Lena, it has been many years since playing Oblivion and I don't recall specifics about the MG in Dune. But I certainly recall loving the Anequina mod, and Buffy spent much time there riding over warm sands, wrapping the jungles around herself and bathing in the beautiful waterfalls. Oh, and (ugh) sandstorms. . . .

We've just started our Elsweyr adventure. The Mages Guild in Dune is abandoned because it is unfinished. There is no key. The cell is empty. So...

Yep, goblins.

Elsweyr Mysteries is now available on Nexus.

Very cool, Lena!

Come to think of it, I never did give Dune a thorough walk about. I'm going to have to pay Dune a visit soon.

Enjoy the rooftops! And good luck with that small goblin problem.

I like Dune. It's got potential - many untold mysteries there! But it will be a while before there's another installment - we want to see other places too. Although I started on a couple of things...

Today I'm attempting to clean up the big stack of TWMP mods, convert some to masters, merge things that have to be loaded together anyway... It isn't as straightforward as one would have hoped. Today was a day of experimentation - I shall likely discard everything in the end (I'm on my fifth attempt already). But I do learn from it. The jury is still out however whether it will amount to anything or whether I'll have to declare it a lost cause. I am expecting another crash any minute now...

Conclusion of the experiments with merging TWMP mods: it is not feasible because the combined size of all TWMP content is over 650MB, and that's ESP only, not counting the resources. This is not counting Elsweyr or Valenwood mods because they are not technically TWMP. For comparison Oblivion.esm with all major DLC integrated, is only 256MB. Makes sense - Oblivion only covers Cyrodiil, just the one province!

Another issue is that if we were to merge TWMP mods, everything would need to be renumbered, requiring a new game and breaking all compatibility with previous save games or other mods. Nope. Not good.

So the TWMP suite should remain as it is - a set of ESP modules to be loaded in a particular order. This gives the players flexibility to choose which provinces they want to include, so it is actually a good thing. The many mods that you have to load however is less good, but it is the lesser evil...

Dune is getting sewers! I am in the dungeon building mood... There will be other dungeons accessible from there, as well as some non-dungeon facilities. All sorts of stuff happens in the sewers, you know.

Dungeon building is in full swing. There is also going to be a chest inside Under the Influence den where you can pick up scrolls with jobs. Put the deliverable back into the chest, close and open it again and take out your reward. A simple system with minimal fuss. Admittedly, these are not going to be world-shuttering quests, but then again, everyday activities rarely are. This is mostly for those people who like to have an incentive for visiting dungeons. Some of these jobs will randomly repeat to keep the system going for ever, even after all the unique ones will have been exhausted. Not a true Radial Quest system, but easy to set up.

Another simple quest line that I am working on is Resupply the Traders. Various traders in Elsweyr are going to complain to you about shortage of certain items, and if you bring them a batch of the stuff, they'll pay you double the market value. Now, these may not always be high value items, so the bother would not be worth the pay. But may be if you do it enough times, those traders might ask you for a favour... and that would be worth the bother. (And no, you can't charm them into it, they'll be counting the batches of stuff rather than relying on disposition.)

This is something that can be expanded as we go along. I started with one trader, then I'll be adding more traders along the way. Got to figure out what their favours are going to be! And it's not guaranteed. May be some traders just want the supplies. You'll never know.

Dune Catacombs are complete, comprising 47 dungeon cells. You descend into the sewers first, and in the sewers there are several access points into the various sections of the catacombs. Each section is comprised of 9 to 11 dungeons dynamically linked via several doors, so not only is the layout different each time you play, it can also change on the fly under certain circumstances (on the whim of the Oblivion game engine). The sections are also connected to one another in a few places, just to add to the confusion... err... fun. But it isn't all that bad: each dungeon cell has a fixed exit back into the sewers. All you have to do is find it.

Of course I did not build 47 dungeon cells from scratch in two days time. I reused existing vanilla dungeons, so some layouts may be familiar (do you honestly remember every single dungeon by heart?). I did change some things around, and of course the doors are all in different places and linked in different ways, so I bet that even if you remember one or the other layout, you will still be surprised.

I have now finished the fetch quests: there are 10 repeatable ones (collect ingredients type of thing), and 5 unique (fetch a misplaced item). Enough incentive to visit the catacombs, I think. I'll give it a bit more play-testing, but then I'll release it for you to test... err... enjoy. In all honestly, I cannot possibly test every single door because of their random nature.

Version 1.1 of Elsweyr Mysteries is now available on Nexus.

I've done another update - Elsweyr Mysteries is on version 1.2 now. Added another run of the roofs and five more jobs for the chest at Under the Influence - these are not simple fetch quests though. But most importantly I fixed several doors, including the ones of the Mages Guild. The Mages Guild quest would still run more or less correctly also with the previous version, but I recommend upgrading. I'm still learning stuff! Those doors have scripts on them, and I hadn't realised all of the consequences of that... Anyway, fixed now.

I have a few more ideas for quests based in Dune, but that will have to wait - I'm taking a break from this. Besides, I really don't like making complex quests. Well, more complex than just stick a scroll into a chest sort of thing. So I don't expect any updates for a while, unless someone finds bugs in it.

Elsweyr Mysteries v2 - Orcrest - is released!

This is not a huge release, but I am moving on to the next city. In Orcrest you'll find a working gambling den in town and a Dark Brotherhood crypt and shrine underground. There's nothing going on in the crypt yet, but even so - can you find it? There are pictures with the mod, so yeah, it does exist and is accessible and all. I have ideas for further content there, but it won't be for a while.

Now we're on to Corinthe! Don't expect to do too much there because several other people already did quite a bit of work on that. But who knows!

Perhaps this thread should be renamed to Wolf Mods or something. I've been doing a lot of scripting recently - working on my own companions system. I started with Companions Share and Recruit, which is a very good system, but it has large parts that I am not using, such as squads or automatic looting. I've used it for a while but I found that these automatic actions result in companions running around a lot and forgetting to follow or to fight, as well as losing their horses. That mod wasn't developed with horses in mind, it has some horse-related functionality but it is unreliable, clearly an afterthought. For me however it is important.

So, drawing on that experience, I started making my own system. It is not generic, you can't just walk up to any arbitrary NPC and hire them, which is what introduced a lot of complexity to Share and Recruit. In my system the companions are dedicated NPCs. Yes, I know of CM partners, but there too it's not quite what I want. It never is, unless you made it yourself.

I have the core of the system working already for a long time, Hauk is my test character here. Poor Hauk, he gets his head messed with quite a lot. Here's what is implemented and working already now:

- Recruit and dismiss companions. When dismissed, they return to their homes and their "off-duty" routines.

- Track each companion on the map with their own quests. Particularly useful when they are off-duty and you want to find them.

- Access companion's inventory, also without recruiting them. Weight limit applies - you cannot give them more than they can carry.

- Let companions follow on foot or mounted and sneak with the player.

- Stop combat and catch up if falling behind.

- Companions' horses follow their respective owners when the player is riding a horse. Companions can call their horses if the horse is too far away and the companion needs to catch up.

- When following the player, automatically sit down when the player is sitting down, sleep when the player is lying in a bed (use See You Sleep to see the player lie in bed).

- When following and the player has City Wear token equipped, automatically switch from armour to clothes and unequip weapons.

- Tell companions to wait, relax or pick herbs in the area. They stop following you without being dismissed. Waiting means stand where you left them, relaxing switches them to eating, sleeping and wandering near where you left them, and picking herbs has them go picking herbs (surprise!).

- While sitting down, automatically repair weapons using repair hammers and level up the NPC's repair skill. Play one of several repair animations, so you can actually watch them do it.

- Automatically recharge currently equipped staff with a trickle charge based on the Intelligence value. Only when out of combat, and only staves. This is meant for mages. I am working on recharging with soul gems, but it is not easy.

- Play some idle animations that don't interfere with actual following. I found that some do.

Of course the system alone is nothing without the companions. I have already a few of them done, others are being tinkered with. Eventually I shall release this together with the companions and a guide how to make your own. Here's what I have now. All these companions have their own horses, too. They each bring new armour, weapons or spells, some also bring houses. Some companions come with quests, others are just sitting there twiddling their thumbs, ready for an adventure.

- Hauk Serck-Hanssen, a battlemage. Friendly and bored.

- Lucien Lachance, a master assassin. Comes with strings attached - a large mod with the Dark Brotherhood quest line redesigned and another quest line added after it. Only after you've done it all, will he come with you. You have to earn the right to be his companion. Typical.

- Fenris Bero, a vampire nightblade - an upgrade of the Dark Minion provided by the Vile Lair DLC. That minion was rather useless, I thought. Comes with an upgrade to the Vile Lair itself, too.

- Garrus Darreliun, Captain of the City Guard in Cheydinhal. Becomes available after that quest is done - Garrus actually gets promoted to Captain and is no longer stuck patrolling the throne room 13 hours a day. He takes over making rounds around the city and will come with you since you've been so good to sort out their little corruption problem. And because he's bored.

- Dylan, a Mazken. Not as useless as the female Mazken would have you believe. He hangs around Passwall once you're through the Gates of Madness. He does not leave the Shivering Isles, and so has no horse (no horses in the Shivering Isles).

- Scorpio, a sorcerer. He starts out as an elemental battlemage, but as you level up, he gains access to more interesting and powerful spells such as thunderstorm, rock avalanche or force push. These work on all targets in the area - on all hostile targets only, allies are unaffected, so they are not plain area of effect spells. Unfortunately the effort of casting it leaves the sorcerer incapacitated for a while, and these are very advanced spells to cast. He can teach you these spells if you're skilled enough. He lives in Crucible but will travel with you everywhere. He's got a horse in Bravil stables for just such an eventuality.

- Geralt of Rivia, a witcher. Does all the usual witcher stuff and hangs around Bruma - those ogres and goblins need to be kept in check. He actually looks like Geralt of Rivia and has all the correct gear and spells - based on Witcher 2, mod "Classic Witcher".

- Jowan Angwin, a blood mage. The concept and the character comes from Dragon Age Origins (except I gave him a surname). Blood magic allows him to cast very advanced spells at the cost of his own health - he is not so evil as to use the health of his allies, but he might use the health of his enemies at times. Blood magic also gives him affinity for necromancy, although he dislikes making zombies (you can't get the stench off your robes for weeks!). He stays a the Bruma Mages Guild (guess why), even though he is not a member of the guild.

- Sanguine, a drunk and a Prince. You have to earn his favour though, and I haven't decided yet how exactly. It will be something to do with Shivering Isles - some stories on the back of my head. He gives you a dremora summon with long term binding - the dremora stays with you until he is defeated or dispelled. You can talk to this dremora and arrange to meet Sanguine - he will be drinking at the Roxey Inn. Sanguine comes with a number of islands that you can visit. They are just peaceful places, with nothing going on. There are a number of nice mods like this, some even freeware, and I plan on using them.

Wow, now that I've written it up, it's quite a lot! No wonder it's been keeping me busy... Plus of course we're still travelling in Elsweyr - Corinthe awaits!

There hasn't been all that much mod building recently because I was busy fixing other people's Elsweyr mods so that I could use them in my game... So I guess it was modding for personal use, since the author of the mods asked me not to release any fixes or patches to his mods. It's his work and his choice.

I've been exploring Corinthe in game, including the City Expansion mod which fills in the Palace District. Something there is making my game lag badly. At first I though it was the sheer number of NPCs walking about, but a thought on the back of my mind was saying: "No, it's no more than anywhere else since you've got Crowded Cities and Radiant AI mods!" Thank you, u16m12*, you're right. Returning to the Palace District at night with barely any NPCs out and about, game performance wasn't any better. I don't know what it is, I've read that some models could drive the FPS down, or may be it's the lighting, no idea. It isn't unplayable, but it's rather jerky. Back to the Market District, and all is well again. Good thing I don't really like palaces anyway.

There's a mystery in Corinthe brewing: where does the wealth of the local Mages Guild come from? It is quite remarkable, considering the less-than-average services that they offer. There must be more to it...

A second blatant mystery is this: where is the Thieves Guild? Is it realistic to think that a city of this wealth be devoid of thieves? No, didn't think so. Yet we found no traces of any kind of thievery. Hmmm.

Jobasha is back from Vivec City, with his store in the Palace District! Hello, Jobasha! Oh wait... Thieves Guild... or may be not.

I made a few additions to Corinthe so far, to appear in the next release of Mysteries:
- All vendors now sell stuff (bug fix).
- The rooftops in the Market District are now properly accessible and traversible, also for NPCs, but there's nothing going on there yet.
- I put up shop signs everywhere... couldn't find my way around town.

I got a plaque for Christmas, it says: "I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change. I am changing the things I cannot accept." Amen.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
* Walter Moers, Die Stadt der Träumenden Bücher, 2004 (also available in English translation: The City of Dreaming Books).

No more ads on Nexus for me! It suprised me today with a big orange message saying that I am now a "recognised mod author" with over 1000 unique downloads across my mods. Wow.

You choose to share your time with me? You humble me.

Very impressive, Lena!

Well-deserved, I would say.

Thank you both!

What I find remarkable is which mod of mine is doing best: it's "Just a bigger map". Yep, it keeps your vanilla interface and just gives you a bigger map window. Considering that when you read descriptions of those various advanced mod UIs, they give you the impression that obviously everyone wants a Skyrim-style UI, or a dark themed UI, or a small font UI, or a tiny icon UI, with far more information, with everything different from the despised vanilla UI... Umm... 438 downloads in under 2 months... it seems a lot of people actually like the vanilla UI after all, and just want a bigger map. Who would have thought.

Of course none of it comes even remotely close to the mods offering you yet another stamp-sized micro-bikini outfit where the stamps are so small, you can't see the picture on them anyway. But hey, we shouldn't be comparing apples and mangos, should we.

I am treading into unfamiliar waters: I've been making quests. I made a rather complicated patchwork quest last week, and just before I could save it, the CS crashed without a panic save... Everything gone. Except of coure the experience. I'll redo that patchwork quest later, but today I've been making two proper quests for Elsweyr Mysteries - yeah, two new mysteries for Corinthe! Testing will be interesting, there are some experimental elements in that... I wonder.

But since they are mysteries, that's all I'll be saying about them.

A quick update to say that two rather large quests for Corinthe are done, that is scripted in. Whether they are actually working or not, is an entirely different matter.

One is a straightforward sort of quest, where you follow it stage by stage and can bring it to conclusion within a few days in-game. That one I shall be testing start to finish. The second quest is sort of a treasure hunt thing. Not saying what it is since it's a mystery, but let's just say I'll test it as far as humanly possible, considering that treasure hunts can become rather drawn out in time.

These two quests and the book that Macole and I have been writing, will constitute the next instalment of Elsweyr Mysteries. Oh, and a few small fixes here and there that I made along the way. Another quest will come later - a follow up on the first quest above. That isn't much of a mystery, and the story is getting included in I am Lena Wolf, but the quest will only trigger for you if you fulfil certain requirements and if you finish the first quest in a particular way, so not everyone will get it. Oh yes, that quest has several possible endings. Your choices do matter.

Corinthe is getting a bath house!

Outside - Market District, by the well

Inside - oh who's this? Bring your own soap

The privvies

Made with beautiful resources by Stroti with Wolf scripting (no clothes in the bath!). This does not require you to wash, it's just for fun. For reading newspapers and such.

Looks very nice indeed!

Postcards from Corinthe.

Who needs a caravanserai?

Another day starting.

Wish you were here...

Some nice travelogue pics from an exotic, faraway land.

Nice pictures! Makes one want to go back to the land of warm sands.

Thanks! Next time you are in Corinthe, make sure to explore the rooftops. The views are brilliant.

Quest debugging is going well! Some experimental effects included. It won't be long now!

Elsweyr Mysteries v3 is released! It includes the Corinthe chapter and a certain book we've been having fun writing... At Jobasha's in Corinthe and at the First Edition, of course.

I am taking a break from Elsweyr Mysteries, I think I overheated under the desert sun... Lena and Hauk are ready to go further South from Corinthe, where we expect massive land tears due to having Pelletine and Valenwood Improved loaded together. Yes, I know, it cannot be done! The Cartographers Guild told us so! It's either one or the other, not both! Umm... but it's one Tamriel, is it not? So how can you have either this or that land layout, dear cartographers? There can only be one land layout, even after a massive earthquake or whatever it was that ripped the very fabric of the land to pieces.

So we are going South. There is a rumour that a new city has risen from the Topal Sea just South of Elsweyr, and it calls itself Senchal the Seaside City! But it is not the Senchal at the Southern point of the Pelletine peninsular. Rumour has it that this new Senchal is encrouching on some of the beaches of Anequina... Or has someone had too much skooma when they were writing that report? We aim to find out.

It is my aim to build a rough patch that would allow to reconsile these warrying mods. Note that I said rough. If some villages get in the way, they may just get removed. Other people are working on a far better patch, so mine will eventually be superceded. I just want to be able to explore those lands without falling into the Void prematurely.

Today was the most annoying day in modern history! Well, all right, the most annoying day of this week. I was working on this new mod - Senchal the Seaside City - trying to make it compatible with Elsweyr Anequina. I was hoping for a patch, but unfortunately that mod had a number of edits that had to be removed - I couldn't get rid of them with a patch. So then I just continued. I did make a nice compatible version, there's a crossing from a beach in Anequina, and the city looks very nice, it's almost on an island, except for that crossing. All good. Except for LOD. I regenerated it five times! And it takes about half an hour on my PC to do Tamriel... And still I was having floating forests and distant land while all of that had been removed! WTF!!!

SkyBSA. No, it does NOT work for me. Freshly generated LOD files should have overwritten LOD found in BSA archives, but in fact they didn't. That wrong LOD was coming from the archives of several mods, and even Akatosh couldn't sort it out. Floating trees and false islands galore. And the stupid thing is - SkyBSA should not have been loaded... I tested it before, found it not working, so why was it still sitting in my OBSE plugin folder? Huh?

So now I am regenerating LOD for the sixth time. I have also removed LOD data from those BSA archives, but there may be more of it around, I didn't check them all. After that it's going West towards that enormous land tear I spotted earlier... unless of course it was only due to spurious LOD! We'll see. Tomorrow has a great potential of becoming the second most annoying day in modern history.

Today is the day. THE day. I've reconciled the warring mods of Valenwood and Elsweyr under a new TWMP Southern Alliance! Yeah!!!

This is my rough patch. It is meant to close land tears, not reposition every rock. In fact, it distinctly doesn't do that. Plenty of floating rocks for you to find in the enchanted forests!

But you can load together TWMP Valenwood Improved, Elsweyr Anequina and Elsweyr Pelletine, and it was Valenwood and Pelletine that weren't getting along. Plus, I also made a version of Senchal the Seaside City that is compatible with Anequina, and I named it New Senchal because obviously we already got one from Pelletine. And if that wasn't enough... I also updated the map! Phew!! Now it's time to go exploring.

Like I said, not every rock got grounded. There are also areas where land texture didn't take - I am not sure what I'm doing wrong, but the CS stubbornly refuses to paint the land. So you see straight lines there, if you ever get to those areas - there's nothing going in those remote regions. I tried my best to make inhabited areas presentable, focusing on the border between Valenwood and Elsweyr and areas that conflicted with Pelletine. I had to sacrifice a group of hostile skooma addicts, but otherwise I tried to reposition things rather than throw them away. I may well have missed something - the place is huge! But you can take the road from Senchal in Pelletine all the way to Skingrad in Cyrodiil, passing by Torval (Pelletine), Haven (Valenwood), Dune (Anequina) and Arenthia (Valenwood), with other roads branching off. There should be no land tears anywhere! But watch your step nonetheless...

Here is a map of the Southern Alliance.

Now focusing on the middle area of the greatest conflict.

New Senchal seen from a beach in Anequina.

Standing on the strait connecting Anequina and New Senchal.

Once Hauk gets over his scorpion fever, he and Lena will set off again, after all they do have that blank scroll of parchment from the Cartographers Guild to fill in... The roads of Pelletine are not marked on the map, we need to change that, and of course to watch for any decidedly floating rocks, trees or houses... Let the adventure continue! Finally!

WOW!!! I need to hurry up and finish a couple quest lines so I can reload everything and go explore what you have done.

Thanks, Macole! Don't rush though - if you wait another month, there's likely to be an update to the Southern Alliance as we go exploring it in game. But it will never be perfect because it will be discarded eventually when TWMP Valenwood Regrown finally gets released. I have to find a balance between investing too much into a throw-away project and having a nicely laid out game here and now. And being impatient as I am... umm... you see where this is going, don't you?

OK, I got things to do for few months or so.
I haven't paid much attention to TWMP so I know nothing about Valenwood Regrown. Been trying to google it but I'm coming up empty. Where can I find info on it?

Oh sorry, I don't think you'll find anything any more... There are some snippets of information in the comments to Elsweyr Pelletine on Nexus, but it is all very hush-hush, which is why I am staying away from it, even though I've got the file. It was a project hosted on Assimilation Labs, an attempt to redo Valenwood so that it would blend with Elsweyr Pelletine. Now that Assimilation Labs has gone down, everything they hosted is essentially lost.

But because Valenwood Regrown was based on TWMP, it is important for Pelletine which is also based on TWMP, and I mean the old land layout, with that big landmass in Southern Valenwood. Valenwood Improved is only about half of that size, and is of a different shape. I don't know the history exactly, but Haldar made TWMP Valenwood Improved which is basically the original Valenwood Improved made to work with other TWMP mods. It was more of an exercise in technicalities than land layout, because it is still very much the same as the original. I am not even sure it's necessary, but I didn't want to take any chances, hoping for a better match with Pelletine. My solution is to keep as much landmass as possible.

So, to end this confusing tale... I haven't actually looked inside Valenwood Regrown and don't know which land mass they chose. So I don't know what of Valenwood Improved is still to be found in it, but I heard from several people that that project was very ambitious, is well advanced, yet is still very unfinished and still unplayable... Doesn't sound like a small job, plus there's that "minor" issue of copyright. The author of Pelletine - EnvyDeveloper - is in communication with the author of Valenwood Regrown, and in all likelihood will get the rights handed over, but from what I gathered, it hasn't happened yet. Anyway, they don't expect to have anything finished for a while still, may be a year, may be more. This is too uncertain for me, so I went ahead with my patch.


PS. Come to think of it, I might just drop in the original Valenwood Improved in place of TWMP Valenwood Improved and see what happens. Since I don't touch any assets of Valenwood Improved besides fixing land tears, I might get lucky. Or not. Worth an experiment.
This was a bad idea. The "TWMP" in TWMP Valenwood Improved stands for form IDs of all those new land cells added by the mod. The original Valenwood Improved is not based on TWMP, so where new cells had to be added, it generated its own form IDs. When you try to use that with any mod that is based on TWMP, you get unresolvable conflicts, giant land tears that cannot be closed. So, without going into detail as to why this is happening (unless you ask me to explain), the conclusion is that we must use TWMP Valenwood Improved.

I declare TWMP Southern Alliance finished for now. I released version 3 which has all land tears repaired, all landscape smoothed over and repainted to my best ability (that is, where the new texture would stick), and all roads checked and fixed. The roads in Valenwood and Anequina were already fine and only needed merging on the border, but the roads in Pelletine required resurfacing, including making path grids. NPCs require path grids to navigate the land, and roads should have "preferential" nodes assigned to them so that the NPCs would be able to tell the roads from the rest of the terrain. This is a manual process. The roads in Valenwood don't always have preferential nodes in their path grids but I haven't done it in this round because Valenwood didn't need any work at all otherwise. May be in version 4.

I made new Tamriel in-game maps in HD that include all the new roads. This is a departure from the Dynamic Map - these are static maps to replace the default in-game map, and they don't zoom. However, I switched to using that instead of the Dynamic Map myself because I found that the Dynamic Map caused performance degradation in my game, and together with the flickering and a few other annoying problems, it just tipped the scales for me to forgo zoom functionality and use a static map. This may well be just due to my rather low end PC, but then again, I know I am not alone in this. Which is why I released the static maps, in case someone else would like them. I shall still update the Dynamic Map module with the new roads too.

The South is open to exploring!

The map of TWMP Southern Alliance with all the roads.

Now that the Southern Alliance is generally working, I have been exploring Valenwood Improved. Well, it's TWMP Valenwood Improved but it is exactly the same as the original - the differences are all on technical level only. So yes, it is just as unfinished and all that. And it is wonderful! I really like it. Such elaborate cities, just waiting to be filled with people and things to do. I am surprised no one has done it so far - or have I missed it? Didn't see any add-ons for the original either. Haven't explored any of the dungeons yet, and won't do on this walkabout - this is just the first tour. Won't get to every city either - Lena is due back in Anvil in a week. The story goes on and life continues, but I can certainly see many happy returns to Valenwood.

A note found in the boarded up Chapel of Arkay in Elden Root.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Take that, Prior Livan! Ha! Ha ha! That's what I say to you!

All of you, taken! Who will come and rescue you now, eh? Arkay hasn't heard your prayers, Priest!

Every single one of you captured in soul gems, all neatly labelled - we are professionals! We left a few people around for now, but we might still come back for them. They are scared enough not to ever tell of what had occurred.

And if only you knew... The way to your salvation is so simple! Take the soul gem and throw it into the fire... And your soul will be released! Together with your body and your belongings, I might add. Genius!

But of course it isn't as simple as that - it would be madness to allow it. You have to throw the gem into the fire in the house where the person in the gem used to dwell the most. And if you throw it into the wrong fire... you'll find out for yourself!

Ha! Ha ha! But seeing how I'm holding the gem with your soul in my hands now, you will never read this note! And we will be gone by morning - we'll take you all back to your roots! Search the Ayleids, if you please!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~



It will take a while to fill this in... please bear with me. But the setup is done, and the first four citizens with their houses and belongings have been created. Of course, their souls are currently trapped in black soul gems, poor things...

Elden Root even though I only met a couple of residents walking around, it is my favorite city in Valenwood Improved. A close second would be Haven with its two inns, The Snowy Owl and the Stairway to Haven.

Oh, are you able to enter the Ayleid ruin Noutar Emero just north of Haven? The starting point of an Ayleid teleport system is found here. I just wanted to know if it works for you.

I haven't tried entering any ruins yet because I don't want to get side-tracked too much as yet. But I looked in the CS - everything is there. Internal cells were not affected by the conversion to TWMP, and I believe that the TWMP version is indeed exactly the same as the original. The triple door in Haven proves it. It says "version 1.20" in the mod description, so if anything, it might miss the updates that came with version 1.21, but Eldarie never made an English update for version 1.30, so the TWMP one is pretty much the latest.

However, just as a test I'll try it tonight. I have a save in Haven that I can use.

We haven't found the Snowy Owl inn! Not because it's not there, but because we got lost... Only when we were about to leave and I stopped to properly study the local map one last time and hover over all the doors, did I notice the subscript. Oh well. This is what happens when there are no shop signs anywhere. The first thing I'm doing in Elden Root is putting up shop signs... Well, of course, they will mostly appear only once the corresponding citizens will have been freed from the soul gems, but even so we already have the Eagle's Nest inn and tavern signs, as well as the Merchants Hall. What's that, you say? Well... it's a hall... with merchants... the ones that avoided getting trapped... I just couldn't not do something for Elden Root, it is an absolutely amazing place. It will be lovely to see it gradually come to life as we start recovering the soul gems and freeing the people.

I shall only release this mod when the quest is completely done, which may take a while - there are a lot of people and interiors to create. Still, it isn't as big as Haven... Give it a month or so. Similar quests can be done for other cities as well, eventually.

It is perfectly possible to add TWMP without starting a new game. You can keep Elsweyr Anequina but unfortunately you have to remove the original Valenwood Improved and replace it with the TWMP version. This does mean that all the Valenwood quests will reset because it is technically a different mod. But on the plus side, you get Elsweyr Pelletine thrown in for free, because I would recommend using the Southern Alliance to smooth over the land tears, also between Valenwood and Elsweyr.

I have been enjoying filling in Elden Root. Every citizen has a story. Status so far: 11 citizens created, plus the interiors of their houses. These are all shopkeepers so far, 8 of them were taken into the black soul gems. There will be a few more people around who were not taken, and there's a reason in each case... I leave it to you to find out.

There are 21 empty houses still to fill in, that includes houses belonging to 3 original citizens. Unfortunately their houses are completely unfurnished... Poor souls. We'll need to fix that. I am also looking to establish a chapter of the Mages Guild and of course a contingent of the City Guard. I haven't decided about the Fighters Guild yet. And then there's going to be a few people living in the streets... So I'd say I'm a quarter in.

If there one place in Oblivion mod world, Elden Root is the one I’d like to see populated. I had thoughts of working on Elden Root myself when I first saw it. There’s a three-story corner house on what I called Elden Root Main Street, it is furnished only with a usable double bed on the second floor. I thought of making it a player home or a chapter house Order of the Virtuous Blood or the Archeology Guild. Dreamer that I am, I never got around to learning how.

That is quite a striking building, the way it is positioned. I haven't decided yet what goes there, I tend to start with middle and lower class houses - that's where the real people live... But of course Elden Root will need to have upper class too, as well as the guilds. And a house for sale! Haven't thought of that - thanks for reminding me.

Creating all these characters with their houses is a whole new layer of playing Oblivion for me. They all have stories... so many stories to tell! If you look carefully at the vanilla characters and their houses, you'll notice that they are all different, they too all have stories. Almost makes me regret never entering most of them in-game because that would be breaking in, and I rather detest that. It is, after all, first a foremost a role-playing game. Did you know by the way that the people of Skingrad all have garlic hanging by their fireplaces? No reason...

Well, I suppose then once you load TWMP into your game, the Jandaga and his ladies will have a lot of adventuring to do to recover the black soul gems and free the people of Elden Root.

Oh, I did check on Noutar Emero, without going too far into it, it does seem to work properly, I don't see anything out of place. Don't tell me what that does! I want to discover it for myself!

Now why would anyone in Skingrad hang garlic on the fireplace mantel? They act like they think the city is run by vampires.

Your Valenwood Cities is sounding very interesting.

Thanks, Macole! I am certainly having a lot of fun making the mod, but it's a lot of work too - over 30 interiors to make, and many of them have to be done from scratch because I can't find a suitable existing interior to copy and modify... But it will be done eventually, every single house. That's the point for me - the city must be complete. It will probably require some 20 guards too to make up the shifts for the patrols, and then of course there's the Mayor and his staff.

I just discovered today that one of the houses in Skingrad is haunted... And not by vampires. Never knew it because I don't break into houses! Do you know which one it is?

As for garlic and vampires... Garlic actually does absolutely nothing to vampires in Cyrodiil, it's an urban myth, is all. The only vampire affected by garlic is Vicente Valteri, and that's just because he's allergic to it, has always been, since before he got vampirism. Now, silver weapons, that's a different tale entirely!

Nerastarel's House, an abandoned house filled with undead sits almost directly across the street from Rosethorn Manor is populated with undead. I don’t know of any explanation as to why being given. It could have been a quest location that was never completed and cut from the game.

Nerastarel's House is the one!

Elden Root is getting several houses for sale. At the moment, there's an apartment in an upper class house as a private sale, plus two houses with the real estate agent. Unfortunately, the real estate agent was taken by the necromancers, so you'll have to free him first to be able to access the properties. But here's a preview (marketing materials alert!).

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The Sextant House

The Sextant House is one of the most prestigious properties in Elden Root.

With its prominent location in the Upper District and its distinctive towers and impressive size, it is not just an upper class house, it is a unique upper class house! Don't miss this rare opportunity to become its proprietor.

The house features ample accommodation and storage on its three floors. The ground floor has the lounge and dining area, the middle floor is laid out for discerning entertainment, and the upper floor offers a spacious bedroom with two most comfortable double beds covering all of your needs!

Please see Sillas at The House and Garden Agency about this property.

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The Hunter's Rest

The Hunter's Rest is a well-appointed house on a budget.

Located in the Lower District, the Hunter's Rest might not catch your eye at first. It is a wooden one-storey house, and thus does not offer the same amount of space as our other properties. But don't discount it just yet.

This open-plan house is laid out for two people - it has two single beds, a dining area, a study, a cozy lounge area by the fire and even a pantry by the side entrance. There is ample storage, and it is connected to our inn services which replenish food barrels on a regular basis. Yet safety of the rest of your storage is guaranteed!

The house has good furnishings, rather better than you would expect to see in a dwelling of this stature. It is a comfortable abode, easily affordable for most people!

Please see Sillas at The House and Garden Agency about this property.

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I intend to add at least one more property, may be two. I'm making it up as I go...

I had a few days off and I spent them building Elden Root... It is getting along nicely! I decided that not everyone will need to be rescued, some people ran away and hid in their houses, so they survived the attack. But they are scared! They are not coming out until the City Guard is restored. At the moment, 17 people need rescuing, which is plenty, I think, considering that each gem is hidden in a different ruin... This will have you running around the entire Cyrodiil and Valenwood! And once you rescue them, some people will have further fetch quests for you before they can fully restore their business. Here I'm reusing existing unfinished fetch quests - there are some 20 fetch quests in the Valenwood Improved mod, of which two in Elden Root, both unfinished. This gave me the idea. Finish them off, and reap the benefit of improved service from those people.

Another thing I've been doing is adding background stories to some people, so they have a little bit more to say than just the rumours about the Emperor being assassinated. They might get quests at a later date, but I want this mod finished and out the door with version 1 for now. Personal quests can be added later.

The status now is that I have done 28 houses already, with their inhabitants and stories, plus market stall traders and a few others. I have only 4 houses left to do, plus beggars, plus the City Guard, plus the City Council schedules (the Mayor is hiding in his apartment for now). So a lot more NPCs to come, and not quite so much real estate.

This is great fun reading about what you're doing with Elden Root. Back in the Second Era, Buffy makes her home there. In her time, the city is mostly within a massive graht oak.

In this screenshot, Buffy is in the foreground. Right behind her to the left is her little 'Snugpod' home that the tree so nicely grew for her. Close behind her on the right, the tarp and tusk structure is the city stable. And in the distance is the Elden Root itself, featuring its cavernous 50 foot high arched doorway. Inside are numerous shrines and shoppes on the ground floor. One floor up is where the artisan crafting centers, banks and more merchants are. One floor above that is the FG, MG, and chambers of the current king of the Camoran Dynasty. Above that (in our head canon) are the real owners of the tree - the Elden Root tribe of the Cloud Dancer clan (to which Buffy belongs). Cloud Dancers are smaller, lighter and well suited for life in the tall trees. Rather than embrace Yffre's Green Pact to free themselves of the Wild Hunt, they long ago embraced the Nirn Mother (Mara) and Sky Goddess (Kynareth) to free themselves. Superb stewards of the forest, they have no problem using wood or the forest's other bounties; they simply do not waste. The Elden Root tribe is quite cosmopolitan about visitors in the lower levels but protective/private about the upper levels of their tree.

Though the tree is ancient, it grows atop and encroaches throughout an even older Aylied Ruin that is now mostly underground.

Look how things have changed! Elden Root of the Fourth Era doesn't have a giant tree, but you can see where it once would have stood - there's a giant hole in the ground, of sorts. And yes, it is built on top of an Ayleid ruin. After all, Valenwood Improved is over ten years old. Some people say it isn't lore-friendly, that the forests and cities are all wrong because they use some elements also seen in the Shivering Isles. But to me, Valenwood Improved is exactly what I imagined the land of the Bosmer to be like, based on the Bosmer characters from Oblivion and Skyrim, the same as Elsweyr Anequina rang true for the Khajiit. I would rather argue that if there are any similarities between Valenwood and the Shivering Isles, that's entirely due to the Bosmer taking their culture from Valenwood to the Shivering Isles, and not the other way around.

I feel that both Anequina and Valenwood Improved have truly enriched my game, and I should be coming back to those places again and again. There's still so much to explore there! And I only started on Pelletine, not even gone to any of the cities yet (tail-less Khajiit in Torval crash my game, and the FPS in Pelletine is hovering around 6 which is abysmal, while I get a steady 25-30 elsewhere). With that said, and with the weather in the "real world" turning warmer, the snow of Skyrim is calling to me again...

The last few days I've been working on a few side quests for Elden Root. Some of the shop keepers will ask you favours after you rescue them - they will need extra supplies. Once delivered, they broaden the range of goods that they offer. Some shop keepers already start out with special goods, and some only get them once everyone has been rescued.

It all started with a small fetch quest that I found in the original Valenwood Improved mod - fetch 15 bags of flour for an aspiring baker... and get a bit of gold in return. Boring, and unsurprisingly unfinished. Well, there's still a quest to fetch 15 bags of flour for that aspiring baker... But now she'll start baking rather special pies - Cornish pasties, mushroom pies, shepherd's pies, vegetable pies, etc. Well worth the bother of collecting 15 sacks of flour, although the pies won't be free.

All in all, I now have 7 re-supply quests and a total of 144 unique items to be sold in shops... How did this happen? Did I may be get carried away just a bit? And these are just basic items, you can make your own enchantments where applicable (although I would not recommend enchanting food, it's best eat it as is).

Things are getting along nicely! The only major task still left to do is to recruit the City Guard.