I'd like it.
A handful of documents like those lying around would add to the "flavor" of the mod.
(Like I always tend to say, "It's the little details that make a good mod great." after all...)

The interesting thought here is that through reading reports, you could start missions. Some could be started like, "You notice an odd omission in this report." and its up to the player to follow up on this. In others, it could be up to the player to notice different things then follow up, in other words, you could have stuff hidden inside these reports.

This is, in fact, a very big part of what I am planning.

Not -all- missions will start this way, of course... and many of the ones that do will be 'side-quests' as opposed to full blown faction -missions-... but the idea is that I want people to go sifting through these documents and reports. I fully intend to include things in the books and letters and notes and the like... which without triggering any kind of quest at all... will hopefully inspire the player to go seek out some of the people and objects and things involved. Sometimes there will be rewards of money, or an interesting item, or what-have-you... and sometimes you'll just feel enriched for having discovered something out in the middle of nowhere.

As far as what I've been doing -at the moment-... I'm making most of the books and notes a mixture of books which have text and information, and books which are essentially serving as generic clutter.

Hopefully this will appeal to everyone.

How will the quests begin? I had a thought, idk if this was already planned, but maybe the PC can be hired after they finish the http://www.uesp.net/morrow/quest/mwqmisc.shtml#deadtaxman quest?

I've been asking myself this question since I began working on this mod.

The truth is, I haven't entirely laid out the plans for how the quests will work because at my current level of skill... I really don't even know if it's possible. My hope is that, through showing my determination to bring this mod to a state of semi-completion, I might entice someone with the requisite skill in scripting and quest-building to assist me in the finalization of these aspects.

So far, this same thought has come to me more than once. The quest to find the dead tax collector is a natural fit for the 'springboard' moment where the player is presented with the opportunity to join the Census and Excise Office.

Other options would be to make it a process similar to the other official 'guilds'... where the player may approach any one of the 'Directors' in any of the various Census and Excise offices I am building around Vvardenfell and inquire as to job opportunities.

The trouble is... there are so few 'faction' mods out there that I have seen ever come to a 'completed' phase, that I find myself without much to work with as a reference.


If any of you have some good examples of a mostly-complete faction/quest mod... please... shoot me a link either here on this thread or in a PM.

I greatly appreciate any and all support and suggestions. Keep it coming, guys! (and gals?)


--- [ EDIT ] ---


I just made a realization about this mod which I thought warranted editing this post.


As I have been designing 'Census and Excise: Dues to Pay'... I have been operating under the assumption that the player is, in fact, the prisoner stepping off the boat in Vvardenfell for release. While this may not seem like a big deal at first, it does effect the way in which certain pieces of information I have prepared for the player to find must be prepared.

In light of this, I would also like to know how many people use mods which -change- this aspect of their character?

Would it warrant me making a second 'copy' of the mod, in which certain names and pieces of information are altered in order to assure proper immersion?

Your feedback is important to me!

-Colonel Tannanbaum

--- [ END EDIT] ---

===== Evening Update: =====


So, because I want to keep this thread as active and alive with my progress as I can, I am going to make it my 'goal' to try to update the status of what I've done each day twice... once in the morning... and once in the evening. Sometimes I may even update it three times, if something particularly interesting comes up, but so far it seems like 'twice' is the ideal number to shoot for. I make no guarantees that these little updates will always have anything of -note- in them. I'll pop in and say 'Didn't do didley squat today!' if that's the case.

I just want to get in the habit of actually writing these updates!

So! Tonight, I began practicing tweaking Grumpy's companion scripts a bit... just enough that I can make my own companions with them... as an experiment. After I managed to get my pseudo-companion to actually pop up with the right dialogue topics, I ran around Seyda Neen with her for a bit and tested out some of her features. I have to say, it's rather satisfying! It makes me wish I could really 'script for realz'.

Even still. It's a good tool to have... I'll probably make some use of it in the future.


Secondly! I've begun writing some 'support text' for the mod while I let my brain play around with the idea of 'cluttering' the Basemant Office.

Now that the office is complete, clutter and population are the only things left to do with Seyda Neen... so I want to take some time and get it right.

I fully intend to get a couple screenshots up once the furniture is in, so you guys can see a before and after of the place once I add all the books, scrolls, random 'contraband', and other various oddities which are to be found in the basemant of this place.

The only trick to that... is figuring out where the heck my screenshots get saved to. T_T

=== Morning Update: October 7th, 2010 ===



Completed the first of my two Seyda Neen clerks while I was goofing around with some 'lore' books I'm writing for the purposes of this mod. Jrord the Dim is a Nord who got dropped on his head a few too many times as an infant child. I'm going to make sure he has entirely unique dialogue, for the most part, as I like to do with most NPCs I add to the game, so you can be sure that interacting with the staff here in Seyda Neen will prove to be interesting.

His counterpart, Audrielle DeMurre, is a Breton girl who just got her first job. That's about all I know about her myself, but we'll see how things progress.


The other thing I have been tempted to do... is alter the text of the 'Release Identification' slightly.

At this moment, it doesn't actually reflect Ergalla's new rank of 'Director' for the Seyda Neen office.

The idea, of course, being that each 'office' is run by a Director, with the Regional Office in Ebonheart being run by the Regional Director.

Very bureaucratic-like.



I'm still working on a list of cities/areas which I want to put a Census and Excise Office into.


Pelagiad is going to get one for Pelagiad Expanded, I know that much. Balmora will have one (technically, anyways. I may end up having the actual 'office' be at Fort whateverMoth.)... Ald Ruhn? Caldera?

There are a lot of possible sites.


I just have to weigh the possibilities against the region... and decide whether it would be believable for them to build an office there. Even in Redoran and Hlaalu run areas, there are dunmer who serve to enforce 'Imperial Law'.


Sadrith Mora might be the only Telvanni city to get one, as well.

We'll see. We'll see.

This is great! And different, which is so cool.

A little bit of surfing found some interesting things on that thar interwebs.

Apparently, in the mid-14th century taxation was re-negotiated from http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=15722 of people to a whole area (a "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vill"). The amount was "fixed by local negotiation between the representatives of vills and the royal officials" - possible quest there? The locals try and convince the Imperial official that they should pay a lower amount, after all "there was probably also a good deal of evasion and under-assessment." Or the PC "audits" a previously agreement which appears woefully low, what's going on here?

Similarly, how about going in to arrange taxation on some of those slave-operated Plantations? That could be fun, particularly if a Twin Lamps representative is trying to free the slaves at the same time.

Seems to be there'd be more tax from somewhere like Balmora or Suran than Khuul, and hence more opportunity for corruption (Imperial or Dunmer) and skulduggery (and quests!)

It seems that historically the http://history.wisc.edu/sommerville/123/123%20133%20government.htm#Coroner was the person who collected the royal taxes, the investigation of dead bodies to see if they were Norman (and so entail the murdrum tax)has pretty clear parallels with the Imperials on Vvardenfell. So as well as collecting cash the PC could be Malpen Roscius, PI! And live in a http://legoficina.blogs.sapo.pt/189192.html. Dunno about Zeus and Apollo.

A bit more on http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/YALDrent.htm and life at the time of the http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/domesday/world-of-domesday/order.htm.

Perhaps the PC would be more dealing with the lords and ladies of the land as http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/medieval_peasants.htm "had to pay rent for his land to his lord [and] had to pay a tax to the church called a tithe."

Oh, and there's always the chance of a good http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/peasants_revolt.htm to spice things up.

I had a thought about the locations for this new faction. As it seems you're having trouble finding space for them why not make that a virtue? Don't increase the size of the Seyda Neen building, instead have the faction members there all crammed in cheek by jowl; have the Ebonheart faction base be a leaking old ship in the harbour; have the other satellite members be similarly constrained. And why is this? Well (perhaps) it's that pesky East Empire Company working against the upstanding collectors of the Emperor's coin. They're the ones who engineered things so our one office is in this soggy village on the Bitter Coast, the swine.

All we need is a quick thinking fellow who's quick on their feet and prepared to work hard. Oh, who's that? The person who solved the murder? Well then, are you looking for employment?

If you wanted to get fancy you could have the faction's offices be built and improve as the player progresses through the quests. Like the strongholds or the http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=4083 mod.

Although seems like you've got this sorted.

Some thoughts on some of the things in the thread (which might have been settled as this is the first time I've seen it):

I'd agree with some taxation on the player being determined by possession or not of a stronghold. Perhaps also dependent on their level within the guilds and other factions. If you're the head of the Mages' Guild then you have to round up the taxes for all the various Mages' Guild locations... Could prove fun.

If you're interested in mod conflicts then I'd suggest Rougetet's http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=6000, a bit out of date but does give a god idea on what mods are where.

Some faction mods:
http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=54
http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=732
http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=1455
http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=6131

As to the PC just having stepped off the boat, well there are a number of alternate character generation mods out there. Some people use them, so... If you want to incorporate those potential changes then it wouldn't hurt I suppose...

"The idea, of course, being that each 'office' is run by a Director, with the Regional Office in Ebonheart being run by the Regional Director."
To me a "Director" sounds more important than a "Regional Director", although maybe that's just me. Perhaps "Head of Office" and "Regional Director" (perhaps a "Province Director" if you gop the whole hog and add things to Tamriel Rebuilt )

As to sites for these offices it seems that it's only http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Third_Era#3E_414 since Vvardenfell was opened up so things could still be in their infancy (bearing in mind the pace of Imperial bureaucracy). So I'd expect the offices to only be at those sites with a clear Imperial presence (Ebonheart, Wolverine Hall and Pelagiad). For me, I think of Caldera as a bit too much of a recent "boom town" to warrant an office but including some quest of starting taxation of all that ebony could be fun (and lead to the establishment of an office, or at least a presence there).

I'd be tempted to leave it at that, other sites being visited by members of the faction (e.g. ships at Dagon Fel, someone hobnobbing with Hlaalu dignitaries in Balmora (or maybe being wined and dined in a plantation somewhere) and so on and so on.

=== Evening Update: ===



Right! So... I've already begun breaking my schedule for updating, but I figure it's better to get this kind of thing out of the way early, rather than surprising anyone interested in this by suddenly not posting once in a while, as planned.


Also! I enjoy starting paragraphs with exciting things like 'Right!' and 'Also!' because I feel like it shows enthusiasm. I'm enthused. Honest honest.

That being said... I haven't accomplished anything yet tonight.


This morning, I woke up with the sudden compulsion to experiment again. So, without wasting any time at all, I went online and began copying into morrowind, Word for Word, the entirety of 'A Pocket Guide to the Empire'.

Needless to say, I discovered that this much text cannot fit into one Morrowind book.

Sad, sad day.


Beyond that, I've only just now begun actually working on the Census and Excise Office for today.


These last two days have been mostly reserved for my rabid playing of Halo and Command & Conquer... though I did spare a little time to write up a couple of 'flavor' text pieces for 'Dues to Pay'. One is a letter from home to the Breton-girl Clerk in the Seyda Neen office. The other is, assuming the player is in fact stepping off the ship as the prisoner, a memo from Director Ergalla... instructing clerk-girl to dig out any information on you that she can find. Which is very little, to say the least.

It may not seem like much, but these kinds of things are going to 'litter' the environs to which 'Dues to Pay' will send you.

Between the flavor texts, lore texts, mission/quest texts, and miscellaneous texts which may or may not prove to lead you on 'miscellaneous' quests/missions... there's going to be a lot of writing involved. And that's all -before- I get around to dialogue.


But hell. At least I'm persistent. You can rest assured I won't... well... -rest-... until such a time as I am "a.) too tired to continue on without sleep.", "b.) rendered unconscious by some sort of science-fiction wave/ray weapon. Maybe even one of those 'zat's from Stargate.", or "c.) quite wholly dead. Dead dead dead. As in the -late- Colonel Tannanbaum. Get it?". So no worries!

===== The Saturday @ Noon Update!!! =====





Excellent news! After hours upon hours of work and effort... I finally managed to make an -almost- fully functional companion using Grumpy's 3.-something mod/resource/tutorial. In fact, my randomly-created farm girl was quite easy to get working... except for the small fact that the scripting calls for certain spells which are -not- saved to my mod. Which means I'm going to have to figure out how to get this to work properly!

However, it also means that there will be COMPANIONS... and ones with interesting dialogue and the desire to help you accomplish your assigned tasks!

Isn't that grand!? Isn't it!??!


(Also... my ear has been giving me trouble... so every now and then I've had to stop, take a break, and wait for the throbbing pulsing sound in my head which makes all rational thought impossible to pass.)


Other interesting additions to this mod:

In my spare time, when I get tired of designing interiors and 'flavor text' for the office and all that other jazz, I have been working on the completion of an A-Z iteration of the 'Encyclopedia Tamrielica'... largely using information gathered from the UESP and Imperial Library pages.

Any other possible source materials which you think might be worthy of mention? Bring them up, here!

I'll happily check out some of these things and look into getting them weaseled into the pages somewhere if they seem lore-friendly.



Basic Progress:


Seyda Neen is still being cluttered. The delays are mostly due to my attempts to understand Grumpy's companion mod (the 3.1 or something version), however... and should not reflect the time it will take me, on average, to complete an office.

Ebonheart's office location has been chosen, for the time being. I am entertaining the idea of making a mod which actually gives the city some LIFE... but this may or may not ever be accomplished. Certainly not within the scope of this mod. However, my 'dream-layout' for the city DID have a large impact on the location I have chosen for the Office to reside in.

Screenshots will begin popping up just as soon as I figure out how to take them, where they are saved to, why I can't find them, where to host them online, and then proceed to actually -do- all of those things.



Overall Attitude: Enthusiastic! I'm making serious progress in terms of making the place FEEL good. I like the ambiance of the Seyda Neen office. The process of properly cluttering it may be taking longer than I planned... but it should be worth the while. I want the player to walk into these places and FEEL the red tape as it ties their hands behind their backs.

A lofty goal? You be the judge.