Kevaar

Random thought I need to look into further—

In Oblivion dialogue, it’s stated that House Hlaalu and House Dres banded together to pick apart Indoril, but most importantly, freed all their slaves and abolished slavery.

Which is a WTF, because Dres economy is dependant on slavery.

I’d like to have each Great House faction questline support what was said in Oblivion, but I’m stumped on this one. I need to think about more how this would logically pan out, but have to run to work now, so...leaving this as an note-to-self.

You won’t like what you will find.
This is based on the last big gasp of Bethsoft’s lore forum, Loranna’s RP. Basically, Helseth shacks it up with a Dres, they ally their houses, abolish slavery, and see Morrowind through a civil war.

It doesn’t mesh with the work TR is doing on the Dres and it was pretty poorly received at the time too (I brought it up on the Reddit Discord the other day and people were WTFing about it even now).

I think I remember back on the old forums this topic was touched on and someone came up with the theory that although the slaves were technically “freed” in name; in reality they were still bound to their old masters by poverty wages and other barriers to returning home. So basically nothing changed at all.

Swiftoak dropped by on IRC and linked a document Adanorcil wrote up on House Dres identity and faction quests. While there are natually some divergences from our conceptualization of House Dres I think there are a lot of ideas worth using. I particularly like the idea of Hearthless Houses and the ancestaggregate.

That document is one of the best TR planning documents I’ve read. This is more or less exactly what I had hoped TR’s take on House Dres would be.

The questline is, in my opinion, the very opposite of bad – I think it’s marvelous.  The various stages are well explained and they will give the player a sense of true progress. There are many elements here that I like really, really much. For example, being adopted into a House by a swarm of ancestral bones is both humorous and tragic at the same time. It’s sort of sweet, too – the orphan player finally has a family (albeit a dead one). I also really like the mystery of the “Hand of the Hist” character and how it slowly unfolds.

The Dres vampirism (Molag Bal’s involvement) and the dealings with the Sload are not mentioned in this version of the questline, but thankfully the plan is vague enough that there’s plenty of room for both to be explored. For example, the klaanath creature that the player needs (being descriped as a coral, tentacle monster that provides the farms with water) for their new clanstead just screams Sload. Maybe the player would be forced to strike a deal (possibly a really bad one) with a Sload to get a klaanath polyp.

On names, though: I’m not the biggest fan of every Dres clanstead having the ‘Dres’ suffix, e.g. ‘Dres Horak’. I am afraid that it will be jarring and/or just the tiniest bit confusing. For the smaller clansteads it might be fine, but the larger clansteads that also serve other functions (trading ports) IMO should have just the name without the ‘Dres’ bit. I will also, once again, voice my dislike of calling ‘Tear’ something like ‘Dres Tyr’, ‘Dres’ or ‘Tyr’. It should be Tear – I don’t know if people have had issues with the name other than it means something in English, but I for one am fond of it. It is already in the Lore, it’s actually one of the few things we already knew about Dres in vanilla Morrowind; the name looks good, it doesn’t stand out from other Dunmer cities (unlike Blacklight and Stonefalls did); and if anything the meanings the name carries in English (a teardrop/to rip, to rend) only work to its advantage (I mean, saltwater and tearing stuff apart – Dres much?). The idea that the Dres names should be more like Ashlander (ie. variations of Assyrian, Sumerian, Akkadian, & co.) names is a great little detail and we should definitely do it. There are great many resources online for ancient names, I’ve personally used this for all my naming needs: https://tekeli.li/onomastikon/ 

The shady Dunmer isn't a Dunmer, though, it's the Hist-made homonculus.

Oh, oh, idea. Maybe it knits the seam together? Sorry for double-post, I didn’t want this to get lost.

So Hist trees are conglomerates of Argonian spirits or break off pieces of themselves to put into Argonians or otherwise create Argonian souls. It doesn’t really matter HOW, the point is, from the view of the Hist trees, how many Argonians souls serve it is a measure of their power. Hist trees being sentient, are just like any other sentient being, in that they don’t necessarily get along with each other.

The Dres deals are a case of Hist tree politics that ended up affecting more than just themselves. One (or more) Hist tree got the idea that if it manuevered it’s opponent’s Argonians into being chained, that other Hist tree’s power would become severely limited. So it made the deal with the Dres that the Dres could capture the rival tree’s Argonians to use them as slaves, and also as cattle for the Dres vampiric rituals.

These rituals in essence destroy the Argonian souls. The Hist tree tied to them is practically toast by now. The Dres, still hungry for economic slavepower and needing to keep up a supply of souls for their own rituals, expanded their operations to include Argonians from more Hist trees that were originally not part of the first deal. This resulted in the Arnesian War.

Fast forward a few more generations and the problem still isn’t solved. The Dres still need slaves and still need cattle. The House Sabael ancestral spirits have recognized this is a downward spiral, and reaches out to the player to put a stop to it. This removes the need for the player to be blood kin in some way, and gives them a very good reason for working in close connection to upper politics within Dres.

It still doesn’t make sense for the Shady Dunmer to be a Hist homonculous, though. Instead, perhaps it is an ancestral spirit, who gave the player the location of the tomb in hopes they would come by and help House Sabael. Only caveat here—why did the spirit choose the player and not the ten thousand other likely mercenaries in the province?

Unfortunately I still haven’t properly gone through your proposals let alone formulated a full reply to them, so for the time being I’ll reply only to the above, to which I’ve apparantly already got far too much to say:
1. I do not think it is a good idea to rely on TESO lore to fill gaps in Morrowind and pre-Morrowind lore. I would really only turn to TESO lore if it can stand on its own merit in the context of TR, or especially if it’s better than anything we can come up with. I don’t think this only applies to TESO either, but don’t want to make this post even longer than it already is.
I will be the first to admit that I’m pretty ignorant on TESO lore, but from the little I glean from your post I think this is one case where we would be best served to forge a different path. The main reason for that is quite fundamental: each game carries with it a certain perspective or set of perspectives on the world it is trying to portray. TESO seems to be trying to make the Hist sympathetic figures, or at least understandable figures on some level. You are encouraged to see things from their – or at least the Argonians’ – viewpoint. TR is creating the world of Morrowind, and in Morrowind the Hist are sinister alien organisms constantly weaving their schemes in the shadows. They are utterly beyond empathy, as they are beyond understanding. They are monsters. For the Dres in particular, they are one of the devils who are offering deals, and who the Dres eternally strive to outwit. They are fundamentally evil, and a particular form of evil the Dunmer find strange and terrifying. They are Eldrich abominations.
So they do not appear to value anything, least of all their Argonian creations. The Argonians are thralls of the Hist; dumb lizards the Hist engineered to serve them. The Hist appear to be a hive mind, again very much from the outside perspective through which they will be viewed in TR. I think internal squabbles among the Hist would undermine their characterization and the threat I think they should present to the Dres.
2. So that I’m not always disagreeing with you (sorry about that), I do fully agree that effectively being given permission to ransack a tomb by a Dunmer came off as very weak to me, even – perhaps especially – with the revelation that he was a Hist-made homonculus. I feel it rather lacks in subtlety, and most people interested enough in the world of Morrowind to try out TR would feel slapped upside the head by the shear incognruity of it. It’s like having an alien infiltrator on earth go up to someone and say ‘here’s a baby, feel free to dig in’. It just makes the infiltrator look like an ignoramus.
3. I think it’s a fairly important point that the player gets personally adopted into the House, and doesn’t become matchmaker for some random Dunmer. RPGs in which players define their own player characters already have a common problem with relatability; developers are so afraid of stepping on the player’s characterization of the player character that they never have anything directly affect the player, but instead always have the player be some altruistic figure helping other people who have stuff happen to them. There are two problems with that: having the player be some altruistic busybody is itself quite the characterization and tends to be very stifling, and it’s much harder to invest the player in the story if it doesn’t have any ultimate significance to their player character. They just do their altruistic deed and move on, forgetting that questgiver#137 ever existed.
Also, as another point, I personally think we should go out of our way in the Dres questline to give the player a feeling of agency. Not in the sense of being able to do whatever he wants, as the world of Morrowind isn’t so forgiving, but in the sense of ‘if you want something done right, do it yourself’. The other Dres will ignore the player unless they think of a way to exploit him. It’s up to the player to seize the initiative and convince the Dres it will be worth their while to do business with him. Should we write ourselves into a corner and need someone to give the player a push in the right direction, I think the ancestaggregate is an excellent device for that purpose: on the one hand, its agency and ability to act is clearly limited, and as such shouldn’t impose on the player’s agency. On the other, consulting with ones ancestors is precisely what Dres would do when they’re uncertain, and in doing so they would not be risking their agency as they would by asking another Dres and possibly becoming indebted in the process. Gameplay would march hand in hand with story.
4. Minor point: I’m not a particular fan on the klanaath creature, at least not with the current characterization of the Dres. I feel that such a blatantly convenient creature would work better in Telvannis. I rather prefer the idea that the Sload traded merely in knowledge, and that even though the Dres have struck very convenient deals (though at a great cost) they’ve really had to work for them. Despite their population of slaves, I very much see the Dres as hard workers. Even if they do not till their fields, they put effort into making sure their slaves do. They are not interested in mitigating their work, not at all. At the root of it they constantly seek validation for their hard labour by seeing it rewarded.
5. I really want to avoid playing the vampiric rituals card for the Dres. This is really me being pedantic again and focusing on semantics, because I think the Dres would care about these particular semantics. I think it’s very important that the Dres wisewomen find their vampirism utterly repulsive. If their deal requires they do something fancy with souls or blood or whatever, they’re merely paying up for their end of the deal by abiding by some needlessly complicated stipulations. Nothing spiritual or ritualistic about it at all, no siree. Rituals should be reserved for things that have a value. To use the term ‘ritual’ in connection with their vampirism would be to legitimize it, and make it appear like something worthwhile on some level, when to them it is only shame and taboo.

Even if they couch it in terms of a hidden treasure, the player still shows up at the tomb and wonders why a Dunmer sent them there to ransack it. The blow to the canon comes later maybe, but still comes.

The reasoning for the Hist sending them there doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me, either. Are they doing it to thumb their nose at the Dres by ransacking a tomb? Do they want the player to meet with House Sabael? It seems like if the key is that the player gets to the tomb regardless, there would be much better reasons for sending them over there. A local complaining of a haunting, protecting it from bandits, even a Mage’s Guild associate wanting to study how Dunmer ancestral worship differs from necromancy..etc,etc.

I think perhaps we can be more direct then. At the base of every Dres quest I think there should be a deal or business transaction. In this case, the homunculus is offering the player a possibility to increase his standing in relation to the Dres – by possessing a clan and ancestry the Dres will feel obliged to take the player more seriously (if only by proxy) and maybe even not try to rip him off quite as much as before – in return for taking care of some task. I think care needs to be taken into what the task is, as it needs to equal or exceed the value of the reward; at this point in the questline a fair deal should come off as a great, vaguely suspicious sign of generosity whereas getting ripped off should be the norm. If the player gets a pay-off for joining House Dres, I think it should come late and that the player will have to suffer a while before it comes.
So let’s say for example the player needs to recover an Argonian who is hiding out in some dingy Imperial checkpoint on the border. The Dres slavehunters cannot complete this task efficiently as the Imperials would not allow them access, but the player, as an outlander, shouldn’t have any trouble convincing them to give him access to the checkpoint. Of course, the player will need to figure out how to haul the slave out and bring him back through the jungle, and all sorts of things could potentially go wrong. The player would specifically be told to bring the slave back alive so that an example can be made of him, which would not at all be an unusual request from the Dres. They would probably see simply killing an escaped slave as wasteful. It’s a very difficult task which carries great personal risk for the player, and the reward – at least as presented to the player – is directions to a tomb with ancestors who might still persist, who might not attack the player and, on the very slimmest of chances, might be open to reaching some agreement with the player. I think that would be a pretty good amount of unfair. (Unbeknownst to the player, the homunculus would probably already have investigated the tomb and gained the necessary assurances that the ancestors would play ball on their end, as otherwise his plot would rely on too many variables to be viable. I think the player should be the main variable in the homonculus’ plans and the rest should be pretty well thought out, but so as not to awake the player’s suspicion the homunculus would want to come off as another Dres ripping the player off, not as a benefactor).
(Incidentally, disappearance and change through lack of belief is established in TES. Belief shapes reality. That being said, in the case of ancestor ghosts I rather think that, without care and maintenance, their connection to the mortal world and with it their identity would erode and they would be recycled in the Dreamsleeve).

We shouldn’t pay attention to TESO lore – unless it’s something that is interesting and doesn’t go against TR’s plans. To put it bluntly, I like TR’s version of the Hist (which, I hear, has a MK seal of approval for what it’s worth) better than Zenimax’s version.

This will sound like the worst counter argument ever, but being exokalpic beings out of space the I’d imagine that the Hist do not hope that their plan works, they know it will. And even if the player fails it matters not. The Hist have got time and patience for aeons. And it’s not like there aren’t a whole bunch of questlines everywhere in video games that don’t come with a legion of ifs – Morrowind’s main quest comes to mind.

Well now i feel compelled to finish writing up my quest idea outline because the more i think about it, the less i like the purposed idea. If anything there should be only 1 or 2 people designated to writing the quest line and thats it, no other ifs ands or buts 

Got sidetracked by work and some other hobbies. Coming back to this to give it a thunk. So here’s my suggestions for cleaning up the logic of the proposed planning document, and also incoporating some other mischief from House Hlaalu and the Sload/vampiric stuff.

First the joining/being adopted quest arc:

Part 1:
Player wants to join House Dres. They ask House Dres if they can, House Dres says NO, you’re a freakin’ outlander, gtfo.

Part 2:
Hlaalu infiltrator posing as a House Dres Overseer comes forward, making the deal with the player that they can get them into House Dres if the player does some work for them. The player is made to do various hard labor jobs and makes trade contact with various other House Dres.

The player does not know this Overseer is from House Hlaalu, however. House Hlaalu is trying to get an informant inside House Dres because they want access to Dres’ agricultural secrets.

Part 3:
Some other official in House Dres comes to the player saying they have gotten wind of the possible Hlaalu infiltration. They send the player to investigate a runaway Argonian slave who they believe had connections to the Hlaalu, working as a spy and passing on information to the other Great House. The player finds the Argonian at the House Sabael tomb. They are dead: the tomb’s guardians got them.

On the body of the Argonian is a journal detailing their recent life. The Argonian is a Shadowscale (trained assassin from Black Marsh). They were captured by a slave expedition to become a House Dres slave (perhaps unintentionally, perhaps as part of the scheme). Once in Morrowind, the Argonian worked with a shady group trying to taking House Dres down from the inside.  This shady group isn’t described or named. The journal then makes references to various plans going awry, and the Argonian fell into depression and took to skooma. After a night of heavy binging, the Shadowscale says an agent of the shady group came to the Argonian and asked them to investigate the House Sabael tomb. The ramblings should also make clear that this Shadowscale highly reveres the Hist.

My reasoning for this change: you can now make any inferences you want on whether the Argonian was acting on behalf of the Hlaalu, the Hist, the Twin Lamps, or a skooma high. It also makes more sense for the Hist to make use of an Argonian operant rather than trying to convince a random stranger in the form of the player to do their dirty work. The reasons for the Argonian going out to this tomb are also never revealed, and are up to player interpretation. Maybe it was the Hlaalu still seeking information on House Dres. Maybe it was the Hist trying to get a legup on the spiritual battleground by destroying the seat of House Sabael’s ancestral power. Maybe it was actually House Sabael contacting the Argonian for help, as spirits of the dead will do. Or maybe it was all just one really bad skooma trip!

Part 4:
Before the player can return the journal to House Dres, the player meets the House Sabael ancestor conglomerate. At first House Sabael is angry that they have been trespassed on not once, but twice by outlanders. They teleport the player into the depths of their tomb in attempts to imprison them and torment them. The player must bypass a variety of puzzle traps and mob encounters; each one gives clues to House Sabael’s greater predicament:

The living relatives of House Sabael are all dead. In life, they were a clan that went back as far as the First Era. They were present when the Indoril pushed the Dres out of the good farming lands and into the salt flats. For whatever reason, they were unable to make the same bargains the other clanleaders of Dres made, and slowly but surely capitulated to the obvious disadvantage this put them at. (In actuality, they were unaware such deals were even taking place.) Now that they are in the afterlife, they have another worrying perspective: the ebb and flow of Dres souls into the afterlife is out of whack. House Sabael has come back to figure out why this is and put a stop to it, for the sake of purifying House Dres and because this unbalance may have greater implications to them in the spiritual afterlife.

So, over the course of the trials, the player gleans this. Upon emerging from the tomb, House Sabael is now seeing the player as someone of power and worth, and the player may see them with more sympathy. The deal is offered: the player becomes the living heir of House Sabael, and serves as House Sabael’s living agent in the politics of House Dres.

Part 5:
The player returns to House Dres to turn in the Argonian’s journal to satisfy the quest in Part 3. They come back to find that Hlaalu Overseer is now being accused of the espionage. The player gets caught up in it and accused, but is spared due to the Dres clanleaders finding out House Sabael has inexplicably decided to back the player. The player is also tasked with rooting out the last bit of the Hlaalu infiltration, proving their loyalty.

Intermediary stuff:
Various miscellaeneous tasks for House Dres that involve proving their worth and building their House. I haven’t fully fleshed this out, though I have some quest ideas that I’ll be putting into the Asset Browser at some point. These are all very miscellanaeous, do not really advance the story so much as give the story its backdrop and setting. Some ideas:
*Player tracks down runaway slaves who say they ran away because they noticed slaves were getting taken out of the slave pens at night and never returning.
*Helping to maintain or repair some of the agricultural infastructure. This could be that klanaath creature, or something more mundane such as getting the parts to repair a water pumping machine.
*Gaining the player a stronghold, also some new members for the House. These should be Dunmer, though a quest dealing with trying to get another outlander accepted into the House might be interesting.
*Various quests to do with farming and bugherding.

Endgame stuff:
House Dres then starts falling apart at the seams due to their past dealings, and the player gets to clean up the mess. A couple quest arcs come together:

*The slave uprising as mentioned in the planning document, or else a modified version of the Pillow-Mace quest with the player as the investigator rather than the co-conspirator. The Shadowscale from the joining quests should also somehow be mentioned or involved here, to nicely tie it together and hint more heavily that the Hist and/or Hlaalu are behind the Dres slave issues. The Hlaalu and/or Hist involvement then tie into what happens in Oblivion (Hlaalu and Dres allying, slavery abolished) and Skyrim (massive Argonian invasion). Though the player should be able to choose the side of the slaves and abolish slavery, I also think there should be a lot of incentive implied to maintaining the House Dres tradition of slave-keeping. After all, the player is an agent of HOUSE DRES, not the Twin Lamps.

*The vampirism thing. The player stumbles on this by first being tasked to clean out a den of normal vampires, who have been accused of taking the slaves and (more recently) Dunmer citizens. There’s hints in this quest that the actual villain is one or more House Dres clanleaders, who have implicated the common vampires to cover their own butt. This muddies the line a little between how vampiric the House Dres clanleaders can be considered, which I think is a good thing. The problem with vampires is when they’re not characterized well, and this perhaps counteracts that by more fully fleshing it out.

*Finally, one of the House Dres clanleaders actually dies and fulfills their end of the Sload bargain. (Reason TBD: Did they go too far in draining slave/Dunmeri souls and were assassinated by their fellow clanleaders, as in the quest above? Or did they just get tired of living and gave in? Or did some other force, such as a slave uprising, cut them off from their cattle and they capitulated unwillingly?) This clanleader’s entire clanstead is now under the thrall of the Sload (transported into an alternate magical realm even?), and the player must free it. This can be accomplished through a straightforward kill-everything-in-sight, but the Sload also offer the player a deal:

If the player takes the deal, they are in essence continuing this practice as a tradition among House Dres at large, and also choosing the route of self-sacrifice for the Dres to continue living the good life. The player becomes like one of the clan-leaders, with all that entails.

If the player doesn’t accept the deal, they are abolishing the vampiric practice and purifying the Dres of their prior contracts with the Sload forevers. This would hurt Dres a lot, as the Sload demand they take the lives of the other clanleaders to seal the deal. However, the player could profit majorly from this, as they are now the only living “clan leader” left. This could then be understood as the more selfish choice.

There is one other route the player could take to free the clanstead, which involves the Hist. The Hist offer their own deal to the player. The Hist ask the player to work to abolish slavery of Argonians, and the Hist will help the player save this clanstead and perhaps get rid of the Sload altogether. This deal would have significant cost to the player (Hist claiming their soul? Need more brainstorming on that), UNLESS the player took the side of the slaves during the aforementoned uprising. So this choice could endup as being as bad as the Sload deals, or the player’s saving grace, depending on what they chose in previous quests.

Hello all, I’m a long time lurker.  
I’ve written up a decently thorough questline (nearly finished) for House Dres.  I’ve tried to incorporate much of what infuses Dres with its character, while fitting in neatly with the lore the team has decided upon while also fitting in with the direction Dres takes during the events in Oblivion.  I know there is a meeting today about House Dres today.  Should I upload my currently incomplete questline, or wait until its finished (which will be in the next few days)?   

Loranna’s RP storyline?  I may be familar with that and simply do not know it by name.  I based my storyline nearly completely on the planning document, the debate on the forum, and of course on the lore on uesp (which is of course not very extensive).

A few things came up and so my questline was put on hold for a few days.  However I am back to work and nearly finished.  I have only about 2-3 quests left to hammer out and I will post it.  
A bit of clarification would be appreciated regarding the pact made with the Sload.  I understand that the Sload showed the Dres how to till the salt plains, but what did the Sload get out of the pact?  Clearly they get the souls of the Wise Women, but is that all?  Did the Sload have some other incentive?  
Thanks, and I will truly try to post this in the next 2 or 3 days.