LE Land of Giants: A quest idea

[koechophe]

I've had a quest idea for some time now, but am completely unfamiliar with both creating quests and creating new areas in the creation kit, so I thought I'd post here. (Wall of Text Incoming)

 

The quest would start out by the player being cursed by a random NPC with a spell that reduces the height of the player extremely slowly (like 1/15th of their size a day. An example of such a spell is found here http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/59621 in the "microbial disease"). The disease would be present in the menu, but cannot be cured by potions or spells, and would say something to the effect of "you're shrinking!" or "the world seems to be getting bigger..." Ideally, the player would suffer problems as they get smaller, such as:

 

-Reduced carry weight (3 points for every percentage point the character shrinks)

-Reduced Magicka (1 point for every percentage point the character shrinks)

-Reduced Health (1 point for every percentage point the character shrinks)

-At 80% height, the character is too small to wear heavy armor or two-handed weaponry

-At 65% height, the character is too small to wear light armor and any weapons except daggers

-At 50% health, the character is too small to wear any equipment period

 

When the character hits the 50% landmark, they receive a quest to investigate their shrinking. This quest leads them to the mage's college, where they find a book that leads them to a cave at the far end of the land. If they ignore the quest, they will black out when they hit 30% size, and be teleported to the cave. Inside the cave is a bunch of small cages, as well as books and runes. The cave has skeevers and spiders, both of which would be difficult to fight at a small size with the debuffs it gives. Ideally, the player's shrinking would accelerate while in the cave, but cannot go below 10%. At the very end of the cave, there's two men. If the player listens without being detected, they can discover that the men are selling shrinking spells to people, and then collecting their victims.

 

At the end of the conversation (or if one of the men sees the player) a cutscene triggers, where one of the men will cast a spell to shrink the player down to 10% height if they aren't already that small, then shove the player inside one of the cages and lock it shut. The player can move around inside the cage for a while, and then one of the men shoves a blanket over the cage and the screen goes dark.

 

The player wakes up without any items, and appears to be normal size again. Ideally, both the player and the house would be shiny, like they're made of plastic. At this point, the player has only 20 carry weight and no magicka. Another plastic person comes up to the player, and the player can ask either where they are or how they got to be normal size again. The conversation reveals that the player is still extremely small, and that the player is now to be used as a toy by the "giants". The player can then explore the house, finding a few other people, as well as plastic armor, clothes and weapons which have extremely low damage and defense ratings (1-5) but also only weigh 1 pound a piece, and the player can actually equip them. If they leave, they find that the house is really in a giant (10x) chest. After a bit of wandering, a hand will grab the player, and the player is lifted up by a (10X) nord. The whole room is also 10X (at this point, assume all assets are 10x to account for the player being only 1/10th of their size. Making all other objects bigger is a much better strategy because then the camera will be normal for the player) and it's just a normal bedroom.

 

The nord throws the player up and down a few times, then sets the player on the floor. If the player tries to run, the nord catches him and puts him down again. If the player stays still, the nord will eventually get bored, and put the player back in the chest.

 

At this point, the player can wait, and have the hand randomly grab and play with the player again, but there's a rather large hole in the wall of the chest that the player can use to escape. Once out, the player cannot open any doors or chests, but can use mouse-holes to navigate their way out of the house (or if that's too hard to design, can simply wait for the NPCs to open doors). If the player is detected, they'll be put back in the chest. All NPCs have giant's footstep, and if the player gets stepped on, they suffer severe damage, or else they die.

 

After escaping the house, the player finds a land where everything is huge. Out in the open, everything is still 10X scale, but none of the NPCs will detect the player, and the player cannot activate any objects, because they're too big. The player can enter other homes and explore. There are other tiny people wandering around, in secret, and by talking with them, the player will eventually hear rumors that they might be able to get help if they venture through the woods and make it to the town on the other side.

 

The player must then travel through a forest, where all the animals are huge too. Fortunately, most aren't violent, but the player will have to fight a few huge spiders and skeevers wearing only their plastic weaponry. On the other side, there's a town that's full of people the size of the player, as well as buildings. The player can explore this town and use everything just like normal. They can even buy a house and adopt kids here, as well as find new plastic weapons. The people of the town say just to accept the fact that the player will always be this size, but eventually, someone tells the player that if the player can find the magician who invented the spell that makes people tiny, he might be able to create a reverse. This magician is imprisoned in the next town over.

 

This leads the player to another town that's 10x scale, and, ideally, if the player were captured here, he'd be thrown into a toy-arena, where he has to fight against either normal-sized creatures or toy-sized people, while being watched by massive spectators. There would be rat holes to escape from there, too. Eventually, the player would make their way to the prison, where they are small enough to slip inside the cell of the magician. Upon talking to him, the player finds that the magician is deeply regretful for what his spell has done and for all the harm it caused, and thus allowed himself to be locked up.The player encourages the magician to try to fix it, but before he's done talking, a man comes to execute the magician. The executioner sees the player and tries to kill them, and the player must fight against him. This will be an extremely difficult battler.

 

After the executioner is defeated, the magician agrees to help, and after a few misteps ( turning the player into a chicken, shrinking the player even more, etc) he finally creates a spell that will turn the player back to normal size. He transcribes this into a tiny tome that he gives to the player, with the instruction to cast it only after he leaves this land. The player must then travel back through all the areas they've visited while still small, until they reach a portal. Using it returns the player to the cave they entered through and puts them at normal size. If they use the tome, the player recieves four new spells: Grow, which increases the player's size, Shrink, which decreases the player's size, Diminish, which turns NPCs into toys (all the negative effects that the player had at small size as well) and enlarge, which returns NPCs to normal. Ideally, the player could revisit the Land of Giants as either a toy or a giant (where the NPCS and such would be normal size) and then the village that was normal before would be tiny.

 

Well, that's the quest idea. Thanks for reading!

 

Other thoughts:

-This could be done entirely with vanilla objects/npcs, just scaled up a lot. The spells could be found from any of the Macromancy mods, provided the owner(s) are amicable to them being used. I think the greatest work is just in coding it, as well as coding the initial shrink spell. The plastic effect could be challenging, though some things in game are similar enough (such as the ghost effect) that it's not entirely unfeasible.

-There could be an additional quest where the player holds a revolt as one of the toy people against the giants, or perhaps a quest where the player helps the other giants capture and enslave the rest of the toy people

Edited May 27, 2015 by koechophe

[Ardoku]

That... is a very interesting quest idea. If only I were a modder, I might consider putting time and effort into this. I hope someone comes along and helps out with making this a reality.

[sevencardz]

Honey, I Shrunk the Dovahkiin.

[koechophe]

Honey, I Shrunk the Dovahkiin.

Incredible Shrinking Dovahkiin, etc. I wanted the quest title a bit more lore friendly, though.