FESTIVALS OF SKYRIM (WIP)
by Qutayba

Description

Come experience the rhythm of the seasons and the pulse of life of Skyrim’s inhabitants with Qutayba’s Festivals of Skyrim! This mod will add lore-friendly atmosphere throughout Skyrim by creating 16 festivals in the province’s cities and villages. Lasting a month, each festival will add cosmetic changes to settlements and several celebrating NPC’s, which will be deactivated at the end of the festival. There will also be several short and simple quests given at some of these festivals. Linking the festivals together will be an overarching quest to help an Imperial scholar from the College of Whispers update her research on the culture of Skyrim.

Design Philosophy (comments welcome)

1) I want to minimize potential conflicts with the many city alteration mods that will be appearing soon. My additions will be largely cosmetic (decorations, such as candles, small statues, etc.) – new structures will be kept to a minimum. The NPC’s will likewise be unique to this mod (changing schedules of existing NPC’s has a lot of conflict potential).

2) During each festival, the new NPC’s will have daily schedules that create little mini events in the different spaces of the settlements (such as processions, dances, chanting, etc.)

3) I decided to make each festival last a month, (rather than just a day!) to increase the chances for players to see the content. It’s not unusual for people to spend a week in a single dungeon, after all!

4) The quests will be independent of one another, so the player won’t be forced to wait a year to complete them! Likewise, all quests will be able to be turned in to the scholar at any time, so there will be no rush to complete the quest during the festival period.

5) I wanted each major city to have at least two events and each minor city to have at least one. There will also be some events at farms, mills, and smaller villages.

6) Roughly half of these festivals are based on Elder Scrolls lore (particularly Arena and Daggerfall). I filled in the rest with new festivals that seem to stick to the atmosphere of the given city or Nordic culture.

7) I believe the game starts in the middle of Last Seed. Most of the play-throughs I’ve done last most than a year, so it should be feasible for most players to see this content.

8) Festivals will be deactivated in cities being besieged as part of the Civil War or other quests!

Progress

I expect the mod to take several months to build, at least. The CK will be coming out at the end of January, and it will take some time to acclimate to the tools before real progress can be made.

The Festivals

MORNING STAR
1)Days of Light (lore): Dawnstar: In the depths of Winter, the inhabitants of Dawnstar celebrate their town’s namesake by illuminating the night with candles.

SUN’S DAWN
2) Mad Pelagius (lore): Solitude: A topsy-turvy festival named after the city’s infamous son. Drunkenness and hijinks are guaranteed.

3) Feast of the Dead (lore): Windhelm: A sombre festival commemorating the names of Ysgramor’s 500 Companions and their deeds of glory against those dastardly elves. (Guess what! There’s already a name wall in Windhelm near the cemetery.)

FIRST SEED
4) Blessing of the Fields: Farming Villages: Priests of Kynareth are called upon to invoke their patron’s name over the fields to ensure gentle rains and fertile earth.

5) Hogithum (Feast of Azura) (lore): Dunmer areas of Riften & Windhelm: Once a fertility ritual, in Skyrim Hogithum has become a colorful celebration of the benevolent daedra lord who looks over her Dunmer, even in their exile.

RAIN’S HAND
6) Days of the Dead (lore): Falkreath & Halls of the Dead: Throughout Skyrim, the priests of Arkay rededicate their Halls of the Dead to make sure the deceased stay that way. This ritual is particularly elaborate in Falkreath.

SECOND SEED
7) The Running of the Horses: Whiterun: Every year, the citizens of Whiterun reenact their ancestors’ yearly rounding up and taming of the wild horses of the tundra. (There will be a few herds of wild horses added permanently to the hold of Whiterun!)

MID YEAR
8) The Dwemer Masquerade: Markarth: A bizarre party of somewhat dubious historical accuracy in which the citizens of Markarth dress up as Dwemer and partake in activities that are only safe to do when your identity is masked.

SUN’S HEIGHT
9) The Flowing of the Mead: Riften: It’s Oktoberfest! – er, Sunsheightsfest! In recognition of another successful year of Black-Briar brewing, it’s time for the inhabitants of Riften and visitors from throughout Skyrim to imbibe too much mead and make Riften even crazier.

LAST SEED
10) Harvest’s End (lore): Farms and Mills: After the harvest, farmers throughout Skyrim burn their chaff and effigies of disease in gratitude for Kyne’s bounty.

HEARTH FIRE
11) Tales and Tallows (lore): Morthal: In keeping with the town’s reverence for the unseen, Morthal celebrates that time when the veil between the living and the dead thins.

12) Briar Burning: Markarth: A rather bloody reenactment of the expulsion of the Forsworn from Markarth, often involving executions of Forsworn prisoners, heads on pikes, burnings at the stake, and other gruesome warnings to the rebels still lurking in the reach.

FROST FALL
13) Witches’ Festival (lore): Crossroads: At remote crossroads throughout the land, the sinister hagravens and their followers practice dark conjurations. Travelers beware!

14) Wizards’ Festival: Winterhold: In contrast to the Witches’ Festival – although the contrast is not strong enough for some – the Wizards’ Festival is an extravagant display of magical power and sorcerous competition at the College of Winterhold that inevitably spills over into the town, much to the Jarl’s dismay.

SUN’S DUSK
15) Voice of Kyne: Whiterun: At the beginning of Winter, the priests of Kynareth in Whiterun beseech the Mistress of the Throat of the World for a gentle Winter.

EVENING STAR
16) Saturalia (lore): Solitude: Although once a bacchanol celebrated in the name of the glorious Empire, Saturalia in Solitude has become more family-oriented. People give gifts to one another and celebrate the fleeting joys of childhood.

I want to attend the dwemer masquerade. It sounds so ridiculous.

This sounds awesome. Can't wait to see where this goes!

Although I do think a month is too long and I'd personally rather see more holidays that are shorter than longer holidays. Perhaps a mix of 1 day, 1 week, and 2 week festivals?

This is freaking awesome. I absolutely will play this, and if you need help with any content, I will be happy to help in between my own modding projects. Later on, I intend to make some city mods myself, and with this coming before that, I will keep this mod in mind when redesigning the cities.

I particularly like some of the festivals you came up with to fit in between the lore ones; especially the Briar Burning and the Running of the Horses. To make them seem a little more like canon lore, you can always take the names of some of these festivals and replace them with Germanic or Scandinavian words for example "Driften av hester" is Running of the Horses in Norwegian.

PM or Email me if you would like my help on this. I will certainly be keeping an eye on your progress. Good luck.

@jehoram: I may experiment with different time periods as I get into it, so we'll see. I want to balance realism with playability. I don't want to put a lot of work into a holiday only to have most people miss it because they were deep in Labrythian at the time. I intend for this to be more of a background flavor thing than a focused quest that players have to plan around.

This sounds wonderful. I was talking with a lot of people about something like this being a great addition to the game. Will def keep an eye on this. +1!

Hahaha! Awesome!

I like having one-month festivals. Perhaps if you're well-known in a given town, you might receive an invite from someone you've helped, perhaps even the jarl if you're a thane? That, more than the length of the festival, would give you a solid in-world way to know of festivals and attend them in a timely manner.

(Why on earth did gamesas name a lore festival http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturnalia? They're getting too much real world in my fantasy! Oh well, they do it a lot, and it only matters when a name you know pops up. I don't think you should change any of the names you have.)

Very cool! My project is to have the player build his/her own city on an island and become the jarl of it. One of my plans was that when the player builds a Great Hall (or, rather, the people will build it for the player to honour their Jarl), you'd be able to select the traditions and festivals you'd want to honour. I was going to have each festival on its own day every week. I'd love to see your mod come to fruition for the inspiration (and maybe collaboration!)

Good luck!

This needs to happen. It always bothered me that there didn't seem to really be seasons or any of those festivals mentioned on the calendar. Please let me know when this is ready for download.

yeah, a month of doing whatever you want in Markarth spells out disaster.

It would make the forsworn look like a bunch of innocent hooligans waving sticks is what it would do.

And we'd see a few of these , and some of these , plenty of these , and quite possibly some of those

Brilliant idea. Gives more life to the cities.

Finally, a way to blow off steam that doesn't involve death and destruction... (Unless i visit that dwemer masquerade. Got a few names on a list I need to cross off)

I want to see a "How to skin a Argonian demo" then I download.

I'm really looking forward to this. It will bring lots more life to the world.

A great idea!

I too think month long festivals are too long, but understand why you are thinking that way. I'd say festivals lasting a week or two weeks would be a good compromise.

I also like the idea posted above of recieving an invitation, using the messenger guy that delivers notes to the player, to festivals for places where you are well known. The festivals could also be advertised with notices put up in the appropriate towns in the month before the vestival begins., plus a list of all festivels in Skyrim and thier dates could be put into an in game book.

As others have said, I like this idea a lot--it should bring some much needed variety and life to the cities. And your ideas for original festivals, and how to tie them together, are clever and good.

For the Wizard's Festival in Winterhold it feels like whether the PC is Archmage, a lower-level student at the College, or has not yet joined, should have some impact. This festival is the only idea of yours that I have some qualms about--I think many Nords would find it in bad taste, in their belief that the College's magic caused the Collapse, and so take umbrage. But maybe that could be worked into the festival, or the quests surrounding it.

Good luck with the project!

For the feat of the dead, you need an NPC to recite the entirety of MK's "500 Companions or Thereabouts"

Looks absolutely brilliant, I hope you'll be able to make it (and the fact that you want it to be compatible with the future Better cities mod is a huge PLUS). The festival ideas are great, Love the Whiterun one with horses. Good luck.

This is a fantastic and creative idea. Can't wait to see how it turns out.

Thanks for the feedback. I'm really stoked for the release of the CK and will try to give regular updates. Something I didn't mention above is that I plan to make the festivals modular. It would svck if there was a conflict with an awesome mod in only one city and people would have to skip all the festivals as a result. I'm not much of a coder beyond the amount of scripting I've taught myself, but as the mod nears completion I may take a look at the mods that have some sort of configuration options, so that you don't need to load 16 mods, but can rather pick and choose.


Yes, I definitely will have a game book that the traveling scholar will give to the player, but I'm also thinking of interesting ways to remind the player. I like the courier idea. I've also been thinking of having bored NPC say that they wish they were in some other city celebrating that current festival instead of being their boring regular city


It is definately in bad taste, DreamKing, kind of like frat boys toilet papering a town (not that frat boys ever do that!). I intend to work the town/gown(robe) tensions into the event.


Yes, I want to! Are you volunteering your voice? However, I'm also worried about enormous sound files. I might go with 100 names though, as long as you promise not to sit there and count. The name wall in Windhelm looks like it has about 150 names or so. I don't know if they were intended to be the Companions, but I've decided to co-opt that slice of wall for my own purposes. It's such a narrow alley, though. Still thinking about what to do there.

NIce feedback. Thank you!

Well personally I would find it more "realistic" (as real as a fantasy game gets) if I DIDN'T get to attend every holiday. For example I live in the Inland Northwest of the United States. Chinese New Year is coming up (or has it started already?) but because the asian population isn't incredibly high around here we don't see any of the decorations, parties, etc. that you would see if you went a couple hours west to Seattle. I know that Chinese New Year is happening but I don't experience it unless I visit a place where it is celebrated, you see?

At least thats my take, I'll more than likely end up using this mod either way of course

I think this would make a great mod! And if you could add drinking contests and fist fights it would be awsome!

Given that Ysgamor's hall and the guild in his honor is near Whiterun, isn't Whiterun a more appropriate place to celebrate Feast of the Dead?

A really clever idea that conributes to roleplaying. Just watch out for the people who will urge mission creep, and want you to develop this far, far beyond what you plan.