2019-04-14 Meeting Summary

Queue: 

Proposed Agenda

Spring Release

  • Anything in need of high-priority attention?

Cross-Province questions

  • Tamriel_Data: how to handle lowres/highres
  • Faction integration, cross-provincial
  • Travel Networks: ships, teleportation, Intervention, restrictions at border forts (these should be been cleared up, further discussion necessary?)
  • Armor and weapons: sorting out stats, expanding or restricting vanilla sets, special cases

Various topics

Meeting Summary

Khalaan

Now that we have a very large interior claim with little to populate it, a discussion was had as to how expand on Old Old Ebonheart, the eternally burning Khalaan.

The general setup was discussed, with consensus largely revolving around the following:

  1. Khalaan is an outer realm populated by the ghosts of the former inhabitants and Daedra,
  2. It came into existence when Khalaan in Nirn was burning or about to burn and the Indoril Patriarch, either in a moment of rage, despair, or on some greater design, cursed the Tribunal and called upon other forces,
  3. Whoever or whatever holds the realm together is not clear,
  4. The Daedra are latecomers and squatters,
  5. The most important thing to take away is that the inhabitants have been ghosts for 400 years and have degraded to a point where they can no longer put two and two together, which is why they just mill apathetically around. This should be portrayed in dialogue: choices should reset, misc quests should have non-standard endings because the questgiver no longer recognizes the player, things like that.

From this, the general gist of the plane was discussed:

  • A demiprince or similar answered the Patriarch, but nobody (not even the Daedra) know who it was and they are not showing themselves,
  • The Patriarch thinks the current state of Khalaan (forever burning in Oblivion) is what he caused upon the town, and so he thinks it's deserved (that other people are also burning alongside him no longer registers, he's only focused on himself as a ghost),
  • The other inhabitants think "living" in Khalaan is what their Patriarch desires,
  • The Daedra came in later and either set up shop because it is a cozy place or because they love torturing mortal ghosts. They don't know who rules this place either, but fear that it will dissipate back into Nirn when all the ghosts have been freed.

The Temple quest can be implemented as-is. Other quests venturing into Khalaan can be developed for other factions or even independently.
The player can be sent in to free some ghosts (which will annoy the Daedra) or retrieve an artifact (which will annoy ghosts), but ultimately nothing will change in Khalaan during the quests at this point - it will always burn.
If the player is Nerevarine, they can provide a clean resolution to the fate of the spirits trapped there and the associated Temple quest by convincing the Patriarch that the wrongs of the Armistice would be righted under the player’s direction. While that would free the spirits, it would not resolve the situation with the burning city/plane itself, and the ultimate mystery - who answered and who holds this plane togethers - should never be answered.

A "final quest" so to speak would be something for the Nerevarine.
Discussed (but not agreed upon) was the arrival of a general of Dagon’s attack on Nirn during the Battlespire crisis, who was blasted into the middle of nowhere and wants to pick up the assault on the mortal realm - an army of ghosts would be helpful.
The end result should be the release of the ghosts and the cessation of the fires, although Khalaan itself might still stick around as to not invalidate the other quests.