11-19-2008, 09:44 AM
Just a quick overview (detailed plans will follow):
The Halls will be built on three epic levels, constructed from a mixture of Imperial Fort ruin meshes (appropriately retextured if possible), and the wonderful Dwarven City tileset made by Mr Siika.
http://www.oblivionsrealestate.com/Modde...geons.html
The first level will be on the surface, which will look like, well... a nuclear testing site, I suppose. A huge complex of abandoned buildings, most of which are just traces in the ground or buried by the sands but a few of which are still accessible, and contain dessicated old crates, barrels etc. The complex is surrounded by the stubs of ruined walls. At the centre of it all is the Hall itself - all that is left now are row upon row of arches stacked on top of one another, much like the walls of the Colosseum in Rome. In what was once the centre, there can be found a huge metal seal covering a massive pit, on top of which somebody, in the past, has made a huge pile of rocks, apparently to keep it shut or seal something in. The lower Halls can only be accessed by a series of service tunnels that lead underneath the main structure.
The second level is underground. Initially player enters through one of the service tunnels, into the living quarters of those who worked in the facility. Kitchens, lounges and sleeping chambers are all eerily abandoned, with a strange, faint, always-present glow emitting from the walls. Moving through these areas will lead the player to massive halls filled with amassed Dwemer junk, collected by the Empire after the conquest of Morrowind. Then they come under attack, from the glowing "tainted skeletons" mentioned in a previous thread - all that's left of the Blades who worked on the project long ago. The player fights their way through abandoned forges, and finally into the laboratories where they were working on assembling working Animunculi as proof of principle.
The products of their experiments attack the player (sphere centurions and other variants are in progress, also by Mr Siika), and the player eventually gets hold of the key to access the lowest level through one of the other service tunnels....
The final level of the dungeon takes the player through a Proving Grounds, where the Blades were exploring the possibility of using Animunculi as a substitute army. Now things start to get creepy. The player enters the rooms where the parts of Numidium were kept, the glow becoming brighter and brighter as they head further in. Glowing skeletons and centurions attack left, right and centre, and other weird sound effects and spectral images start to appear. The end of the storage halls is ominously blocked by a huge sealed door.
The player exits the chambers into a room filled with plans and schematics, after which can be found the laboratories where they were working on the Mantella. There will be several of Zurin Arctus' notebooks in the rooms, which will be interesting from a lore point of view, as well as a deathbed confession of an alchemist which suggests that the Underking may be responsible for the walking skeletons.... The player also gets the option of going into Zurin Arctus' private quarters, and reading his journal which sheds some light on his demise.
Finally the player takes a side passage into the massive chamber where Numidium was assembled and activated... and I don't know what to put there. We should definitely have a huge empty scaffold where it was built, but aside from that, a dungeon this big needs something quite epic at the end...
Thoughts?
The Halls will be built on three epic levels, constructed from a mixture of Imperial Fort ruin meshes (appropriately retextured if possible), and the wonderful Dwarven City tileset made by Mr Siika.
http://www.oblivionsrealestate.com/Modde...geons.html
The first level will be on the surface, which will look like, well... a nuclear testing site, I suppose. A huge complex of abandoned buildings, most of which are just traces in the ground or buried by the sands but a few of which are still accessible, and contain dessicated old crates, barrels etc. The complex is surrounded by the stubs of ruined walls. At the centre of it all is the Hall itself - all that is left now are row upon row of arches stacked on top of one another, much like the walls of the Colosseum in Rome. In what was once the centre, there can be found a huge metal seal covering a massive pit, on top of which somebody, in the past, has made a huge pile of rocks, apparently to keep it shut or seal something in. The lower Halls can only be accessed by a series of service tunnels that lead underneath the main structure.
The second level is underground. Initially player enters through one of the service tunnels, into the living quarters of those who worked in the facility. Kitchens, lounges and sleeping chambers are all eerily abandoned, with a strange, faint, always-present glow emitting from the walls. Moving through these areas will lead the player to massive halls filled with amassed Dwemer junk, collected by the Empire after the conquest of Morrowind. Then they come under attack, from the glowing "tainted skeletons" mentioned in a previous thread - all that's left of the Blades who worked on the project long ago. The player fights their way through abandoned forges, and finally into the laboratories where they were working on assembling working Animunculi as proof of principle.
The products of their experiments attack the player (sphere centurions and other variants are in progress, also by Mr Siika), and the player eventually gets hold of the key to access the lowest level through one of the other service tunnels....
The final level of the dungeon takes the player through a Proving Grounds, where the Blades were exploring the possibility of using Animunculi as a substitute army. Now things start to get creepy. The player enters the rooms where the parts of Numidium were kept, the glow becoming brighter and brighter as they head further in. Glowing skeletons and centurions attack left, right and centre, and other weird sound effects and spectral images start to appear. The end of the storage halls is ominously blocked by a huge sealed door.
The player exits the chambers into a room filled with plans and schematics, after which can be found the laboratories where they were working on the Mantella. There will be several of Zurin Arctus' notebooks in the rooms, which will be interesting from a lore point of view, as well as a deathbed confession of an alchemist which suggests that the Underking may be responsible for the walking skeletons.... The player also gets the option of going into Zurin Arctus' private quarters, and reading his journal which sheds some light on his demise.
Finally the player takes a side passage into the massive chamber where Numidium was assembled and activated... and I don't know what to put there. We should definitely have a huge empty scaffold where it was built, but aside from that, a dungeon this big needs something quite epic at the end...
Thoughts?
