Lake Andaram #3 | Tamriel Rebuilt

One Tier IV settlement is the Velothi style Aimrah in the pensinsula in the north.
Aimrah has a Silt Strider port and a docking area (no actual boat travel, it's all freighters here). It is house Indoril's primary trading outpost on Lake Andaram (importing a lot of saltrice from the Deshaan), so the docking area needs to be prominent while the actual living quarters may be made up of hostels, with very few inhabitants that are not dock workers or travel agents.

Aside from the prominent harbour in Aimrah, it should have large accommodations for pack guars to take the saltrice inland. As the settlement is Velothi, it should have very few shops if any, rather having communal service structures such as a large tradehouse, probably a temple or at least shrine of some sort, and probably at most one or two outside merchant stalls.

Lake Andaram should have an abundance of grottos and other hideouts, maybe some ruins close to the land; that is largely up to the claimant, although the south-western land should have one or two Daedric ruins, one near the lake line, partially submerged.
It's a sweet water lake, so inhabited mostly by mudcrabs, fish and slaughterfish. There is possibly organised underwater activity hiding in its depth. We might want to add submerged pirates with water breathing potions eventually. Their hideout should be well hidden but accessible, since this is one of the most patrolled lakes.

Files:

LakeAndaram3.jpg

andaram_north.png

andaram_south.png

Comments

I'm not keen on the pirate

I'm not keen on the pirate bit, as I think Lake Andaram -- as the chief waterway through which saltrice is transported from Deshaan to the rest of Morrowind and even the Empire -- would be one of the safest, most heavily patrolled waterways on the continent.

Aside from the prominent harbour in Aimrah, I'd add it should probably have large accommodations for pack guars to take the saltrice inland. As the settlement is Velothi, it should have very few shops if any, rather having communal service structures such as a large tradehouse, probably a temple or at least shrine of some sort, and probably at most one or two outside merchant stalls.

I do agree this claim could have a lot of grottos and caves, but as this claim is -- other than Aimrah -- mostly filled with water, I also think the claimant can spice things up for themselves a little by adding some exterior ruins. I'd suggest one or two smallish Daedric ruins in the southwest bit of land, one perhaps partially submerged.
As Lake Andaram existed from the start and wasn't created like the Inner Sea, ruins at the lake bed don't make much sense, unfortunately, but personally I'm very open for ideas of things to put there; perhaps some sort of coral terrain as by Cormar along the lakebed?

Adjusted accordingly. I don't

Adjusted accordingly.

I don't really see corals in a sweet water lake - lake Cormar gets along with it since it's pretty close to the ocean, which this one isn't.

The lake borders itself have probably shifted outwards. Or maybe inwards, but I don't know how to portray that.

I've claimed this exterior,

I've claimed this exterior, but I've also been since informed that MinerMan60101 wanted to claim one of these Andaram claims as well.

If the claim that MinerMan wanted is this one, I'm obviously gonna let him have it. It would be an abuse of power (and a pretty dick move) to snatch it from him before the showcase has been approved.

I wanted #1, you're fine.

Gotcha!

Took a first look at the

Took a first look at the claim area in the CS and did some rough plans for the layout.

Aimrah will be really, really small. The Temple will be little apart from the rest of the town (as is often the case with Temples), most likely on the lake on sort of a "mini canton". For the lake I'm going to try and create some deep and narrow trenches, to make it more "three dimensional".

Just as long as it has a big

Just as long as it has a big harbour and travel, Aimrah should be fine smallish.

Sure thing!

Uploaded a WIP file with a

Uploaded a WIP file with a rough sketch of what Aimrah could be. Load alongside the TR Data Addon.

Really nice work, I like how

Really nice work, I like how the settlement is shaping up. Don't forget the siltstrider.

This looks really good! I can

This looks really good! I can't wait to see it finished. (or to develop some of its interiors)

Thank you both! I'll be sure

Thank you both! I'll be sure to add the strider port. Currently I'm trying to figure out whether I can fit a proper Temple in the cell somewhere or if I should go for a shrine. I'm currently leaning more towards having a shrine here, but don't know what it should be commemorating. Does Lake Andaram have some religious significance or a creation story behind it? Veloth probably did not pass through here, yes?

I don't think shrines in

I don't think shrines in Velothi settlements need to commemorate anything in particular, just a saint. As Aimrah is primarily a cargo port, I'd probably go with either Saint Roris, patron of caravaners, or maybe Saint Olms, patron of clerks.

A new WIP file up. Added a

A new WIP file up. Added a Daedric ruin, Andarannipal, to the southern bit of land, added details (including a Silt Strider platform) in Aimrah and made some progress with the lake as well. This is how the whole claim is looking at the moment:

What I would really like to do is to add a small Dres outpost to the southwestern-most cell; it would be really tiny and use the de_shack and de_dock assets, and be perhaps half-forgotten. A remnant of the Arnesian war perhaps? Whaddya think?

Hm, as a rule I'm not in

Hm, as a rule I'm not in favour of the Dres using the shack set, or really any set besides their own, and generally I don't think they'd have an outpost on their borders if they can avoid it, which seems like it would be the case here.

That being said, I'm not actually against the idea. I suggest some Dres Chap-thil have simply occupied and perhaps expanded an existing, abandoned location for whatever reason (hunting down escaped slaves?), in which case the outpost can be any tileset that would make sense for the area.

Update. Most of the lake

Update.

Most of the lake floor done, but a lot of detailing still left. Now sculpting the landmass to the south.

Uploaded a new file. Also

Uploaded a new file. Also dropping claim and giving it to BarackOshizzle.

Here's how the claim is looking right now. Points of interest included Aimrah (obviously) and the Daedric shrine of Andarannipal (of Mehrunes Dagon); both of these are pretty much done. Aimrah could maybe do with some detailing, though nothing too fancy--it is a working mer's town after all.

There are a couple of underwater grottoes and currently one shipwreck stranded by the Daedric shrine. The lake has trenches and all kinds of hidden nooks for underwater exploration. I've also made a deep sinkhole type of thing which will be pretty much dead center at the lake once its finished called "Paruddma's Maw". My current headcanon/explanation for it is that that is the place from where the lake's native Dreughs rule their lake. During the Arnesian War the Temple/Indoril made a pact with the Dreugh of Andaram so that the Argonians couldn't cross the lake into Indoril lands. Since the war the Dunmer of Aimrah and the Dreugh of the lake still live in relative peace, though sometimes ships that stray too near the Maw are never seen again. Something blasphemous is rumored to be going on underneath the surface: perhaps the lakeside Dunmer are turning to worshiping the powerful children of the Ruddy Man (so basically Shadow over Innsmouth in Morrowind).

Just checked it out in the CS

Just checked it out in the CS for fun, and nice work so far!
I would suggest however using the exterior floor like used in Almas Thirr for Aimrah though, but that's a personal preference I guess.

Revoking this with

Revoking this with BarackOshizzle's permission so that it can be wrapped up as soon as possible.

Granting to Meriyal, who

Granting to Meriyal, who forgot to make a post.

Claiming.

Unfortunately, I'm abandoning

Unfortunately, I'm abandoning this claim due to real life reasons.
The land to the right is mostly finished, but the orange area could use more rock cluttering. Yellow area has no container/static flora at all, excluding the grass static. Future claimant should check the region template or the neighbouring claims for references. The ocean cells and the Maw's surroundings was lacking rock clutter so that what I was working yesterday. I was planning to clutter the blue area, by blue area I mean the surroundings of the bigger rocks in the cells. You can take the clutter in the blue circle for reference of how much clutter there needs to be. If you want more inspirations you could always check the other claims, and especially LA2 for ocean cells. (Though I advise you to shrink the size of the rocks, that's one of my self-criticism)

My general plan for the ocean cells is usually like this: - The major rocks that is used to divide areas and create verticality. These all have Rock_Coastal texture under them. (Warning, don't use 120,120,120 vertex shading between Sand_02 and Rock_Coastal texture nearby major rocks, it mixes with the static shading and it looks bad. - I clutter the sides of the major rocks with smaller rocks, most importantly terrain_rocks_AI set and terrain_ai set. - For ocean flora I mix the kelps with in_cave_plants. - I decorate the top of some of the rocks or the ground near the flora with barnacles. - I also use Tx_ai_mudflat for variety in texturing.(edited)
IIRC LA3 has 1 grotto at the moment, (could be more) so it would be good if you put one or two more where it's suitable.

Quite a bunch of texture seams and many unsmoothed areas.
Outside of that only two floaters somewhere in the ocean.

Note: Very nice and creative looking exterior.

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