Kane....very nice update and a great way to segue into the DG quest-line.

Oh yes...Andre Norton ( love..) .. the only thing that drag's me away from Skyrim... picking up a good book!

Thanks Areial! We had no real objective other than ingredient hunting, so this makes for a nice twist in the story.

@Andra and Serethil, I enjoyed those updates and even though I'm joining in on reading them pretty late, I'm looking forward to how they play out!

Kane, oh yeah, his boundless curiosity comes through in these latest entries. I like very much!

Benzava is quite an interesting character, Kane. I really enjoyed those entries - and liked it that he felt that he should check in with "family"! Off to Solitude.... Of the DB quest line, that was the only part I didn't mind. But it wasn't enough to keep me playing the one character I did the whole quest line on....

I have a feeling that someday his curiosity might end up being his downfall!

As evil at heart as he is, he does enjoy the company of his fellow assassin's and was quite pleased to stop in at home for a little while.

Aillyn Wynter-Wolf http://ailynwynterwolf.blogspot.com/2016/04/witnessing-pg-11.html pg 11

I have some pic's to share..they go well with the story, but won't load up atm... I'll add later I guess.

Areial, I loved the Witnessing, and all the tradition involved with it. So much better than a plain, over too fast, wedding in the temple at Riften. I could almost feel Kristof's impatience, though he held up well, lol. Lovely read!

Thank you Andra.....it's a mish-mash of a couple different IRL traditions, but I tried to keep what would actually work in a Skyrim. errr and I cut it short... cause ..yeah.

Yeah...I know.

Disaster has struck! Well, sorta... You know things have been strange with Nora, right? unexplained occurrences ans so forth. Well, last night (my time) she was at the imperial camp that lies between Morthal and Dawnstar on the Northern coast. The wind was blowing, and the snow was falling so thick and heavy that visibility was reduced to perhaps 20 or 30 feet at most even though the day was fairly bright. She'd been caught in a whiteout, and though it was early in the afternoon, she decided to stop in for a visit with the legion and wait for better weather.

There she was, crouched down warming her hands by the fire when her stomach started rumbling, reminding her that she hadn't eaten for many hours. Well, several hours... Okay, okay, it had been about two or three hours since breakfast. Anyway, her stomach started rumbling and legion soldiers were jumping to their feet with weapons drawn expecting to see a hungry bear attacking the camp.

Anyway, Nora reached in her pack and pulled out sweet roll and an apple, and began munching away at them like they were some kind of treat from the Gourmet. That much was normal, but after she finished eating them... well she sat there for a moment, then stood up, walked into that big fire. The soldiers and I were a bit amazed at that, but then she bent down and pulled a half-loaf of bread out of the fire, moved back to where she had been, and proceeded to eat it. She was very nonchalant, and acted as though everybody did that on a frequent basis.

Oddly, the weather cleared about mid-afternoon so she mounted up and headed toward Riverwood where she had been told to rent the attic room. On the way, she came to a fort full of bandits, and things got very strange. I thought she should dismount and fight on foot, but she refused to get off of her horse. So I thought fine, she could just use her bow... but it refused to work. Once she had an arrow nocked, first she couldn't release it, and then once it had been released, she couldn't nock another one.

A huge bandit highwayman carrying an executioner's hook ran to attack Nora while she was trying to figure things out. Hardly sproting, if you ask me, eh? Anyway it was time to make the horse run, but... he decided to stroll forward at an achingly slow walk. Here I am in a panic banging on my keyboard trying to get that nag to move, and... sure enough, it slowed to a miserable crawl while the highwayman kept swinging that ridiculously effective hooked blade.

Just as I thought Nora was going to run out of healing potions, the horse decided to run after all, and away we went... for about fifty feet, when Nora suddenly decided to jump off the horse and turn to counter-attack. The interesting thing is that she unequipped her bow and equipped her sword and shield all on her own. I didn't do a thing, and had nothing to say about it.

After using the last healing potion I thought she needed some distance to cast some healing on herself since she was pretty dinged up by now. She used whirlwind sprint, and... when she arrived at the end point of her shout, that damned bandit was right on her heels. During this whole fight she had been unable to hit him with a power blow of any sort, but this time, she turned around and about took his head off with a sword stroke followed by a power bash with the shield. Just in time, too...

Nora met up with Delphine and went to Kynesgrove to fight Salohknir (spl) , and that was the deadliest easiest dragon fight I've ever seen. Salohknir took of and immediately shouted at Nora... I thought it was just some kind of frost shout, but with no visible references, Nora's health continued to fall even after she was out of the area of effect. In fact, It fell so rapidly that her health bar was still shrinking even though she was continuously dual casting heal.

Finally the health stopped vanishing, and she got healed up but then we couldn't find Salohknir anywhere. I'd hear a huge crash while Nora was healing, but it couldn't be the dragon going down without being hit, right? Eh, not right. Nora and I finally found the dragon laying on his belly at the end of a long furrow he'd dug when he crashed. Nora ran up and started whaling away at him, but even though his health was almost untouched, he never made any attempt to hit back. He just lay there staring at us with a kind of pathetic look in his eyes.

After the dragon was dead and his soul devoured, it took about 4 minutes for Delphine to finally say anything but "By the Gods, look at that!"

Leaving Delphine to do whatever, we went to Bonestrewn ridge, and she had too put her nose on the wall and hold it there for several minutes before she could learn the word. It seems Nora's a slow learner on top of everything else... After going to High Hrothgar, it took about twenty minutes for her to learn "DA" and then have the graybeards get done shouting at her. I hae to say though that it's been... interesting playing Nora this way. Unfortunately, it just isn't tolerable. So, I've got to do something to get this fixed. SkyUI only occasionally allows me to access my mod's menus, and I get the feeling that SKSE is only working sometimes. I know for sure all the scripts are lagging.

I'm afraid this means a complete uninstall and reinstall of Skyrim and my mods ... and bye bye to my characters. I may try to recreate Bel and Nora, but you never know how that sort of thing comes out. I'm just hoping that it doesn't come down to a new hard drive though.

Oh...Dang Neil...that really svck's! Bel might be a bit easier to recreate,

Kurdan Gro-Olar http://kurdangro-olar.blogspot.com/2016/04/my-first-days-in-skyrim.html pg 3 ( pg 1 http://kurdangro-olar.blogspot.com/2016/01/hard-choices-pg-1.html & pg 2 http://kurdangro-olar.blogspot.com/2016/01/half-journey-pg-2.html To refresh or if you haven't read)

I downloaded http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/74565/?, it is not the most lore friendly mod, but well... I wanted something different for Kurdan... this fit's the bill)

Geeze these move fast. We're already on page 2.

Omigosh, so did I. I'm playing it off as my new character having horrible hallucinations. The tall blue people don't exist, Germain, calm down.

Good grief neil!! I'm sorry to hear it, I hope you figure out what's going on asap!

Areial, poor Kurdan definitely had a hard day!! lol

LoL... Kurdan figures if Nirn can have Tall Green people or Golden skinned or Purply/ Grey skinned people, why not Blue?

For now he just figures they might be from Atmora, until they tell him different. .. but I might RP it that way anyhow.


And hard!! This is a mod that makes having followers...nessessary. I also got Death Alternative. .and good thing too.

Kurdan sounds like he'll be a lot of fun to play (and I like the story too... )...

As for me, I don't think I'll be adding much in the way of new mods for a while. I've decided I'm going to get rid of the whole current profile (and all of my save games) I'm using for Nora and go back to an older one where everything was working. Maybe that will solve the problem without a full reinstall.

Ake...#72

Areial, that was EXCELLENT. Very well thought out, very well put together, very well told. A lot better than the silly ceremony in Riften.... heh. I liked the touch of the Forsworn chief too! And giggled at the boys trying to get away, "tails tucked".

Oh, LORDY, Neil.... Some of that sounds like lag. Like the game's lagging so hard that instructions are way behind, and when they finally catch up, you're watching the stuff going on and thinking whatintheHELL - because those instructions were so long back you forgot you'd given them.... I'd suggest you save the first actual save (after character generation and loadout into Skyrim) on each girl somewhere - you might be able to salvage them that far back. And gosh, I'm sorry....

Andy, I love it! Yes, Kerik wanted that land (well, I do on some characters too - only one right now though) - it's a REALLY lovely place.... I did get the "remove the icky altar and its necromancer" mod - but I gave the bandit one (those Ake and Kerik took care of) a pass, because the guy who made it deleted the stuff instead of disabling and doing stuff properly. You just can't delete skyrim.esm assets (well, you CAN - but it's kind of a bad idea....) And yeah, I've had issues with the bears in Falkreath Hold myself.... y'all need to start taking a pack horse along, or a handcart.... because all those bear pelts weigh TONS....

The Ravensdaughter:

Midnight in the Bee and Barb – darker than a mousehole in a dungeon. Good thing I’ve always had decent night vision. I crept through the silent inn, hoping I didn’t knock over anything. I finally made it to the Argonian innkeepers’ private rooms. I tapped once, then cracked the door open and slithered inside.

One of the Argonians stuffed something under the door – and then lit a lamp. It was so bright I almost couldn’t see – again. They had put something dark and heavy over the window to stop the light…. This was beginning to make me jumpy – I realized the Thieves’ Guild had a presence here, but from what I’d seen so far (not much really) they were fairly inept….

After I blinked the tears from my eyes, I looked over at Keerava. "Is all this really necessary?"

She hissed. "If you lived here you would not ask. You are wanting us to help you find someone - who doesn't want to be found, yessss? So. We must keep our heads down and our snouts clean here - the backing behind the Guild.... well, it is not something we want to deal with. We have a life, a decent life here - a home, a business. If this meeting becomes known, and this person you look for is found.... it would be obvious how and why. And then our heads would be parted from our necks. We do not care to chance that. We do appreciate that you found the gems for my ring. And so we do acknowledge that we owe this to you. But you MUST NOT let anyone know where you got the information! Is this agreed?"

I began to see that just being here for a day or so might have already done much damage. And I told them that. "Here, then, is a problem already. Regardless that you've told me nothing as yet, I'm a stranger here, and won't be staying after I find the mark. And no matter what you tell me or don't, if something happens.... it's going to be obvious.... not only who was the one who needed the information, but who gave it me."

They looked at each other. Talen-Jei shrugged. "There are others who bide here only for a few days, and came at about the same time as you. You do not have the "sore thumb" look - you are a Nord. A couple of the others are - not. So?"

"Well, I don't like depending on the truly innocent to cover up for me. But - well, I just need to find the man. There's some indication he's hiding out somewhere underneath the city. I'm not sure what that means...."

Keerava hissed. "The sewers of course. The Ratway. If you poke around the canol a bit...."

Ah. I bowed. "Thank you. I will see to that. But not for a few days. I will.... hmmm.... talk to the Jarl about a house perhaps." I waited while they doused the lantern, let my eyes adjust a bit, and then eeled my way back to my room. I had a lead.... but Esbern would have to wait until I managed to diffuse the danger to the Argonians.

I wandered into the Jarl's hall the next morning. Hmm. There were two men wrangling over the Empire it seemed. And there was a court mage, as usual. A very scatterbrained one.... Divines help me stay out of her reach! The Jarl sat in her chair chatting with an elf. I moved toward them, and gave the Jarl a courtly bow. I'd decided overnight how to play this. I hoped it went well....

Well done Sere! I like the way Veri is creating a cover for both the argonians and herself, very cool! I don't like the necro, but haven't done anything about him yet, and as for the stupid bandits, mostly my characters will take the back road into Falkreath just to avoid the respawning fools.

Serethil. ..very nice! I love how Veri thought about keeping the Inn Keepers safe....but it fits with her personality.


Andra. .. I always figured someone should have come up with a pack mule or donkey by now. .. it sure sounds like the two of them need one. Nicely done.

Andra... Nice. I love bears - for lunch... It seems to me that I usually run into spriggans rather than bears in that area though.

Serethil... Well done. I can certainly identify with not being able to see a thing at night in Skyrim, eh?

Areial... "Convenient Horses" makes horses into very convenient pack animals with limited or unlimited storage apacity as suits your playstyle. Many of my characters have a horse bu usually walk with the horse trailing along behind.

Finally, I started a new "Nora" and so far so good, but things are "different". No, not lagging issues so far, but things just not the same as usual. I don't know how it's goint to work out yet. I made a new thread called "What's Wrong With this Picture" and if you want a small diversion just for fun you can see what I mean by "different"...

BTW, I didn't delete Bel's saves. She's on a different profile with some different mods, so as of yet I have no evidence there is anything wrong with that profile.

Neil... good that Bel's save is on a different profile and should be fine!!

My Bard/ Assassin used the "Bards Saddle" from convenient horses and their IS a "hunters saddle" .. but it isn't the same....

Yeah, I've had that mod for a while now. I might keep to the mod's own followers to keep up with the "delirious dream" angle. With the way Kurdan was curb-stomped I expect I might need them regardless of where they come from.

@ Neil - I take it to mean you're using Mod Organizer or Wrye Bash? I always find Mod Organizer a lifesaver when it comes to this sort of thing. I've actually had to restart Aza several times due to script lag and other awful things in the past. (I think the current playthrough might be attempt #4?) Makes reinstallation a breeze. I wish it were just as easy for Oblivion. It actually had the opposite effect for me. :T Anyways, glad to hear things are mostly stable for this new attempt and I hope it doesn't "infect" Bel as well.

@Serethil - It's been a while but I always wondered how the innkeepers knew about Grandpa Alzheimers being in the Ratway. I guess it was for an out of the way, easy option to progress the quest (outside of going into the Ratway yourself).

FAKE EDIT: Oh, Keerava pretty much leads you to the "look around the Ratway yourself" option. In that case that's an interesting spin you gave it. Weaving in two miscellaneous quests like that is pretty smart. Better than involving the Thieves Guild, imo.

@Andra - I actually had a different problem with Lakeview in that things would never despawn. Ever. Maybe I never left for enough days or something, but I'd always find wolf corpses there and the occasional worshiper.

I blame my inability to make completely new characters on this tendency. :V

Yout might, I'm using them (Sky standalone uniques) because it suits his RP atm, but if they get too beat up then I'll switch to the mod's followers. I think I have a good mix though. If Azul, actually uses the heal other spell, that would be a good thing, otherwise, the mods description said one of its followers would act as "medic".

Ake...#73

From the previous thread.



---Last Seed, 26th, 4E 201---

Life is filled with oddities. One day, you're out fighting the Stormcloaks in a fort that the Empire must capture. Moments later, you find a pretty sword said to belong to a Legion Praefect that fell in combat defending this place. The cherry on top? My father, the consul of Chorrol, bought Proudspire Manor on my behalf, behind my back. It's a mighty fine house, with a pool and more. The fact that I'm considered for thaneship in Haafingar notwithstanding, of course.


And then, I just remembered that this is not where I left off last time I was writing. But hey: I successfully defended Whiterun from Stormcloak and dragon alike. The camp leader chose well. I should give him my gratitude one of these days.


Also... what's a dragonborn? Is it... is it an hybrid like the Bretons? Is it a bipedal dragon? I mean, I don't have any draconic features on me...


What is up with my life...


Note: I used Consul instead of Count because of the Imperials' Ancient Rome influences, by the way. As for the sword, it's the Imperial Captain sword from Billyro's newest bundle. I use Proudspire Manor Extended, hence why it has a pool.