Does anyone know of a way to find Illia (mage from darklight tower) after shes been forcefully dismissed via other quetslines? She had half a dozen or so of my Daedric artifacts, and many other valuable things as ive had her for about 45lvls (few hundred hours of play) and she doesnt go back to darklight, shes not in any of my homes, and im lost...

I heard of a bug from awhile ago, but was hoping it had been addressed?

She is one of the really bugged followers, after dismissing her once she will not give the dialogue to become your follower again, if you are on PC, there is a fix (though I do not know it as I'm on console), if you are on console, your only hope is to reload, or failing that, look around for her and unfortunately kill her for your stuff, this is unfortunately one of those really annoying glitches which Bethesda has not addressed. Here is the UESP article, see bugs: http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Illia

EDIT: If you are on PC, the solution is in the bugs section

http://uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Illia

That has some stuff addressing your issue. Try to see if you can get to her using any of those solutions.

Edit: Posted this right as the guy above me did so I didn't notice that he already said what I was going to.

If you're on PC, download the unofficial Skyrim patch. It fixes this issue right up.

From what I hear, once she is dismissed, it is impossible to re-acquire her as a follower due to some bug.

She should return to the tower where you found her. I don't know if she'll be at the bottom where you first encountered her or at the top where you defeated her mother.

She might take some time getting there and I suppose it's best to wait for thirty days in another cell before you travel there, so the tower cell can reset.

If you're on console you'll likely be unable to re-aquire her as a follower. You can try getting your stuff back through pickpocketing if you don't want to kill her. Due to a bug there is a moment where you can pickpocket anything from an NPC if you time it correctly while they are paralysed.

Good luck

Reload and make her a steward if you need another companion. I think she should be back at keep on the roof. Good luck.

She's bugged if your on console (PC can use console commands to work around her bugs, or the unofficial patch). If you have anything important on her, then you'll need to reload an earlier save to get the stuff you gave her back. She's an average follower anyway, The Khajitt mage is a better follower to use because he continues to scale with you, although the only downside is that he's not as pretty as Illia.