Finding A New Guar

[Dexter]

While walking between Tel Ouada and Tel Aranyon/Ranyon-Ruhn (Cell 28, 16 just before the canyon), you come across a, Argonian slave standing next to a dead guar. When you speak to the slave, he says that he was bringing the guar from the farm to the north of Tel Ouada after purchasing it for his master, when he accidentally let some noble sedge petals mix in with its food. He cannot run away, as he is in the heart of Telvanni territory wearing a slave bracer (which his master has the key to), and so has no chance of escape. He tells you that he has to return to his master in Ranyon-Ruhn with a healthy guar, or he will most certainly be whipped to death.
The slave had been given a scroll of command creature by his master, in case the guar tried to wander off, or spotted a female in heat. The slave asks you to take the scroll, and bring him a healthy (non-diseased) guar so he can return to Ranyon-Ruhn.
Your options are:
Tell the slave that you won’t help him. The slave does not attack, but says something along the lines of “I understand. Why would anyone want to help a filthy slave like me anyways. I should just head back and face my fate.â€Â￾
If you select this, and speak to him again later, he will make the offer again, and you can agree to do it this time, or any time in the future.
Agree to help the slave. The slave cheers up and says “Really? Great! Here is the scroll, and a healthy guar can’t be far off!â€Â￾
If you agree to help the slave, the scroll of command creature is added to your inventory, and off you go to find a guar. If you are successful and bring a guar to the slave, he will rain thanks upon you, and say that he will spread word of your kindness to everyone he meets. This will result in a reputation bonus.
After you are given the scroll, and before you bring back a guar, if you talk to the slave, he will ask you how things are going. You can tell him that you no longer want to help him, in which case the slave will take the scroll back, and say he hopes someone else will come along to help him.
24 hours after you return a guar to the slave, they will both be teleported to the outside of the master’s house in Ranyon-Ruhn. His dialogue from this point forth will be the same pole-polishing you would expect.
Of course you can kill the slave at any point, which would bring the whole thing to an abrupt halt.
Another option I am considering is placing a key to the slave bracers on the master, so the player can go kill or pickpocket the master, take the key, free the slave and escort the slave to a safe point (Firewatch will do). This will result in a reputation bonus, plus a bonus with the Twin Lamps.
I am still looking for acceptable NPCs, but I know the slave will have to be new.
(Original idea by littlebros)

Edit: Evoh Ulessen, Irele Nathryon and Nevusa Lakasyn look like the three candidates to be the master.

[Thirsk]

erhh, Dexter? how are you/PC going to get the guar to follow you to the slave?

[Dexter]

That's what the command creature scroll is for.

[Stumpytheguar]

It will be difficult to detect just any guar with scripting, as they've all the same ID and are referenced by the game with a numerical index concatenated on the end...

I could be wrong (And I hope I am, for simplicity's sake), but this might be impossible without having a unique guar ID to detect.

Perhaps you could have the slave tell you where to find a specific guar? Maybe a guar from the herds he's been tending recently gave birth, and he's kept one of the litter for himself to aid in his chores. You could justify the necessity of using this one specific guar due to several factors; genetics, for one (This one guar bears the same markings as the dead sibling), or perhaps that the guar must be pre-domesticated in order for the switch to go un-noticed, and this is the only unaccounted trained guar to be found in the area.

You could then also have another option of the player purchasing for the slave a replacement trained guar from someone in a local town (much like the rat salesman in Mournhold), with a different quest ending of it's own.


Altogether, it's only logical from both a scripting and reason viewpoint. You can't just go out and grab any wild horse, chain it up and expect it to drive your plow, just as an untamed guar would not be appropriate for muck harvesting.

How about this for an option as well; the player approaches the slave owner and informs him of the slave's failure. The slave master is angry at the slave, and asks the player to punish him (since you've been such a great help already) and bring back evidence of his death for a reward. The player can then carry out the swift arm of Telvanni law and take care of the troublesome slave himself - or take this opportunity to make the slave dissapear in another fashion by sneaking him out to safety (and bringing back false evidence of his death).

This change would make the quest more of a moral decision for the player than just a filler-up, "Go do this now" sort of thing, by creating the decisions as follow.

1. The player could free the slave by killing the master, and then proceed to lead him and his guar to safety.
+1 global rep, -1 Telvanni rep, +1 Twin lamps rep

2. The player can spend some of his hard-earned cash to save a slave's life and friend, but leave them at the hands of the slave master.
-1500 gold, +2 global rep

3. The player can save the slave's life, but force him to sacrafice his friend, as well as leaving him bound to his master.
+1 global rep

4. The player can ignore it completely, and come back later to find the slave being punished.
-1 Twin Lamps rep

5. The player may report the incident and kill the slave as punishment.
+1000 gold, +1 Telvanni rep, -2 Twin lamps rep

6. The player may report the incident, and then sneak the slave out of Telvanni territory into safety.
+1000 gold, +1 Telvanni rep, +1 Twin lamps rep

Your thoughts?

[Dexter]

The scripting issue occured to me after I posted the idea. I was thinking though, since the area the slave is located in is rather scarse, and there are not many guar around, there could be a unique guar placed on the hill next to where the slave is standing. It could be called "docile guar" or something like that, with a very low wander value. The slave could tell you that the guar came over to the hill to eat a few hours ago, and hasn't left. The slave is afraid of wild animals though, so he asks you to use the command creature scroll on it.
As for your options...

1. The player could free the slave by killing the master, and then proceed to lead him and his guar to safety.
+1 global rep, -1 Telvanni rep, +1 Twin lamps rep

I included this option in my initial writeup. The master will have the key to the slave's bracer on him.

2. The player can spend some of his hard-earned cash to save a slave's life and friend, but leave them at the hands of the slave master.
-1500 gold, +2 global rep

What friend? And what exactly is the player buying? Is he simply paying the master to forget the incident and buy a new guar?

3. The player can save the slave's life, but force him to sacrafice his friend, as well as leaving him bound to his master.
+1 global rep

Again, what friend are you talking about?

4. The player can ignore it completely, and come back later to find the slave being punished.
-1 Twin Lamps rep

I was thinking that for simplicity's sake, this is a quest you could come back to at any point in time and finish. It may be somewhat against logic, but lets face it, after getting Wraithguard, you can take all the time in the world to go and tango with Dagoth Ur.

5. The player may report the incident and kill the slave as punishment.
+1000 gold, +1 Telvanni rep, -2 Twin lamps rep

I like the idea of the player reporting the slave to the master. However, the master probably would not want the player to kill the slave. This is the master's only slave, so odds are he/she wants it alive. A cash reward would be enough, and the master will say that he/she is sending out guards to find the slave and bring it back for punishment.
If the player kills the slave and tells the master, I think it would be interesting for the master to be angry, and for a small bounty to be placed on the PC's head. Not the killer bounty, but a thieve's bounty, since this would be viewed as damaging property, not murder.

6. The player may report the incident, and then sneak the slave out of Telvanni territory into safety.
+1000 gold, +1 Telvanni rep, +1 Twin lamps rep

Sounds good to me.

[Anonymous]

When I had the oringal idea, there was opion of doing it from the masters side where you have to go find the slave and help him....

[Stumpytheguar]

1. The player could free the slave by killing the master, and then proceed to lead him and his guar to safety.
+1 global rep, -1 Telvanni rep, +1 Twin lamps rep

I included this option in my initial writeup. The master will have the key to the slave's bracer on him.

I know it was in your original writeup. I was trying to sum up all of the possible options for the quest were it written how I would have done it. Moving on...

2. The player can spend some of his hard-earned cash to save a slave's life and friend, but leave them at the hands of the slave master.
-1500 gold, +2 global rep

What friend? And what exactly is the player buying? Is he simply paying the master to forget the incident and buy a new guar?

I had referenced that there might be someone in the local area might be willing to sell a previously trained guar for the right price. I had also suggested that the slave himself had another trained guar hidden somewhere from his master that had gone un-noticed when removed from the rest of the herd. Like a pet to keep him company and help with his chores.

3. The player can save the slave's life, but force him to sacrafice his friend, as well as leaving him bound to his master.
+1 global rep

Again, what friend are you talking about?

Same one. Here's the section I previously posted about it.

Maybe a guar from the herds he's been tending recently gave birth, and he's kept one of the litter for himself to aid in his chores. You could justify the necessity of using this one specific guar due to several factors; genetics, for one (This one guar bears the same markings as the dead sibling), or perhaps that the guar must be pre-domesticated in order for the switch to go un-noticed, and this is the only unaccounted trained guar to be found in the area.

That's quite a long paragraph to just miss like that.

4. The player can ignore it completely, and come back later to find the slave being punished.
-1 Twin Lamps rep

I was thinking that for simplicity's sake, this is a quest you could come back to at any point in time and finish. It may be somewhat against logic, but lets face it, after getting Wraithguard, you can take all the time in the world to go and tango with Dagoth Ur.

You've got a point. Morrowind wasn't very much a time-oriented game, so this option is an un-necessary complication.

5. The player may report the incident and kill the slave as punishment.
+1000 gold, +1 Telvanni rep, -2 Twin lamps rep

I like the idea of the player reporting the slave to the master. However, the master probably would not want the player to kill the slave. This is the master's only slave, so odds are he/she wants it alive. A cash reward would be enough, and the master will say that he/she is sending out guards to find the slave and bring it back for punishment.
If the player kills the slave and tells the master, I think it would be interesting for the master to be angry, and for a small bounty to be placed on the PC's head. Not the killer bounty, but a thieve's bounty, since this would be viewed as damaging property, not murder.

I didn't know it was his only slave; I imagines this as another large plantation/landowner situation. If it's his only slave, then yes, this makes more sense.

6. The player may report the incident, and then sneak the slave out of Telvanni territory into safety.
+1000 gold, +1 Telvanni rep, +1 Twin lamps rep

Sounds good to me.

So then, one last re-write and it should be good?

[Dexter]

Yes, this is a situation where the master only has one slave. The master is going to end up either as the healer service or alchemist service in Ranyon-ruhn, so she would only have the slave for gathering ingredients from the surrounding countryside. She decided to purchase the guar so that the slave could carry more ingredients back and forth, and therefore increase production.
The problem I see with there being someone in Ranyon-ruhn who trains guars is that there are no farms in Ranyon-ruhn. The surrounding countryside doesn't have any farms or the like on it, just rolling hills.
But Sload said he had some idea to write this quest into a larger idea he had, so I am waiting for him to post his ideas here.

[Sload]

I don't have time to elaborate, but the basic idea revolves around the Sadas Family. Here's what I told Dexter over AIM.

The entire idea with the Sadas Family is that there are three brothers: the one at the plantation, the one at the guar farm (in Tel Ouada), and the one at an eggmine added to Gah Ouadaruhn or Gah Sadrith (probably the former.) The plantation owner is using family funds for his own luxuries, the guar farmer is having the trouble with Mistress Rathra, and the mine owner is working with a Hlaalu spy. You can side with the plantation owner or the guar farmer, but the miner wont let you into his business. If you side with the plantation owner, you end up killing the mine owner, if you side with the guar farmer, you kill the plantation owner and the mine owner.

[Sload]

OK, now that I have time, here's a quest outline:

A = Guar Farmer Sadas (unnamed)
B = Angon Sadas

A1. Guar Farmer tells the player about the failing of his farm, and has him do this quest to check up on his slave.

A2. Guar Farmer wants the player to check up on Mine Owner (unnamed). Mine Owner gives him some coded reports and Angon isn't very happy about it.

A3. Guar Farmer wants the player to check up on Angon Sadas. Angon says not to get into his business, but Guar Farmer says that he keeps careful record of his financial history. The player can find these records in his bedroom.

A4. Not a quest. Guar Farmer says that Angon has been cheating the family out of money, and he wants the player to confront Angon about it. Angon says that Guar Farmer is an incompetent loser who can't manage money for beans and denies these "alleged side spendings". The player can chose to side with either party.

----

B1. If you talk to Angon at the plantation he says that the guar farmer's been losing a lot of money, and that he wants the player to investigate; he also wants the player to give a gift to a woman friend of his in Tel Ouada. Guar Farmer says that Mistress Rathra wont let him use Tel Ouada's port because she's bitchy, and he's had to go through Bal Oyra or Gah Ouadaruhn instead. He's not heard back from a guar shipment of his, and wants the player to check on it. And so begins the quest this thread is about. The woman in Tel Ouada gladly accepts the gift.

B2. Now Angon wants the player to check on his other brother, Mine Onwer (unnamed) and give another woman friend in Gah Ouadaruhn something. Mine Owner gives the player a report to give to Angon, written in the classy code those Telvanni love to use. Angon is not very satisfied. This woman friend also gladly accepts the gift.

B3. Angon says that he has nothing for the player to do, but that he should ask one of the other brothers. Mine Owner says nothing, ofcourse, but Guar Farmer has the player perform A3. (See A3 for details)

B4. Not a quest. Identical to A4.

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The rest isn't done, but it will probably be a bit longer, 4-6 quests each side.