Wake for the Waves
The quest starts via latest rumours at any non-Temple commoner in Necrom (Solamis Gerthas for example, her house is near where coc Necrom puts you). They direct you to an unknown old man who has been spotted on the north eastern coast, up on a high rock.
You need jump or levitate to get up to him, that's intentional. He looks all spooky standing up there, especially at night. He has a levitation item with him to explain how he got up there.
Vanryth Adrano's dialogue hints at a nearby shipwreck (it's the Corroded Shipwreck, already in mainland). Relevant for the quest is the new ledger found in the cabin, which tells you the name of the ship. There's also an extra slaughterfish spawn there, so that even at lvl 1 there is at least a token guaranteed combat section in the quest. If you picked up the ledger before starting the quest or talking to the guy, that's fine too, it will add the name of the ship as a dialogue topic that unlocks as soon as you reach this stage of the quest.
People in Necrom will point you to the harbormaster Ethaso Athones (already in mainland, but with no role in quests afaik), you can go straight to him as well. You learn that the ship sunk over a century ago.
For a 75 dispo check, a bribe, or by being a temple member, he will get you the old logs after a 24h timer. I felt like this was pretty natural point to use a timer, since he really would have to leave his post and root through 120 year old records.
When he gives the logs to you, the harbormaster tells you that the only survivor of the wreck used to work here, and is now a scribe at Romithren Monastery. I ended up copying the already existing directions to the monastery for consistency here (which imply that you should start at Dreynim because there is no road from Akamora, even though going from Akamora is much more efficient for a player and you don't need levitate at all)
The survivor is Travin Benelas in the scriptorium (other npcs will tell you where he is). He tells you a bit of backstory about the ship, and when he hears Vanryth's name he suspect that he might have had something to do with the sinking.
When you return to Vanryth, he admits his culpability in the sinking, and you get three choices.
1. If you say that you will kill him, he accepts his fate (he won't fight back even if attacked, and his health is dropped way low to suggest him "offering his throat", so to speak. That only applies to this specific quest stage, attacking him at any other time just starts a normal fight)
2. If you say that he will stand trial in Necrom, he chooses to kill himself instead. Mechanically that's just a suicide spell, but the implication is that he is using the enchanted fire ring in his inventory, that you of course get to keep.
3. If you say you will let him walk free, he will give you the ring, and also teaches you 3 points of enchant skill
4. And there is also the hidden option of saying you will spare him and then kill him anyway, it comes with its own journal entry. Mechanically, this is the "best outcome" if you want to game it.
If you picked any of the options that led to Vanryth's death (including sparing then killing), Travin at the monastery will thank you and give you a swift swim ring. If you chose to let Vanryth go, Travin is disappointed, but at least he has closure now.
That's the path through the quest a normal player will take, but I also took a lot of time to make sure the quest can never get stranded in the quest log, so there's like 10 extra "Finished" stages for killing any of the 3 involved NPCs before their part in the story is done.
Design-wise, my considerations were that this quest adds something new to do to Necrom, uses the docks administration and its leader, and that it's a twist on the idea of a restless spirit (it's left open to interpretation if there even IS a restless spirit involved). I also liked the idea of a quest taking advantage of the long natural lifespan of dumner, even the average non-magelord non-insane ones.
I also went for maximum compatibility, which means that no reference in mainland was changed or removed to make this quest work, it's all additions.
| Attachment | Size | Date |
|---|---|---|
 TR_showcase_revane_v1.ESP | 48.67 KB | 2022-10-06 20:48 |
2016-06-10 21:48
13 hours 49 min ago
Hello! Thank you for the showcase submission. As is tradition, these are the changes I'd like you to make
1. Always use double hyphens -- like this instead of - that (specifically in journal entries)
2. topic 'So the good people of the city' has a double space after a sentence, as do some journal entries
3. remove the race filters (dark elf) for the orphaned dancer topics. this will be mildly annoying to do.
4. your generic dialogue entries need local TR_Map >= # filters (or map-specific filters, in this case map2). this will prevent npcs that follow you for quests, companions, etc from obtaining your generic topics just because they enter that cell.
5. The quest should be start-able if you just find the guy, rather than have him permanently Goodbye greeting the player. most people won't know where to go to investigate, you may as well have a path that starts with him.
6. Don't end generic dialogue lines with ... (latest rumors) I would just cut that end phrase entirely
7. Dial back the quest npc's poetic speech just a little bit, I know that he's a stoic watchman but he's maybe a bit too flowery with his dialogue
8. the shipwreck is really far away from shore and difficult to find, maybe position him further north (ie, *directly* west of the shipwreck) and have his instructions say "east"
9. remove 'do ask' from the first orphaned dancer topic
10. reduce the length of the player choices. "I believe there is more to the wreck than meets the eye" -> "You should investigate further." "Would 100 gold be an adequate reimbursement for your time?" -> "I can offer you 100 gold for your time." These are player-inserts; the less prose you give the player, the better. as terse as possible when it comes to player choice responses.
11. orphaned dancer response after the 24 hours, change the line to like "There really was nothing special about this vessel -- low-value cargo, only docked", as written the second part is a fragment
12. need a journal entry when you talk to travin benelas
13. decades in the temple and travin is only an initiate? poor guy, lol
14. similar to above, reduce the player lines during the final choice segment
15. why does he try to cast his suicide spell on the player in the results box?
16. when you manually kill him, it says "travin will want to know he's dead." is that hinted at anywhere? travin should tell you that before you go.
overall good dialogue, good flavorful reward, great job. make those changes and get badge
2022-10-06 08:56
5 hours 7 min ago
First things first, I found a legitimate bug with the ledger script (it added the topic just by being in the same cell, not by actually reading it), so that's replaced with a different one now.
1), 2) fixed (hopefully)
3), 4) fixed
5) quest can now also start by first finding vanryth (he even mentions and marks necrom so the journal can point you there, just on the stupidly low chance that anyone would find him before finding the city)
6) done
7) toned it down
8) as per discord, didn't change the location but the npc now explicitly tells you it's to the north-east of where he is, and that gets reflected in the journal entry too
9) done
10) shortened and rewritten the follow-up dialogues where necessary
11) done
12) All quest-related dialogue with Travin now goes through the Orphaned Dancer topic, so you always get some info on the ship before you bring up Vanryth's name
13) Promoted to adept, like the other scribe in the room
14) shortened
15) I thought that's how it should be. If I add himself as the target instead, it does work, but he does an extra, inexplicable half-turn before casting. I have left it with the player as target for now, unless this actually causes an issue I am unaware of.
16) Travin now explicitly tells you to come back to him after meeting Vanryth
Also, uhm, here is something embarassing I only saw just now - I checked if the Corroded Shipwreck had anything unique in it before writing the quest, but I didn't realise until playtesting the changes in this that two of the crates on the outside are filled with ebony ore and dwemer stuff, so this clearly was intended to be a sunken smuggler. This doesn't outright contradict the quest, but I don't think it fits. I left it for now, but IF this quest gets folded into TR, I would just remove those. Now that a quest points to the ship and it's not a rare random find, it doesn't need that additional loot anyway.
2016-06-10 21:48
13 hours 49 min ago
a few notes
1. the topic to ask the people of necrom about him is filtered to commoner, which is way too specific. necrom is packed full of pilgrims who could see this guy, and filtering to commoner means publicans, merchants etc can't tell you about him either.
2. "Perhaps the people of nearby Necrom know who he is." is only borderline acceptable for journal entries. this errs dangerously close to the player character telepathically knowing what to do next. that being said, it's a logical conclusion and prevents the human player from not knowing what's going on. the trick to making this acceptable is adding something in the npcs lines that makes asking the people of necrom about him seem obvious, e.g. "The people of Necrom know my shame." i'm not changing it now, I think it's good enough
3. I think the ebony ore and dwemer stuff is probably fine to keep, it's a nice treasure for anyone exploring that far off shore. a lot of smuggling happens on regular ships without the knowledge of the captain -- someone on the crew sticks some ebony in a crate and suddenly everyone on board is inadvertently a smuggler.
overall a nice talky quest, good job, promoted