Quest idea: The backed up Basement

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Glisp
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Quest idea: The backed up Basement

Post by Glisp »

Okay, so a lot of you probably remember the imperial with the house that has a backed up sewer or something in his basement that's in Helnim. He doesn't seem to have any quest which makes the nasty poo water basement kind of pointless.

What if we did something to make it worth visiting. As you know, the guy is upset about his basement being flooded with poo water. The idea is to construct a sewer system for the town. What tileset is debatable. Definitely not the Velothi sewer tileset though since you're under an imperial town. I'd think the Castle tileset would be more appropriate, or a new set altogether.

To enter the sewers, you'd use one of the wells you find in town. once there, you'll have to travel to the spot that would be under the guy's house.

Once there, you'd have to find what's clogging his Basement. I thought about making it something absurd like an Ogrim but I dunno. Maybe an object. I suggested an Ogrim because it would be cool to have whatever was clogging it to attack the player.

Basically, the back story behind this quest would be that the guy crossed a Telvanni wizard, so the wizard decided to play a prank on him and flood his basement by summoning an ogrim or something in the pipe or whatever it is that's backing his basement up.

Basically, you'd kill the Ogrim and the quest would be resolved. what he awards you with is open for discussion. And no, the sewer wouldn't be constructed for this quest alone. That would be stupid.

though for making a sewer we'd need to make it not seem too epic but also not seem boring. Gnomey will explain the issue with doing either. Actually, the sewers would be a great way for Theives and outlaws to carry things around the city without the guards noticing. It could play a role in the thieves guild quests come to think of it.
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Gnomey
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Post by Gnomey »

This came up on IRC. My basic view of it was that Helnim probably doesn't need a sewer system -- if we even leave it as an Imperial town -- but that there might be a use to adding a relatively reserved sewer to a town such as Helnim.

In vanilla Morrowind, sewers appeared at the lower levels of cantons and in a few random Dunmer strongholds. Then there's Mournhold with its epic sewer system. In TR, we've added OE with its epic sewer system.
While the Vivec sewer set is roomy, the sewers themselves were generally rather small, except for Kogoruhn. I think there may be value in trying to keep sewers relatively grounded on average, and have the epic interiors be the exception. Which means I think we could consider adding small sewer systems to certain locations.

As a rough idea, (haven't tried it out in the CS), I'd consider trying a mixture of com_stone and drywall, or just sticking to the Imperial castle set, but keeping the scale small.
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Tyrion
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Post by Tyrion »

There's no real basis for having that large of an Imperial settlement in map2 anyway. After a while the sewer theme becomes cliche. It'd be best not to repeat it too many times unless there's a unique basis and some flavor to add.
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Glisp
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Post by Glisp »

Well technically, this is only suggested for helnim. I had no intention of suggesting it for other imperial settlements. I also like the idea of Imperials having to charter and purchase land from Telvannis to build a settlement (that's pretty much what Helnim is technically when you think about it)

Another reason for a sewer system is because Helnim has quite a few wells scattered throughout town. I think having smuggling routes under the city to travel safely from one well to another would be useful for the Theives guild. I mean, we really need to flush out the quests more for Helnim.

Plus we have that guy with a backed up basement. A quest would be interesting.

Another benefit that would be a side effect is it would allow Vampire players to travel between locations in town without having to deal with guards that have gone permanently aggro from being talked to too much as a vampire. (trust me, it happens. A lot of guards become permanently aggressive if you talk to them as a vampire.
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