I am by no means a great modder as I'm brand new to Oblivion, but this is my first house mod and I just wanted to get some feedback to get me started.

Tresserhorn is for those Mages out there who prefer the dark arts over those the Mages' Guild practices. It's a large tower, located in a separate worldspace that's attached to the rest of the world via the Ancient Gateway in the northern mountains. When the player arrives there, any pursuers will be attacked by the undead which inhabit the frozen valley. All undead within this worldspace are friendly to the player and respawn if killed. After passing through the valley, you will arrive at the tower itself, next to a frozen lake.

Here are a few of the ideas I've gotten for this mod:
Recruitable undead; the lake is full of zombies, the catacombs beneath the tower contain liches, and skeleton archers guard the crypt to the east.
Necros Altar: sacrificing bones to this altar will reward the player (though I'm not yet sure what with)
Tome of Death: Teaches the player to summon a wall of bones around a target and possibly other spells
A Cattle Pen for Vampires

Please leave your thoughts. All comments welcome.

Personally, I would say a ruin-style tower or a crypt, as long as it has at least one well-maintained room for the Necromancer to live in. I've never really understood why being evil must give a person an aversion to comfort. :shrug:

Never having been able to role play an "evil" character, I don't know if something like this already exists in-game, but I would say that your altar should act similarly to a chapel altar. It would be nice for players with a high infamy to have their attributes restored without having to go on the KotN pilgrimage.

The crypt IS in pretty good shape, and I wanted to make some furnished rooms to live in. I know what you mean, I'm sick of living in an Ayelid ruin full of traps.




Yeah, it's pretty frustrating trying to get my stats restored as an evil character. I don't think anything like that DOES exist in-game outside DLC, so it sounds like a good idea to me.

I forgot to mention earlier: Tresserhorn is the name of a tower from the Magic: The Gathering series, that served as sort of a base of operations for a necromancer named Lim-Dul.

My logic tells me that Necromancers have nothing to do with Mehrunes Dagon and his Oblivion plane, so it's down to Tower Ruins or Crypts. Of the two, the tower gives you the possibility of above-ground as well as underground living and working space, such as a "Shade of the Revenant" altar within your area of control, so I'd go that way. There's no restriction on putting a crypt under the tower and combining both, of course.
http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=31282 don't have to be completely in ruins, either.

You know, I voted 'Crypt.' But now that I think about it, having some kind of desecrated chapel filled with blood, bones, and flesh (Like http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Cadlew_Chapel would be really cool. And the altar in the chapel could be corrupted somehow, and work like a normal altar, except for necromancers. Of course, this might limit space because there's usually only 3 cells in most chapels, so you could somehow integrate the main room of a chapel.

I'll second that...

I know, I know, necromancers had nothing to do with Oblivion itself. I just thought the Daedric towers looked cool. Interiors...not so much. As for there being a crypt under the tower, I'm thinking about doing that right now...there is an entrance in the side of the lake (it's dried-out) and one in the base of the tower.

I'm posting in here as I work on the mod, but here's my idea:

Immediately upon entering the Frozen Valley, you can turn to your left to see a chapel. I could make it desecrated, like Halperin said, and it's a sort of emergency interior for vampires. After going through the valley (which is filled with various, friendly undead that respawn) you will come across the tower itself, which uses the ruins architecture but is pristine save for its missing roof. At the top is a room that contains a bed, chair, lecturn, barrels for food/drink and maybe a few other things. The bottom of the tower has an entrance to the Crypt, which can also be accessed by the door in the lake of zombies. The crypt is really well-furnished and serves as the rest of the house, the bedroom being in the tower (though the crypt does have a bedroll for vampire players). It branches off into some hallways full of skeleton archers that can be recruited by the player, then leads to the Catacombs (or maybe dungeon), where the Tome of Death, cattle pen, and liches are located. If there's anything specific you'd like to see, tell me.

Perhaps a secret passage from the chapel to the main tower? That way the owner could duck into the chapel and sneak over to the tower to activate the defenses, or just to get out of the sun. Next, perhaps another secret passage (I love secret passages) leading out of the valley or to a remote corner of the valley for escape purposes? Finally, and this is just out of curiosity (for now), why a frozen valley? If it's in a separate worldspace, then I can understand the area around the portal being frozen, due to the location, but I would picture a valley long inhabited by Necromancers to be dark and grim, without much foliage except some dead trees and bushes (I'm picturing the Scourge ground from Warcraft 3 as I write this).

Secret passages seem like a good idea. As for the frozen valley, it's not actually a portal the player uses but a large gate (literally, a gate) north in the Jerall mountains. I see your point, though. Another thing about this is that, since the entire mod is based on the MTG series, a frozen setting is all that would work since Tresserhorn was taken over by Lim-Dul during an ice age and was destroyed before the ice age was over.

I see. Thanks for the explanation! I'll be lurking around here throwing in my opinions every now and then. :ninja:

Yeah, I didn't really elaborate on that too much.

Thanks to everyone for the feedback, it's been a lot of help in getting started. Now, I should get to work!

EDIT: I just thought of something that could be incorporated in this mod...spellmaking and enchanting altars! Or were they lecturns? I'm not sure how to balance them so they have to be earned...any ideas? And, on a similar note, any thoughts on how to limit the amount of undead the player can bring out of the valley? One zombie with a skeleton archer and lich don't quite seem like an army to me.

That would really depend on what mods are being used. In Vanilla, that would be a nice army, but with mods like OOO or FCOM, no way would that make too much of a difference.

What is this Vanilla I keep hearing about? It's all over the place but I still have no clue what it is.

Anyways, bit of an update...the valley is larger than I expected, and the lake smaller, so I've decided to up the count on zombies in the valley,so for recruitment just head out there...the Crypt and Catacomb have been merged to form the Dungeon, but it will still contain the respective objects of each. I've also moved the bedroom from the tower to the Dungeon since the fort ruins architecture doesn't allow for solid floors, and I'm the kind of person who would feel so safe I forget not to fall to my death upon waking up...

Vanilla means an unmodded and plain game.

That explains a LOT. Thanks. Still doesn't seem like too much of an army in Vanilla Oblivion, but maybe that's just because I'm so accustomed to Morrowind. Ah, the good old days of Hungers stampeding through Balmora...

Crypt works for me: the dirtier the better.

Well, small problem now...is there a scripting command that makes an NPC/creature evaluate an AI package?