Project Tamriel

The worship of minor spirits below the level of the Divines is an important part of Cyrodiil, and not only in the east. We don't have a lack of gods, spirits and saints, but we do need to integrate them deeper into the visual side of the province. To that end, I would like to propose we make a dedicated set of "petty shrines", wayshrines using similar textures and design cues as the wayshrines of the Divines, but smaller and in different shapes. A couple of inspirations (though they would need to be smaller than these):
[hsimg=]https://67.media.tumblr.com/69c05690b11 ... 4_1280.png[/hsimg]
[hsimg=]https://67.media.tumblr.com/d5e4c58abf3 ... 2_1280.png[/hsimg]
[hsimg=]https://67.media.tumblr.com/b39b933b467 ... 3_1280.png[/hsimg]

I've noticed, for example, that the Anvil claim has a wayshrine to Zenithar set up inside of the city: this model fits badly, feels too big for its environment. Instead of that, we could have smaller shrine-stones on the corner of buildings, alongside the roads, inside of major buildings, etc. dedicated to different saints, spirits, and gods. A crossroad somewhere in the middle of nowhere could have five to even ten differently sized and shaped shrines lining it, most of them dedicated to gods that have since been forgotten. This would give these places a much deeper sense of time, emphasize the age of Cyrodiilic civilization, and express the dazzling variety of gods and spirits without having to invent a temple, priesthood, and dialogue for each and every one of them. Some of them could perhaps provide very small blessings, like a minor boost in fatigue, while others are inert or broken.

Similarly, we could maybe have small, wooden shrine-cabinets and altar pieces for interior use in wealthy houses, like this thing:
[hsimg=]https://p2.liveauctioneers.com/1670/727 ... 84_1_l.jpg[/hsimg]

These would give houses more personality and say something about their inhabitants, without requiring a lot of dialogue spelling it out. Visual storytelling.

We could base some of them on the same textures that are used for second empire fortresses and barrows, so you could have these alongside some overgrown walls of what would have been a very old building.

Good idea, then we could also use them inside of dungeons, like the way you sometimes find Tribunal shrines in ancestor tombs. Shrines from different periods could reflect different gods that were in favor back then.

Update: a small-ish obelisk shrine. The hole on the side is meant to hold candles or tiny cult statues.

At the moment this could also be a tribunal or other dunmer shrine of some sort, but it's probably a non-issue. I just want to point my fingers at it, in case this is something you want to avoid.

Well, there's only so many ways you can shrine a shrine. It's a lot bigger than the dunmer shrines, and with a square footprint instead of a triangle. I think the difference in material and environment should discourage and associations.

It looks great on it own, an obelisk shape is a great call, if you ask me, but I agree about strong Dunmeri resemblence. I'm not sure if folks at TR still plan to use these assets, but MWgek's Dres set especially, with white-grey color, raw geometric shapes and lots of niches does look like this shrine especially.

Maybe it's color palette could be moved slightly towards browns and yellows, kind of like GC Imperial forts tileset?

These are the textures from the Imperial Wayshrine altars. In fact, the shape of the foot is mostly influenced by the wayshrine altar.

The grayish color is mostly caused by the material properties of the shrine and less much by the textures that are much lighter. When I recently saw the other wayshrines between the houses in Anvil, I have already been thinking the material color could be raised a bit to make it contrast less strongly with the other structures.

I'm totally fine with keeping this shrine as it is. It only gave me a slight vivec-feeling on the first glance. probably due to the fact that the dirt stuff in the upper part makes it look like it is made of plaster, while it is meant to be made from stone. But ultimately that is pickiness and probably waste of time. Onto other things, I say.

Came across this image on Tumblr today, it struck me as a cool way to depict the saints and animal spirits in Nibenay, hopefully without being too intensive from a modeling standpoint:

[hsimg=]http://67.media.tumblr.com/ecc0900516c8 ... 1_1280.jpg[/hsimg]

My thought is that there would be a little humanoid statuette and then just all these layers of silk wrapped around it, in different combinations and patterns. I can draw up some concepts if people are interested.

Those look very neat, Saint_Jiub!

Those do look very nice. I'd be interested to see some concepts: something like protector spirits for fields and houses, maybe. Additionally, we could probably use a database of 10-20 different Niben silk textures to be used on different objects, items and clothes. It would give a sense of visual coherence to Niben culture if you see the same patterns and colors show up in different places.