Board Thread:Other TES Titles/@comment-67.171.74.199-20140717215229/@comment-67.171.74.199-20140722180115

Okay, I think I need to post some kind of icebreaker.

Luckily enough, I've been planning a few ideas for rather a while now.

One of them is an Easter Egg of sorts - rather a nod to a particular book series which probably nobody here has read. In this small quest, a father in a small village in Skyrim asks you to follow his daughter to a place where she has been sneaking off for several weeks, because he thinks she's going to meet a boyfriend outside the village, and he worries that the dragon who roosts nearby might get her. (He also might note in passing that he doesn't think much of a man who makes a girl walk through a dangerous area at night to meet him.)

Well, if you take the quest and follow the girl, you see that it's not what the father thought it was at all. The girl is leaving every night to talk to the dragon. What started as a brave but foolish offering of a cow that had died of old age in order to coax the dragon into not attacking the village turned into...well, the closest a dragon and a human can get to a friendship.

The father, understandably, flips out if you tell him this (although I presume there would also be an option to lie to him and tell him that she is meeting a man; you could even supply a name and watch the father loudly confront your poor victim in the middle of town. I know some Daedric Princes of discord who would be pleased with this one). More in panic than in outrage. You can agree with him, which will cause him to get angry, or you can try to pacify him with the good ol' Persuade, Bribe, Intimidate options.

Furthermore, when you go back to the girl, she'll say that she longs to explore beyond the area around her village, and most of all to fly, although she was afraid to when she met the dragon because she worried the guards nearby might shoot at them. You can either help her sneak away, convince her father to let her go, or get her father to force her to stay.

She will go adventuring if you secure her departure, and you can find her in random encounters. She will be a potential follower if you can run into her for long enough, as well as (this is the Easter Egg part) a clothing merchant. You see, I based this character off the main character of a book series I like, who is a seamstress and who befriends and rides a dragon. Perhaps eventually she will tire of adventuring and have the dragon take her to the capital, like the character in the book. In fact, there's already a famous tailor's in Solitude for her to settle into - perhaps if the store is still going (which makes sense, because it's already a family store and it belongs to elves) there could also be a quest around her doings there. (In the books, the character works for a while at the most famous tailor's in the city and then is betrayed by a coworker and leaves; flash forward through a mad battle and she is granted her own shop by the king.)

Okay, completely pointless Easter Egg: done. Now for the mage guilds.

So, I don't know why, but lately I have been fleshing out the Synod something fierce. I see them mainly as scholars - rather dusty ones. Hence you get classes for apprentices and all that jazz. Perfect excuse to slip in some thoroughly plausible new lore about how, exactly, magic works. Alchemy, for instance. I'd like to think that all matter filters magicka from Aetherius differently, and what you get from that is alchemical-magical effects.

I also imagined that there would be a sort of...hall of discoveries in the main Synod academic complex. There would be little tributes - shrinelike things - to people who made discoveries in the field of magic or simply important mages. Among those who get major flowers and stuff on their monuments would be the really famous ones like Arch-Mage Shalidor and Vanus Galerion.

You'd also find tributes to such people as Sinderion for his research into Nirnroot (nobody cares about that one except for this one alchemist student), Neloth (the students think this one is bad luck because Neloth was so weird and freaky), and even the Dragonborn, for showing off the validity of dragon magic and the Thu'um like nobody ever before. This last one will be important later.

At any rate, there will of course be the lazy arrogant student who plays with his quill in class and doesn't see the point. You'll have a bunch of students who study hard, the one who started late, one or two who always mess things up, a few who are really serious about studying the arcane arts but who primarily use them for pranks and parties, and then the little parcel of weird students who specialize in stuff that usually nobody cares about.

You'll have the daughter of a more senior member, who is also one of the instructors; bonus points if she's a far more interesting character than the usual Teacher's Pet. (Perhaps her instructing parent is her mother - you almost never see that. Perhaps the instructing parent is harder, not easier, on her because xe holds her to exacting standards. THERE IS A WHOLE WIDE WORLD OF RELATIONSHIPS TO PICK FROM HERE. :D)

The quest idea I had centers around one of the weird specialist students - specifically one who specializes in dragons and Shouts. You see, the Dragonborn's tribute monument is new - and the higher-ups are considering getting rid of it, because the Dragonborn is more of a hero-destiny role than anything specifically magical.

Well, this student is really interested in dragons and the Dragonborn and Shouts. She's a Nord from Cyrodiil, and she wants to check out the heritage of her forefathers and foremothers and yatta-yatta. But she doesn't want to abandon her assigned studies to do it. So you can get a quest from her to talk an instructor - any of them, although of course you'll get different reactions from each of them - into letting her go on a study trip to Skyrim.

And then you have to go with her to help her study old ruins - specifically ones that have Word Walls in them. It will be assumed that the Dragonborn gathered just about every Shout there is to get in Skyrim, and therefore the ruins that have Word Walls in them will have depleted numbers of Draugr. Not no Draugr, as that would be too easy; but remember how there are always a few sleeping Draugr, in the catacombs, that never move? Those ones wake up for the BoJ and their new mage friend.

So then the student studies the Word Walls, and then you have to go talk to the Greybeards to see about learning something of the Voice, and the Greybeards hem and haw, and eventually they agree to demonstrate one Shout and one Word transfer a la the time the previous Greybeards taught the Dragonborn "Wuld".

The student will make a comment about feeling the push of magicka as the Greybeard doing the demonstration exerts his will on the world or something. She will also make a comment about how the dragon language appears to be a primal force that you can just focus really hard on and either speak or transfer. Finally, the Greybeards suggest seeking a dragon - but only if the two students are absolutely resolved and only if they are careful. (At this point, you can also initiate the quest that allows you to study with/join the Greybeards.)

You then head out asking around in villages about where to find dragons. (NPCs will have discussions about you with each other, wondering if you're crazy.) Eventually once you get directions to a dragon, it will attack you and you will either have to fight it until you subdue it, at which point it will respect you for your prowess and talk, or yield to it to begin dialogue and convince it to stop.

Either way, it will direct you to Odahviing, who has become the new ruler of the dragons. You will have to seek him out at some specific ridge or peak or gorge or whatever. Well, when he shows up, he will give a lecture on the Voice as he sees it - lots of emphasis on will and power and whatnot, since that is how dragons do. If you've done the Paarthurnax quest, you can ask him, and he will give another lecture; if not, you can do the Greybeard questline to the Paarthurnax quest and then ask him.

Whether you get Paarthurnax to help you or not, the student will have gathered enough notes to give a presentation on how the Thu'um comes from the dragon language, which comes from the Divines and is knit into the fabric of the universe or something. Something really profound and probably mindscrewy. Anyways, the higher-ups will congratulate her, keep the Dragonborn monument, and promote the both of you for excellent scholarly work. (The main Synod questline will probably have to do with rooting out corrupt leaders or something. It seems a very power-hungry group, besides its obvious academic roots.)

Also, just an idea I had today while doing research - the Shehai Shen She Ru. Awesome, or awesome? I think this unique variety of magic needs a quest dedicated to it - perhaps in the College of Whispers questline, as they seem very fond of the magic stuff that nobody else seems to like.

(Apologies for the weird link; I'm having to write in source code due to some sort of problem with the message box.)

I am going to add in some new stuff here and decide that the Synod sends students out on study trips when they are ready to progress to a new rank - or when the student requests one for research purposes. They are then expected to return with enough notes to write a thesis paper. Because yes, I am absolutely adding the idea of a thesis paper in here. I love academia, have I mentioned that?

It would be a little like the final choice dialogue in the Tending the Flames quest, only more complex. And you get to choose the topic. Apprentice thesis paper on the Hist, anyone? On the Dwemer? The Falmer? The dragons? Akavir? The Sload? The mating habits of scamps? -trollface-

The College of Whispers, on the other hand, would probably have some sort of odiously dangerous magical trial of some sort. Battling some kind of summoned Daedric thing - presumably leveled to the player - with intentionally lowered magicka, as a test. If you pass, it demonstrates that you are familiar enough with magic to use it flexibly. Perhaps something like holding a Levitate, Ward, or Waterbreathing spell for a long time, to test your fortitude and will. And finally some kind of target practice with moving targets, to test your precision and finesse. I like these trials, actually. I like them a lot.

Okay, well, that's long.

First spearpost of the new thread! Hooray!

- WorshipsMeridia