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