When I discovered over the long weekend that there were some unused voice files for the Windhelm Pit, I started making another mod to place an arena in Markarth. The reasons for Markarth are first that it's relatively easy to add another door to a piece of cliff as an entrance, and the whole thing can be underground, and second that the Dwemer architecture suits making one.

So I have three new interior cells, all of which need cluttering, and better lighting, but are nav-meshed and usable: Entrance leading to a Dwemer Lift; Main Arena with bar and betting booths; Quarters for gladiatrices and other staff.

There's a set of eye-candy gladiatrices to stage entertainment matches. Each has the same sword and shield and a race-appropriate set of "armor", which is actually zero-defence clothing. The swords do less damage than a wooden child's sword to compensate, and they're all essential, with the bout to end when one takes a knee. Armor is similar to that used by Freija in my Oblivion mod: a Manica on sword arm only, Boots and Gauntlets. The boots are asymmetric in many cases, with leg plates on the left (leading) leg. Open-faced helmets are used when available, or heads are bare. I'm working on converting the missing helmets to open-faced, but could live without a complete set.

So far: Altmer in Elven; Breton in Blades; Bosmer in Leather; Dunmer in Bonemold; Dremora in Daedric; Imperial in Imperial Steel; Nord in Nordic Carved; Orc in Orcish, Redguard in Steel Plate. I haven't included Khajiit or Argonian, as they don't show any skin, and that's the whole point of these matches.

Next up are scripts for the staged matches between the women, and attempt to convert that to a player option to fight an essential opponent with equal equipment and skills, as I did in the Oblivion quest. You win by forcing the opponent to a knee as with the brawls, but this time you'll have weapons. Shouts and spells disabled, probably, as that could be hard to explain/balance if the arena opponent uses them.

After that, it's Player/NPC versus creature(s). Those will be harder to balance properly, which is why I'm doing the others first. The betting mechanism should be easy enough for all the matches.

The left-over voice files may prove not to be enough, and it may never happen, but I'm having fun seeing how far I can get. I can use a fair amount of generic bar dialogue as well as the cut stuff.

An Arena! Oh yes. I'd be keenly interested in this one. I went looking for arena mods about a month ago, was rather surprised to find there aren't many of them out there. Half of them have bug reports a mile long, too. I even expanded my search beyond THE Nexus and began looking at Steam mods.

If you need someone to beta test or whatever, I'm all about that.

I wholeheartedly agree with this. Your idea for an arena mod sound amazing. Also happy to try beta testing should you go through with making it

So what are your expectations? I have eye-candy matches planned for betting, but what else?

My current thoughts are that nobody gets killed (or they'd run out of contestants too quickly) - much like Roman Gladiators. Same arena is used for executions of/by creatures, so NPC v animal would happen, but no betting on those. NPC or animal involved is supposed to lose. Those would only happen when there's a need for capital punishment, as a replacement for the headsman's axe.

It should be possible to run player v gladiator like the brawls, but with weapons. However, the reason the game has the "nothing but fists" rule is to make it easy to balance. I'd have to equip the opponent to match the player, who has extra choices in inventory, or restrict the player to the same kit as the opponent, and disable shouts and spells.

A "pick from opponent list" option for the player, where reward is higher for tougher opponents, is one option. This needs a mechanism for player losing that's not just die-and-reload, IMHO.

Great idea, ghastley! I love the idea that no one in the gladiator matches has to die.

For making the equipment somewhat even between the player and the opponent in the gladiator matches, could you use a mechanism like in Oblivion where you couldn’t compete unless you were wearing your raiment?

I’m not sure which mod does it, but in my games if a player uses a Shout or spell (including healing) the brawl is over and I think the NPC goes hostile. Would something like that work instead of disabling Shouts and spells?

This. I agree.

Yes yes, this is good that pcs are restricted to certain weapons. I also like the "pick your opponent" idea, because I surely wouldn't want to have one of mine forced into a fight which is way too hard (even though that could be realistic too). Picking our opponents hasn't been done, that's something new. It adds some temptation for difficult fights, since money is stated up-front.

Me personally, I don't like fighting creatures as much as NPCs, but my issue was really with the way Bethesda did this. After the Arena questline ends, we're stuck with fighting minotaurs & other beasts, which is fine but the problem was the game always threw these creatures at us, there were no more NPCs. I lost interest after awhile.

I've done Bethesda's TES4 Arena as well as a few fights for Giskard's arena (Kvatch Rising). Giskard's idea was different from Beth's; he had his own twist. In his arena, we were fighting criminals, Empire traitors, daedra sympathizers, and the like.

Anyways, stuff sounds good so far.

The one thing that's been a roadblock on my quest mods so far has been voice-acting. I can do a male voice for a unique character, but not a female one, or extra dialogue for anyone already in the game. I think there's enough generic dialogue, and the few unused voice files for the Windhelm arena could fill the gaps. If the arena announcer is male, he'd have most of the new lines.

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I have the Female Mannequins mod, so I made an NPC one to model the outfits for you

Blades worn by the Bretons
Bonemold worn by the Dunmer
Daedric worn by the Dremora
Elven worn by the Altmer
Imperial Heavy worn by the Imperials
Leather worn by the Bosmer
Nordic Carved worn by the Nords
Orcish worn by the Orcs
Steel Plate worn by the Redguards

They all need a little more work. I'd like to have a left leg covering in all, and an open-face helmet. Manica straps need a few adjustments.

Twiggy and clones will probably get used in the living quarters, so they can change into something more comfortable when off-duty.

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One reason behind the "pick an opponent" idea is that the player can determine what level he can handle out in the world by testing himself against an arena opponent who may defeat, but not kill him. That lets the DiD players take a few risks, because they aren't really.

Question that's partly independent of this mod:

Many of the races have a clear "style" for furnishing their homes. There's Orcish stuff labelled as such in the CK, so they're the easiest. The more carved items are appropriate for the Nords, especially if they have the dragon head motif. Redguard can be brass and rugs, even on the walls. Bosmer would be no wood / lots of furs and hides. The Dunmer have various things from Solstheim, as I'm already Dragonborn-dependent.

Less clear are Breton, for which I can substitute Dwemer, as this is Markarth, and Imperial, which will just be Noble stuff (where not too Nordic).

What to use for Altmer? The only specifically Elven items I've found are weapons and armour. I have similar problems for Dremora, but that's expected. I may have to retexture some things for them.

Edit: I found the Ancient Elven furniture for Oblivion and adapted a few items for Skyrim. So they look OK.

The Dremora have beds that combine the Dwemer stone base with the claws of Apocrypha altars. I just need some chairs and lamps for their room. I can probably take a plain chair and add curved spikes to it, and just retexture a Dwemer table.

Sorry for not responding earlier. Yes, I like those ideas, like Dwemer for Breton. Sure, that's fine. It's part of Skyrim, makes sense with the gameworld.

You could try looking at Thalmor decorations for Altmer? I believe there are some buried in the CK somewhere, but I could be wrong.

Hope you're doing well. Merry Xmas and happy Festivus for the rest of us.

Another thing I'm looking into is creatures from other regions that could be "arena fodder". ESO provides a whole lot of ideas, I just need to determine what's practical.

The Skyrim Hagraven skeleton and its animations might allow a credible Winged Twilight, or Harpy. Probably the latter, as the former is Daedric, and belongs in a another realm, not just another province.

There's probably some Morrowind creatures that could be reskinned onto standard skeletons, too. I'm not intending to use any of the old meshes, just reproduce the appearance in a Skyrim style.

Wow you can share "skins" from different games? Neat.