Blacklight
Blacklight is the greatest city in northwestern Morrowind, Julan-Shar region, and the historical capital of House Redoran. Built in a crater of uncertain origin, the city crawls up its sides while the grand council building draws eyes on an isolated cliff in the middle of the bay.
In recent years, the Redoran Council has moved to temporary quarters in Ald-Ruhn on Vvardenfell. The economic power of Blacklight has waned little in their absence, however.
Scamp built our most recent version of Blacklight in 2011 based on Why's concept. (There were two other prior attempts at building Blacklight, but neither of them were anywhere close to modern Tamriel Rebuilt standards.) This version is not workable from a technical standpoint and substantial revisions must be made.
Issues With Current Implementation
The current implementation of Blacklight by Scamp is beautiful and very much loved by many Tamriel Rebuilt developers and fans. Its overall look and structure will be very much retained. However, it is unescapable that a substantial update is needed, for the following reasons:
- Performance: The biggest issue is that the current version is simply unplayable from a performance standpoint. Each of the exterior cells in the city includes almost 1200 object references, far more than the worst part of Old Ebonheart, which is an infamous performance sink that we do not want to replicate. For reference, Narsis city references never go above half of that number.
- Spikes: The spikes do not have bespoke models, meaning that they are cobbled together from a mish-mash of rocks that looks quite unsightly beyond the most cursory glance. Moreover, from a design standpoint, the current spikes may be a little too edgy. It is very difficult to rationalize their existence and the fact that they are so pronounced makes it even harder.
- Docks: The docks are made using Redoran interior meshes that are clearly not meant for the purpose, so they use way too many references and clash with the exterior architecture pieces. A redone docks area will need substantial asset work and will look much different.
Plan
The current (tentative) plan is to re-implement Blacklight from scratch using bespoke assets, taking heavy inspiration from Scamp's work. A concept for a re-implementation is seen in the art by be-a-stranger, attached in the top part of the page. Focus points are de-emphasizing the rock spikes somewhat, remaking and expanding the docks, adding an arena, and generally spreading out the buildings in order to improve performance. The Redoran set doesn't work well being all squished-together.
On the spikes, it is important to tie them into the region somewhat more and to provide an explanation. There have been ideas that the entire Julan-Shar should have spikes here and there, all pointing towards the city. An idea for why the spikes came to be is that tey were formed in the battle between Wulfharth and the Tribunal described in the Arcturian Heresy. The Redoran capital being the site of a victory against a powerful force fits the Redoran very well.
The current (tentative plan is also to move the city further north in order to correspond to its location on most TES maps, along with the whole Julan-Shar region. This would make Anthology Solstheim or equivalents a hard dependency for Tamriel Rebuilt.
Lack of Foreign Influence
Given that the settlements in Velothis generally do not have a heavy Imperial population, Blacklight, too, should be almost entirely a Dunmer city. It should not have a "foreign quarter" or anything like that. That being said, Blacklight should still be a major port; its "merchant district" which sees a lot of foreigners just shouldn't extend far beyond the harbor.
Development History
In the 2010s, Tamriel Rebuilt motioned to rename the capital Baan Malur, reasoning that it was a logical followup to TES3's decision to rename Arena's procedural generated names to handcrafted conlang names more consistent with the setting they'd built. The renaming of Blacklight was still a contentious decision, as its name is well-substantiated in various in-game books and dialogue. Moreover, the pre-development concept map depicts the city of Blacklight alongside a variety of otherwise renamed Dunmeri cities. A vote was held after a long series of debates, the verdict of which solidified Blacklight's name in TR canon.
