LE Well-Versed Dragons and War - A Few Well-done NPC's for Incredible

[RustyMuFFins]

Brief summary: A few lore-friendly adaptive dragons that know and use all of the dragon shouts and level with you are in a turf war and you can get in on the action or interact them outside of the conflict for shouting matches, befriend them, or form a rivalry with them.

 

Add five to ten dragon lords across Skyrim that lord over large territories. (Each dragon knows all of the shouts available.) Pre-existing vanilla dragons are then a part of those territories wherever they are. Each of the dragon lords combat each other personally from time to time. Now obviously, Dragon Aspect is redundant and Call of Valor and Dragonrend would be unusable to them, so they don't bother using those, but say you use a weather-altering shout or magic like Storm Call or Celestial Star from the Colorful Magic mod -the opposing dragon uses Clear Skies. Say you use Marked for Death on him/her, the dragon uses Marked for Death on you. You respond with Dragon Aspect to make up for the defense lost. They'll hit you with Ice Form so you don't get much use out of it. Say your ancient dragonborn avatar holds enough aggro to allow you to recover, you summon atronachs to keep the aggro off. The dragon responds by using Animal Allegiance or Soul Tear to combat your forces and keep an even playfield. All the while, you take shots with magic, sword, bolt, and arrow while he/she takes shots with dragon breath (Unrelenting Force, Fire Breath, Frost Breath, etc.) talons, teeth and tail. This epic game of back and forth continues for days until only one conqueror is left standing to include all spectators foolish enough to try to watch two dragons fight.

 

This is what I propose, add some dragons that are in a turf war. If they could be voiced, that'd be awesome. There doesn't need to be any big quest or anything. Just make them npc's with daily routines. Hang out on a mountain in the morning ('cause dragons like mountains) possibly kill any vanilla dragon squatting on their territory. Go for a fly around their territory, eat some sheep, toast a horker, and talk to himself or enemy dragons about life or how the enemy dragon is gonna get his ass kicked. Make them available to talk to when they return to their perch. Give them unique stories regarding their ascension to power, how they fought in a mysterious plane of Aetherius while their souls wandered, how they grew strong before their deaths during the dragon war, but were bested by sheer numbers of Voice-wielding Nords -maybe one could mention fighting with Miraak for several days before the two decided to give up and fight another day. Maybe that one will look to you to make up for his loss. Dragons are prideful. Maybe another dragon, like Durnehviir tried seeking power in other places and learned how to channel Aetherius magicka for brief spurts making him temporarily invincible until he can use it again. Maybe another learned to fly incredibly fast and maneuvers in the sky like no other. Another could have a Nirn-shaking roar that paralyzes even the strongest foes with fear and makes the continents tremble. Another may not need breathing time in-between shouts and turns the mountains into a no-man's-land warzone of morphemes and insults. Unique skills like that would be incredibly useful for keeping the dragon unique so that their shared ability to use all of the shouts doesn't make them carbon copies of each other.

 

There are a number of dragon overhauls out there that make dragon fights more interesting or more challenging. Deadly Dragons, Dragon Combat Overhaul, and Colorful Magic provide some highly memorable ones so kudos, but the fact is, it could still be better based on sheer lore alone for the simple fact that dragon shouts are dragon language. Why can a dragon not use all of the shouts? Each dragon is easily exploited once you understand their strengths and weaknesses, but logically-speaking, dragons should only be limited by their vocabulary... and since they're considered immortal for the most part it's difficult to imagine how any dragon should be taken down without knowing all of the dragon shouts. It's like a baby beating an 80-year-old philosopher in debate -no. So I recommend a mini-overhaul. Even if Alduin is The World Eater, that doesn't mean he's the strongest, it was just his destiny, so it's feasible that there're dragons stronger than him and other dragons stronger than them whether they were born that way or simply grew to be strong like a wandering samurai or pit-fighting vagabond.

 

So place these dragons at various points across Skyrim, like Eldersblood Peak, Throat of the World, and the Shrine of Azura, give them unique skins like the Behemoth and Thanatos mods. They'll track and comment on your strength and progress by level and/or shouts you know and are available to be challenged at any time for a sparring match or argument. If you beat them they may decide to recruit you or decide to get stronger than you. (Please note, the dragons cannot be killed by challenging them like this) and should you choose to fight for one, he/she'll reward you with buffs to your shouts, 0 recharge time between shouts, their understanding of words you haven't spent souls on, and new words entirely that you may not know (all of this depending on how epic the deed -whether killing ten dragons from an opposing territory or besting the lord of it.) Another dragon may decide he's not strong enough and will go fight other dragon lords for a few days and next time you fight him, he's leveled up by 10. (So even legendary skill levelers will get replay value assuming you don't kill him.) Another dragon lord may decide he tires of the constant strife and wants you to lead him offering his name to be called upon when in need and able to be ridden using Bend Will as well. (Bend Will is ineffectual against them otherwise, some may laugh at you or shrug it off like dust.) You could own all of his/her territory.

 

So a lot can be done with 5-10 dragons fighting each other. Based on what little I know of modding, I don't think creating dragon npc's with all the shouts available is the difficult thing; I think it'll be making the AI smart enough to know how to use it all effectively in battle, but there are dragon mods out there that alter dragon battle behavior quite well so I believe it can be done. It could follow a pattern like a chess game, whenever you use A, he uses B, C, or D at random. Excuse me if I'm thinking too small. I'm sure there are some of you modders who're thinking, "Silly muffin man... I can script a dragon to do this...!" Apologies, I'm no modder. As for a routine, I've also seen dragon npc's loop. An example would be the dragon in Halls of Dovahndor. There must be data in the game allowing you to talk to them too since Paarthurnax allows you to talk to him when he's around. I think that, despite everything this mod would do, it requires comparatively little in relation to the massive replay value it would bring. Pardon my ignorance if I'm mistaken. I think the hardest thing would be finding good voice actors. I'd be more than happy to write out dialogue for the dragons and name them in dragon-language. I'm a damn-good writer.

 

 

 

This could easily incorporate new npc's and spells, and even shouts, but I'm not asking for any of that. If anyone's interested, please post. I'd be more than happy to collaborate with the concepts and write up dialogue. I'm also a decent artist so I could provide concept art for retextures if needed with ideas on where to pull textures from in-game.