Two years ago a game I got into way back in 2004 came back. Or rather, I got back into it.

In 2012, it was the shutdown of an MMO called City of Heroes.

In 2020, during the beginning months of the pandemic, I found City of Heroes.  And I took the dive back in.

There was a ton of familiarity with the game, and a lot of new things as well.  But the thing I found the most enjoyable was base building.  I built whole towns and created a representation of Bloodborne.  And there was people who managed to create fantastic designs.  Everything from a starship to a pirate's cove.  Base building, aside from creating characters to role play or to create builds, became a big part of my return to City of Heroes.

One day, I decided that I'd already recreated Thradra N'Tir, a long time Skyrim character, in City of Heroes, I thought why not try to recreate an area that I loved exploring.  One of my favourite sections of Skyrim was always Falkreath.  The area held a lot of memories for me.  And it helped that it was often the first region you'd end up in when starting the game.  Okay, maybe second or third after Riverwoood and Whiterun.  But Falkreath was one of the Holds that I always loved.  I loved the area surrounded by trees and the mountains right there.  Even the people held a lot of interest.

So I decided to rebuild a close approximation to Falkreath in City of Heroes.

Jarl's longhouse

I first managed to grab an overhead map of Falkreath, just so I could capture the position of each building, and once those were in place, went about putting down markers and then just starting to build.

The blacksmith's

Each building did have it's own look and feel, but it also had a familiarity to what was built in Skyrim.  There's certain items that you can't kitbash in City of Heroes (and kitbashing is a lot of what you do when base building), for instance there's no thatched roof items, so you just have to deal with what you've got.

Deadman's Drink

I also put in a few easter eggs found in the game from the area itself.  For example, there is a dog on the road outside of Falkreath.  I also placed a dog sitting on the platform  that holds the blacksmith's shop.  That would be Meeko, who you meet at an abandoned shack near Dragon's Bridge.  You do have the opportunity later on to give Meeko to the blacksmith, as he was earlier trying to send you on a quest to get the aforementioned dog outside of Falkreath.  This dog would, of course, turn out to be Barbas.  The other half of Clavicus Vile.

The cemetery and the shrine to Arkay

The saw mill

There's also every well known spot to be seen in Falkreath.  The merchant's shack, the alchemist's hut, the barracks, the saw mill and even the cemetery. But there's also a few items that were placed thanks in part to the limitations of base building.  You can't put absolutely everything into the base exactly as you might want it.

The Warrior, Thief and Mage standing stones

One of many ruined watch towers that dot Skyrim

There's also items and locations that are placed in the base which harken to how close they are to Falkreath, such as the three standing stones which players will often run into right away after escaping Helgen.  Or, an abandoned watch tower now taken over by bandits or some other creature.  There's a lot more that I've added to the base which are more locations found outside of Falkreath, but I'll leave that for another post.

Which reminds me, next I'll be talking about some of the interiors of some of the buildings which I'm working on.

Stay tuned.