Idea: "The Elder Scrolls: Cosmos" Space Exploration Mod

[Glitchipedia]

How about recoloring the sand to look more like Mars?

[Germandeathkittiez]

Yes and there could be like a constant sandstorm there... the rocks could be darker though, so it doesn't seem like you traveled all that way and just encountered Elsweyr (especially if you're fortunate enough to still have that mod). I think Masser would be a great place to start. Then we decide is it breathable or not... what will the creatures be like... what will the civilizations be like, etc.

Edited December 6, 2013 by The Black Ninja

[3rdtryguy]

YES! Excellent!

The texture of the terrain of Masser would be the easy part.

 

Next we'd need to change the sky. Instead of looking up and seeing Masser and Secunda, we'd have to see Nirn and Secunda. Secunda would look a little bigger, maybe, but Nirn would be huge, looking at least twice the size that Masser looks from Nirn.

There are a few mods which give us a globe of Nirn, but they all have writing on them and are too dark. We'd need a new globe model, this time without any writing on it, and preferably better illuminated. Making it have day/night would be great, but we can live without it if necessary. It would have to have the other major lands on it, though, Atmora, Akavir, Summerset. I think that Yokuda suffered a cataclysm and sank, but a big dark shape beneath the waters should be seen, ringed with little fragmentary remnant islands. Don't forget the icecaps and some other islands scattered here and there. Well southwest of Summerset there are some little islands where some people called the Maomer live.

 

Atmosphere on Masser is thin, but at least it does have one. Windstorms would work, sure.

 

I'm thinking that the people living there live in underground cities with definite Ayelid characteristics.

Another idea is that they have instead built themselves some pocket dimension spaces hidden deep within some buidings, and the teleporters allowing access are hidden in those buildings. This would let them live a more-or-less normal life in an otherwise inhospitable area. These little bottled cities wouldn't be conncted to each other, though, requiring travel on the planet's surface to move between them.

Hmmm... how about TWO civilizations? The bottled people living a life of ease and luxury, and the outsiders who live, well, outside, in the harsh environment? Maybe the outsiders are descended from exiled outcasts banished from the protected realms?

Neither would be especially friendly by any means.

Edited December 9, 2013 by 3rdtryguy

[Germandeathkittiez]

http://nirn.wdfiles.com/local--files/maps/nirn_edz.jpg

Okay here's a map of Nirn I found. It doesn't picture Pyandonea as a couple of little islands here, and I think it's a more accurate description. While it is not very big, it's bigger than Summerset Isles (which is kind of too small in this picture). The map also shows Aldmeris, which is not proven to exist. While this is a good map to go by, things like Aldmeris, Atmora, and Akavir's location/size are still left to the imagination. There is also the little island continent of Thras, and a bunch of other little islands, near Hammerfell, and Elsweyr, and Valenwood. Here's an idea: Aldmeris is a thin continent that extends along the longitude of the globe, ending near southern Atmora and beginning near Northern Atmora. It sounds crazy, but I think that Nirn as it is is meant to have a typical Earth-like geography (Tamriel in the West with its Roman and European influences, Akavir in the East, which is basically China) so I feel like something weird would be good. It would also explain why no one has ever found it, as it is just a giant invisible wall that enshrouds travelers in mist and makes them turn back. Beyond the wall would be the actual continent, a fractal neverending city that would appear as a deepness or whirlpool, because it extends infinitely into the nirn without ever reaching the core. So basically it would just be some weird blob on the side of the planet, because who knows if it really exists or not. :P

 

About the two civilizations, perhaps the outsiders are the only natives. While they come to the surface, maybe they dwell underground. Meanwhile the Ayleids were never extinct and they now live there too, in a centralized white-gold-tower like city that extends to the core of the planet. I have an idea for another, Venus-like planet. This planet's atmosphere will be so thick that it has cities that float on it (which is a hypothetical model of Venus colonization). Deep below in the swirling poisonous atmosphere, weird plant creatures are all that exist. The environment would be vine-like forests, low mountains, due to tremendous plants plants eroding the land by fighting for space to grow (trees would be taller than mountains, extending even up to the highest reaches of the atmosphere) toxic oceans and lakes, and a single snake-like desert, caused by unknown origins (something hostile to the plants in that area that you have to discover).

 

Okay a crazier idea: what if Aldmeris is a planet? A planet of cities upon cities that just extend forever inward. I don't know how much of this is even practical; I just have a lot of ideas atm so I thought I'd share them.

Edited December 10, 2013 by The Black Ninja

[3rdtryguy]

Yes, I think the Ayleids should have survived. The way I'm seeing this, they fled to Masser as Nibenay fell, and had the fuses scattered to keep the humans from following them, which matches up with Umbacano's story in which he tells us the Ayleids had them scattered as White Gold Tower fell. As for native "Mass-mer" of a different origin, that would be cool. "Lorkhmer?"

Ooooohh... Lorkhmer. I like the sound of that. Sounds like something Lorkham might have whipped up as one of his dying acts.

 

Come to think of it, a few Dwemer, safely encapsulated in a pocket dimension at the time they vanished, might have escaped the fate of their brethren and survived.

 

Aldmeris... hmm.. some say it never really existed, some say it was physically removed from the planet... I think it could have pulled a Pandaria and just vanished in the mists, yes. Like your map suggests, it could be way down south on it's own, enshrouded in magics which keeps anyone from ever being able to get close to it.

In fact...

That could lead to an expansion. Once it's existence was confirmed by looking at Nirm from Masser, a whole new mod could kick in dealing with the quest to find it.

 

Other worlds. Hmm.. Well, the orrery plainly shows that this sun has a half dozen worlds or so orbiting it, so it's not unreasonable to flesh them out. In fact, it might be kind of cool to modify the original night sky to include some of these worlds. They'd look very small, of course.

Your venus-like world of floating cities sounds pretty cool.

Edited December 11, 2013 by 3rdtryguy

[Germandeathkittiez]

Seeing as Venus will most likely never be inhabited that way, I'd love to at least do it in a videogame. I got a little carried away with Aldmeris; the description on the wiki just sounded so damn cool, along with Pyandonea. But we should try and focus on actual space stuff to start. Making heightmaps, terrain, aliens, etc. Right now I'm deep in the middle of projects and my finals, but by next week all that will be out of the way and I'll have literally months to just mod Oblivion. I'm gonna be checking out whatever cutting edge things I couldn't possibly comprehend are out there that could be freely used, taking them, putting em all together and seeing what the hell happens.

[Glitchipedia]

For no apparent reason, I got this crazy idea of the Venus-world's floating cities having this bullet train or something going between them. Perhaps a vandal destroys part of the track, and your first experience beneath the clouds is brought about by the resulting train wreck (which you survive because lol inertial dampeners)? And your ship can't just beam you back up because the clouds interfere with the transporter signal. You're left to survive on your own down there until either you find a way back to the colonies, or someone else finds you and rescues you. Or you die.

 

Assuming you make it back to the colonies, your next task is, of course, to discover the identity and motive of the vandal. And possibly end up a suspect yourself if this isn't your starting world.

 

Good? Bad? Potentially good with better execution?

[Germandeathkittiez]

I think that's a really good quest idea, because it allows for different outcomes, and sort-of character development. For instance, a movie with a main character who has no control over situations, and the situations sort of develop the character more than they and their interactions do themselves (Example if you have seen Elysium:

Matt Damon does not choose to die in order to free Elysium and let anyone travel there, he just ends up being a hero, but is still seen as a hero nonetheless.

It's sort of like with the Dark Brotherhood, and how you don't seek them out, they seek out you. The more things in general that happen to the character in this game, the more you feel involved with the world. Perhaps there is also a mysterious healing quality (some OP ingredient/item) in some of the plants located in the deepest jungles. You also may find yourself on a journey to seek that out. Perhaps, you find a weird yoda-like creature who tries to convince you to help him go after this stuff, and asks you, are you the type of person who would let their curiosity/greed for power get the best of them in such a dangerous place? If you say yes, you follow him; if no, he just vanishes forever (making it very hard to find the secret power on your own). Of course, you could also kill him after he gets you there, if you're that greedy. Perhaps there's a twist and he tries to lure you to the plant people to make a deal with them, or just kill you in some way. Maybe he's the vandal all along. Just brainstorming ideas. Maybe the real inhabitants are these yoda-like people, and they have actually had control of all or some of the colonies in the clouds for a while, from their societies beneath the clouds. Everyone is against you, until you discover it's because they are controlled by these people. How bout this: Someone mysterious/wise in the city gives you a special trinket. Then maybe you are on the run for something sporadic or trivial (like picking up a watermelon, lol) and the guards chase you to one side of their colony, where you escape into the bullet train track, where no one else would dare go. Then the yoda-like vandal blows you out of the sky, and you survive and the trinket allows you to breathe while you slowly sift through the dense atmosphere (just make invisible blocks below your feet so you can slowly go down). The yoda-like people don't see you as a menace, they see you more as brain food. They are literally getting high off of their telepathic abilities crossing the colonists' synapses and transferring neurotransmitters. The yoda-like people are not a menacing people, but the colonists are like a mutually harmful disease as the result of something foreign brought to a new place, causing both the yodas and colonists to go insane. The only reason you have not lost your mind is because of the trinket (which is made with this mysterious power). So you go to find the power, with this strange yoda-guy, maybe ultimately making friends or enemies; but in order to allow the two races to live in harmony, you need to find a way to use this energy to protect all of the colonists from the yoda-like people. What do you think?

[3rdtryguy]

Whoa! MY brain hurts a bit after all of that. LOL

Yodalike people living in the otherwise uninhabitable mists, leeching brain energy from hapless heores who fall down from the sky cities?

 

Awesome!

[Glitchipedia]

Sounds great to me. Though I wonder if these creatures shouldn't take more inspiration from Sméagol/Gollum than Yoda, at least personality-wise. So you never know if they may suddenly turn on you for no apparent reason.