Intensive Wonderland Mod

[Trinxeria]

I have long wanted to create a detailed Wonderland mod in the Shivering Isles. I can create the basic landscapes and link the areas I need, write the dialogue, and outline the quest, but I have no skill for scripting or creating meshes and textures. Realizing this mod would have to be a joint effort with other talented modders.

 

I first felt the urge to create this mod shortly after Skyrim came out. I couldn't have had worse timing. All the good modders jumped over to Skyrim and got caught up in a whole new game to mod. Recently, I've noticed Oblivion mods getting attention again, so I thought I'd make my proposal once again.

 

I want this mod to be a series of quests that take the player through Wonderland in the place of Alice. The impact to the SI world will be relatively small, because the only existing worldspace used will be a little are just off the road out of Bliss. A garden maze will occupy that space, where a small white rabbit in a waistcoat can be seen dashing about. When you enter the garden, the rabbit runs off into the maze, and you receive a quest encouraging you to follow him for curiosity's sake. At the back of the maze (though it won't be much of a maze with no wrong turns), under a large tree, the rabbit disappears down a dark hole. Activating the hole will apply the effects of the Boots of Springheel Jak (so you don't die upon falling into Wonderland) and teleport you to the top of a long chute.

 

As soon as the new area loads, gravity will kick and you will fall down past a jumble of miscellania, shifting in concentration from rocks and roots to furniture and items as you descend. A large armchair will break your fall, and a journal entry will be added about this strange rabbit-hole. Your only option is to go forward into a long hallway that will grow smaller until it ends in a round chamber with a table in the center and a tiny door in the far wall. On the table you will find a bottle labeled "Drink Me", and a journal entry will prompt you to drink it. Activating the bottle will add it to your inventory and shrink you down to the size of the door. When you approach the door, you will find it locked. The door will then either speak to you, or a journal entry will scold you for your brash behavior and advise you to check the table for a key (I haven't decided if the door or the journal will tell you). When you reach the foot of the table, your journal will inform you that there is no way up, but that a cake labeled "Eat Me" has appeared. Activating the cake will cause you to grow to fill the entire room (obviously some experimenting with the size values will be necessary), and your journal will inform you that you are dismayed and upset and you begin crying. The room will fill with water and you will be prompted to drink the remaining "Drink Me" potion in your inventory.

 

Once again you are in miniature, and a mouse will approach you as you swim in the Sea of Tears. When you try to talk to the mouse, more animal characters (or just animals, if no one wants to make new animal races) will swim up. The water will recede, leaving you and all the animals on a sandy bank. The animals will discuss aloud how to get dry, and the mouse will insist on a Caucus Race. All the animals will begin running in a circle, and your journal will prompt you to join them. They'll keep calling out for you to run with them until you do. After a few laps, your the animals will run away, and your journal will tell you that you should not have mentioned your ferocious cat.

 

Once all the other animals are gone, the rabbit will approach again and come talk to you. He will mistake you for his servant and order you to run to his house and fetch a pair of gloves for him. Your journal will tell you you don't have anything better to do, even though you're not his servant, and you must follow the path a short ways until you come upon the rabbit's house. Inside, your journal will draw your attention to your hunger from running in the caucus race, and point out a plate of fruit nearby. Activating the food will cause you to grow until you are too large to move in the space (again, we'll have to experiment to get the size values correct). The rabbit will come to check on you, and begin yelling about a monster in his house. His panic will soon draw the other animals to gather, and your journal will tell you that they are throwing rocks. The rocks turn into cakes, which you will be told by your journal that you eat, and you will return to a reasonable size.

 

Your journal prompts you to get out of the house before the mob realizes that you are the "monster" that was stuck in the house, and out the back door you will find a path into a thin forest. The path will lead you to a large mushroom with a caterpillar character sitting on it. The caterpillar will initiate a conversation and inquire about your identity. Your dialogue responses will only allow you to admit to some confusion or recite a poem incorrectly. The caterpillar will refuse to talk to someone who doesn't know who they are, and will tell you that eating either side of the mushroom will make you grow or shrink. Activate the mushroom to shrink and get a journal entry about being too small, then activate it again to become enormous. Once you have grown, your journal will inform you that you experiment with the two pieces of mushroom until your size is manageable. Follow the path away from the mushroom and you will find a Manor.

 

As you approach the manor, a messenger will finish a conversation with the footman, who is a frog, delivering a letter for the Duchess. Talking to the frog footman will prove useless, he'll drop the letter, and your journal will tell you to simply take it and go inside. You will hear crashing and yelling once you enter the house, and in the kitchen will find the Duchess and her Cook and the Duchess's baby and the Cheshire Cat character. The Duchess and the baby will be sneezing (rather than an animation, you will hear loud sneezing noises) and the Duchess will argue with the Cook about the amount of pepper in the soup. The Duchess will read the invitation you brought from the footman, and tell you to take her baby. Once the Duchess leaves, the baby will be replaced by a pig, much to your surprise (as your journal will tell you). The pig will run off and the Cheshire cat will leave through the back door. Your journal will tell you you see no reason to stay, so you will follow the cat and find him in a tree.

 

A circuitous and confusing conversation with the cat will end with him telling you to follow the path to the house of the March Hare, and then he will fade from sight. I'm not sure if the animation for making just his grin linger is possible, but it will still work without it. A little ways down the path, there will be a cottage with a fenced garden occupied by a large table covered in cups and kettles and pitchers, with the March Hare character and the Mad Hatter sitting at it, loudly discussing unbirthdays. When you approach, the Hatter will invite you to tea. Once you sit, you will be bombarded with riddles by both characters. You will be asked why a raven is like a writing desk. If you try to drink your tea, the Hatter will shout "Clean cup, clean cup, move on down!", and the NPCs wil change seats. If you don't try to drink your tea, the doormouse on the table will wake up to say a senseless poem, and your journal will tell you that this is the stupidest tea party ever and prompt you to leave. The Hare and the Hatter will continue with riddles and talk of unbirthdays until you are out of earshot.

 

Finally, the path will take you out of the forest and into a lovely garden full of rosebushes. Half of the rosebushes have red roses, half white, and in the middle, three red card-men are painting a half-white, half-red bush. Talking to any of the card-men will make him inform you that the Queen hates white roses, but they planted them by mistake and have to paint them red before the Queen finds out and beheads them. After this explanation, the king and queen of hearts and their court of cards will enter the garden along with the white rabbit. The queen sees the white roses being painted and orders the gardeners beheaded, then approaches you and tells you to play croquet. Your journal will advise you to play the game, since the queen clearly does not hesitate to execute anyone who doesn't do what she wants. If you follow the queen to the next garden over, where stakes are set up for croquet, your journal will observe the unusual use of flamingos and hedgehogs in this game. Activating a flamingo will cause the Cheshire cat to appear and annoy the queen, saving us from having to animate flamingo croquet mallets. The queen will order the cat beheaded, but the execution will claim it is impossible because the cat has disappeared completely except for his head, and has no body to cut the head from. The Queen orders the Duchess summoned to deal with her cat.

 

The Duchess will make annoying comments to the queen about morals, and the Queen will send her away. The queen will then initiate a conversation with you and introduce you to the Gryphon character. The Gryphon will ask you to follow him into an adjacent garden, where you will find the mock turtle. The turtle will tell you about the benefits of turtle soup, and the Gryphon will want to play a game. The Gryphon and the Turtle will dance, and then the Gryphon will tell you to come with him for the trial. The journal will admit that this behavior is confusing, but will direct you to go with him.

 

Leaving the garden, you will follow a path to a castle, where a trial is being held. The Knave of Hearts is accused of stealing the Queen's tarts, and is judged by the King and a jury of animal characters. Like much of this story, you will simply watch and listen to the NPC's until you get a journal entry telling you that you are growing again. The doormouse will complain that you are using too much air by growing so large. The trial continues in the background as you grow, with the other characters you have met giving meaningless testimony. The Queen calls you to the stand, then orders you to be gone because you are too tall. Your journal will call them a silly pack of cards, and then Wonderland will fade away and you will wake in the garden in the Shivering Isles where you first saw the rabbit. Sheogorath's voice will laugh from the sky, and tease you about your time in his garden. The dialogue from Sheogorath at the end will either be very limited or need to be replaced with an alternate ending, as existing Sheogorath voice files will have to be recycled for it to sound like him. Then a final journal entry will mark the quest completed, commenting on how completely senseless Sheogorath's sense of humor is. You are then free to return to whatever you wanted to do next in Oblivion.

 

Once started, the Wonderland storyline cannot be exited, and Wonderland cannot be returned to, unless we think of a good way for the player to get back out of Wonderland if they return.

 

I know I think it's a neat mod, but I need to know if any of you want to help with it, as it's certainly too big to do alone. The Shivering Ideals are an ideal setting for this mod, but if there is still to little interest in new mods for Oblivion, this could be made for Skyrim instead.

 

We will need someone to make races for each of the animal characters, or, more likely, costumes. Helmets for animal ears, armors or clothes for all the bodies and unique clothes, boots for animal feet. Some unique architecture and trees would be nice, but not necessary. We will need a rabbit-hole door, sloping corridor pieces, a "Drink Me" potion activator, an "Eat Me" cake activator, a "Drink Me" potion item, a fruit bowl activator, a mushroom activator, an invitation for the Duchess note, a baby item, a pig (could be borrowed from a farm animals mod), a teacup activator, a teapot, three kinds of rosebushes, a flamingo activator, and a hedgehog ball item. We'll need someone to do the male voice-acting, or several someones if we want more variety than different versions of one actor's voice. We'll need a lot of scripting done for all the NPCs and the activators and the quest progression.

 

As long as we've made all this cool new stuff, we may want to create a unique heart- or card-themed player abode in the SI garden to have when the story is completed, so that the pretty new meshes and textures get more use and can be revisited. The house would need new, heart-shaped windows, or a square with panes in one of the four suits in each quarter. Card-man guards for the outside, the White Rabbit taking care of the house on the, functioning as a servant but still mistaking you for his servant in the dialogue. Card-themed rugs and paintings with scenes of the places you journeyed to in Wonderland. "Eat Me" and "Drink Me" static items for decorative purposes, half-painted rosebushes around your house. A bed with a comforter similar to the rugs, a mannequin in the bedroom dressed like Alice, a chest with an axe called "Off With His Head" with the blade shaped like a heart, a sword with a heart for a crosspiece, A red bow, a black bow, and heart- diamond- spade- and club-tipped arrows. "Wonderland Adventurer" light and heavy armor sets decorated with the four suits. Unique spells to enchant the new armor with the "Heart of the Cards" (fortify health, magicka, and attributes), "A Spade is a Spade" (fortify blade, blunt, block, and hand-to-hand), "Diamonds are a Card's Best Friend" (fortify speechcraft and mercantile), and "I Call Clubs" (fortify sneak and security). The weapons we should leave unenchanted and just make them powerful. For extra awesomeness, everything from the tables and chairs to the chest and wardrobes could be customized in the card theme.

 

The house and items would be a nice reward for the Wonderland quest. Especially since the quest is completely passive - you don't actually have to do anything but activate things to finish it. Once the story part is done, the house could be in v 2.0 and/or offered as a separate download for those who don't care to go through Wonderland to get it.

 

I don't think I've forgotten anything major that needs to be created for this mod. Meshes, textures, scripts. Let me know if you think of anything that should be included in the plans for this mod. I am determined that this will get made, for Skyrim if not for Oblivion. I want this mod to be fantastic! Ideas, criticisms, and volunteers are all welcome!

 

Let's head down the rabbit hole!