Dark Brotherhood Chronicles: Consequences

http://www.theassimilationlab.com/forums/uploads/gallery/category_8/gallery_1_8_314278.png


Introduction

Once upon a time, our name was whispered in the dark corners of the deepest caves and feared in the highest towers. Once upon a time, we bore the blood of emperors on our hands. Once upon a time, we were mystery, and secret, and the greatest in the Empire would gather our rituals to be allowed to grovel at our feet. Once upon a time, we scorned Mephala Herself, stole Her treasures, and found a master far beyond what She ever was.

But now...

Whether you've decided to restore the Dark Brotherhood or bring about its sundering, your work has only just begun. You have made your choices. Now it is time to face the Consequences.

Consequences is the second instalment in the Dark Brotherhood Chronicles. It will feature two complete quest lines, along with a series of side quests for each side.

Description

The Dark Brotherhood Chronicles is a large quest mod that continues and expands the story of the Dark Brotherhood in Oblivion. The project was started in late 2006 or early 2007 - we're not really sure. With some early background and advice from Emil, the Bethesda employee who conceived and developed the Dark Brotherhood, the original team started writing a story that was meant to span three separate chapters, which they didn't name. Amadaun joined the team and after a couple of team changes and rewrites, we settled on the story that was released as Awakening, the first chapter. We had a rough outline for the second and third chapters, but nothing concrete.

We wanted to release Awakening before Bethesda released their fifth game, Skyrim, but we failed to meet that deadline, instead releasing Awakening in late November 2011. It was well received and we earned the Nexus File of the Month award for December 2011. However Awakening has one major flaw which has frustrated many a player ever since: it ends in a cliffhanger.

One person who complained about Awakening's story was a forum member named Cray. He took the time to join the community site that now hosts the Dark Brotherhood Chronicles and wrote a two-page long critique. I was impressed with what I read, despite its length, so I challenged him to put his words into action and help us with Consequences. He took up the challenge and now he, Amadaun and I have teamed up to flesh out the story for Consequences. We are also planning the story for the third chapter, which we hope to develop for Skyrim. It will be called Transgressions.

Cray and Amadaun are both lore nerds and excellent writers, so our aim is to provide a rich story that does justice to both sides. If you don't know what I mean by "sides", then you will need to play through Awakening. Consequences will bring both sides together in one dramatic ending. This time the story will end... until Skyrim 200 years later.

Progress

The plot is settled, the NPCs are almost wholly written up, it's just time to write quests, think of rewards and get to work on the mechanical side. We are still tossing around ideas for side quests as well.

Plot:
[███████████████████████████████████████████████??? 95%]
Quest Writing:
[?????????????????????????????????????????????????? 0%]
NPC Conceptualization:
[█████████████████████████████████████████████????? 90%]
NPC Implementation:
[█████????????????????????????????????????????????? 10%]
Landscaping:
[?????????????????????????????????????????????????? 0%]
Modelling:
[?????????????????????????????????????????????????? 0%]
Dungeons - Level Design:
[?????????????????????????????????????????????????? 0%]
Dungeons - Cluttering:
[███████████████??????????????????????????????????? 30%]
Buildings - Level Design:
[?????????????????????????????????????????????????? 0%]
Buildings - Cluttering:
[?????????????????????????????????????????????????? 0%]
Quest Coding:
[?????????????????????????????????????????????????? 0%]
Testing:
[?????????????????????????????????????????????????? 0%]

We may not need any new landscaping, dungeons or buildings. We have plans to repurpose some buildings from Awakening. Dungeon cluttering includes the clean-up of existing locations and quite a bit of that has been done already. We'll have a better idea of what we need once we start writing the quests.

The Dark Brotherhood Chronicles is hosted on http://www.theassimilationlab.com/forums/forum/8-dark-brotherhood-chronicles/. You can follow our progress and check out our http://www.theassimilationlab.com/forums/gallery/category/2-concept-art/ and http://www.theassimilationlab.com/forums/gallery/category/8-dark-brotherhood-chronicles/.

Current Team
Amadaun - Team Lead, Writing, Modelling, Texturing, Level Design
AndalayBay - Team Lead, Scripting, Quest Building, Level Design, Sound Engineering, Site Administration
Cray - Team Lead, Writing, Lore Advisor, Critic
Vincent - Level Design, Modelling
'Drea - Writing, Quest ideas, Critiquing
Sunseahl - Writing, Critiquing

Credits
I must repeat the credits from Awakening since we are building off that body of work:

• Bethesda for creating Oblivion
• shadeMe for the CSE and Conscribe
• scruggsywuggsy the ferret for OBSE
• mr_siika for the Sanctum meshes
• Helborne for the Chitin armour and weapons
• Xiamara for the chair and sofa meshes
• Gildur and Demonmaster for the Anima Cyrodiili tileset
• Meo for the ceremonial dagger mesh
• Ren for the blindfold mesh
• Phoenix Amon for some of the book covers
• Emillia for various meshes and textures
• InsanitySorrow for various meshes and textures
• Qarl for his spider web meshes and textures
• TheTalkieToaster for the Spider Draedra NPC
• elveon, Malo, mikal33 and AlienSlof for the spider resources
• LHammonds, Sita and Jerros for the Paladin armour
• Klaus for his UI topic fixes
• fg109 (RandomNoob) for his help with scripting and quest building
• Unofficial TESA Clutterer's Guild for various meshes
• PrettyMurky - XML, Scripting
• Rahvin - Writing
• theinfamouskat (thechickwhopwn3dyou) - Writing
• Thomas Kaira - Interiors
• Ysne58 - beta testing
• Xae (Xaeaix) - soundtrack, sound engineering
• Elec0 - Modelling, Beta Testing
• Koniption - Modelling, Texturing
• Lareneg - Writing, Beta Testing
• omeletted - Texturing, Beta Testing
• Silver - Modelling
• Siulil - Beta Testing
• 'Drea - Writing, Beta Testing, Voice Acting for Awakening
• Morrigain - Writing
• saebel - Critique and assistance in rewriting a couple of quests, Voice Acting for Awakening
• Ibsen's Ghost - Voice Acting for Awakening
• Mick Mize - Voice Acting for Awakening