Malekna Forest (An Attempt at Organizing TLDR)

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Iskuss1418
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Malekna Forest (An Attempt at Organizing TLDR)

Post by Iskuss1418 »

Image

KIng Dead Wolf Deer (viewtopic.php?f=155&t=1056) will reside in Malekna Forest.

ThomasRuz: “Malekna Forest will have huge spiders, mushrooms, low hanging fog, probably undead or other creatures.”

Roerich added that it could use more development in order to make it more interesting.

To which ThomasRuz said that they could expand on Occult and Druidic influences that are present in Malekna.

Saint Jiub: “Dark/dense is good, I just don't think we need to overstate it with like fog effects and spooky scary skeletons. The fact that the player is fighting an immortal pissed off wolf god is going to be creepy enough. Karstaag Castle is a good model for his lair I think - hints of nobility buried under dirt and blood and raw primal savagery. Maybe some markers for the edge of his territory - wolf skulls on stakes and like wooden wind chimes or something. Have activator sounds for birds chirping, boars snuffling, etc. in the areas around the forest, and then have those sounds completely drop off once you cross that threshold.”

It was decided that Malekna Forest doesn’t need undead, as The Crypt of Hearts already fills that criteria.

Saint Jiub wondered if these could work as border markers for dangerous territory in the forest:
Image
Saint Jiub: Border markers for KDWD's territory? You hear the sticks clattering together before you see it, so you have some warning that you're getting close. Really, these would probably be useful for denoting any particularly dangerous territory (witch covens, druid enclaves, etc).

Miraclestone: “The two most important things about the zone are the crypt and KDWD. Since it's so small in cells, the focus will undoubtedly have to be on them with minor elements on other themes. There is also most likely something about the area that made it suitable/required for both the crypt and KDWD, they may be connected. We'll have to figure out why KDWD doesn't mess with the knights of the heart too.”

Miraclestone: “The Knights of the Heart haven’t really been in the forest since the The War of the Bend'r-mahk, because of the spread of shadow magic causing them to lose control over the crypt. But we'd still need to answer how/why the knights/covens were able to co-exist for so long with KDWD.
Just throwing out an idea but maybe there is something about the forest that sedates those within it. The races of old buried their dead there because they had issues with angry dead in most of the other parts of High Rock but not in Malekna Forest. That’s why the crypt was created, because it was a perfect spot to store the dead so they wouldn’t return. And maybe this is also why KDWD has stayed there so long, because on a subconscious level it is calming KDWD and keeping it stationary. KDWD is still mad/crazied enough to kill anything that comes near it but not driven enough to leave its part of the forest and cause destruction in HR.”
Last edited by Iskuss1418 on Sun Oct 22, 2017 4:33 am, edited 4 times in total.

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Post by Iskuss1418 »

Y'ffre will have woodland shrines in Malekna Forest.

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Post by Iskuss1418 »

https://imgur.com/a/sV7Sw Malekna Forrest Inspiration

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Post by Iskuss1418 »

Roerich pointed out that the name for Malekna forest did not fit HR in his opinion, lacking the 'gaelic' ring as he put it. He suggested that Malekna might be changed to Malecnar instead. R-Zero admitted that since the region was taken from TES:II as an unplaced region, it could have easily been in Hammerfell. It was discussed whether it should be moved to the Hammerfell designs Infragris has been working on but the conclusion seems to be that dropping the k for a c would be fine for HR. Thomas wanted to make sure that Malecna Forest would be a misty place.

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Post by Iskuss1418 »

Inspiration for Malekna spiders(super-sized black widows):
Image
Malekna spiders as large as a large dog(Great Dane).

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Post by Iskuss1418 »

ThomasRuz: Forest/Swamp mix, Continuous rainfall sometimes with sleet, misty, pretty much windstill, slight breezes that wave the branches around so to speak.

Lympan March Vs. Malekna Forest Debate:
Spoiler
Roerich and R-Zero:
"so I was thinking, could the Lympan March be an actual location in HR now?... something that washed up there because of y'ffre connections"(edited)
"Lympan March showing up in the middle of High Rock isn't even the weirdest recent occurrence in this ancient province. But the antlered monstrosity called King Dead Wolf Deer is certainly among the more grotesque beings to stalk these lands."

Saint Jiub: So Malekna is still doing its thing but you also have a Valenwood forest that popped up in the middle of HR
Either the Lympan March is in Valenwood because of timey-wimey spacey-wacey Y'ffre shenanigans, or KDWD is in the Malekna forest because of reasons.

R-Zero was proposing that Lympan March, the location from Valenwood that KDWD originally stalked, has mysteriously appeared in High Rock. He proposed that this was somehow due to the shared Y'ffre connection, though we could really blame it on Numidium too if we want. Like maybe it got dislodged from space/time around the siege of Alinor, and reappeared during the second activation of Numidium.

Iskuss: I'm against doing the weird time-space stuff and putting a piece of Valenwood in High Rock because I think High Rock should be itself. High Rock has a lot of interesting aspects to it without having to get weird with space and time. The warp in the west is enough time weirdness for me.

Saint Jiub: On the one hand, I think it would provide a very cool counterpoint to the forests and environments of High Rock, and allow us to inject a little Morrowind style weirdness into the environment. Given the absence of Valenwood mods for PT, this would also give players a taste of what the Bosmer homeland has to offer - fulfilling a similar role to the Forgotten Vale in TES V, or Solstheim in TES III. It also gives justification for KDWD being in High Rock at all (I'll get back to you with quotes in a sec Miraclestone), since a monster like that travelling over land without leaving a swathe of destruction in its wake is somewhat questionable (and according to the Trial of Vivec, even a native of High Rock was unaware of who or what KDWD was). I alos don't feel that having some Valenwood weirdness would detract from our High Rock weirdness.
On the other hand, it would be a lot of additional asset work for one area (really, you only need a couple of cells to serve as KDWD's lair) that arguably isn't absolutely necessary, and we all know how I feel about that, and it would require flexing our lore muscles a little more to justify a piece of Valenwood growing in the middle of HR.

Saint Jiub: So the official timeline, such as I can make of it, is that the Wild Hunt began in Cyrodiil in 1E 369, killed Borgas and the Alessians, devoured itself except for a handful of very powerful monsters which made their way back to Valenwood for a time (with KDWD making its lair in the Lympan March), and then sometime in the 3rd Era KDWD made its way up to High Rock, settling in a small patch of forest at the base of the Wrothgarian mountains.
But somehow it did so without making an impression on the Bretons since there's virtually no record of his presence in HR, per the Trial of Vivec. Which to me is a point in favor of it just sort of appearing there one day
Along with the Lympan March

The advantages, as I see it, are twofold: 1) it explains KDWD's presence in High Rock in a very succinct manner - he just appeared there one day along with his entire lair, because of reasons. 2) it gives us a chance to present a very different environment to the rest of High Rock, which would be a fun challenge from a level design standpoint.

Miraclestone: HR needs to stand on its own feet, providing interesting and enjoyable content that is exclusively and unashamedly HIGH ROCK. Lets make KDWD High Rock's, something for the project to be proud of and something that can only be found here. It just seems really unfitting to have one of the biggest end game content pieces to not be tied to the land.

Saint Jiub: Well, I mean, he's a Wild Hunt monster. Culturally and historically, he's not High Rock's.

Roerich: Why KDWD was moved from Valenwood is pretty explicitly stated in PGE2.
Along with the Lympan March being washed away. [By Kynareth]
"The Lympan March was washed away entirely, sliding to whereabouts unknown. Hopefully, the Elder Lord of Teeth and Twenty Antlers will trouble us no more, as there were no recorded survivors."
And then next thing you know he shows up in HR with no one knowing about him

Zinitrad: The PGE2 is really awesome in general but I personally don't consider it very practical to use as a source of information. I actually really prefer the idea of him being weaponized by Haymon and its rampage being ended and averted in High Rock, to the idea of Lympan washed away and just sorta smushed onto High Rock.

ThomasRuz: I know TES has a lot of Timey-wimey stuff that can be toyed around with, but generally in fantasy it is regarded as weak writing
"A solution to everything"
So I rather only have it effect things that had to do with the warp and Numidium
and not connect everything that happened to the warp.
Malekna Forest should still be Malekna forest
But the part where KDWD might have changed by the presence of KDWD
KDWD probably wouldn't have any monsters/beasts in the immediate vicinity, but the abominations that reside in the forest and around are probably attracted to his presence
like the stitched up centaur-look-a-likes.

Roerich: I'd rather keep his appearance in HR unexplained and vague than having it throughoutly explained.
I wouldn't like the Lympan March thing overly explained either.

ThomasRuz: I really don't like that it attributes the disappearance of LM to an intercession by Kynareth. Divine intervention should be virtually nonexistent, especially by the late 3rd era.
That's not how the Aedra roll.
And after talking it out I agree that having the Lympan March present in HR is more trouble than it's worth from a lore perspective.
In Summary: We're still discussing if the Lympan March and KDWD should have been teleported together to High Rock, or if he just moved to Malekna forest. We agreed that in either case, the details should be left vague to protect KDWD's mystique. The advantages to having him be teleported to HR along with Lympan March is that it would explain why nobody knows he's there, and why he didn't leave a trail of destruction. It could also help make the area more interesting by adding elements of Valenwood's alien feel to HR. The disadvantage is that this would require more models and technical work to do. The advantages of having him move to Malekna Forest are that some of us were uncomfortable with the use of Divine Intervention, and that having a piece of Valenwood magically appear in Highrock would feel contrived, and weird for the sake of being weird. The disadvantage is that we would have to figure out how KDWD got to where he was without people learning of his presence.

KDWD's Timeline if He Moved to Malekna Forest:
"So the official timeline, such as I can make of it, is that the Wild Hunt began in Cyrodiil in 1E 369, killed Borgas and the Alessians, devoured itself except for a handful of very powerful monsters which made their way back to Valenwood for a time (with KDWD making its lair in the Lympan March) At approximately the year E3 230, KDWD was enslaved by Camaron Usurper in his bid for conquering Tamriel. With the Empire distracted, Camaron was able to conquor along the west coast up to the Illiac bay with the help of KDWD. The Baron Othrok of Dwynnen lead his army against Camaron and released KDWD with druid magics, placing the thought in his mind to settle in the small patch of forest at the base of the Wrothgarian mountains known as Malekna Forest."

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Post by Marandahir »

Should Malekna Forest make special mention to Malacath? We’ve got a clear name tie: Malek/Malak/Maulach/Mauloch.

And it’s close to the Wrothgarians. Perhaps even a change to something like Malechna Forest would fix the issue above of “not Gaelic-sounding enough.”

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Post by ThomasRuz »

Changing the name slightly might indeed be more beneficial. For now the name seems to have stuck for over a year, so comparatively there is not a big incentive to change it. The majority of the theme of the region is centered around King Dead Wolf Deer, and the Crypt of Hearts, I think that should remain the focus. Though some witches or maybe some cultists wouldn't go amiss.
>This is when ThomasRuz made a new discord channel about maps and the conversation died.

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