I have most of the pieces for adding an Orc Stronghold to the homes the player can build in Hearthfire. It's going to take some time to connect it all up - especially linking all the pieces to the their enable parents, and making the lists of components that drive the scripts, but everything is figured out. The bit that's missing (apart from some of the partial building meshes) is the quest that allows the player to use the plot of land.

In the DLC, the player is granted the right to purchase the land by the Jarl of a hold that has no ready-made home. The only one that doesn't already provide a plot or a house is Winterhold, and that's all heavy snow and ice. The Orc Longhouse comes in regular and light-snow variants, and I didn't feel like adding to the load by making another, so a grant from Winterhold was ruled out. That left me with putting the plot in one of the others, and the need for a different story.

I found a suitable location at the northern side of the central plain, near to Greenspring Hollow. It has iron veins (6) and corundum (2) in reasonable reach, plus 2 clay, and I've found a good spot to add a stone quarry. That puts it in Whiterun's area, and the Jarl there already lets you buy Breezehome. So I need another way for you to get the grant to the Greenspring Longhouse plot.

One idea I have is for the Orc chieftains collectively to reward the player if he/she has done favours for each of the four existing strongholds. The chief of Largashbur gets replaced by the Malacath quest, but that's no different from the Civil War replacing Jarls, and can be accomodated by an appropriate alias. None of them would step down, and let him/her replace them, but letting the player build a new stronghold would advance the Orcish cause in general. This only makes sense for an Orc player character, but I suspect that's what the human playing the game would expect.

The questions remaining are:
Who to pay for the land? It's easier to use the existing scripts if I can keep this part of the process. I'm thinking Whiterun Steward, as it's in their territory.
Adoption? The longhouse is smaller than the other three houses, but you can fit child beds into it. The code allows adopted kids to move to a house that has those, plus their own chest. The counter-argument is that there's no Orc orphans without another mod. On the gripping hand, you don't have to adopt kids of your own race. Since I can control what's put into the house, I can turn adoption on or off by the making of the kids' beds and chest(s).
Should the longhouse recruit other Orcs? DLC houses can add bard and carriage driver, and convert a follower to steward. It may be possible to re-purpose those slots to more Orcish-stronghold "jobs", like shaman or smith.
Multiple marriage? Orc chieftains can have more than one wife. Should building the longhouse give the player the right to extra wives? And what if the PC is female? I'm not sure if this would mean new script, or if "hunts-wife" could just be a replacement for "bard".

Depending on how you set this up, I might be interested in using this mod. Would you have to be an Orc to get it? Does it have walls and outbuildings?

Paying for the land, that would make sense to get it from the steward.

I don’t really use the adoption feature so I don’t care about that much.

I’d like to recruit anyone really to work at my longhouse. Not just orcs.

I’d say extra wives for orcs only. Part of their culture, but not really part of anyone else’s.

Since the orc strongholds are autonomous, it seems odd to pay the Whiterun Steward to create a new stronghold. Since the orcs themselves respect strength, I would think they would most respect someone who simply took the initiative and created their own stronghold, and of course had the strength to pull it off. So instead of paying for land, I suggest some quest(s) to take and hold the land. Put some giants there you have to slay, or a den of bandits, etc... Then once construction has begun I suggest a few more defend the stronghold quests from bandit raiders and the like.

I think you may as well keep the adoption feature. People who like it can use it. And it won't matter to people who don't bother with kids.

I suppose one question you need to answer is if this is going to be for only Orc characters. If it is it will limit the usefulness of the mod. But it does make the most sense to me. Why would a Bosmer want to build an Orc Stronghold? Unless you just like the way the buildings look (which I have to say I do).

So here is an idea. Let anyone build an Orc-themed house. But only let an Orc player build an actual stronghold. So then what is the difference between the two? The Orc-themed house would be a standard Hearthfire home, just with Orc meshes and textures rather than the Nord-style building. Everything else would be exactly the same as in HF. The Stronghold would be an all Orc affair. Besides the usual steward, wagon driver, bard, you could implement a script that adds other Orc npcs who just live there, work the mine, the smithy, the potion table, and so on, the same as a regular stronghold. That would also give you an armor/weapon vendor and a potion vendor. It might be simplest to just make two separate mods. One an Orc-themed house that you buy from the Whiterun Steward, one the Stronghold that your Orc character carves from the wilderness all on their own.

On wives, the Orcs are polygamous, but only the Chief. As I understand it he is married to every female Orc in the stronghold (except his children). The other Orc men are not allowed to have wives, or sex as far as I can tell. They basically modeled it after RL lion prides. So I think if it is going to be an actual stronghold, every female NPC in it should be married to the player. If that is the case I suggest putting in some random quests where other male Orcs from the Stronghold challenge the player to a fight to the death for Chiefdom. Not being able to have sex is probably going to make most of them ready to kill sooner or later. Likewise new Orcs can come along to challenge the player as well, just like male lions do in the wild.

If the player is female... Traditionally female Orcs don't run strongholds. But RL has plenty of examples of women who did things that traditionally they weren't supposed to do. A female chief might simply do exactly the same things as a male one, and thusly be married to all the women, and just as before no men ever get to get laid. Or she might really buck tradition and completely change how Stronghold society works. But if that is the case, it seems like less an Orc Stronghold, and more just a village with a lot of Orcs in it. So I would suggest it work the same for a female or male player character.

I'll take a screenshot or two of the outside tonight and post them. Inside is only half-done, but I may include that. Current plan is for this to be Orc-only, or at least only for players with an Orc spouse. Otherwise, why would the grant be made? And I'm assuming the local Jarl needs paying off in some fashion. In feudal societies, they "own" the hold, and all sub-ownership is at their whim. But the High King "owns" the entire province and grants them their holds in the same way. The Orcs may be semi-autonomous, but they're still in someone else's province, so they need to negotiate terms for expansions.

Construction will go like this (subject to change):
1. Build a small hut - Framing uses Orc full canopy, then add walls, and a door. No foundation, no floor, and result has a dirt floor and does not create an interior space. Completing this puts in bedrolls, and lets you
2. Build the longhouse - in the first cut, this will all go up at once, but I'm putting together meshes for floor, low walls, and roof framing, so it can become a four-stage process, and once the door is added, enable the interior. Unlike the DLC, it's not connected to the first "room", but that appears to be OK.
3. Can now build interior items at workbench inside, and can add outside buildings:
3a. Forge with partial canopies - once this is added, you can add tanning rack, armourer bench, and grindstone
3b. Smelter
3c. Half-canopy for storage
3d. Can also add a cellar to the longhouse - this adds a workbench for cellar content.
4. Complete set of outhouses lets you add a stockade.
5. Stockade lets you add a wooden guard tower.

At some point, the starter hut (which just had a couple of bedrolls in it) will be remodelled as something else - perhaps a smokehouse, with tables and hanging racks for fish/meat. I don't need new script for this as room 1 remodel is already part of the DLC script, with item lists defined separately. The bedrolls would be moved to the cellar, if built.

Most exterior building will need more wood, less clay/stone than regular hearthfire homes. But since the interior is smaller, the total wood usage should balance out. On the interior, you're making items from the Main Hall list only (and probably not all of those). No add-on wings, and the Orc fireplace is there to start with - part of the standard interior mesh. I need to see if I can "build" the spit/pots instead. There are a lot fewer doors, so you won't be making so many locks, and 2 corundum veins are close. I need to make sure there are plenty of chests to use those locks. You won't need as much iron for fittings etc, inside, but nails for the stockade should bring that need back up.

Recruiting arbitrary staff would need new script, but keeping the existing method requires converting a follower to a "steward", so that's not ruled out. Some of the follower mods that allow multiple followers may make it irrelevant, anyway.

I like the idea of recruiting other orcs for the orc stronghold. Maybe the player could choose two of their own wives as the Hearthfire spouse and steward, then have the steward-wife (called the forge-wife or whatever) recruit the next two wives in place of the bard and carriage driver.

I would make adoption an option and let the player figure out where they are going to get orc kids or if they are going to adopt humans instead. If they don’t like it they can just not adopt kids.

Of course I would love to have the ability to make an orc-style longhouse as a different race. Maybe a longhouse-lite version rather than a full-blown stronghold, or even allowing the player to play and recruit any race or gender and just deal with the lore-unfriendliness of their decisions.

This is very exciting. Also I love the location you picked.


ETA: Lol. I realize I mixed up my recruiting and plural marriage thoughts.

Another thing while I’m babbling incoherently, if there’s a way to leave the Temple of Mara out of the wedding mechanics, that would be great.

I like the way the Orc buildings look, and I like the idea of building a fort that looks like an Orc stronghold, but I'm not actually interested in playing an Orc.

However you set it up, you wound need some way to "earn" the land from Whiterun. Why would the Jarl let you take some of his land without paying for it? Unless you are planning on making all of Whiterun hostile...

My thought on that is the Jarl of Whiterun (and every other hold), does not gather their army and try to drive out every group of bandits, necromancers, vampires, and what not who decide to set up shop in their territory. If they are going to just ignore the bandits living in their forts, I don't see why they would bother with someone who is not (presumably!) a lawbreaker building a house. The most they ever do is put out a bounty. Maybe they might do that, and a quest or several quests could revolve around fighting off bounty hunters and then finally squaring things with the Jarl?

That's why I'm currently thinking that you'd pay Whiterun for it, and that the Orc chieftains have negotiated it for you because of your helping them. That avoids me having to write extra quests to get there. Each of the Jarls that gives you a direct grant to allow purchase of house or land wants a number of quests done in their hold, and I'd like to substitute checking the Orc quests, as it seems more appropriate, and justifies the building of an Orc longhouse in particular. I looked into having a longhouse option at each of the three existing sites, but the way the scripts are written prevents them being used that way. I'd have to replace the scripts to do so.

Whiterun is also different from the other holds in that the Jarl's disposition to you is mainly set by the MQ - and you either killed a dragon, or took the city for him in the Civil War. So when the Orcs approach Balgruuf or Vignar, they already like you. You'll get a courier notification that it's happened, no need for anything complex.

And keeping this simple is important for two reasons: I need to finish it, and if it's too complex, there's more opportunity to dislike parts. Leaving out the "Player is an Orc" test meets the simple requirement, and I'll do that, but that opens it up to requests for non-Orcish content, and more complexity. As it is, I'll be using the furnishing list for room 2 - main hall - as much as possible, to avoid extra work. The items built may be Orcish-style, and not match the workbench image at first, but I can replace the tokens' images later.

@SubRosa: The Jarls don't just ignore the bandits etc. They send the player to wipe them out!

I love this idea Ghastley! My Orc Shaga would've loved it

One thing to remember that I don't think has been mentioned (sorry if I missed it) is that there is always one elderly female Orc that plays a shaman role in the stronghold. She isn't married to the chief and has quite a lot if influence in the stronghold. Otherwise I think you've got most of it spot on

Story-wise I wonder about rebuilding an old stronghold rather than establishing an entirely new one. There wouldn’t have to be ruined buildings at the site, just the dialog that there had once been a stronghold there. The other strongholds would naturally want their trading partner back, and it would be no surprise that the Jarl of Whiterun would cooperate. Also if you wanted to put some more orc NPCs hanging around in the world they could be scattered tribe members the player could recruit to rebuild their parents’/ancestors’ home. Just a thought.

The "wise woman" at three of the four strongholds is the chief's mother. Atub at Largashbur is the exception, and it's just possible that she's Yamarz' mother, but doesn't like to admit it.

The player doesn't have a mother available. He might have a mother-in-law, but ...

Images of build progress.

Bare Site - a little bit of local leveling of the ground was done, but not much - some grass removed.

First the small hut gets built - frame, then walls, then a door.

Next the main longhouse - I'll release the beta with it all built at once, but I'm working on floor, walls, framing meshes to do it in stages. Then the externals, such as the smelter and forge to give this result.

Finally add a stockade and gate tower like so

The forge area - hidden at the back of the other views

Site from the West and North - the latter from on top of a corundum vein. There are four iron ore, one gold, and two clay along the shore of the water. The stone quarry is in the rocks to the left just beyond the gate-tower.

Nice spot for it.

That looks great, ghastley!

More teaser images, just to show at least some progress.

The book on housebuilding that's normally on the carpenter's workbench describes the standard house so I had to replace it.

It contains sketches of the rooms/buildings you can construct, so here's the first one. Making that page from NifSkope screenshots took a whole morning. Progress is slow, if steady. Hopefully, now I know how, the next one will be quicker.

Looking very good. A guide to Strongholding!

Looks great! That’s enough to give a homeless orc adventurer hope.

Looking great Ghastley!

I have this image in my mind of a huge, battle-axe wielding, Orc chieftain trying to decipher the cyrodiilic in the guide to strongholding

I thought that building the building was slow enough in Hearthfires, what with collecting all the iron ingots or ores and then the multiple stages of crafting ore -> ingot -> building materials -> furniture/house parts, but building the building of a building is even slower. I have to create the misc items that are the tokens for the player inventory, then a recipe to make them, then add the keywords to the workbenches that will create them, then rig up the enable/disable logic to put the corresponding item in place.

And some of the bits I want to make aren't already separate meshes, so I have to convert the .nif's into a form that Blender will import, alter them, export, and convert back. Progress is slow, if steady.

Anyhow, I'm getting there slowly. I can now use the drafting table for an Orc building, and make pieces at the workbench.

I thought originally that I'd be able to use the existing scripts for most things, but it turns out that they have too much hard-coded into them, like the total number of sites, and which rooms are bedrooms, so in most cases I have to take a copy of the code and modify it as an Orc version. It's still less effort than creating it from scratch, but the CK has a lot of annoyances that make it a grind.

I also want to do something other than the steward/hiring mechanism - where you can only add staff after you convert a follower to steward, and then can't hire those directly. The stronghold probably wants a smith (weapon/armor merchant) and a wise woman (alchemy merchant) but I haven't yet decided how it gets them. That means completely new script code.

Latest Update: This got badly stalled when I discovered that my test game had old, bad script baked into the saves, and I wasn't testing the updated code. I'm partially replaying Gol gro-Molag from before I added the mod, to get him back a point where this one kicks in, and I can test from a clean save. So I'm exercising my modding muscles back in Oblivion, trying to finish up Evergloam, while I do all my playing in Skyrim.

This looks really neat. Very fun to see the orc building parts coming together. Thanks for the update, ghastley!

I created a new Orc character to do the testing for this, but she's distracting me in a different direction. I grabbed some alternative hair from the Apaachi SkyHair mod for her, and decided she looked a lot like She-Hulk when I finished. Since the game engine supports transformations for werewolves, werebears and vampire lords, I'm now looking at having a petite Breton (Genevieve Walters) hulk out when she gets angry (SetRace to Orc, and SetScale to 1.2, plus outfit change).

I'd post a screenshot, but she has a custom body with extra muscle, and I haven't yet adapted clothing that covers enough for decency. Angles that don't flaunt her assets don't show the muscles either. Building clothing for her has the same problems, of course. It has to be torn in all except just the right places, but still look like it wouldn't just fall off completely. The Breton character is naturally unremarkable.

Plus I need to complete the packaging of the Evergloam mod for Oblivion, and rebuild my mail server, and do my taxes, and ...

The She-Hulk transformation idea is brilliant!

I love the idea of hulking out!

Quick screen-shot to show some progress. The Riften guard is standing at her level, she's just that much bigger than him. Her alter ego (who can't be in the same shot of course) would be shorter than him by nearly a head.

I didn't go overboard with adding muscles to her, as She-Hulk isn't as exaggerated as her cousin, but she does have larger biceps, triceps, quads, calves and a few others than the regular large orc. Plus the scale-up. I tried out a normal map with extra muscle definition, but decided I preferred it without.

Oh my gosh, she looks awesome! I love it!

Very nicely done, ghastley!

Looking very good!

Well, after the interruption for Hulking, I got back to the Hearthfires this weekend, and discovered what might be a show-stopper. It seems that when a property of a script is defined in a secondary master, the script-engine's gonna crash, because it will mess up adjusting the top byte of the reference.

My BYOHOrcHouseBuilding script contains the line

int logCount = Game.GetPlayer().GetItemCount(BYOHMaterialLog)

This counts the number of (hidden) log tokens the player has, and the script's job is to correct the global variable that shows when you activate a log pile. However, BYOHMaterialLog is defined in Hearthfires.esm, and so it has a first byte that depends on the Load Order. It appears that the Papyrus engine sets anything non-zero in the top byte to the Load Order of the running script, which is in my mod, not in Hearthfires.esm. So it can't find the item to count, and crashes.

I have the same issue, except that there are no scripts involved, with my Log Pile. Because I placed it in my mod, its name - which includes the global variable BYOHHouseLogCount - fails to show the count because it's trying to find a global with a different formID. I may be able to fix this one by editing the RefID of the activator to make it appear to be part of Hearthfires itself - which is possible in Tes5Edit.

But it looks like GetItemCount can't be used. I may be able to write a function to do the same thing, walking the player's inventory and looking for a FormID match, but then I'll probably run into another instance of the same problem trying to update Hearthfires' global that the LogPileActivator can't read.

If anyone has any wild ideas how to get around this, let me know!

Revisited this over the holiday and bypassed the log update calls to unblock progress. The log pile is really just a gauge to indicate your log stock, and doesn't actually "hold" the logs for you, so it can be put back later. It's also quite likely that my crashing issues were all due to the model for the pegs of the hut layout.

I still hit some crashes, and Gol has now built the hut and longhouse no less than five times for his lovely Borgakh. He is fated to do so many more times, as most changes to the quest mean reloading the game from before it's started in order to test with the new property values. I may start giving him materials via the console, instead of re-clearing Halted Stream Camp every time! He's also had to fight a random dragon a couple of times during construction, and wolves spawn nearby for extra spice.

My latest gotcha was adding the cellar, and finding that the trapdoor didn't get enabled, so we can't go down there and make the furniture. I also have to add models for the stockade and guard tower for display in the workbench UI, and correct a few of the interior ones, such as the cook-pot.

Before release, I have to cut up the longhouse model into sections (layout, floor, knee-walls, framing and roof) so that it can be constructed in stages, rather than all at once like a stable. That will mean Gol building it again, probably multiple times. I hope Borgakh shows some appreciation for all his work!

I haven't tested yet to see if Uzi will move in there once adopted. I'm only including one WIP in any game, to avoid confusion.

The quest to get the plot of land will be similar to the Thane quests in the major holds. I.e. the player will do a qualifying quest (Malacath's) and also "help" a number of Orcs, via the favour quests, such as mining ore, Fight! Fight! or those for the non-stronghold Orcs, such as fetching a book for Urag. These latter are the same quests that can make you Blood-kin. Doing it this way, with a courier-delivered note announcing the grant, avoids needing any new dialogue and voice files.

I started a new Orc to test this as a first Hearthfires house, and discovered another major annoyance. The sale of logs is conditioned on tests on any of the existing plots being purchased, but this was done as three tests OR'ed together, rather than a single test on a global, so I can't just set the same flag in my mod.

I can't just duplicate the dialog, or it will appear twice in the list if the player owns Greenspring Stronghold as well as one of the others. So I have to make dirty overrides to the existing quests whether I want to or not. I think I'll change them to use a global in case anyone else makes a new house.

There may be light at the end of the tunnel. I found a way around the lumber vendor issue that lets me use my mod's dialog only when the Hearthfires one isn't used. And my problems with adoption are solved by another mod - Hearthfires Multiple Adoptions which also allows properly configured mod homes to be used for the kids. I tested it with the Orc Stronghold and the Elf kids, and it works!



Now back to trying to make partial meshes for the longhouse. And there are still a couple of pieces of furniture that don't enable when they should, and glitches with the Drafting Table.

Very exciting news, ghastley! There’s little Uzi sitting at the dining table.

I like the way you’re using orc quests to qualify for getting the land. A new stronghold is a pretty big deal, and multiple quests reflect that.

Quest-testing is under way. I had to adjust the criteria for the "helping the Orc people" part a bit as the original only counted the quests for the stronghold inhabitants, but that's working now. Yarob has reached four by mining at two of the strongholds, doing Ghorza's quest for a book for Tacitus, and clearing Kolskeggr for Pavo and Gat. I want her to do The Cursed Tribe before the fifth, as I'm not sure if that quest will complete the total, or she'll need another. I may have to help her kill the giant via the console, as she's only the minimum level (9) needed to start the quest.

I've made the partial meshes for the longhouse, but need to add collision to them before adding them to the game. I may also need to nav-mesh the floor, as you can walk inside the half-built structure. You'll build layout (pegs and string), then walls, then floor, then framing, and finally the roof will include adding the door, as it gets enclosed at that point. Gol and Borgakh will have to do it all again a few times when I get that far, but since I can test the quest part with a one-step longhouse, they get to rest for a while.

I plan to include Uzi in a separate esp, so you can use any other child mod, such as Urshug, but you'll have a default one.

Edit: Yarob completing The Cursed Tribe did kick off the Stronghold quest as intended, but perhaps because she also hit the five "Help the Orcs" count at the same time, it didn't trigger the courier properly. After console help, the courier delivered nothing. I have another problem with creating the letter to deal with. But when she went to the site, the workbenches and chest were enabled, and she was able to build a home and adopt Uzi.

However, I'm a bit worried about her. I mean, she doesn't just tidy her room, she cleans it. The kid's not normal, especially for an Orc!

Of course, the changes I had to make to the quests prevent me testing in Yarob's game where it's already running, so I have another character (a small archer this time) running around the strongholds and helping the other Orcs. That's helping me refine the counting mechanism, or at least documenting it. For example, doing two favours for the same character doesn't count as two. You need to make new friends for it to count. So mining ore for Gharol and delivering the blade to Lash don't add up to two.

I looked up what it takes to make a new collision mesh for Skyrim, and it looks laborious. Most "tutorials" just cover copying a collision mesh that's near enough from another model, or do it all in 3DS MAX (I use Blender). However, the current "build the whole longhouse in one step" process works, so I'm concentrating on getting the quest logic right first. The house-building logic is already tested with the hut and outbuildings, and the interior, so making the longhouse build multi-step is only dependent on the meshes. (Only!!)

The lack of nav-mesh cuts when the stronghold is built has caused issues. The site is on the route of at least one Imperial courier, and he got stuck inside the stockade, running against the wall. Again, stuff I know how to do, but laborious because of the number of collision boxes that need to be added, and parented to the enable markers. There aren't any creature spawns on the site, but a few nearby (which will give the guard on the watchtower some target practice later). The mammoths walk up and down the next valley, but the nearby one leads to Drelas' Cabin, and doesn't get them. There's a dragon mound not far away, but I haven't yet played a character who's seen that being used.

Yay!! Good idea to nav mesh the unfinished floor if you can walk inside. I’ve had a few characters camp in their partially built Hearthfire homes for a time while they collected ingredients.

Uzi looks adorable sweeping her room. So that’s what it looks like when a child actually cleans!

Would it help to have a test character ready who has already completed the quest requirements to see what happens when your mod is added to an old save? I’m going to start a new orc so that the Hearthfire Adoptions mod has the best chance of working (also to test the Bless Home spell with my own very basic house mods), and I could get him or her started on the appropriate quests in their free time. Keeping old saves, of course. Oh, and when you’re ready I can try the Alternate Start mod’s orc start to see how that works with your quest requirements if that would help.

Pretty excited, ghastley!!


Edit: It takes me so long to post that you updated while I was posting. Good luck with your next steps. I only know enough about this stuff that the word “nav-mesh” makes my stomach turn over, lol.

The problem you'll have with an existing game is that there aren't many Orcs you can do a "Favor Quest" for. The mechanism is triggered by Story Manager when the there's a Relationship change, and the Favor Quests usually end with a SetRelationshipRank(1) to make you a friend of the other character. If you already did one for them, it's not a change, so it doesn't start the count tracker quest. I haven't yet scanned through to make a list of all the Orc-related quests that qualify, but it may be quite a short one.

I'm using SM's ChangeLocation event to detect when the player leaves Largashbur with DA06 completed, so it doesn't matter if they did that before installing. A revisit to Largashbur provides another chance to fire it off, once you leave again. The quest ends before you take Volendrung, while it's still on the altar, so it doesn't matter if you took it or not.

If you're already friends with too many Orcs, it's probably possible to console-set the global, but I may just add a "manual" stage to the quest, so you can do it that way. I'd prefer not to, as too many people will want to use the "cheat" and complain if it has bugs.

Edit: I'm having worries about the navmesh for the floor of the incomplete building. It has to be there only when the building is part-built, and it has to connect to the world, so that followers can follow. The first part should just be a matter of a nav-cut box that wraps the floor and enables/disables opposite to it, but I can't find anything out there about how to join navmeshes in game. Regular Hearthfires must do it, but I haven't yet found where. I do know that unconnected navmeshes don't allow an NPC to pass between them.

Another small but significant step. My latest Orc, Dhul, has finally received the letter telling him he has land. It took ages to track down all the niggling little details that prevented some of the aliases from filling, that were needed to construct the text, the courier origin, and all the other little pieces for the delivery quest. It's complicated by the fact that the Civil War can replace the Jarl and his steward, so there has to be provision for the new ones' names to be used. I should have built nearer to Solitude!

Yay!! That approaching courier must have been a welcome sight!

Houston we have a problem!

I just started placing the meshes for the longhouse under construction, and realized that I can't remove the slope where the longhouse gets built. It looks like it will have to be released with the one-step build for the longhouse, as some of the ground will be above floor level. The only remaining decision is whether to modify the pegs to follow the slope, and mark the location, or just build without them (the current situation).

I still have some detail stuff to do, such as inventory models, and the navmesh tweaks as things get made, so there's time to decide. But the scripts are working, the quests fire off when they're supposed to, so it's getting there.

Yikes. Can you adjust the slope down just a little so that the rope barely shows? That way it would look like the ropes indicate building something level. Of course skipping the ropes entirely is not a big deal.

I looked at sculpting the slope, but the result looked artificial, so I scrapped it. I'd already flattened a small area for the hut, which didn't look unrealistic, but the longhouse would need too much work. I can't change the level at the front, or it affects the hut, and lowering the back would need a new cliff/rock outcrop to justify the step. The final longhouse now looks like it was dug in, which is similar to at least one of the others, but I don't know how to replicate that during the build. I don't think it's possible to disable a piece of landscape.

Since the current process works, it stays for now.

I've adjusted the interior lighting a bit, adding lights that get enabled with the chandeliers and the dining table (which has candles on it). The major part that's holding up release is the lumber purchase dialog. The script to add the mill owners to the lumber vendor faction is not being fired off, so they won't sell logs unless you started a regular Hearthfires home. When I manually add a mill owner, it still doesn't show, sometimes.

And the log pile has reverted to showing "Log pile (" instead of giving the current count. I probably have to purge some empty scripts that were unintentionally compiled from the base DLC. The CK sometimes does that, and since it doesn't have the source in the right folder, they become empty. Doing that may fix my startup issues, as well.

Progress is slow, as each time I change the properties of the main quest, I have to roll a new character, as they're fixed once the quest starts (at beginning of game for that one). Largashbur requires level 9. I really need to run a character up to that level without the mod, and make a save I can reuse, but they'd still have to do the making friends quests, so it wouldn't save much time.

Well, it looks like it may actually be close to usable.

My latest Orc (Thudd) has a log-pile that shows how many logs she has, and Hert is selling her lumber, even though the Greenspring Stronghold is her only home. She's built the longhouse and all the outbuildings, and furnished most of the place. Just a few more ingots, and she can complete the basement.

I still have a few little things to tweak, like getting the bedrolls in the hut to appear and disappear at the right times, but I may have something for you to try really soon. That's if I can figure out what needs to be included.

I want to provide a piece of the Elf Kids as an optional esp/bsa, so you can have Uzi if you want a matching child, but that can wait for a later beta release. It won't be easy extracting her from the others.

Yay!!!!!

Well, if you're brave enough to try an 0.1 release - here it is.

Because of the way Bethesda wrote the scripts which I cloned, much of the variation is in the properties, which get baked into the save game. That means that when I fix anything in that area, it can't affect an existing game, and you'd have to start over. I'd strongly recommend a new game to try this.

I've found that if you run round the Orc Strongholds, and do Ghorza or Moth's quests at Markarth, then by the time you reach Largashbur at the end of the cycle, you're just reaching the right level (9) for The Cursed Tribe.

Of course, killing the giant at that level isn't easy. I've managed to find a location where I can use a bow, but not get hit, but the giant isn't dumb and retreats out of range. It's then a cat-and-mouse game of following, sniping and running back to safety.

When you leave Largashbur with Volendrung then the game will start showing you how many Orc friends you've made. It's been counting since installing the mod, but you don't see the count before. If you're lucky, you already have five, and a courier is on his way. If not, mine some ore, beat up the chief, or seduce Borgakh.

Happy building!

Awesome Ghastley! Downloaded, and Thanks!

Whee, thank you! Malacath's next champion emerged from under Helgen this morning. (An Altmer named Mithilion the Hammer.) He's about to release the dragons and then go make friends with some orcs.

Added the documentation to my web site, here. in case anybody needs it there. The missing images on some pages aren't broken links, they're just not created yet,

Feedback on that will be useful, too.

The documentation looks great! I had some questions in the back of my mind about how the construction would work and if I would have to make choices like the Nord Hearthfire houses such as building the wings, and you’ve already answered them here. I suggest a section about NPCs and how that will work, such as who is the Wise Woman that will live in the hut, do you recruit her from a follower you bring to the site or does she show up on her own (or however it happens), and are there other roles for NPCs that can be recruited to live in the stronghold.

The Quest section was perfectly clear to me. My character (The Hammer) is level 6 and about to start the favor quests, so I needed a fresher on that part!

NPC recruitment is not yet included, so that's not described.

Although I have several potential NPC's in mind, I don't want to add any dialog, other than pieces I can copy from existing quests. I don't want any voice variation, and I can't hire the original voice actors. So I'm hunting through the text, looking for stuff I can cobble together.

Oops. Give me an 0.1 to play with, and I’ll put the last stage before the log pile. I am perhaps a little excited about this mod. Good luck in your dialog hunt!