Markarth Mages Guild Questline

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Taniquetil
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Markarth Mages Guild Questline

Post by Taniquetil »

Markarth Side's Guild of Mages is an austere institution that shares an enormous guildhall with its Fighters Guild counterpart and the regional Imperial-sponsored building commission.

Characters
Soren Lantern-Heart - Nord Sorcerer (Master Wizard)
  • The reclusive guildmaster of the Markarth chapter is one of the most individually powerful mages in western Skyrim, but has little interest in politics, other guild chapters, or even the activities of his own members. Soren rarely leaves his underground chambers in the guildhall, and prefers to concern himself with his own affairs.
Cyslandra - High Elf Spellsword (Warlock)
  • The experienced leader of the vaunted Mages Guild expeditionary team and deputy of the Markarth chapter.
Tarug gro-Dular - Orc Healer (Evoker) and Grisdir - Nord Witchhunter (Magician)
  • Other members of the Mages Guild expeditionary team. Tough and competent.
Emmandic Courcelles - Breton Enchanter (Conjurer)
  • Steward of the MK guildhall, and the questgiver for the earlier part of the questline. Runs the day-to-day at the hall.
Rosvild - Nord Guild Guide (Conjurer)

Denegal - Wood Elf Battlemage (Apprentice) and Cassia Vitilia - Imperial Alchemist (Journeyman)
  • Younger guild members. Cassia provides modest Alchemy services.
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The Guild in Markarth Side is the oldest in the Reach, and the only Nord-built guildhall in the kingdom (the guildhalls at Karthwasten and Dragonstar were built originally by the Hammerfell Mages Guild, and the Dragonstar chapter is still operated by them). Though the Markarth Side and Karthwasten guildhalls report in theory to Arch-Mage Hesta at Haafingar, they are generally granted a high degree of autonomy while Hesta pursues other agendas. The Markarth Side chapter is best known as the headquarters of the Skyrim Mages Guild's crack expeditionary squad, led by the chapter deputy Cyslandra. The expeditionary team has members throughout the province, and routinely organizes high-profile sojourns into highly dangerous ruins and remote location, often joined by members of the Fighters Guild and the Imperial Archaeological Society.

Recently, a much-heralded expedition into a colossal ruin in Falkheim (Helsgard Deep) went badly awry. A cave-in stranded several members of the expeditionary team, and they are presumed dead. While Cyslandra and most of the Mages Guild cohort survived, two of the victims were members of the Fighters Guild, which has strained relations with the Guild's sister organization next door. (Quest content to investigate the Helsgard Deep disaster will be appended to this questline as high-level content when the Falkheim release enters quest development.)

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Markarth Side release content - main questline

Quest I - The Lady and the Lake
  • Emmandic has received a contract from a woman named Haeli who lives in Markarth Side. Haeli has evidently lost a prized enchanted ring while strolling out on the docks, and would like the Guild to come find it for her. The player can find the ring in the harbor using Detect Enhantment and return it to Haeli, who seems a bit disappointed that Emmandic did not come himself.
Quest II - Lugrash Liaison
  • The player is next asked by Emmandic to visit the Lugrash tribe of Orcs. The Lugrash are a nomadic and mostly peaceable folk, and they have somewhat unusually reached out to the Mages Guild for assistance. Emmandic hopes that good relations with the Lugrash might prove valuable for future Guild interests, so the player is encouraged to solve their problems however possible. Upon arrival, the player is asked for a number of potions of cure disease in order to eradicate a sickness that's spread throughout the tribe. The player can simply fulfill the Lugrash's request and return home, or stick around to investigate and root out the cause (an aggrieved witch living in a nearby cave).
Quest III - Catacomb Curse
  • Things have been going missing from the catacombs beneath (outside?) the city, and tombs have been disturbed. The tomb is actively used by the residents of Markarth Side, so these thefts have been noticed. In response, someone seems to have placed an curse on the tomb, causing everyone who enters to emerge feeling ill. The cityfolk are no closer to finding the thief, but now are more concerned with removing the nasty enchantment on their ancestors' burial place. The player, upon entering, is immediately stricken with Brown Rot. The player can find evidence within the tomb of an amateurish attempt to create a bonewalker - a strangely out-of-place sight here in Skyrim. Investigating further will lead the player to the local Dark Elf hostel of Vadas Marvani, where a newly-arrived Dunmer named Trayna Resvalyn admits to summoning the bonewalker, but strenuously denies being the thief. Trayna claims she saw a Nord woman - Haeli - repeatedly exiting the tomb with trinkets. Trayna (hoping to impress her Nord neighbors by protecting their tomb from the bandit) placed the curse to ward off further thievery. She thanks the player for removing her overzealous curse and asks them not to reveal her part in the scheme. Confronting Haeli requires a speech check, but she will eventually admit to having stolen enchanted items from the tomb in order to "lose" them again (as in quest I) in order to get Emmandic's attention. The player can either turn her in to the guards, pin the crime on Trayna, or claim to have killed the thief outside town. Either way, Emmandic is a bit embarrassed by the whole situation.
Quest IV - Conversation with a Clever-Man
  • The player is directed to Cyslandra for this quest. Cyslandra asks the player to head to Beorinhal to speak with Eran Fog-Breath, a Clever-Man who resides in Beorinhal. Cyslandra asks the player to deliver a sealed scroll to the Clever-Man, and to bring her the mage's reply. Upon arrival, it quickly becomes clear that there is something of a cultural gulf between Cyslandra and the Nords whose ruins she studies; the Clever-Man refuses to read the scroll, insisting that "true things can only be shared by a tongue". The player is forced to open the sealed scroll and read it aloud or return shamefaced to Cyslandra. If opened, the scroll contains several questions about the nature of the Underworld, as well as Nord beliefs on death. Cyslandra is particularly open-minded for a High Elf, but she will still express some cynicism when the player relays the Clever-Man's cryptic, vague answers to her straightforward questions.
Quest V - Grave Gamble
  • The Mages Guild's recent failure at Helsgard Deep has put its other expeditionary projects at risk. The player is asked to speak with the kingdom's Imperial Magistrate at the Commission next door for more details. The Magistrate informs the player that Jarl Horir has retracted his approval for the Guild to investigate the tomb of Queen Liode, an ancient Reachman queen buried just west of the Granite Hall. The Magistrate says that while the Empire could in theory intervene on the Guild's behalf, the Proconsul does not view the excavation as an important enough project to risk upsetting the fragile politics keeping Horir docile. Emmandic recommends that the player again speak with Cyslandra, who is incensed. She urges the player to make an "independent" sweep through the tomb, and to search for a grand artifact that can restore the reputation of the expeditionary squad. The tomb should be full of traps and difficult enemies, but ultimately the player should be able to find an ornate crown belonging to the ancient queen of Fodhla. The player can either bring the artifact to Jarl Horir as a gift, which will net the Guild a hefty reward and mend the relationship, or bring it back to be displayed at the Mages Guild (in the future, the Karthwasten IAS museum), in which case the Jarl will be incensed.
Quest VI - Sunblaze
  • Relations with the Fighters Guild have been strained since the Helsgard Deep expedition went missing. Emmandic wants to fix that by aiding the FG with a difficult contract, free of charge. The Fighters Guild has run into some kind of magical barrier while clearing a band of highwaymen from the Direnni ruin Amrothal - they were able to clear the upper levels of the ruin (this should be a FG quest), but can't penetrate past some kind of magical barrier in the depths, nor do they have the means to navigate the huge vertical mineshaft. Emmandic charges the player with delivering some potions of levitation to the FG. The Fighters ask for help opening the magical barrier, which seems to be impervious to magical or physical attack. Emmandic recommends speaking with Calcelmo, a High Elf Alchemist who serves as the court wizard for King Barda. Calcelmo, an expert on the Direnni and their magic, informs the player that he believes Amrothal to have once been a Direnni attempt to physically drill into the Nordic Underworld. He suggests that the barrier likely requires a certain potion to be consumed before passing through it. He will provide the player with this potion if the player brings him some alchemical ingredients. Drinking the potion indeed allows the player to pass the barrier, revealing (after a bit more exploration in lower Amrothal) a caved-in passageway. A bit of digging about will reveal the body of Narin Sunken-Grove, a member of the Helsgard Deep expedition from the Fighters Guild. The Fighter's Guild rewards the player (via Emmandic) for discovering Narin's body.
Falkheim release content - Helsgard Deep Expedition

Quest VII - The Doorstep of Death
  • Emmandic now wants you to head to Helsgard Deep and attempt to find some trace of Cyslandra, who has ventured back into the ruin in search of her party. Helsgard Deep is an enormous dungeon crawl, with many treasures to find and enemies to fight, but a thorough player will indeed find the remnants of a campsite deep in the complex. No trace of Cyslandra can be found, but one passageway leads to a great stone wall with runes carved upon it. Blood is on the floor, along with an ornate knife, and the player recovers a journal penned by Grisdir, which describes being attacked by eyeless globs of magical flesh, which dragged several of his comrades through a breach in the carved wall. Attempting to step through this breach results in a messagebox and a strong force pushing the player back. Back in Markarth, Emmandic accepts the journal, gives a reward, and asks the player to speak with Soren.
Quest VIII - The Fence of the Fallen
  • Soren explains that the wall is the legendary Fence of the Fallen, a ritual barrier between the worlds of life and death. He asks the player to again speak with a Clever-Man (Narin Sunken-Grove or any other Clever-Man will do), who explains that crossing the Fence requires one to have been slain in battle - only the soul of one who has sustained mortal injury may pass the wall. While Soren has no idea what could have dragged the members of the expedition through the breach, he suspected that they are likely dead, or the magic would not have let them cross. But Cyslandra's letter (from Quest III) shared her solution: to cross the Fence, one must die - but only temporarily. Cyslandra discovered that a mortal wound from the ritual knife would be healed once the subject passed the barrier, so she cut her own head off, walked through, and re-attached it. The cave leading to Amrothal was found further down, so Cyslandra sent Narin back in the hopes of finding a way out. The player returns to the Fence of the Fallen, and in a scripted sequence, cuts off their own head. Following a succession of pop-up-boxes, the player fumbles their way through the breach in the Fence before recapitating themselves. Beyond the barrier lies an extensive cave system lined by strangely pulsing biological growths, which launch magical attacks at the player until destroyed. An immense, ancient stone door blocks the path forward, but in an adjacent antechamber, the player finds a ragged-looking Cyslandra and Tarug gro-Dular.
Quest IX - The Bridge of Helsgard Deep[/url]
  • Cyslandra, grievously wounded but alive, breathlessly informs the player that the expedition members were abducted one by one by the monstrous offspring of some ancient Direnni experiment, an alchemical creature the elves had bred specifically for the purposes of bypassing the Fence of the Fallen. She and Tarug attempted to follow and rescue them, but the other expedition members were already all dead. Cyslandra mentions that before she trapped the creature in the main cavern, she saw several more of the half-biological "nodes" grown into the walls. She believes that the monster, having grown powerful for millennia by caching magical power from the threshold of the Underworld, can be weakened and killed by destroying these nodes. The player must enter the final chamber of Helsgard Deep - the Chasm, a narrow bridge above a bottomless abyss, and fend off the creature's alchemical blasts while using levitation or ranged attacks to reach the nodes. When all the nodes have been destroyed, the alchemical leviathan (implemented as an activator, most likely) will finally die, opening the passage to the Underworld. Returning to the Guildhall, Soren asks the player to keep the discovery a secret. Alternatively, the player can return to King Barda's court and inform Calcelmo.
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Luxray
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Post by Luxray »

Prefaced by this is just my opinion.

I'm going to say right away I don't understand how the guild chief manages to be a recluse, I don't think it makes sense personally. It'll be interesting to see a comparison between a guild mage chief and a traditional nord Clever-man, should be played up.

quest 1 - lots of opportunity for pithy dialogue, love it

quest 2 - I don't like how it reuses the npc Haeli from q1, seems arbitrary to me unless foreshadowed. meanwhile we are undermining Emmandic, so maybe there's a payoff

quest 3 - make sure it is some ingredients barrow related, like gravedust, widows kiss, etc. Should have a break-seal script to read the letter early (even if coded)

quest 4 - could have a fg bonus if you did this, or its linked.
"Attempting to step through this breach results in a messagebox and a strong force pushing the player back. " this is very unsatisfying, it needs a more conclusive ending, like a local mage advising this is magic beyond ken.

(After this -- no Emmandic, needs a higher role for the persona you gave him, or pithy dialogue)

quest 5 - "Soren explains that the wall is the legendary Fence of the Fallen" I actually wouldn't mind a misc quest here whilst they researched it.
"Cyslandra discovered that a mortal wound from the ritual knife would be healed once the subject passed the barrier, so she cut her own head off, walked through, and re-attached it."
I'm wholly for a Skull of Vecna reference here.

quest 6 - "When all the nodes have been destroyed, the alchemical leviathan (implemented as an activator, most likely) will finally die, opening the passage to the Underworld."

Yea but then what? The player can't go in? Ultimate cocktease imo.

Final thoughts: Soren should have some interest in the Underworld you could tease early.
Guild should offer prodigious spellmaking/services, ones not offered in KW.
Quests 5 and 6 sound very difficult to do environment-scripting-wise.
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Rakanishu
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Post by Rakanishu »

Markarth Side release content:

Big fan of the Detect Enchantment aspect of quest 1 and I like the twist involving Haeli. I think we can turn these into a claim as soon as the following are resolved:

Quest 2 - Can the player also heal the diseased Orcs via spells/scrolls? Is the witch found in "Sky_iRe21_Cave 4" (viewtopic.php?t=1540)? If so, I'd just fold her undetermined quest into this one so we don't feel pressured to have another quest where the player has to complete Y's quest to finish X's quest.

Quest 3 - Is the curse removed via magic or by talking to Trayna?

Quest 5 - Queen Liada or Queen Liode? I think it's the former, but just confirming.

Quest 6 - I don't think we should lock one faction's quests behind another's quests, even in this case where it's proposed that the local FG and MG work more closely together than other chapters (same building, joint tasks, etc). A mage character shouldn't have to join the FG to finish the MG questline. I'd like to see this changed to the FG having done their thing in Amrothal prior to the player arriving in MK, or some other solution that removes the gating. The player should be given FG rep (not explicitly announced) upon telling Emmandic about Narin's body, regardless of whether they're a FG member at that point.

Falkheim release content:

Doing a bit of stream of consciousness here.

roerich's musings on the Underworld from Discord:
"We are going to feature the Underworld, but most likely not Sovngarde itself. It will be ambiguous whether it actually exists down there, and whether the Underworld is a semi-mythical realm or just a really deep cavern system."
&
"I would like to keep it ambiguous whether all the places that are fabled to be entrances to the Underworld are actually connected, and the same for whether you are in a different realm, or just really deep underground."
The Fence of the Fallen concept is cool and scriptable, but I think it reduces the ambiguity of the Underworld by going too far in the direction of "semi-mythical realm" by way of the life/death requirement. We could maintain some ambiguity and a lot of the current proposal with something like this:

- Helsgard Deep was a successful attempt by the Direnni to drill into the Underworld to accomplish their goal of a) escaping conflict, b) launching surprise attacks, c) discovery, and/or d) ???
- The Direnni created the Alchemical Leviathan with an immense amount of magical power to further accomplish their goal of a/b/c/d, such as being a tool of war or the actual tool they used to drill into the Underworld
- The Direnni set up the barrier in quest 6 to keep others away from Helsgard Deep and the Underworld
- The Direnni were unable to control the Leviathan and were forced to abandon it
OR
- The Direnni didn't excavate far enough to find other possible connections in the Underworld before they started to lose their holdings in the Reach. They were forced to abandon it when they fled

The questions in Quest 4 in the MK content could be changed to provide a solution to opening the first barrier or just "guidance" on the Underworld in general.

I think you could either outright cut the Fence of the Fallen or replace it with a more mundane second barrier that's made passable by solving some kind of puzzle or task in Helsgard Deep.

The Chasm could lead to some development headaches. If it's bottomless, the player would be able to levitate down and look up at a bunch of "missing" content such as rocks, terrain, etc. on the Helsgard Deep side of the bridge. On the other hand, a seemingly-bottomless pit could add to the ambiguity in a positive way. I'm just struggling to reconcile the out-of-bounds issues.

The most important thing is that we need to figure out how the Underworld is presented and what we want the player to be able to do there. Here, it's a big dungeon crawl that could be a mix of Direnni architecture and cave sets with the latter gradually becoming more prominent. If the various entrances to the Underworld aren't connected to each other, then there needs to be some kind of appropriate content or reward in each area. This would also help to answer what we'd find behind the Leviathan, be it a reward, a dead end, or continued progress into the Underworld.

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Taniquetil
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Post by Taniquetil »

I am cutting the Underworld out of this concept. It is too awkward a fit for the Reach. I would still like to do this stuff with Helsgard Deep via either the Snowhawk or Haafingar mages guild questlines though.

I will have a revised version of this up at some point, hopefully soonish. I got a bit stalled out on it when I shifted focus to the Reach faction stuff, admittedly.
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