Pamatronic
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Sovngarde Aftermath - Progress Report
🕑 Added 2025-01-09 05:26:32 +0000 UTCSome time has passed since its announcement, so I think its time to give a quick update on the current progress and planned features.
Lets start at the beginning: Characters getting killed by Deadly Furnitures in the real world.
As I mentioned, this mod is supposed to provide a way to get dead followers back from the afterlife, so lets start there.
When A follower is killed by a device, they get "marked" by the mod, but will otherwise behave as usual. They will stay in the device, and even if they are removed later on, the marking will persist. When the player is send to Sovngarde by any way, marked followers will be collected, resurrected, and placed in zap devices scattered throughout the Sovngarde Worldspace.
Ive implemented simple API functions to Mark followers, move them directly to Sovngarde, or start the Sovngarde Quest for the Player. this is intended to make the mod accesible for other mods. Archeron integrations come to mind, but I´ll leave that to other modders.
Sligh "Challenge" here are the existing furnitures. In order to not completely explode your game, every Device needs a new function to do a hard reset when its occupant is whisked away to Sovngarde. And Those functions need to be tailored to every specific device.
Currently I´ve only implemented it for the gallows so far and that is working fine. But Im a bit concerned on whether or not its possible to re-attach heads for player characters if they lost them during their final misadventure, but Im sure there is some way to make it happen.
Ive made some changes to the Devices so they check for PaSo (official shortener for Pama Sovngarde).
If you dont have it installed, Devices will act like normal. If you DO have it installed, the player will get Moved to Sovngarde upon death and the Purgatory quest beginns.
Ive Actually made this into a full fledged quest. With Journal entries, stages, markers, and all that fancy stuff. It also does account for repeat-offenders. I.e it will skip a few steps and Journal entries/dialogues will reflect it when the player ends up in Sovngarde again after their first time.
Basic walktrough as its implemented so Far:
After Arrival, your main Goal is to find the return gate and any potentially trapped followers.
I'm probably gonna add a ghost near the starting area to give you some initial bearings and a new questmarker for the gate.
Finding Anything is however made difficult by the Heavy fog in the Area. While not implemented yet, One of the Major Ideas I still wanna do here is adding some "Lost Souls" here. They will patrol the area and actively be searching for new Arrivals. When they catch the player, you will get a bad end.
Since souls cannot die twice, player will be thrown back to the starting area if this happens.
The Return Gate is present, but The player can not traverse it in their current state.
Upon failure to pass through it, the quest will direct you to make your way to the big mead hall, which is visible from the summit
The Mead hall itself is a copy of the original one. this allows to place a lot of nonsense without messing up the Vanilla quest line there. I haven't gone completely ham yet, but Im sure I will get some more Ideas later on.
When the player arrives in the Hall, they can talk to the named heroes there to find out that they need the "Atherial Glimmer" in order to save followers and pass trough the gate. The Glimmer is just this weird golden glow that every hero has, and the only way for the player to get it, is via an infusion from the heroes.
I've placed An Oven, A Dwemer Electric Device, and a Hanger in the hall. Every one gets a Scene. Player can talk to the heroes to select one. If they manage to "Survive" the trial, they will get the Glimmer and can continue to the Gate. If the Heroes go a bit too far however, player is once again thrown back to Starting area and has to try again.
After acquiring the Glimmer, you have the option to search and rescue your followers. After that's done, return to the Gate.
once you reach the gate, you and the saved friends will be returned to the Overworld and the quest ends.
Its planned to integrate FSM from LL here, so there is an option that saved followers don't simply re-materialize alongside you, but are instead restored right into the hands of a slaver somewhere in Skyrim and you have to search for them.
Thats the state right now. Current active step is to finish at least ONE of the device scenes within the hall. After that, the Quest is completeable and will get its initial release. I do expect this to be very soon. A week or so. At worst two.
Until then, as always, thank you for your support and patience. Gotta admit that I had some starting troubles with this one, but by now I´ve reached a state where its fun again. Next update on this will contain something playable :)
Comments
Vahzah Vulom
is the plan to eventually introduce the different elder scrolls "after lives"? the soul cairn immediately comes to mind but the others would be cool too
Bob
This sounds incredibly exciting - hats off to you for implementing this mechanism, and I'm hoping it will be the spur for defeat mods large and small to integrate into your framework. :)
