Blackrose is a city some distance inland from the southern mangrove coasts of Black Marsh, right on the fringes of Murkwood. Little is known about it from lore, but what we know for certain is that it's home to the largest and nastiest prison in the whole Empire, the Rose. This is the kind of place that people would actually prefer the death penalty to being imprisoned in, where the very worst criminals in Tamriel are sent to rot.
Blackrose was originally a Lilmothlit town, and the ruins of their buildings are still in evidence, though the Lilmothlit are themselves extinct. It is mentioned as still being in ruins when the Rose Prison was first built, which suggests that the rest of the city grew up around the prison, most likely due to the protection offered by the garrison to travelers through the region. Consequently, I suspect that Blackrose should be a relatively small and seedy city, tainted by its proximity to the infamous prison and with few permanent residents.
Architecturally, I suggest that since the city was founded in the 2nd era by the Imperials, and hence is of a contemporary age to the ruined forts in Cyrodiil, we could use the extra fort building meshes which are not used in the vanilla game to construct most of the city, with the remainder being supplied by pieces of Bravil's architecture.
This thread is for the submission of plans and concepts for the city. I now leave the floor open to you all...
I'm not entirely sure about the use of the fort architecture. I'd like to have some relatively unique look to the Lilmothlit ruins especially....although it may be little more than strewn bricks.
I do, however, have distinct interests in the prison itself. Personally, I'm quite keen on using oubliettes - holes in the ground that you drop people into. The actual name comes from the French verb oublier (to forget), so it's where you put someone to forget about them.
We could make use of the slavery anims that KP suggested to me a while back for the prison itself. There are also various rather unpleasant torture device mods if they should be required.
If I remember rightly, The Grey Wizard originally envisioned Blackrose as being quite tall and very, very dark like a black monolith. I quite like that idea...
That could work. The idea was that the outer city would use the fort models, whereas the Lilmothlit ruins would be based on the ancient building designs from Elseweyr, as the Lilmothlit are supposedly related to the Khajiit.
And yes, the monolith idea is one I like too, but the model that GreyWizard already made is extremely low-poly and would probably need remaking...
Is this where you plan to use my Lunar Temple set? If you haven't looked in a while there are some peripheral buildings in preparation. The desert version screenies are in my
Lunar Temples thread. There's also the desert retex of the basic stonewalls set. You'll have to imagine all of them in the jungle colour scheme, but that's the plan. I also intend to make ruined versions of the outbuildings. The intact buildings could have been re-used for the later residents.
Might be a little while 'til I get back to them, though, as I'm curently stuck on the wrong side of the Atlantic....
That all sounds excellent, and is exactly what I had in mind for the central area of Blackrose.
We will still need to find ourselves a suitable model for the Rose Tower, however...
OK - that's cool. Let me know if you have any specific requirements for the Lilmothlet stuff soonish before I get stuck into finalising the models.
I like the idea of the Rose Tower being tall and dark, although it shouldn't differ too much from Imperial architecture in general. What about something reminiscent of the Bastille?
The Bastille sounds like a good plan to me. I like the Lunar Temples too. If you could achieve a halfway version between the Lunar Temples and the Bastille then I think we'd be on to a winner. I see how your 'pyramid' is formed out of two separate chunks. I guess if you made the prison tower similar but with slightly less sloping walls and with three or four chunks then that could work quite well. Failing that, to achieve the monolith effect then maybe something without the sub-sections but which rises very high and, unlike pyramids, doesn't meet at the top to form a point but instead leaves you with a top rather like Saruman's tower from LOTR and the OB wizard's tower.
Don't worry about how long it takes. We're talking about after the beta version here. This will only make an appearance after that. Deeza is just looking ahead....
Need to clarify how the Rose Tower came to exist. From Deeza's desciption it sounds like the Lilmothlet town preceded the Imperial colonisation by a significant period and was probably 1st era - which tallies with the Elsweyr buildings' vintage. I don't know why the Rose Tower would then have followed the Lilmothlet architectural style: opressors don't generally "go native" until the power of the central authority starts to decay.
I think there should be two visibly distinct styles: a Lilmothlet old town, interspersed with and overlaid by an uncompomisingly Imperial new one. We could perhaps re-use my forest wall textures to blend the new and old architectures tonally, but keep the shapes distinctive. Arguably there might be a third phase derivative architecture for subsequent urban sprawl.
The ideal of a repressive Imperial presence could be emphasised by building the Rose Tower on top of a partially demolished Lunar Temple-style complex: kind of growing out of it.
The Bastille consisted of 8 actual towers joined by curtain walls with two central courtyards. Do we want the Rose Tower actually to be a single tower, or more like the "Tower" of London: a bunch of towers and buildings joined into a single structure?
If we do use several towers then there's obviously scope to make both the interior and exterior modular, which would help in making the structure seem really big and brooding. And we can scatter your oubliettes around liberally, Ibsen!
Well, 8 towers is a bit much. I don't like creating vast amounts of interiors work. However, if done fluently enough so that it's not a mishmash (as can happen with modding) then this would be good. Personally, I'm probably still leaning more towards the single monolithic tower idea but I'd like to hear what Deeza thinks too. Deeza is far better at offering opinions on lore than myself.
I do like the idea of it growing out of the ruins anyway...
morcroft's idea was kind of what I had in mind. My idea was for there to be just one lunar temple in the centre of the city, with the top demolished and the Rose Prison (actually a cluster of towers with one central one) stuck rather crudely on top. The central part of town around that would be Lilmothlit buildings, but some of these would be totally ruined and overgrown. Around that would be several arcs of newer buildings that make up the "petals" of the rose, with Imperial Fort ruin towers forming the outermost layer.