While wandering the Ascadian Isles region east of Vivec looking for something else, I happened across a wrecked slave ship. Inside the ship there was an NPC, Ranas Alethri, who agreed to follow me to Ebonheart and, on arrival there, give me the key to free the slaves from the ship. Trouble is, once we get out of the ship onto the beach, he just stands there and doesn't follow. Using the CS, I verified that Ranas and the ship are added by Brother Juniper's Twin Lamps mod. Does anyone who's played this mod, or was involved in its creation, know what the problem is?

Also, when I checked out the PES comments on this mod, I found some which seemed to indicate that this quest (freeing the slaves from the ship) is one which a quest-giver NPC will assign me in the normal course of events, and if I do it too soon (by stumbling on it as I did) there are several quests which are supposed to happen earlier that I won't be able to do. Is this true? Having already spoken to Ranas, if I now just walk away and leave him there until I'm told about the ship, will I be able to get the earlier quests?

I can look inside the plugin to try to figure it out ... What does the console command:
GetJournalIndex TL_Shipwreck
return? If he's already agreed to follow, it looks like it should be 45 or higher.

If you talk to Ranas, does he have a topic "travel together"? If not, does the console command
AddTopic "travel together"
add it to his topic list? If it does, you might be able to get him to follow using that topic.

In the worst case, you could probably finish off that quest and get the key and secret from Ranas by getting him to Ebonheart (using the spell "Command Humanoid" or the console), at which point, if you are close to him he should force greet you, and give you the stuff.

I can look deeper if none of that works out.

I've gotten the journal entry that says he'll follow me (#45; I checked myself using the CS). I get the travel together topic and used it, and he said he'd follow. I also tried the Command Humanoid spell, and he still didn't follow.

Did you use a custom Command Humanoid spell from a spellmaker? The standard Command Humanoid spell is for up to level 5, and Ranas is level 6.

It was the standard level 5 Command spell I used earlier. But just now, I tried it again with Command of the Third Corner, which affects a random level from 5 to 25. I tried it twice, so it almost certainly should have affected Ranas at least one of those times. But no, he still just stood there when I walked away.

I also used the console command GetCurrentAIPackage on him, both after casting the spell and after using the "travel together" topic once again. Both times it returned a value of 0, which means he wasn't set to follow me. Could there be a script somewhere which prevents him from following if I didn't get the quest legitimately? It isn't the script attached to him; I checked that.

Still better to use a custom spell to be sure. You could try the console command
tl_ranas->aifollow player 0 0 0 0
If that doesn't work, then yes, there probably is a script interfering. It looks like it would be the script on Zeerul Dai, the argonian slave on the shore outside the ship. When you got out of the ship, there was supposed to be a fight or something with the slaves there, and the journal should have been advanced past 45. That's why it's important to know what the GetJournalIndex returned. It looks like the quest can go a couple ways, the slaves can kill Ranas, or you take Ranas to Ebonheart. I think you can just end the quest by killing Ranas yourself, taking the key, and freeing Zeerul Dai.

Or you could just use the console to teleport Ranas to Ebonheart. Find a nice spot in the exterior cell "Ebonheart", then get your X, Y, Z from the console
Player->GetPos X ... etc.
then you can teleport Ranas to that position:
[b]tl_ranas->positioncell X,Y,Z,0,"Ebonheart"
Get up close to him, he should forcegreet you and give you the slave key.

I've done some poking through the CS, and I think I have it figured out. It is the script on Zeerul Dai which is stopping Ranas from following; it gives him an AIWander command and starts combat with the other slaves. Problem is, the other slaves are disabled unless the quest was given normally; the journal entry which you get at the start is the one which enables the slaves. So Ranas just stands there, neither fighting nor following.

I can talk to Zeerul to stop the fight, and then Ranas follows me.

The shipwreck, and all the slaves except Zeerul, are disabled until the first journal entry; if Zeerul had also been disabled, none of this would have happened. This should be a lesson to the makers of quest mods--scripting should be carefully designed so that the stages of quests either can't be done out of order, or can be done out of order without messing anything up. A good playtest should try to do things out of their intended order to see what breaks.

Warning to anyone playing this mod: if you encounter Zeerul Dai before you're told to look for him, don't speak to him.