His Dark Materials Items

[Germandeathkittiez]

Hello this is my idea for a mod that would add the three items from the book series His Dark Materials that Lyra Belacqua, Will Parry, and Mary Malone use: The Golden Compass (alethiometer), The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass.

 

The Golden Compass (alethiometer) – Tells the truth. Possible applications to Oblivion: Tells you information about people; whether or not they are associated with any quests and what those quests are, their disposition toward you (in case you cannot talk to them); their dispositions toward other people; where they live; where they are going; tells you about a certain place such as the quests and guilds (where important guildmembers / leaders are); as much information as possible that can be given to the player. It will look golden and shiny. I will try my best for book-accuracy especially on the symbols. I will need texturers. And Definitely scripting for the information. The method of asking the alethiometer questions will probably a sort of menu – most likely with some customizations to it. I do not know how to actually make an alethiometer, much less read one, so this will obviously be a bunch of hulla-balloo, but basically it will be a lot like alchemy where you match ingredients and they happen to work. I may use some intuition and examples from the book in matching them. If you get it right, instead of making a potion a book or something should open then it will simply tell you the info you asked for, likely in some sort of console lingo- if that doesn’t seem fun enough, I might add more articulate descriptions or riddles as scripted answers.

 

The Subtle Knife – cuts through anything. Reverse blade cuts through to other universes. The last one may be hard to do. For starters, I cannot wait for UVII to come out – then I can hopefully use the limb-chopping from that to assist in this. Most likely if you cut someone’s arm, it will fall off, same with legs. If they’re blocking with their hands up, those will come off. Across the torso will probably end up with a punctured lung (cause it’s a dagger) or just cut the person in half. Same with the head. So basically, anywhere you cut should cut through something. Obviously, inanimate things cannot be cut. Now, for the other side of the blade, possibly an animation could be created to show the player flipping or turning the blade over via the stroke of some key. Then the player would glow with some magic effect. (I imagine dark purple for some reason). Now, the hard part is, it wasn’t easy in the books for Will to cut through worlds – he actually had to try. So I don’t want this to be easy for the player, after all – you are cutting through a universe. So slashing the dagger won’t open a window, but it might start a cut. This will happen at random or maybe there will be hidden portals to find?? ^ ^ Anyway I don’t know if there’s any type of sword struggle/ deadlock animation but maybe a lockpicking type menu could work for this. And you just use that to inch your way to opening a portal. The Planes of Oblivion are randomly generated, so idk if this would work but possibly having a sort of thing like Oblivion and everytime you go through it’s different. So it will just cycle through different worlds – Oblivion, SI, - any world you enter in the game that doesn’t give you bad glitches by going to it. I don’t know how probable that is but it would be perfect if it worked.

 

The Amber Spyglass – detects Dust. Well, a simple detect life-based enchantment would work well for this --- in fact Detect Life may just give the illusion of being the same thing! Basically Dust is dark matter, and is attracted to all living humanoid souls. I don’t know about creatures – that’s one of the things Pullman probably didn’t know about his own world. The thing is Most people have animals alongside them that are Daemons, and those are souls, thus these people have Dust around them. Whether or not Dust is attracted to animals basically takes it down to the question of whether or not animals have souls – so bah this is getting complicated, but I believe they have souls, so it’s ok if it detects all living things, which would be easier anyway. However, the flow of Dust is in the air. SO, a big mass of glowing stuff has to be sitting in the air idly above you through the spyglass, which comes to center around beings. However, once you use the subtle knife to make a portal, the Dust will become no longer idle and pass through the portal – sounds hard to do. It might pass through magic portals already in the game, too, but those are magical, not physical, so maybe not. The spyglass should just look like a little telescope or as it is defined in the book.

HOW TO LOOK THROUGH: Now, it might not be easy to actually look through it in Oblivion. It is an item. It will probably just be an enchantment that gets equipped to a slot and the magic effect begins. Or, if it was more complicated, an animation and HUD for looking through the thing would be added, but that sounds extremely hard to me, and then the script for the magic effect wouldn’t start until you look through the spyglass. (Cuz it would be stupid to look through a spyglass if the effect is all around you). These are my ideas. Hopefully others can add (or subtract) to this and come up with suggestions if I left anything out. Oh and help would be nice, too. :sweat: Scripters, texturers, etc. Thanks :D I am new to modding, but thought I would share this to see what everyone thinks.

[alonsomartinez]

Sounds cool , I remember reading the series it was certainly awesome !