LE Hearthfire-style improvable estate

[RainOfChaos42]

I was looking through the player abodes and the castle/manors categories recently, and I noticed a distinct lack of "build up from a little hut to a big castle and estates." I love that style of play, and I'd really like to see more of them. So, in an effort to generate ideas...I present my idea, a very nice little estate centered around Fort Sungard!

 

The reason I picked Sungard in particular is actually because of another mod. I was looking for a place to put my well to start the Tundra Defense mod, and Fort Sungard just looks cool to me. I mean, it's got that big columned-circle thing, and a couple nicely-sized buildings. But I saw all of the ruined chunks too, like the big hunk of wall on the back side of the fort that's slowly crumbling away into the valley below. I really wanted to fix up the fort, and turn it in to a player home or something, but when I pulled it up in the Creation Kit, I found that, to my dismay, it was one of the major civil-war forts! That being said, my own CK experience is extremely inadequate for even touching the story triggers and whatnot, and I didn't want to break anything, so I started looking around to see if I could find a mod that would let me have my beautiful Sungard. Seeing none, I went to the next best thing: builder mods. But after looking around, there were perhaps two or three that really appealed to me. So I came here, in hopes that someone, anyone, will see this and realize that they, too, want to be able to fix up a fort and make it their home, or even build a completely new one!

 

So, now on to the actual idea. There were a few features that I had thought of, but as I said I lack the experience to do these myself. I would think that it would be easier to do through the Hearthfire house system, with the workbench maybe up on top of a watchtower or something, out of the way for the improvements.

 

So, the features that I thought of, starting with exteriors:

1. Fix up the fort! Put the back wall back up and healthy-looking, and a general removal of debris.

2. Mage tower. I was thinking something a little different than your standard tower, though. I was thinking something more like a thinner tower, with chunks of the blue crystals just kind of hanging in the air around it. To put it scientifically, the mage tower should look "magic-y." Maybe in a series of upgrades to make it look more and more "magical."

3. Estate upgrades. When I think of owning a castle, I of course think of feudalism, and rulership. Things under the "Estate" category would be things like building a town around the fort, maybe even with NPCs! This would also include putting in things like additional watchtowers at the "borders" of the estate, and maybe stationing guards at them or patrolling. There's a LOT of possibilities for this stuff.

4. Upgrading the fort itself! Maybe adding a forge in that ring of columns, or a bridge from the rear balcony to the watchtower that's separate from the fort off the rear, just kind of hanging out way out there on the edge of the cliff.

 

Then some ideas I have for the interior of the fort:

1. A ladder to get back up from that cave entrance that I always seem to fall in. It's out there in the lonely little watchtower at the rear of the fort.

2. Debris-removal. This is just nice for fixing up any fort. I mean, what king lives in a hole in the wall?

3. decoration options. This is more of a flavor thing, such as imperial/stormcloak banners, a shrine to the deity of your choice, etc.

4. NPCs! All sorts, like a cook for the kitchens or a random maid that just walks around and brooms stuff. Maybe even a merchant or two!

5. A basement vault. This is totally a flavor thing, I'd really like to be able to have this big room that I can decorate with static piles of treasure by just dumping gold into one of the Heathfire benches.

6.Guard barracks. What respectable castle doesn't have one of these? I believe that Sungard actually has one, but improvements for it would be super cool. Maybe even upgradeable guards, that go from fur-covered bandits to plate-armored elite warriors!

7. IF possible, a special little "secret room" that's sort of a "mythic realm." I'm extremely into mythology, and a room that can be customized to different mythological styles, while I'm sure it's immensely complex, would be absolutely AMAZING.

 

I know that a LOT of the stuff I had for ideas is probably not even plausible, but I guess that's how development goes, yeah? Anyway, I really want to do this, but I seriously lack the experience to do this, the most I've done is a simple dwemer-crawl dungeon. It wasn't even that good. :P

Anywho, if you guys have any other suggestions or ideas to throw in, please do! I'm going to do my best to learn how to work with the CK enough to make this beast.

If anyone's willing to help me with this, please just pm me or something, whatever works! Thanks everyone!