If you’ve progressed far enough in the main quest of Oblivion Remastered—which many people haven’t, according to achievement statistics—you’ll know that the good people of Bruma commission a statue in your honour after your heroics at the Great Oblivion Gate that opens outside the city.
The “spawning” of the statue is an interesting process. After completing “Great Gate”, the statue spawns the next time you enter a cell with Martin present in it. This can either occur on the road from Bruma to Cloud Ruler Temple, or instead temple itself.
At this point, the game calculates the “best” armour and weapon you have in your inventory, something you need to be cognizant of if you don’t want an ugly statue.
This can be problematic because the calculation includes quest items that can’t be removed from the inventory, and they also tend to be the best items in your inventory. This includes Umbra, which is pretty cool, and the Bloodworm Helm, which looks terrible.
The Second Coming of Pelinal Whitestrake
However, anything would be better than what Reddit user Cook_Over received for their efforts defending Bruma. The sculptor in charge of depicting their visage decided to sculpt them at their most vulnerable: “bald, naked and empty-handed,” as they put it.
The cause of this bug is well-documented. If the player has the Crusader’s Relics in their inventory, then these vestments will be selected over everything else, but the statue can’t actually equip them. This problem stems from the Knights of the Nine being an expansion, and the Crusader’s Relics not being present in the base game.
There’s no fix for this bug, besides simply not having the armour in your inventory at the point of the statue’s creation after Great Gate.
Another fun fact is that the statue is actually a giant NPC, and not an inert object. You can use console commands on the statue to make it come alive or collapse into a heap on the floor. This is also why the statue won’t equip broken items, as that’s something that’s hard-coded into all of Oblivion’s NPCs.