Espionage

[Coinneach]

Well I thought that the general main quest idea was a house war ?(

My post was basically suggesting that we add spying events for each joinable faction - if it is going to be a house war, and AFAIK its going to be building up, then espionage and spying would be good to have before any actual fighting takes place.

For example, say you join House Telvanni, and the storyline is gradually building up, tensions rising etc. Each of the separate houses(and Imperials, Nords, Betmer etc) want to be in as good a position as possible if a conflict does begin. And it is for this reason that they need to gather information that could help them.

So it could be something as simple as stealing names and pay receipts of new recruits, or something as complex as inflitration and assasination of a high ranking noble.

Although infiltration would be quite difficult unless you limit each faction to some races. Khajiit pretending to be Nords, or Dunmer pretending to be Argonians, wouldn't very well :yes: :lmao:

Edit: Just realised how confusing my Imperial Sponsoring quote sounds. What I meant was that the Imperials would be spying as well, i.e. sponsoring spying of their own, not anyone elses.

[raggidman]

House War and Espionage

Add Traitors

Add other Factions

Specify thr Nature of each House involved and their declared interests

Are you sure Coinneach? What about magic? Shapechanging, etc ...?



Specify the hidden agendas within each House

Houses

Hlaalu - 'King' Helseth the Usurper - has split his House.

At age 12 his Imperial mother the former Empress, while she was married to the King in 'Daggerfall' was sent for tutoring with the Worm King - as payment for services rendered ... is he therefore secretly allied with Dres Vampires. Has he agreed to vampirise Hlaalu?

Now with his Imperial Allies weakened by the loss of the Emperor and the invasions through the Gates he declares his alliance openly.

But by assassinating his predecessors he has alienated half his House, or more. Up until nowe they have remained comparitively quiescent out of respect for his Imperial Mother the former Dunmer Empress and once Queen of High Rock, Bahrenziah. If they discover or are persuaded of the true nature of his 'dark' connection what will they do?

Dres - Vampire Council members and ripping the Heart out of Indoril on the Mainland

Telvanni - there may be a Telvanni Coucillor who is a Vampire, and there are moderns who want to adopt Imperial ways. With the Telvanni who can say? But they have been at war with Hlaalu and Redoran for a long time ... that is what the 'settlers' are about.
Officially they might not like Telvanni Vampires - and that would be excellent propaganda. The Telvanni then have 3 scores to settle with Hlaalu: Hlaalu Imperial leanings are possibly more of a liability than ever, Vampiric (true or not) and the right to settle unoccupied or abandoned holdings and land. and if Redoran agree split Hlaalu lands on Vvardenfell between them ...

Redoran - Natural allies of Indoril. They are being squeezed to death by Imperial-backed Hlaalu, and they hate Vampires. They might feel that their only recourse, now that their Church and Tribunal support is diminished is to add new allies. And the Nerevarine has to ally with Nerevar's House now that the matter of the Sixth House is dealt with. All the Houses on Vvardenfell owe the Nerevarine, even those he did not join. He also probably did their quests even though he did not join

Nerevarine - Whatever House the Nerevarine joined on Vvardenfell. Their Vvardenfell Council will remain loyal to the Nerevarine and will ally with Indoril against the rest of their House if it is Hlaalu.

Indoril - Nerevar's House - Church Loyal and Redoran Ally - to ward off the Threat from the Empire, Hllalu and their Vampiric allies will finally accept Telvanni - as like Redoran, in their weakened state, they can do no other.

Imperials: Those that have not been recalled to protect the Homeland are in disarray. they no longer have an Emperor to follow, and frnakly Chancellor Occato is just a tad greasy ... so they are split.

There is a former Empress alive and thriving in Mournhold. Will she make a bid for the Throne? What will happen if the Dunmer turn on them. Do they want th eDunmer to take control of the Empire again?

What is the Religious position now that the Tribunal is gone?

Did the Nerevarine join the Imperial factions - especially the Legions and the Nine?


Let the Spying, Misinformation, Disinformation, outright Lies, Betrayals and Propaganda commence!

But please, no spin doctors!


If YOU ARE PREPARED TO ACCOUNT FOR ALL THE ABOVE FACTORS AND MORE THEN YOU CAN CREATE A MAIN QUEST FOR VVARDENFELL. But you will need to work closely with your faction Mayors/Modders to ensure that a very wide variety of options and several outcomes are open. You cannot just do it from one point of view and with one or two outcomes. If you are not prepared to see the whole job through then you can't mod this ... in which case - forget it

[Coinneach]

I don;t know if you directed this at me but.....

If YOU ARE PREPARED TO ACCOUNT FOR ALL THE ABOVE FACTORS AND MORE THEN YOU CAN CREATE A MAIN QUEST FOR VVARDENFELL. But you will need to work closely with your faction Mayors/Modders to ensure that a very wide variety of options and several outcomes are open. You cannot just do it from one point of view and with one or two outcomes. If you are not prepared to see the whole job through then you can't mod this ... in which case - forget it

Well I wasn't trying to push my idea of a main quest for Vvardenfell in, and I am certainly not skilled enough to write a MQ for Vvardenfell.... especially seeing as I'm not a core modder or anything like that.

My reason for posting this was that I thought it would be a good idea to implement spying etc into the MQ that is being decided or whatever stage its at. I'd be happy to help with ideas etc, but I'll leave the MQ proper to the proffesionals :goodjob:

[raggidman]

I~t is directed to anyone who has the commitment to take this on.

No one is a professional here in theorie, but I know what you are talking about and it is not a bad idea.

Just trying to encourage a bit of thought and get people involved.

I do think that the Core members of Vvardenfell should get their act together and 'rescue' this mod. Or the other members who will otherwise see their contributions totally wasted. Of all the mods here this is the closest to ST and I believe they really ought to go together ... It's a bit of a nonsense to create a Mainland without Vvardenfell especially as the basis for the Mainland is Vvardenfell.

Insanity Sorrow and Dave seem to have come in and cleaned out stuff without reading it in detail, then given up and ST has come here and poached modellers and key people without offering anything in return.

Skyrim has 'stolen' Solstheim, etc ...

Sad really as Vvardenfell has many supporters.

[Coinneach]

Yeah its quite sad to see a mod fall into inactivity, especially when non-core members carry on. If I was anything other than an ideas noob, id contribute something more substantial

I was reading some of the stuff Kukulza wrote in the factions department, and it shows you how one guy can make such a difference. Especially one as creative and talented as he was.

I agree that Vvardenfell and ST should both work together a lot more, it would mean that as you say modders etc aren't 'stolen'.

[Razorwing]

Originally posted by raggidman
[..] ST has come here and poached modellers and key people without offering anything in return.

That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Given that our needs are the same as Vvardenfell's what possible incentive would there be for us to 'poach' someone over to our team? I've personally spent thousands of hours creating models, others in our team hundreds of hours, that we freely share with TES4: Vvardenfell. What the hell have you ever done for anyone. Is it that I moved threads over to the Visual Development board? If so, have you somehow missed that our VD board is the same as Vvardenfell's?

I think one of the interesting things about you is that a disturbingly large amount of your postings are fueled by a hatred of me. Like this time, blaming Vvardenfell's misfortune on me (ill-disguised as 'ST'). From my point of view it started after we sacked you as Editor since you didn't do any of the things you were supposed to be doing nor did you show much interest in our mod. From your point of view... well, for kicks, you explain how you saw it. And all the while your hatred of me oozes out here and there, as I go about my business - like setting you up as moderator on the Valenwood boards today, on request of their team's leader. What does that say about you and me?

[raggidman]

I read the thread that The Modax Jago made when he arrived. And your invitation on the Beyond Cyrodiil Vvardenfell thread to model for ST, when you have complained about BC people recruiting on ST Forums ... ? But prove me wrong in general and invite the whole of Vvardenfell to merge with ST, as should have happened a long time ago!

Here you are talking about shutting Vv down because their team is shrinking, and 'quietly' massaging the process?

If you merged the two projects (without 'playing favorites' thereafter) I recon you would find that there was massive support for it and it would boost interest in ST... and here I am the guy who is only getting at you for some qui9xotic revenge or the sake of it, eh?

Some home truths for you to gnash your teeth over:

People don't crit you for that reason, they crit you because you often act arrogantly and inconsiderately and obstructively and allow your judgement to be swayed by personal considerations and fears. You do stuff that is worthwhile, then let yourself down with the harm you do when you get a bee in your bonnet and damn the consequence. ... and yes, I am old enough to speak to you like that. I have been around for about twice your lifetime, and I have learned quite a bit in that time

And thank you for doing upon further special request what you ought to have done when you were told that the whole Core was converting to equal leadership as Elsweyr almost did - apply moderator powers to the whole Core.

At first you gave the new Core members, that I and Windy as the last active Core members (given Mormacil's resignation) had recruited, Full Moderator powers and removed mine, then you restored my Valenwood Lit Dev powers before being asked to do so but nothing else, when you were asked to give all the Core Moderator powers. Meanwhile FLESH, who had not posted since last June and who formally resigned as Leader and from the Core presumably, was being kept on as Moderator ... fortunately he has returned to us having seen the new activity that I and Windy created - but I do and did nothing?

I did not ask for the editor's title to be reinstated in any way, by the way, others did that w/out consulting me, I believe as a gesture of their regard.

You may have acted in error or mistakenly, and as often, very, very slowly, but you have a habit of doing that ... maybe it is because you are overburdened with both your modding and administrative duties? Well don't blame me for that. You could always recruit new people to Admin. You told me you did not want to give such powers to others as you did not know who you could trust, and what catastrophies could occur if 'the wrong person' was given access to the administrative controls ... about the same as not staffing adequately eh?

I did not do what I was asked to do? Don't blame an old man with Diabetes, Hyperglycaemia, incipient Pancreatitis a broken finger and an unsplinted Broken Leg walking over 2 miles a day and carrying half his bodyweight for slowing down a bit. I messaged you apologising for the reduction in activity during that period over a year ago. And you so asked me to carry out an extra 'special project'.

While I was trying to think of a way to tell you gently that the most recent task you had requested of me was a bit of a waste of time (it still has not been done has it? =) ) I never received a 'wishes of better health', nor any other response. Until you messaged me out of the blue telling me that it was not your decision, refused to tell me whose decision it was, but you had removed my moderator powers and had to sack me from the Editor position, and boasted that you were surprised I had carried on for so long - umm, what did that mean one might wonder? But you also refused to tell me why I was being removed from that position.

What happened next? There I was coping with appalling burdens on my health that might have killed a younger man, in and out of hospital (each visit was another 2 miles a day) and you gave me one week to remove all my work from Editor's Corner (I was still coping with the broken leg) and subsequently removed everything in that closed forum, including the 40/50 works by others that were in process of being edited and prepared for presentation as completed works ... only the people who I was working with on that can verify to others what I was doing there (other than yourself and the founder and major owner of the ST site) but then it seems that so many of them have subsequently 'moved on' as peole do, especially when no one is liaising with them any more ...

Then there was a period of weeks and months before someone was recruited as 'temp assistant editor' - but who does not appear to have actually done much of that (though there may be stuff not seen ...? ) and all the projects that I had underway braiding the Lore and written work and modding between ST and BC together so that they were all benefitting from the work of the others have been dropped ...

Actually, come to think of it you had no concept that you needed an editor before you recruited me. and you still try to tell me that you have perfect English :lmao: you have good English, better than most non-English, but you come out with some very strange words that do not make any sense here and there ... maybe you have a translator programme that does your translating for you? Believe me, you will only know how flawed they are by reading stuff that your programme has translated from English into Swedish ... and it is also possible that the English Swedish translation is better than the Swedish English?

I have recently been tutoring Chinese people in English, and tutoring one of them in her Post Grad Dissertation in International Business. (her problems with English are so great that when I asked if this was for her Doctorate she said yes, and so she has received tuition to a far higher level than required - which hopefully will not harm her results) and as part of my preparation for this I reviewed the 'English Dictionaries' she had been using and the coursework she had been previously presented with. It was clear that her tutors and the compilers of the dictionaries are not English speakers. So I directed her to the Concise Oxford Dictionary and others of serious academic standard. hint.

You recruited others to use the locations that were being selected for those projects without informing them that they were part of something else ongoing, or told them that those very live projects were now dead ... you supported others in supplanting the plans and scenarios that I had painstakingly put in place and those people then turned away to do other things ... and now you claim I did nothing. Nah mate, you just wiped out much of what I was doing ... and you know it.

I am beginning to wonder if you believe that you are King Helseth and that no one can be permitted to 'get in your way' ... instead of a Modder/Dev who according to the traditions of ES should be providing the opportunity for the player to decide which way he wants things to go, and to fashion the historic outcomes by his actions.

Why am I wasting my time telling you stuff you already know, eh? I guess you just enjoy the controversy as you always rise to the bait

Well, there you go - these are my beefs. Now can you put that behind you and offer to merge Vv with ST? It is the same cultural base, the Vv MQ that is being proposed would work very well in conjunction with the ST Lore and provide balance - especially if Hlaalu has the opportunity to strengthen its hold on ST and Redoran, Indoril and Telvanni look to be able to fight off the proposed Hlaalu/Dres Alliance and oust Hlallu from Vvardenfell. Well let the player decide who comes out on top!

This could work if you accept that the Empire is in serious trouble in the wake of the Oblivion incidents and HAS already, starting with Morrowind, begun withdrawing the Legions from Morrowind.

And there is one more aspect that begs to be included - the scrabble for power in Morrowind should be accompanied by a sub-text. Bahrenziah is a former Empress, so her Son and Heir 'King' Helseth has a claim to the Imperial Throne. and the Heir, Martin is now dead.

Helseth has already Usurped the Throne in Morrowind ...

[Coinneach]

I think this war of words might soon overshadow my cr*ppy espionage ideas If you're gonna argue, best to do it in pm no?

And bob already started a thread regarding the Status of the mod, and so if we're gonna discuss whether or not to merge, best to it there than do it here OT :yes:

[raggidman]

agreed - apologies Coinneach -

there was a little bit at the end that goes with your thread.

... and don't be silly, your espionage idea is not crappy - that is not what my earlier 'short story' is saying ... honest. Your thread here inspired, it did not fall short!

[bob196045]

Originally posted by Coinneach
I think this war of words might soon overshadow my cr*ppy espionage ideas If you're gonna argue, best to do it in pm no?

And bob already started a thread regarding the Status of the mod, and so if we're gonna discuss whether or not to merge, best to it there than do it here OT :yes:

your idea isn't crappy, just needs a bit of discussing and tuning

Raggidman has some good points with regard to the situations of the houses, I don't necessarily get that deep into the politial and social ramifications of such ideas, to me its pretty simple (simple mindedness )

you can have such spying going on, all we need to know is for what purpose and what will the outcome be , sufice to say it would be best to consider not using the Great Houses or other major Factions/Guilds as a base

It might be best to consider such acts with regard to rival mages who are looking to get promoted within the guild and need dirt on the other

or uncovering :bad cops: within the ranks for the Imperial Legion

even rival clans (Hatfields and McCoy type rivals)

things like this can still be made out well and give the player much entertaining game play

The Idea is good don't give up on it


Enjoy
Bob