Errands for Orvas
by Cal
23-01-2010
updated 13-01-2011: small fixes, ESM added and same-sex romance with Ahnassi
updated 26-08-2014: script corrections, two lines of dialogue added
updated 12-10-2014: script code shifted to RanesPlaced.esm, crates altered to
hopefully not cause error messages in vanilla Morrowind

(This plugin needed a solution for the duplication of the second Ienith brother
when loading two or more plugins that needed to place him for use with scripts.
Hence the extra ESM, which is also included with OddsAndEnds.)

This plugin allows you to become member of the Camonna Tong and do a few quests
for the Al Capone of Morrowind, the black sheep of a respectable Hlaalu family:
Orvas Dren. There's nothing really gruesome, mostly fetch & fedex and the
occasional request for murder, but you can always get around that. In addition,
you can help Ahnassi get Daren Adryn off her case by telling him to back off if
you outrank him, and settle for giving Gentleman Jim blackmail material rather
than killing the Ienith brothers; yes, you can be a member of both the Thieves
Guild and the Camonna Tong, although some actions can get you expelled from the
Thieves Guild. There is no alternative to killing Thanelen Velas or the
Fighter's Guild bosses, although if you kill all Camonna Tong members in the
Balmora Council Club, you're expelled from the Camonna Tong, so for a solution
to Larrius Varro's quest, take a quick peek at the spoiler text (mspoil.txt).
There is also no way of staying on good terms with their employer if you kill
the Ienith brothers for the Morag Tong.

(The plugin OddsAndEnds allows some Morag Tong writs to be revoked, including
those for the Ienith brothers, thereby reconciling the Morag Tong Missions with
Camonna Tong membership.)

There are two ways to become member of the Camonna Tong; the first is to mention
the Vassir-Didanat mine to Orvas Dren before you go to Nevena Ules (and this
time she WILL pay you) and the second, if the Vassir-Didanat quest is already
over, is to join the Fighter's Guild, do all quests up to and including Helviane
Desele's debt - without killing her, of course - and collect a compliment _and_
a recommendation from Manos Othreleth. If you finish all quests successfully,
without being expelled (it is not possible to make amends), you may advance to
the rank of Kingpin. However, if you do the standard House Hlaalu and/or
Hortator quests, you will, if you get Orvas Dren's support, also become Kingpin.
In either case, other Camonna Tong members will be more civil to you, and give
you some information on Nevena Ules. If you never wanted to join but do want a
safe way to get rid of Orvas Dren, report his intentions to the Duke during the
final quest, and he will be swiftly taken care of.

This plugin is meant to work with Morrowind-only installations, without altering
the startup script or any NPC scripts (except Ranes Ienith, who has to be placed
in the game to be able to refer to him in scripts) so one of the many
workarounds is keeping added NPCs in the Clutter Warehouse cell until needed.
I'm not sure if it's all that compatible with existing savegames, although it's
safer than plugins that do change NPC scripts; my advice is, backup the savefile
before trying. This plugin will probably not be compatible with other plugins
that change the Ienith brothers, allow the player to join the Camonna Tong, or
add generic Camonna Tong dialogue. Slave-enhancing plugins might not be
compatible with the two slave-related quests, although I've taken care not to
change the slave script.

Two plugins that I'm working on, which will be compatible with this one: yet
another plugin to improve the slaves (by altering the slave script and adding a
lot of dialogue, requires Tribunal) and a companion plugin (requiring Tribunal
and Bloodmoon) that's taking forever to finish, but which already has the
potentially conflicting dialogue copied into it. This companion, a Redoran whose
parents have been killed as part of a House War, has to be adopted by a noble of
House Hlaalu to end the conflict, and Orvas Dren is a candidate since i. he is
obviously a noble of House Hlaalu, whatever his other affiliations and ii. this
is a way to drag him and his high-level guards (though they're low-level
compared to Bloodmoon characters) to Solstheim as meat shields. Obviously,
having a Redoran around the house means he has to clean up his act a little. The
effect of the plugins will be: the slaves that you can get as reward in one of
the quests will be more useful, and some quests will be a bit less nasty,
although none of them are very nasty anyway.

In this plugin, some characters are killed "offstage"; when you go to the cell
where they're supposed to be lying dead, you will instead see them topple and
die. This is a limitation of the game engine: living NPCs and creatures can't
die unless they are in the same cell as the PC, and will put their death on hold
until the PC is there to see it.