced as well, and are never used. Instead, the Khajiit brothers use a modified version of the concept;
- Ra’jiradh still has a package called “ImpExProvideServicesRaJiradhMTWSu”.
- Urjabhi still has a package called “ImpExProvideServicesUrjabhiTWThFSa”.
- And Hassiri still has a package called “ImpExProvideServicesHassiriMThFSaSu”.
The only differences being that these packages work on multiple days instead of a single day each time, and instead of activating as long as they are in the Black Horse Courier building, Hassiri and Ra’jiradh’s packages only activate when they are seated in the office chair, while Urjabhi’s doesn’t have any such requirement. Again, it seems like it was intended for the brothers to offer services to the player when they were seated in the office chair, but it is never clearly defined what kind of services these would’ve been, as the brothers normally aren’t vendors. If I had to make a guess, it’s possible you could pick up a random letter from their vendor menu to deliver, but that’s honestly just pure speculation on my part.
And with those last few AI packages out of the way, we’ve covered all that remains of the Imperial Express leftovers. 42 AI packages, 5 topics, and a script. It seems that the basic gist would’ve been that the player could’ve overheard NPCs discuss the brothers being in need of couriers, which they could then follow up on with one of the brothers. After getting details, the player could then accept or deny becoming a courier, which would apparently unlock the option of participating in this radiant-type letter delivery quest. The details such as time and not opening the letter would be tracked via script, and the player would likely receive better pay for a timely delivery when compared to an unopened or late one. When meeting an innkeeper, the player could likely use the “Imperial Express letter” topic to hand them over and the “Delivered letter” topic upon returning to the couriers’. Any other details that were kept in dialogue are probably lost to time as no dialogue related to this (apparently) repeatable quest has survived, neither voiced nor written.
Food for thought
It seems that the repeatable quest here was deliberately removed, as Bethesda tried their best to keep the radiant questing system out of Oblivion, as they would only embrace it later on in Skyrim. But, if it wasn’t deliberately cut, then it might’ve been due to the fact that the Black Horse Courier as a whole was reiterated upon many times. In case this wasn’t clear by now, the Black Horse Courier in the final game is never implied to deliver mail, only their own newspapers. The “Imperial Express” part that often gets attributed to the quest itself is likely just an earlier name for the BHC. And it’s not even the only one. All three brothers have an eating package that’s called “EightCitiesEat6x2”; and all those citizens that visit the office to drop off their mail? They’re kept in a faction called “Eight Cities Couriers Customers”.
So it apparently evolved from “Eight Cities Couriers”, to “Imperial Express”, to “Black Horse Courier”. Also, what exactly does “Eight Cities’’ refer to? Just the cities besides the Imperial City? That’s weird. But I guess so is ignoring one other city to have the IC in its place. Speaking of weird, if we go look at the brothers’ factions, we’ll discover another weird oddity. It is called “Ra’jiradh’s Price”, with the more logical internal name of “RajiradhsPride”, implying the actual name just contains a typo. This faction, weirdly enough, marks Ra’jiradh as the father of Urjabhi and Hassiri, rather than just their brother. And while all dialogue referring to this was likely re-recorded, it seems that his leadership role of the pride was kept even into the final game. All the brothers’ dialogue has the “REC” note attached to it, indicating a recording note. Sometimes context is given with this note, but when it’s just those three letters, you can be sure the dialogue was re-written and re-recorded at some point. Also, this faction owns a chestnut horse that’s present at the local stables, implying that the brothers might’ve also been intended to make their deliveries on horseback.
And then there’s even more oddities, such as Ra’jiradh’s name being capitalized inconsistently in dialogue versus everywhere else. Or the Nord/Imperial rumor dialogue that misnames the paper as the “Dark Horse Courier”, which might’ve been a simple mistake, or maybe yet another earlier name. But possibly the most interesting weird bug/leftover, is this. As we’ve gathered, the Black Horse Courier in the final game is a newspaper. The previously mentioned Imperial Express was seemingly a mail delivery service. But there is some dialogue that suggests that at some point in time the Black Horse Courier (or the Eight Cities Couriers) really was a courier service, true to its name. Like most shopkeepers, the Khajiit brothers are a subject of the Imperial City’s gossip, and there are three rumors about the Black Horse Courier, which have four possible random responses. The interesting thing here is that the four responses are different for women with the female Nord voicetype, meaning female Orcs and Nords. And while the subtitles were updated, their dialogue still talks about the Black Horse Courier as if it was a courier service. The early lines can be transcribed as follows:
- “Not really. I just usually wait for some random adventurer to show up, then I get them to do it for me.”
- “It’s a nice service, but all you need to do is throw an adventurer some gold, and he’ll fetch anything you need.”
- “It’s true. I haven’t fetched anything for myself in years.”
- “They’re handy, but I usually just wait for some random adventurer to happen by.”
This means that at a previous point in time, the question about the Black Horse courier was likely completely different as well, and while the responses were re-recorded for basically every voicetype, the FemaleNord one was forgotten and the old dialogue remains in the final game. It seems that Bethesda just kept going through version after version of the courier idea, only to end up with a half-baked one getting put in the released version. The Imperial Express content wasn’t fully removed from the final game, and the Black Horse Courier as a newspaper service just isn’t that deep or interesting. And it seems that none of the iterations of the idea ever got the polish they deserved from a AAA developer. As such, the files are littered with bits and pieces of different incarnations, as even the developers apparently couldn’t differentiate between versions anymore. Alas, this did give us an interesting look into the development of this quest/location/system, so at least there’s that. If only this was the only time Bethesda had interesting cut content left over in the files as mere bits and pieces, oh, how easy my life would’ve been then. But no, there’s far more stuff to talk about where that came from.
