I'm just reposting this from the chat window. Hope it's not too late to contribute.

Well, I had this really wicked idea, but it be kinda hard to do. My idea was that you arrive on the West Coast of Hiboria. You find yourself standing on a dock; you look up to see a burning city.

Suddenly, a Holorian soldier comes running over, shouting for you to help them reclaim the city. You follow the soldier up and fight off the enemy, which turns out be a band of rebels.

After all the rebels are dead, the soldier thanks you and can then fill you in a little on the new land of Mesogea. From there, you can go wherever.

Basically, the city will be on a cliff or high area, overlooking the sea. The structure of the city is pretty much in the air.


Oh, and since you start off in traveler's clothes, you'll find a dead Holorian Soldier nearby; you can take his weapon.


Edit: Note that the Charactergen menu or whatever comes up before the scene opens up to the dock. Also, there will be a good number of Holorians on your side, so it will be more like an Imperial Dungeon fight (you always win). Finally, we could make the soldiers private guards or something if valisarius' lore doesn't fit in with this beginning. What do you think?

We can merge this and the other idea:

Rather than arrive ala Morrowind on a boat, or at the docks. How about the town you are in is a Holorian coastal town and you and some others are about to be loaded onto a ship as captives. You and three others perhaps along with a couple of caged animals. Your back story is that your village was attacked and destroyed by slavers, they have bribed the customs guards (the Romans had tax collectors at ports) to let this human cargo go onboard a private vessel.

Suddenly there is an alarm, and Karithian pirates are attacking. The slavers scatter (they can be teleported away to a holding world and later on placed in the countryside where you get rumour of them and can hunt them down.)

Into the docks come a unit of Holorian soldiers. One sees the wagons and questions you as to what you are doing there. He curses the slavers and says well, the customs guards have all been slaughtered already. He frees you and the others and says "Slave running dogs, its the death penalty for them making captives of citizens. If they get out of this place alive, which I doubt any of us will."

He asks you to help and says if you live through the attack he will see the town governor rewards you. You can either run off or agree.

Ends>

There are a couple of towns that would be great for this. Corus means Port.

Corus Deboran is at the base of the Barrier Mountains (centre of the map)
Corus Kavarn is to the left along the coast before it swings south towards Karithia.
Corus Mayen is between them.

Deboran would be the better of the three as it could be raised up around the port to make it quite dramatic and borders southern Sarachia through which slavers could travel without much hinderance from the Army.

I like the idea. How about instead of already being a citizen of Holoria, you're just an unknown person without a background (to allow for roleplaying concepts)

When the soldier finds you, he instead says "I usually don't associate with slaves, but I'm in a good mood today. Alright, slave, you help us fight off these pirates, and I'll see to it that the governer grants you citizenship. Run away, and you become an escaped slave. And I hunt down escapees. Understand?"

You can then pick up a weapon from a dead slaver and fight off the remaining pirates.

Note: You can't ACTUALLY escape the docks. There will be a collision box blocking your path until you kill the pirates. So, the soldier won't try to hunt you down or anything.

Sounds good. If others are in agreement we can go with this. Who's going to make the town.

Sounds like a good idea. It's another whole town to make though, haha. How big and what type of town would Deboran be like?

It would be a town rather than a city. A fair size though and walled so it could be, or part of it could be another world space for lots of NPC's. A bit like anvil but more organic, tangled up and with alleyways. This picture is of a town about ten miles from me, I used to work there. Dover, Kent, UK.
http://www.dover-kent.co.uk/history/ima ... _dover.jpg

Its not a good picture but gives the idea. Anvil is all a bit nice and cuddly, with nice detached houses, lovely wide roads and a few sporadic people. Its like pirates of the carribean but with nice pirates who you could imagine drinking tea. In short, its rubbish.

I would imagine Deboran as a tangle web of alleyways with some very nice places around the exterior but the port and slums would be stinking and dangerous.

If nobody volunteers, I can do it. Since, it was partly my idea after all...

Sounds good. Usually people do drop along at some point and take these things on but as we want to do it sooner than later Im more than happy for you to go for it. I think youve probably got more of an idea about the town etc than most of us.

Let me know if you need anything.

Great! So what's the basic location of this port?

You guys should check out a newer mod "Barbada Island". It's posted at TESNexus. It's a pirate island, and I think the designers did a good job of exactly what you're going for. A smaller but crowded town with small alleyways and a bit more dirty look than any other town in Oblivion. Check it out, it might give us some good design ideas.

Thanks. Will do.