Reviving the Literature Department

[Yeti]

I don't think Darwin has any place in TES. Just to interject for a moment.

It was just a joke. I certainly agree that evolution has no place in TES. I was referring more to the fact that any species of creatures wouldn't survive long if their bodies emitted electricity that would kill everything in the water for a several mile radius every time one of them died.

[Not]

A book, to replace something crap with something (hopefully) less crap. From a title suggested by Adanorcil, book burner extraordinaire.

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How to Tune your Hoom
By Arvyrin Adrys

We are all aware of the long and storied history of the Mountain Hoom. Who has not, as a child, heard the tale of Daroom, the Beast of the Mountain who sang to the Dwemer animunculi in their own language? Or of the seven thousand Hoom that greeted Saint Veloth (blessed be the dust of his mouth), and announced to him that he had entered Resdayn at last?

Not all of these proud creatures can claim such legendary status, but most can, with patience and wisdom, be trained to sing harmonies both pious and beautiful. By following my advice, perhaps you too like the Chimer Magnates of old can own a parade of these animals, to march before you and signal your approach.

To do so, one must raise the beast from birth. Locating eggs is not hard, but harvesting them from the mother’s back may prove a challenge. Once hatched a juvenile Hoom is no larger than a mouse and will happily sit in the folds of your cloak, eating comberries and other fruits.

When it comes of an age to carry itself, you must begin its training. Speak to it, sing to it, play the flute or ash horn to it if you can. It will see you as a parent and will strive to imitate. I once saw a Hoom three summers of age that could form Ashlander melodies as sweet and mournful as any one might hear on the winds of Vvardenfell.

The Nords believe that the Hoom learns best in its Spring mating season, and you may see a poor apprentice lad wearing the shell of a potential mate, trying to inflame the blood-fired creatures so that they sing all the sweeter. Amusing though this charade is, there is little enough proof of it’s effectiveness, and the creatures learn as diligently in Frostfall as in First Seed.

With skill, it is possible to craft reeds and valves from wood, bone and other materials. Fitting these to your companion will broaden the range of sounds that it can produce. Masters of this art engrave their sigils on the carapace of the animal, making art pleasing to the ears and eyes alike. My symbol is the double-headed Shalk: you may encounter a few examples of my life’s work.

Finally, a note to those who have a romantic imagination and a love of the old tales. It is said in ancient days the Hoom could be taught to speak as well as any Dunmer, and utter pieties. I fear that if you wish to see this done today, you must seek a better teacher than I. That art, if it ever truly existed, is now lost. It is claimed by some that the Hoom long ago said all they wished to say, and are content now to simply sing. Perhaps in this they are the wise ones.

Looks damn good to me. I'd say leave it as is, but again, I'm not the best reviewer when it comes to literature. Perhaps Adanorcil or Nanu could comment on what may or may not need changing, as well as what specific book this one should replace.

[Nanu]

Aren't most of the books in finished from our defunct Hammerfall project? I'm all for including some of them, if they're better than the stuff in Data, though it might be wierd having a ton of Hammerfall books turning up in Morrowind.

Some, not most. We could offset this by writing books specific to other provinces as well. That way, for every Hammerfell-related book we put in, we'd have a few from the other provinces also. If we can't actually rebuild Tamriel, we can at least expand on the far away lands through words.

How to Tune your Hoom is great. Like, really great. This off-beat subject matter is what makes Morrowind so much better than the more generic sequels. As to what it replaces, any guide would do. We have at least four bad ones.

[Haplo]

I like How to Tune Your Hoom, but four quick errors:

1. "Spring" should be "spring"; you don't capitalize seasons unless they are part of a proper noun or beginning a sentence.

2. "proof of it's effectiveness" needs to have the apostrophe removed, since "its" is not a contraction here.

3. "better teacher than I" should really end with "me" rather than "I". Using "I" here changes the meaning to imply that the teacher is seeking a teacher of his own and that the reader should seek a better teacher than the teacher that the teacher is seeking.

4. "to simply sing" is a split infinitive AKA bad. You can fix this easily by transposing "to" and "simply".

I won't comment on passive voice.

[arvisrend]

Now, as for the list of what we should add... no real idea. As BC and others have noticed, I mostly think of the game in terms of gameplay. I definitely like BC's Five Parables suggestion and I hope we can find enough people to actually do them (a quest indeed better not left to the showcase, lest we want to get five rewritten Aesops). What about the memoirs of a Temple preacher who (in vain) tried to convert Ashlander tribes? Conversely, an Ashlander's perspective on the Five Houses?

More suggestions:

- The cultural significance and tradition of rat fights in Morrowind. I don't know if they are a uniquely Hlaalu thing (they only appear in the Hlaalu questline in MW, see the "game rats" topic), but they seem to have some more meaning than cheap entertainment. [I'd also like to make some rat fight quests in Almalexia, but that needs not be related to the book.]

- A leaked report of an Imperial Legionnaire about corruption and dereliction at some Imperial fort in Morrowind (Windmoth?). The report was meant to go to somebody in Cyrodiil, but was intercepted and publicized by the Dunmer (House Indoril?), and now circulates as a book popular among traditionalists. Of course, the Imperials would contest the report's authenticity, and noone would be surprised if some editing was done to it before its release to the populace.

[arvisrend]

Now to something completely different: gro-Dhal's book.

How to Tune your Hoom
By Arvyrin Adrys

We are all aware of the long and storied history

Storied history? Is that intention? If not, I'm not sure it's a good thing.

of the Mountain Hoom. Who has not, as a child, heard the tale of Daroom, the Beast of the Mountain who sang to the Dwemer animunculi in their own language? Or of the seven thousand Hoom that greeted Saint Veloth (blessed be the dust of his mouth),

Sounds a bit like PBUH to me; are you sure the Tribunal Temple uses phrases like this? (A search for "blessed be" in vanilla gives only 1 hit.)

and announced to him that he had entered Resdayn at last?

Not all of these proud creatures can claim such legendary status, but most can, with patience and wisdom, be trained to sing harmonies both pious and beautiful. By following my advice, perhaps you too like the Chimer Magnates of old can own a parade of these animals, to march before you and signal your approach.

To do so, one must raise the beast from birth. Locating eggs is not hard, but harvesting them from the mother’s back may prove a challenge. Once hatched a juvenile Hoom is no larger than a mouse and will happily sit in the folds of your cloak, eating comberries and other fruits.

When it comes of an age to carry itself, you must begin its training. Speak to it, sing to it, play the flute or ash horn to it if you can.

Ash horn! Do we have it? We should!
(But no urgency, of course. Can say it's a map 5 thing, right?)

It will see you as a parent and will strive to imitate. I once saw a Hoom three summers of age that could form Ashlander melodies as sweet and mournful as any one might hear on the winds of Vvardenfell.

The Nords believe that the Hoom learns best in its Spring mating season, and you may see a poor apprentice lad wearing the shell of a potential mate, trying to inflame the blood-fired creatures so that they sing all the sweeter. Amusing though this charade is, there is little enough proof of it’s effectiveness, and the creatures learn as diligently in Frostfall as in First Seed.

With skill, it is possible to craft reeds and valves from wood, bone and other materials. Fitting these to your companion will broaden the range of sounds that it can produce. Masters of this art engrave their sigils on the carapace of the animal, making art pleasing to the ears and eyes alike. My symbol is the double-headed Shalk: you may encounter a few examples of my life’s work.

Finally, a note to those who have a romantic imagination and a love of the old tales. It is said in ancient days the Hoom could be taught to speak as well as any Dunmer, and utter pieties. I fear that if you wish to see this done today, you must seek a better teacher than I. That art, if it ever truly existed, is now lost. It is claimed by some that the Hoom long ago said all they wished to say, and are content now to simply sing. Perhaps in this they are the wise ones.

This is wonderful! (I haven't been looking at spelling since Haplo did.)

[gro-Dhal]

I like How to Tune Your Hoom, but four quick errors:

Thanks. The only ones i'd quibble are 3 and 4, as I don't think perfect grammatical construction is entirely necessary when writing 'in character'. I'll see if I can improve them anyway.

[gro-Dhal]

Storied history? Is that intention? If not, I'm not sure it's a good thing.

That is intentional, and legit use of English. It means a history containing many stories.

Sounds a bit like PBUH to me; are you sure the Tribunal Temple uses phrases like this? (A search for "blessed be" in vanilla gives only 1 hit.)

I don't see why they wouldn't. I can change if people think it's worth changing.

Ash horn! Do we have it? We should!
(But no urgency, of course. Can say it's a map 5 thing, right?)

Ha. I pictured it a bit like those big trumpets people use in the alps, intended to warn of approaching ash storms.

Nanu is it essential that new books are similar in terms of genre to what they're replacing? I though the idea of this was to improve the diversity of literature.

[arvisrend]

That is intentional, and legit use of English. It means a history containing many stories.

I'm aware that it's legit use of English; I dislike it stylistically (it's basically the same root word repeated twice). But if your language feeling says it's good, it is.

Nanu is it essential that new books are similar in terms of genre to what they're replacing? I though the idea of this was to improve the diversity of literature.

I'm not Nanu, but I can say it would be very good if, at least, for every book we remove we can find a placement-equivalent book, by which I mean a book which will not look out of place if we just replace the text of the old book by the new one. So, we shouldn't replace a pro-Imperial book by Temple writings or vice versa, and probably "science" texts on conjurations shouldn't supersede romance novels. Otherwise we'd have to search/replace tons of stuff in all the currently unmerged ints, and that's a ton of work.

[Nanu]

Nanu is it essential that new books are similar in terms of genre to what they're replacing? I though the idea of this was to improve the diversity of literature.

I'm not Nanu, but I can say it would be very good if, at least, for every book we remove we can find a placement-equivalent book, by which I mean a book which will not look out of place if we just replace the text of the old book by the new one. So, we shouldn't replace a pro-Imperial book by Temple writings or vice versa, and probably "science" texts on conjurations shouldn't supersede romance novels. Otherwise we'd have to search/replace tons of stuff in all the currently unmerged ints, and that's a ton of work.

Correct, and for the reasons you stated. If they're so different from anything we've written, they just go in. Otherwise, there needs to be something at least kind of relevant that we can replace with the new text.

[Adanorcil]

Updated the shitlist to include all TR_bk books. The _sc ones will come later.

[Not]

Out of random curiosity, after we finish with "the shitlist", are we going to make them into claims or are we just going to make a request thread? how are we doing this? I understand we'll have to replace the shitty books with good books that are on the same topic, but what about new writings for new towns? Have we decided how we're going to approach this?

[arvisrend]

So, about Adan's xls file and putting them all into Data -- I'm giving it up for today. I used to think that MW books can have boldface and italics text but apparently they don't. Are there any standards for this, like use * for italics and ** for boldface? That wouldn't look very good in a place like this (weird indentation preserved):

Code: Select all

        inside the head for the soft and squishy mnemocrypt. That one closed
         that one’s eyes and muttered a cantrip, speaking to the memories,
          swimming through them, being enclosed and sustained by them like
           placenta. <i>Slow, painful. Dying. Realisation. Soulsnare. Poison.</i>
            Now K’tala understood the absence of living parasites in the pool

(@Haplo: I haven't changed anything in Data so far, and will not for a while. Most of the work is done in a text file. So please don't regard me as having the Data.)

Can anyone explain me the "virtual" in the Orc Creation Story?
But my kin bow and scrape towards Imperials, and virtual down their tusks so they not gore their general's wives when stooping to kiss their hand, and do not keep alive the old myths of the pariah folk, and Gortwog is to blame for that.

I'm a bit surprised by the amount of swearing in some of the obscure texts -- do orcs speak like that?

Should every Song of Pelinal volume be a single book? Some of them are really short, even if I put the (global) Editor's Note in the text.

And should the picture in volume 7 of http://www.imperial-library.info/content/song-pelinal go into the Data?

[Haplo]

We just don't use italics or boldface in texts for Morrowind, unfortunately. As for that image from TIL, no. We don't own the image and it wouldn't look good in a book anyway.

[Adanorcil]

Can anyone explain me the "virtual" in the Orc Creation Story?
But my kin bow and scrape towards Imperials, and virtual down their tusks so they not gore their general's wives when stooping to kiss their hand, and do not keep alive the old myths of the pariah folk, and Gortwog is to blame for that.

I have absolutely no idea what that is doing there. It should clearly read "file down".

I'm a bit surprised by the amount of swearing in some of the obscure texts -- do orcs speak like that?

It's very much on purpose and in line with the intent of the text. The idea is that, contrary to popular opinion, Orcs do have a rich culture and tradition. The central pillar of their identity, however, is that where the other elves are all dejected about having lost their link to the divine, the Orcs stare the big ugly, smelly mortal world straight in the eyes and go "Bring it, motherfucker. Whatever you do, we can be uglier and stink harder". The text basically turns the term "pariah" into a badge of honor.

Should every Song of Pelinal volume be a single book? Some of them are really short, even if I put the (global) Editor's Note in the text.

The notes at the end say they can be separate books. Yeah, it's short, but put it in another book anyway. It's a very important bit of text and there's precedents like it in vanilla too, I'm sure. Besides, it removes one more crap book and in having seven books, we neatly cover up the seven volumes of this one particular series.

And should the picture in volume 7 of http://www.imperial-library.info/content/song-pelinal go into the Data?

As for that image from TIL, no. We don't own the image and it wouldn't look good in a book anyway.

Unless it's specifically Bethesda's stuff (like the art book), it's probably fine to use it. If you're not sure, ask me. This particular picture came with the Knights of the Nine expansion to begin with.

That being said, don't use this picture. It's a particularly bland image of Paladin-Pelinal and, as Haplo said, it probably wouldn't look good anyway.

[rot]

In defense of the more mediocre books (because it seems even those that aren't terribly written are criticised for being useless), do also look at them from the point of view of interior design and NPC characterisation, rather than literature. I haven't seen this elaborated further than the concern over how inconvenient they are to replace - books are not just text, they're also objects, and NPC possessions. Interior people use them when they want *books* somewhere, be it for characterisation, or just aesthetic objects without specific meaning.

Sure, worldbuilding should have some priority in what you give the player to read since text is the only way to do unimplementable stuff, but all books needn't be for the player to read. Some are made for the NPCs, and if too many books scream "look! look at this strange setting!", the player starts to catch on and there goes your immersion. Some just have to be bland, hey, even bad books have their place. Obviously they'd have to be in-universe bad, not fanfiction flavour bad, and that's harder to pull off, but they don't need to have any literary or cultural merit to them either. And it's still good to have many of them so all the NPCs aren't reading the same 5 bland books.

Case in point, the King Edward / Fool's Ebony scripts. Yeah, I wouldn't read them either (disclaimer: and didn't. why yes I AM talking out of my arse) but they clearly announce what they are in their title or first few lines, so one knows what they're in for if they start reading them.
aside from all that, on there being several volumes in series of books: the possibility that they could be spread in various interiors is good for gameplay (egg hunt), but somewhat bad for immersion...

tldr and if only for all this rambling not to be useless, here's an idea: price the bland books or "pointless" fiction an order of magnitude below the books you want the player to read. IRL books with worthwhile information are always terribly overpriced so we're used to that and it could make some immediate, intuitive kind of sense at least.

[gro-Dhal]

I have to disagree with that. If a book isn't of interest to the player, it has no business being in the game. I personally take issue with some of these ints that have shelves with dozens of books that are just <this ledger is here for decorative purposes> or similar.

That doesn't mean they all have to be 'literary' (I don't think any of us can claim to be writing Umberto Eco or Borges here), and they can and should cover ostensibly mundane subjects. But if they're pointless filler, and if they're boring to read, then we should aim to replace them all if we can.

[rot]

I personally take issue with some of these ints that have shelves with dozens of books that are just <this ledger is here for decorative purposes> or similar.

And that's what those books are: better than activators that only read <this is a script> - static props you can't investigate just wouldn't fit ingame. It sure would be nice if you could replace them with more interesting versions of that type of material, but replacing them with books which are obviously all for the player's benefit ("oi! world exposition! DUNMER!") is in terms of immersion exactly as bad as having only gamehint books. And as terrible and moddy as are the contents and title of "Jokes!", it makes more sense for NPCs to be reading that sort of thing than another book on guarherding imo -

[Swiftoak]

I am with gro-Dhal on this matter.

If we're going to keep ledgers for the sole purpose of filling bookshelves, then we should make the player actually want to read them.

Like fill them with actual content instead of the filler stuff in brackets.This means we also need to cut down the amount of these books. I'm OK for ledgers and records, just not having 10 of them fill the same shelf. If they don't serve the purpose of contributing to the story/atmosphere of a particular interior or questline, then we should axe them.

For example, I could see ledgers being useful in the sense of that genealogy stuff in the Indoril questline. Having to go through ancestral records or something in Necrom would be cool.

[This is another shipping ledger for all imports in Helnim]. Not cool.

Just my two cents.

[gro-Dhal]

It sure would be nice if you could replace them with more interesting versions of that type of material, but replacing them with books which are obviously all for the player's benefit ("oi! world exposition! DUNMER!") is in terms of immersion exactly as bad as having only gamehint books.

It doesn't have to be obvious, but it should all be for the player's benefit. They are, in the end, the only audience for this stuff. That doesn't mean it all has to be high-minded lore weirdness of course. There are lots of subtle ways to reinforce the worldbuilding through writing.

[Jule]

While writing elaborate and descriptive ledgers might be a nice solution for some interiors, it could also be a problem for others. I'll speak for myself: while creating the interior for the Temple Administration building in Necrom, I didn't even try to write anything similar to a ledger or list of buried interred Dunmer. First reason: it would've been a hell of a list. Second reason: this would require a deep knowledge of lore, something I don't have. Third reason: this would require a knowledge of all the current AND future (AND obviously former) inhabitants of Morrowind in order to avoid any controversies, something that wasn't possible at the time.
As for other interiors with similar books: the books would have to be well thought through, which means you'd have to know what the economy of a city is all about before attempting to write a ledger for a dockyard or granary or harbor or plantation or whatnot. Just half-assing it could cause bigger problems than simply having a ledger saying <lah-dee-dah I'm a generic ledger of X in Y>.
So, while writing specific ledgers might be a nice solution to our problem, we would have to define what to write (and who should write it) BEFORE creating the interior. Ideally, this should be clarified while planning any town before actually planning what interiors it should include, so the interior could actually help by giving players an idea about their surroundings.

[Swiftoak]

I agree with your assessment actually, which is why I suggested toning down the quantity and opting for quality. Emphasis quality.

They don't have to be overly elaborate either. I'd rather take the time and do this right. It's never too late to do things right.

Recordkeeping is usually done in volumes, so we don't necessarily need to do everything. Even just a single ledger with certail excerpts of note that would simply serve to highlight certain noteworthy things would be okay. Anything other than the bracketed nonsense.

Heck, I'm all for just axing those things altoghether and leaving only quest-specific ones.

I'm probably the worst judge on literary matters though. So this is all I'll say on the matter. I think it's more important to consider our actual literature hitlist before we start talking about ledgers and stuff.

[Jule]

I think it's more important to consider our actual literature hitlist before we start talking about ledgers and stuff.

I couldn't agree more. Ledgers and stuff like that should be on the bottom of the to-do list, with the exception of ledgers serving quest-related goals. For example, I would have liked to see how exactly that guy in Caldera fixed the numbers to obtain profit (however, I admit this could have been a bit over the top), or how much he actually skimmed (this would have been easier, they should've just given a number). Instead of just pointing out the fact that the guy did embezzle funds, they could've made the player figure it out by himself.

[Yeti]

Blank Ledgers (those with their hypotheical contents summarized in brackets) should only really be added where they serve a useful purpose, such as creating the illusion of a massive archive. It would be completely unrealistic to create complete documents in such cases. With that said, we can do without adding these kinds of documents to most interiors. More often than not, they end up being bland unnecessary fluff that add little to the player's experience.

I myself am guilty of adding these kind of documents in the past. This was mainly back when I was a noob who didn't know any better, and thought adding unique books to my interiors made them more hip.

[Swiftoak]

I think ledgers and interior/quest-specific books should actually be discussed in their respective threads on a per interior/quest basis, rather than as a whole, which threatens to derail the discussion on some of the things in our literature department that truly need work. *puts on a guilty face*

I brouight it up simply so it wouldn't be completely ignored in the future. Far too many times we've gotten too ahead of ourselves which has resulted in some very bad decisions being made, at least in my opinion.

[Not]

I think ledgers and interior/quest-specific books should actually be discussed in their respective threads on a per interior/quest basis, rather than as a whole, which threatens to derail the discussion on some of the things in our literature department that truly need work.

As a matter of fact, this is exactly how the process is supposed to work now. If there's an interior that will hold special NPCs and/or documents, then the contents of said documents/ledgers/whatever are discussed first before implemented.

That's how it is now, though I don't know if it was like that back then. Again, I'm pretty much a newbie here when it comes to stuff a while back, but nowadays these things usually have to be run by either Why, Adan, or myself before they're actually implemented.

[Adanorcil]

On the ledger problem: it's a tricky problem with no obvious elegant solution. My opinion would be to include a few lines that suggest the content, followed by some variation on the phrase "this goes on for a lot longer".

Ideally, though, I'd say to avoid using ledger-type books whenever possible. From a gameplay point of view, it's far less jarring to see a cell labeled "Archives" that only has three books in it than to have a cell filled to the brim with the same book.

[gro-Dhal]

Yeti and BC, both of the texts you've provided here are good, solid context-providing stuff. Would you care to give them their own threads in the lit forum so they're not forgotten?

Yeti: i'd suggest a different title for yours to distinguish it from the overfamiliar Brief History of the Empire books.

BC: 'amid the Imperial Simulacrum' sounds a bit weird.

[Yeti]

Ah yes, I'd almost forgotten about that text. I'll make a thread for it in the literature section once I have time to revise it.