10Kaziem

I imagine the telvanni, as the actual wizards, don't care too much about what happens because they stay stuck in their towers all the time. They might have opinions on the rare occasions on which they emerge. Their retainers probably run things, though, including taxes, etc.

Yes, and who is chief among those retainers? Their Mouth. Who directs the activities of the retainers and makes sure they are roughly in line with the Master's wishes? The Mouth. Who doles out punishment for transgressions and reward for minor tasks? The Mouth, or someone working on their behalf. Who ultimately has to sign off on things in the Master's stead? The Mouth. Who arranges the payments from the Master's treasury to the relevant parties in order to procure guards, materials, food and other necessities? The Mouth, or someone working on behalf of the Mouth. If the Master personally oversees these things instead of the Mouth, or "as the Mouth", then why even have a Mouth in the first place? If the Master does not control any of these things directly or indirectly through a Mouth, then how does he procure these services? Are you suggesting that the residents of the town simply take a collection plate door-to-door to fund these things?

This is a nonsensical idea which flies in the face of the known purpose of a Mouth. I'm not usually so blunt, but this is something that I am absolutely, vehemently opposed to for the dozen or so reasons I have listed in this thread and it's predecessor. None of which have actually been directly addressed, I might add. Only one small part of my posts has been excised and quoted at a time, with no regard paid to any of the remainder of my posts. This idea is simply illogical, unnecessary, ill concieved and problematic on numerous levels. If there is some secret place where this has been discussed and my concerns already explaiend away, may I please have a link or a copy of that discussion? If not, would whoever is the main proponent of this idea please read my posts and explain just what exactly he or she is thinking?

I'm firmly in the camp of no mind-wipe. It makes no sense and disagrees with both the vanilla game (in which Fast Eddie mentioned training as a mouth and was blocked from the position - hardly something you would expect if being a mouth meant a complete mind-wipe, you'd think mouthes would be the most prominent former enemies of their master).

At the same time, Telvanni territory is not in complete anarchy at least at the city level (and probably beyond, otherwise why have a council at all).

The error is, I think, in assuming that the Telvanni spring up fully-formed with towers around them. Instead, they probably developed as every fictional magocracy does. In every magocracy, the most powerful members cannot be the ruling class, because they need the time and effort to retain their higher status.

Young, aspiring Telvanni become powerful enough to attract the wrong kind of attention, settle somewhere else to study in piece and get away from local politics. Since having to fend for yourself is pretty tiresome, they have retainers with them that they pay from whatever money they have (probably from selling enchantmented items or training when they were young, dumb,  and needed the money).

Building a settlement might be fun for them, or it might be a chore, but at one point their research outpost reaches critical mass and forms a settlement. This is now when the young, aspiring Telvanni has become a middle-aged, aspiring Telvanni and is dangerous enough to be squashed by the older Masters. So they send a Mouth to the council to placate them, or they are requested to send a mouth (or else). Note that only the two more powerful Telvanni Masters have no Mouthes in vanilla.

Being annoyed with all the minor details, trusted friends, students or servants take up the slack while the now-Master goes back to studying and tinkering. Some might care more about their town, some might care less, but they simply do not have the time to be both powerful and a meddler, not when there's always other young, aspiring Telvanni around who are becoming powerful enough to attract their attention. After all, that's what you have your trusted servants for.

That's when the time of the oligarchic middle managers have come: the Mouth and the Steward. The Steward (or several) takes care of the city government. The Mouth takes care of the Council and stays in constant communication with the Master, by the one known way to do this: the Dreamsleeve.

It is noted in MK's older writings that it requires the mind to be at least in partial meditation at all times (and that Imperial clerks can use it as well), which would point nicely to what a Mouth training actually is all about. It also gives a good, deeper meaning to the word: the Mouth speaks the word of their Master without having heard it before. They know of it thanks to wireless communication by Tamriel's soul-internet.

At no point does this make mind control necessary or desirable. Nor total anarchy.

Anonytroll

The Mouth takes care of the Council and stays in constant communication with the Master, by the one known way to do this: the Dreamsleeve.

If they have the Dreamsleeve, couldn't all the Masters communicate with each-other through that and cut out the middleman?

Anonytroll

-snip-

I really like this idea, it expands upon the original concept of a Mouth without completely tearing it apart like the mind control idea, while still being interesting and fun. I'm fairly certain no Mouths ask you to deliver anything to THEIR master, implying they can communicate instantaneously with them, just not the others. So this doesn't even break or invalidate any minor delivery boy quests in vanilla.

To the person who said why not just have all the masters communicate via dreamsleeve, I'd say it's because they don't want to. Having a connection to all other Masters would be a lot more of a pain in the arse than having a connection to their Mouth who then speaks to all other Masters through their Mouths in the council. Whether the Masters listen or care to the other Mouths is up to them. Having it be a direct link between Masters would cut out the middle man in a way the Telvanni probably don't want, which is why they wouldn't do so in my opinion. The Mouth serves as a drivel-buffer between every petty issue and foolish proposal and the Master's (often already tenuous) sanity.

Side Note: I really hope the new forums get some needed updates - I can't seem to add spaces in my posts by clicking return as I used to be able to, and I don't see a spoiler tag or the ability to double-quote anywhere. All my posts end up as incongruous walls of text.

ObligatoryUsername

Anonytroll
-snip-

 I'm fairly certain no Mouths ask you to deliver anything to THEIR master, implying they can communicate instantaneously with them, just not the others.

There's that quest where you deliver Daedra Skin to Master Aryon.

Yes, I should have been more specific. I meant to say that the Mouths do not have you deliver any MESSAGES to their Masters. Aryon's Mouth asks you to deliver a coded missive to Divayth Fyr, for instance, but he does not ask you to tell Aryon about his reply.

Well I suppose I done fucked up. Aryon says sepcifically:

"Baladas will be joining the council, and, as we agreed, I will be your patron. Please accept this Silver Staff of Peace, the traditional patron's gift to his protege. You are now my Mouth in House Telvanni with all the duties and privileges of that rank."

I very much agree. Telvanni, as fragmented and in feud as they are, must have some mode of functioning as an actual society. While it’s established that the wizards themselves view the populace as a source of revenue and retainers and not much more, not much has been shed on how commoners view wizard lords. Vanilla Vos NPCs do have some dialogue about how they consider Aryon an okay lord since he does his job of protecting them adequately and doesn’t bother them much, but I feel that for Telvanni that’s the exception instead of the norm because of the peculiary of both Aryon and how he acquired Vos. Having some settlements be in constant terror of their wizard-lord, in reverence of him or even ignoring him due to reclusiveness/weakness/outside influences would be interesting.

Also agree on bugherders. I think that on the whole the average Telvanni peasant knows more magic and is better at it because of the needs of wizard-lords and the close proximity of his retainers who might offer services to the public at large as a way of supplementing their income. Having a whole town full of vanilla-style mages wouldn’t mesh well with anything, however, and their magics are likely to be very peculiar and idiosyncratic (like Dust Adepts). So that’d be best explored through bug, ash, dust and of course fungi magic.

Basically, a lot of our Telvanni content has fallen behind our current standards and aim for cohesive vision. Most notably, House Telvanni is not portrayed anywhere near its full potential or the level of depth we intend to apply to the other Houses. As such, once we’re done with the rest of the province we plan to return to Telvannis and give it a funal bump up to our current standards.

Alongside a big heaping of Crowley, this frankly sounds more like something the Telvanni Isles might degenerate ìnto deep in the fourth era, or some port city in the Abecean Sea.
Not saying it’s not appreciated, but this is really pretty far from how TR has envisioned the Isles to be so far.  Both the Empire and the Tribunal have built a civilisation, and the Isles are one of the four corners of the house of shipping, especially for the East Empire Company, so an active pirate base would not be appreciated, to say nothing of the fallbacks and safeguard Dral left behind before he became an Outer Realm.

However, since the eastern coast is sort of free game as far as re-development is concerned, and since the unofficial motto is “a coast of heretics”, maybe some of these could be based in Uriel V’s abandoned naval bases, bidding their time until civil order breaks down? God knows we could use more actual heresies in Almsivi’s cracking order.

Powerful wizards would be less of posers than Crowley was, for sure. I mean, they have actual, visible proof of their prowress. If given enough time, they will understand exactly how the afterlife and souls work (and they will stop there, most likely, or go the route of Archmagister Dral and become their own Outer Realm, or the route of the currently missing Indoril head of house who zero-summed).

I’m absolutely sure we aren’t touching the Corprus storyline, sorry – it has been done well enough by Morrowind proper and it’s not in either TR’s place or interest to invent secret lore around a storyline already steeped in ancient and forbidden lore.

I think we had some discussion about including the Hive, except as part of the Deshaan Plains. It would be a prototype for the Skyrender hives the Dres harvest for beasts of burden. I’m not sure how your vision would be implemented – we are after all bound by having to put this in-game, in a somewhat mundane, unobscured reality.

The Hive is a great choice for Telvannis’ parliament of bugs, even the name suggests that purpose. I also like the sorcerer-Lawmen trajectory with the Dust Adepts; they're not full wizards, but they can be an unholy terror. In regions without the mageocracy, they might be the only law.

Of course, I'd like to see the Velothi get more love than yurts… All good possibilities.
 

In my head, I’ve thought that the Telvanni tower communities get their food by a combination of trade and Velothi tribute.

The lands that the Telvanni live in are extremely undeveloped outside of the isolated towers, but there are a good amount of Velothi living off the land in small communities centered around fishing, herding, farming, hunting, etc. I don’t imagine that the Telvanni mages would want to concern themselves with the Velothi at all in terms of keeping the peace or providing services, but there must be some relationship between them.

I think Velothi living near Telvanni towers would be so isolated from higher level magic that they would treat the mages almost like powerful, dangerous deities. Like a lot of cultures in the real world with similar beliefs, they could have a tradition of offering food and other supplies as tribute to the mages. This would sort of function on a superstitions level, where they believed that giving tribute might increase their harvests, etc. But it would also function on a practical level, because the Telvanni would be very inclined to protect villages & peoples that were effectively feeding them.

I think it’s a good solution, because I can’t imagine the Telvanni wanting to get involved in mundane things like taxing agriculture. It would also provide a bit of color to the world, and could provide the basis for more than a few quests. What if Indoril priests are moving into the Velothi villages in Telvanni territory, ostensibly to spread the faith but also conveniently spreading Indoril influence and teaching the villagers that offering tribute is blasphemous. What if one of the villages was unable to pay tribute to the local mage lord, and the player is sent to deal with them. I can also envision small shrines on the outskirts of Telvanni towns where the Velothi leave offerings to appease the mage lords. I think there’s a lot of good stuff that can come out of this idea.

-- Concerning the question of how wizards communicate with their mouths –

So not to be a buzzkill, but what is wrong with a simple teleport spell? Since mouths probably do not speak with their masters too often, why cant they have a teleport spell marked at the counsil chamber, an one at their master’s settlement. To me this whole talk of Dreamsleeve and mind wipes seems to me to be an overly complicated sollution to a very simple problem. People send people to advocate for them all the time. They just give them instructions beforehand. 

Here is how I imagine a day in the life of a mouth. 

Morning: Get up, get dressed, and teleport to your master and discuss issues up for discussion at the counsil. That is if there are any, and if the master even can be bothered. Then head back to counsil business. 

Noon: Lunch. 

Aftenoon: Then head back to counsil business. 

Evening: Dinner; Report back to master if necessery, then go to bed.