 Concept Art - Adamantine Tower |
Deeza
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Registration Date: 2008.06.03
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 Concept Art - Adamantine Tower |
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Hi everyone.
Here is my concept for Ur-Adamantia, the silver tower on Balfiera
Island that was built by the gods and has been used as a home and
fortress by different mortals ever since. This was derived from the
description given in PGE1, as well as a few details from the depiction
in Daggerfall (a central tower with the summit missing, surrounded by
lower buildings).
My concept was partially based on this picture:
Click Here
"The Construction of the Tower of Babel", by Breugel the Elder, one of
my favourite artists. I thought it appropriate, given the mystical
connotations of the tower and the dramatic visual impact of the
multi-layered construction. I have tried to get across the feeling that
the tower has been built up around many times over the aeons of its
existence (it was built not long after the world was formed), to the
extent of now being surrounded by the ruins of thousands of years of
habitation, of which only a small part is now inhabited by the modern
descendents of the Direnni family who used it as a fortress. As mortal
extensions crumble, the metal cylinder core made by Akatosh which gave
the tower its name (the uppermost, narrowest section of the tower) is
the only part which remains unaffected by time.
The most important feature of the design is that it can be built
entirely using appropriately retextured Vanilla assets. The jumble of
decrepit buildings can be made wholly from Ayleid ruin arches, Imperial
buttresses and Imperial City sewer ruins, with the remainder made from
Fort ruins. The metal cylinder could simply be a geometrically perfect
cylinder made in blender (which would produce quite a creepy, unnerving
visual effect, surrounded by rougher surfaces and textures), given a
nice shiny metallic texture.
What do you think?
This post has been edited 1 time(s), it was last edited by Braggi: 2008.09.28 21:37.
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2008.09.09 19:04 |
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Lady Nerevar
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Registration Date: 2006.01.04
Posts: 1,362
Location: Not in hiding anymore
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I like it, but I think the upper part needs more details of some sort.
maybe that can be done through textures, but it looks rather plain on
the concept.
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2008.09.09 20:50 |
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Deeza
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Registration Date: 2008.06.03
Posts: 1,066
Location: Procrastination
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Good point. Perhaps some more cracks in the stonework, or a brickwork
pattern like the ones used in the ruined fort walls? |
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2008.09.09 20:58 |
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blackbird
Inactive ST modder
Registration Date: 2007.03.27
Posts: 728
Location: Brugge (Flanders, Belgium)
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Off topic: They call Breugel the elder also Pieter Breugel.
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2008.09.09 22:56 |
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Deeza
Editor
Registration Date: 2008.06.03
Posts: 1,066
Location: Procrastination
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About the imitation of Adamantine Tower: (I know this is a little
long-winded but it's very important lore for the Tower itself and is
very relevant to the High Rock mod):
From what I know of the lore behind this, as I understand it White-Gold Tower was actually built in imitation of Adamantine's function,
not its structure. Adamantine tower was created when Akatosh finally
figured out what was really going on during the creation of the world,
and built it as a sort of bizarre spaceship to fly down from Aetherius
to Tamriel (ripping some of the holes in Oblivion known today as
stars). He crashed it into Tamriel (which was then a shapeless blob),
providing it with a fixed reference point (a bit like the Greenwich
Meridian I suppose), creating north, south, east, west, gravity, etc.
and all the other natural laws which allowed life to develop. He then
held a council of all the spirits left alive, which decided to rip out
Lorkhan's heart as a punishment for creating the world and killing most
of them, and buried his heart under Red Mountain (the First Tower),
which stabilised Tamriel enough to let it survive without the presence
of the gods. Then they went back up to Aetherius to party, presumably.
When the Elves later found the tower (possibly millions of years later,
there were no dates until the First Era), they figured out how to
reverse-engineer its magical powers to stabilise the world. They wanted
to escape from the world they believed trapped their souls (a bit like
some sects of buddhism or gnostism in the real world), and tried to
build their own towers to either further stabilise (in the case of the
Altmer and Crystal-Like-Law, hoping it would make their society perfect
and undying) or even DE-stabilise the world (in the case of the Dwemer
and Numidium), allowing them to turn back into immortal spirits. None
of their attempts really worked very well, and arguments over the
engineering problems, or even if it was a good idea at all, split the
Aldmer into all the different kinds of elves of today.
White-Gold Tower came the closest to working - it would probably have
succeeded if the Empress Alessia hadn't wiped out the Ayleids. The
thing is basically a metaphysical gun designed to blow up the world and
release the Ayleids into the state of the "Mythic Dawn" (an idea which
inspired the cult who are the main bad guys in the game).
This stuff can be pieced together from the "Nu-Mantia Intercept", which
can be found at the Imperial Library under "Obscure Texts".
So to answer your question, there are two essential architectural parallels which we need to include as a minimum:
1. There is an extremely tall central tower - White-Gold's smaller
towers in wheel pattern around it are their own invention and different
to all the other Elven Towers.
2. The Tower has a magical Stone to power it. Fortunately this has
already been done for us - Adamantine's Stone is the Heart of Lorkhan
from the endgame of Morrowind. White-Gold's Stone is the Amulet of
Kings.
Beyond that though, I think its up to our imagination how similar we want them to be.
This post has been edited 1 time(s), it was last edited by Deeza: 2008.09.10 20:02.
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2008.09.10 20:01 |
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Gyssar
First Knight
Registration Date: 2006.09.07
Posts: 107
Location: Moscow, Russia
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| quote: |
Originally posted by Deeza
2. The Tower has a magical Stone to power it. Fortunately this has
already been done for us - Adamantine's Stone is the Heart of Lorkhan
from the endgame of Morrowind. White-Gold's Stone is the Amulet of
Kings.
Beyond that though, I think its up to our imagination how similar we want them to be. |
Someone please bring me up to speed on this - wasn't Lorkhan's heart destroyed by the Nerevarine at the end of TES3?
Can it even BE destroyed?
__________________
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2008.09.10 21:07 |
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Lady Nerevar
Marquise
Registration Date: 2006.01.04
Posts: 1,362
Location: Not in hiding anymore
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the heard was not destroyed, it was returned back to lorkhan. as in we
cant see it, but it still exists. However! the heart aint the stone of
the Adamantine, the 'impossipoint of the convention' is its stone. in
other words, its stone is the very fact that the convention happened.
as to some other things: the stars were formed by etada escaping
mundus, not coming into it. the aedra cant leave either, since they are
part of the world. the elves actually witnessed the convention, you
have to remember it occurred years after the initial formation of the
mortal plane, and began emulating the adamantine pretty soon after.
This post has been edited 2 time(s), it was last edited by Lady Nerevar: 2008.09.10 22:17.
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2008.09.10 22:13 |
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Tabber42
Knight
Registration Date: 2008.06.22
Posts: 81
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I thought the tower was a smooth cillinder (sp? bah, not bothered to
spellcheck haha), that had buildings around the base of it (base being
where it hits the ground, not underground)
Maybe I'm mistaken, looking for the link (this is a time where organization would own)
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2008.09.11 07:05 |
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Braggi
Seigneur
Registration Date: 2006.09.23
Posts: 287
Location: B.C. Canada
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As a side point - this whole Akatoch coming to Nirn ins a metal cylinder sounds pretty sci-fi-ish. 
Wonder if there was a nod to to the Might and Magic series of games,
which were active and had a strong following during the days of TES1
and 2. (New World Computing went belly up during the time of TES3's
early development and their last game installment, MMIX, hit the
shelves incomplete due to publisher time pressures.)
We now return you to your regularly scheduled thread.
__________________
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2008.09.11 20:56 |
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Deeza
Editor
Registration Date: 2008.06.03
Posts: 1,066
Location: Procrastination
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I guess people say space-ship only because it was used to fly to Nirn
from Aetherius through outer space (Oblivion). Imagine a giant dragon
rodeo-riding a massive silver tower down into the earth's core like the
Texan pilot riding a bomb in Dr Strangelove and... I guess it seems a
bit more like fantasy....
I shall now go quietly insane....
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2008.09.11 21:48 |
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jman0war
Associate
Registration Date: 2008.08.29
Posts: 3
Location: ireland
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That's a nice concept sketch Deeza.
I never knew the lore behind the tower tbh.
I understand why my own design is not how you imagined it.
I am a particular TES2 fan, and re-imagining TES2 is my ultimate dream.
Also, since I live in Ireland I am influenced by Norman architecture:
castles and tower houses that dot the countryside. That's why my
Direnni Tower looks more Norman than the TES2 original.
I don't know if Direnni Tower was ever portrayed in TES1.
Since the tower was built by the gods, I wonder what they're
architecture would look like? Maybe something different than Ayelid
ruins. Different also from Daedric. Could be it's own genre. |
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2008.10.06 21:41 |
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Deeza
Editor
Registration Date: 2008.06.03
Posts: 1,066
Location: Procrastination
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I think that only the Cylinder was built by the gods. The rest was
built by Direnni High Elves, and as you say, those guys almost
certainly have their own unique style.
The only reason my concept looks the way it does is that I wanted to be
able to make it using only assets from the game, because I can't model.
I had no idea at the time that anybody was working on a unique mesh for
it. 
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2008.10.07 11:42 |
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