Board Thread:Other TES Titles/@comment-67.171.74.199-20140717215229/@comment-67.171.74.199-20140930151816

Uhhh...that is an exceedingly weird quest.

That is the sort of thing you would find an awesome comic about on the internet...I kind of love it to pieces. It's amazing.

Sadly, I feel like Towers should be a little more serious than that.

What if the mudcrab merchant was cursed by Sheogorath to be in the form of a mudcrab? That would explain why he seems to be confused that he is a mudcrab in Morrowind. And now he has to spend eternity as a mudcrab, so he has to hire somebody else to go and take care of his customers' debts. He makes the best living he can, considering he's been transformed into a mudcrab.

A Cyrodiilic noble, a Nord phony hero, and an Argonian bandit as debtors...yes. This is good. However, I would like to posit that there could be two others - a Khajiit mage and a Dunmer ghost who resides in his ancestral tomb. Just to round it out a little. Furthermore, the Dragonborn-level bit, the swearing, and the silver/gold ebony armor should probably not be included.

So, if you find the mudcrab, you can buy from him, or you can ask how he came to be a talking mudcrab merchant. If you ask him, he'll ask you if you're sure you want to know; just a heads up to players who might not want to get involved in the quest. If you decide to listen to his story, he will tell you that he was once a rich merchant who had fallen on hard times, suffering from bad business and bankrupting himself further with gambling and drink. Desperate, he tried to summon the Daedric Prince Clavicus Vile on a depressing, stormy night. However, stormy nights belong to Sheogorath, so it was Sheogorath who answered the summons. He made a deal with Sheogorath for massive quantities of gold...but in exchange, he was surprised with the consequence of being a mudcrab, unable to defend himself or to drink his beloved liquor.

So he did his job as a mudcrab instead, hiding his wares well to avoid theft. But five individuals, realizing that he was a mudcrab and couldn't do anything about it, decided to not pay their debts to him. Hence he hires the first person to come along; you will still have to verify that you want the quest. I know a lot of people find it annoying that some quests in Skyrim were just thrust onto you with no prior warning, so I think I'll try to get some little warning signs and a few easy hoops to jump through before every quest. Just little things like the quest giver warning that it could be dangerous or might take some time, requiring you to first inquire about the quest and then to agree to it in order to actually get the quest, etc.

Instead of, say, Brynjolf accosting you in the street, he might make his comment about coin, and then you could choose to ask him what he meant by it, if you want. Or you could ask other NPCs about Brynjolf and/or rumors of the city, and learn thereby that Brynjolf is an agent of the Guild, and seek him out to gain the quest if you want to. Of course this is just an example, because by the time of Towers, Brynjolf would be long dead!

Back to the mudcrab. If you agree to the quest, you will have to hunt down the five debtors and get the money, either by stealing it, killing them and looting it, brawling them, persuading them, or intimidating them. Bribery would sort of defeat the point. (Speaking of dialogue persuasion options, I miss the old Oblivion reaction wheel. Perhaps there should be a dialogue option just called "converse", that would simulate the reaction wheel by opening up six dialogue options (specific to the type of character you've made by default, and also customizable in the settings menu) that you can use. Each NPC would be given reactions to each option. I say six because I believe there should be one for offering a gift, and one for flirting, because seriously, why not? And I also think there should be a separate scale for romantic interest, because while fetching a mammoth tusk for somebody might make them like you or be indebted to you, it would not make them romantically interested in you. I just believe that the Skyrim marriage system was super lazy. There should be options for flirtation and courtship. People do not suddenly become lady magnets by scouring a couple dungeons. In which case, you could probably also seduce the debtors into handing over the gold...just imagine, if a character has a high enough speechcraft skill it wouldn't even matter who they're flirting with!)

And then you bring it back to the mudcrab (or possibly have the option to abscond with the gold! Not everybody is a goody two-shoes! Presumably there'd be a time limit; "bring it back to me by next Fredas" or some such thing. If you exceed that time limit, you will fail the quest, and instead succeed a previously hidden quest called "Swindler". In fact, perhaps that's the name of every hidden quest you succeed by double-crossing a quest giver.), and Sheogorath shows up and says that it is terribly bad form for the mudcrab merchant to sneakily get around the honest consequences of the deal he made. Then the mudcrab and Sheogorath get into an argument, and you have to break it up.

You can either persuade Sheogorath to let the gold slide, persuade Sheogorath to turn the mudcrab merchant back into a man (since he surprised the merchant with the transformation and it was never agreed to as part of the deal), or persuade the mudcrab that Sheogorath is right. If you succeed at persuading Sheogorath to let it slide, the mudcrab remains a merchant; if you succeed at persuading Sheogorath to turn the mudcrab back into a person, the merchant becomes a follower, but does not get his gold back; if you fail at either, the mudcrab loses the gold and will cease to be a merchant, instead bemoaning his sorry fate and ceasing to be useful to the player. If you have already done Sheogorath's Daedric quest and/or have completed some tasks and quests to influence his disposition towards you, you will have a much better chance to persuade him to spare the mudcrab; if you do Sheogorath's quest after the mudcrab quest and choose to accept the offer of becoming Sheogorath's mortal Champion, then you can request that Sheogorath return the gold and/or return the merchant to his original shape, and he will agree.

If you succeed at persuading the mudcrab, he will lose the gold and become a sulky mudcrab follower, reasoning that you seem to be good at extorting money and that if he sticks with you he might get some more money. Yes, that's correct - he will become your follower while he is still a mudcrab. If you fail, however, you will have the opportunity to try to convince Sheogorath to let him have the gold or change him back, as before. If you don't take either of those options, the result will be the same is if you failed them.

How does that sound? Did I keep enough of the original madness?

- WorshipsMeridia