Project Tamriel

A reachmen house at -109, 6. This is a somewhat well-hidden Reachmen village and its inhabitants are either hostile or at least not very welcoming to outsiders.

The exact purpose of this house is still unclear. Perhaps, Berry can chime in and tell us what it is about.

The exterior file can be found here: viewtopic.php?f=125&t=340" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[hsimg=]http://i.imgur.com/vgbBp7W.jpg[/hsimg]

I didn't really have anything in mind for this village. House #1 could be where the person in charge resides, because of it's size.

Perhaps because of their small numbers this tribe never earned a witch-matriarch of their own and are being led by a man, and they are being looked down at because of it by other tribes? That might be too direct translocation of vanilla Ahemmusa motif, though.

On the other hand, initially, when I worked on this area within my Claim #1, I had this concept in mind:

-109, 6 - Reachmen Village; 3x "Sky_Ex_Reachmen_House_01". Secluded and with many ritualistic spots around. Possible inhabitants: 2-3 Reachmen wise women (eyes, mouths and arms for local hagravens) with their male elderly servant?

as seen here. I imagine this could work too, given sacral cave within the village, though the population should rather be increased to 5-6.

This tribe maintains a small, apple tree grove next to the village, and probably is responsible for any sacral activity in -109, 9 valley and surroundings (offerings to hagravens & statues, keeping burial in good condition etc).

So yeah, probably some witch-committed, unwelcoming folks.

I like Berry's proposal: unwelcoming npcs, but not immediately hostile.

Some outwardly hostile folks could be found in the caves below the village, then, Hackdirt style.

You could also encounter some hostile people from the village between the village and the exterior cavern. But the idle people in the village would just be unfriendly.

Claim! A house of a profane person in charge of this village. Not really rich, unwelcoming to strangers, basically a bandit ring-leader - as we were discussing above. The house would hide some signs of vile Reachman magic, too.

Roerich, a question in regards to a layout of your cave, past that village. Do you think a hidden trapdoor leading from this house to it's tunnels would be fine? I have this rather cool idea for it, if that won't conflict with your plans.

Edit: I want to claim house labeled #1, according to the map above. It can be quite confusing with new cellnames, so I hope that's a right place to ask.

Yes, it is the house with number 1 on it. 2 is Sky_iRe_DH05 and 3 Sky_iRe_DH06.

Have at it, I'd say.

Update. It's close to being finished now, I just need to add some more details here and there, surround it with lava_blacksquares and make a working path grid. These two latter steps would be a pain, so I'd like to get an approval before.

I made this interior a two-story one; even if we end discarding the idea of a passage joining this house with the caves, there's still a cell in a basement too. It can be quest-related, or remain empty, with a skeleton of some poor late guy only.

So basically, what looks like a cozy Reachman cottage...
[hsimg=]http://i.imgur.com/J7mx9tH.png[/hsimg]
...hides a vile secret. Welcome to Druadachs, mates.
[hsimg=]http://i.imgur.com/c8dab21.png[/hsimg]

I think it would be better, if you replaced the barrow walls in the cellar with those reachmen walls that match the foundation of the hut. The direnni grates could be replaced with our iron rods. Reusing things from a different context should be done sparingly. Also, if you apply big makeshiftings in each interior, the majority of interiors will be tinkered in some way rather than represent how an interior of this type should look like. This is only a general concern and I'm not asking you to change this particular interior. Sorry if I'm being a constant nuisance about this topic.

Another thing: As you know there is some intersection between the nomadic orcs and reachmen. But again, it should be confined to instruments, beverages, goat rugs. I would prefer, if the orc basket, for example, would be mainly kept as a feature of orc camps and not be found in regular reachmen houses. The reachmen use the regular nord baskets for them already, so there is not really a need for the orc baskets. Therefore I would like to remove them from the dock houses as the karthwasten docks, if that's ok.

Good calls! I wasn't sure about the grate myself, iron rods would work great here indeed - I just entirely forgot about them.

I know I have a problem with detecting the fine line between Reachman and orc interiors and overconceptualizing when I mod (and thus doing some needless makeshifting), so please, if something strikes you as off, don't hestitate to fix it, man.

Finished. It received quite a makeover, as I tuned down the style-mixing soundly. Here's a story behind this place as I imagined it: this house's both a community gathering hall and a place where an old male mystic, a retired warrior of the tribes, lives. The man can be seen as a leader figure by a clueless tourist, but he's in fact a thrall of matriarchs and hags of the tribe - they're residing in deeper caves of Druadach mesas, too busy gathering dark powers and planning their knaveries to address daily affairs of the village, so they left their thrall-husband as a deputy. This man is a guide to the underworld for the villagers as well - both figuratively (communicating with gods, spirits and hag-mothers via wicked bone totems he creates) and literaly - there's a trapdoor leading down to the caves, to Sky_iRe_DH03, in a basement below his house.

There is some stuff in this interior that was not agreed on before, but I decided to go my way about them - they can always be altered/removed by a reviewer or NPCer when he have this tribe or the Reachman in general more fleshed out. The bone totem may rise some questions in particular, but then: we already have a similar construction in -109, 9, guarding entrance to hagraven's cave, so I wanted to connected these two areas together, as most likely this tribe is responsible for caretaking after those mothers. It's a nice touch I think, making the world more coherent. It's also a play on Briarheart motif from TES V. Still, I'd have no problem with seeing this go - or perhaps moving it to nearby deeper caverns? There was supposed to be a metaphysical testing chamber down there, I can see such totem working well as a part of trial. As a sidenote, personally I think some voodoo-like vibes like this, most likely borrowed from early Yoku believes, fit Reachmen well.

Another thing is the trapdoor leading to these caves. I'm not sure how well (if at all in fact) it goes with roerich's plans for that claim's layout, so it can be removed too of course, if it's a problem.

What remains to bring up for discussion is the mummified Nord prisoner in the basement. I was inspired by Old Hroldan's mummy here, but I can see a pit trap ahead of us if we keep using it for SHotN - the asset is supposed to be a Colovian mummy after all, not a generic dried corpse. We should probably limit it's usage to more unique places, so it doesn't catch too much attention - Old Hroldan would be fine, but a basement of generic Reachman house - not. In that case, it should be removed too.

The interior is pathgrided, surrounded with lava blacksquares and cleaned in tes3cmd.
http://i.imgur.com/ST6zYOK.pnghttp://i.imgur.com/x2NZNOj.pnghttp://i.imgur.com/wU3FxqH.pnghttp://i.imgur.com/xNlvf9Q.png http://i.imgur.com/Rtj2EMi.pnghttp://i.imgur.com/imPtPhJ.pnghttp://i.imgur.com/Vdr96SJ.pnghttp://i.imgur.com/ATycleA.png

I personally find this interior a tad too weird and over the top, even a Reachmen cultist of some kind. The kind of asset mixing, sorry to say, still evokes a strong feeling of moddiness. I particularly dislike the glowing lichen in the cellar and that tinkered skeleton with cattle head. I also dislike that the P:C - mummies are getting refitted for whatever purpose you or roerich have for them. These mummies belong to the colovian barrows and should not be used in SHOTN. Why would a reachman house contain a mummy anyway? I think you are overdoing the witch-idea without really basing it on any kind of cultural philosophy. I wouldn't just make all kind of stuff only to make them witchy. There need to be some kind of background for these things.

Thanks for feedback, I can see the point about lichens. I thought it'd be a nice touch for a basement, but I'm not sure if something similar can be seen anywhere else already? If that's a consistion-breaking precedence then it should be removed, agreed.

I'm sorry to ask, but did you read my post? I mean I wrote my thoughts on every point you made (other than lichens), in fact I actually wrote the same about the mummy. As for the background for Reachman witch objects, well, I wrote my proposal, actually basing it on a cultural philosophy of local people in fact (Briarheart-like voodoo totem, originating from warped Yoku believes, used by Reachmen of this tribe to commune with spiritual world). We also already have a similar skeleton in exterior file, as I pointed out (though that doesn't automatically justify having these two in a final file of course; when we have Reachman culture brainstormed, we can as well decide to discard both of these totems. I only mean to show here I didn't come up with the idea out of blue)

Anyway, I'm fine with slashing over this claim with Occam's razor when we have Reachman culture and religion more conceptualized, again: these were just my proposals how it can be handled, since we have hardly any lore for it currently, if I'm not mistaken. These ideas can and should be reviewed later on.

Forgive me the lack of attention. I skimmed your text and saw something that looked like some kind of explanation. I think I'm just not really open to certain ideas at the moment. And I have a hard time getting my mind into the current developments, generally.

I must say I lean towards worsas with the criticism on this. Really good stuff but this Reachman stuff is sometimes tricky business, especially as we're each working from our own interpretation of what the native cultures of the Reach are like, and not from a commonly agreed upon and strictly descriptive master plan.

Some of it needs to be toned a bit down, but otherwise this looks great. In general I think the witchy aspects of Reachmen culture should be left a bit more up to imagination, with some of the more sinister aspects slowly revealed through quests and lore. Less is more. Like you proposed, the totem can be moved to a more hidden location.

Also I don't think every Reachman location needs to be witchy outside of the already inherent witchiness of the Reachmen set - stuff like the fireplace, the fletched windows and fences, the carved idols, the drinks and weapons etc. Sometimes a hunter settlement should just be a hunter settlement, if you get what I mean. A witchy atmosphere can also be created through the intended use of these assets and simply adjusting the fog to be thicker and green or purple, and then adding a mist static.

Also berry I hope you don't take it in a wrong way how we always seem to criticize you. You are really creative and I like a lot of the ideas you bring forth. Don't stop being creative and challenging the intended use of our models, I love makeshifting as well. But we need to adjust here and there to achieve a coherent SHOTN experience. Just to be clear, I think you're taking it like a champ. But I always feel bad when you upload something you've spent a lot of work on, and then we only focus on the things we would like to see changed or would have done differently ourselves.

Cheers

Misc comments:
- I'm sorry if I started a trend with the Nord corpse in Old Hrol'dan. I didn't want us to use it in place of skeletons. Originally the corpse was being burned on a pile of wood, so I had hopes for either a retexture to look like a charred corpse, or just keep it like it is and try to show the same.
- The fine glass bottle should be removed. I'm hesitant to add it in all but the richest, westernized interiors. I know it's not that expensive, but it stands out a lot when put together with other SHOTN assets.
- Same goes for the tapestries. I think we should only use the Reachmen tapestries in the data, and maybe occasionally the Nord ones as well. Other wall decoration should mostly be Wormmouth hides and animal pelts,.
- You use the barrow urns a lot. I personally don't think they should be used anywhere outside the barrows. They aren't a common clay item crafted by anyone, they should instantly remind someone of a barrow and ancient nordic culture. I'd rather we stuck with baskets and wooden misc items for Reachmen.
- The Orcish drum should be saved mostly for Orcish locations, or Reachmen-Orcish locations. Now we have a few more anonymous drum meshes in the common data (two of the Imp drums), so we can replace some of them and improve their rareness.
- Personally I'm not fond of how you use ingredient stones for eyes in idols or totems. It always ends up looking extremely moddy, IMO. I don't know how every one else feels about this.

Sorry for taking so long to respond, especially if it looked like I was offended with your criticism. House-moving activies've been a pain in the neck.

Just dropping in to say all's cool, and I didn't find your reaction hostile or offensive. Will share more thoughts and respond to the feedback in following days. cheers

Luxray, did you grab this eventually, as discussed in KW REL thread? If not yet, I can implement roerich's/worsas' suggestion and post the file on Saturday.

I have DH05 if you want to work on this one on Saturday I'll have the other done then as well.

A note: I changed a bit in the exterior, as can be seen in the latest KW file. If you could subsistute some of the content that needs to be removed in favor of more focus on tanning and hide working, that would be great. I've added a few goat skin racks and some pelts to the exterior of this house.

Alright, here it is

Awesome berry! Quick review:

- removed T_Imp_SetHarbor_ShipHatch_01
- removed some clutter upstairs (a few weapon crates, some orc stuff, a dream catcher)

Perfect!

Also, how do we get you on Discord? You are missed!

Merged