Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Locked thread
The Protagonist
Jun 29, 2009

The average is 5.5? I thought it was 4. This is very unsettling.

Phrasing posted:

Stuff like this reminds me how much I want the next Elder Scrolls game to go to the Black Marsh.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels this way. There's some crazy ingame books about their whole subterranean worm transportation system and a bunch of stuff that just reads like an ayahuasca trip, and I really like to imagine a deep jungle with multilevel treehouse cities, ancient vine-choked ruins, and going totally vietcong on some slaver chumps but...

...it'll never happen :smith:

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

PhantomBowie
Sep 3, 2009

"I always had a repulsive need to be something more than human."
Speaking of in game books, is there some sort of way to read them without playing? Did someone retype them, maybe their format isn't too far off from text file, etc?

Top Bunk Wanker
Jan 31, 2005

Top Trump Anger

Phrasing posted:

Stuff like this reminds me how much I want the next Elder Scrolls game to go to the Black Marsh. Skyrim was gorgeous but we're overdue for another alien landscape. Oh wait, the next Elder Scrolls game is the MMO. Shucks.

Any future Elder Scrolls's Black Marsh will bear very little resemblance to the one that's been described in the books up until now.

Guildenstern Mother
Mar 31, 2010

Why walk when you can ride?
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Library

Error 404
Jul 17, 2009


MAGE CURES PLOT

PhantomBowie posted:

Speaking of in game books, is there some sort of way to read them without playing? Did someone retype them, maybe their format isn't too far off from text file, etc?


It's online
Or for your phone. (if you have Android like I do)

efb, but I also included the phone app. :colbert:

The Protagonist
Jun 29, 2009

The average is 5.5? I thought it was 4. This is very unsettling.
The Argonian Account: Book 3

Decumus Scotti was supposed to be in Gideon, a thoroughly Imperialized city in southern Black Marsh, arranging business dealings to improve commerce in the province on behalf of Lord Vanech's Building Commission and its clients. Instead, he was in a half-submerged, rotten little village called Hixinoag, where he knew no one. Except for a drug smuggler named Chaero Gemullus.

Gemullus was not at all perturbed that the merchant caravan had gone north instead of south. He even let Scotti share his bucket of trodh, tiny little crunchy fish, he had bought from the villagers. Scotti would have preferred them cooked, or at any rate, dead, but Gemullus blithely explained that dead, cooked trodh are deadly poison.

"If I were where I was supposed to be," Scotti pouted, putting one of the wriggling little creatures in his mouth. "I could be having a roast, and some cheese, and a glass of wine."

"I sell moon sugar in the north, and buy it in the south," he shrugged. "You have to be more flexible, my friend."
"My only business is in Gideon," Scotti frowned.

"Well, you have a couple choices," replied the smuggler. "You could just stay here. Most villages in Argonia don't stay put for very long, and there's a good chance Hixinoag will drift right down to the gates of Gideon. Might take you a month or two. Probably the easiest way."
"That'd put me far behind schedule."

"Next option, you could join up with the caravan again," said Gemullus. "They might be going in the right direction this time, and they might not get stuck in the mud, and they might not be all murdered by Naga highwaymen."
"Not tempting," Scotti frowned. "Any other ideas?"
"Ride the roots. The underground express," Gemullus grinned. "Follow me."

Scotti followed Gemullus out of the village and into a copse of trees shrouded by veils of wispy moss. The smuggler kept his eye on the ground, poking at the viscuous [sic] mud intermittently. Finally he found a spot which triggered a mass of big oily bubbles to rise to the surface.

"Perfect," he said. "Now, the important thing is not to panic. The express will take you due south, that's the wintertide migration, and you'll know you're near Gideon when you see a lot of red clay. Just don't panic, and when you see a mass of bubbles, that's a breathing hole you can use to get out."

Scotti looked at Gemullus blankly. The man was talking perfect gibberish. "What?"
Gemullus took Scotti by the shoulder and positioning him on top of the mass of bubbles. "You stand right here …"
Scotti sank quickly into the mud, staring at the smuggler, horror-struck.

"And remember to wait 'til you see the red clay, and then the next time you see bubbles, push up …"
The more Scotti wriggled to get free, the faster he sunk. The mud enveloped Scotti to his neck, and he continued staring, unable to articulate anything but a noise like "Oog."

"And don't panic at the idea that you're being digested. You could live in a rootworm's belly for months."
Scotti took one last panicked gasp of air and closed his eyes before he disappeared into the mud.

The clerk felt a warmth he hadn't expected all around him. When he opened his eyes, he found that he was entirely surrounded by a translucent goo, and was traveling rapidly forward, southward, gliding through the mud as if it were air, skipping along an intricate network of roots. Scotti felt confusion and euphoria in equal measures, madly rushing forward through an alien environment of darkness, spinning around and over the thick fibrous tentacles of the trees. It was if he were high in the sky at midnight, not deep beneath the swamp in the Underground Express.

Looking up slightly at the massive root structure above, Scotti saw something wriggle past. A eight-foot-long, armless, legless, colorless, boneless, eyeless, nearly shapeless creature, riding the roots. Something dark was inside of it, and as it came closer, Scotti could see it was an Argonian man. He waved, and the disgusting creature the Argonian was in flattened slightly and rushed onward.
Gemullus's words began to reappear in Scotti's mind at this sight. "The wintertide migration," "air hole," "you're being digested," -- these were the phrases that danced around as if trying to find some place to live in a brain which was highly resistant to them coming in. But there was no other way to look at the situation. Scotti had gone from eating living fish to being eaten alive as a way of transport. He was in one of those worms.

Scotti made an executive decision to faint.

He awoke in stages, having a beautiful dream of being held in a woman's warm embrace. Smiling and opening his eyes, the reality of where he really was rushed over him.

The creature was still rushing madly, blindly forward, gliding over roots, but it was no longer like a flight through the night sky. Now it was like the sky at sunrise, in pinks and reds. Scotti remembered Gemullus telling him to look for the red clay, and he would be near Gideon. The next thing he had to find was the bubbles.

There were no bubbles anywhere. Though the inside of the worm was still warm and comfortable, Scotti felt the weight of the earth all around him. "Just don't panic" Gemullus had said, but it was one thing to hear that advice, and quite another to take it. He began to squirm, and the creature began to move faster at the increased pressure from within.

Suddenly, Scotti saw it ahead of him, a slim spire of bubbles rising up through the mud from some underground stream, straight up, through the roots to the surface above him. The moment the rootworm went through it, Scotti pushed with all of his might upward, bursting through the creature's thin skin. The bubbles pushed Scotti up quickly, and before he could blink, he was popping out of the red slushy mud.
Two gray Argonians were standing under a tree nearby, holding a net. They looked in Scotti's direction with polite curiosity. In their net, Scotti noticed, were several squirming furry rat-like creatures. While he addressed them, another fell out of the tree. Though Scotti had not been educated in this practice, he recognized fishing when he saw it.

"Excuse me, lads," Scotti said jovially. "I was wondering if you'd point me in the direction of Gideon?"
The Argonians introduced themselves as Drawing-Flame and Furl-Of-Fresh-Leaves, and looked at one another, puzzling over the question.
"Who you seek?" asked Furl-of-Fresh-Leaves.

"I believe his name is," said Scotti, trying to remember the contents of his long gone file of Black Marsh contacts in Gideon. "Archein Right-Foot … Rock?"

Drawing-Flame nodded, "For five gold, show you way. Just east. Is plantation east of Gideon. Very nice."

Scotti thought that the best business he had heard of in two days, and handed Drawing-Flames the five septims.

The Argonians led Scotti onto a muddy ribbon of road that passed through the reeds, and soon revealed the bright blue expanse of Topal Bay far to the west. Scotti looked around at the magnificent walled estates, where bright crimson blossoms sprang forth from the very dirt of the walls, and surprised himself by thinking, "This is very pretty."

The road ran parallel to a fast-moving stream, running eastward from Topal Bay. It was called the Onkobra River, he was told. It ran deep into Black Marsh, to the very dark heart of the province.

Peeking past the gates to the plantations east of Gideon, Scotti saw that few of the fields were tended. Most had rotten crops from harvests past still clinging to wilted vines, orchards of desolate, leafless trees. The Argonian serfs who worked the fields were thin, weak, near death, more like haunting spirits than creatures of life and reason.

Two hours later, as the three continued their trudge east, the estates were still impressive at least from a distance, the road was still solid if weedy, but Scotti was irritated, horrified by the field workers and the agricultural state, and no longer charitable towards the area. "How much further?"

Furl-of-Fresh-Leaves and Drawing-Flame looked at one another, as if that question was something that hadn't occurred to them.
"Archein is east?" Furl-of-Fresh-Leaves pondered. "Near or far?"

Drawing-Flame shrugged noncommittally, and said to Scotti, "For five gold, show you way. Just east. Is plantation. Very nice."
"You don't have any idea, do you?" Scotti cried. "Why couldn't you tell me that in the first place when I might have asked someone else?"
Around the bend up ahead, there was the sound of hoofbeats. A horse coming closer.

Scotti began to walk towards the sound to hail the rider, and didn't see Drawing-Flame's taloned claws flash out and cast the spell at him. He felt it though. A kiss of ice along his spine, the muscles along his arms and legs suddenly immobile as if wrapped in rigid steel. He was paralyzed.

The great curse of paralysis, as the reader may be unfortunate enough to know, is that you continue to see and think even though your body does not respond. The thought that went through Scotti's mind was, "drat."

For Drawing-Flame and Furl-of-Fresh-Leaves were, of course, like most simple day laborers in Black Marsh, accomplished Illusionists. And no friend of the Imperial.

The Argonians shoved Decumus Scotti to the side of the road, just as the horse and rider came around the corner. He was an impressive figure, a nobleman in a flashing dark green cloak the exact same color as his scaled skin, and a frilled hood that was part of his flesh and sat upon his head like a horned crown.

"Greetings, brothers!" the rider said to the two.

"Greetings, Archein Right-Foot-Rock," they responded, and then Furl-of-Fresh-Leaves added. "What is milord's business on this fine day?"
"No rest, no rest," the Archein sighed regally. "One of my she-workers gave birth to twins. Twins! Fortunately, there's a good trader in town for those, and she didn't put up too much of a fuss. And then there's a fool of an Imperial from Lord Vanech's Building Commission I am supposed to meet with in Gideon. I'm sure he'll want the grand tour before he opens up the treasury for me. Such a lot of fuss."
Drawing-Flame and Furl-of-Fresh-Leaves sympathesized [sic], and then, as Archein Right-Foot-Rock rode off, they went to look for their hostage.

Unfortunately for them, gravity being the same in Black Marsh as elsewhere in Tamriel, their hostage, Decumus Scotti, had continued to roll down from where they left him, and was, at that moment, in the Onkobra River, drowning.

Pumprag
Jan 29, 2013

Top Bunk Wanker posted:

Any future Elder Scrolls's Black Marsh will bear very little resemblance to the one that's been described in the books up until now.

Yeah.
Reminder that this is TES now:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2lQ2Vin4Vs

PhantomBowie
Sep 3, 2009

"I always had a repulsive need to be something more than human."


Awesome!
And there goes even more free time...

Pretty good
Apr 16, 2007



http://www.imperial-library.info/ is superior, in my opinion, which is personal.

Although it's down right now I think

Cantorsdust
Aug 10, 2008

Infinitely many points, but zero length.
Speaking of lore:

The Thirty-Six Lessons of Vivec: Sermon Twenty-Three

The Scripture of the Sword, First:

'The sword, treated as a delicate meal, is the Symbolic Collage. It serves you well in the first half of life. Name one dynasty that knows this not.'

Second:

'The unity of my approach is understood by the immobile warrior. True eyes are acquired. Rejoice as my own subjects and realms. I build for you a city of swords, by which I mean laws that cut the people who live there into better shapes.'

Third:

'Girls burn their dresses on my arrival if I am armored. They crawl to me as bled pilgrims. Minor spirits die without trace. Follow me of all the ALMSIVI if you are to mark your days with killing. AE ALTADOON, the third law of weaponry.'

Fourth:

'The immobile warrior is never fatigued. He cuts sleep holes in the middle of a battle to regain his strength.'

Fifth:

'Instinct is not reflex action, but mini-miracles held in reserve. I am the welfare that decides which warrior will emerge. Beg not for luck. Serve me to win.'

Sixth:

'The span of the apparently inactivated is your love of the absolute. The birth of God from the netchiman's wife is the abortion of kindness from love.'

Seventh:

'The true sword is able to cut chains of generations, which is to say, the creation myths of your enemies. Look on me as the exiled garden. All else is uncut weed.'

Eighth:

'I give you an ancient road tempered by the second walking way. Your hands must be huge to wield any sword the size of an ancient road, and yet he who is of right stature may irritate the sun with only a stick.'

The ending of the words is ALMSIVI.

Pretty good
Apr 16, 2007



iirc whenever Vivec says "walking way" he means one of the ways people can achieve apotheosis/enlightenment/whatever. CHIM is one of them, mantling a god is another. Talos did both because he owns. Not sure about the others, I think there are six of em though

Prism Mirror Lens
Oct 9, 2012

~*"The most intelligent and meaning-rich film he could think of was Shaun of the Dead, I don't think either brain is going to absorb anything you post."*~




:chord:
Something good that reddit pointed out about the Sermons: repeated references are made to the Sharmat (Dagoth Ur) being in the 'center' or 'core' (of the wheel), and being a 'false dreamer'. When the wheel is turned sideways one sees "I" and achieves CHIM by realising I ARE ALL WE, we are all being dreamed by the godhead but still I AM. But one can only do this from the outside of the wheel; the Sharmat, dancing in the core, also sees the wheel as the I, but falsely believes that he is the dreamer. He has a kind of hosed up CHIM.

quote:

'There is no true symbolism of the center. The Sharmat will believe there is. He will feel that he can cause years of exuberance from sitting in the sacred, when really no one can leave that state and cause anything more but strife.

...

'The Sharmat sleeps at the center. He cannot bear to see it removed, the world of reference. This is the folly of the false dreamer. This is the amnesia of dream, or its power, or its circumvention. This is the weaker magic and it is barbed in venom.

Lore is cool

Cantorsdust
Aug 10, 2008

Infinitely many points, but zero length.

Cantorsdust posted:

Eighth:

'I give you an ancient road tempered by the second walking way. Your hands must be huge to wield any sword the size of an ancient road, and yet he who is of right stature may irritate the sun with only a stick.'

The ending of the words is ALMSIVI.

It's been said that the Sermons of Vivec are Vivec's message to the Nerevarine, not necessarily Vivec's tutelage of Nerevar himself. This line here pretty much says that "it's supremely hard to mantle a god, but the right person in the right place (say the player character born at the right time and sent to Morrowind) might find their job significantly easier."

I wonder how much Uriel Septim knew what he was doing when he sent the PC to Morrowind. Caius says the Emperor just wants a convincing fake of the Nerevarine, but Uriel forsaw a lot of things, including his own death.

Pretty good
Apr 16, 2007



Caius Cosades is a geriatric skag fiend.

omg chael crash
Jul 8, 2012

Macys paid for this. Noodle Boy and Bonby are bad at video games and even worse friends.


Yo guys, I'm downloading the "Morrowind Overhaul - Sounds and Graphics 3.0" or some silly nonsense. What else do I know? Something easy to install?

Shoehead
Sep 28, 2005

Wassup, Choom?
Ya need sumthin'?

Cantorsdust posted:

It's been said that the Sermons of Vivec are Vivec's message to the Nerevarine, not necessarily Vivec's tutelage of Nerevar himself. This line here pretty much says that "it's supremely hard to mantle a god, but the right person in the right place (say the player character born at the right time and sent to Morrowind) might find their job significantly easier."

I wonder how much Uriel Septim knew what he was doing when he sent the PC to Morrowind. Caius says the Emperor just wants a convincing fake of the Nerevarine, but Uriel forsaw a lot of things, including his own death.

Someone mentioned earlier how belief on Nirn can make things real, so I think it's more a case that as you start ticking off the boxes more and more people come to believe that you are the Nerevarine, it eventually MAKES you the Nerevarine, and probably has some weird feedback loop which makes you more likely to tick those boxes as well, who knows?

Also I like that line about cutting sleep holes in battle, it's just opening you inventory :3:

Lunchmeat Larry
Nov 3, 2012

walk like them until they must walk like u

Shoehead
Sep 28, 2005

Wassup, Choom?
Ya need sumthin'?
Fake it 'til you make it.

The ending of the words is ALMSIVI.

Pwnstar
Dec 9, 2007

Who wants some waffles?

Welcome, Moon-and-Star, to the place of destiny...

Come to me, through fire and war. I welcome you.

Medieval Medic
Sep 8, 2011
It is really dumb, but last week(nearly a decade since I first played Morrowind), it hit me what ALMSIVI stands for. Almalexia Sotha Sil Vivec. :doh:

Shoehead
Sep 28, 2005

Wassup, Choom?
Ya need sumthin'?

Medieval Medic posted:

It is really dumb, but last week(nearly a decade since I first played Morrowind), it hit me what ALMSIVI stands for. Almalexia Sotha Sil Vivec. :doh:

:psyduck: Well poo poo

DEEP STATE PLOT
Aug 13, 2008

Yes...Ha ha ha...YES!



Medieval Medic posted:

It is really dumb, but last week(nearly a decade since I first played Morrowind), it hit me what ALMSIVI stands for. Almalexia Sotha Sil Vivec. :doh:

WHAT THE gently caress

TacticalUrbanHomo
Aug 17, 2011

by Lowtax

Medieval Medic posted:

It is really dumb, but last week(nearly a decade since I first played Morrowind), it hit me what ALMSIVI stands for. Almalexia Sotha Sil Vivec. :doh:

holy poo poo

on an unrelated note, my tribunal devotee monk is only level 8, but his hand-to-hand skill is at 97. I decided to pick a fight with Krazzt during the pilgrimage of courtesy (Where you have to speak to a dremora bound beneath Vivec's palace and give him a silver longsword as a gift) and smoked him with no problem, so I'm thinking I'm going to try my luck at clearing out some daedric ruins with my holy fists of fury.

although, my unarmoured skill is only at 41 (because I usually knock things out before they can land more than one or two blows) and I've got a fairly large pile of gold saved up so maybe I should invest in that first

TacticalUrbanHomo fucked around with this message at 15:05 on Feb 20, 2014

Abysswalker
Apr 25, 2013

well you got me to reinstall morrowind, thanks a lot fuckers

TacticalUrbanHomo
Aug 17, 2011

by Lowtax
one thing (possibly the only thing) Skyrim indisputably does better than Morrowind, graphics notwithstanding, is stealth gameplay, goddamn I wish there was a way to mod Morrowind to be more like that in that one single way

Prism Mirror Lens
Oct 9, 2012

~*"The most intelligent and meaning-rich film he could think of was Shaun of the Dead, I don't think either brain is going to absorb anything you post."*~




:chord:
^^ look at all these fuckin' outlander s'wits not being able to piece together ALMSIVI :lol:

I would like to strenuously retract my comments earlier in the thread about LGNPC. Shoulda named it More Rapey NPCs. The Seyda Neen stuff is good but everything outside of that is like Morrowind as written by Ryan Sohmer. LICDNPC

Red Mundus
Oct 22, 2010
God drat, I really need to read The Argonian Accounts. Looks badass.

frank.club
Jan 15, 2011

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS
Alright so I'm in this dudes ancestral tomb looking for some sword when this skeleton bro hits me with a magic arrow that freezes me in place and plinks them at me until I do.
Is it acceptable to be only level 8 or so at this point?

The Protagonist
Jun 29, 2009

The average is 5.5? I thought it was 4. This is very unsettling.

Red Mundus posted:

God drat, I really need to read The Argonian Accounts. Looks badass.
Yeah just power through all four, it's a quick read, of one continuous story of a guy literally inheriting the Argonian Trade Account, and his solution to the myriad of problems the province suffers ends up being to embezzle all the development money and just let Black Marsh be Black Marsh :v:

Elmo Oxygen
Jun 11, 2007

Kazuo Misaki Superfan #3

Don't make me lift my knee, young man.

Prism Mirror Lens posted:

The Seyda Neen stuff is good but everything outside of that is like Morrowind as written by Ryan Sohmer. LICDNPC

IIRC Seyda Neen was done by a different guy a year or two before the LGNPC project really took off.

Mel Mudkiper
Jan 19, 2012

At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Prism Mirror Lens posted:

^^ look at all these fuckin' outlander s'wits not being able to piece together ALMSIVI :lol:

Inexplicable Humblebrag
Sep 20, 2003

Red Mundus posted:

God drat, I really need to read The Argonian Accounts. Looks badass.

decimus scotti owns

Gobblecoque
Sep 6, 2011

Medieval Medic posted:

It is really dumb, but last week(nearly a decade since I first played Morrowind), it hit me what ALMSIVI stands for. Almalexia Sotha Sil Vivec. :doh:

:stare:

Georgia Peach
Jan 7, 2005

SECESSION IS FUTILE

Prism Mirror Lens posted:

^^ look at all these fuckin' outlander s'wits not being able to piece together ALMSIVI :lol:

01011001
Dec 26, 2012

Prism Mirror Lens posted:

^^ look at all these fuckin' outlander s'wits not being able to piece together ALMSIVI :lol:

pretty sure they explicitly say it at some point too?

like i paid half attention to lore and i knew it so it cant be that non obvious

Pretty good
Apr 16, 2007



Morrowind concept art is excellent

First image related to Morrowind ever released, from around december 1998.


"Vivec's birthday"


Puzzle canal


Vivec city (there's a mod to make the cantons open-top like this and it owns)


Balmora


Ald'ruhn


Sload!


Dwemer


Character art









this one's my favourite


More here and here.

DEEP STATE PLOT
Aug 13, 2008

Yes...Ha ha ha...YES!



Mammal Sauce posted:

Vivec city (there's a mod to make the cantons open-top like this and it owns)


I knew Vivec had to have been originally designed with open-top cantons. I can only assume they changed it because it made the game run like poo poo.

Crewmine
Apr 26, 2012


p certain this isnt official but hell yeah Redoran

Cantorsdust
Aug 10, 2008

Infinitely many points, but zero length.

Cannot Find Server posted:

I knew Vivec had to have been originally designed with open-top cantons. I can only assume they changed it because it made the game run like poo poo.

I'm running MGSO on mostly moderate settings + Distant Land and with a modern computer I still get FPS in the 20s in Vivec.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

hailthefish
Oct 24, 2010

Prism Mirror Lens posted:

^^ look at all these fuckin' outlander s'wits not being able to piece together ALMSIVI :lol:

God I didn't even read half the dialog going through the main quest and basically none of the other lore and I still figured it out.

  • Locked thread