If you recall, Krahzgorr (or Krah as he refers to himself), is a Spirit Shaman hailing from Rashemen. He was one of the few elder shamans of his tribe, communicating with the spirits and providing guidance to his people. They are second only to the chieftan, but the shamans were often the ones telling the chieftan what to do. There have been cases where the chieftan strives for more dominance and power over his people, attempting to rid the place of the shamans. But that is a story for another time.
Along your journey, Krah will often tell you tales that has been passed down from generation to generation. Such tales usually relate to an idea of some sort or detailing a piece of important history. I have a few in my mind already that will relate to the PC and his struggles against the inner evils from within, but I would to hear what you guys can come up in terms of ideas. To clarify that, things like the concept of fear being told about in a story of an orc travelling into a wolves den with no weapon as a test of his faith to Gruumsh. Things like that would work. It might even be easier to thing of what stories an Indian tribe would share with their people.
I should also add that these stories are completely oral. Krah doesn't know how to read or write.
Hope that made enough sense. I'm just looking for ideas at the moment, and could use some help :) . Thanks, guys.
Krahzgorr's Stories
An Interesting Turn of Events
Surague has been released as of a few hours ago. Interestingly enough, some NWN Hall of Famer has been dissing on the most recent Obsidian Area contests (Me, SDJ and SGK). Whats even more interesting was that I got the lowest score. Should I feel proud or something? :) I got a 1.00! Hurrah!
Personally, I don't really care what anyone votes on my stuff. Numbers are irrelevant. However, others don't really share my same feelings. So others who actually provide the community with stuff (particularly a new guy) sees some jerk vote a 5.00 on his stuff while only saying "Wow! Just average.", it might discourage them from producing anymore and a valuable member might've been lost. That's what actually ticks me off. If he voted just a 1 only my area, then so be, I'd leave it, but do it on others, and I'll come down on ya like a hawk. Or if he actually provided some critiques, I would've left him alone.
Not sure what his problem is, but I'm looking out for some motive. He didn't seem to be any participant in the Custom Content contest that I know of, so its not a revenge issue. And he only seemed to target NWN2 material, seemingly the newest contest entries and a portrait pack. Just idiocy.
Tomorrow
Keep an eye out for Surague tomorrow on the vault. I did some last minute touchups. I found a tree I forgot to put a cutter around, so I actually just removed it. It was in the middle of the road anyways. Thanks to all of you reading for your support, except for those of you who voted "Up to You." You weren't helpful at all :)
Just kidding.
Surague Escarpment Pre-Download
I was wanting some comments and critiques from you guys before I send off to the vault, so I've uploaded the area to the server. The pics with it are what will be displayed as the images. And don't hold back too much. No one ever said I wasn't ruthless with any one else's areas. :)
www.ruinvalor.com/Josh/SuragueEscarpment.rar
Once I get sufficient amount of comments, I'll put it up to the vault. The Day/Night settings will come with two sets. The bloom enhanced and the regular (regular not included above).
Surague Escarpment Run-through
This is my nightly run-through Surague Escarpment, the likely to be Obsidian area contest. Took me 7 whole days to do it, but it turned out really awesome, so it's all worth it. Its all during Moonrise/Night-time as that happened to be where the time fell during my run through. Its 5:25AM so I'll keep this short, but rewarding with screenshots. I wonder when I should upload this to vault, since this is what you guys seem to want me to do.
Pick out your favorite shot of the bunch and I'll be sure to upload it.
Oh and could one of you guys check up on something for me? I noticed a weird glitch with the waterfalls (not shown above) that when you're using the Waterfall placeable, if you glance into the water you'll see Missing 2D Texture for the waterfall. I was wondering if anyone else was experiencing this strange phenomenon.
Poll #1 Results:
2 Posts Today: Poll and Spring Break (Surague Escarpment area as well)
Long overdue here, but here they are:
How long do you, as a player, prefer the length of the module to be in hours?
<1 hour: 0
1-2 hours: 0
2-3 hours: 3 (25%)
4-5 hours: 6 (50%)
6+ hours: 3 (25%)
So, it would seem most people would, on average, prefer a 4-5 hour long module (I assume they chose that because of how long it takes to create 6+ hour long modules). The bad news is that TN - Chapter I fell around 3 hours. I added a side quest that might extend it to 4, depending on your gameplay. I'm also concentrating on getting some of the events for the bounty hunter camp into the Chapter I release (it's consider Chpt II content), like the Brawling matches you can participate in.
Oh, and don't forget to read the post below. It's the longest and the better one.
Spring Break!
It's finally here! And you know what that means. Yes, getting drunk! While I might be doing that, I can finally get some TN work done (yay). Some other people spend their breaks doing other things, which I won't go into great detail there. Its Central Florida, you can just imagine what they do down here. The people probably reading this blog, would be working on their own mods as well.
I'd say some other things on the topic of Spring Break, like how my friend's room-mate spent his last day of college before the break, but it's not really appropriate for this blog. Let's just leave it at fraternity mischief.
I've done some bug fixing and started working on some other areas while the enthusiasm still lasts. I began working on Surague Escarpment/Sunrise Mountains, home to... many different monsters. to say the least. It's crawling with creatures free from the Red Wizard's grasp, such as gnolls, orcs, wyverns and possibly Mountain Giants (but there's not really a suitable low-intelligence looking giant model in the toolset, spare for the ogre maybe).
And a little extra information on the Sunrise Mountains, paraphrasing from the Unapproachable East Handbook (pg 155-156):
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The Sunrise Mountains, which many consider to mark the eastern end of Faerun, run all the way from the center of Rashemen to just past the south-eastern border of Thay. It forms the entirety of Thay's eastern border, towering just below 15,000ft above sea level. The mountains are teeming with dangerous animals and hostile humanoids. From time to time, scouts from the goblin and kobold tribes living here forage into Thay.
Every now again, the tharchions of Thay send an expedition into the peaks of the mountains for those sturdy and adventurous enough to take on the task. The Sunrise Mountains are said to be virtually impassable on foot, but those who know their way about the mountain can scale the cliffsides or find another path that other inhabitants of the mountains have made. Old Raumviran towers and strongholds lie buried beneath the snow of the high slopes, as well as ancient well-like fortresses of some even older people forgotten by time. Rumors have it of a hidden passage leading through the mountains into the Endless Wastes beyond, but no such cavern has been found to this date. The caverns beneath the Sunrise Mountains are filled with horrible creatures, including nagas, chimeras, and things unspeakably worse.
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I can't really pull off nagas realistically, so its not likely I'll put them in. But if someone were to make one, one could probably even use them for Mariliths or those snakes whose name escapes me at the moment. They were in BG2... But anyways, I could probably get away with using a Wyvern for Chimera.
And just to confirm, yes, you do get to travel into the snowy peaks of the mountains. The one and only snow area in the module probably.
There are several caverns lining the Surague/Sunrise areas that you can enter. Some are off to the side areas, containing loot, some monsters; others have plots inside of them. When you first approach the Surague Escarpment, you'll notice several hot springs off to the side, probably not one of those you want to go swimming in, lest your skin burn off. If any of you know about hot springs, they're usually generated from a "dormant" volcano, waiting to burst at any time. I use the term dormant loosely. It hasn't erupted in years, but might some day (i.e. Yellowstone National Park, which is where the idea actually came from: Old Faithful). Of course the Thayans aren't intelligent enough to figure that out yet.
And that concludes the intro to Surague Escarpment and the Sunrise Mountains. The rest will be disclosed in game, whenever you get there. And a few complimentary screenshots for your troubles:
And I almost forgot. I've been contemplating about adding this area (Surague Escarpment) into the contest. It's a fairly large area, 24x32, and it wouldn't include the Sunrise Mountains portion as I probably wouldn't be able to finish it that kind of time frame. This area by itself requires alot of time. Took a whole day and half with sketching out the terrain. And due to its size, this is day 2 on texturing. I should be done texturing tomorrow and all that would be left is the touch-ups. So a 5-day area I would say. Poll is off to the side in a few min from the time of this post. if you want to add another option, comment here and I'll add it.
Keep in mind, the kind of competitors there are in the contest. I don't really like stealing the show, especially when I'm not really participating for the prize (I mean its nice, but I don't really have any use for it). I also intend on allowing anyone to use TN areas as prefabs upon release of the module, so it's really only a matter of time.
Status Update
Well, I'm now mostly caught up with my course load. The two programming assignments are near complete (well, one is a term project so its only half complete :) ). The assignment I've been working on this weekend took up about a thousand lines of code. Wasn't that difficult, just time consuming. I'm pretty sure it can be optimized a little as some of the code is redundant, but I'm not all that worried about it. Working with databases is fairly easy. Can't really say the same with working with ID3.2 tags. If you don't know what they are, they're the things that hold data (album, genre, track, etc.) on your .mp3 and .wma files. Doesn't sound all that difficult, but there's a lot of stuff to do to get it to work. Much easier just to use ID3.1....
A guy named Trescus was asking around for assistance on some area creation, so i took a smaller area to do (as that's all I really had time to do). And I whipped this up in around 30 minutes. Thanks to the countless prefabs, I've made for myself :) 
The deadline for the area contest is coming closer, and I still haven't a clue what to build for it. If any of you want me to make something in particular, I might be more willing to make it, otherwise I probably won't enter it (not as if there's that many entries in it in the first place - nothing phenomenal, but decent entries to say the least). I'm not really interested in the prize all that much. Far too poor to actually be able to use such a thing. I mean, I'm not buying another monitor! I'll just keep my single 21" :)
So if any of you have any ideas, feel free to speak up. My mind is pretty blank. And TN will probably resume either Wednesday night or the day after.
PS. Not really interested in forests. Hated the one and only forest I ever made pretty bad, only for it get butchered later :(
Temporary Hold
Thayvian Nights has been placed on temporary hold until I am able to get rid of the plethora of assignments that are due. I have exams all this week and two nasty assignments getting in the way as well. Afterwards, I need to prepare for the final presentation of my final project as well. This programming class is more trouble than its worth.
I'm not sure when I'll be able to pick it back up again, but I'll keep you all updated every Monday with whatever I have to offer.
Screenshot Moonday
No, no title mispellings. Just me being silly.
What lies behind the ominous gate deep beneath the earth?
Speaking of earth, I swear. It's one of the best sounding words in that kind of context, but there is no Earth in the Forgotten Realms, so it kind of makes that word a little bit awkward. Like what am I supposed to say? "Deep beneath the ground?" Or maybe "Deep beneath the Toril?" Yea, that last sounds too much like turmoil or toil for that to work. Although I imagine its common enough for others to forget that fact and continue playing without questioning it. And here I am ranting.
