Project Tamriel

Animals (flavor)

• *Abecean Longfin - passive fish creature, encountered in the Abecean Sea, Strid and Brena Rivers. Considered a delicacy.
• *Chrysophant - exotic fish native to the Nibenese waters. River traders claim it is a sign of wealth.
• *Fringed Leaper - common fish found in both sweet and saltwater.
• *Spearmouth - - common fish found in both sweet and saltwater.
• *Stridfish - a fish native to the Strid River and environs.
• *Chicken - small domesticated fowl is common in both Colovia and the Nibenay.
• *Seagull - can be seen above the water regions and coastlines (Abecean Sea, Topal Bay). May also feature above Bravil, the Imperial City, and other port towns along the Niben.
• Colovian Hawk - rare (passive) sight across the west.

Animals

• *Colovian Bear - solitary animal, Colovian Highlands and mountain regions. Several color variations (brown, black, maybe an exotic variant). Drop bear pelt.
• *Colovian Wolf - aggressive animal, encountered in packs. Colovian Highlands and mountain regions.
• *Highland Colovian Wolf - stronger, more dangerous version of the common Colovian Wolf, encountered in the Colovian Highlands.
• *Rat - aggressive animal, encountered in caves, sewers etc.
• Muskrat - aggressive creature encountered in Colovia, often near rivers or marshes.
• *Mud Crab - aggressive animal, encountered just about anywhere with water. Crab meat is a staple of eastern kitchen.
• *Moon Crab - a rare crab with lustrous blue shell.
• *Slaughterfish - common aggressive creature, encountered in water.
• *Orangeback Slaughterfish
• *Small Slaughterfish
• Colovian Deer - passive creature, encountered in various regions. High flee chance.
• *Horse - domesticated animal, encountered at caravan stops, city stables etc.
• *Donkey - domesticated animal, used in trade caravans. Wild donkeys can often be found in small packs across the Highlands.
• Goat - often encountered in Colovian Highlands, West Weald and Jerrall Mountains, both domesticated and wild (though passive) variants. Domesticated versions are also common in the Nibenay.
• *Cow - domesticated animals, encountered in pastures across Cyrodiil. Rarely seen in the wilds. The Bull is sacred to some Nibenese cults.
• Tantha - timid monkey-bird critter encountered in Colovia and Hammerfell.
• Morla - fat-fured, Highlands variety of the above.
• Pinga - amphibious, broad-beaked variety of the above.
• Fynne - bird-dog, domesticated animal, encountered in cities and farms. Sometimes used as guards, hunting dogs, or deterrant for thieves.
• Alphyn - hawk-dog, wild version of the above.
• Kelpii - river-wolf/lion, shoreline predator common to the east.
• *Bullfrog - aggressive, encountered in most eastern jungle regions. Blackwood features an especially toxic variant.
• Gila - a creature native to the southeastern jungles. A poisonous lizard, crocodile king of thing.
• Snake
• River Newt - encountered along the Nibenay's waterways. Source of the popular River Newt Armor.
• River-Drake
• Painted Leopard
• Petty Troll - distant cousin of the troll, encountered in south-Niben towns. A local pest much like a street cat or dog.
• Troll - lumbering, brutish jungle predators.
• Carnelian Sea-Slug - bright red slug, living in the Niben delta. Produces red dye, which is used in Imperial banners and insignia.
• Coutal - the favored anteater mount of the extinct Kothrinig nomads. A sturdy pack-beast found in the eastern jungle regions.
• Rubicator - dragon-mounts imported from Akavir.
• Tinmi Dragon - diminutive descendants of the above. Considered a pest/holy animal in the Heartlands.
• Painted Leopard - beautiful, if deadly chromatic hunter of the deep jungles. Considered an evil omen by Nibenese, for its associated with the Tigers.

Monsters

• *Dreugh (& Land Dreugh?)
• *Goblin
• *Lamia
• Nereid - nymph-like water spirits associated with the Niben river and common Al-Estia worship. Similar to Spriggans in nature.
• *Minotaur - the descendants of Morihaus, the Minotaurs wander the jungle in packs, far from civilization. Their camps and outposts are passive, but unfriendly.
• *Trebataur - a berserker Minotaur, often outcast or questing far from his pack.
• *Morihayn - a Minotaur chieftain, who carries in him some of the Divine blood of Morihaus. A formidable opponent.
• *Sload
• *Spriggan
• Tiger
• Ur-Fjiron - Guardian spirit found in Nibenese tombs and moth-cult monasteries, born from the collective will of a cloud of moths and causing them to act as one to deter threats. Through sheer weight of numbers it pins down burglars and other intruders, filling their eyes and mouths with hundreds of the insects until whatever threatened it has been smothered out. Immune to physical attacks, it can only be destroyed by burning or poisoning enough of the swarm that its will is broken, returning them to nothing more than individual moths.

Undead

• *Ghost
• *Ghost Guardian
• *Mummy/Oathman
• *Skeleton
• Wraith
• Zombie

Daedra

• *Atronach (Flame, Frost, Storm)
• Auroran
• *Clannfear
• *Daedroth
• *Dremora
• *Golden Saint
• *Hunger
• *Ogrim
• *Scamp
• *Winged Twilight
• *Vermai
• Xivilai

Ayleid

• Ayleid Lich/Sorceror-King - the necromantic remains of the Ayleid kings of old. The Ayleid kings were known to pledge themselves to various Daedra in return for frightening powers, which warped their appearance. Texts like the Adabal-a and the Song of Pelinal hint at bird-like features.
• Guardian Statue - a statue fashioned in the likeness of an Ayleid, which comes to life when someone goes near it.
• *Welkynd Spirit - a guardian spirit made of pure energy.
• Redeemed Servants - the remains of Nedic slaves, bound to their master's will beyond the grave.

What about that little city troll that was part of a TR piece of writing? Wasn't there supposed to be some kind of giant snail aswell?
How about moths? Revenant had a concept for a cat-creature named Neofelis Something on the old forum. At some point an elephant-like creature was in the discussion, I remember. What about the Abecean Miracle Bass?

Deer, Dog, Boar, Goats and the like are creatures that would be nice to have, but contribute comparably little to the gameworld, except backing story references to them. But luckily they are comparably easy to implement, if based on modder resources. I would suggest doing without the sheep, if it hadn't such a central role in our colovian economy.

I personally feel a bit meh about such creatures as Will-O-Wisp or Imp. The imp in Oblivion was probably only a joke in the first place. The Will-O-Wisp just feels wrong in this universe, overall, in my opinion.

Nice suggestions on Ayleid creatures! Overall this list seems like a solid outline of possible creatures. The only thing I'd suggest is doing away with creatures, only added for Oblivion-sake unless we have like zero work including them.

Did TR already introduce the Auroran, Spider and Xivilai? If not, I don't see why we would do so. It would just be additional modeling/animation work, plus it would add a major inconsistency with the vanilla game. As far as I can see, Xivilais are mostly related to Mehrunes Dagon, who appeared in Morrowind, so they would've existed on Vvardenfell, too. Same goes for spiders and Mephala, I suppose.

Thanks for the reminders, I just threw this together based on Oblivion's creature listing. Can't believe just forgot about the Petty Troll and the Carnelian Slug - I made them up in the first place. Same goes for the Abecean Longfin. I'm not sure if we want to make moths actual creatures or particle effects, like the dragonflies in the Bitter Coast sounds addon. Maybe both. There might be something we can do with a giant moth creature. I'll add them to the list.

I remember that cat creature: it was a nice design, but the name Neofelis is kind of weird. There's reason enough to put in at least one or two jungle cat creatures, especially sine we already have armor with feline qualities (the Niben Bronze set).

I kind of like having these "normal" animals around, because the way they've been implemented up until now actually strengthens the weirdness and diversity of the world: the African-style fur patterns on the donkeys and horses, for example, make them feel a lot more unique than having a completely new creature that would only serve to fill the same old role. The theme of normal creature + strange and exotic detail goes really well with Cyrodiil, where there is more of a mix between strangeness and familiarity than in Morrowind, I'd say.

I kind of agree about the Imp, though I think some kind of sentient marsh-lamp would be nice in Blackwood - that place is supposed to be a little weird due to being close to Argonia, anyway.

EDIT: Ashtaar of Tamriel Rebuilt is actually working on several new Daedra, Xivilai among them. I'd also like the Aurorans to be added because they are linked to Meridia, a Daedric Prince who was not featured heavily in Morrowind, but has a strong connection to the Ayleid.

Are we still thinking of having most of our creatures be bird-themed the way Morrowind was bug-themed? Unless we're doing so for reasons of convenience (less model/texture work), I personally vote the dog, wolf, and bear off the island.

I'll post this in my concept art thread as well, but here's a couple of creatures I'm thinking can fill that niche, ecologically and culturally:
Gryphons

Bird themes are a great idea. Westly's Menagerie has some gryphons and the like in it, though we'll have to wait for it to be released if we want to mess with those. Also, that owl-pug is amazing.

It seems that tigers are no longer found in Cyrodiil as of at least the late second era.

"Another little known fact is that the Imperials often refer to Guars as 'Tigers'. Here's why: during a tour of Morrowind in the earliest days of the Armistace, Tiber Septim became enamored of the beasts. On the mainland, and specifically the Deshaan Plains, Guars are striped. This, coupled with the fact that His Holiness was never able to pronounce 'Guar' correctly (his troubles with the provincial Chimeric tongue is legendary), led to Septim finally callings them 'Tigers', from a fabled recollection of a storybook beast he loved as a youth. The new name stuck. Even now, Dres slavers often refer to their cattle-Guar as Tigers."

Where'd that text come from? Something from ESO? As far as tigers are concerned, there are a lot of sources that half-hint at something odd going on with them. They seems to have a connection with the Ayleid, and some texts ascribe them dominance or special power over the jungle. Tigers have been somewhat on my mind in regards to the Nibenay, but I'm not as yet sure how we could utilize those fragments of lore.

The farthest back I can find it dates to 2005 It's attributed to Kirkbride.

Why would the xenophobic Dres give a crap about what some filthy n'wah "emperor" called their guar?

Otherwise, it's a neat text.

One (admittedly somewhat bizarre) thing I would love to do with tigers is present them as a kind of et'Ada, supernatural spirits akin to dragons, but with a fundamentally different perspective. Where dragons are domineering, tyrannical spirits who chose the side of Man and the Endeavour in the Beginning, Tigers could be presented as an Elven-aligned kind of supernatural spirits, with a natural inclination to tricks, deceit, and jungle law. A physical manifestation of the jungle as it exists within the minds of the Imperials,somewhat.

Read The Water-getting Girl and the Inverse Tiger to know what this is all about.

I've been thinking along those same lines lately.

Yeti wrote:Why would the xenophobic Dres give a crap about what some filthy n'wah "emperor" called their guar?

Maybe specifically because of that.

Infragris wrote:One (admittedly somewhat bizarre) thing I would love to do with tigers is present them as a kind of et'Ada, supernatural spirits akin to dragons, but with a fundamentally different perspective. Where dragons are domineering, tyrannical spirits who chose the side of Man and the Endeavour in the Beginning, Tigers could be presented as an Elven-aligned kind of supernatural spirits, with a natural inclination to tricks, deceit, and jungle law. A physical manifestation of the jungle as it exists within the minds of the Imperials,somewhat.

Read The Water-getting Girl and the Inverse Tiger to know what this is all about.

Can we tie this into Tsaesci influence on the Imperial culture as well, I wonder?

Tosh Raka? Hadn;t thought of that yet. I guess the Tsaeci wouldn't be too pleased to find tigers in Tamriel as well.

Actually, you know what? Tigers are dragons. Tout court. Lots of hints and suchlike in the background, I think we're legit to have striped wingless dragons in the dread greenery of the Nibenay.

i have an eastern dragon model that i can remesh for this. assuming someone would be up for texturing it

Sorry, I should restate that: tigers are dragons, in the shape of tigers. What I'm trying to say is that we have the opportunity of presenting tigers as fundamentally the same mythical creatures as Skyrim's dragons in terms of powers and personality. It's something that has been hinted at multiple times, but yesterday I came across this little tidbit:

Lord Akatosh wears both a dragon's face and a human's to symbolize the Covenant with the Empire of Man, that covenant made between the Divine and St. Alessia when the humanity of Cyrodiil was freed from the Elves. And the linguists will tell you that, to the Nedes, 'Tosh' means not just 'Dragon,' but also (depending on usage or placement) either 'Tiger' or 'Time.' Thus: Akatosh the Time Dragon.

shit sorry man. thoughts on tigers not necessarily needing to use the voice to fit kurts idea of dragons being 'biological time machines powered by ideologies'?

They shouldn't use Thu'um, since that's such a Nordic thing, but I do think they should have some kind of voice-related power - perhaps some kind of extreme power of persuasion or hypnotism, as the Water-Getting Girl seems to imply they have something like that.

That quote is perfect, by the way. In this case, these Tigers would be similar spirits to dragons, but powered by a different ideology - which means a radically different appearance and personality.

"The trouble with tigers isn't that they'll rip your throat out. It's that they'll convince you to do it yourself." -Nibenese proverb

Now that I'm thinking about the Abecean Longfin and how it could appear in-game, I'm feeling that it would be odd to have this as the only fish species in the Abecean Sea next to the vanilla slaughter fish. I think it would be much better to mix things up and have the longfin as a speciality between a number of other species. I'm thinking that the orangeback slaughterfish could still get added in as another local fish species with slightly changed proportions (thinner mouth?) and changed texture (and perhaps keep it references in dialogue as well?).

Some of Caits fish species might be relevant, too.
http://mw.modhistory.com/download-55-2590

I can't decide, if a retextured slaughterfish would really pose an enrichment for the sea life of the Abecean Sea. We do have the Moon Crab that is a retex of a rather iconic vanilla creature and now the retextured ghosts. I don't want retextured vanilla duplicates to be a predominant feature of the mod, so people won't think: Oh hey another retextured vanilla creature! Why didn't they just use the original?

What I definitely want to do is adding the fish that we have as static objects in PC_Data as generic fish creatures to accompany the Longfin. For that purpose I'm going to retex and slightly reshape them. I'll probably give them the same animation the longfin now has or alternatively the animation of Caits fish (the TR animation is hideous, unfortunately) or I'll decide on a case by case basis. TR also have got a Sea Crab that was made by Dirnae at some point. It is quite well-animated but not necessarily a typical morrowind creature. It has got both a walking and a swimming animation, so it might be able to walk around the beach as a more classical crab creature (in TR_Data it is a pure water creature, if I'm not mistaken).

The tiny crab creatures from Caits collection, while odd-looking on close-up, are even more suitable to give beaches a marine flavour. We don't have noteworthy hostile sea creatures apart from the Lamia at the moment. In theory it would be great to have something more remarkable (an additional fantasy creature) that you could encounter in the big body of water between the Gold Coast and Stirk, but I would be overstretching myself with that at the moment. I'm happy that I've been able to pull off those three creatures that quickly.

For the Mooncrab, I was thinking that we could do a slight mesh edit of the shell, just to change the silhouette up a little. It shouldn't be too difficult to make it a little flatter or give it a more prominent ridge or something. We can also mess with the scale of the creature in the editor. In theory, we could also do something like that for the ghosts by making their cowl more pronounced or placing a veil in front of the skull or something - though that's not really necessary if the retex is good enough.

Animating the dead fish objects is a really good idea - how many types of fish will we get out of them, in your opinion?

Editing the ghost model in Blender doesn't seem to be that easy and I don't think it is necessary. I'm happy enough about the retex myself. I'm only generally worried about a predominant appearance of retextured vanilla creatures, especially if they are very much morrowind-style like the MW-Mud Crab. I'm mostly thinking about the combination of a retextured slaughterfish and the moon crab together making the marine flora look like a vanilla reskin.

The static fish, when animated will result in three types of fish, one of which I would like to fashion into a slim, silver-colored species with forked fins.

As for the Moon Crab and a couple of other models in PC_Data we'll have to speak to the openmw people about support for the environmental effect. Last time I checked they didn't support environmental effects the same way the vanilla engine does. A number of objects in Data might look radically different. But we should definitely look into maximum compatibility with openmw, especially as they have the expanding world map and removed the float inaccuracy for objects far away from 0,0 (implemented in their recent port to osg). Check this.

Also they currently don't support creatures emitting light when a non-carriable lightsource has been put into inventory (needed for the Velkynd Spirit).

Have you seen PeterBitt's Nix-Hound update? It has different versions for normal Morrowind and OpenMW, designed to take advantage of the new engine's functionality. Might be worthwhile to compare the two versions.

Concerning tigers: this is kinda what I'm talking about. Note parts of this comic are a little nsfw.

Hey, I've been interested in the project for a while, but this is my first post here. I've been working on a sort of concept inspired by the idea of the Petty Troll and thought I should post it here:

I started from references of Indian monkeys and added in Cyrodiilic troll features, I'm not sure if it would be better to give them a heavier coat like the bigger trolls or not though. I'm imagining them making the strange moaning sounds that Oblivion trolls made, but with less of a roar. Feel free to criticize.

That is nicely done. I'm not sure a bigger coat would be needed - a kind of ruff around the collar, maybe. We'll have to take our clues from the troll creature once that one is made. But both creatures are jungle-bound, so not an immediate priority.

Nice, pretty similar to the one I made although yours is a little fiercer looking haha. Mine was based off a lemur which is a pretty dopey-looking creature


For our trolls, do we want to primarily go off of the simian design of Skyrim and/or Oblivion or something more alien? MK's trollbone helm concept art makes them resemble spiders almost, and even in Oblivion they had insectoid eyes.