Last year, beefy Skyrim quest mod Lordbound finally soft launched, having spent a decade in the oven. Now, two of the modders behind it have managed to make their creation semi-canon, by weaving some of its lore into a fresh add-on approved by Bethesda.

“It’s been over a decade since Lordbound was conceived, and during that time, many of us have turned from gamers, to modders, to game developers – and back,” former Lordbound project lead Arcky wrote on the mod’s Discord server. “About 18 months ago, myself and your favorite Lordbound dungeon designer RoKMod – famous for Brainrot Cave – quit our cushy game dev jobs to become independent game developers. But making games is RISKY and EXPENSIVE, so we decided to make another huge Skyrim mod instead!”

That Skyrim mod’s a DLC-sized expansion called Legacy of Orsinium, and it’s been released through Bethesda’s Creations initiative. It’s fully compatible with Lordbound, with Arcky adding that it “may even contain some familiar story threads and more Lordbound lore” and – since it’s been released with Bethesda’s approval – technically makes Lordbound semi-canon. That last bit looks to have been said in slightly tongue-in-cheek fashion, but it’s still pretty cool.

As to how some of its developers going off to make this creation under the banner of their own indie game studio Veelpoot fits into ongoing work on Lordbound, Arcky noted in a disclaimer that it hasn’t negatively affected the mod development. “The teams are different, but the tools I made for Legacy of Orsinium [are] already helping out Lordbound development,” they wrote.

While the latest implementation of Bethesda-affiliated or approved mods has attracted just as much criticism from some players and modders as previous Creation Club iterations notoriously have, it’s been nice to see some long-tenured modders be able to use it to vault into indie development. The creators of big Fallout 4 mod Sim Settlements morphing into Kinggath Creations and using their Creations income to help support their traditional modding efforts is an example which springs to mind. “It’s been great to finally pay some of the Lordbound developers I’ve worked with for over a decade,” Arcky wrote in their announcement.

If you fancy trying Legacy of Orsinium, which adds a bunch of new voiced quests to Skyrim’s Orc strongholds, you’ll need 1000 of Bethesda’s Creation Credits – roughly £8.79/$9.99 worth in real money – and can find more info on it here.