Orc Hearthfire, Help me with the story part Options

[ghastley]

I have most of the pieces for adding an Orc Stronghold to the homes the player can build in Hearthfire. It's going to take some time to connect it all up - especially linking all the pieces to the their enable parents, and making the lists of components that drive the scripts, but everything is figured out. The bit that's missing (apart from some of the partial building meshes) is the quest that allows the player to use the plot of land.

In the DLC, the player is granted the right to purchase the land by the Jarl of a hold that has no ready-made home. The only one that doesn't already provide a plot or a house is Winterhold, and that's all heavy snow and ice. The Orc Longhouse comes in regular and light-snow variants, and I didn't feel like adding to the load by making another, so a grant from Winterhold was ruled out. That left me with putting the plot in one of the others, and the need for a different story.

I found a suitable location at the northern side of the central plain, near to Greenspring Hollow. It has iron veins (6) and corundum (2) in reasonable reach, plus 2 clay, and I've found a good spot to add a stone quarry. That puts it in Whiterun's area, and the Jarl there already lets you buy Breezehome. So I need another way for you to get the grant to the Greenspring Longhouse plot.

One idea I have is for the Orc chieftains collectively to reward the player if he/she has done favours for each of the four existing strongholds. The chief of Largashbur gets replaced by the Malacath quest, but that's no different from the Civil War replacing Jarls, and can be accomodated by an appropriate alias. None of them would step down, and let him/her replace them, but letting the player build a new stronghold would advance the Orcish cause in general. This only makes sense for an Orc player character, but I suspect that's what the human playing the game would expect.

The questions remaining are:
Who to pay for the land? It's easier to use the existing scripts if I can keep this part of the process. I'm thinking Whiterun Steward, as it's in their territory.
Adoption? The longhouse is smaller than the other three houses, but you can fit child beds into it. The code allows adopted kids to move to a house that has those, plus their own chest. The counter-argument is that there's no Orc orphans without another mod. On the gripping hand, you don't have to adopt kids of your own race. Since I can control what's put into the house, I can turn adoption on or off by the making of the kids' beds and chest(s).
Should the longhouse recruit other Orcs? DLC houses can add bard and carriage driver, and convert a follower to steward. It may be possible to re-purpose those slots to more Orcish-stronghold "jobs", like shaman or smith.
Multiple marriage? Orc chieftains can have more than one wife. Should building the longhouse give the player the right to extra wives? And what if the PC is female? I'm not sure if this would mean new script, or if "hunts-wife" could just be a replacement for "bard".

This post has been edited by ghastley: Feb 27 2014, 04:14 PM

[King Coin]

Depending on how you set this up, I might be interested in using this mod. Would you have to be an Orc to get it? Does it have walls and outbuildings?

Paying for the land, that would make sense to get it from the steward.

I don’t really use the adoption feature so I don’t care about that much.

I’d like to recruit anyone really to work at my longhouse. Not just orcs.

I’d say extra wives for orcs only. Part of their culture, but not really part of anyone else’s.

[SubRosa]

Since the orc strongholds are autonomous, it seems odd to pay the Whiterun Steward to create a new stronghold. Since the orcs themselves respect strength, I would think they would most respect someone who simply took the initiative and created their own stronghold, and of course had the strength to pull it off. So instead of paying for land, I suggest some quest(s) to take and hold the land. Put some giants there you have to slay, or a den of bandits, etc... Then once construction has begun I suggest a few more defend the stronghold quests from bandit raiders and the like.

I think you may as well keep the adoption feature. People who like it can use it. And it won't matter to people who don't bother with kids.

I suppose one question you need to answer is if this is going to be for only Orc characters. If it is it will limit the usefulness of the mod. But it does make the most sense to me. Why would a Bosmer want to build an Orc Stronghold? Unless you just like the way the buildings look (which I have to say I do).

So here is an idea. Let anyone build an Orc-themed house. But only let an Orc player build an actual stronghold. So then what is the difference between the two? The Orc-themed house would be a standard Hearthfire home, just with Orc meshes and textures rather than the Nord-style building. Everything else would be exactly the same as in HF. The Stronghold would be an all Orc affair. Besides the usual steward, wagon driver, bard, you could implement a script that adds other Orc npcs who just live there, work the mine, the smithy, the potion table, and so on, the same as a regular stronghold. That would also give you an armor/weapon vendor and a potion vendor. It might be simplest to just make two separate mods. One an Orc-themed house that you buy from the Whiterun Steward, one the Stronghold that your Orc character carves from the wilderness all on their own.

On wives, the Orcs are polygamous, but only the Chief. As I understand it he is married to every female Orc in the stronghold (except his children). The other Orc men are not allowed to have wives, or sex as far as I can tell. They basically modeled it after RL lion prides. So I think if it is going to be an actual stronghold, every female NPC in it should be married to the player. If that is the case I suggest putting in some random quests where other male Orcs from the Stronghold challenge the player to a fight to the death for Chiefdom. Not being able to have sex is probably going to make most of them ready to kill sooner or later. Likewise new Orcs can come along to challenge the player as well, just like male lions do in the wild.

If the player is female... Traditionally female Orcs don't run strongholds. But RL has plenty of examples of women who did things that traditionally they weren't supposed to do. A female chief might simply do exactly the same things as a male one, and thusly be married to all the women, and just as before no men ever get to get laid. Or she might really buck tradition and completely change how Stronghold society works. But if that is the case, it seems like less an Orc Stronghold, and more just a village with a lot of Orcs in it. So I would suggest it work the same for a female or male player character.

This post has been edited by SubRosa: Feb 27 2014, 05:43 PM

[ghastley]

I'll take a screenshot or two of the outside tonight and post them. Inside is only half-done, but I may include that. Current plan is for this to be Orc-only, or at least only for players with an Orc spouse. Otherwise, why would the grant be made? And I'm assuming the local Jarl needs paying off in some fashion. In feudal societies, they "own" the hold, and all sub-ownership is at their whim. But the High King "owns" the entire province and grants them their holds in the same way. The Orcs may be semi-autonomous, but they're still in someone else's province, so they need to negotiate terms for expansions.

Construction will go like this (subject to change):
1. Build a small hut - Framing uses Orc full canopy, then add walls, and a door. No foundation, no floor, and result has a dirt floor and does not create an interior space. Completing this puts in bedrolls, and lets you
2. Build the longhouse - in the first cut, this will all go up at once, but I'm putting together meshes for floor, low walls, and roof framing, so it can become a four-stage process, and once the door is added, enable the interior. Unlike the DLC, it's not connected to the first "room", but that appears to be OK.
3. Can now build interior items at workbench inside, and can add outside buildings:
3a. Forge with partial canopies - once this is added, you can add tanning rack, armourer bench, and grindstone
3b. Smelter
3c. Half-canopy for storage
3d. Can also add a cellar to the longhouse - this adds a workbench for cellar content.
4. Complete set of outhouses lets you add a stockade.
5. Stockade lets you add a wooden guard tower.

At some point, the starter hut (which just had a couple of bedrolls in it) will be remodelled as something else - perhaps a smokehouse, with tables and hanging racks for fish/meat. I don't need new script for this as room 1 remodel is already part of the DLC script, with item lists defined separately. The bedrolls would be moved to the cellar, if built.

Most exterior building will need more wood, less clay/stone than regular hearthfire homes. But since the interior is smaller, the total wood usage should balance out. On the interior, you're making items from the Main Hall list only (and probably not all of those). No add-on wings, and the Orc fireplace is there to start with - part of the standard interior mesh. I need to see if I can "build" the spit/pots instead. There are a lot fewer doors, so you won't be making so many locks, and 2 corundum veins are close. I need to make sure there are plenty of chests to use those locks. You won't need as much iron for fittings etc, inside, but nails for the stockade should bring that need back up.

Recruiting arbitrary staff would need new script, but keeping the existing method requires converting a follower to a "steward", so that's not ruled out. Some of the follower mods that allow multiple followers may make it irrelevant, anyway.

This post has been edited by ghastley: Feb 27 2014, 06:01 PM

[Grits]

I like the idea of recruiting other orcs for the orc stronghold. Maybe the player could choose two of their own wives as the Hearthfire spouse and steward, then have the steward-wife (called the forge-wife or whatever) recruit the next two wives in place of the bard and carriage driver.

I would make adoption an option and let the player figure out where they are going to get orc kids or if they are going to adopt humans instead. If they don’t like it they can just not adopt kids.

Of course I would love to have the ability to make an orc-style longhouse as a different race. Maybe a longhouse-lite version rather than a full-blown stronghold, or even allowing the player to play and recruit any race or gender and just deal with the lore-unfriendliness of their decisions.

This is very exciting. Also I love the location you picked.


ETA: Lol. I realize I mixed up my recruiting and plural marriage thoughts.

Another thing while I’m babbling incoherently, if there’s a way to leave the Temple of Mara out of the wedding mechanics, that would be great.


This post has been edited by Grits: Feb 27 2014, 08:37 PM

[King Coin]

I like the way the Orc buildings look, and I like the idea of building a fort that looks like an Orc stronghold, but I'm not actually interested in playing an Orc.

However you set it up, you wound need some way to "earn" the land from Whiterun. Why would the Jarl let you take some of his land without paying for it? Unless you are planning on making all of Whiterun hostile...

[SubRosa]

My thought on that is the Jarl of Whiterun (and every other hold), does not gather their army and try to drive out every group of bandits, necromancers, vampires, and what not who decide to set up shop in their territory. If they are going to just ignore the bandits living in their forts, I don't see why they would bother with someone who is not (presumably!) a lawbreaker building a house. The most they ever do is put out a bounty. Maybe they might do that, and a quest or several quests could revolve around fighting off bounty hunters and then finally squaring things with the Jarl?

This post has been edited by SubRosa: Feb 27 2014, 10:20 PM

[ghastley]

However you set it up, you wound need some way to "earn" the land from Whiterun. Why would the Jarl let you take some of his land without paying for it? Unless you are planning on making all of Whiterun hostile...

That's why I'm currently thinking that you'd pay Whiterun for it, and that the Orc chieftains have negotiated it for you because of your helping them. That avoids me having to write extra quests to get there. Each of the Jarls that gives you a direct grant to allow purchase of house or land wants a number of quests done in their hold, and I'd like to substitute checking the Orc quests, as it seems more appropriate, and justifies the building of an Orc longhouse in particular. I looked into having a longhouse option at each of the three existing sites, but the way the scripts are written prevents them being used that way. I'd have to replace the scripts to do so.

Whiterun is also different from the other holds in that the Jarl's disposition to you is mainly set by the MQ - and you either killed a dragon, or took the city for him in the Civil War. So when the Orcs approach Balgruuf or Vignar, they already like you. You'll get a courier notification that it's happened, no need for anything complex.

And keeping this simple is important for two reasons: I need to finish it, and if it's too complex, there's more opportunity to dislike parts. Leaving out the "Player is an Orc" test meets the simple requirement, and I'll do that, but that opens it up to requests for non-Orcish content, and more complexity. As it is, I'll be using the furnishing list for room 2 - main hall - as much as possible, to avoid extra work. The items built may be Orcish-style, and not match the workbench image at first, but I can replace the tokens' images later.

@SubRosa: The Jarls don't just ignore the bandits etc. They send the player to wipe them out!

This post has been edited by ghastley: Feb 27 2014, 10:32 PM

[Vital]

I love this idea Ghastley! My Orc Shaga would've loved it

One thing to remember that I don't think has been mentioned (sorry if I missed it) is that there is always one elderly female Orc that plays a shaman role in the stronghold. She isn't married to the chief and has quite a lot if influence in the stronghold. Otherwise I think you've got most of it spot on

[Grits]

Story-wise I wonder about rebuilding an old stronghold rather than establishing an entirely new one. There wouldn’t have to be ruined buildings at the site, just the dialog that there had once been a stronghold there. The other strongholds would naturally want their trading partner back, and it would be no surprise that the Jarl of Whiterun would cooperate. Also if you wanted to put some more orc NPCs hanging around in the world they could be scattered tribe members the player could recruit to rebuild their parents’/ancestors’ home. Just a thought.

[ghastley]

I love this idea Ghastley! My Orc Shaga would've loved it

One thing to remember that I don't think has been mentioned (sorry if I missed it) is that there is always one elderly female Orc that plays a shaman role in the stronghold. She isn't married to the chief and has quite a lot if influence in the stronghold. Otherwise I think you've got most of it spot on

The "wise woman" at three of the four strongholds is the chief's mother. Atub at Largashbur is the exception, and it's just possible that she's Yamarz' mother, but doesn't like to admit it.

The player doesn't have a mother available. He might have a mother-in-law, but ...

[ghastley]

Images of build progress.

Bare Site - a little bit of local leveling of the ground was done, but not much - some grass removed.

First the small hut gets built - frame, then walls, then a door.

Next the main longhouse - I'll release the beta with it all built at once, but I'm working on floor, walls, framing meshes to do it in stages. Then the externals, such as the smelter and forge to give this result.

Finally add a stockade and gate tower like so

The forge area - hidden at the back of the other views

Site from the West and North - the latter from on top of a corundum vein. There are four iron ore, one gold, and two clay along the shore of the water. The stone quarry is in the rocks to the left just beyond the gate-tower.

This post has been edited by ghastley: Jun 6 2015, 03:27 PM

[King Coin]

Nice spot for it.

[Grits]

That looks great, ghastley!

[ghastley]

More teaser images, just to show at least some progress.

The book on housebuilding that's normally on the carpenter's workbench describes the standard house so I had to replace it.

It contains sketches of the rooms/buildings you can construct, so here's the first one. Making that page from NifSkope screenshots took a whole morning. Progress is slow, if steady. Hopefully, now I know how, the next one will be quicker.

This post has been edited by ghastley: Jun 6 2015, 03:28 PM

[SubRosa]

Looking very good. A guide to Strongholding!

[Grits]

Looks great! That’s enough to give a homeless orc adventurer hope.

[Vital]

Looking great Ghastley!

I have this image in my mind of a huge, battle-axe wielding, Orc chieftain trying to decipher the cyrodiilic in the guide to strongholding

[ghastley]

I thought that building the building was slow enough in Hearthfires, what with collecting all the iron ingots or ores and then the multiple stages of crafting ore -> ingot -> building materials -> furniture/house parts, but building the building of a building is even slower. I have to create the misc items that are the tokens for the player inventory, then a recipe to make them, then add the keywords to the workbenches that will create them, then rig up the enable/disable logic to put the corresponding item in place.

And some of the bits I want to make aren't already separate meshes, so I have to convert the .nif's into a form that Blender will import, alter them, export, and convert back. Progress is slow, if steady.

Anyhow, I'm getting there slowly. I can now use the drafting table for an Orc building, and make pieces at the workbench.

I thought originally that I'd be able to use the existing scripts for most things, but it turns out that they have too much hard-coded into them, like the total number of sites, and which rooms are bedrooms, so in most cases I have to take a copy of the code and modify it as an Orc version. It's still less effort than creating it from scratch, but the CK has a lot of annoyances that make it a grind.

I also want to do something other than the steward/hiring mechanism - where you can only add staff after you convert a follower to steward, and then can't hire those directly. The stronghold probably wants a smith (weapon/armor merchant) and a wise woman (alchemy merchant) but I haven't yet decided how it gets them. That means completely new script code.

Latest Update: This got badly stalled when I discovered that my test game had old, bad script baked into the saves, and I wasn't testing the updated code. I'm partially replaying Gol gro-Molag from before I added the mod, to get him back a point where this one kicks in, and I can test from a clean save. So I'm exercising my modding muscles back in Oblivion, trying to finish up Evergloam, while I do all my playing in Skyrim.

This post has been edited by ghastley: Jun 6 2015, 03:29 PM

[Grits]

This looks really neat. Very fun to see the orc building parts coming together. Thanks for the update, ghastley!