Quest line concept: "Love and Death"

[arkannos]

For as many tales as Oblivion has, there is one that's clearly missing, a tender romance that the game merely hints at: the story of Falanu Hlaalu, the charming proprietor of "All Things Alchemical."

 

It seems you have stumbled across a trapdoor hidden among the debris in the ruins of Falanu's first shop, on the southeastern shore of Lake Rumare. And there, in a cavern with a glowing pool fed by water dripping from the Morrowind-like mushrooms towering over its perimeter, is a raised white dais containing a tidy alchemy lab, where Falanu herself is working.

 

You are a hero now, and she wants you to perform a heroic deed: Reunite her with her past lover and mentor, Arindil. Of course, Arindil has been dead and buried for years in a small cemetery outside Skingrad. But love conquers all, and if you can bring her the mouldering corpse, she will reward you dearly.

 

You grant her wish...but there is another problem. It turns out that as a wizard of some small renown, Arindil's body parts have been rather in demand throughout Cyrodiil. So now, if you can just gather them for her...the appendage that's in use as a Hand of Glory by another wizard, the other hand that's been reanimated and now is scurrying crazily around the nooks and crannies of a necromancer-occupied cave system, the heart offered in sacrifice to a Daedric lord, the certain bit that's being used as a model by a sculptor for the Imperial palace, and so on.

 

And finally, once all the pieces are gathered, she just needs to restore his body to an eternal beauty of youth...which will require the power of a sigil stone. Then at last, Arindil is restored! Indeed, not just restored, but resurrected...but that wasn't quite part of the plan, as Falanu was the one who murdered him in the first place...

 

I dreamed of tackling this myself, but a few hours spent trying to find my way around the Construction Set have left me very discouraged. Still, if anyone wants to take it up...whether you need my input for it or not...it would be a delightful story to see. I imagine it as sort of a cross between Re-Animator, Monty Python, Love Story, and Silence of the Lambs. More or less. :blush:

[Vagrant0]

The problem with quests, especially new ones involving existing NPCs is that they are more prone to conflicts and can be much harder than a normal quest to make. As for the quest idea, it really doesn't fit with the world. Necromancy isn't something that can totally restore someone, it is uses primarily to get a mindless minion. Besides, doing this really doesn't fit too well with the NPC, I would imagine that she has a reason for asking about necrophilia. I'd say the joke is good enough as is and should probably be left alone.

[arkannos]

That's the reason for putting the NPC into a separate area as the quest location...it'll just be a copy of her, rather than the actual one (she'll have a means of detecting you and teleporting to the sanctum from her shop, and she'll refuse to talk about the quest outside of there). It wouldn't be dabbling in the standard necromancy either...as the story outline suggests, she had no intention of resurrecting the corpse, just making it look better.

 

There certainly would seem to be a back story involving her, considering the burnt wreckage of her first shop on the lakeshore. But if all this strains players' imaginations too much, well, nevermind.