[Faction]The Mages Guild

[SamirA]

Use this thread to discuss how we want to portray the Mages Guild in Cyrodiil and how the player will be involved in the story.

[TerrifyingDaedricFoe]

I think that in P:C there should be the option of either supporting Hannibal Traven's bid to become Arch Mage or of standing against him and becoming Arch Mage yourself.

I think that when an Arch Mage resigns (or is overthrown by a vote of no confidence from the Council of Mages) there is an election to select the next Arch Mage. Every Wizard and Master-Wizard is eligible to vote (from Oblivion, that's an electorate of 20).

Once you reach the third or fourth rank in the Mages Guild a rumour begins that the current Arch Mage (name tbd, for now referred to as CAM) is getting old and wants to retire. After another rank or two people will tell you that there's a rumour that your rapid progress through the ranks has brought you to the attention of many important people in the higher echelons of the guild and your name is being bandied around as a possible candidate for the job of Arch Mage. At this stage, if your disposition with CAM is high enough, (s)he will confess that you're his/her preferred replacement and (s)he thinks that Traven's hard-line approach to necromancy will cause more harm than good.

During this time Traven will be watching your progress with interest. You'll probably have done some low-level quests for Carahil at the Anvil Mages Guild already. Now he'll offer you some higher level ones. These will be really, really hard because he wants you to realise how weak your powers are compared with his. If you come back and tell him you can't do the quest he'll be very understanding, saying that it was wrong of him to ask so much from such a relatively inexperience mage. He will then ask you to support his bid to become Arch Mage. You can refuse, but the task of persuading people to vote for you will be much harder if you don't complete Traven's quests.

When you reach the rank of Wizard CAM retires and the election begins. If you stand against Traven you'll have to travel all over Cyrodiil gathering votes. Your performance in previous Mages Guild quests will have an important impact on how many support you over Traven. For example, if you had a quest from Cheydinhal where you weren't supposed to kill someone and you did, then the Cheydinhal Wizard won't be so inclined to vote for you. At this point Tarius' flow charts will be incredibly useful.

If you support Traven then a candidate from the Necromancer sub-faction will stand against him. They need not be a necromancer, they just support their right to carry out their work in a non-evil way that benefits the guild and the Empire. You will still have to go on the campaign trail, but this time you're gathering votes for Traven rather than yourself.

When one candidate has gathered 11 votes (assuming an electorate of 20) then they have won the election and have become Arch Mage. It should be possible to lose the election. In fact, it will be very easy to lose if you failed Traven's difficult quests. On the other hand, losing to the necromancer candidate will be difficult as that candidate is very weak compared with Traven or yourself.

If Traven wins then some of his policies come into place and half the Council of Mages resigns. If you helped him then he rewards you. If you win then nothing much happens. Traven doesn't like you and people refer to you as Arch Mage. If the necromancer candidate wins then Traven resigns and goes and lives in a hut in the middle of the Nibenay basin and probably some other things happen as well.


So, whaddya think?

This has the potential to have far reaching repercussions and should be shown as such through the availability of different quests.

ohh yeahhh, politics true to morrowind with oblivion echos. i like it. And i agree it should affect questing.

More Discussions

[Tes96]

Since Traven is already the arch mage in TESIV, shouldn't he also be archmage in TESIII? And isn't there only supposed to be one archmage in all of Tamriel, according to UESP? I don't understand how Player became "archmage" in Vvardenfell. Guildmaster would probably make more sense.
And when rising in the ranks, shouldn't the Player be on the Council of Mages first before having the opportunity to become Archmage?

[TerrifyingDaedricFoe]

The huge number of rumours concerning Traven in TESIV implies he became archmage recently.

[Scamp]

Hmm, I like this a lot. Maybe we could even do more with the idea of having several sub-factions (not really joinable, but just referred to in dialog) in the Mages Guild, such as the Necromancer faction you refer to. You could, for instance, side with people of the Necromancer faction rather than the "normal" mages and have different kinds of quests. Of course, this would also mean you'd probably not be able to support Traven because he'd reject your help entirely.

[Infragris]

There's one book in Oblivion, The Black Arts on Trial, that documents an actual debate between Traven's faction and the Guild necromancers before their expulsion. We could build a quest around this, perhaps even allowing the player to take part in the debate.

[Alebre]

In Trebonius Artortius' Morrowind UESP article, it does say that he is the "the Arch-Mage of the Mages Guild in Vvardenfell". It does seem weird, but that seems to be how it is. TR are also treating the Vvardenfell factions as a seperate organisation from the rest of Morrowind and Tamriel, from what I know.

Apart from during the necromancer debate, would it really make sense for the Mages Guild to be split into a "necromancer faction" and a "non-necromancer faction"? In Oblivion, each Guild Hall specialises in a certain field, so there might be a necromancer hall somewhere I suppose; but unless necromancer was banned in Cyrodiilic law (which I don't think it is), I don't see how there would be anything to stop the necromancer faction simply splitting off into their own "Necromancy Guild", with Guild Hall remaining, unless it was fully integrated beyond repair. Or am I just thinking about this in too much depth?

[SamirA]

As this thread is touching one the main ideas behind the Mages Guild, I have moved the above posts to the appropriate Master Plan thread. This is where we need to discuss how the Mages Guild is currently setup and what story we want to tell before we break it into more region specific quests and general "climbing the ladder" type quests that lead you through the story we design here.

[Tes96]

Well I'm still confused. How does the hierarchy of the Mages Guild work? Is there one arch mage over all of Tamriel? Or do you have arch mages in every province?

@ Alebre, you're saying TR allows you to become Archmage on the mainland, without having to battle Trebonius?

[Alebre]

I don't know exactly how TR is doing its Mages Guild since I'm not a modder there, but I gather (particularly from the UESP articles) that it's treating the mainland guilds (Thieves Guild, Fighters Guild, Mages Guild etc) as seperate from the Vvardenfell ones.

Though this might be a bit off topic, since we're not TR, but while there may certainly be one Arch-Mage for the whole of Tamriel, there does seem to be "secondary" or "tertiary" Arch-Mages who just control certain areas. Does someone more about this?

[TerrifyingDaedricFoe]

From Oblivion's Mages Guild Charter:

ADDENDUM: Effective 3E 431, as per Council mandate, sale of spells in the Imperial Province is to be re-distributed across guild halls. The following halls are to be responsible for each School of Magic:
Alteration: Cheydinhal
Conjuration: Chorrol
Destruction: Skingrad
Illusion: Bravil
Mysticism: Leyawiin
Restoration: Anvil

So the specialisation only happens after Traven becomes Archmage.

As far as Archmages in Cyrodiil / Vvardenfell / Mainland Morrowind go, I haven't got time right now to do some proper research. However, there these wise words from the 'Origin of the Mages Guild'.

As begun by Vanus Galerion, the Mages Guild as an institution is presided over by a supreme council of six Archmagisters. Each Guildhall is run by a Guildmagister, assisted by a twofold counsel, the Master of Incunabula and the Master at Arms. The Master of Incunabula presides over an additional counsel of two mages, the Master of Academia and the Master of the Scrye. The Master at Arms also has a counsel of two, the Master of Initiates and the Palatinus, the leader of the local chapter of the Order of the Lamp.

One need not be a member of the Mages Guild to know that this carefully contrived hierarchy is often nothing more than a chimera. As Vanus Galerion himself said bitterly, leaving Tamriel to travel to other lands, “The Guild has become nothing more than an intricate morass of political infighting.”

[Scamp]

Well I'm still confused. How does the hierarchy of the Mages Guild work? Is there one arch mage over all of Tamriel? Or do you have arch mages in every province?

@ Alebre, you're saying TR allows you to become Archmage on the mainland, without having to battle Trebonius?

Last I know, TR adds completey new factions, as Alebre mentioned. You join the factions and in case you are already head of the respective Vvardenfell faction your rank will be somewhat higher upon joining, but other than that, you still have to do the questlines TR provides in order to become the mainland faction head. I think that applies to every faction.

[Mwgek]

It would be more interesting what to do with a PC that is already arch-magister of whole MW rather than the more in significant Vvardenfell. This is just something for the future since TR is nowhere near doing a lot of Advanced guild quests. I think it would also be best to do soms basic level guild quests and norhing beyond a certain rank. If a greater proportion of cyrodiil is finished the rest can be implemented. Planning the different guildshalls and quests should be done before advancing.

[Tarius]

It would be more interesting what to do with a PC that is already arch-magister of whole MW rather than the more in significant Vvardenfell. This is just something for the future since TR is nowhere near doing a lot of Advanced guild quests. I think it would also be best to do soms basic level guild quests and norhing beyond a certain rank. If a greater proportion of cyrodiil is finished the rest can be implemented. Planning the different guildshalls and quests should be done before advancing.

Wasnt there an idea to say that MW is kinda a backwater and anyone wanting to do anything in Cyrodiil needs to start from the beginning?

[Tes96]

It would be more interesting what to do with a PC that is already arch-magister of whole MW rather than the more in significant Vvardenfell. This is just something for the future since TR is nowhere near doing a lot of Advanced guild quests. I think it would also be best to do soms basic level guild quests and norhing beyond a certain rank. If a greater proportion of cyrodiil is finished the rest can be implemented. Planning the different guildshalls and quests should be done before advancing.

Wasnt there an idea to say that MW is kinda a backwater and anyone wanting to do anything in Cyrodiil needs to start from the beginning?

Wait, you're saying an archmage in Vvardenfell would be treated as an Apprentice in Cyrodiil? That just sounds ridiculous. Then again, the Empire does make some ridiculous laws, i.e. levitation act. Although I bet if they couldn't implement jumping in the game, like in the Witcher series, they probably would have had a Jumping Act made too.

[Tes96]

Are we doing city governed magic schools? i.e. Leyawiin governing and teaching school of Mysticism? It never quite made sense to me that all the mages or teachers in the mages guild in a certain city would know just one type of magic or teach one type. Perhaps I knew a lot about restoration but I grew up in Bravil and could only afford to live there and all my friends were there. I wouldn't want to go live in Anvil just to be with the other restorationists. It would be more realistic if all different types of mages were in all the guilds in the different cities.

My main question is whether we are going to make a certain city specialize in a specific school or magic, or just keep it how Morrowind does it and just have all types of mages at guild halls.

[Alebre]

I think that the benefits of having a specialised Mages Guild is that it gives each guild a different feel, and therefore makes them all unique and interesting, with having the added benefit of, if you want a good Conjuration spell, then you know to go to Chorrol knowing that there will be a decent one there for you. This specialisation can also be added to any quests coming from each city guild hall to, once again, make them all feel different and interesting.

However, I agree that I might not have much sense in terms of the way you spoke about tes96. I also think a bit more of a mixture might make it less frustrating in the way that if you are in Cheydinhal, and need a Mysticism spell, you won't have to go all the way to Leyawiin just to get it. I would prefer the specialisation personally, though, just to ensure that all the guild halls are different, but there are pros and cons either way and I'm not doubting that they could all be made to feel intriguing without it.

[TerrifyingDaedricFoe]

The specialisation occurred in 3E 431, after our time. So our Mages Guilds should be unspecialised.

[Alebre]

Ah, well that settles it

[Tes96]

Thanks, TDF.
Is Hannibal Traven at Master Wizard rank during 3E 427?