[Thirr Region] May She Rest in Peace

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Kevaar's picture
Kevaar
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Another of Atieggar’s brainstorms in proposal form. And good grief, thetypos and autocorrect on this thing...

Premise: A father must free his terminally ill daughter from pain and then wants the player to take her ashes to Necrom. Exact locations TBD.

assets needed:
Nibanel Andrano (Dunmer, male, dressed in robe, found in Temple)
Savile Andrano (Dunmer, female, found lying in bed (force death or unconscious animation))
Interior for Nibanel’s home (use existing interior in Dunmer village?)
Savile’s Ashes item (Use Ash Salts mesh)
scripted urn in Necrom
priest npc (use existing)

reward:
100 gold

details:
The player meets Nibanel praying in the Temple. He tells the player his daughter is terminally ill and asks the player to end her life so she doesn't have to go through anymore pain.

 “I have prayed everyday, outlander, but the illness does not abate. This cannot go on. My daughter...she is in such pain. Please, outlander, I could not bear to do it...end her pain for me. Take her life, and deliver her soul to Necrom.”

deliver her soul topic
“Her ashes, outlander. When you end it, burn the body. Take the ash...to Necrom. Please, I cannot speak of this further. one of the priests here can help you.”

The player csn speak with the newrby priest, who instructs them to use a fire effect when they deliver the final blow. The player then goes to Nibanel’s house where they find Savile stretched out on the bed, unresponsive. They csn only “kill” her using a fire effect, and then loot the ashes from her body. Using other types of damage will result in the message “You must burn the body.” or something similar. 

from there, the player can take the ashes straight to Necrom and leave them in an urn. Or, they can speak to the priest in the Temple to instruct them exactly where to go. If spoken to, Nibanel only forces a goodbye:

”[Nibanel does not speak to you. His head is bowed in solemn prayer.]”

Upon returning to Nibanel, the player finds he has moved back to his house (the corpse of the daughter should be removed). He thanks the player, and pays them a pittance to make up for their trouble. 

”The Tribunal watches over us all. It is not our place to question the whys and whens of these things. My daughter’s soul serves now in the Ghostfence. It is a great honor, and of some comfort to me.”

Savile Andrano topic
”Will I miss her, outlander? Every day. Every day...”

Ateiggaer's picture
Ateiggaer
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I also very much like this one. Maybe the father gives you a poison, wich you infuse in to the daughter.

Suggestion: After you ended the life of his daughter, the father ask you to bring her ashes to Necrom, along the lines of:”I don’t know you, or your past, if good or bad, but could you do one more task for an old, lonley man who just has lost something more valuable to him than his own life? Please bring her ashes to Necrom, as I doubt that I would be able to reach Necrom on my own, without me needing to be cremated too. Bring me back a receipt, and I will reward you with my last coins, as I don’t need them any more.”

This would maybe explain why he trusts a complete stranger, hoping that he wouldn’t deny an old mans last wish.

Terrifying Daedric Foe's picture
Terrifying Daed...
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I don’t like have to killing her with a fire effect. It feels too gamey, as IRL you would kill her any way you wanted and then take the corpse to the temple for cremation. I don’t know anything about Dunmer attitudes to euphanasia, but it strikes me that if the priest is willing to help then the father would just go to the priest and ask them to arrange something. There’s no need to ask a strange (possibly heathen) outlander to do it.

My suggestion: In some dungeon somewhere (possibly a dwemer ruin) you find a dunmer caught in a rock fall, their legs trapped (perhaps they went exploring and didn’t report back, so their relatives in a nearby village ask you to go look for them). They ask you to put them out of their misery, which you can do so. If you just leave them there you get a journal message 24 hours later saying “They will almostly certainly have died a slow painful death by now. You bastard”. You can report back to the family and tell them the bad news.

For taking ashes to Necrom, it might be better to have this as a temple or indoril quest for some important ex-person who needs an important escort. It would give it more gravitas than just some random misc quest.

Kevaar's picture
Kevaar
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The problem I’m running into is how to transport the body itself. In other games they’ll sometimes make a special “body” inventory item, but that always felt weird to me. Like you’re carrying around a dead body in your pack along with your ten swords and three different suits of armor? A satchel or urn full of ash makes more sense. I suppose it’s possible you escort one of the priests to the house that does the cremation process for you.

The Dwemer ruin idea could work, but as a different quest. It’s too fundamentally different to this one.

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I’d tend to suggest simplifying things: just have her body disappear on cell change and maybe have a unique urn with her ashes appear in the basement of the local temple (where the ash pits are), if we want to be fancy after some time has passed, probably one day. Basically, once she was dead, the priests came and handled the rest, including cremation. If there were a way to check for the speed of her death, I’d do so; for one thing, being burnt alive is not a pleasant way to go, unless the spell is powerful enough to cause instant death, and I can’t see the father being happy with the player essentially torturing her to death. I don’t think the bit about bringing her remains to Necrom is necessary, but I could see it being a bonus stage to the quest or something.
The player will probably be asked to complete Veloth’s pilgrimage for the Temple, which requires crossing the span of Morrowind from the pass at Kragenmar to Necrom. By tradition, remains to be sent to Necrom are often left along the route by those with too little money to have the remains transported the whole way, so that pilgrims on the path can carry them on their way, if not all the way to Necrom at least a part of the way so that the remains will eventually reach their destination. As such, I don’t think it’s bad to have more than one quest where the player is asked to carry remains to Necrom, especially if those quests take place along or near Veloth’s route, for instance in Almas Thirr. or the Velothi hamlets on the east bank of the Thirr.

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Kevaar
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Yup. The fire effect was to give the feeling of ending her life and doing the cremation. The mechanics is that the daugher only has one 1 hit point (so anything can kill her), but cannot be looted for the ashes until hit with a flame effect: But how it would look to a player would be different:

1) Walk in, daughter is in unconscious position on cot.
2) Player hits daugher once with any kind of attack, unconscious position then changes to death position. Daughter is now “dead”.
3) If player tries to loot or hit the daughter again with anything that is not a fire effect, they get the “you must cremate her now...” message
4) Player uses flame effect (or kills with flame effect to begin with), and can then loot the ashes from the “corpse”, which makes the corpse disappear.

But I think I like Gnomey’s simplification a lot better…less crazy coding for one.

As far as the fedex bit goes, I know players tend to hate fedex quests, but personally I think they’re important part of making a game world feel bigger and more alive. I suppose an alternative could be that the player can give the ashes to a priest to transport, but the tradeoff is the player loses the gold reward (for the priest gets paid for the transportation instead of the player). Player can still transport the ashes themselves and get the full reward.

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Terrifying Daed...
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The reason for my rather different quest idea was because I just can’t see how the mercy kill theme can be used in a settlement environment. The reason the player receives quests is because they have uncommon abilities and because they are travellers – they go to a far greater number of locations in a single week than most NPCs will in their lives. In a settlement neither of these factors apply. No travelling is involved and the task, whilst psychologically difficult for some, is not the kind that requires the involvement of an outsider. NPCs have to have a good reason to go to the player rather than to their friends or the authorities, particularly for this matter which is so emotionally difficult.

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I agree, maybe the old man should live outside of a settlement, being kinda shunned from the locals for what ever reason ( maybe he’s not that devoted to the Temple like he should be), living with his only daughter secluded from the village. He would be so desperate that he would literally ask anyone for help as long as they’re not townsfolk. It could also be a part of a larger quest for the Temple, you know, doing a favor for some information or something like that.

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Kevaar
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Found a location in the Thirr Valley along with a backstory that might work out, combining Atieggar’s and Gnomey’s ideas.

So! The daughter in question will be Fedura Ovav, who has an existing shack outside of Dondril that she shares with Garvs Ovav, which we will assume to be her father. The NPCs’ models may need to be changed to reflect this age difference and I may need to move Garvs because I haven’t found him yet ingame. Instead of being in a Temple somewhere, he will be in the central rock building of Dondril, which I’m assuming will have a communal shrine in it once its interior is completed.

Unfortunately, Garvs’ family has been under suspicion for a long time, and no one will talk to him, including anyone who will agree to heal his daughter or put her to rest. So he asks the player to do the deed and then talk to the priests in Vhul to obtain cremation services.

This leg of the quest could possibly have a small escort involved (everyone’s favorite, I know, especially over all those Thirr rocks), in which the player leads the priest back to the shack to do the cremation. But this could be cut out and the player returns to Garvs directly.

Either way, player will returns to Garvs (who either has the ashes or the player will give him the ashes after escorting the priest). He mentions something about the villagers not wanting his family’s ashes mixed with theirs in the communal shrine either. (Such nice folks...)

The player then has two choices: bring the ashes to Necrom, or figure out why the villagers are being so mean to Garvs. This investigation is brief, with a couple dialgoue clues leading the PC to talk to the Hetman, who tells a story of a group of witches coming out of Hadrumnibibi several years ago, in which Garvs and his daugher were implicated. He admits the Indoril judges could find no incriminating evidence, but this of course hasn’t stopped superstitions and prejudice from running rampant among the villagers. If the player talks to Garvs about this, he says while they do have an ancient shrine on their property (or whatever those ruins are, with the blocked door that overlooks the farm), the accusations against his family are false. He admits he doesn’t know what the shrine-thing is or what it does, and that he always commanded his daughter to stay away from it. He believes she disobeyed him and that her sickness was somehow tied to that. He warns the player to stay away from the shrine thing, that it brings “ill omen”.

To muddy the issue, dialogue (topics possibilities: latest rumors, Dondril, or little secret?) tells of how Garvs’ wife was killed by witches several years ago under mysterious circumstances, and some grumblings that the woman may have delved into Daedric magic herself. This rumor crops up before and after the quest is completed at a low frequency, to make it more difficult for the player to find it and connect it to the quest’s happenings.

Anyhow! After being told the reason Garvs’ family is under suspicion, the player can then convince the Hetman to allow the daughter’s ashes to be spread at the communal shrine anyway. At very high dispositions, the Hetman even agrees to speak at her funeral or otherwise honor her passing, which means Garvs will be accepted by the villagers again. A failure to convince the Hetman can still result in the player bringing the ashes to Necrom and reaping their reward that way.

And for story purposes? We might just never reveal what that shrine thing is in any detail, allowing the player to draw their own conclusions about it, the daughter’s sickness, and the wife’s role (if any) in it. The shrine thing may also crop up again in a Temple faction question, wherein the player is asked to purify/sanctify it. Through that quest they are given a vague background detailing the Hetman’s exploits in driving witches from the Dondril area. (And note, the whole thing with Dondril, Hetman, and the witches I am taking from the current dialogue ingame, in which the Hetman is a retired witch hunter).

Terrifying Daedric Foe's picture
Terrifying Daed...
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Now this I like :)

Ateiggaer's picture
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Yeah, wow I love how that quest evolved, nice job Kevaar!

Dog Monkey's picture
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Qutie partial to the new draft; only addition would be that I think the temple should have a recent initiate who, if their disposition is above 70 (or 80 or 90 or something; I’m not particularly set on that number), will be willing to carry the ashes for you.

Kevaar's picture
Kevaar
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Going to get these and some of my other suggestions put into the Asset browser for easier reviewing.

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Kevaar
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Already in asset browser, with all suggested edits incoporated/responded to.

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