[RELz] Arthmoor's Villages of Cyrodiil

[Arthmoor]

Arthmoor's Villages of Cyrodiil

Cyrodiil is a fairly expansive province, and is said to have a number of small villages and towns. Unfortunately what we actually got failed to live up to the descriptions. This is my collection of mods which aims to correct this problem by building several villages scattered throughout Cyrodiil in various pockets of unused space. Each one has its own unique set of inhabitants and its own special charm. Some have quests, others may not. Wherever possible, all of my villages mods will attempt to fit in with their surroundings and blend into the lore of the areas they're in. There's even some story elements which cross over between villages, though there are no direct quests that span more than one village. Hopefully there will be a little something for everyone to enjoy while filling in those empty roads of Cyrodiil with some life.

Current released villages: Faregyl Village, Vergayun, Feldscar, Molapi, Frostcrag Village, Reedstand, Urasek, Sutch Village, and Gottshaw Village.

Downloads for Faregyl Village: AFK Mods
Downloads for Vergayun: AFK Mods TES Alliance
Downloads for Feldscar: AFK Mods
Downloads for Molapi: AFK Mods
Downloads for Frostcrag Village: AFK Mods
Downloads for Reedstand: AFK Mods TES Alliance
Downloads for Urasek: AFK Mods
Downloads for Sutch Village: AFK Mods
Downloads for Gottshaw Village: AFK Mods

Faregyl Village

Feeding the empire, one roast chicken... or pork chop... or rabbit steak at a time! Cyrodiil demands MEAT!

Ever notice how there's no real farming presence in Cyrodiil? Except for some really small isolated places, there's perhaps one major operation going on outside of Skingrad. And they make wine. Wine is great and all, but where do folks get the meat? I mean the good meat. Chicken, pork, rabbit. We have plenty of mutton, but, well, mutton can only go so far before it gets old. There's also a noticeable lack of traditional crops being grown anywhere on any kind of meaningful level. So I got bored while thinking about this and decided it was time to do something about it!

I searched high and low and found only a small number of farming mods. The usual. Sheep, sheep, sheep, and oh, more sheep. Wonderful. Got the mutton sources covered now. So I'm attempting to fill in some of the gaps. There were a number of other good farming mods but they all landed in locations that were less than ideal, at least for my game. The UL team has someone working on a grand implementation out by Anvil, so I figured on letting them take care of that. So why Faregyl? What's so special about this place? Nothing really. When I scouted for locations it wasn't used by anything I could find. So I figured it was as good a place as any to stick some small farming operations.

This mod adds a pig farm, chicken farm, rabbit farm, some traditional crops, and a local smithy to the Faregyl area. Instead of an isolated sleepy old inn, now there's a useful farming village to help sustain the population. Each farm is owned by an NPC who has a work schedule and a normal eat/sleep schedule. Don't try and mooch off the stuff though. Killing the livestock or stealing the crops is going to make someone angry if they catch you! There's also a local smithy who will repair gear and sell mundane supplies and equipment. He's got an ox to pull his cart, but the ox is mean. Don't mess with him. There's also two local legionaries who patrol the area to help keep the peace. And of course, the abandoned gold mine. Something the locals are reluctant to talk about....

Requires OBSE 0019b or higher.
Has built-in support for Oblivion XP.

Vergayun

It's the small fishing village with the funny name!

As I was poking around in the CS, scouting locations for something to fill a hole, I took notice of a dock next to Fort Variela. I wondered if perhaps it was the footprint of something Bethesda simply left out. So I went looking for lore maps to see if anything at all was indicated there. One such map exists, and was marked with the word "Vergayun" right about where the dock is. As it turns out, an old discussion in the lore forum had taken notice of this before and concluded the name was actually added by an overzealous fan of Redguard when they extended the map for it to cover part of Cyrodiil. Well, lore correct or not, the name stuck.

Imagine my surprise when checking my load order also turned up nothing touching the two cells I wanted to use. With a name, and the site being clear, the fishing village of Vergayun is born. It consists of an inn, a farmhouse, 2 small houses on the shore, and a larger building which is being used as a warehouse. The dock area has also been cleaned up a bit to remove the broken junk that was laying around.

The inhabitants earn their living by fishing for slaughterfish, trapping mudcrabs, and harvesting clams. These are then turned into a delicious clam chowder, mudcrab stew, and slaughterfish surprise. Nobody is really sure exactly what the surprise is, and the innkeeper isn't talking!

Requires OBSE 0020 or higher.

Feldscar

A small Nordic village in the lower Jerall Mountains, north of the Frostcrag area. Black Rock Inn serves as the primary means of local support, while trade in hides and leather goods made in the local shop serve as their ties to the rest of Cyrodiil. They live a reasonably isolated life but welcome visitors from far away places. Some well known people have passed through on their way through the back country, as Feldscar is one of the few places to escape the biting cold of the mountains.

NOTE: In order to access some parts of this mod's content, you must disable your border regions. The best and most compatible way to do so is to open your Oblivion.ini file, usually found in My DocumentsMy GamesOblivion, find the line in there called bBorderRegionsEnabled and change the value following it from a 1 to a 0. You may have already had to do this for another mod. It is strongly NOT recommended to use so-called border disabling ESP mods because they cause compatibility problems. Wrye Bash also has an ini tweaks menu which handles changing the correct value.

Molapi

Molapi is a small village built on the island just north of the city of Leyawiin. There you will find a small group of Argonians and Khajiit who are making the best of poor living conditions and oppression from the nearby city. Tensions are high, and there is an uneasy peace which is not being helped by the city watchman assigned to patrol the area.

The name Molapi was actually plucked from an unofficial map of the area that had been created by a community member, which listed the Niben River as the River Molapi - supposedly deriving from old Elsweyr maps. As seen here.

There is a quest included, which will only trigger some time after you've spoken to the village residents. Just visit once in awhile and it will start, unless the local city watch guard has been killed before the timer runs out. Be careful with your decisions during the quest - it has multiple outcomes and not all of them may be considered favorable to you.

Frostcrag Village

High in the Jerall Mountains lies the impressive Frostcrag Spire. A magical wonder which you have apparently inherited from a long lost relative. As you arrive to claim your inheritance, you soon discover that there is a small village at the foot of the Spire which your unknown benefactor has failed to mention at all.

Frostcrag Village is a small Nordic settlement that sits in the shadow of Frostcrag Spire and serves as the homes for those who became the Spire's caretakers. It is a fairly simple place, with a tavern and homes for the residents to live in. Yet despite its simplicity, there are things to do here, so talk to the folks. Especially the tavern keeper, who as usual has loose lips about any and all who live there.

Requires the official Frostcrag Spire DLC.
Requires OBSE 0019b or higher.
Has built-in support for Oblivion XP.

Reedstand

Argonians in the swamp. Who would have thought?

Reedstand is a small Argonian settlement in Blackwood just to the north of Reedstand Cave. It isn't much, but the locals have been here for what seems like an eternity, and have come to like their isolated little portion of the swamp. There is, however, trouble brewing. An eccentric wizard has caused corruption of the local plant life and landscape. The people have tolerated this so far, but they are growing impatient.

This is yet another village mod stuffed into a small gap that doesn't appear to have been used yet. For those who say Cyrodiil is too overcrowded, be more creative, or I'll end up filling in all the spaces

Urasek

A mining support town situated alongside Fort Urasek.

Ever wonder where all the mithril for all those pieces of mithril armor come from? Unless we're to believe it appears by magic, someone has to spend the time digging holes in the ground to bring it up to the surface and turn it in to useful ore, which is then sold to blacksmiths to make armor. The town of Urasek attempts to answer this in some small way by representing the last known operational mine in Cyrodiil where mithril ore is brought up. The town consists of an inn, blacksmith who sells ore and finished pieces, and the arrogant Altmer land baron who runs things.

I've checked lore sources and found next to nothing detailing how and where mithril ore is mined. Nothing says that Cyrodiil ever had any, nor do any sources mention exactly where the stuff comes from. So I felt this would remedy the situation without going too overboard.

Requires OBSE 0020 or higher.

Sutch Village

As many are aware, Bethesda once had plans to include the city of Sutch in the game. The E3 demos contained passing hints to its existence, the map loop in the game's intro had it marked NW of Kvatch, in the CS you can make out the land depression they prepared for it along with several cells tagged as being part of it, and it even has its own Oblivion gate.

For reasons unknown, it was cut from the game at the last minute and a ruined Fort Sutch plus the Oblivion gate is all that remains. As a result of this, several people have attempted reconstructions of the city. Plenty of projects have been abandoned, while others left their work for someone else to pick up.

This village mod is our take on restoring Sutch to the game. Based on extremely sketchy lore found in scattered places on the web, we arrived at the conclusion that the city itself has been destroyed and only a ruin is left behind. Rather than attempt to rebuild a large city over the top of a ruin, this mod takes the position that settlers have only recently come back to the area in an attempt to start over. There is a village northwest of Fort Sutch, containing a manor house along with some housing, an inn, some supporting farms, a vineyard, and an ebony mine. Yes, the only one known to still be functioning in Cyrodiil. The stuff can't only be available in Morrowind

Gottshaw Village

Sometimes it makes little sense the way there are inns scattered about in places far enough from civilization to warrant being something more. Gottshaw Village is an expansion on the Gottshaw Inn to address this problem for one such place. Now instead of just a sleepy little inn, there's a blacksmith and two homes. Gottshaw also plays host to a group of refugees from Kvatch who will decide to settle and build a home here. One of these refugees is looking for her husband. Will you help the poor dear or leave her hanging?

Install Instructions

Each village mod is BAIN friendly, and therefore they all share common installation procedure. It is highly recommended that BAIN be used to manage the installation and removal of all of my village mods as I have a common resources pool that I draw from when creating them. Utilities such as OBMM are not capable of properly managing these kinds of overlaps. For this reason, OBMM is *NOT* recommended and I will not provide support for OMOD packaging with these mods.

BAIN installation is a simple matter of putting each mod into your "Bash Installers" folder, normally found in Bethesda SoftworksOblivion Mods. Once there, just right click on each and select install. BAIN will manage the rest and keep track of any resource conflicts.

If you prefer manual installation, you can simply unpack each archive directly into your Data folder. I've taken steps to ensure resources used with these villages are stored in a logical folder structure, for example:

DataMeshesArthmoorFeldscar would contain all of the meshes for Feldscar. Similar structure exists in the Textures folder as well.

Do be aware that doing manual installs will likely prompt for overwrite permission, you should allow this, and you need to be double careful about removing any shared files that other mods might still need.

Compatibility Information

As many are aware, I make great effort to maintain compatibility with as many mods as possible, but issues will still come up from time to time. Some can be solved by load order, others cannot. All known issues will be listed here. If you know of something that hasn't been covered, please report it with as much detail as possible.

Faregyl, Vergayun, Molapi, and Urasek must all load after New Roads & Bridges in order to maintain compatibility with that mod. As a bonus, NRB4 will also activate extra road signs for those mods which have them.

Faregyl requires a patch for compatibility with Elsweyr Anequina, which is available on Faregyl's download page.

Feldscar requires a patch for compatibility with UL:Snowdale. The patch is available here: https://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/13834

Vergayun is incompatible with the new Midland mod. Both villages occupy the same space. This will not be patched. You will need to choose one or the other.

Frostcrag Village is compatible as-is with UL:Snowdale. It is not however compatible with Frostcrag Reborn and no patch is planned to address this.

Disclaimer

These mods are not made, guaranteed, or supported by Microsoft, Zenimax, Bethesda Game Studios, or any of their affiliates.

[Arthmoor]

Eat shit size tag, you've been defeated. Oh, hey, this thing is on?

 

Followers of Faregyl will be pleased to know that the initial work for phase two, the middle portion of version 2.0, has been completed and will be entering testing shortly. I expect I'll find loads of bugs because, well, I'm just a magnet for them.

[Dwip]

I can't possibly think of anywhere you'd find help with that.Indeed, the size tag is sizable.

[Arthmoor]

Yep, size tag is sizeable. Even restricted from being something other than 1 thru 9.

 

Yes, I imagine you guys won't mind helping test, but I need to make my own first run through after setting up some convenience activators to set the end conditions for phase 1 since there's a lot of convoluted multiple pathing stuff going on.

[Conner]

Cool, what'd you do to fix the size tag? (Is it something that can be incorporated easily by the rest of us QSFP users?)Faregyl has a phase 2 in works? Am I just that tired this morning or did we not already know about this?

[Arthmoor]

Yes, it'll go into a future QSFP update. I always do that kind of work against the SVN branch. I'm also trying to coax topic and file tags out of it but PHP is having nothing to do with that.

 

Also yes, the public at large has known there's a Faregyl 2.0 in the works for some time. I just managed to finally get the second phase of that done and ready for my first test run.

[Conner]

Topic and file tags? You have my interest now.. What would topic and file tags do? (Are file tags for file attachments like emotes?) :thinking:Ok, now that I've had a bit of a nap, I do recall that you'd been working on version 2 of Faregyl, I just got thrown by the reference to it as a phase because I was overtired earlier.

[Arthmoor]

Topic tag: -> translates to: http://www.afkmods.com/index.php?a=topic&t=69File tag: [file=15] [/file] -> translates to: http://www.afkmods.com/index.php?a=files&s=viewfile&fid=15

 

Basically so you can link to a file or a topic more easily than copying the URL. Regex doesn't want to go along with the idea though so it's on hiatus.

 

Well phase 1 is basically what's already public, with some reworking done. It's outcome impacts the start of phase 2.

 

Phase 2 is what happens after that. Once phase 2 is resolved, then the aftermath is looked at and how phase 3 gets started is determined.

 

Yes, vague I know, but I'd prefer to keep the spoilers out of the public eye.

[Conner]

Ah, gotcha, well, you'd think that'd be fairly easy to do. Gammon did something just like it on his forums not too long ago. :thinking:Ok, that really was fairly vague, but I can appreciate what you're not saying mostly well enough.

[Arthmoor]

So. During work on Faregyl 2.0 I gave Sjirra a house. She's the one who does the potato quest. I realized that for whatever reason, I removed Alix Lencolia from the village faction. I cited the fact that he's a "long time visitor" for that, but there's no indication in any of his dialogue that he actually lives somewhere else. So does he deserve to get a house too? And an AI schedule that consists of more than just standing around the inn? I'm thinking he does.

 

If you have no idea who he is, he's the master blade skill trainer. So his yard would obviously need to reflect that by having a practice dummy there.

[Dwip]

I think the relevant question here is "Why wouldn't you do something cool like this?"

[Arthmoor]

I suppose aside from the usual concerns about editing vanillas, there's no reason not to do it.

[Hana]

+1 yes for Alix.

 

All my chars are fighters and he's important to that. He deserves his own little house and has earned something more to do than stand around the inn all day and night.

 

Of course, there will be the inevitable threads on BGS "Where the hell is the master blade trainer dude?"

[Conner]

I would have to agree, it sounds too obvious to ignore to me too. I say go for it.

[prettyfly]

How much bigger is Faregyl growing then?

[Arthmoor]

Not much beyond what it is now. Two additional houses next to the inn. A few extra Ayleid ruin bits on the other side. The entire second stage of the MQ for the village which is more or less done and tested as much as I can at this point without wanting to gouge my own eyes out.

 

So yeah, it's getting there. Which means I'll need to get the 3rd stage actually written and done now. But that shouldn't be overly difficult and shouldn't need more than a quick bit of testing once written in.

[Conner]

Doesn't sound like all that much expansion to me, though extra Ayleid ruins sound fun.

[prettyfly]

Well, I suppose Oblivion villages can only grow so big before they become cities (given the scale of the game). In fact, this will probably make Faregyl the biggest village in the game.

[Arthmoor]

Well, you can be the judge now

 

http://img840.imageshack.us/img840/962/screenshot817.jpg

 

The two circled in red are new, the new Ayleid bits should be obvious, and the rest of it has been there the whole time. I suppose as classifications go, it's no longer a village. It's grown into a town. Not quite city yet though. It would need to grow a bit more for that, which it's not going to be doing once I get this 3rd phase done.

[prettyfly]

Ah, I see, so it becomes the smallest town rather than largest village :wink:

[Hana]

Looking good Can't wait for new quests!

[Arthmoor]

Maybe if you checked your email more often?

[Hana]

Oh, damn .... rofl

[Conner]

I'll second Hana in saying that it's looking pretty good so far. :)As for size, I don't think those two extra buildings are really adding to the size of the village, certainly not in total area.

[Hana]

It actually does make a difference. Plus there's more than that in the general area.I won't divulge all the secrets though.