[Temple quest] The Natural Order

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FifthEstate's picture
FifthEstate
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I’ve always thought the concept of diseases and afflictions in Morrowind was a great idea that became underwhelmed in implimentation, so here’s a quest where the threat is real, characters in the game are affected, and players get a glimpse of the ever underappreciated Taskmaster at work. 
 
Also, whoo, first contribution! Hopefully this propels me to be more active on this project, I could use a productive hobby.  
 
Quest Giver
A Tribunal Temple healer in a small-mid sized Tribunal-worshipping community

Reward
Option 1. An incurable negative effect for a timed duration + the White Robe of St. Seryn and Temple reputation + disposition increase
Option 2. Temple reputation 

Short Summary
The player arrives in a town to discover numerous residents have mysteriously become afflicted with a variety of diseases and is asked to help minister healing to the community.

Long Summary

  1. The PC is cautioned by a local NPC to keep their distance to avoid catching the NPC’s disease. If the player inquires, they are told how numerous town residents have fallen ill under mysterious circumstances and that the local Temple healer is struggling to remedy the situation. If the player offers to help, the NPC directs them to the local Temple.
  2. The PC meets a Healer NPC at the local Temple who fears a plague has befallen the town. The Healer is obviously at the end of their rope and it seems that for every townsperson cured another falls ill. The healer is convinced extra hands are needed to remedy the solution, so they tasked the PC to gather and distribute 5 cure common disease potions to affected NPCs or cast spells on them to the same effect. He also offhandedly remarks that different villagers are experiencing different symptoms of a variety of common diseases.
  3. After distributes healing to the local population the PC returns to the Temple to report their success. The Healer expresses gratitude and asks that the PC check on their patients before they leave town. After this dialogue, approaching any of the previously cured NPC’s results in them complaining that their ailments have returned—but now they’re even worse than before. The PC is asked to return to the healer with this information.
  4. The PC speaks to the Healer who has come to the conclusion the affliction is unnatural. He asks you to investigate and suggests you speak to locals to find out if any unusual happenings have occurred around the time the afflictions began.
  5. Asking around about unusual happenings leads to a few NPCs telling a story of a delirious old man arrived in town out of the blue and began preaching in the street how the town would be punished for [some form of hubris]. The man was found dead in the square the next morning with no markings or apparent distress on the body. Because the man was obviously an outlander, the locals decided to bury the body in an unmarked grave outside town.
  6. The PC is directed to the grave site and after a small hike arrives to find a bizarre sight; the grave has been unearthed by flora (trauma roots) with the skeleton of the man hanging from the roots in a way that almost props the body up as a standing skeleton. The PC can approach and interact with the strange skeleton, whereby a strange disembodied voice speaks to the PC and claims responsibility for the pestilence. The voice offers the PC a choice—persuade the Temple healer to come to the shrine and accept all the villagers’ diseases or have the PC take the diseases instead. The voice warns the PC the longer the pestilence stays, the worse it gets, so a decision should be made quickly. This leads to the following arcs in the quest:
    • The PC convinces the Healer to take the disease: With a disposition of 80 or higher the Healer can be convince to follow the PC to the shrine. The priest interacts with the voice and then falls unconscious. A journal entry then suggests the PC tells one of the town guard to carry the Healer back to the Temple. The quest ends and the player earns renown and Temple approval. If the PC returns to the town two days later they learn the Healer died from the disease.
    • The PC choses to do nothing: If the PC choses to neither accept the diseases or convince the priest within a week’s time, all afflicted NPCs die and the quest fails.
    • The PC choses to accept the diseases: A significant negative modifier to skills and attributes is placed on the player that will only be removed over a reasonable period of time (or maybe a pilgrimage could fix it). The player returns to the Healer who praises the virtuous decision and gifts the player with the Robes of St. Seryn, a holy artifact imbued with powerful restoration magic. They also receive Temple approval, renown, and a disposition increase of +20 for all previously afflicted NPCs and the Healer.
 
Kevaar's picture
Kevaar
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Hi! Thanks for your contribution. Quest idea submissions should be going into the Asset Browser though ( http://tamriel-rebuilt.org/asset ).

I like this idea, up until the trauma roots. Makes me wonder who/what actually put this curse on the town. Are they ever identified?

FifthEstate's picture
FifthEstate
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Ah, my mistake. I’ll submit it there.

The inspiration for the trama root skeleton was to create a sort of “shrine,” who true identity is that of a Peryite worshipper. The corpse would be the conduit through which Peryite would speak through. I recognize it’s the shakiest part of the questline, but I was unsure what vessel would be an acceptable conduit through which the transaction between Peryite and the PC. 

I didn’t specifically mention Peryite in the quest description because I thought if we made the reference obvious through key words like pestilence, the natural order, etc, the PC would pick up on the reference. This may be worth considering, maybe I made it too vague.  

Terrifying Daedric Foe's picture
Terrifying Daed...
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It’s best to link Morrowind quests to the Daedra associated with it rather than any of the others. That’s more Outlander business. There’s little tying this quest to Morrowind or to the TT in particular, it could just as easily take place in another province. That’s something to avoid.

Perhaps instead it is Malacath cultists spreading a debilitating illness amongst the Dunmer of the town in revenge some slight the townsmer did many centuries earlier. Something the stranger said reminded the oldest member of the town about a story their grandmother told them as a child… 

Once upon a time a pair of sickly children were born to a family in the town. They were physically disfigured, with withered limbs and hideous birth marks all over their bodies. Ashamed of their disabled children, and struggling to even feed themselves due to a famine that was afflicting the region in that year, the father took them out of the village and left them out in the wilderness to die. As he returned to the village he was filled with remorse and ran back to where he had left them. When he approached the place, however, he was horrified to see a Ogrim stooping over the babies. The Ogrim scooped up one of them and left in the direction of a nearby Daedric shrine. The father hurried over and saw that the remaining baby was dead. Ashamed, he buried the baby at that spot.

Upon hearing this the Healer suggests visiting the shrine. At the shrine the player meets the cultists, led by a mer claiming to be descended from the stolen baby. He says that the dead baby must be exhumed and laid to rest in the town’s ash pit. He can then lead you to the site, where selecting an activator will accelerate time and place the baby remains item in the player’s inventory.  Placing the remains in the town ash pit lifts the disease from all the townsmer.

If we wanted to introduce conflict, perhaps the town’s authorities are unwilling to cave to the demands of Bad Daedra cultists. If the demands are not met then the people die of the disease and the quest ends (but the player gets to slaughter the cultists and steal their loot so it’s not all bad news).

Sorry for hijacking your quest idea FifthEstate!

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FifthEstate
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Please don’t apologize, I’m happy to get feedback on this quest! 

Just to be clear though, are you saying that non-featured Daedric Princes are off-limits completely? I’d like to rework this quest in a way that features a stronger “Morrowind flair,” but I still think Peryite would be a powerful component to the story. My current reservations on the Malacath idea are mainly that 1.) I don’t see Malacath as the type of Daedra to work through something as subtle as disease (his sphere is the Bloody Curse, so maybe a Curse could be a possible fix to this one), and 2.) Malacath’s character in vanilla Morrowind strongly revolves around Orsmer, who don’t really have any involvement in this quest so far. 

IF Peryite could still be on the table, I wanted to propose an alternative idea I came up with the other day that tactfully removes my talking shrubbery (feat. skeleton) idea in the original post. I don’t want to presume I have that authority though, so in the meantime I’ll start thinking about your suggestions around Malacath and how I could adjust the quest accordingly. 

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Kevaar
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I don’t think we should be restricted to just the classic Morrowind Daedra, especially not if it’d be going out of our way to make one make sense. I like the quest as is, though I’d make it a “leetle” more obvious who it’s referencing, to make the vines thing make sense.

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Terrifying Daed...
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My justification for Malacath is that he is the patron of the spurned and ostracized (link is external) (which is not exclusive to orcs) and he tests the Dunmer for physical weakness (link is external) and I’d argue that inflicting debilitating illness fits the bill nicely.

If you can come up with a good reason for Peryite to target this particular Dunmer town then I’m all for it. You can even play up the local priests’ ignorance of this “western” daedra. I just thought from a thematic viewpoint it would be more appropriate to have one of the House of Troubles be the antagonist in a Temple quest, and I didn’t consider the switch to Malacath to be “going out of the way to make it make sense”.

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6plus
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What IS TR’s stance on Peryite even?
In Morrowind and Olivion his realm is (natural) order, he’s associated with lesser daedra and is called the “taskmaster”. That pestilence thing hasn’t been mentioned before Skyrim. So did we adopt that trait?

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Rot
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I’d seen the pestilence thing on peryite before Skyrim came out. It’s probably from daggerfall.

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6plus
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Rot

I’d seen the pestilence thing on peryite before Skyrim came out. It’s probably from daggerfall.

Well, the book On Oblivion mentions that:

Peryite's sphere seems to be pestilence,...

but that book also says

Nevertheless, scattered throughout the literature of the First Era are diaries, journals, notices for witch burnings, and guides for Daedra-slayers. These I have used as my primary source material.

so I’d take that pestilence thing with a grain of salt. Especially when the first quoted sentence continues:

...and Vaermina's torture.

But even if we accept Peryite as Prince of Pestilence that doesn’t necessarily mean that he happily spreads plagues whenever he feels like it. The daedric prince of natural order seems prone to using a natural cause like plagues to restore natural order i.e. the weak perish and the strong survive. Releasing an unnatural disease to weaken and destroy mortals is IMO more Molag Bal’s thing.

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Kevaar
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Bump, since I think this is worthy of going in if we can figure out the critiques.