https://youtu.be/cRePc69JlvQ
Keep in mind there are Micro-Level Quests, and Macro-Level Quests. Ultimately, Macro-level quests are designed to convey the player from place to place in order to get the player to experience the micro-stories that those places have to offer, while still providing them what they feel to be a meaningful experience.
Rumor has it that there are riots in the Imperial City regarding the Imperial Heirs. It has come to light that Jagar Tharn had been replacing the Imperial Heirs with doppelgangers. Daedra or as many call them, Demons in human form.
Many of the Heirs are currently in the Imperial City under the protection of the Legion, however before the riots started, one left the Imperial City, intending to make a journey across Tamriel’s various ports on a journey across the empire.
We can find a proper name for him, but in the meantime Christoph will do. After the riots began, Christoph found himself in danger, and with two imperial knights protecting him, he departed his ship. Intending to use the ship as a decoy, he is currently in Morrowind now, in the <insert district here>.
The Imperial Knights have not checked in as ordered, we need to find the heir at all costs. The people think he’s a doppleganger, an evil daedra twisted to look like an Imperial. But we assure you, he’s not. He is a true heir in line to the throne of The Empire of Tamriel. We need to protect him at all costs.
This would be a multi-part questline that would take the players across Morrowind, trailing this man whom is currently marked for death by the Dark Brotherhood.
The mechanical functions of this quest are as follows:
1 - Give the player a note telling them to go to <insert imperial port town on the mainland here>. The goal is to expose the player to the mainland.
2 - Make the player travel through dangerous land to an outpost, fort, or other location where we believe he has gone. The goal is to give the player exposure to no less than 3 side-quests and micro-stories. It will be up to the player if they want to take up those side-quests or drive on with the main plot.
3 - Make the player travel to a second imperial port town where we find the heir’s ship now docked. The Heir is not aboard, although we are told he is. The Dark Brotherhood will attack the player on the boat. A note on the Assassin will reveal the heir was the target.
4 - The player will be directed to Mournhold to speak with the King of Morrowind about this. He will have no knowledge of this and direct you to a member of his spymasters who will tell more or less place the seed of doubt as to if this is really the heir or a daedra in disguise.
5 - The player will be directed to Ebonheart to follow a sighting of Imperial Knights in the wilderness. This will be the trigger that spawns the Heir and his bodyguards, they will not exist in the worldspace unless this part of the quest has been triggered.
6 - A member of the Imperial Legion will offer to guard you as you goto the cave where they were sighted. You are free to decline as he was not ordered to accompany you.
7 - When you reach the cave, if you opted to allow the legionnaire to come with you, he will turn out to be a Dark Brotherhood member in disguise and attack you. Either way, killing him, fleeing from him, or not bringing him along, you can enter the cave.
8 - Inside the cave, there would be Imperial Knights. They’d allow you to pass.
You meet with the heir, and he tells you a story about how the Imperial City isn’t safe anymore, how Tiber Septim once had some of his heirs killed, and he’s afraid Uriel Septim is going to do the same.
He’s scared for his life, and he’s certain that the Elder Council has hired the Dark Brotherhood so they can have him executed and blame it on someone else. He’ll flat out say, if you return him to the Imperial Legion, they WILL make sure he has an accident, kill him have him killed.
He will ask you to go back and tell the Imperials that he’s dead, that the Dark Brotherhood killed him, and died in the process. That wild Clanfears were eating the corpses. The Heir will leave a a couple skeletons behind for the Imperial Legion to find.
Path A - If you Accept. He’ll give you his pendant and tell you to give it to the man who sent you on this quest in the first place. Instructing you to come back and see the Heir afterward.
Path A-A - To the Questmaster you can Lie and say he’s dead, this will give you a small reward. When you return to the cave the heir is gone and your quest journal updates to say there are no clues, it’s unlikely you’ll find him again. Quest Ends
Path A-B - You can tell the truth and you’ll meet the questmaster at the cave, but again, the heir is gone and you’ll have no clues. You’ll be given nothing since it’s your fault he got away. Quest Ends.
In Paths AA or AB the cave will show evidence of Daedric Rituals and the corpses of two Imperial Knights will be found in the back.
Now for Path B - You can refuse, and he’ll attack you, his Knights that let you through will draw Draedric weapons and attack you, they will act and sound like Daedra Lords creatures, despite looking like Imperial Knights. He should be an incredible boss fight, scripted teleports, long ranged attacks, debuffs. He should summon at least one Daedroth and Hunger during the Fight.
You know, prepare to cry. Path B would also happen if you attacked him.
After killing him, your journal should update with you should either look around for more clues or return to the Questmaster.
Path B-A If you tell the Questmaster you were attacked by the Heir and killed him. you’ll get charged a 10,000 septim bounty and the usual jail-resist dialogue would be displayed. The Quest Ends
Path B-B You tell the Questmaster you couldn’t find the heir, you get nothing and fail the quest, Quest Ends.
Path B-C You read journal on the corpse, it has orders from Jagar Tharn regarding the Daedra Worshipers in Morrowind, trying to convert those who worship the Bad Daedra to his side. In the latter pages you can see how the heir had turned it into a journal, and now that Jagar is dead, the heir is looking for allies. If you take this journal to the Questmaster as proof that he was a doppleganger, you’ll get your full reward and the quest ends.
The purpose of the final part is simply to give the player the freedom of choice. Either you believe the heir, and now the heir is out there somewhere all spooky like. Or the player does not believe the heir and is punished for not properly investigating the scene. The AirQuotes correct choice does exist, for people who investigate things, notice the corpses of the knights at the back of the cave in the storage room, put 2 and 2 together or just get lucky.
It’s a quest that takes the very simple tenets of the Elder Scrolls gameplay to get people across from one place to another, that’s the conveyor belt idea I was talking about.
2016-10-06 10:39
5 years 3 weeks ago
Wow, thats a great one! Im not someone who makes decisions here, but im voting for implementing this (well, imao maybe the reward is a bit high. whatever)
2016-01-19 19:35
1 year 7 months ago
I do like it. Couple of problems, though:
--Clanfears don’t exist in the wild, as they are Daedra and come from another realm. Unless this is supposed to be a clue the Heir is not what he seems, it should be something like nix-hounds or alits.
--I don’t like that lying ends in no quest updates. If I were a player, I’d wonder if someone forgot to complete the mod and if I was missing a step somewhere. At the very least, I’d instead say something like “I returned to the cave but they weren’t there. I don’t know where they have gone.” and then mark the quest as completed. (That, or perhaps write another tie-in arc where you DO find the heir. Perhaps as part of a TR main quest..?)
--There should also be a quest ending for if you attack him but don’t kill him. (Because, yanno, I would just run!)
2016-01-17 14:03
4 months 2 weeks ago
Several issues I see with this quest proposal (apologies if this sounds a little harsh):
I do think this quest proposal has merit, but it would need to see some serious revisions. The idea of a “manhunt” quest in which the player must trace a person from place to place is quite interesting and original (I cannot remember any example of it in the base game). The questline would either have to be anchored more firmly in the Imperial Legion, or disconnected from the faction altogether to form an independent misc quest (perhaps useful for the recently proposed quest pack expansion). I would also caution against using the Emperor’s heir in this story: obviously I have my own reasons for this, but I also believe that the quest would benefit from grounding it in local Morrowind politics: for example, replace the central character with a deposed heir of King Helseth, or of his predecessor King Llethan.
2016-04-21 20:13
7 years 5 months ago
I have no problem with any of the objections listed in Kevaar’s post, as this is just a rough idea I figured people would retool things as it fit their vision. I figured in the tiny chance this was implemented, it would undergo massive changes, like the Nyx Hounds objection.
As for Project Cyrodiil, I think that the Imperial Presence is the glue that holds the entire Elder Scrolls universe togather, something that Skyrim was really really stupid to discard. Thus it should be used as a tool to remind players that even if they are in a mysterious land, there’s always these elements from Arena, Battlespire, Daggerfall, that creep their way into refrences and side-quests – This is still the Empire of Tamriel.
As for the Imperial Heirs, question: Are we going off the TES4 Oblivion logic where all the heirs are slated for death? Or are we operating on the TES2 Daggerfall logic where there’s a massive dynasty and we’ve confirmed the dragon blood is in mutiple kingdoms due to hundreds of years of breeding and someone can be 12th or 14th in line to the throne?
If the latter where the case, you can have cousins, nephiews, bastard sons (since Martin proves TES dosn’t care about bastards/legitment for imperial throne purposes). Catch 22 really, Oblivion dosn’t exist yet in this timeline, and I think it’s better that it dosn’t.
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2016-01-17 14:03
4 months 2 weeks ago
Yes, but you need to work with the way in which the Empire relates to a specific province: Morrowind is simply not a place where a Septim heir goes to be safe or build up support. Anyway, that’s not the point I was trying to make: what’s troubling is that you make assumptions on the situation with Cyrodiil, the riots, and the activities of the Emperor, which forces P:C to either change all our plans or start contradicting TR. The troubles surrounding Uriel’s heirs will naturally be the focus of a major P:C questline, and I think it’s understandable that we want to develop it on our own terms.
P:C (and, as far as I know, TR) do assume that the rough lines of Oblivion’s plot happen shortly after the Morrowind time period: the Septim Empire falls, Daedric invasion, etc. Morrowind itself foreshadowed these events in multiple ways: rumors, oracles, and apparitions all prefigured the decline and fall of the current Empire. We do try to portray this instability in a more realistic way than Oblivion did (there are already several nobles and generals preparing to claim the throne should Uriel die) but we do assume that the Septim Empire is in a late “fall or Rome” stage, and present the province according to that interpretation.
2016-04-21 20:13
7 years 5 months ago
As for building up support, it wouldn’t be with the towns, it would be with the local cave nuts, the folks prowling the Daedric ruins. Kind of like necromancers ’s in TES4 Oblivion. The wilderness is littered with people you can garner support from, especially a wilderness as large as that. Not political power, magical power, summoning power, combat power. Remember, he’s a daedra in human form first, a heir second. Everything is merely pretence. He’s suspected by everyone at this point that’s why he ran before any of this instability started.
The confirmed doppelgangers and allies got thrown into an Argonian prison in Archon, we’ve confirmed that much. He doesn't want that to happen.
Assumptions, not so much, if you delve into the Morrowind Dialogue, what I’m saying about the heirs being suspected doppelgangers is confirmed, the riots are mentioned at the same time.
The activities of the emperor on the other hand, as mentioned by the heir are LIES for his benefit as indicated by the fact he’s not human. When players got to Cyrodiil it’s unlikey that anything would be as the heir indicates. A player whose been there already could sell through his bullshit in a second.
As for the whole MINE DO NOT TOUCH attitude. I recommend instead linking to a thread containing all your plans so they can be analyzed by the greater community, to see what can and can’t work with the plans as they’ve been established. If the plans are developing, then this is the perfect time to discuss them.
As for portraying the various kingdoms of cyrodiil in a more realistic way, yes, all that and some more. Absolutely. I’m NOT SAYING the Daedric invasion shouldn’t happen in the timeline, I’m just saying a lot of the design choices made in Oblvion the game and many of the story choices therein were a mistake, and therefore best ignored.
The Dragon Blood isn’t something limited to Uriel Septim’s direct line, we’ve confirmed this in earlier games. Therefore in an In an Ideal Elder Scrolls Pre-4 these people are all possible claimants to the throne, each one vying for power. Europe is a great teacher for what happens when you have too many people with loose blood connections and a power vacuum.
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2016-01-17 14:03
4 months 2 weeks ago
Well now. I do not want to antagonize you, but when you write “ Change whatever, use, don’t use, it’s all fine” at the beginning of your post i can’t help but take that at face value. I do not appreciate being accused of a “mine, don’t touch” attitude, as if this is something P:C does not have a right to. I do not try to define the identity of the Great Houses in P:C, neither should you tell me what to do with the central conflict around which the entire project to which I contribute is all about. I think these are fairly reasonable limits for everybody to adhere to. Your demand for a concise document attesting to this is asinine: just as there is, as of yet, no definite document that completely defines House Dres, there is no such documentation on the P:C side. These things are a work in progress embedded in everything we have built so far. I keep up with what TR is doing to avoid inconsistencies, others could do us that same courtesy. Anyway, you still haven’t responded to my others points: your proposal does not substantially connect to the Legion-Morrowind context, and its place in faction progression should be clarified before it can be made to work.
Please understand that I am not trying to break down or demolish your proposal. It has great merit. But I do not believe it can function in the shape it has now, even without the interprovincial shenanigans.
2016-04-21 20:13
7 years 5 months ago
Demand for a document is more like a request, but simple text exchanges don’t contain that kind of nuance you’d have in a voice conversation. What you call an accusation is how I read the text, meaning neither of us properly conveyed what we wanted to express. to one another. In legaleese, no true meeting of the minds occured.
Anyway, such a document would be helpful to have to say the last, although I can understand why it dosn’t exist in the project’s current state. I’m very used to a clinical approach, with a proposal, addtional brainstorming sessions, deisgn documents being drawn up, and finally executed.
The idea of building a set of plans of what you do and don’t want to have, instead of holding those ideas in your head is really something you NEED to do when you are dealing with larger groups of people, each with their own creative vision. This becomes doubly so when you don’t have a single athority, like a Game Director or lead writer calling the shots. What limits exist are solely up to the construct itself, what one believes to be common sense isn’t actually common at all and bits and pieces of that sense are strewn about the social landscape.
The initial proposal isn’t something that’s ready for implementation, it’s something that needs to be put to brainstorming, tweaking and weither it works or not is entirly up to the implementation someone else (not myself) gives it, and they would retune it to their creative vision.
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2016-01-19 19:35
1 year 7 months ago
Hm. I agree that it’s not likely for the heir to come running to Morrowind to hide, since Morrowind out of all the provinces hates the Empire the most, and is also going through the Vvardenfell crisis (and later, the crisis of two of their god-kings being slain).
Alternatively, perhaps we could do some brother’s mother’s sister’s grandson’s cousin twice-removed getting assassinated so they don’t take the throne? I don’t know what P:C has planned—is there somewhere we can go to see what you guys are planning? And/or could you give us a summary? As most of the devs here are working their butts off getting the TR project back in gear, it’s not really feasible for us to dig through your website to find all the appropriate information, though I salute your dedication doing the same in return with us.
2016-05-04 09:31
7 years 5 months ago
I’d like to propose an idea mentioned briefly in Zaric’s video—this quest could be easily re-tooled to be a Blades quest. I like how the quest proposal serves as a way to introduce Imperial-based players to Tamriel Rebuilt in an active, exploratory setting. The quest also compliments a key role the Blades played in the vanilla game as agents of plot exposition, answering questions like: “Why are you here? What’s the problem here? Who are the characters?” etc. I’m new to the forums and uncertain what the TR team is planning for the Blades quests, (I assume something, I ran into one exploring Almas Thirr today) but I think the idea of a challenging manhunt for an shady Imperial VIP would fit the spy organization beautifully.
The PC could be sent from city to city seeking out agents and trading “favors” for additional information to move the quest along. That also gives added incentive to actually do those side quests you mentioned—you could possible make it so the information you recieve from these favors is relatively cryptic or vague so you’d have to do at least 1-2 of the side quests to get a picture of where to go next.
I’d also add that this opens up the quest to more players, due to the ease of joining the Blades (heh). I mention this because this adds real diversity to the player’s motives—I know many of my characters don’t serve the Emperor out of choice, and I assume this could lead to some diverse end-quest decision beyond just doing your duty to the Gods and your Emperor.
There’s obviously a lot of challenges with using Imperial blood as the main actor in this quest, but in my opinion the value in the proposal is more the chase than the actual catch. I’d love to help brainstorm this one further, once we get to that point.
2016-04-21 20:13
7 years 5 months ago
And I agree the order of Imperial Spymasters would be a good fit for that kind of quest line. However that raises a question about how does the player get that quest. The Go-Go member of the blades Caius Cosades leaves Morrowind at a certain point during the Main Quest, this means that he will be unavailable for players who have progressed. There are Blades Trainers, but you effectively outrank them when you reach the rank of Operative and Caius Cosades leaves, furthermore a player that advanced in the quest wouldn’t ever think to seek them out for anything.
Since we’d want to change as little vanilla content as possible, it seems like inserting another blades member would be a thing to do. Perhaps he’d be marked for deletion after you receive the quest, as he was only there to deliver a package to you with orders. His appearance could be gated based on you joining the blades, so he’d never give you the quest if you weren't a faction member.
While a solid idea I can get behind, it doesn't address the elephant in the room which is WHO you are looking for. I personally still push for it being someone tied to the empire, yet someone who Project Cyrodiil could get behind as not being present in Cyrodiil at the time. My idea behind the heir is that in Daggerfall we established that countless nobilities have the Dragonblood. Bumping dynasty up to a large number, putting it more in line with europe pre-fall of rome. You can have a 12th or 14th in line to the throne at that point. Someone in the line of succession who got the hell out.
When you have mutli-team development it’s very easy to have diverging continuities, the goal here I think is to be able to use hard-hitting, plot driving Empire Centric plot elements without nabbing something from Cyrodiil that the Project Cyrodiil team needs. Unless of course Project Cyrodiil is going to forget about all the extra bloodlines and go Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion, where there’s a handful of heirs slated to be wiped out, in which case they publish a document somewhere in their version of Cyrodiil that contains the names of all the known heirs, stating there are no more, contradicting Daggerfall -- meaning this plot wouldn’t work.
Those possibilities existing is why this is just a hypothetical and needs to be discussed at greater length, both internally here and with them. There should be MORE links like this with empire-centric content, not less. Of course that should be contrasted by the local content as well, Morrowind is an autonomous state.
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2016-01-17 14:03
4 months 2 weeks ago
@Kevaar: I will try to get some documentation together, whenever I have the time.
@Zhakaron: the matter is not about who has or has not the dragon blood, but who can lay claim to legacy of Tiber Septim: either to continue it or to replace it. The minutiae of the dragonborn situation is not something I want to get into, but suffice to say that people outside of the Septim line can have it, and that people inside the line might not. The direct line of succession since Tiber Septim has been broken at least three times, and the blood relation of the current Emperor with Tiber is tenuous at best. Either way, who gets to rule the Empire is not dependent on these arcane matters: it is decided by politics, the will of the people, military power, the support of the Elder Council, things like that.
The current plan for P:C is to feature three “direct” heirs, Geldall, Enman and Ebel, who are next in line for the succession. They are the source of the doppelganger controversy: people claim that, since they did not notice their father’s replacement, they must be in on the plot or replaced themselves. The truth is ambiguous: Uriel was a negligent father, and it is quite possible that his sons would not have noticed the change at first (no one else did, after all). Much like the controversy on whether the Tribunal murdered Nerevar or not, what actually happened is less important than what certain interested parties want to have happened.
There are others with a partial blood claim on the throne: Calaxes Septim, a bastard child and former archpriest of the Temple of the One, staged a coup once before and has since fled to the jungle. Countess Valga of Chorrol is trying to marry her daughter to Count Caro of Lleyawiin, hoping to create a strong Colo-Niben dynasty with a path to the throne. The Mede dynasty in Sarchal claim to be descendants Cuhlecain, the Emperor Zero, whose claim to the throne technically preceded the entire Septim line. The influential Voria battlemage clan of the southern Nibenay is planning to propose Princess Caula Voria, the Emperor’s ill-favored wife, as a regent should the Emperor come to die. Popular Legion generals like Pottreid or Alorius are scheming to claim the Imperial City on military might alone. Of course, there are others with blood ties to the Septims within and without Cyrodiil, but without political and military support, their claims are meaningless. Dynasties with a strong claim have pretty much been eliminated, either through assasination or through the many civil wars fought over this same issue.
The riots in the Imperial City, meanwhile, are about more than just the status of the heirs: hey originally started out as guild protests against tax hikes, but were co-opted by Tharn sympathizers, Moth-Eaters, and agitators of the Boethite and Dagonite cults. These factionas are not so much interested in claiming the throne as in breaking it: they seek an end to the Empire and a return to the chaotic freestates of the Interregna.
Anyway, for the target of your manhunt I have two proposals:
2016-05-04 09:31
7 years 5 months ago
I spent a bit of my free time this afternoon on the P:C and Project Tamriel forums, and it seems to me they’re utilizing a more Oblivion-centric interpretation of the Septim line; meaning Geldell, Enman, and Ebel are currently the only heirs that seem to be recognized. That said, Infragis is the Head of Lore for P:C—he’d be the one to confirm that.
But what about the suggestion Infragis made earlier in the thread about Morrowind politics? Here’s a thought: King Lethan and his nephew Talen Vandas died under mysterious circumstances, perhaps Talen had a son or a bastard who disappeared shortly after Talen’s “hunting accident” and is now gathering allies to uproot Hlaalu Heseth from the throne. The Emperor may see this as unwanted insurrection, given the Imperial grasp on Morrowind isn’t fully cemented and the displacement of a pro-Imperial king could lead to destabilization in the region. He deploys a messenger to you, an Operative the Blades, to quietly resolve the situation. The messenger directs you to another agent in an area where pro-Vandas sentiment is high and you begin to unearth a conspiracy against the Crown that spans across the mainland.
Edit: just saw Infragis’s post. Andorak Septim’s line could be an interesting option.