Redoran: Nord Iron Mine

[Razorwing]

<p><img src="../../oblivion/images/bk_whos_who/archmaster_varkan_areya.jpg" alt="Areya as in Silgrad Tower: Morrowind" width="61" height="195" hspace="15" vspace="0" align="right">
[1st]A[/1st]rchmaster Areya explains that House Redoran is in need of an iron source. He and the council are in negotiations with an envoy from Skyrim <font color="#666666">[the player might have noticed the two Nords sitting by the fire as he walked into Areya's Manor]</font>, but if the player were to arrange access to a source of iron which didn't involve House Redoran losing money, his work would be much appreciated. Archmaster Areya won't go into detail as to why they have a need for the ore, and he's hazy on giving clues to the player where to start. He casually suggests the player trek the countryside and see if he discovers any iron deposits.

<p><strong>1a.</strong> A rich player can opt to pay the Nord envoys out of his own pocket, which will cost him 200,000 gold (using Morrowind's scale). It's costly enough to hopefully persuade the player not to take the easy road. As it is logical to pursue this solution, it will be featured as an alternate way of solving the quest.

<p><strong>1b.</strong> If the player is industrious enough to trek to Silgrad Tower and meet with the Guild of Traders, he can broker a deal with them which is more or less favourable than the Nord envoy's offer depending on his Speechcraft skill. An expert speechcrafter can get it as low as 125,000 while a novice would have to come up with 250,000 (the Hlaalu are greedy!). This ending is handled purely through dialogue.

<p><strong>1c.</strong> The main path in solving the quest involves the player raiding an iron mine far west of Reich Parkeep, at the base of Jarnhald Mountains. A decent speechcrafter can gather information from certain individuals in Reich Parkeep - small clues which adds up to the player getting rought directions to the mine. BUT who are Reich Parkeep's experts when it comes to ore? The smiths! If the player is clever enough to talk to them, they'll be quick to spill the information on exactly where they get their iron ore, and the blimp-on-the-radar becomes activated to guide the player to the location of the mine. That's to simulate the smiths giving long, windy directions to it.

<p>The Nords who operate the mine, which is in the middle of nowhere, aren't very happy that the player is interested in their mine. They feel they have a good setup with their kin over the border in Skyrim, trading the small quantities of ore they mine for food and supplies. As the Dunmer have no interest in Jarnhald, they've let the Nords keep to themselves there, while technically they are invading and exploiting Dunmer soil. The stubborn Nords have little respect for House Redoran's needs, and tells the player in no polite manner to get the hell out of their mine. The player will need to slay every last Nord in the whole mine for the quest to succeed. By doing that he becomes the sworn enemy of the Jarnhald tribe, who will attack him on sight if he visits them.

<blockquote><p><em><font color="#666666">If the player leaves one or more survivors in the mine, he will think that the quest has succeeded, but instead of getting the all-clear from Areya he is instructed to let a Redoran NPC accompany him to the mine to inspect it for ore as well as making sure it's safe. The surviving Nord miners will have brought everyone from the Jarnhald tribe down to the mine to ambush the ones responsible for the attack, and they all attack the player and companion together. It will probably lead to any player's death. If the player prevails, the quest is solved as normal, but he won't get rewarded from House Redoran, he'll just proceed to the next quest. This side-note may be overly complex, and is optional to implement.</font></em></blockquote>

<p>A player that:
<br>- is pursuing other paths in the main story (or have completed it in another path),
<br>- isn't pursuing any path at the moment,
<br>- has solved the quest in an alternative way,
<br>will find a rugged but cautiously friendly Nord iron mine, and have some interesting talks with them, and that's the end of it. The player can entertain himself by trying to steal ore from them. A rod of iron ore isn't very valuable, so it doesn't much matter if they're guarded or not, although the Nords would patrol around. The Nords can even be used for other main story paths, since only one path can ever be active in any one game. If the player has already slain the Nords prior to this quest, he'll get a new reply option to Archmaster Areya at the beginning of the quest, where he can inform Areya that he knows of a now-abandoned iron mine. The quest will then be solved.

<p>Archmaster Areya is equally pleased either way the player solves the quest, and takes no enjoyment in the possible death of the Nords. He feels it's something that had to be done.

<p><strong>REWARD:</strong> The player is told to see a Redoran blacksmith in town in a week or so, and pick up a free full suit of iron armor, which are the fruit of his good work. <font color="#666666">(This is not the same iron armor that comes with Oblivion; it will need to have a much lesser polygon count than that. The low poly count will enable a future mass battle between the Houses, which is the intended climactic end of this quest path.)</font>

<p><strong>WORLD CHANGES:</strong> If the quest is solved by killing the Nords, tents will spring up a few days later outside the mine, along with Redoran miners.

<p>This quest was written by Razorwing directly to the website on May 24th, 2005.

[bob196045]

Howdy


I like these Ideas have they been implimented or is this still open ?


Bob

[Razorwing]

It's still open I'm afraid. The whole questline hinges on the location where Areya lives, and the interior for it doesn't exist yet (whether modded or modelled). I hope to be able to fix it during April.

[Seniosh]

Hey, as long as you have an NPC giving out mining quests (at least you plan to) could he also prehaps give out the Glassmines quest? I do not think we currently have an NPC to give out my quest.

Prehaps i'll take this also... Glassmine's almost done, just some tweaking to do really (plus it's not linked to exterior)

Yeah, i'll do this too. And Areya can give out Glassmines while he's at it. Of course it sounds quite a bit like he's not currently in existance, but i assume someone'll do that, and i'll just do the rest, make the mine, ect.

Also, morrowind currency deals with much larger numbers than oblivion, but is the currency going to actually scale? Do you warp to ST and bam! you have 10x more money than before? Cause if you say 200,000 gold (morrowind) how much does that translate to in oblivion??

And is the reward really going to be low-poly iron armor? Cause it seems like you have ideas to use it for another quest, but it doesn't look like the other quest is formulated yet...

In short, I Hereby Claim this Nordic Iron Mine in the name of Silgrad Tower! I await additional instruction on the points listed above.

[Razorwing]

Well, I've planned to have that NPC for almost a year now and I don't know when he'll be accessible in the mod, so you might want to choose a different one. =) Before he can exist I need to create an interior for his mansion, which I'm currently leaning towards doing by modifying an old Redoran tileset someone made for us but which didn't fit with the snap-to-grid system. Plus my NPC is in Soluthis while your glassmine is closer to where the city Silgrad Tower will eventually be. Not that that would be a technical obstacle but the player would have to travel a helluva long way to get there (farther distance by comparison than the whole Cyrodiil landmass actually).

[Seniosh]

Ahh yes, i still haven't quite got the map memorized, partly cause all the cities aren't built. Yeah, looking back at the glassmine, i'm waiting on the creation of another NPC in Silgrad. Just wondering any estimates on how long it'll take for NPC creation in Silgrad to start (if it hasn't already, it seems like Reich Parkeep is the much more complete city at this point)

So then 2 different NPCs.

Can you suggest a different NPC who would be appropriate to give the Iron mine quest? I don't mind waiting for your NPC to come into being, seeing as i really REALLY want to figure out how to make those NPCs mine.

Another note, there are no iron rocks, but unlike glass, i think a simple retexture of the silver rocks would suffice.

[bob196045]

I'll have a look back at the MW version and see if theirs any interesting sorts that may have had an interest in the mine

And/or

We can write a background story for one of them and put that interest in mining into the dialogue

Also

If you want to start this quest process for the glassmine take some of those ideas (and any others you might be thinking of) we discussed in the Claim post and write them into the Quest Submissions



Enjoy
Bob

[Seniosh]

Well the Glassmine is near complete. Questwise it's done already, and the entire thing works. The only thing left i have to do is prehaps clutter the mines and tomb better, as well as make the dialogue better.

The Nord Mine looks like it is a smaller quest than the glassmines, but it would be nice to have some interesting dialogue - it's the tradeoff of killing them.

[bob196045]

:goodjob:


Thats excellent news I had just put your orignal glass mine quest concept in the Submissions so that we could go through it, but I suppose thats a bit late, is your original concept idea what you went with or was it changed?


Unless you have another idea for the mine we can add it in as well



Enjoy
BOb

[Seniosh]

I did chop down the original concept a bit, having the entire quest take place within the mines (setting up things on the outside landscape would have gotten complicated, as i belive sandor is in charge of the landscape, and the glassmine is not placed yet)

The only real thing i changed was that a miner is now the one who steals the artifacts, and he is the one found dead. And the artifacts are now in the caverns.

All in all, it isn't a very large quest, and it's certainly not the most original idea of the century, so i'm counting on the glass rocks and mining.

If you want though, this quest [nordic mine] could possibly be expanded, as I haven't gotten near setting up the quest.

A small sidenote, how exactly does one claim a quest (if at all) I can see the submissions board, and that certainly is a good idea, but then what happens from there?