The Missing Merchant

Priority: 

Stage: 

  • Merged

Development Progress: 

100

Claim Type: 

Faction: 

Description

Dreynos Helvi is concerned about the disappearance of one of House Hlaalu's affiliated outlander merchants, Gavros Falas. The player is sent to investigate Gavros’ house. As evidenced by the stashes of ash statues and other illegal goods (skooma, dwemer artifacts, etc) hidden in his residence, it becomes clear Gavros was a smuggler along with being a Hlaalu merchant. (The interior dev is encouraged to get creative with the placement of these illegal goods, such as behind false walls or hidden behind furniture, etc.)

There are also several threatening letters found stacked on Gavros' desk. These letters are unsigned, and demand him to either let the writer in on the profits, or to clear out of town. From there, the player must find additional leads by asking around.

Indoril Merchant: There are two ways to get to this lead. One is asking about the town, which will result in the player finding out that the merchant’s nephew is visiting to check on his uncle, who he is worried is getting involved in the bad parts of Morrowind society.

If the player goes to the tavern, the tavern owner says someone has been looking for them and nods them over to a patron drinking in the corner. This patron is the nephew, but that can also be inferred by the player by the NPCs last name so attentive players can simply find him that way. If questioned, he shows the player a letter his uncle had sent him a few weeks prior. The letter details how Gavros tried to broker a trade deal with a member of House Indoril, by giving them a cut of the profits if they helped protect his smuggling operation from “the Dunmer natives” who have been threatening him and his business. The letter points the player to Darane Navur, a dunmer merchant in Almas Thirr.

The other way is speaking with traders and merchants, with a high enough disposition they point the player directly to Darane Navur, who they know had a partnership with Gavros at one point.

Darane Navur is an Indoril-aligned merchant. She admits it is not typical for the Indoril to engage in much trade with the Hlaalu controlled areas, but that her goals are her own. When questioned by the player, she explains she had been trying to broker a trade partnership with Gavros before he had disappeared, but had had to pull out of the deal due to him getting involved in illegal smuggling operations. She states proudly she is loyal to Temple law, and lambasts Gavros for being a Hlaalu heretic who should never have come to the Thirr River Valley. She tells you the location of the cave he was smuggling in to back up her statement. With a little more persuasion/intimidation, she would also admit Gavros was trying to convince her to trade in ash statues, but that she, as a faithful follower of the Tribunal, refused of course!

 

Sixth house: This is intentionally harder to find, since it bypasses the journey to Almas Thirr, but should still be an alternate route. In an alley of the town is a Sleeper, who can give clues as to the merchant’s fate through his confused ramblings. The dialogue they have should be sensitive to the completion of the main quest. For instance, before the Sixth House has awoken, the Sleeper may say: “ Try... down. By the waves. In the dark. Somewhere... Sorry, I’m rather preoccupied, try asking someone else.” The sleeper also has some statues in their home.

-Whereas after the Sixth House has awoken, the dialogue might be: “Dragged where surf and crawling worms go down, down, down, at behest of star-wound and the red in my eyes. Into darkness he climbed, twisting scales and bringing smiles to the sleeping, dreams to the betrayed...my dreams, oh, my dreams. Leave me, outlander!”

-While after the main quest, the Sleeper tells the player coherently that he believes Gavros was murdered in a Sixth House cave and gives them directions to it, asking the player to not tell any others of his “indiscretion” in return.

 

This all leads to a cave by the coast (cave directions are notoriously hard to follow so make sure they are almost excessively clear, except the two cryptic ones from the sleeper). The first few rooms of the cave should look like a smuggler’s hideout. The last rooms should have open crates of ash statues scattered around (but no other overt signs of the Sixth House). The dead body of the merchant is also in here.

Next to his body is his journal. The journal details all that has happened so far: being threatened by a syndicate (he writes he thinks it’s the Camonna Tong), losing his Indoril business partner over a disagreement, writing his letter to his nephew, and then coming to the cave to meet Darane. This last entry details some confusion as to what the contact wants from him, and his hopes that the Indoril has finally seen reason.

 

After gathering this journal, the player may then return to Helvi, and have three options. Any choice will reward you for solving the investigation:

1) Only shows if the player spoke with the Indoril merchant. They can accuse Darane of the murder, on the basis that she believed Gavros to be a heretic and “took care of him”. Helvi says this is just another regretful symptom of the brewing conflict in the Thirr Valley. (curiously, you get a little extra pay for this option)

2) Only shows if they have the nephew’s letter and the merchant’s journal. They can accuse the Camonna Tong, saying they hate outlanders and wanted to gain control of Gavros’ smuggling operation. Helvi hushes them up, saying accusing the Camonna Tong is very dangerous and to say no more of it. However, they say the player has gained enough evidence to satisfy their investigation, and that the house will take over to find “the real killer”.

3) Only shows if they picked up one of the unique ash statues in the merchant’s house, the sleeper's house or in the smuggler's cave. They can accuse the Sixth House cult of the murder. Helvi is incredulous and finds it hard to believe, but because he recognises the statues he is satisfied that Gavros's meddling with sixth house artefacts caught up to him in some form and considers the matter resolved.

 

This is constructed so that it reasonably could be any of the three, so any choice will successfully complete the quest.

Once the quest is finished, Helvi will tell the player that they are now working for Andas and should report to Ulvys Ules for their next task.

Assets needed:

smuggler cave dungeon

letter addressed to nephew

threatening letters addressed to Gavros Falas

Victim’s nephew NPC in The Dancing Cups, with last name Falas

Sleeper NPC

 

Old version under the spoiler:

 

Comments

First draft of dialogue

Kevaar's picture

First draft of dialogue posted into the claim description. Might still need some loose ends tied up, but a review at this point for it would be appreciated! 

I am a returning modder to

Boznirith's picture

I am a returning modder to the site after several years, and my account is no longer active, so this is a new one. I interested in doing this interior, but I notice the cave type is not specified. Would someone clarify the cave type to use?

Finally done. There were a

jonado's picture

Finally done. There were a lot of edits back and forth to make this fit well into Andothren. I feel a bit of pity for Envy who had to deal with this. Anyway, I promised him some feedback, so I took some time to review his work, which could hopefully bring me closer to the Reviewer role.

General: If this would not have been a major blocker for the House Hlaalu questline, I would have sent this back to development instead of finishing it myself. The quest was clearly not playtested to a larger degree and several paths were incoherent or partially missing. On the positive side, I like that there are several ways to finish the quest and the open ending, which could get a promising sequel in a later release (if you report the Indoril as the killer, that should have consequences for the relation between the Houses, potentially sparking a House War). The writing was also generally quite good, although some information was missing at places.

Clean: No.

Spoiler: Highlight to view
  • There is a lot of dirty dialogue in the Greeting 5 section. If you move around dialogue, you need to clean it manually. In this case it would have been better to create a new entry at the right position.
  • There was a dirty reference to in_hlaalu_room_side in The Dancing Cup. If you accidentally move objects in the section file, a new copy will be created. If this happens, you need to delete the duplicate.

Follows TR naming conventions: Mostly.

Spoiler: Highlight to view
  • One important exception is Gavros Falas' desk, where you had used an ID starting with a T_ prefix, which is reserved for Tamriel Data. I changed this to TR_m4_And_GavrosDesk.
  • Related to this, you had once referenced the deprecated faction T_Mw_Hlaalu, although that might have been a misunderstanding. There is only one Hlaalu faction in use nowadays, Hlaalu.
  • There was also a misunderstanding of the region name, although I partly blame the asset creator for this, who likely had intended the old region name “Thirr River Valley”, which now is called Aanthirin. Thirr Valley was recently used for the Coronati Basin region, which is further south. I changed all instances of this to “Aanthirin” or “Thirr river”.
  • While not strictly important, I would have liked to include a reference to House Hlaalu in the journal ID - it should have been something like TR_m4_HH_AND_MissingMerchant. It would have been quite a lot of hassle to change this, and since you included _And_ for Andothren, I think this is okay enough to keep it.

Object placement: Generally okay, but some objects were missing.

Spoiler: Highlight to view
  • I think you followed the description a bit too strictly. Therefore, I moved Gavros' journal to his body, since this could make the scripting and journal entries more straightforward (see below). You are free to alter the quest to improve playability. Related to this, I set the ingredients he was carrying to non-respawning quantities. I don’t know if it makes any difference, but thought it was a good idea.
  • The Sleeper, and the associated ash statues, were not placed at all, so this path could not be played. I will describe that in its own section.
  • You also seem to have made an attempt into replacing Gavros' desk with the unique one. This will create a duplicate as I mentioned above. To fix this, I asked Jacks to replace the one in the section file with a new one with the correct ID, and remove it from the quest. If this would not have been done, this should have been requested in the merge notes.

Journal: The general layout was okay, but some information was missing, and there was one serious issue.

Spoiler: Highlight to view
  • I changed the quest name to “House Hlaalu: The Missing Merchant”, since this is a Hlaalu quest.
  • Changed the first journal entry to “Dreynos Helvi asked me to investigate the disappearance of an outlander Dunmer merchant named Gavros Falas. I should start by checking out his house, which is located in the Andothren docks.”, since I think it reads better. I know I am partially to blame for the previous statement.
  • I see no point in splitting journal entry 40 and 41, so I merged the ash statues part into the first one.
  • Added directions to Journal state 51: “He can be found in a cave on an island a short distance east of Andothren.” It is important to include clear directions in the journal, or a link to a topic that has them.
  • I changed Journal state 60 to “I’ve found Gavros Falas' corpse. He was carrying a journal describing the final period of his life. Now I should either return to Dreynos Helvi and tell him who I believe murdered Gavros Falas, or gather more evidence.”, since it doesn’t trigger on reading the journal (nor should in my opinion). Related to this, I also made some changes to the mechanics for reporting the quest; see below.
  • Changed “Helvi” to “Dreynos Helvi” in the journal to be in line with the rest of the questline.
  • The jornal entries related to the Sleeper path blocked the regular path leading to the Dancing Cup, so I made it a separate journal. This is an excellent example of when it is useful to use several journals with the same name.

Dialogue: Was somewhat incomplete, especially compared to the rest of the questline.

Spoiler: Highlight to view
  • The directions to the Dancing Cup gave no reason why the player should look for Gavros there. I added “He usually hangs around there.” to this line. I also made sure that Dreynos Helvi cannot say this line, since that would have been weird.
  • Jada is not at the same floor as Honon (this is another case of where you have followed the description too quickly. While being nice, it doesn't really work with the layout of the interior), so I changed her line to “There's a man in the basement who has been asking for you. His name is Honon Falas.” I also added a check that he is still alive.
  • A few lines should not be enabled for Honon Falas, so I added filters to prevent that.
  • Darane Navur clearly says that she refuses to trade with ash statues. I added an appropriate Service Refusal line to deal with that (also for the unique ash statues used in the quest; see later comment). I also removed the condition for not having finished the quest for this line to be active, since it is not directly related to the quest.
  • The directions to Molkobal were not nearly good enough. Changed these to “It is a cave on the first island east of the Dwemer ruins overlooking Andothren.”. Also added “No honest person has reason to go there, though.”, since I think people would ask themselves why you want directions to a smuggler’s cave.
  • It is quite important for the context that the merchant is an outlander (this should be emphasised, since he is also a Dunmer), so I added this to the introductory line: “He is an outlander, but that doesn't excuse him.”. I also added a Hlaalu Retainer requirement and let this be active until you have searched the house.
  • Added a line to Dreynos Helvi that he is asking about progress also before you have found any evidence (gives better quest flow).
  • Added a greeting to Dreynos Helvi while working with the quest, to be in line with the rest of the quest line. Also added a line for having completed the quest.
  • I would tone down Dreynos’ criticism towards the player accusing the Camonna Tong ( I know it was in the claim description, but it does not really work well). He is fully aware of their hatred towards outlanders, so I changed this to “So you think the Camonna Tong is to blame? Without any evidence, I have no reason to believe your accusations, %PCName.” Also changed the journal entry to “I told Dreynos Helvi that the Camonna Tong was responsible for Gavros Falas' murder. Dreynos Helvi warned me against accusing the Camonna Tong without proof. He said that I have gained enough evidence to satisfy their investigation, and that the house will take over to find "the real killer".”
  • Added a new dialogue line if reporting the Sixth House to be the murderer after having finished the main quest. House Hlaalu has no longer any reason to worry about the threat from the Sixth House at this point, which is reflected in these new responses. I also added a different response for players that have not reached very far in the main quest, since the Sixth House is originally not very well-known (as pointed out by Gnomey).
  • Added the topic “Darane Navur” to help with directions, once the player has made it to Almas Thirr. I also added one line for Andothren, to give a hint for players that they should go looking elsewhere. This is enabled by reading the letter.
  • Following discussion with Jack, I added the following line to Dreynos’ response if accusing the Indoril: “We'll naturally have to take actions on this, but the process may take a while.” to clarify that this will not get resolved anytime soon (the reason being that these are severe accusation, so the House will have to act subtly and decisively).
  • Most dialogue does not have conditions for the quest being started. I added such lines, just in case.
  • Generic lines should usually have a disposition requirement of 30. Added that where appropriate.
  • Added a missing condition to check that the quest is still active for the Camonna Tong evidence.
  • Added the missing journal check for index 20 to the lines where NPCs point the player to the Dancing Cup.
  • NoLore filters are missing for the topics “ash statue” and “Molkobal”. I added those where necessary. Also added a Not faction Camonna Tong filter to the topmost entry, and Not faction Temple and Mages Guild to the generic ash statue entry (it doesn’t make sense for their members to say this line).

AddTopic: Should be added to every topic to be on the safe, but was missing for a couple of topics.

Spoiler: Highlight to view
  • Added missing AddTopics “I remember” and “my uncle”.
  • There is nothing in the quest adding the topic “ash statue” (except picking one up, but I do not think that is enough). Fixed this by attaching a script to Gavros’ second letter, which is mentioning the ash statue trade. Also moved the AddTopic “Molkobal” here, since you will not know this without reading the letter.

Scripts: While functional, the few that were used were based on some questionable decisions.

Spoiler: Highlight to view
  • Gavros’ body was not disabled from the start, despite him still being alive. Fixed this by attaching a script to his body. I also carried over the functionality from TR_m4_And_GavrosMarker to the body, making it redundant. Moreover, I moved the journal to the body to be in line with my change to the change to the journal edit (and since I think it makes more sense for him to carry it than having it lying around just beside the body) and triggered the journal entry on OnActivate.
  • If approaching the desk, you will have no idea about the letters in it, mismatching the journal entry. I fixed this by removing the marker, attaching a similar script to the desk, and activating it via OnActivate.

Quest flow: Generally working okay (after having fixed the above issues), but there were some serious issues (not including the Sleeper path here):

Spoiler: Highlight to view
  • There is nothing pointing you to Darane Navur in Almas Thirr. That should obviously have been part of the letter, but it currently mentions someone who doesn’t exist. I suppose this was a remnant from an earlier iteration, so I changed the relevant line to “I find the rumors of the Morrowind House Wars to be overstated: Darane Navur was very well-mannered, even if her head was stuck too firmly into the edicts of the Temple.  If she is to start trouble, then she is far more subtle than her demeanor would have me believe. I would expect that level of trickery out of an Ashlander, not the civilized folk in Almas Thirr!”. Please tell me if you don’t agree with this change.
  • There was no possibility to report the quest if you have found the body, but not found enough evidence. I don’t think the player should be obliged to have spoken to Darane to be able to finish the quest. She might even be dead, and then you are locked out from the rest of the questline. Moreover, the final journal entry originally assumed that you have found evidence for the killer, which was not necessarily the case. Therefore, I changed the dialogue line where you report to Dreynos to only require that you have found the body, or got the confession from Darane, and your choices to depend on what evidence you have found. If you have not found evidence, I only included the option to tell him that you need more time.

Sleeper path: Was mostly missing, and had serious issues. I had to add most of this myself.

Spoiler: Highlight to view
  • After a lengthy discussion on Discord, it was decided not to give the Sleeper a sleeper script, but rather a regular NoLore script. The reason is that the Sixth House should not have much influence on the Mainland, so he would only be on the way towards becoming a Sleeper (through the influence of ash statues), and not fully controlled by House Dagoth. His role in this quest is just to give the player directions towards the cave by an alternative route. After discussion with Jack and others, I also replaced him with an existing NPC - Sathes Bernalo - who has a house in Andothren, but is currently residing in his house. I placed a new instance of him in an alley in Andothren and requested Cicero to move him from his house, so it should be done in the next version of the section file.
  • I gave the Sleeper some unique greetings to emphasize his confused mind, and later his Sixth House connection (for players who have beaten the main quest). I also gave him a few lines about ash statues, where he identify them as the cause of his madness after you have beaten the main quest, but otherwise gives a hostile reply to the player.
  • The only way to report the Sixth House as the killer, was to first having beaten the main quest, and then they are not even a threat any longer. To fix this, I have added the option to report the Sixth House as the murderer, if the player presents Dreynos with one of the unique ash statues in his house (late addition by Jacks). I also added more of those ash statues in Sathes Bernalo's house, and am requesting to replace the ones in the cave. These have a unique script that triggers a new journal entry with some clues. You will need to have reached stage 10 of A1_2_AntabolisInformant to be able to present them to Dreynos Helvi, since otherwise it is not likely for the player to have knowledge of the Sixth House. This also gives sense to Dreynos’ claim of the player having proof in their hands, which was previously not the case.
  • The rambling dialogue entry required A2_2_6th_House to have reached stage 100, so I fixed this to the maximum index of 50. There was also an incorrect journal requirement for this quest for his sane answer.

Other additions/fixes: I fixed some more bugs, added some parts that I felt missing, and edited a few things to be more consistent with the rest of the questline.

Spoiler: Highlight to view
  • Honon Falas didn’t actually have the letter he is giving the player. It is good practice to add this to the NPC (and remove it in the dialogue), since this gives the player more freedom for solving the quest. Fixed this.
  • The dialogue mentions that Honon Falas will soon be leaving Morrowind, which was not implemented. Therefore, I attached a unique script to Honon Falas that disables him at the end of the quest and added a line to Jada, explaining this.
  • Fixed incorrect journal entries if reporting either the Camonna Tong or the Sixth house to be the killer (swapping the results).
  • It is clearly indicated that Darane Navur is a member of House Indoril. I added this membership to the NPC.
  • I changed the reward to charm spell scrolls + gold bonus if you accuse the Indoril. The reason is that there are enough quests in the quest line that offer gold already, so I needed some variation. I also added these lines for motivation: “Here, take these spell scrolls. I think they could be useful in your future business with our House.” or “Anyway, I think you deserve these spell scrolls. They could be quite useful in your future business with our House.”
  • I moved the journal entries below the item exchange in the dialogue result box. While there is obviously no standard for this (Vanilla does it both ways), this makes it consistent the other quests in the questline.

Typos/style errors: Found a couple.

Spoiler: Highlight to view
  • There were missing line breaks in all of the books. Added those. I also switched the colon to a period in Gavros Falas’ Journal, since it looks better.
  • Some symbols were not parsed correctly. This even confused me at first, so I thought some text had been cut out. The Construction Set does not accept formatted versions of ´, ", ..., etc. If you use a word processing programme for writing the dialogue (which I personally think is a good idea), you should either turn off automatic formatting, or copy the text to a text editor before parsing into the Construction Set.
  • “His house is the Andothren docks.” -> “His house is at the Andothren docks.”
  • “Or that of my brethern, or my lord?” -> “Or that of my brethren, or my lord?”
  • “Darane doesn't seem to like Gavros very much, and is suspiciously approving of his death.” -> “Darane doesn't seem to like Gavros very much, and was suspiciously approving of his death.” (Use past tense for the journal)
  • “Gavros Falas was nowhere to be found in his home, but I found some threatening letters on his desk.” -> “Gavros Falas was nowhere to be found in his home, but I found some threatening letters in his desk.”
  • “I don't know what Darane wants from me, but I hope Indoril has finally seen reason.” -> “I don't know what Darane wants from me, but I hope the Indoril has finally seen reason.”
  • “Letter from Honon Falas” -> “Letter to Honon Falas”

Merge notes: replace all ash statues in Molkobal (in TR_Mainland) with the unique version using the ID TR_m4_HH_GavrosStatue. Add a level-25 lock to the door in the middle of the cave.

To playtest the quest, one option is to load it alongside the Hlaalu questline. It should load after the Hlaalu questline, but it might not be important. The quest is the seventh quest you will recieve in the questline (read playtesting notes in the Hlaalu claim). Alternatively, type AddTopic "Gavros Falas" in the console, make sure to advance to Retainer rank in House Hlaalu, and speak to Dreynos Helvi about this topic.

After a bit more playtesting,

jonado's picture

After a bit more playtesting, I added a suggestion to Dreynos Helvi to ask around town if the player gets stuck after having searched Gavros' house.