So you hear rumors of a small cursed town to the south, strange deaths, violence, claims of daedric possession, all sorts of bad things. You go to investigate it and at first things seem rather normal except the rumors of what is going on. You're sent on separate quests. One to interrogate a murderer, one to assist a mage to investigate a case of possession, and one to talk to the family of the recently deceased woman. All of them seem to lead to a dead end, once you complete the last of the three however more people are dying by the handfuls so they bar the town gates and you have to stay, they suspect a murderer may be in the town.

You explore the town, talking to people trying to get a grasp of what's going on. The main suspect is a Khajiit that arrived in town 3 months before this all started happening. They have him trapped inside his house. You go to question him and with enough speechcraft you can get him to confess the truth or you can accuse him of being a murderer and fight him. Either way you learn through him or a note he has on him that he is a smuggler that deals in Skooma ingedients namely refined moonsugar. Apparently the town guard, small as it may be was onto him, one of the guardsmen was really applying pressure to him. He hid the refined moon sugar in a dug out cave under the house he rented.

The guardsmen was the first to be murdered so he was waiting for a chance to reclaim his goods and leave. You enter the trap door in his shack and proceed down a short path only to find a few chests packed full of refined moonsugar, now under a few feet of water. You claim the refined moonsugar and with the letter of confession in hand you leave the house headed toward the guard. When you leave the small shack though the town is in chaos, people killing one another, buildings on fire, people seizing on the ground. You're forced to kill a few crazed citizens on the way to the guard tower.

You soon put two and two together and warn the guard that the refined moonsugar has contaminated the water in the well and the whole town is overdosing causing mass hallucination and paranoia. By the time the drugged villagers are detained and the well closed over half of the village has been killed or died and another fourth are recovering from the effects.

Sometimes not everything in a fantasy game has to be attributed to the magical. Sometimes it's error of the denizens of the world and have perfectly reasonable explanations.




I thought it was an interesting idea for not every quest to revolve so much in the fantasy realm. Thoughts and ideas on this?

I'd like it.

couldn't it be more of a Draugr town? First when you arrive you search for people, then when you find an artifact in the castle Draugr's are suddenly all around you. But when i now read yours more carefully i noticed the paranioa and hallucination's. yours got even better.
Either way it was a good idea Daemaro.

Good idea

Well that was sort of the point, no magic artifacts, no undead explanation. It's purely the work of the error of a mortal race.

If you got high alchemy skill, you should be able to tell that the townsfolk were stoners, without asking the kahjiit.
You would still need to find out what was causing it, in the end leading you to the well (which you should be able to drink from.)

Awsome! I like that it seems to magical in origin then it turns out not to be.

P.S

Do you get to keep the MoonSugar you collected in the cave? :celebration:

You can tell the guards you destroyed it, or you can hand it over.

sounds like an episode of supernatural meets skyrim. not saying thats a bad thing

Never thought of that, though I have seen the series.

Well, I like the idea!! It could be great with a quest like that!!

No because now I'd know what would happen. :vaultboy:

Any quest involving moon sugars return in Skyrim would be appreciated.

very cool
the whole time i thought about this i was thinking about how weird [censored] went on whenever an ash statue was sitting around somewhere

Dammit, now I know how it's going to end. Though I would like this type of quest and is quite interesting.

AWESOME kind of quest.

For this sort of quest there should be multiple endings:

Bad Options:

1. Take the guards key and leave town to kill each other. :starwars: (Bad Option)
2. Help the Khajiit smuggle the Skooma out of town as long you get half of the profits. (Bad Option)
3. Tell the guard it was someone else who was the murderer and have them killed without mentioning the Skooma. (Bad Option)
4. Tell the guard someone planted Skooma in the trap door in the Khajiit's house and have them arrested. (Bad Option)
5. Tell the Khajiit you'll help him by luring the guard to his house and killing him. :whoops: (Bad Option)

Good Options:

1. Kill the Khajiit and warn the town guard of Skooma in the well. (Good Option)
2. Tell the guard of the Skooma in the well and save the city, however the Khajiit gets away. (Good Option)
3. Manage to get half the town out of the village with the crazed villagers still in town. (Good Option)

Neutral Options:

1. Tell the guard to cut off the well, but let the Khajiit escape. (Neutral Option)
2. Kill everyone in the village stopping the Skooma business. (Neutral Option)

What do you mean, bad, good and neutral. There is no karma in TES. These are all just possible choices.

Fame/Infamy, but yeah there were bad/good/neutral options in TES games as everything you do is choices as you said and some happen to fall under those categories. Those options were probably just categorized that way for those who prefer to stick with one of those categories.

Heh, I like it.

Some more choices isn't a bad idea, I like some of them. Good job.

I really do like the idea in that sometimes the explanation for something happening is mundane while maintaining the tension and all that. It doesn't need to be magic or anything fancy.

''Enough speechcraft or fight'' ''Cant leave town'' That fights almost all TES laws i can think of!

Well if there was a murderer running around and people dying left and right, you think they're gonna let YOU a recent prisoner who just showed up in town leave? They want to contain the situation.

This is also partly because I want people to find out what's going on and not just leave town willy nilly. As far as enough speechcraft or fight, that's basically how everything was in Oblivion. I could talk the item out of them, or I could kill them and take it.

I like it, but I dont understand why the town breaks out JUST then. In the time of less than 10-15 minutes. Its not like everyone is going to go drink a gallon of contaminated water in that time period.