Gold Coast Interior Claim PC_i2-32 [COMPLETED]

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Infragris
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Re: Gold Coast Interior Claim PC_i2-32 [Leon]

Post by Infragris »

An interesting idea for a quest, but a couple of remarks:
  • I don't think going straight for international conspiracies is the best way to go, here. We should build up the scale and importance of our quest lines relative to their location and the path the player took to get there. A high-stakes quest dealing with spies and assassins, the Emperor etc. would be better placed as part of a Blades questline, in the Heartlands or further east, and "gated" based on the player's level or reputation.
  • Likewise, the Camonna Tong simply have no place here. They are a crime/mafia guild based in provincial Morrowind, and while they have strong political connections there, this should not translate to any international presence. At best, they could have a fleeting presence in Cheydinhal, close to the border, and even there they would be under constant threat by the Thieves Guild. They are on a completely different scale of power compared to the Empire. More to the point, we should refrain from involving Morrowind factions in general: our quests should focus on fleshing out our own, native factions, and avoid entanglement with vanilla content at all costs.
  • I'm not a big fan of making this man a Blades agent either. The Blades are some of the Emperor's most trusted men, fanatically loyal to the Empire. While featuring a traitor is definitely an interesting concept, it would make the wrong impressions to make this one of our first experiences with them, on a meta-narrative level. Also not really sure what kind of critical information an operative in a small town like Brina Cross could provide.
  • Lastly, while the idea of featuring a player execution is interesting, it opens up a whole can of worms when dealing with crimes of the same caliber that the player can perpetrate elsewhere, and with the concept of player freedom and freeform questing that informs most TES quests. Performing treasonous acts should result in high to very high bounties, perhaps some kind of bounty hunter system, as it is in the vanilla game. There is one situation where I believe it would make sense to give the player a "cutscene execution": if they manage to murder the Emperor or his close family.
This may sound like a lot of harsh criticism, but I want to emphasize that I like the basic idea of the quest a lot. We just have to Cyrodiil-ify it a tad. Some suggestions:
  • Local scale: reframe the situation in terms of local, Colovian conflicts: the Kali Mes situation in Sutch, the Free Estates Movement, mercantile factions like the East Empire Company or the Zenithar Cult, etc. This also prevents problems like "why don't I go back to Vvardenfell and kill Orvas Dren?"
  • Local factions: there are a number of spy factions this person could belong to: the Gilded Eye Cult (Hermaeus Mora cult who worship information), the Vampyrum Order (disguised vampire faction that influences the government from within), the Temple Zero Society (Illuminati-like secret fraternity)

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