I'm for it. That just leaves out SkyShadowing. I linked this topic on his thread, but he hasn't responded to that. I can shoot him a PM in a bit. Since posting my college of winterhold ideas, I had a breakthrough on an idea that I was formulating. I'm gonna shoot you, masoni88, a pm regarding that since it's very spoiler-y and I just want to know if you have plans for this little detail with one of your quests. So, everyone, nothing to see here, go ahead and move along. Oh, but keep posting and keep voting. kthxbai.

Yes, yes to all. This is what I was hoping for to begin with. I especially would like to see a better College questline, it is so abrupt and uninspired.

It would also be cool to be able to join the Psijic's when you meet them in the College quests, and maybe have a split to side with them and eventually join them, or to go with the college, and perhaps keep the Eye and harness it to rebuild the College and all of Winterhold.

I think I posted in your previous thread, StarDebris. I'll probably be expanding the Companions faction at some point, as part of my follower mod. It may take some time before I get that far, though. (And as a new modder, I don't expect anyone to take me seriously until I do.) In terms of inter-mod compatibility, the things to note in my plans are that I'll be adding skill requirements, so being invited to join the Circle would require being above 60 or so in at least one weapon skill; I'd like to give the PC the option to decline being Harbinger, so that title shouldn't be assumed just because the quests are completed; if the PC accumulates a large enough bounty the other members of the Circle may kick the PC out of the faction; and I'd like to give the PC the chance to recruit some likely NPC warriors into the Companions after the end of the vanilla questline, to shore up their depleted ranks. This could involve existing NPCs like Erik, Mjoll (which could involve some Companions-Thieves Guild conflicts), etc. But we'll see when I get there.



Edit: oh, and as part of my follower mod, I'm hoping to give the PC a few additional chances to change sides in the Civil War quest. I need to see the quests in the CK before I know how viable that is, though. Could be a source of conflicts, if other people modify the war questline.



BTW, one faction you left out in your OP are the Bards and their College. I'd love to see more done with them. Cheers.

Yes, I remember you posting in that thread. That was, technically, my thread, this is me with a different username, etc etc, in case there was any confusion.

Presently, I think you're the only modder on these forums with plans to touch up the companions. As I said before, that should be great, and your ideas hold a lot of promise. One in particular, Mjoll...I feel like she deserves to play a role in Skyrim's affairs, and I think that would be a great start for her. I've been thinking a lot about the fate of the Thieves Guild (as well as every other faction, of course), and I've decided that I, and other players, really value that characters that Bethesda created to fill up the flaggon. They have a lot of potential, but they're currently confined to a very bad guy quest, being controlled by my least favorite NPC (Maven ).

I'll include a link to any thread that you make that is specifically a for a quest mod. In the meantime, feel free to contribute anything you'd like to this thread, and also feel free to PM me if you have private spoilery information that you'd like to make me aware of, for collaboration's sake.

Yes, I too would love to see the bards' college fleshed out. Possibly even add the ability for the PC to play music/sing at inns for coin.

So the coolest idea is to allow player to destroy each fraction instead of joining it, e.g. like Dark brotherhood.

There's always a person that want another dead - I understand that Silver Hand vs Companions leaves us with choice of joining one and that's cool too. However joining Thalmar wouldn't mean the same as opposing Collage of Winerhold, so I would rather see people of Winterhold holding a grudge against it, and asking you to take care of it. Of course like in DB case any privilages and profits of joining a fraction that you destroy should be unobtainable. On the other hand if you join Silver Hand over the Companions you should get similar benefits - not lycanthropy of course, but new followers, custom armor and radial quests.

The College of Winterhold itself is an institution, and a respected one at that (though it is not entirely respected locally). You can shut down the Dark Brotherhood with violence because it's an illegal organization. By destroying an established organization with violence, you would closely align yourself with evil and with law-breaking. I think the best options for beating up the College of Winterhold are either creating a better organization, one that would have a characteristic that the mages in Winterhold despise, or destroying them politically, something that the Thalmor could do.

The Thalmor's principle concerns are taking over the world and killing all of the human races. The College of Winterhold has supported Talos worship in the past (according to a bizarre thread on the lore forum that I haven't finished reading all 200 posts of), and it supports humans by not segregating them. The Thalmor could eliminate the problem of the college by controlling it, which they tried to do in a very moronic way. I feel like political manipulation is the best call here. The Thalmor can take a number of problem groups, such as Witches and Necromancers, and convince them to attack the college. They can spread propaganda showing that the evil magicians are only active because of the college, thereby reasoning that the college needs to be managed in such a way that it either does not provoke such attacks, or it can champion a movement to stomp out the questionable magical practices. The other method would be to attract the attention of "good" organizations, like the Vigilants of Stendarr, and ignite a fire between the two groups on issues of daedra conjuring and necromancy. The Thalmor could then offer to settle the dispute in exchange for greater control over the college, then probably just assassinate Savos Aren and put a puppet in his place while naming a Thalmor wizard the Master Wizard of the college.

I guess a final option would be to create fake evidence pinning the destruction of Winterhold to the college...I didn't even think of the fact that that would be the most obvious play. Without a fair trial, neither the empire nor Ulfric's regime would be quick to shut the college down, though the people of Winterhold would be giddy to have a reason to attack the college. The result could very well be the slaughter of the people of Winterhold (because it's not like they'd beat the mages), leading to a harsher inquiry against the college. Not sure what happens from there. This is definitely something to think about. The college and the Companions seem to have the richest histories of any of the factions in Skyrim, though the Companions lost their moral high ground when they became werewolves. As such, I feel that taking down the college would be the most complex task for a character to undertake, potentially resulting in a joint effort by a number of factions, led by one that would definitely be joinable by the player.

If I'm remembering right didn't the Mage for Windhelm say the college hasn't allowed Necromancy for some number of years? I think this is an optional conversation you can have with him during the Blood on the Ice quest.



So if someone was a powerful Necromancer they might want to take over the college. It could be an option for those who want to play an evil character. Maybe even bring back Mannimarco in some form since he hated the Mage's Guild. Even if the College of Winterhold isn't the mage's guild it's as close as Skyrim gets. It could still involve the Thalmor too.



Edit: This idea could also be applied to someone who wants to save the college not just destroy it.

Some might say that College lost their hight ground when they allowed necromancy - I know that in Skyrim the only spells that touches this subject is rise undead spells, but it used to be a big thing in Oblivion.

There are two option to go with College - taking it over for Thalmar (since they already have their agent in there) or destroying it in the name of people of Winterhold - it doesn't have to be a good act. While the simple destruction gives an opportunity for animating a huge castle falling down the cliff into ruin it, the other option allows us to create a chain of events in which Thalmar is the one discovering the Eye - in this scenario you working for the agent would obtain all artifacts and defeat him again but in this scenario as an agent of Thalmar and Arch Mage of Mages Guild in Skyrim. If most of mages of Collage get killed in this story line then new members could be sent by Thalmar and even a quest to recruit new members could show up.

Quest in Eastmarch: The White Phial

Just curious - anyone doing Khajiit caravans or Orc strongholds? While I suppose the Khajiit aren't really a faction (joinable, questline, etc), the Orcs certainly are joinable, and are just begging for a questline.

I plan on doing both Khajiits and Orcs. One mod I plan to make will have a specific faction for each race, and the Orcish strongholds will be the one for the Orcs. The Khajiits, however, I plan to add a few more, and they may tie in to my skooma mod.

The Thieves' Guild in Skyrim is fairly crap. In Oblivion, it's all about thieving, culminating in the greatest heist of the era (stealing an Elder Scroll). In Skyrim, it's a fairly badly-written tale of betrayal, with thuggery here and there, and rather minor theft side missions. The occasions where you have a Thieves' Guild member tagging along with you, they seem to have no concept whatsoever of stealth. I mean damn, they put my dual-axe wielding Nord character to shame with their charging headlong into combat with no regard for safety or stealth.

Here's an idea for overhauling the recruitment stage, hows about rather than Brynjolf slagging off any player's finances whether or nor the player actually earned their money legitimately, a low-level fence outside the Guild recommends talking to the bloke after you've made a bit of a name for yourself in the community of criminals. Perhaps another way would be if the player is caught and goes to jail or pays a hefty fine for thieving.

It's a nice idea for Thieves Guild be interested only in thieves. I for once as an Archmage felt offended by the fact that a guard wanted to get a ransom out of me - I am an Archmage and I am intelligent enough to know better so I resolved this quickly, and then I am asked to perform a robbery because of it? If possible I wanted to clean Riften off the thieving scum and make it a nicer place to live - this is the reason why I could kill a horrible woman to be able to destroy the dark brotherhood. How is it fair that I have "joining the thief guild" quest twice just by walking around.
There should be some requirements to join a guild. To join the collage you need to be interested in magic, to join companions you need to believe in fixing your problems with your muscle, to joing dark brotherhood you need to be not afraid of killing, but to join a thief guild you need to be smarter than a bag of rocks.

Hello there, folks. So I'm making a lot of writing-based progress on the Stranded Light, just figured I'd mention that. In the mod, I add some options to Molag Bal's quest, in particular I add an option to betray Molag Bal and destroy the Cursed Mace (don't worry, you'll get Goldbrand, which is so much slicker than Molag's mace). The reason I bring this up, though, is that Molag Bal seems to have created vampirism.



I think I mentioned it in my spoilered ideas on my original post, but I've been contemplating how Molag Bal could tie in to a vampire faction. In Skyrim, there are the vampires of Morthal as well as the vampires in Fellglow Keep, and their researchers, both of which I find interesting. The old vampire in the Morthal quest supposedly contracted porphyric hemophilia, but is somehow now a volkihar, when he should have Cyrodiilic vampirism. As for the vampires in Fellglow Keep, it seemed that the Master Vampires were being subjected to experiments, and so I figured that the mages there were studying vampirism. I'd thought perhaps you could become a vampire, and enter a storyline that attempts to infect you with a more perfect form of vampirism. Then the Game Jam happened, and we witnessed the Vampire Lords.



Now, I just wanna say, the vamp lord looked awesome. Crazy wings, flame atronach-esque hovering, and little imps. So I wanted to put this out there, see if anyone had any ideas about and how they'd like to see vampire quests implemented. The Vigilants of Stendarr take a strong stance against these vampires, of course. In Morrowind, though, you become a vampire of a certain clan, each focusing on the three main archetypes. Is that what people are looking for, or would they prefer to see one longer questline that was more about gaining power than empowering your faction.

For the bards college they should be good at speech and have money to hire mercs

For the bards college they should be good at speech and have money to hire mercs

Darn.. I voted for Stendarr (in hopes to encourage the modder to make and actualy FINISH a quest mod) but then I just noticed this was a resurrected thread from 2012 !