Morrowind is nearing it's end, and it's almost time to close the final curtain on a game whom many of us considers to be the best there ever was. In its stead waits Oblivion, whose release date is fast approaching, promising new adventures and fun for many years to come. But there are those of us out there who share an inescapable love of Dunmer culture and history, and to whom the Morrowind Province is the only place where they'll ever feel at home. We don't want to give it up, but at the same time we of course recognize the flair and potential of Oblivion to be an even better game than TES III.

What to do?? ...
The answer: Bring a part of the Morrowind Province to Oblivion!

That is what the Silgrad Tower team is all about.

We've been around the Morrowind mod community for over three and a half years now, and during that time our team created a massive landmass (intended as a part of the Morrowind Province's mainland) west of Vvardenfell. With its attention to detail, dozens of quests, and many hundreds of houses, tombs, caves and other places we created a mod that got played by tens of thousands of players. In doing so, us who modded on it fell in love with our part of Tamriel and the history and background we developed for it. There wouldn't be a team anymore if we hadn't set our minds on returning to the same place of Tamriel for the new game, so doing something else was never really an option for us.

Pre-work for the planned Oblivion mod has gone on for close to a year now, and we've made a lot of progress in that time thanks to the hard-working, devoted members on the team. At the heart of pre-work is models, because if we are to realize our vision of going back to the Morrowind Province we need to portray the culture and architecture of the Dunmer people in a believable manner.

All our models are catalogued in a model showcase, which has over 75 entries.
To name but a few, the showcase includes:
¤ Hlaalu exterior tileset*
¤ Velothi tileset
¤ Redoran buildings (work-in-progress)
¤ Special-culture tileset
¤ Emperor parasol
* Note that the screenshots of the Hlaalu Exterior Tileset shows how the set looks in TES3. Oom developed both a Morrowind and Oblivion version of the tileset simultaneously.

1. Overview

This threedimensional overview map shows at a glance which regions we plan to mod for Oblivion. We'll border Skyrim to the west and Cyrodiil to the southwest, the latter of which will be the direction the player will first enter our mod.

In our plans are four major cities, several towns and even more smaller settlements. In the far north is the grand Imperial city of Blacklight, and westward across the border you'll find the large Nord keep of Windhelm. As we go south you'll pass Reich Parkeep, which is a major Redoran city situated among densely forested hills. Silgrad Tower used to be Redoran as well, but was destroyed in a war with House Hlaalu and has since been rebuilt under Imperial supervision, using architects and masons from the latter. It's now run as an independent city-state under a Council of Elders, comprised of representatives from the factions that have a stake in the city. (expanded information)

2. Organization

The western mainland of the Morrowind Province will initially be divided up into three areas, which will be developed as stand-alone mods. This is for technical reasons, as we believe that the process of team modding for Oblivion will be similar to Morrowind in that it places a lot of work on a single administrator, who recieves plugins and maintains the base mod (with bugfixing and other factors playing a major part in the workload). By spreading the workload on several administrators in the beginning stages, we hope to avoid a bottleneck situation so that work can progress in a steady manner. As the mods grows and expands they'll meet up at the seams, and eventually merge into one when the time is right. While the areas may be separate, the administrators behind them all belong to the same team who work together towards the same goals.

- Blacklight area: administrated by Thorpe a.k.a. Rodan
- Reich Parkeep area: administrated by Razorwing
- Silgrad Tower area: administrated by Valderon

The team itself is loosely organized into members, honorary members, core members and admins (here's an overview). Core members are modders that have a long history with the team and have stuck by us during harder times, and for doing that they get to vote on internal matters. Admins are core members with expanded control over the forum, website and other areas behind the scenes. Honorary members are retired core members, whose work for the team in the past deserve praise. This organization has worked out well for us over the years.

We don't confine ourselves to specific tasks such as concept artists or modellers; rather, members are free to pursue whichever facet of modding appeals to them. Having said that, several members have special responsibilities. Joining is as easy as signing up on the forum - and there isn't any strings attached. As a member you're as active as you want, and you do as much work as you want; which isn't to say that ambition won't be recognized. Naturally the amount of effort a member puts into the project affects the weight of his word. But there's no threshold to gain our respect and kindness.

3. We need you

Modders
Modders are always welcome to Silgrad Tower, but since Oblivion hasn't been released the options for a modder is limited right now. But if you're interested, that shouldn't stop you from swinging by our forum and getting to know the team. Maybe you'd like to tell us a bit about what type of work you'd like to do on the mod once the game is out. Perhaps you have an interesting story you'd like to write, which can later be added as an in-game book? Or maybe you have a great idea for a quest - or perhaps you're a graphical artist and would like to share your concept art? Whatever the case may be, we're looking forward to hearing from you.

Modellers
As much as we've modelled already, there's still a number of important model types we need.
Most importantly, plants. As good as the plants from Oblivion are, it just won't *feel* like the Morrowind Province if there isn't heather and stoneflower around. Some plants have been modelled, but most remain. Dunmer furniture and lights are other types which are needed to get a sense of Dunmer culture.

If you're not into modelling but would still like to lend us a hand then it'd really help us out if you could research Morrowind mods and see if you find stuff we can use for Oblivion. Please zip the meshes and textures and attach the archive(s) to a post on our forum along with screenshot(s). If you're able to import NIFs and export them to .3ds that would be grrreat, but if not then no sweat, NIF meshes would work too.

Fan Fiction
Are you up for writing a book? Or maybe you'd like to share one you've written previously? Please check in on our Literature Development board.

Quest writers
If you have a good quest idea, please present it in a new thread on the Quest Development board.

Sound/Music
We have an Acoustic Development board too, where music and sound effects can be submitted and discussed.


4. News roundup as of March 4th


Some news from us.

¤ We figured out a middle-way between making forum boards look totally different (different color scheme, buttons, top-banners) while still retaining the handy Silgrad shortcut links at the top. So now, browsing Silgrad boards, Blacklight boards and Vvardenfell boards (among others) is a very different experience that I hope will make those boards feel less tied to us. It's been a problem for a long time, and something that turned off several hosted sites from having forum boards with us... quite naturally I might add, because I totally understand why they wouldn't want our Silgrad banner on their forum.

¤ Theatrus made a collection of Dunmer candles the other day, which I think turned out great. The textures haven't been finalized yet and ultimately we might very well use textures from Oblivion on them instead - his call.

¤ Vvardenfell has got a new website, with a cool domain name (both courtesy of our core member Rodan):
http://www.vvardenfell.org/

¤ Our old members Danath_in & Galrina have come back, and with them, their concept of modding the Skyrim Province for Oblivion in affiliation with the other mods in our network. They might be getting a hand by Zarkis, who's "Scepter of the Wolf Queen" quest draft revolves around Riften.

¤ Personally I've had fun discussing concept ideas for Reich Parkeep, one of the cities from the old mod we plan to bring back. If you'd like some info on the backdrop of the town there's an article about it on our "Silgrad Lore" board. The lore board - a new addition to our forum - is a handy place for us to put articles about finalized concepts of our planned mod.
Hope to see you around our forum

5. In closing

I could easily fill a dozen pages with information... but I doubt anyone would want that. If you happen to have any questions I'm happy to answer them, whether here in this thread or on Silgrad Tower's Forum.

Thanks for taking the time to read this post, and whether as a player or modder I hope this isn't the last you choose to hear about Silgrad Tower

ask it hoss

I'm sure I'll love this, Morrowind is my favourite proivince!
And it's architecture/armor/weapons rule!

kenhopsa wrote:

ask it hoss

????????????
I already do things for Silgrad

A sudden thought, since I know both of you go to the Official forums; Cythus (or whatever his new name is) may be able to help with the bonemold, judging by his Gah-Julan armour mod, which is very high quality, he might be able to do it again for Oblivion.

Zann wrote:

I'm sure I'll love this, Morrowind is my favourite proivince! And it's architecture/armor/weapons rule!

architecture/armor/weapons - yes , but hero ...... grafics of hero )

Graphics very good!

What is SilgraD ??

I updated the initial post.