The Secondary Questline - Sugar and Blood

[The Old Ye Bard]

The Secondary Questline - Sugar and Blood
(Imperial Legion/Navy & The Gold Cat/Ya'Tirrje)

8 Quests long. Western, meets "drug story", meets "dirty officer" story, meets revenge tale, still a work-in-progress.

Note: Player must have finished the "Introduction" chapter of the MQ, along with the first quest of the "Rebel" chapter ("Delivery Run"). This insures there's no conflicts with the two storylines, and means the player already knows a limited amount about the Gold Cat's drug operations.


The Hook That Caught You

You're assaulted by a Gold Cat thug. Report it to any Legion Officer (in the Elsweyr worldspace), who then will redirect you to "The Investigator" who's incharge of digging up dirt on the Goldcat (based in the Port Topal/Fort Spraymoth). Searching you, the Investigator finds a vile of Skooma (whether you had it or not -the player suggesting it must have been put on them by the Gold Cat thug, but The Investigator doesn't care, or believe the player). Blackmailing you, the Investigator says he can lock you up for years, or you go free, but you have to do undercover work for him.

(Attaining the rank of "Informant" of the Imperial Legion)

He tells you to meet up with a 'contact' of his, another uncover operative who will get you into the Gold Cat's employment (in some shady bar in Senchal). The contact says he'll bring you along to his overseer (not the Gold Cat), who'll then initiate you into the Gold Cat's Thugs.

Brought to the overseer, he tells you for your initiation you have to beat up a skooma addict being held in the back room, who was caught trying to steal from their storage. Going to the background, you're locked in there with the Skooma addict, and you're presented with 2 choices, either fake beating him up, telling the Skooma Addict to make noises, and then for him faint, or to just beat him unconcious (but result in the same outcome of getting into the Thugs, however if you spare the Skooma Addict, your disposition with Skooma addicts and the Lowerclass folk of Senchal will be raised).

After dealing with the Skooma Addict, you can leave the room, and the Overseer says you're now in the employment of the Gold Cat.

(Attaining the rank of "Thug" of the Gold Cat's Thugs)


The Taste of Sugar is Sweet


The Marionette

Introduces the Puppet-King of Senchal.


The Golden Cat Glitters

Player 'meets' the Gold Cat for the first time, but only sees a great big Golden Statue (with the real Gold Cat hidden away behind a curtain). Involves doing drug running for the Gold Cat, whom wants you to make a deal with a Drug Lord in Dune (which would allow for more distribution in Dune, Orcrest and Riverhold, and better trade into Cyrodiil and Valenwood). Contacting The Investigator will end up with him telling you to make the deal go south. When you broker the deal, it ends up going south no matter what you do, but the Gold Cat's thugs 'remedy' the situation by simply killing the Drug Lord, and assuming control of the operation, with one of the Gold Cat's subordinates taking over.


The Leaking Men

The Investigator is getting word that the Gold Cat's Thugs are being leaked infomation by corrupt Legionnaires. He has managed to extract their names, and sends you with another one of his undercover agents to kill the Legionnaires who are hiding out in a shack somewhere in the desert.
Investigate and find out where the shack is (or find it for yourself), confronting the Legionnaires, they knew that someone would come to kill them, fearful for their lives they try and tell you that you're in serious peril and that there's a conspiracy that goes all the way to the top, but before they can explain any further, your partner murders them both, then trys to do the same to you.

(Attaining the rank of "Undercover Agent" of the Imperial Legion)


The Puppeteer at Sea

The Investigator has gotten word that a huge shipment of Skooma/Moon Sugar is going to be smuggled out of Senchal to Morrowind, and in a very rare opportunity the Gold Cat will be aboard -and he wants you with him, saying once it's done you'll be free.

Out on on the sea, the player follows the Gold Cat's ship in an Imperial Navy vessel, and the Legionnaires board the Gold Cat's ship (as the player watches from the Imperial Navy vessel with the Investigator) -suddenly the Imperial Navy vessel is filled with Gold Cat thugs, who were stowed away below the ship, and in the distance the Gold Cat's ship is on flames, killing all the Legionnaires. The whole thing was a trap (the Gold Cat not being on the ship, and the few crew abandoned it before the Legionnaires boarded it), as the Investigator explains to the player, who is really the Gold Cat's second-in-command (being paid generously for turning sides, which happened years ago), and that this was all a set up in an on-going power play between the Imperial Navy/Legion and the Gold Cat, they just needed a fool to play the part you were given. The Investigator also mentions he planted the Skooma on you to begin with.

Setting the thugs on you, you attempt to fight back, but it's a losing battle, and there's too many of them. You're beaten within an inch of your life, and while unconcious you're sealed in a coffin, taken out to the middle of the desert/badlands, and they begin to bury you alive.


The Hero's Rebirth

Waking up the player finds themselves in a coffin, but there's a slim chance of survival -the planks on the boards of the coffin are slightly loose, and the coffin is yet to be buried entirely (the player can hear shovels piling dirt onto the coffin still, and can see light from between it's wooden boards). Quickly prying open/punching open the coffin, the player jumps out (having been buried with all their equipment), and kills their grave-diggers (of which there's three).

After escaping from your fate, you're meet by the old Khajiit. He says he watched from a distance as they buried you, he mentions he's the Old King of Senchal, exiled many, many years ago by the Gold Cat, with his son put in power soon after as a puppet-king. He no longer wants the life he had, for he has little time left to live it, and living as a poor man has given him a perspective he could never have dreamed of as a King -but he still wants revenge. He says that before the Gold Cat performed the coup, that her Villa used to belong to the Royal Family of Senchal (having been built as a wedding present for Keirgo of Anequina and Eshita of Pellitine, from which the Exiled-King and his Son are descended), and that he knows of a secret way into the Villa (for which he has the only key, which he took with him when he was exiled).


The Final Showdown

Make your way into the Gold Cat's Villa via the secret entrance (the front remains locked, with Thug's defending the entrance). Hack 'n slash your way through the thugs, til you encounter The Investigator, and an epic battle insues (with The Investigator saying he plans to kill the Gold Cat and become the new Drug King of Tamriel, etc). Victorious, you find the Gold Cat, Ya'Tirrje hiding in the back, begging for her life (also revealed to be female, the first time the player has actually met them).
She tells her side of the story, how she's really the niece of the Old King of Senchal -her family was killed when she was small, and she was raised as if she were the daughter of the Old King, however when the time came for the Old King to choose a successor, the Old King went with his Son (who was incompetent and lazy in the eyes of the Ya'Tirrje) -furious, Ya'Tirrje using the resources she had amassed from the Drug Trade, stormed the palace, and held a coup, forcing the Old King out into exile, however knowing she would never be accepted as Queen by Pellitine or the population of Senchal, she put the Old King's son in place as a puppet-leader, pulling his strings from the background, while her thugs replaced the city guards, in the years following she strove to prove the Old King wrong, by remaking Senchal in her perfect vision, at the cost of people's freedoms, and huge increases in drug addicts right across Elsweyr (with her power slowly driving her to be more and more ruthless). You are left with two options, either spare her life and exile her like she did the previous King, or kill her (exiling her will make her a beggar in Corinth and give you Fame +40, killing her will give you Infamy +40).

The Puppet-King of Senchal reclaims his authority, the palace is cleaned/refurbished and a new city guard is brought in. The Old King retires to the Villa to live out the last of his years, and the player is granted their own quarters in the villa. The Drug Trade still exists though, as it must to support the Khajiiti way of life (given Moon Sugar is vital in Khajiiti culture), and so the player takes on the position of Drug Lord (whether they wanted it or not), and the Villa is still the base of operations for that (and the player can make on-going decisions, such as whether to continue the trading and production of Skooma, how ruthless you want your thugs to act, etc, which will impact the world, such as more/less Skooma Addicts turning up in the cities, more/less money the Drug Trade generates, etc).

[Deeza]

I like it. Quite similar to the outline quest for the Empire/Gold Cat I made a while back, but obviously made with a better knowledge of the background culture than I was able to muster!

[Ja-Kha'jay]

I love it, this is fantastic. expands on the Gold Cat nicely.

[The Old Ye Bard]

Working on something for The Investigator's Office, going to make a few more posters to go on the corkboard, some more serious than others haha. Just something to look like an actual investigation is going on.

[Catlemur]

Looks like Shegorath..

[The Old Ye Bard]

Originally posted by Catlemur
Looks like Shegorath..

*Sigh*

That's the joke.

[Deeza]

Pretty impressive artwork, though, I must say...

[The Old Ye Bard]

Originally posted by Deeza
Pretty impressive artwork, though, I must say...

Thanks Deeza! Just a 5 minute sketch cleaned up + coloured in photoshop/made into a texture

[The Old Ye Bard]

Finished that goldcat corkboard!

[morcroft]

Looks great!

So what else do we need for the investigators office? Moon-sugar coated donuts and lots of coffee for a start.