Silgrad Tower from the Ashes

Hello, this is my first post.
Firstly I'd like to start off with a little of what this is about and my situation.
I need a new computer, and when I have it I will purchase Oblivion for PC. I am a creative/designer type of person, and love to carve, draw, mod... basically most things that I can customize and change to my liking... I also love TES games and many others
I've modded RTS games like Starcraft, Warcraft3 and The Battle for MiddleEarth.... and was going to mod Halo2 and Rome Total War... but never got to it.... I began to fall in love with TES3 Morrowind... and I am anticipating TES4 Oblivion

(i do not yet have a mod website)
There are 3 major mods that I am planning:
Argonia (The Black Marsh)
- will have to do with Imperials, Argonians, Dunmer, and maybe Akaviri; Argonia is being invaded... kinda
Dreugh Civilization
- Dreugh race, dreugh stroyline, etc.
Morrowind Mainland
- post-Tribunal, Oblivion, Velothi Mts., expanded 6th house ruins and Dwemer ruins

that's where Silgrad Tower comes in... I am going to need to make the lower section of Morrowind, and also include certain parts outside of the main location.

conceptual mod map
here is the preliminary map. This is what I am using a a sort of guide of where my MW mod will be. As you can see, it is mostly the area south of the Thir River. so mostly lands controlled by Hlaalu and House Dres, with a little overlapping into Indoril.

These are the Minor regions:
Telvanni Islands (partial, w/ Port Telvannis)
Septim's Gate Pass region (w/ Verachen Hall, Omayni, Bodrum)
Shadowgate Pass region (w/ Kragenmoor)

These are the individual cities:
Silgrad Tower (Redoran)
Black Light (Redoran)
Old Ebonheart (Imperial)
Mournhold (Indoril)
Narsis (Hlaalu)
Necrom (Indoril)
Firewatch (Telvanni)
Tear (Dres)
Tel Fyr (Telvanni)

as you can see, this is quite an ambitious mod. The basic storyline is as follows:
1- post- Tribunal, the Great Houses aren't as united as they used to be by a common religion, a House War ensues, Hlaalu, now extremely powerful, allies with the Imperials... the Redoran, Indoril, and the Dres, now on the decline and also firmly anti-imperial ally to fight them... the Telvanni try to stay out of it.
2- A surprising number of Velothi-cities (some inhabited), Dwemer ruins, and House Dagoth refuges are found in the Velothi Mts. Along with Daedric Shrines. The Telvanni welcome the last of House Dagoth and they form an alliance, trying stay isolated from the war, but eventually being pulled in... anti-imperial... but also anti-indoril/dres/redoran
3- Nerevarine is busy fighting Daedra on the mainland, so you must save people from whatever is happening in the south. The houses must be united to fight back Oblivion... or they will be destroyed.
4- Relics of the Tribunal can be found.... Vivec is still alive, Almelexia had a war-mask and Hopesfire, and Sotha Sil had armor and mask... they can be used to help fight the Daedra.
5- a daedraric king/lord (powerful daedra) is the general of the Daedra in Morrowind, kill him and the Daedra mostly scatter in fear....

A new race will be added: Dwemer... you will have the choice of being a Dwemer... with an interesting side quest with Yagrum and Divayth Fyr... apparently Yagrum wasn't the only one who traveled to the outer realms for extended times...
All of Morrowind's armor and weapons will be back... and some new ones will be in.

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so seeing as how Silgrad Tower and Blacklight are part of my mod.... perhaps I could partially merge with you guys and when I have a team assembled OR if the Silgrad team wants to be part of my mod too... then we could all work on it.
I dunno, those are my thoughts... I come to these forums in search of guidance and help... I've never modded TES3 and of course not TES4 (I have goty on xbox, how could i mod).... but I have great ambitions... hopefully you will all see an eager and promising modder starting something new and attempting to create mods that everyone can appreciate.....

KuKulzA: Hello, and welcome to Silgrad Tower!


I had a reply drawn out in my mind, but the more I read of your post the more I came to realize it's most likely intended for Oblivion instead of Morrowind, especially as you mention you only have Morrowind on the Xbox. With that in mind I took the liberty of moving your thread to the "Organizing..." board. While it's not exactly for Silgrad Tower, it's the only Oblivion mod planning board we have.

My first impression of your idea is that it sounds more ambitious than you might have thought. One relatively easy interior - a common house, for example - easily takes an evening to mod. So assuming you do one house every evening you'll have your work cut out for you just doing that well after TES V is out. Even with a dedicated team, it'll still be very hard to pull off. The Tamriel Rebuilt project serves a case in point of a project who's ambition overtook them. As good and solid as their vision was, one can argue they underestimated the work involved in even recreating the Morrowind Province - something they are quite a way from accomplishing even now, a couple of months before Oblivion's launch.

I'm not saying it's wrong to have ambition, I'm trying to say that I personally feel it's a better approach to start out small while still retaining a grand goal on the horizon, than to start out with a gargantuan project with so much to do one never reaches Beta. The community has seen a lot of grand projects begin only to be abandoned at one point or another, so the greater the scope the greater the disbelief, at least on ESF's Morrowind Mod forum where I hang out a lot when I'm not here or in 3D Studio Max.

I rather like your storyline though, good thinking there
Still, in regards to it as well as the rest of your post I'd like to highlight the fact that Oblivion will have *nothing* from Morrowind out-of-the-box. There won't be Hlaalu / Redoran / Telvanni civilizations from which to assemble towns like for instance we did in our current mod. There won't be Chitin/Netch/Bonemold armor or Dunmer weaponry. None of the plants or rocks or animals from Morrowind will be available. With a few exceptions (daedra & undead, mostly), none of the creatures from Morrowind will return - most likely including Dreugh. There won't be anything regarding the Sixth House shipped with Oblivion either.

So you see, we in the Silgrad Tower team really have our work cut out for us just recreating our little sliver of the mainland, but we're getting there. If you're interested in working alongside us in that endeavor, either as a team member or just collaborating to help each other put together a set of Morrowind-related stuff, you're most welcome. If you do join our team you'd be helped along due to the fact that Silgrad Tower and Verarchen Hall are already being slated to return, and so will probably Blacklight and Cormaris View too, which means you could concentrate on your other cities and just "use" our cities as vehicles for your quests.

Do you happen to have any experience with 3D modelling, or if not is that something you'd be interested in learning more about? If so, I'd be happy to help, just send me a PM

well thanks... and yes there has been many RTS mods that have been too ambitious and never completed... so I fully know what you mean... infact... if you are interested in Lord of the Rings, you will know of The Silmarillion... I assembled a team and tried to mod the entire Silmarillion (entire 1st age of middle Earth) into a mod for The Battle for Middle Earth. It was such a big project... we never got done the beta for the 1st section of the 1st campaign... :lmao:


also, I know that in TES4 Oblivion, there will be no Morrowind in it... that makes me creating parts of the mainland... even harder... because all the model needs to be remade.... but I am not planning to give up... perhaps I will reduce the scope of the project... or the land mass... initially I triend to do so by only making a few larger land masses available.. the rest being cities. but apparently, even a city of any large size will take at least a month.

of course my mods are to be "shared", by that I mean they will overlap.... the Morrowind mod will have a lot of House Dres... which will be used in my Argonia mod... and the imperials of argonia will use their own equiptment from TES4, and also a lot of it is Akavir-influenced... so it might help me to fit in the Akavir (not revealing how they relate to the Argonia storyline). However, the Dreugh.... they are going to have to come by scratch... I have a lot of concept art... the storyline is based on Molag Bal... the dreugh civilization that once flourished... and stuff like that.....


well thank you for the information... it decreases my morale, but not my will to succeed... and yes, I am very interested in 3-d modelling... I have fooled around with g-max, but it is harder and more confusing to use than 3ds.... infact I haven't done so well and haven't gotten far at all in the field of 3d models... but I'd love to learn.... most of the tutorial I've found are for those who already know basically how to use the tools... hehe, well I don't ....
thanks for the offer... and I will pm you about 3d modelling...






(for those who know me on the official Elder Scrolls forums... you'll know that I've been making polls and asking about lore... obvious signs that I am seeing and deciding the storylines for my mods... :rofl: )



Edit 2005.09.08 05:11
HOW I CAN HELP WITH SILGRAD:

-concepts (I am the main conceptual artist in many of the mods I've been in)
-"terraining" (I've been predominantly a terrainer in RTS mods, dunno how I'll do in TES4)

I hope to learn to make:
3d models
skins



(I'm kinda bored... so I am posting this incase anyone wants to know... I'm not a jack of all trades, but if there is something I'd like to learn, then I'd liek to learn it... and hopefully become skillfull)

KuKulzA: Concept drawings are always welcome. Personally I'd love to see designs on new Redoran houses. I'm halfway-decent at modelling houses, but sometimes I lack imagination. New 3D models are the most important thing right now, though. There's no one doing Telvanni for example; admittedly we ourselves have very little need for Telvanni architecture but if you plan to create a Telvanni setting then your need would be much greater, and something we could also be helped by if you have a personal stake in making them. If you want to mod a part (or all) of the Telvanni region on the eastern mainland for example, we could have a ship that ferries the player from Blacklight to Firewatch and vice verca. That would of course require a decent number of Telvanni houses, but you can be inventive about things like that; find a mushroom model, blow it up to a huge size, slap a door and steps on it and you've got yourself a Telvanni home. I've attached a mushroom I found on the net some time ago that you might feel like experimenting with later on. It really helps that Telvanni homes are supposed to look weird and wild.

Apart from that you might have a great resource in your contacts with mod groups dedicated to other games, as those 3D models could be used to great effect in Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion mods. Stuff from modern or sci-fi games can often be reskinned to look Dwemer (that would probably be extras though, as I'm somewhat sure Dwemer stuff will be in Oblivion), and of course "Lord of the Rings" stuff can surely be used. Messing around with other people's meshes has also been a good way for me personally to learn more about modelling, checking out what solutions others have used and such. Still, I think you can't beat the satisfaction you get from modelling something from scratch.

Apart from the Telvanni mention above I see you're thinking of modding a part of the Velothi Mountains (Verarchen Hall, Omayni, Bodrum). Our esteemed team member Ben Vagara holds reign over that region in our community, so perhaps you two would be able to work together on that region? I'll leave the decisions and details to you two to decide

So, from the perspective of our mod I'd say the Velothi Mountains and Telvanni regions are the two in your concept that are closest to us. I'm unsure if we'd plan to build Kragenmoor from the start... that'd probably be further in the future as we'll have our hands full for some time modding our traditional region, and of course I don't think anyone here has any plans to mod anything Telvanni so that'd be totally up to you.

I hope we can work something out that'll benefit both parties, as I can tell your enthusiasm is high and optimistic people are highly needed to keep the energy flowing :bananarock:

yeah, definitely, I know what you mean... with low morale, even a dedicated mod team isn't going to get very far.... I'll see what I can do.... but I had already started making concept art for my Morrowind-Oblivion mod... so maybe sometime I can post a sample image... I've got Hlaalu, Redoran.. Dres, Indoril... lots of stuff....
mostly Indoril, Redoran, and Dres.... seeing as how they are the least explored... I have some interesting ideas for Dres... though a bit exotic... but Dunmer are known for making their buildings out of the materials at hand....
Indoril... I have some ideas... based on Mournhold and the cities Vivec, Molag Mar, and also the underground ruins of Old Mournhold....
Redoran.... I have some creative ideas for them.... I dunno if they will be well recieved... but I'd say that one of the styles I had come up with was a very naturally fortified look... I thought that since the Redoran are situated near Nords... and Nords were once great enemies of the Dunmer... perhaps the Redoran, a pious preserver of the old martial ways, might still be defensive... and trying to hold the mt. passes leading to Skyrim..... I dunno that was my thought....

KuKulzA: Good ideas The Vivec style doesn't have anything to do with House Indoril though, if anything that style is closer to Velothi. It's definetely possible there would be Indoril towns built in the Old Mournhold style though, and certainly in "New" Mournhold style.

It's true that the Nords and the Dunmer are old enemies, but I think there's been peace between them for centuries, at least since the Empire conquered Tamriel. So I don't know how much fighting would be going on. Then again, with the breakdown of the empire, who's to say skirmishes won't start again... maybe dusting off "The Ancient Gate" The Ancient Gate is an abandoned defense installation in our mod, on the border between Morrowind and Skyrim.

sounds good.. infact a screenshot of the 'ancient gate' is on my desktop

anyhows, I think its pretty good... and vivec, molag mar, ghostgate are all more velothi... but that'll do welll with my mod with the velothi mts. as the chimer settled that area 1st before moving onto the fertile river valley... and then Vvardenfell...



Edit 2005.09.12 00:26
I will post concept art here from now on... if Razorwing doesn't want it here.... then I'll move it.... but it'll go here until furthur notice....