On my most recent Morrowind playthrough a Quest idea has popped in to my head which I feel would be a very cool experience for the player.
The quest would loosely go as follows:
> Playeris tasked to retrieve an egg from a cliff racer nest. The mother has been killed by hunters, and this is possibly a very rare breed. Or the quest-giver has a particular interest in cliff racers (maybe a telvanni wizard wants to study one), or could simply be some Imperial nature enthusiast who wants it rescued for humanitarian reasons.
> In any event, the player retrieves the egg and brings it back to the quest-giver. The player will be told to return when the egg hatches (anywhere between 1-5 days?). When the racer hatchers, it would be nice to have a unique visual identifier to establish this cliff racer as unique, perhaps a red stripe or something simple? At this point the player has to fetch some food (any raw meat will do) to feed it once per day for about 3 days in a row.
> The final stage for the player will be to give the (adolescant) cliff racer name, and then take it to the top of a tower and see if it can now fly, and watch it fly off into the view distance limit.
-But-
I'd like the player to encounter this racer again at some point. There are a few ways we can do this and the choice is yours.
> Write a script where this particular cliff racer suddenly returns if the player is in trouble (<30% health, outdoors, under attack) and fights by your side
> Have the racer act as a permanent companion (which cannot follow to interiors, and teleports to a specific nest area when badly separated)
> Give the player a power to summon once per day (outdoors only)
2016-01-19 19:35
1 year 7 months ago
The first and third script ideas are close to impossible, if not impossible in TES3's setup. The second is do-able, though I'm not sure what flying does to the generic follow script (considering how well ordinary cliff racers "follow" you when they're right above you trying to get down to you...)
As I think I said in Discord, getting a cliff racer pet would be a very special thing, and the questline leading up to it isn't so special. I'd like to see something more unusual or engaging to lead up to it. While the Saint Jiub thing Skyrim made canon is a little cringeworthy as far as lore goes, there might be something to play with in there.
To go with the idea that the cliffracer returning is a surprise to the player, you might also be able to tie it into a larger questline too--where the player comes back to the area the cliffracer was released in for another reason, and the cliffracer helps them kill some big bad (or otherwise provide aid to the player).