House Dres Settlements Brainstorming

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Gnomey's picture
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I felt it was time to work on some more atmospheric concept art so that we don’t lose ourselves in the detials:

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This looks really nice. I like the imposing nature of the  buildings and the way they get stacked. And also the buttress theme being repeated from the large buildings to the small.

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Oh wow, this is really cool! It could appear in a geography book about Des lands or in a guide to a certain town/region.

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why not have the cities lowered slightly, or go deeper into the ground, that way the player gets a deeper feel for the intense dres class system. having the aveage dunmer living at street level, and slaves housed like bees in the lower gutters of the city. also, having the higher parts of the city connected by bridges would be neat, so that you basically have 3 cities in one.

the ending of the words is almsivi

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The main reason at the moment is that the current plan for the Dres doesn’t really include intense class divisions, at least for their main holdings (their clansteads). I’d argue that the Dres recognize three classes in their clansteads, not counting slaves who I’d argue they would not recognize as a class but rather as livestock:

The top ‘class’ consists of the clan matriarchs, so typically two individuals per clan at any one time. They reside on the highest platform of the clanstead. They are greatly respected, being essentially wise women who devote their lives (more than the Dres know, depending on how one interprets their motivations) to guiding their clan. Then come the Dres clansmer. Though these are divided into very distinct roles and ranks, those divisions are insignificant compared to the division between a clan member and a clan outsider, or a clan member and a clan matriarch, so for all intents and purposes they constitute one class. As long as you’re a member of the clan, you are deserving of respect. If you cross a line that loses you that respect, you’re probably no longer part of the clan, and possibly quite dead. (I don’t see Dres as severely punishing minor infractions of their clansmer, though it would probably earn you a pretty harsh browbeating, but once the infraction can no longer be described as ‘minor’ all bets are off). Dres clansmer all reside on the lower platform of the clanstead, whatever their status, though Chap-thil and their retainers live a lot of their lives away from the clansteads due to their semi-nomadic lifestyles. The third class is those not associated with the clan, and they (generally very few in number at any given clanstead) reside at the base of the structure. This would probably include the obligatory Morag Tong guildhall; the Dres greatly appreciate and respect the Morag Tong, but they are still not clansmer. Which is to say that this lowest ‘class’ isn’t necessarily despised by the Dres, but is rather kept off the clanstead proper as a matter of principal.

People the Dres do discriminate against wouldn’t be allowed to reside for any length of time in the clan territories in the first place. The Dres are too intolerant to allow their enemies (ie. outsiders) to live in slums upon their precious territory, or in pits dug into their precious soil. Indeed, it is a great trial for the Dres to allow lizard filth dragged up from the swamps to dirty their lofty soil, but they recognize that sacrifices must be made for the greater good.

Things might look quite different in Dres Tyr and Dres Horak, which were largely created as places to dump and deal with all undesireables it was useful for the Dres to keep around. Aside from those, though, I’d actually imagine Alamexia to much more closely present the sort of class divisions you describe.

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New art, for chap-thil/nomad tents, and possibly for the Dres Leader’s tent.

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The leaders tent is very cool, has some mongolian feel to it!

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Vaguely Ashlander, too. I like it!

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Something that has been bothering me about the modular houses is that they don’t have any windows. They seem a bit bland on the outside, perhaps hexagonal windows could be added?

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The windows are a separate asset that are added on as needed; I think most of the exterior tilesets in Morrowind work that way. Check these:

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Not my most developed concept ever, but here’s an overhang and some water towers.

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I didn’t know about windows and things being separate assets. I’m a bit new to this kind of thing. I took the concept of hexagonal windows and came up with this though.

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Hexagonal windows could be interesting for larger windows. That building has a nice tiered look to it, too. We might be able to use that for a special building rather than a standard one (as the standard ones are going to be a bit plainer as far as we can tell right now).

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It looks certainly nice!

Only downside is that those inlaid windows would have to be part of the house mesh, whereas the triangle ones can be put on top of the house mesh itself, which makes for more variation.

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I got ideas from the chat transcript of the meeting yesterday.

Edit: Got me more ideas.

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Kevaar

the knobs on the building’s roof in this picture look very strange. Might need to be made smaller, maybe into inward-curved spikes? As is, reminds me a little of a jester’s cap. laugh


Those pillars were originally intended to be support structures for a roof to rest on, opening up the building and adding a bit of interest in terms of what could be done with lights placed up there and how that could effect the ambience of dres settlements, lots of outdoor living spaces, highlighting the warmer climate in the south. A few years back I suggested having most of these structures set up with sail canopies anchored on them, breaking up parts of the the traditional velothi box shape and adding a slightly more organic (almost hive-like) look and allowing us lots of variation when building the cities.

This kind of thing is what I had in mind:
          
How they could suggest a hive when viewed from the ground level

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I think having overhangs would be good; there’s definitely too much sun and not enough shade in the Deshaan, and Dres architecture would probably take that into account. I imagine the overhangs also being made from organic materials in contrast to the plaster/adobe/concrete whatever that the main buildings have going.

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Wow the dres fort is so cool! The hexagon is so smart to show the symbolism of house dres in the physical. Hhaha. GJ!yeslaugh

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I made a sketch of a Dres city— this would be on top of the canton, probably.

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Adore the windows, specifically.
The writing on the walls is something I’ve seen for Velothi villages before (in the Chaos Heart mod), and it was as well as it is here. Stylish and appropriate.

My only concern is that it makes the top of canton look a bit too big for MW’s level of compression.

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That’s a really nice Dres street view, Kaziem

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so this is quite old from me, and it was aw hile ago that i spoke to kaziem in a meeting where i asked if i should crosspost from my concept art thread into the brainstorming threads, but she said yes so i’m posting the stuff i did relevant to dres settlements here.
 

 


 

“...Salt lamps are believed to have soothing effects by the Dres – not because of any magical properties, but just because they look nice, which is as sophisticated as their sense of aesthetics really gets. A dres home will have mostly stone furniture. Nobody buys furniture made out of salt brick, because you can’t guarantee if someone just sold you something made with those poisonous salt pyramids you see so much of here, and if you knock over a candle or something, you could suffocate on those noxious fumes that the Deshaan is so famous for. 

Rather than shelves, poorer Dres find it cheaper to have satchels stringed together on leather and hooked onto the wall.  Shelves, for some reason, are much more expensive here than elsewhere in Morrowind.”

more specific comments:

so, certain materails are going to be much harder to find, and more valuable in the deshaan than others, and i think among those are things most other regions would take for granted like wood, or usable stone materials for furniture and the like, and maybe certain kinds of cotton. but things more like leather, or salt crystals and the like, much more so – i imagine a kind of minimalist furniture as a result, so while many people need strong sturdy tables because it can’t be avoided, shelves can be worked around with a more leather based solution, and local resources would obviously be preferred. chairs and seating might be a harder more stone like material with stuffed cushions on top to keep it from being too hard, beds might barely be raised off the ground just to save money for some mer, sort just stone basins with a thin mattress thrown on top. this is more interior focused than most of the exterior work that’s been going on – but i thought i’d post it here anyway.
 

 


 

...The only guideline for where the slaves were supposed to dump the salt was ‘Anywhere, as long as it’s not near anything important.’ Apparently, the beast pens aren’t considered ‘Anything important’, or perhaps the local guar and skux don’t mind the salt – the translucent shadesails that they stuff together to protect the beast pens certainly wouldn’t be of much use in keeping salt of that magnitude out. I asked the Plantation steward about this policy.

’Slaves aren’t predisposed to order and following rules.’ She said. ‘If you told an Argonian where to toss the salt back while they’re toiling with the saltrakes and saltshovels, they’d probably miss, or get salt all over the crops or other slaves instead of where you actually wanted it to go. It’s hard enough to get them to throw it into the piles. Besides, we make sure they shovel it away at the end of each week anyway, otherwise our crops would be ruined in the next wind storm.’

I replied, ‘Sera, I have my own plantation back in Orethan with a number of Argonian slaves, and I find that they’re more than capable of understanding ‘Place waste here, in these barrels’, or, ‘ Look before you toss dirt to make sure you don’t hit anyone.’

’Yes, I’m sure.’ She said. ‘But your Argonians are not inhaling and swallowing the salt everyday, or going deaf from skyrenders buzzing right by their ears, or having standing in wells of poison everyday, for years. I think it damages their brains, really.’

’If the environment is so hazardous to your slaves,’ I asked, ‘then why are you so careless with them?’

She shrugged. ‘It’s not like we’re short on them or anything.’

hardly functional and more atmospheric or making a point with this drawing (like the other one), but here’s a small edge of a plantation. others commented that the shadesails/protection for the beast pen seems hardly necessary if the animals have natural protection from having evolved in the deshaan, and to be honest, that’s a good point, so, you can ignore that bit. but i imagine the edges of plantations to have mounds of toxic salt waiting to be carted off by slaves, large iron barrels that help pump water up from underground with visible pipes, metal barrels nearby to fill with the saltrice, and they might be quite near an underwater canal and riverstrider bays to take them over to horak or tyr. nothing too revolutionary, but thought i’d post it anyway.

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Some more art for the Dres…

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EDIT: Nevermind. Saw that previous design documents of the canton’s had temples on the top on third level of the canton.

That being said, could I posslby place a sketch of a possible standrad Dres canton temple? 

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Are Dres going to have actively used good Daedra temples? I imagine they would still worship Azura etc, while still hating bad Daedra worship.
Ancestor worship and good Daedra worship go hand-in-hand, don’t they?

What do those in-use and not-abandoned Daedric temples look like?

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MrWillis, go for it— you don’t need permission to do concepts of things, just give it a try!

For daedra worship, I’m not sure if they’d have currently active shrines. That’s a good question.

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On Daedric ruins, I do think there should be Daedric ruins in the Deshaan and that they should be in relatively crisp condition, but not necessarily used. I think Dres would have early on adopted clan-temples (which should visually borrow heavily from Daedric architecture but as interpreted through Dres architecture), and that the Daedric temples would be from the Saltwalker days, or sometimes even older.

Note that I think the Dres council houses/wisewomen’s chambers should be on the top platform – not temples – with ancestor burials below them; I think temples should get their own mini-platform, though they should be given a prominent position.

Only issue I have with nwo_viper’s post are the mentions of metal, which I think the Dres should do without where possible. I actually like the attention to interiors; I’d assumed the only reason we haven’t discussed them yet is that nobody has had any ideas. In general, from my experience, exterior architecture is more quickly designed than interior architecture.

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I was reading: http://www.tamriel-rebuilt.org/asset/dres-cremation-practices
And it struck me that Dres (proper House Dres who abide by their House’ burial practices) would probably be enticed at the prospect of using their combat foes’ bones for their own future burial and burning, so I’d imagine they might encorporate something along those lines into something of an oft used battle cry when engaging in combat.  Something like: “You’re bones will fly with me to Necrom, scum!” (or something)

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Impression of some sidebuilding welded into the first level of a Dres canton.

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Oooh, those look nice. I quite like the little insets on the buildings. And I think the buildings merged with the walls is a visually interesting way to do them, and would let the interiors of these buildings have more freedom in their design.

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