Crown of Antlers

For being a non-fanfic game, the world of Moonlight Falls does seem to be weaving an interesting story. So, last night Gloria's dish-washer crapped out (the world is sort of Victorian-Steam Punk theme to allow for some technology and different clothing styles). Her trusty handyman immediately got to work with fixing it while Gloria mopped up the water.
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Thank you darth_eldritch for directing me to the Faery's Gifts blog with all of her wonderful Skryim conversions. I grabbed the Telvanni textures and redid the Grouch House with them. The place is still like a box, which can't really be helped, but now looks more like it was grown, or partially grown rather than built.

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Once the spring season finally rolls around in Vvardenfell I plan to start taking wedding themed pose screens for Aeronwen's journal. I have been looking at community lots to use for the settings and have chosen to go with this one: Romantic Little Church.

This lot fits the Dragon Valley world (and Moonlight Falls) perfectly. It's also very versatile. Ceremony poses can be set up either inside the chapel or out in the garden.

I made a few changes to it, mainly removing some of the shrubs in the garden and replaced them with pink rose bushes. I also removed the grim reaper statue and replaced it with the "Alexa Full of Hair" statue. This statue could represent any Daedric Prince or Divine who tends to appear in a female form.
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I feel a little guilty for not having made a post in the aeronwen blog, but I got caught back up in the other save a started a while back featuring Gloria and her friends as children. The game became so interesting that I went even further back in time and started a game with all of the parents as young adults without children so I got to play through the birth's of Gloria, James, Allison, and Robin. For a while everyone lived in the Great Bear world, but when loading the save began taking quite a long time I used NRaas Porter to pack up all my custom households (including the newly created grandparents) and moved everyone to Moonlight Falls (now with the cobblestone road from Dragon Valley and with modern buildings replaced with Victorian styled ones).

The Winters family home in Moonlight Falls:

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This afternoon I found another medieval career mod for the Sims 3: Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer Career

One of the branches has a "ranger" career line, so the next time I'm in the game I'll remove the "Hunter" career mod and replace it with the D&D one. This is exactly what I wanted for my Elder Scrolls characters.

I have almost all of Lost Pantheon's Fantasy/Medieval career mods installed and figured out how to set up NRaas Story Progression to only allow inactives to be placed in those jobs. This way I don't end up with inactive sims running around my Elder Scrolls themed worlds in modern day career clothing.

In my aeronwen journal Aeronwen and Neldor continue to slowly work their way through the White Wolf of Lokken Mountain questline. One they're done with that I'll need to think about how much time I want to allow to pass before they would start thinking of returning to Vvardenfell. From a story standpoint I want them to remain on Lokken until enough time has passed for Caius Cosades to return to Cyrodiil and the blight/Dagoth Ur issue to be dealt with by another character. At that point in the Morrowind main quest I don't think they would have to worry about being forced into being spies for the Blades.

Perhaps around that time their siblings come to Lokken looking for them. *files this idea away with the other plot bunnies*

Over the past week I set up some additional sets for upcoming installments for the aeronwen story blog. After much deliberation I decided to have the side quests that take place in the city of Vivec play out in the town of Ebonheart. As mentioned before, I'm not even going to attempt to build Vivec. While I have an excellent gaming computer, I think such a city would really bog down whatever world I placed Vivec in.

That being said, there are some, shall I say garishly colored palace and castle mods out there that I considered using to represent the city of Vivec, but the fact is that Aeronwen doesn't go to those big settlements very often, and since I have already done some lore bending and breaking to deal with the issue of Vvardenfell's wildlife, I figured I may as well simplify things by changing the location of some of Morrowind's quests.

Now for the screenshots: ( Read more... )

When I set up the save I'm using to create illustrative screenshots for the fanfic in the aeronwen I didn't intend to actually play that game. It's purpose was to contain a series of "photography sets" where characters would be posed. But at some point along the way I started actually playing it, and it's really been a lot of fun.

Unlike my other games, I didn't have the entire town built and the population added at the very start of the game. In fact for a little while Aeronwen was the only person in the world except for her household which contains two foxes. There is of course Rey the red fox and there is also a white fox. The purpose of the white fox is so that I have another sim to select when Aeronwen and Rey both appear in a screenshot. This way I don't have to worry about editing out the green glowing plumbob. I'm using a mod that makes it quite small, but its' still there. By selecting the white fox while taking the screenshots I don't have to worry about editing the plumbob out.

Different areas of the map have been designated as different Vvardenfell regions. The Bitter Coast is set up in lots that are close to the beaches. The Ascadian Isles is in the center of the world, and the West Gash and the Grazelands will be set up on top of the wide flat hills that can easily be used for building but don't contain anything in the vanilla Dragon Valley world.

When it's time to do scenes in the Ashlands I'll create a save for Midnight Hollow that has all the sims and buildings removed. I'm not sure what sort of buildings I'll use for Ald'uhn but I'm sure I'll be able to think of or find something suitable when the time comes.

Right now the population of the "Ascadian Isles/Bitter Coast" world is still small. Fargoth, Arrille, Eldafire and Eldafire's two children are set up in Seyda Neen. Mebestian, Samia, and Drelasa Ramothran are set up in Pelagiad. Nelos and Maurrie were there but have been evicted since Aeronwen just did the Beauty and the Bandit quest (to simulate that they have left the area and will never be seen or heard from again).

Two farming households were recently added to Pelagiad. One contains the Argonian Junal-Lei and his teenage son who is added by Children of Morrowind. To complete the household, I added Traveling New Woman as Junal's wife and mother to his son rather than placing her in a farm all by herself. As pets the family has two cats.

Another family I created contains Farusea Salas and her daughter which was added by CoM. To complete that family, I added Lloyn Andus as Farsusea's husband as the father of her daughter. Corky is there in the form of a Tarpan Mule and the family also has a small dog (the daughter and the dog immediately headed for the dog park as soon as they were added to the town).

Before long I'll be adding Nels Llendo along with Uulernil the grouchy Altmer blacksmith.

Another bit of lore bending I did was to add Jobasha and have him newly married to Adanja. They are now running the Old Tomes Bookstore and Tea Room which is a short distance northeast of Pelagiad (approximately where NoM adds the food merchant in that area). The story is that Adanja didn't want to move to Vivec, so she and Jobasha opened the shop in the Ascadian Isles. Jobasha runs the bookstore side while Adanja runs the tea room.

An unplanned story angle that just came up today; Fargoth has been coming to the Art Barn to paint and there he met Samia. The two Bosmers became friends and are now romantically involved. I like this story and will let it play out.

To close this entry, here is an unused screenshot that I took when experimenting with poses. It simply shows Aeronwen sitting on a bench outside her rental hut, quietly observing the neighbors as they come and go.

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Edited to add: Something I forgot to mention as far as the play aspect of this game goes. Since Aeronwen can't actually hunt for mudcrabs, I have her go fishing for a couple of hours each day. I'm also using the Hunting Career Mod to help her earn an income and to simulate her being off hunting in the wilderness.

I've been seriously considering giving the Three Merry Widows their own profile on the roleplay forum, and if I do I think I'll use this screenie as their avatar, which was created using the Poser mod.
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For a while I've been a little concerned about my TES themed Sims world due to the fact that loading, saving, and exit times have become quite long (and this is even before a new generation has been born). If it's so slow and bogged down now, what will it be like later when children are born and more time has gone by?

Now for the record, I am not surprised by this having read the warnings and experiences of people who play with a lot of custom neighborhoods and large households, but I decided to proceed because I wanted to see what would happen. I am not going to delete that save and will still play it at times just to see how far it will go, but I knew I needed a more stable world for Aeronwen to write about in ascadian_rose. So I started doing some research on what I can do to keep a highly customized world going.

Time for a cut since this is a long entry: ( Read more... )

...because every herdless horse needs a mini-donkey paddock pal. Mule and Donkey bases and other resources can be found at: Cheshire Farms.
Gloria felt that her horse Faith needed a paddock pal so she adopted Alisha.

This is a repost of an entry I made the other day. The reason for the repost is to change the screenshots. After making the original entry I went into the Advanced mode for customizing the horse colors and experimented with adding and arranging layers and playing around with the different pinto patterns and face marking. The end result was the mini-donkey having a unique look.
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