[WIPz] A Brotherhood Renewed

[Arthmoor]

I don't normally do WiP threads, but the situation with this one is a bit different. Be advised that this entire subject is likely to be considered a spoiler for those who have not completed the DB questline. And for obvious reasons, this will only appeal to folks who play through that guild. Like me

At the end of the Dark Brotherhood quest line, once all of the other members have been killed and it's just you, Arquen, and some random assassin, I always felt things just got left hanging there. You go to Bravil once a week to talk to the Night Mother, then back to Arquen to deliver the message. Woopie. How utterly unexciting. Wouldn't it make more sense to turn your focus back on to rebuilding the guild? Haven't you been told one way or another than there was once a sanctuary in every city? Well shouldn't Arquen know all this? Why not have her prompt you into doing something about it! You can of course continue to go about collecting your measly pittance of a sum of money each week, but surely it might be a bit more interesting to pile that into a Brotherhood account and have it spent on rebuilding your guild's former glory. So that's more or less the plan. You, Arquen, and random assassin guy are going to rebuild your guild.

Each sanctuary will exist the whole time during the game but will not be populated with anything but junk until after it's been officially reclaimed. If at all possible the existence of them will be concealed until Arquen reveals their former locations as needed. Each one should be doable individually, or in parallel, doesn't matter. Restoring them will mean finding them at first, making sure they've been cleared of nasties, the Sithis altars consecrated, and then recruiting some assassins to handle the day to day in each one. Each one will have the standard living quarters, training areas, and altar to Sithis type stuff. Vampires welcome in locations reasonably able to support them, such as below the IC - there will be a couple of new vamps roaming the sewers.

The locations chosen so far:

1. Sideways Cave. That place is awesome and would be a perfect base for an IC location. And a good excuse to mix DB with the always cool Ayleid ruin set

The new sanctuary will be connected to the bottom level of Sideways Cave on one side, and to the Arena Bloodworks sewers on the other. Both of these are sufficiently removed from civilization that it's reasonable to say nobody remembers the place is down there. The sewer side will be inaccessible until the sanctuary is reclaimed, the gate can be opened from the back side. Sideways Cave provides a cool ready-made dungeon crawl protecting the back entrance, and the player will have to complete most of the crawl to find the sanctuary.

2. Leyawiin. An abandoned sanctuary lies under the Greyland Estate house. The drug dealers who moved in have no idea it even exists and have therefore not disturbed it. They've apparently been too busy producing Skooma. If the player has already gotten rid of them, then this part will be fairly quick. The now abandoned house provides cover as we presume the city guards won't allow anyone near the place. If the player has not yet removed the drug dealers, Arquen will prompt him to do so so the sanctuary can be reclaimed. She'll even go so far as to suggest speaking with the legion guard who handles it, since you may as well get paid for the effort.

Special case: If you spared the Argonian Shadowscale, Scar-Tail, you will be able to recruit him to head this sanctuary once it's reclaimed. The game does not kill him off if he's spared, but he could die from incidental exposure to spawns in the area.

3. Bravil. Always seems stupid that the citizens openly display the Night Mother and that the current listener lives there, but there's no sanctuary? I think that tavern on the south side of town serves as good cover for a DB base underground. This one can operate more openly and won't require killing people in town, and won't be infested with monsters. It will however have been hidden and the door not activated until the player is officially on the quest to restore this one. Simulates the populace not wanting to give it away, etc.

4. Anvil. The sanctuary here is largely unknown, save for the warehouse operator who tends the entrance. Once sent to reclaim it though, it is discovered that the former Speaker performed a purification of his own. Something for which Sithis was not pleased at all and it's up to you to settle his wrath and get things back into place.

One might notice these are being built with avoiding direct access to the city cells. It's easier to deal with compatibility issues when you're not having to fiddle with rock method hacks. Also, there will be an attempt to tie in with the mod Whispered Warning. If that mod is in use and the player chose to leave any of the previous sanctuary people alive, they will be the prime choices to run the reclaimed sanctuaries. It seems only fitting if you went out of your way to warn them that you'd probably trust them with such duties. Since these people are dead otherwise, well, they won't be available. Have to find someone else.

There may or may not be more built. I figured 4 was enough of a burden to go on for now. I am also fully aware that other people have made sanctuary mods but they don't fit what I wanted and are usually openly available despite the obvious fact that the DB is in very serious trouble in the game.

I'm willing to accept a sanctuary built by someone else as well, provided it follows the same conditions of being concealed within another building, dungeon, cave, hole, whatever. No touching the city worldspaces directly. Would be highly preferable to not touch anything on the surface land at all even. Also, bending lore is ok, but I'd really rather anyone who wants to provide a spot not utterly break it with things that don't fit. Preferable to stick with vanilla content, and restrict use of 3rd party meshes and textures to a minimum. The only custom model+texture it would be nice to have is something to use as an altar of Sithis since we can't gank the one from Vile Lair without raising copyright issues.

Undecided as to whether SI content would be acceptable or not. Lots of people have SI these days, and SI surely has some neat stuff that could be incorporated. it just tends to limit the audience too much for some reason, despite SI's penetration lately.

The plan is to have any additional submissions merged via Gecko once done. Shouldn't be overly difficult to do that as long as nobody touches the outdoors.

Anyone who wishes to submit a module is free to build the quest and the stuff needing to be cleared out from the sanctuary being reclaimed. The quests all need to be hooked up so that Arquen is the one who delivers it.

Any questions, suggestions, etc, just ask.

Assigned Areas

Chorrol: Dwip [Done]

Leyawiin: the-manta [Done]

Anvil: Cliffworms [Done]

Imperial City: Arthmoor [Done]

Bravil: Arthmoor [Done]

Bruma: Manni

Skingrad: Manni

Kvatch: Not planned, but will accept something if offered so long as it doesn't require editing exterior worldspace cells. Would also be best to avoid it being attached directly to the city since several mods rebuild it and don't use the original worldspace to do s.

[WhoGuru]

This is a fantastic idea Arthmoor! I love it! If you're still working on this once I get a few projects off my plate I'd love to try my hand at building a sanctuary.

[PacificMorrowind]

Undecided as to whether SI content would be acceptable or not. Lots of people have SI these days, and SI surely has some neat stuff that could be incorporated. it just tends to limit the audience too much for some reason, despite SI's penetration lately.

I would vote use SI.

Also of note - since I originally posted this to my personal blog ( political content, most people usually don't care to read it ) Dwip has said he'll provide a sanctuary in Chorrol as well. He's already got a decent plan laid out assuming Vista and the CS can get along with each other.

never seen a link, I'd give it a look. I can testify to Vista and the CS work fine (as long as you avoid the UAC restrictions - disable UAC or install to non-system location).

Anyways really like this. I too haven't really liked the look/play of other sanctuary adding mods... just don't seem to fit into the DB current status.

If I get some time (hahaha)before you get this done I might do up a location. need any meshes? for the alter to Sithis got any ideas (ie concept art) or just basically moddeled to look somewhat similar to the Vile Lair one?

Pacific Morrowind

[Arthmoor]

I would vote use SI.

Leaning that way myself, the interior ruin resources are pretty nice.

never seen a link, I'd give it a look. I can testify to Vista and the CS work fine (as long as you avoid the UAC restrictions - disable UAC or install to non-system location).

Link is in my profile, I'll warn you ahead of time though, it's not someplace I stick to my usual reserved manner.

The CS issue is odd, Dwip has his game installed on a totally different drive outside the influence of UAC. CS won't let him save new files, but he was able to copy and rename the SI DLC file and the CS put up no complaints to saving over it.

Anyways really like this. I too haven't really liked the look/play of other sanctuary adding mods... just don't seem to fit into the DB current status.

If I get some time (hahaha)before you get this done I might do up a location. need any meshes? for the alter to Sithis got any ideas (ie concept art) or just basically moddeled to look somewhat similar to the Vile Lair one?

Pacific Morrowind

The Vile Lair shrine might be a bit over the top, but an altar with a likeness of Sithis would do nicely. Bonus points if it fits in decently with Ayleid architecture along with whatever else gets used in the other sites. Without a custom mesh, an altar/shrine to Sithis would probably have to involve creative use of Oblivion realm pieces and I'm not sure those would work out as nicely in the end.

[WalkerInShadows]

This sounds awesome. My new character is going to end up as an assassin (eventually), and I've got a bunch of DB mods I want to try out. One thing - Ayleid Steps uses the ruins in Sideways Cave also; there's a door that leads to a new area in there. Since you're going as low-impact as possible, I think you'll be all right.

[Arthmoor]

Yeah, already checked it with Ayleid Steps loaded, I'm in a different spot down there and all I've done is make a connecting passage to the actual sanctuary.

Oh, hey, gots me a shiny Senator tag now too

[Cliffworms]

Thank you Arthmoor for planning/designing the new sanctuaries and making them more lore accurate. Because, indeed, some mods that add new sanctuaries don't take in account how the Dark Brotherhood has been seriously hit.

As for designing new sanctuaries, I would like to submit one I designed around 2 years ago.

Back then, I was the lead level designer for The Dark Brotherhood Chronicles. I was part of the first team that attempted to complete it, but we got problems of members leaving or not responding and so we all went our way.

Then the team was formed again by fans of what we had done and they asked me to join again. But I personally didn't really like the new administration and left.

During my time as Lead Level Designer, I designed a sanctuary that was to be used in Anvil, accesssible by a trap door in one of the dock's warehouse.

I can assure you that the current Dark Brotherhood Chronicles team is not using my level because they changed the whole storyline. As such, the works I had done didn't have any takers and I see your project as an opportunity to give my sanctuary a life again.

The Anvil Sanctuary comes in two flavors. In the original story, every members of the Anvil Dark Brotherhood had been violently murdered by its silencer who decided to do his own purification of the sanctuary, because of what happened at Cheydinhal.

So there's a "Purified Version", which is a dark, abandoned sanctuary with barely any lighting. Brothers and sisters who have died in most violent deaths. And cobwebs fill up some space also.

Then, there's the "Restored Version", which is basicly a functionning sanctuary ready to be filled by Dark Brotherhood members.

The sanctuary has the following rooms:

- lodgings for the lower ranked members.

- lodgings for the higher ranked members.

- The Silencer's personal quarters

- The Main hall with a statue to the Night Mother, a dining table and a reading area

- Training room

- Storage room

So if you are interested in taking either (Or both ) of Anvil's sanctuaries, I'll gladly hand them over to you. The only thing left is doing the pathgrid, if I recall correctly.

Cheers!

[daemondarque]

This is a seriously great idea, and I'd love to see it happen. That's the kind of quest I'd always hoped to see brought into Oblivion--extending the existing storylines and threads of ideas that Bethesda left hanging--and I can't help thinking sometimes that they left them that way on purpose. The game is full of possibilities... yet to date only a relative few mods have taken advantage of them. Anyway, I've got a Listener and an up-and-coming assassin who would both love to pay their respects when this one is done--I agree with every point you've made, and it sounds like you've already got a good solid beginning!

[Arthmoor]

Very nice Cliffworms. I like those shots alot, and they both fit very well into where the end of the quest line plays out.

You say you had them in mind as a sort of one or the other thing, but I think that your first one where the sanctuary is purged by a rogue silencer would be perfect for the beginning phase and the second functional one would be ideal for what you get after going in to clean out whatever infestation exists in the one with all the dead folk.

Are the designs feasible enough to make that work? I think that would be truly a very cool thing and moving it to somewhere under the dock warehouse is fine so long as that's not going to involve an external worldspace edit.

[Section_31]

I haven't played DB quests, but being the "deepest" than the others hollow guild quests, this looks interesting enhancements.

[Cliffworms]

Very nice Cliffworms. I like those shots alot, and they both fit very well into where the end of the quest line plays out.

You say you had them in mind as a sort of one or the other thing, but I think that your first one where the sanctuary is purged by a rogue silencer would be perfect for the beginning phase and the second functional one would be ideal for what you get after going in to clean out whatever infestation exists in the one with all the dead folk.

Are the designs feasible enough to make that work? I think that would be truly a very cool thing and moving it to somewhere under the dock warehouse is fine so long as that's not going to involve an external worldspace edit.

I'm glad you like the screenshots.

I actually meant that using the two versions would be better than using only one of them. Like you, I also agree that having a rogue silencer who, out of paranoia of what happened in Cheydinhal, decided to perform his personal purification of his sanctuary. Having a paranoid person as the leader of a sanctuary can be destructive and it would be another way to explain how the Dark Brotherhood is truly going downhill in Cyrodiil.

And, yes, it's easily done to switch from one version to the other.

Simply add the same warehouse door on the same position as the one that leads to the purified version, but make it initially disabled. Then, when the player manages to restore the sanctuary somehow, use a simple script to disable the door leading to the purified version and enable the one leading to the restored version.

As for the emplacement, in the Dark Brotherhood Chronicles project, the DB bribed the warehouse worker for keeping their location secret.

May I send you the file?

[Arthmoor]

I'm glad you like the screenshots.

I actually meant that using the two versions would be better than using only one of them. Like you, I also agree that having a rogue silencer who, out of paranoia of what happened in Cheydinhal, decided to perform his personal purification of his sanctuary. Having a paranoid person as the leader of a sanctuary can be destructive and it would be another way to explain how the Dark Brotherhood is truly going downhill in Cyrodiil.

And, yes, it's easily done to switch from one version to the other.

Simply add the same warehouse door on the same position as the one that leads to the purified version, but make it initially disabled. Then, when the player manages to restore the sanctuary somehow, use a simple script to disable the door leading to the purified version and enable the one leading to the restored version.

As for the emplacement, in the Dark Brotherhood Chronicles project, the DB bribed the warehouse worker for keeping their location secret.

May I send you the file?

Yeah, I know how to alternate the door, I was asking that to find out if the layouts were the same so that it won't mysteriously become another layout after it's been reclaimed.

The warehouse works just as well as the abandoned house, probably more so since it won't seem awkward with the Thieves Guild stuff there.

Definitely like the idea of the rogue paranoid silencer. And yes, you can send me the file

[Nic-V]

If it can improve quality you should use SI all the way. I will without a doubt get this when it comes out

[Arthmoor]

Hit a nice snag today - drive is about to blow itself out. Spent an hour or more fighting BSODs to make sure I could pull my latest files from it so they don't get lost. Lesson for folks - if you're making regular backups, don't get lazy and have to do what I'm doing now. Trying to weed through partially destroyed installations of Firefox to get back pieces you still need is not fun, and neither is realizing you haven't backed up your mod files in 2 weeks, which naturally means you've done tons of work on them in that time. All while sitting there listening to the sure sign of coming death - *click* *click* *click* *scrape* as your files are slowly being copied to external storage. Then of course having to outlay for a new drive you really didn't want to get and can't really afford to do but knowing you need it.

In short, don't get lazy about your backups!

BTW - Chrome sucks as a browser. Just thought I'd share that. Interesting toy, too quirky and awkward for real use.

[Arthmoor]

Back on track. New harddrive is in, and all my game data is back in place so I should be able to pick this back up shortly. Some minor files scattered around the drive didn't all copy over. Most likely cause I waited too long to heed the warning signs. Don't do that. When Windows Update breaks, and then later on you get a progressive infestation of thumbs.db files popping up all over the drive, do something about it. Not that a head crash had much to do with all that but who knows. Maybe all the junk activity strained the motor cause I can hear stuff rattling around in the old drive when I shake it even just barely. I think it threw a bearing in there.

[PacificMorrowind]

OUCH!

Hope you didn't loose much in those minor files.

meant to mention this earlier but you need to edit your profile; html code isn't working nicely... I think it needs to be changes to bbcode.

Pacific Morrowind

[grond]

Sorry for your troubles. Hope everything made it out of the 'burning house'. Thanks too for the advice!

thumbs.db eh? Are they truly a sign of impending failure?

[greenwarden]

I'll add to the chorus of "great idea, more sanctuaries are quite wanted". I may not typically play DB members, but part of the reason for that is due to the lack of locations associated with the storyline. I'm glad the project is back on track, especially in light of your recent hard drive issues.

But I saw on your website that you are/were also creating a new village-I will off-topic cheer that on here as well.

[Arthmoor]

OUCH!

Hope you didn't loose much in those minor files.

meant to mention this earlier but you need to edit your profile; html code isn't working nicely... I think it needs to be changes to bbcode.

Pacific Morrowind

Doesn't look like anything important was lost at this point, had to redo some recent mesh work with collision changes but so far that seems to be it.

I'll check the profile again, I don't recall having used HTML to generate it but that may be leftovers from when I originally signed up here.

Sorry for your troubles. Hope everything made it out of the 'burning house'. Thanks too for the advice!

thumbs.db eh? Are they truly a sign of impending failure?

Honestly I don't know if the thumbs.db problem is a sign of anything bad. Surely the drive throwing a bearing would have nothing to do with that, I think it was probably coincidental, but I do know that XP has a tendency to start going wonky after it's been running awhile. Usually I start noticing it because folders lose the settings I give them and keep losing them after being fixed. My Windows Update had broken about 14-18 months ago, I think right around the time I installed SP3. Paid no attention to it for the longest time. This thumbs.db problem was getting worse and worse though. The files were showing up everywhere and I was knocking them down at the rate of 50 or so a day and they'd just come right back again. Not irritating tiny ones either, big ones. So I figured the OS was eventually going to trash itself but I was holding out for Windows 7. Obviously didn't get that chance. Wasn't going to use Vista, that's for sure

I'll add to the chorus of "great idea, more sanctuaries are quite wanted". I may not typically play DB members, but part of the reason for that is due to the lack of locations associated with the storyline. I'm glad the project is back on track, especially in light of your recent hard drive issues.

But I saw on your website that you are/were also creating a new village-I will off-topic cheer that on here as well.

The DB questline actually is one of the deepest and most involved, and it does range across many locations. The reason for why they don't have any of their own locations is tied to the questline, so it is adequately explained. But once you're done, it makes no sense to just leave things that way.

Yeah, the village was just one of those things that started to nag at me, and cluttering a large ruin got boring. I have a bit of a chaotic pattern to modding. I work on whatever the mood strikes me with. Vergayun interrupted the work on the DB stuff and then stalled when I wanted to add a ship to it and ran into FPS issues with Silka's cog. It'll get back on track now that I figured out enough of Blender to get that changed over to MOPP collision - which was a massive improvement.

Don't know how people work with Blender. That's the most disgusting UI I've ever seen in my life! It took 3 hours of wrangling to figure out that I needed to click some tiny little pink button on one of the menus and guide the mouse with pixel precision into a tiny little pop-up menu to click on one of the other shapes in the list before exporting the nif would work. So I have much respect for anyone who can actually tame that beast and produce such masterpieces as that cog vessel with it.

[greenwarden]

The DB questline actually is one of the deepest and most involved, and it does range across many locations. The reason for why they don't have any of their own locations is tied to the questline, so it is adequately explained. But once you're done, it makes no sense to just leave things that way.

Yeah, the village was just one of those things that started to nag at me, and cluttering a large ruin got boring. I have a bit of a chaotic pattern to modding. I work on whatever the mood strikes me with. Vergayun interrupted the work on the DB stuff and then stalled when I wanted to add a ship to it and ran into FPS issues with Silka's cog. It'll get back on track now that I figured out enough of Blender to get that changed over to MOPP collision - which was a massive improvement.

I should have expressed myself more clearly. I meant "Not enough locations" as in guild halls. For whatever reason, I am passionately attached to the very idea of them. Perhaps it took root in Morrowind, when I walked in to the Aldruhn Mages Guild for the first time and just fell in love. Er, anyway.

Between Khettienna's Better Dark Brotherhood Sanctuary and this WIPZ, I am going to have to break my goody-two shoes habit.

[Section_31]

I noticed in the late original DB quests, some never-before-seen Dark Brotherhood members appeared (such as Arquen). If I understood the description correctly, the new Sanctuaries will be available along the Dark Brotherhood quests, but before the final original quest? Perhaps you might want to add these members to some of the new Sanctuaries.

Don't know how people work with Blender. That's the most disgusting UI I've ever seen in my life! It took 3 hours of wrangling to figure out that I needed to click some tiny little pink button on one of the menus and guide the mouse with pixel precision into a tiny little pop-up menu to click on one of the other shapes in the list before exporting the nif would work. So I have much respect for anyone who can actually tame that beast and produce such masterpieces as that cog vessel with it.

Heh, I found Blender confusing at first too. But after learning from this tutorial I am able to grasp most of the basic functions in Blender on a short time (I think it took me less than two hours). You might want to try that as well

[PacificMorrowind]

Don't know how people work with Blender. That's the most disgusting UI I've ever seen in my life! It took 3 hours of wrangling to figure out that I needed to click some tiny little pink button on one of the menus and guide the mouse with pixel precision into a tiny little pop-up menu to click on one of the other shapes in the list before exporting the nif would work. So I have much respect for anyone who can actually tame that beast and produce such masterpieces as that cog vessel with it.

the reason people work with blender is despite it's UI which makes windows 95 look like a startrek friendly OS is that it is VERY VERY powerful and can do almost anything you want... if you can figure out how

any questions and I can help... I've learnt a LOT of blender in the last couple months

Pacific Morrowind

[Arthmoor]

Heh, well. Suffice it to say I'm unlikely to go much further than fixing bad collision on things. I can't even draw stick figures most of the time on paper, let alone on a PC screen, and certainly not in 3D I'll leave that to the pros.

Could still use something to be used as a Sithis shrine though if anyone wants to take a crack at that.

[Cliffworms]

Hel Borne might be interested. I love his resources and especially his statues.

[Arthmoor]

I think I may just use Night Mother statues instead. They look just as cool and fit just as well and I don't need to have someone make a custom model for it

Going through getting your Anvil stuff merged in. That's some wicked work you did there. Would indeed have been a major shame to see it go unused. So bigtime thanks for that.