I have ran into a problem and I am sure I am overlooking the obvious. I found Marlek (leader of the Skyrim Bandits) far in the mountains and when i tried to kill him for his dragon armor he just goes unconscious (set as essential). Is there a quest update needed first to kill him or has another mod messed up his flag?

Thank you greatly for any help.

I had a similar issue the last time I faced him when he suddenly turned essential when he normally should have died and then he got up again - and after a couple of seconds the essential crown went away so I finally could kill him. He is set to be essential until faced by the player (so he won't be killed by others before that), but he's supposed to turn non-essential when the PC fights him. Seems something is up with the script - or that something else is interfering.

Haven't tried it but I guess you could open the console, click on him (so his name turns up on the top of the screen) and use the console command

SetEssential 0

to remove the flag.

Thank you so much Arkngt, this was exactly the problem. Came out of stealth and had no problems with him.

You're welcome. We'll look into it for the next release. Vyka has the same issue as she is using the same script. The problem is that the scripts seem fine AFAIK so not sure what's up really.