Trailers and Teasers

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Today was probably the least productive day I’ve had since the inception of the mod. I spent three hours watching baseball, and then stared at the clock for about five minutes trying to figure out if watching paint dry could possibly be as pointless as what I just watched. I did manage to get some real life work done, as well as add some audio and dick around with a new follower, NPC #139, albeit to be honest I lost count of how many “interesting” NPCs I made many moons ago, as opposed to NPCs just there to move along a quest. This one has a short little drama tied around his appearance, but there are some kinks that need working out before he can be released.

As you can tell, he’s an Orc. He has hair like Bob Marley. His name has two linguavelar stops. Perhaps I should have named him Nurgok and gone for the trifecta. As for the new voices, they are here for your viewing pleasure. If you are not pleased, then I suggest you make efforts to pleasure yourself. It always works for me.

Quest Pages and Wiki

Alright, here’s an example of a quest page, which will be added slowly to the blog. I listed the stages of the quest that get activated, but the enabling and disabling of NPCs in this particular quest happens mostly through the conversations, and as such, the note below should explain why setting a stage won’t always have the desired effect. Forgotten Lore and Radiant Dark each run into this issue, as the newer quests are all set up to where for the most part, the main script enables/disables everything.

The actual page is here, which will also be linked to the ReadMe and everywhere else the quest is mentioned, and can be found via search as well.

I tried to fill the page with both background information as well as relevant data for progressing through the quest, and may include a video walkthrough at some point. If nothing else, the quest codes and stages should help, but again, for other quests more than this one.

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Forgotten Lore
Quest Giver Olivia Meronin – Winterhold College Arcanaeum
Locations Arcanaeum, Shadowgreen Cavern, Windhelm Warehouse, Wreck of the Winter War, Graywinter Watch, Falkreath Watchtower, Ironback Hideout
Prerequisites None
Related Quests The Radiant Dark
Enemy Level PC x 1 Class LvlWarlockBoss
Quest ID CWQQ2 Editor ID 02038120
NPCs Olivia, Jadro’Ra, Erith, Arryn Grey, Lyanna, Melisandre, Fisherman
Reward Olivia’s Staff(Wall of Flames), Gold(1000)

The very first quest introduced into the mod, the skeleton of which was taken from Roarian’s mod of the same name. He transferred over his scripts, ideas and characters upon which the dialogue and story was built. The quest starter Meronin was renamed Olivia Meronin, to account for the overabundance of male roles early in development. Each of the five mages is based off a boss level warlock template, but Lyanna(Alteration) and Erith(Restoration) are given their own spells to account for their school of magic. The names for the mages are predominately taken from A Song of Ice and Fire, with the exception of Erith who is named after the Final Fantasy character.

Finding Jadro’Ra
Olivia will indicate Jadro’Ra will likely be in one of the caverns along the northern shore. The exact location is Shadowgreen Cavern, where the Khajiit will reveal he shadowed another mage, who at this point remains nameless. The identity of the leader of this group is revealed during the events of The Radiant Dark.

Olivia’s Advice
Upon returning to Olivia with Jadro’Ra’s information, she will ask the PC to retrieve the notes from the rogue mages. In addition to giving basic information on the five schools of magic, Olivia will tell the five stories which Vanus Galerion told of his youth, each alluding to the school of magic the spell tome contains.

  • Illusion – The illusion story tells the tale of how Vanus’ father told him to never reference things he learned from his studies, as the mention of a beast from a faraway land would clue his master into realizing the boy had been educated.
  • Alteration – As the nature of alteration is not to deceive, but alter reality, such is the story of how Vanus’ mother’s anxiety made her worst fears come true.
  • Destruction – Vanus’ anger transforms into rage, as his screams fill the night’s hollows.
  • Restoration – Vanus escapes but at the cost of his constitution. However, a band of troubadours nurses him back to health.
  • Conjuration – In his time with the troubadours, Vanus learns the value of conjuration, and the ability to always summon laughter, even in times of sorrow.

Destruction
At the top of Falkreath Watchtower. The warlock is disabled for the purpose of this quest and enabled upon finish.

Conjuration
Graywinter Watch. In versions prior to 2.38, corpses are enabled at game start. In subsequent iterations, the corpses will be enabled for this part of the quest and disabled upon its conclusion.

Restoration
Windhelm Warehouse. A restoration mage and bandits will spawn in the warehouse, but can be led outside in order to attract the guard and remove their inherent advantage.

Alteration
Unlike illusion mages where the trick is performed through misdirection, the alteration bandits wear their names and act accordingly. The difference is they are dressed in farm clothes, and the attempt is to lower the PC’s unconscious aggression by making him/her question whether they should be attacking or if they’ve encountered a bug. As such, the altered behavior is real as opposed to a game mechanic.

Illusion
Found at The Wreck of the Winter War, the Fisherman is deliberately set up to appear like a vanilla prisoner, hence the illusion. Originally, the quest marker was designed to appear over the dead body, but a lack of scripting knowledge prevented many of the desired effects. Releases after 2.38 will incorporate that, with a fake page placed on the dead fisherman seen below.

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Forgotten Lore (CWQQ2)
Stage Information
0 Speaking to Olivia, she will inform you that her assistant, Jadro’Ra, has gone missing.
10 Jadro’Ra can be found at Shadowgreen Cavern, where he is lying wounded and dying.
15 Upon his death, Jadro’Ra hands you notes on the location of five wizards who may be in possession of the stolen documents.
20 After returning the notes to Olivia, she will ask you to track down the mages and recover the missing pages.
90 Olivia will reward the player 100 gold per page. Retrieving all five pages will set the stage to 90.
200 After receiving all 5 pages, Olivia will reward the player with a staff and 500 gold. She will then go about the business of decoding the texts, and make note that Jadro’Ra’s killer is still at large.

Notes: The scripting for this quest happens primarily through dialogue. Meaning, setting the stage through the console may not produce the desired effect, as the enabling of various NPCs is done through the fragment scripts attached to the conversations as opposed to the quest’s main script. Roarian wrote and encrypted the pages, which each have various messages contained within.

Character Profile – Nitter

When we all transfer our DNA into hard drives and live in a virtual paradise, the one thing that is certain is that it will be full of beautiful people. Sure, there will be times when we all get bored of being hunky/sexy supermodels and role play a club-footed midget, but for the most part we are lazy and it is simply easier to live our daily lives as a more ideal version of ourselves.

We will all be beautiful. We will all be confident, for whatever weaknesses we had could be erased with the appropriate software. We will all be more or less perfect.

While there’s a Stepford-ian quality to such a utopia, this is not a bad thing. There will still be diversity, it will simply come from our various interpretations of beauty. There will also be Orcs and Khajiit and Fairies and Hobbitses, and that outweighs any fears of the kind of banality we now associate with the suburbs. In fact, the analogy probably works better in reverse. The virtual world will be full of breasts, beauty, beasts, and blood. It will be total hyperbole, and we will forget all the plain ol’ folks we left back in the real one.

The modding world is but a teaser for this dichotomy.  It adds to Skyrim hordes and hordes of beautiful, talented, badasses and quirky, adorable companions. For creators of smaller NPC mods, it makes sense, as there’s a marketing aspect to consider.  However, if you combine them all together, what you end up with is a Skyrim less like it was intended to be, and more like our virtual playground of the future.

That is to say, no one will want to download a companion mod featuring an insecure, submissive man with a bird for a haircut. In a vacuum, this person would not stand out. However, in a world full of beautiful, amazing, and eccentric people, the universe’s last pathetic weakling seems almost refreshing, and Nitter (Tom Shortridge) is all kinds of pathetic.

While Hjoromir‘s weaknesses are almost masked by his unwavering bravado, Nitter is no such thing. He is an obvious submissive, making himself an easy target in a city full of cutthroats. For the PC, Jaree-Ra is at best a partner and at worst someone entirely beneath you. For Nitter, he’s a chance for acceptance. He’s a friend. So while all the warning signs are there, he chooses to ignore them. Moreover, he has an incentive to ignore them. It’s not so much the loneliness that drives him, as he’s become numb to the feeling. It’s the joy of having someone muss his hair, even when the fingers are coarse. Nitter will commit crimes, he will act against his own interests, because for him, nothing was as euphoric as that feeling he belonged.

Which is why the only cure for his destructive behavior was true acceptance. In Ma’zaka, he found someone who not only forgave him, but understood him. After all those years cooped up in an old lighthouse, perhaps they needed each other. Sure, the relationship mirrors a mentor and his student, but in terms of their friendship, Ma’zaka is the first person to ever see Nitter as a peer. So while the pairing may not be perfect, and there will be days they annoy each other, in the end, having each other’s company is something they both find ideal.