I've been thinking about getting back into modding now that Skyrim is out, and one of the things I'd like to do is a long interesting quest where you end up defeating some villain threatening Tamriel with something nefarious. I have some ideas, but a lot of them are garden variety RPG evil plot variety. Stuff like necromancers rising armies of the undead, or a plague ala Thrassian, you know boring stuff (subjective). What I'd like to know is what would you, the lore forum find intriguing, what would give you guys a loregasm? Something involving a tower, attempted ascent to godhood? I'm plenty capable of hammering out the major details myself, I'm just trying to find out what makes you guys tick.

Tower? Attempted ascent to godhood? Like Morrowind's main quest?

Yeah, I mean that was my favorite quest so far.

Why make it villainous? I find gray vs. gray morality far more enjoyable.

Have the player accidentally get his/her hands on some shiny mcguffin and have five or six different factions all fighting over the thing, with the player being final arbiter of who gets the prize. (Basically, just read the next-to-last questline of Daggerfall.) If you want it to be something that gets the lore buffs excited, make it a dwemer mcguffin, since dwemer stuff is always just obscure enough to make for endless speculation.

I admit I like the grey vs. grey as well, and I do plan on multiple outcomes. But I do think I will put a 'more right' option in as well, even if it has the player guessing if it really was the correct thing to do.
I wouldn't focus on the villainy aspect of this too much though.

I've definitely been considering something dwemer related, but at the same time I can see dozens of dwemer quests popping up when the CK comes out. I've been leaning towards something a little more alien.

Kagrenac's ring, with the power to bring back and control the Numidium! Then, the player has to organize a group of people who are to travel to Red Mountain and throw the ring back into whence it came! I made it up just now, so this story is guaranteed to be fresh and unique.



Oh... wait :sadvaultboy:

You can just use the already-existing factions and people's pre-existing leanings to muddy the waters.

Look at how the Imperials vs. Stormcloaks debate goes - before the game was released, players favored Stormcloaks 2-to-1, but now, a recent thread I was in actually favored Imperials 2-to-1. The more argument happens revealing how involved the Thalmor are in starting the Stormcloak rebellion, the more people generally side with the Imperials, but at the same time, people had a natural inclination to go for the underdogs and the rebels, just by default.

If you want to really shake things up, make some group that is normally hated (oh, say, Reachmen) into the ones that bring about the best outcome, while the groups that the players would naturally have the most affinity for (like, say, a survivor of House Telvanni) would have the most disasterous consequences for the broadest number of people.

It only took one optional quest to turn the fanbase against the Blades, though...

Anyway, if you don't want to go dwemer, go for some esoteric metaphysics on how the towers work. Make something having to do with how The Throat of the World works as a regulator of the laws of physics of Nirn, for example.

I say make a quest that has to do with putting the Forsworn back in-charge of Markarth

Yes I had noticed that. I immediately began to regret siding with the Stormcloacks when I read that dossier. Ulfric is as good as dead once he's non essential.


Probably won't go that exact route with it, but I do really like the idea of the Forsworn. They creep me out, and the Reach is my favorite area in Skyrim. Is there any information on them out there, all I've seen is that report on the Hagravens on TIL.

Everything related to Red Eagle is about Reachmen: http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:The_Legend_of_Red_Eagle

There's also another lorebook I remember reading where a scholar tried to ask for the Reachmen's perspective on the conflict between Nords and Reachmen, but I can't remember the name properly enough to link to it.

Snow Wales.

Terrible foes, impossible to slay, they fly through the sky, and kill with joy-snow. You laugh and laugh and die and laugh after inhaling joy-snow.

Just like the Snow Wales want.

Someone is trying to resurrect a snow wale. He must be stopped.

I'm writing a short web series/machinima at the moment for Skyrim, where the big bad is using the Staff of Chaos to unbind the Earthbones from Nirn, to sort of un-make reality.

With bad guys, you gotta think big. Don't just kill He-Man, nuke Castle Greyskull and napalm the survivors.

What would make me loregasm is the Falmer.

They can be an unambiguously antagonistic force without being "bwahaha evul", which satisfies our love of gray shades of morality.

Anyways, my idea: The quest will explore their primitive society and motivations, taking them beyond mere "hurr durr we haet surface peeples". The threat they present can be some massive underground beastie, or something ancient and mystic.
Or both.

A good idea - The Fall of the Snow Prince paints them as tragic figures.

You could do a story about how their degeneration into blind hunchbacks was inflicted upon them by the nords. Make them out to be a noble people who had to suffer a loss of humanity (meranity?) as the only alternative to extinction, and have plenty of lorebooks and journals of some sort of genetic line of survivors gradually losing their ability to think as a sentient being so that they become tragic victims, rather than mere targets of extermination once more.

Read this really short book from Skyrim: http://www.imperial-library.info/content/skyrim-falmer-study

It fearfully predicts that the Falmer are marshaling their forces to retake Skyrim, and possibly undergo a transformation of sorts. Is that the sort of thing you were looking for?

something that has to do with nvde chicks.

No wait, GIANTS.

No wait GIANT nvde CHICKS

First, eliminate almost all dialogue in favor of Morrowind-esque boxes so you can do something complicate.
Next, make the civil war a four-way struggle between Solitude, Markarth, Riften, and Windhelm, with several rebellious factions within each hold.
Then, have there be a final big four-way battle at some point, probably in Whiterun, which is a Dagorlad if I ever seen one. The big bad dude plans to throw a spear over the whole shibang to absorb their souls in a huge soul gem to use as a mantella to reconstruct Numidium from echos left after the siege of Alinor distilled from vivisected Thalmor agents.

Stolen from American Gods, but whatev.

A powerful necromancer/ ancient mage a la Mannimarco, who by his deeds and machinations is well on the walking way.
He is attempting to usurp an Aedric or Daedric spirit with dire consequences unkown. (Of course the player would have to stop him.)

Id say one of the powerful ones no-one ever gives much thought, like Stendarr or perhaps Ebonheart.

I have no idea what actions/ quests this divine path would translate to, only of course that the hero saves the day in the nick of time, possibly a little too late.

My ideal one would be the destruction of all the towers by some dudes to destroy Nirn and reascend to godhood. The entirety of the game is dedicated to protecting the final tower left.