» Sat Mar 29, 2014 1:06 pm Greetings all! I have been thinking a lot lately about the Morag Tong's "Threads of the Webspinner" (TotW)... um, quest. I hesitate to call it that because, in my view, it is so patchy and incomplete that it's hard to call a proper "quest". Check out these numbers I just put up on the UESP Wiki's discussion page for the TotW quest:
- There are a total of 20 NPCs with Sanguine items.
- Of these, only 7 have MT quests that lead you to them.
- Of the 13 left, 3 are in the same locations as the targets of those MT quests.
- That leaves 10 NPCs with no MT quests to lead you to them, or even near them.
- Of these 10, only 3 are in locations that other, non-MT quests lead you to, and one of these 3 NPCs is not hostile. (Gluronk gra-Shula in the Gateway Inn is not hostile. There is a rumor about her, but it is only spoken by 1 NPC in the entire game.)
- That leaves 7 with no quests that lead you to them; they are only discovered by exploring.
- Of these 7, only 1 has a rumor that might lead you to him. The rumor is very vague, and is only spoken by 1 NPC in the entire game.
- Of the 6 left, 2 are not hostile.
From all of this, I would conclude that there at a minimum 2 NPCs that you would just have to randomly kill in order to find out they are the bearers of Sanguine items. There is no dialogue that might lead you to them, and they will not attack you when you encounter them. There are 2 more non-hostile NPCs that do have rumors, but in both cases there exists only 1 NPC each that will tell you the rumors. Also, Dro'Zaymar's rumor simply says, "Dro'Zaymar, a Khajiit in St. Delyn, can jump higher than anyone I know. I wonder what his secret is." To me, that's hardly enough to murder poor Dro'Zaymar, which is what you must do to find out he does indeed hold a Sanguine item. And then you have several more NPCs that you would literally just have to "happen upon" in order to collect the items. Vvardenfell is big, and with so many locations to explore I'd argue that finding all of the Sanguine items organically, that is without consulting the CS or some other reference, is statistically improbable and practically impossible.
I have done some preliminary research to see what mods might exist for the TotW, but I didn't find what I was looking for. I have no desire to change the Morag Tong or the way the Sanguine items are acquired and/or re-acquired. I don't want to add much of anything, at least not at this point. But I do think something needs to be done here... there should be a way for players to complete the TotW quest without random acts of violence. The Morag Tong is a proud and highly principled organization... killing random people is not representative of their ideals and beliefs. They look down on the Dark Brotherhood, for cryin' out loud! 
Soooooo, I'm thinking about taking this thing on, maybe. In short, I'm thinking this can be solved with some thoughtful, well-placed dialogue and a few more Journal entries. But before I get too deeply into it, I thought I'd ask what you all think about it. Can you think of anything I'm overlooking, or any pitfalls that might come up? I'd like any content I add to be as lore-friendly as possible... we're only talking about a baker's dozen of NPCs or so, but there may be lore connections for some of them that I'm not familiar with. Any input at all would be helpful, really. 
Well, that's about it. Just some thoughts right now, not even a WIP. I posted here because I want to be able to talk about the spoilers openly, and I'm not sure this will become a mod... yet! We shall see.
So, any thoughts? Thanks in advance. 
