Codex Alera (Total Conversion?)

[KOFFEYKID]

It seems to me that if you had the know-how and the gumption to do it you could actually pull off a very good Codex Alera mod for Skyrim. Ideas include:

 

Remove all magic spells.

Remove all magic skills.

Remove all magic perks.

 

Replacing them with skills, spells and perks for each branch of Furycraft (Fire, Air, Water, Earth, Wood and Metal).

 

Ditch enchanting and Alchemy entirely, as they aren't needed.

 

Redesign smithing perks and armor to match the armor types found in the Codex Alera series. You would still have Cloth, Light and Heavy armor but not Daedric, no Dragonbone, etc. New meshes and textures for most armor.

 

Then of course, there would be the business of doing the world map and environment to fit (the hugest problem).

 

Finally, add Marat, Canim (use werewolves and add armor and weapon support for them) and Vord creatures.

Edited February 1, 2012 by KOFFEYKID

[kromey]

This wouldn't be too hard to pull off, I don't think.

 

Replacing the spells with the various furycraft spells wouldn't be hard, although some of the books' furycrafts (e.g. the increased weapon prowess of metalcrafters, the contextual veil of woodcrafters, making trees fight for you and your enemies' wooden weapons turn on them) would be very hard to implement. Still, some equivalences could be worked in I'm sure -- for example, putting some archery perks in the woodcrafting skill. Hm, actually, metalcrafters' weapon prowess could also work in this fashion, putting weapon perks (might merge one- and two-handed) into the metalcraft skill. Woodcrafting (beyond archery prowess) would still be very hard. Restoration mostly moves straight over to watercraft; the various *skin spells would work to simulate metalcrafters' pain endurance; most destruction spells (except frost spells) could simply carry over to firecraft, as would fury. Aircrafters would have spells for flight, and invisibility, and silence. Earthcrafters would... okay, that might be another tricky one to do. Well, actually, if we put one-handed weapons in metalcrafting, and two-handed ones in earthcrafting, that's pretty close. And of course at high levels all the various disciplines would be able to actually summon their fury to fight for them.

 

Most of the races wouldn't be hard to do, either. Alerans are easy -- just pick your favorite human race (I think Imperials would make perfect Alerans), and change their name. Done! Marat are only slightly harder -- use the Forsworn, but scale them up to account for their larger size. Give some groups a bunch of horses, others wolves; the bird things (been a while since I've read the books, forget what they're called) would have to be new models I think, as would the giant lizard things (although mammoths could likely form a good base). Canim could, as you suggest, be werewolves (although permanently in beast form), but there'd need to be armor and weapons made for them.

 

For the Vord, the chaurus, scaled down some, could work pretty well as the wax spiders; alternatively, scale them up instead and make them the Vord soldiers. The spriggans could make a really good base for modeling a Vord queen. Then you'd just need a new model for the Vord soldier/wax spider (whichever role the chaurus didn't fill). For the Vord behemoths, the chaurus again could make a good base, although obviously you have to make them a lot bigger, which would almost certainly demand a new texture to look decent at that scale. With the CK, you could add Vord soldiers riding the behemoths, and grant them flight.

 

And don't forget those snow-people north of the Wall; again, I forget their names. The obvious answer is the frost trolls, but I don't like that -- they should be much more human than that, at least from the impression I got from them. Maybe re-textured and scaled-down giants? Eh, probably just need a whole new model for these guys.

 

The remaining critters (other than animals, of course) could be simply re-named as (or just considered in the new lore to be) "unbound furies" -- in the books they had a multitude of forms, so that's not much of a stretch at all.

 

Redoing the map of Skyrim to match the map of Alera... hoo boy! That's a biggie! And way beyond anything I'd be interested in even attempting!

 

Thinking about this, I'm actually kind of excited about redoing the spells, skills, and perks to align with the different furycraft disciplines. Would take a lot of planning, though -- obviously I'm still thinking in terms of Skyrim, not Codex Alera, trying to make existing things fit instead of trying to bring Codex Alera itself alive. I'm no modeler at all, though, so doing the races (beyond the Alerans and the Marat themselves) is really beyond me, but I wouldn't mind working with a modeler to make them come alive. The map, though, that's not for me.