Noticed we didn’t have one of these since I finished with summarizing with the old documentation.
Summary of current documentation exists here: http://tamriel-rebuilt.org/forum/imperial-cult-documentation
TR Handbook Link: http://tamriel-rebuilt.org/content/faction-imperial-cult
^Well, that’s looking rather sad and empty. So Imperial Cult ideas, guys! Go, go, go!
[Moved to conceptualization, as we’re nowhere near actually implementing this -10Kaziem]
2016-01-17 14:03
4 months 2 weeks ago
Are you supposed to post here or in conceptualization?
Anyway, I do have some of the design documents from Province: Cyrodiil. Not all of these are completely up to date, but they do show the road we’re planning to take.
A General Look at Imperial Philosophy and Theology
An Overview of the Cults and Religions of Cyrodiil
The Saints of Cyrod
Note: the Imperial Cult (or the Citizen’s Cult of the Eight Divines and Tiber Imperator) is the result of the re-union of the Great Faiths under Tiber Septim. Before that, the cult had splintered in dozens of minor convents, dedicated to different, sometimes conflicting splinter-aspects of the Divines. This was the result of the Marukhati suppression of the faith and the misrule of the First and Second Interregna. While things aren’t quite as chaotic anymore, the Cyrodiilic cults continue to be very scattered. Missionary cults like the one in Morrowind are the efforts of the Ennead, an arch-prelate council with ties to the Emperor. The minor convents are forced to contribute to the missionary efforts, but only a handful really care about the efforts. Since Divine worship is almost universally accepted in Cyrodiil, there is no real evangelical tradition.
As a bit of unofficial style guide, we’re mostly using Tiber Imperator for the Divine as opposed to Tiber Septim the mortal man, and Talos the Nordic general. This is to avoid confusion. Or to increase it, depends.
Also note that we’ve stepped away from featuring the knightly orders in Cyrodiil: they did not contribute anything meaningful, and seemed on the whole something specific to High Rock culture.
There’s also an Imperial creation myth, but it’s a bit of a mess.
2016-08-30 04:49
6 years 4 months ago
So are religious orders and temples devoted to individual Divines strictly out of the question then?
I can understand why there would only be a lightweight Imperial missionary presence on the newly-opened Vvardenfell, but I had always imagined there being a few Western religious orders devoted to specific Divines on the mainland, where Imperial influence has been much stronger for much longer.
Sorry if I’m out of line or if this isn’t the right place for this sort of post, I’m very new to TR and this is my first brainstorming sesh. Thanks for being patient with me.
2016-01-17 14:03
4 months 2 weeks ago
The Talos Cult from the vanilla game is technically a cult dedicated to an interpretation of a single Divine (though Talos is not exactly the same as Tiber Septim). I think divergent Imperial religions in Morrowind can definitely exist, but only in areas with a strong Imperial presence.
2015-08-10 20:50
3 weeks 16 hours ago
While I’m catching up on the forum...
Moving away from knightly orders I can get behind.
I have nothing against the concept of temples devoted to individual deities, but at the moment it looks like Morrowind will lack sufficient Imperial concentrations to really make that viable; we don’t seem to have left much room for many Imperial towns on the mainland, and at this point I’m not sure if we’ll even want more.
2016-01-17 14:03
4 months 2 weeks ago
Without the colonization plot, large Imperial settlements don’t make a lot of sense either way. But a sizeable Imperial fort in the west could be a center for Stendarr or Talos worship, while a merchant or diplomat enclave in the Narsis area could feature a Nibenese Zenithar cult or something like that.
2015-08-10 20:50
3 weeks 16 hours ago
Oh yeah, certainly in Kragen Mar – and Narsis is also quite possible – I could imagine some more specialized shrines. Now that you mention it, an idea was that, in Hlaalu lands, Imperials would simply have shacked up with their hosts rather than living in separate forts and settlements for the most part, so rather than general Imperial Cult shrines I could see outlanders (who would indeed probably in large part be Nibenese) worshipping in a way that comes more naturally to them.
2016-01-17 14:03
4 months 2 weeks ago
Random quest idea: a local Tribuna Temple and an Imperial Cult outpost reluctantly cooperate against a crazy Nibenese jungle cult that crossed the border.
2016-10-06 10:39
5 years 3 weeks ago
Okay, here my new post. In more than one part. enjoy ;p
Hey guys, its me :D! Some people may have read my latest posts on here and that I want to work again on the imperial cult. First of all, I dont want to draw attention off the deshaan plains and house dres project, for thats the main priority at the moment (or as I noticed). It is more like I began working on this one here the last year and really wanted to take it a step further this year. And well, its october now, I have to hurry^^. So: while this is of course open for discussion, feel free to ignore it until it is time to seriously think about the IC questlines.
Oh, and excuse my bad english, I try to talk as understandable as possible^^
So for the interested:
First I characterize the IC by its goals, then I develop realistic ways the IC can reach those.
The last thing will be detecting potentials for quests and developping a first scheme of the ICs quest landscape
( Preliminary remark: When you join the IC in vanilla MW, you are told that you cant be a member of the actual cult hierarchy but only join the cult as a lay member. Thats important, for it means that the NPCs that are part of the ingame faction IC dont have to be lay members themselves – some may be some, some may not. The ones that arent, yes, what are they? The ranks vanilla MW has for the faction are only the ones available for lay members and there is no NPC-only-faction “actual imperial cult” or something. So as I talk about important NPCs and questgivers, remember that they might be more than the rank may say. )
FIRST STEP:
The goals of the Imperial Cult
I like to characterize a faction by its goals and its way to reach those, and the main goals of the IC in MW are:
1. offer the possibility of practising the imperial faith in peace and safety, best without any discrimination
2. Worship the Nine Divines, live life in keeping with the Nine Virtues and encourage and help other believers to do so
3. evangelizing the Dunmer and other non believers in MW
2016-10-06 10:39
5 years 3 weeks ago
SECOND STEP:
The ICs ways to reach its goals
In vanilla MW there is the concept of the lay servant, who can do the tasks of a lay healer (who serve Mara), an almoner (Zenithar) or a shrine sergeant (Stendarr). It is said that “at the moment we need” those three. I think there is the possibility that other jobs exist, one for each deity (although they might not be as important as the three mentioned). So we have nine jobs, I call those the “Minor Duties”. My theory is, that to work as someone who does those, you dont have to be a lay servant. Theoretically even the Primate of MW himself could do those jobs and be – for the time he/she does the job – an almoner or something.
The questgivers for the “Minor Duties” are three members of the cult in the Ebonheart chapels, which are of low cult ranks. Maybe they do the minor duties themselves and are appointed to organisators of this kind of members.
Which level of tasks is a horde of lay servants capable of? Certainly its a matter of how many and how well trained they are. Because the nature of a lay servant seems to be that he/she is a voluntary, the cult itself doesnt have any influence in those two. So the cult needs a constant number of well trained members to make sure it is always able to react to urgent problems/tasks that cant wait for lay servants to join up.
When the PC joins the IC, he/she is told that he cant be a priest or consecrated cleric for he would have to devote himself full-time to the cult.
That means that there are people (at least clerics) who are always “on duty” for the cult. I will now carefully fill the gaps with implied lore and at some places with new lore I suggest for them.
So if we look back to the goals of the IC, there is:
1. “offer the possibility of practising the imperial faith in peace and safety, best without any discrimination”
[spoiler]
These are actually three goals: “offer the possibility of practising the faith” means that every believer in Morowind shall have a shrine and a priest to go to and religious literature within reach.
“...in peace and safety...” means that no believer shall fear threats of all kind
“without discrimination” means that no believer shall be disadvantaged for religious reasons.
The last two are not limited to threats due to the faith, but the IC tries to fend for its members and believers that are not members.
For the part with the shrines and literature, the faction needs an office, carriers and people who buy things (including acquiring houses for shrines). I call the office “office of organization and distribution”.
The part of “in peace and safety” is a little difficult. I think the biggest expectable threats from outside the cult are knifings between single or small groups of believers and Dunmer/non-believers, supposedly not because of religious differences but personal. As I said, the cult tries to protect its members and believers. So how does it handle such a problem?
The idea of an armed squad of warriors who avenge the cults people is certainly not realistic, not in morrowind. The guards have to adhere to law and order, and the next authority would be the great houses. A group of warriors in heavy armor that obviously belong to the empire and outside the strongholds would cause a little trouble.
I think a “commitee” for questions of security is a realistic one, a group of high-ranking cult members that “deal” (talk and think about^^) with those problems. Lets say in case of a conflict between believers and non-believers they send someone who tries to contact the guards and the great house in order to persuade them to do something about it. If they wont, the cult tries to bring the believers to a safe place or something like that. The IC I imagine behaves very defensive at that point.
2. “Worship the Nine Divines, live life in keeping with the Nine Virtues and encourage and help other believers to do so”
- Every once in a while the common believer visits a shrine.
- A shrine provides a healing altar and a priest.
- There is at least one important rite that involves bread and cyrodiilic brandy (or shein).
- The chapel in vanilla ebonheart offers either speeches or common church service (because of the benches straightened to the altar)
Why does a believer visit a shrine? Either because of the healing altar (healing), the priest (pastoral care or buying potions) or the rite (unknown).
The rest happens in everyday life.
2016-10-06 10:39
5 years 3 weeks ago
Second step:
3. “Evangelizing the Dunmer and other non believers in MW”
For the goal of evangelizing, there is the missions headquarter, which has an important office in Kragen Mar. The project of evangelizing the Dunmer is maybe one of the most delicate intentions the empire has in MW, and everything a person does “in the name of the 9 Divines” directly reverts to the public image of the cult and the empire. So the IC has developped a method to control the missionary activities in the province. The method is simple: Every missionary has to be registered in a large index and every bigger undertaking for the purpose of evangelizing people has to be officially approved.
Why an office in Kragen Mar? Well, there are a couple of reasons. The first one is that House Hlaalu is the group of Dunmer in MW thats the most amenable to everything imperial, including religion. That doesnt mean that they are begging for a new religion, but if there is any realistic target for a cyrodiilic missionary in MW, then it is the house Hlaalu – or non-Dunmer. The second reason is, that when a missionary travels from cyrodiil to MW (I think most missionaries of the imperial cult will come from Cyrodiil), his first travel target will be either Old Ebonheart, or the first big, realistic target a missionary can have – Kragen Mar, (or Narsis/Balmora, but Kragen Mar is close to Cyrodiil). And if he wants to go to OE, well, Kragen Mar is on the way to OE. So at least 60-80% of the missionaries coming to MW will come to Kragen Mar.
The committee of safety and order I talked about should consist of high ranking priests. In my imagination they dont have given up their original duty but additionally chose to serve as member of those groups.
Its a little different with the office of organization and distribution and the missions headquarter. The first one consists of lower-rank members, the second one as well – but the head of the missions headquarter is a high-rank member of the cult.
2016-10-06 10:39
5 years 3 weeks ago
Now the interesting:
THIRD STEP:
Quest potentials
Goal 1 “offer the possibility of practising the imperial faith in peace and safety, best without any discrimination”
Questgiver: “Office of organization and distribution”
- organize a house for a shrine in telvanni-area
- carry messages, gold and items from shrines to the office and vice versa
Questgiver: “committee of safety and order”^^:
- The committee sends the player as official representative of the IC to solve certain problems like:
– a quarrel between an IC-member and a Dunmer thief lead to the thief stealing an important item, take it back
– escort a priest to a shrine in a dangerous place
– a believer accidentally broke something important to the temple, quieten down the dunmer mob
Goal 2 “Worship the Nine Divines, live life in keeping with the Nine Virtues and encourage and help other believers to do so”
Questgivers: Priests, Oracles, members and believers
Oracle quests (rare):
- interpret cryptical visions and do things that are at first very hard to understand and later get something going thats even harder to understand
Priest quests:
- The priest is overworked, take care of one or two depressive believers
- help at a rite (but how?)
Goal 3 “Evangelizing the Dunmer and other non believers in MW”
Questgivers: The missions Headquarter, missionaries
- talk to Dunmer about faith and try to convert them
- look after a missionary who works alone in a distant place
- for a missionary: convince the missions headquarter of a delicate mission
- either help a missionary not to get registered as missionary (because he doesnt want to be slave of their “cowardly fear of the Dunmer”) or tell the HQ about him
Misc IC and IC-related quests:
- a member of the IC wants a seat in the committee of safety and order or in one of the offices
- a believer wants his son/daughter to be more religious
- a Zenithar-worshipper wants the player to find out why his sales volume seems to be cursed
- an ugly woman prays to dibella for beauty (or every other deity gets prayed to for its special thing, julianos-intelligence, zenithar-wealth...)
- Help a high ranking cleric scribe a religious text
2016-10-06 10:39
5 years 3 weeks ago
My excuses for not posting this in one part with spoilers. I have a serious problem with my internet connection and with my knowledge about bb-codes (seemingly ._. I tried, honestly). The really interesting part is my last post, so if you are not interested in how I got to that point, reading that informs to 70%^^
2016-10-06 10:39
5 years 3 weeks ago
Hi guys, a little update shortly before meeting, to unify every bigger approach to possible questlines I read in the old forum summary and here. And to publish my latest proposal of the IC as a whole.
1. Organization
There are shrines (of course) with at least one priest (questgiver) and an altar.
Oracle's (questgivers) receive visions from the gods every now and then.
There are very few irregular places belonging to the IC (office of organization and distribution, committee of safety and order and the missions headquarter - names not final), attached to local shrines. The leaders of those "offices" are questgivers as well.
Of course the primate of the IC in Morrowind is a questgiver.
2. The questlines happening in the IC
There are far more than one questline in the IC. There are:
- the quests every questgiver has to offer (priests, maybe some believers, the primate - always available)
- a little questline for every deity (available after you choose to champion a god - you only can choose one single deity)
- questlines based on the daedra
- the four questlines of the 4 ideologies radical, liberal, Puritan, godlead, which ultimately lead to the player becoming the primate himself as representative of one ideology and enforce the long term goal of that group. (Radical - build a center for indoctrination and training missionaries, liberal - stop unnessecary expensive missionary activities and start a humanitarian project for poor people instead, Puritan - build a monastery only for IC-members, godlead- do a ritual to set up some kind of mystic connection with the aedra (which wont be the resounding success as hoped, but has a slight effect of pandering oracles to receive visions))
Edit: it won't be possible to become primate just by doing enough quests, because the primate himself (in my proposal a godlead), is a strong leader and at first there's no reason to replace him. Only the 3 other ideologies rather would have a leader with their views of faith. If you choose the godlead yourself you have to convince him that the gods chose you to be the primate instead of him.
2016-10-06 10:39
5 years 3 weeks ago
Hey, guys, its me again.
I finally have this update finished, so enjoy.
First of all I have to say that I am searching for an interestig inner conflict in the IC I can base the questlines on. This was the reason I originally came up with those 4 ideologies/styles of religion.
The questlines
1. The lay-servants'quests - always available because of the nature of those tasks. You can even do those when youre primate (suggestion)
2. The priest-quests - the priest who is running a shrine somewhere normally has some tasks to fulfill. Help him.
3. The Oracles' quests
I originally had the idea to set up a little questline for every divine, and every divine has an oracle. The problem here was the size of the whole thing. a questline of - lets say 3 quests per questline would mean 27 quests. Thats too big, so I said that one quest per deity (at max) has to be adequate. That mean 9 quests.
Then there had to be 9 Oracles. Vanilla MW has one. So 9 oracles would be ridiculous, Id say 3 oracles on the mainland at max would be enough. Suggestion: Every god-quest can be started at every oracle OR every oracle has a unique connection to the aedra, so every oracle has her own quests.
Those quests can only be done far to the end of the rank tree. At the end of a quest you receive a permanent blessing from that god. You can only choose one of the 9 quests.
4. The Quests for the ideologies that ultimately guide to you becoming the primate of the IC
the ideologies are:
- syncretistic/traditional spectrum
- god-led/liberal spectrum
From those spectrums 4 groups of believers are formed, The god-led syncretistic, the god-led traditional, the liberal syncretistic and the liberal traditional. in praxis there are only 2 groups, the syncretistic and the traditional, while the decision how the faith is actually lived is more a personal question. There would be books that explain the theory behind the ideologies.
The syncretistic try to melt the Great Faiths together into one single faith and religion with one archbishop (pope-like figure) on top. The rank of the primate and Morrowinds IC are the first step on the way to this goal. The primate is a religious leader.
The syncretistic are unhappy with the current primate, because he tries to conserve the Great Faiths.
The traditionalists want to perpetuate the Great Faiths and see a connection between them in a religious sense as unnatural and unintentional from the divine point of view. The IC itself is seen as only expedient for the organization of cult activities, not for influencing them. The primate is something like an overseer of organizational belongings and must not decide anything faith-specific unless he/she is a religious leader IC-rank-independent at the same time.
The traditionalists are unhappy with the current primate, because he tries to be a religious leader for more than one Great Faith (his logic is like this: there are few believers in MW that come from different Great Faiths - that few, that none of the Great Faiths has an actual leadership in MW. The primate tries to fill that gap and be sth like their high priest, while they stay at their religions)
The third way the player can go is to help the current primate keep up the current compromise. Maybe at the end he says something like "im old, im passing this rank to you" and the Player becomes primate.