Saturday June 04 6:00 GMTmeeting (held on Discord:)

Discussion leader:N/A

Note-taker (secretary): Atrayonis

The Salt Wastes (Dres Canals)

There are currently only three pieces of concept art of them.
It was suggested that the tileset should be asymetrical and modular, to make the best use out of it. The sheer scale is enormous (the Salt Wastes being the western/northern part of the Deshaan Plains).
Parallels were to be drawn to the Velothi sewer tileset in size and scope – inserts were suggested to make the set more varied. Bridge pieces, linking one side to the other, crystals, sections which have been replaced with artificial scaffolding, and crystal chambers.

The pumps above the surface were also discussed – while definitely not Dwemer in origin, the clearest comparison is to the Archimedes screw or the Perarchora wheels. They would be operated by slave labour, perhaps looking like Roman era aquaduct pumps or Babylonian irrigation.

Suggestions: Image 1 Image 2 Archimedes Screw Perachora Wheel

The key difference to ancient civilisations would be that the Dres are pumping the water from underground, instead of surmount significant distance over land. Perhaps an oblong wheel would work best, as the height difference is akin to the elevators on the wall in Game of Thrones. In-game this would roughly be 3950 units above sea level, going by Morrowind’s help file, this would be 188 feet/57 metews.

The sheer size of such an oblong wheel would be baffling, but with applied magic (feather effects or similar) it would be doable with lots of slave labour. The in-game implementation would need to have the slaves be on break when the player visits – keeping them chained up while on break was suggested, or keeping them in cages.

As one series of oblong wheels (not one for the whole height) would be used to power one plantation, the slaves would have to be kept locally. The purpose of the pumps is to replace the water in the saltrice paddies when it becomes too saline for the saltrice.

As an alternative, giant insects were suggested, who would suck up the water into their belly then fly to the surface.

Solutions were discussed. This picture has several possibilities, and the solution F (using both slaves and animals of whatever kind) was generally agreed to work pretty well.

Handbook discussion

The agenda’d points are to be talked about next week, when Kaziem is back.

Quarantine

For LondonRook’s mod Outlander, Vivec needs to have less people on the outside (35 max), so the topic of the quarantine was brought up.
Since the quarantine was supposed to contain Vvardenfell off the mainland and TR ditched it, it was agreed to have TR mainlanders discuss under “Latest Rumors” that they heard that people in Vivec are afraid to leave their houses, for fear of the Blight.
While this would only be a rumor in vanilla Vivec, it would tie Outlander in nicely.

The general background was resolved to be: in 426, both a tax revolt in Balmora and a series of assassinations of Imperial and Hlaalu supporters (both events mentioned in vanilla books) took place, spooking Imperial administrators in newly-built Ebonheart. With the intention to clean his new home, the head of the Imperial Legion, Varus Vanitius made a widely publicised attempt to quarantine the entire island of Vvardenfell and send in his legions in a series of punitive and investigative strikes.
While some local attempts were made, the effort quickly collapsed, both due to lack of manpower and lack of political backing – the Hlaalu, the Temple, even the Eastern Empire Company stood solidly against the idea. While every now and then, clueless outlanders will wonder about the quarantine, the only thing it succeeded in was killing Vanitius’ standing among the Duke’s council and among the Legion, losing precious political support when the Blight began resurfacing in 427.

Books and rumors about the crisis of 426 should be written and put into TR.