LE High Rock and Hammerfell: The Northwestern Provinces

[theshelteringsky]

So I've been thinking about this idea for a mod since before the game came out. I would like to place a portion of High Rock and Hammerfell into the game, mostly the eastern portions of the provinces. The reason I am just looking at the eastern portion of these two provinces is because I wish to have a great amount of detail in these new lands. Here's my basic outline. It will probably be unfocused, but I will try and make what I have thought of presentable. I wish to present these regions in an accurate and detailed manner, so this will be a rather long post.

 

High Rock: The Eastern Kingdoms

 

1. High Rock: The Eastern Kingdoms - Yenaon (Cold Coast)

 

This portion of High Rock will contain the most northern area of the province. It will contain the cities of Jehanna and Farrun. Jehanna will try to have a rather elegant look to it (quoted from Go Blades: "Welcome to Jehanna, a city as beautiful as her name"), a contrast to many of the dirty and unpolished cities in Skyrim. Farrun will be much like Windhelm, a walled city in a region of constant snowstorms, with a lot of ice around the city. The reason behind this is because in lore, Farrun is often described as a cold, snowy, icy and kind of miserable city. This seems to make sense, it is after all the northernmost city in High Rock, and only a couple of the port cities in Skyrim are more northward than it. As for the area outside of the cities, it will consist of forest (much like the boreal forests in Skyrim) and vast plains of snow and ice, with the inhospitable and icy sea of ghosts at the northern end of the province, like in Skyrim.

 

2. High Rock: The Eastern Kingdoms - The Reach

 

Yup, just like the Reach in Skyrim, considering its right next to it. In terms of landscape, High Rock's Reach will be very similar to Skyrim's Reach. The main city in this region will be the city of Evermore. As of now I do not have as much for Evermore. It is a large city (larger than Jehanna and Farrun), I know that much, but I don't have as much info on it other than that.

 

3. High Rock: The Eastern Kingdoms - Gavauden Forests

There are no defining cities in this region. This will mostly consist of small towns and wilderness.

 

Hammerfell: The West Reach

 

1. Hammerfell: The West Reach - The Principality of Dragonstar

 

Now Dragonstar would be much less of a hassle to create. Dragonstar was actually featured in a previous Elder Scrolls game (Shadowkey: anyone remember that, much less actually played it?). In the game, the city was described in great detail. In fact, there are even maps and some good backstories on the city already (links: http://www.imperial-library.info/content/dragonstar-city, http://uesp.net/wiki/Shadowkey:Dragonstar_East, http://uesp.net/wiki/Shadowkey:Dragonstar_West, http://uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Dragonstar). Given all of this info, it will be fairly easy to recreate Dragonstar. However, because this is over 200 years after the events of Shadowkey, some things might be different. Of course, it's all up in the air at this moment, but some possible changes could be that the city is no longer segregated and both sides are open to each other, some of the guilds might be different, etc. Thankfully, there's more info on Dragonstar than any other area in this idea.

 

Also in this regions will be the Dragon's Gate and the ruins of Fang Lair, the infamous Dwarven ruin from Arena (the very first Elder Scrolls game) where the Arena champion had to go to find a piece of the staff of chaos, hidden by the evil Jagar Tharn.

 

2. Hammerfell: The West Reach - The Principality of Elinhir

 

Unlike Dragonstar, there is not as much information on Elinhir. Due to its proximity to Cyrodiil, there is a large Colovian influence within the city. This Colovian influence comes from a fairly large imperial population. Not much else is known about Elinhir. This region will consist of a few small towns, such as Nimbel Moor and Belkarth Guard.

 

As a side note, the two Hammerfell regions will mostly consist of rocky mountains, and the famous deserts of Hammerfell do not reach the areas which I am describing. However, there are exceptions to this geography. There are certain areas of forest among the border to High Rock (boreal forests like the ones in High Rock and Skyrim) and Elinhir seems to be out of the rocky mountains that take up most of Eastern Hammerfell, instead Elinhir seems to be in a lowlands area, between two mountain ranges in Hammerfell (judging from Zephyr's map: http://www.imperial-library.info/content/hammerfell-map-zephyr)

 

 

Notes

 

-In terms of races, High Rock will be predominantly Breton and Hammerfell will be predominantly Redguard. However, certain cities will have large minority populations (Nords in Dragonstar, Imperial in Elinhir).

-The word "Yenaon" does not appear in lore. It is a word I made that very loosely means "Cold Coast" in Breton (real life Breton, not their language in the game). If anyone has a better name for this region, please suggest. I named it Yenaon because, well, its on the coast and its very cold and miserable (yeah I know, not very imaginative).

-There would have to be new factions for both provinces (Hammerfell's will be unique due to their independence from the Thalmor and The Empire, and Dragonstar has a unique faction called the Merchant's guild)

-I'm not too familiar with the creatures that inhabit these regions. I'm sure there are creatures and beasts unique to High Rock and Hammerfell, but I wouldn't really know.

-Most of these cities are the size of Skyrim's main cities, and Dragonstar and Evermore will be the largest

-The political situation in High Rock is mostly up in the air. High Rock is known to be littered with small, feudal kingdoms and city-states, and I can only imagine that this has become more prevalent since the Oblivion crisis. So as a remote possibility, High Rock's small kingdoms can act very much like Holds in Skyrim (law and bounty varies by region).

-Hammerfell at this time is an independent state, so it would be practical to have a huge selection of troops guarding its borders to protect itself from the Thalmor and the Empire.

 

And that is my jumbled mess of ideas for a landmass mod which I can't really create because a) you need a large dedicated team to do this sort of thing, and b) I don't really have a lot of modding experience. So I leave this large and slightly unfocused idea to whomever is viewing it and wishes to take some things from it for their respective mods. I do plan on getting back into modding (I used to mod a fair amount with Morrowind, never really publicly released anything and kept the mods to myself) but I know that this is definitely out of reach at the moment. I plan on occupying my time with much smaller mods (adding homes in certain places, expanding city sizes, etc.) before I even think about doing this.

 

If you have any suggestions, any questions, anything to add to these ideas or wish to use any of these ideas for something you may have, please feel free to either leave a comment below or contact me.

[Paons]

It sounds good someone make this mod!

[Kairo29]

Im for it, my Redguard would b pleased :)

[dark3000light]

Why not do something like Morroblivion? and combine Morrowing, Oblivion, Skyrim? Hammerfall and high rock would need to be remade from top to bottom due to graphic technicalities.

[Melissia]

It'd be practically impossible to import High Rock anyway. Just for reference, Morrowind is approximately 0.01% the size that High Rock is in Daggerfall; that is to say, it's about 10,000 times bigger than the entirety of explorable terrain in Morrowind.

 

You'd have to limit yourself to a very, very small portion of High Rock.

Edited December 4, 2011 by Melissia

[dark3000light]

Note Daggerfall is nearly entirely randomly generates. I think that modding oblivion to have hammerfall through random generation and mod terrain shaping, and connecting oblivion with skyrim (similiar to morroblivion).

[Nigoki]

Hi, I have some modding experience (made a few quests for myself and some landscaping in oblivion) and I want to do a city and it's respective region (like the rift) for Highrock. Anyone interested in joining me?

[dark3000light]

I used to be a dreamer like you, but I took an arrow to my knee.

[leptok]

Speaking to how Daggerfall randomly generated Highrock areas, it should be time to move on and redefine the area.

[Wraithofdoom]

im specially interested in High Rock, i suggest to make it witch-heavy, bretons always kinda strike me (since oblivion) as the race most suited for being pagans and practicing witch craft or necromancy. Maybe a witch hunter faction could work for High rock ?.