History

When Sotha Sil became a god, he set out to find a place he could make his domain, just like Vivec and Almalexia did. While his divine siblings enjoyed the company of the mortals and revelled in their worship, Sotha Sil was looking for a reclusive place where he could research all the possibilities his divinity granted him.

He built himself lair after lair in the most remote places of Morrowind, but each of them was eventually discovered, followed by pilgrims, merchants and tourists flocking there.

It was not out of hate for these people, but out of concern to their safety that Sotha Sil did not want them around. The machines he created posed a threat to any layman trying to tinker with them and one could only give proper consent to exposure to the tribune’s experiments if one was well versed in matters of magic.

Eventually he gave up and settled in the arnesian jungle and started to create a plan that would grant him the place of quiet study he dreamt of.

But the people of his city, many of them eager scientists-mages, ardently tried to show him that they, too, wished for such a place. Many schools, some more esoteric that others, popped up, each trying to outdo each other. And while Sotha Sil was not too fond of the attention he got as well as this competetive mindset, he eventually saw the benefits of giving these people a place where they conduct research together or in competetion with each other

In secret Sotha Sil dug deep, deeper than anyone had ever dug before and destroyed all the exits to his underground lair. Shielded by miles of bedrock and his strong magics, no one could enter or even locate it. There he began building his magnum opus and started to selectivley invite those he deemed trustworthy and usefull.

It took some time, but eventually the people in the city above noticed Sotha Sils abscense. When important figureheads of the city started to disappear, rumors started to spread: Sotha Sil had abandond the city and created a new one once again. And so many of Sotha Sils inhabitants set out to find the new city but most failed eventually. They made many theories where this new city could be located that no one can find it.

But some scholars returned to the city in the jungle and kept searching. They believed this to be a test of their faith and intellect. They realized that Sotha Sil would not have left the city if he had not found a new way to hide. Their best chance of finding him would be to stay behind and search for clues of his whereabouts.

These abandoned scholars became the hermist known as the cacophones. Their goal was to to locate Sotha Sil and convince him that they are worthy to live in his presence. Wearing suits of tonal machinery they marched around the province,modlating their frequencies, looking for magical resonance that could indicate the location of Seths new lair but all they found was earlier iterations of the tribunes city.

One group of cacophones had the idea to set up a tonal network between the clockwork ruin to create a province-wide sonar of sorts. They build their machines as deep within the ruins they could go, plastering their path with traps and hostile fabricants to keep others out. With this network, they finally could locate the city and tried to access it by magical means.

Sotha Sil, impressed by their abilities, granted them entrance made them citizens of his city. Thus the ruins actually became entrances, but to reach the portal within, one would have to get through tunnels full of traps, fabricants and riddles created by the eremites.  The creators of these portals became the wardens of them. Once someone managed to pass through one of them, they would be marked with an enchantment, granting them safe passage through said tunnel.

Implementation, and tribunal quest

At the ruins of Sotha Sil the player can do quests for cacophones (still proving themselves to enter the clockwork city) and get information about riddles that await them inside as well as hints leading to locations of the smaller ruins. But the player is free to try and figure out the dungeon themselves and locate the other ruins. All of this can be done from the get-go after starting a new playthrough. By visiting all the ruins and talking with the gate guardians the player can piece together the history of the clockwork city. But there are no hints to the location of any of these ruins apart from those given by the cacophones living in Sotha Sil.

Sotha Sil consists of three layers:

The city above: Structure aboveground. Tall towers overgrown with folliage. Some cacophones hang out here and there, either warning people from the dangers ahead/conducting research/trying to find their way to the tribunes lair. Barilzar is in the top of the main tower, which is filled with fabricants/undead or other guardians to keep people away. Tribunal Quests sends you to get his mazed band.

The city below : Structure directly below the city above. A big maze once used by the inhabitants of the city, now also filled with fabricants and traps. The deepest room of the city below contains the mazed gate which teleports you to the third layer

The Hall of Depths: It is located miles underground but only Sotha Sil and the gate guardians know this. It is a minor city with some artificial nature surrounding it. It works as a training and teleportation hub, but you need to unlock the gates from the surface. Only if you pass through the main gate you get access to the Hall of Depths. The hall of depths contains Sotha Sils workshop, which is locked and can only be accessed with the mazed band.