Hello,

I have been enjoying my first 120 hours but have hit a wall in this quest line. Serena will not let me start the quest. There are many posts on this bug but none of what I found will fix this.

I play through Steam and really like this game but this seems like part of the main quest line and not proceeding is like a show stopper. I am level 31 and have mostly heavy weaps and armor training; in case that matters.

Serena says there is an interloper I have to get rid of to continue. I have tried many things that did not work.

One side note is that I am seeing what may be a hint to this problem.

A few times when I returned to Whiterun I saw a message in the upper right corner that said, "your follower got tired of waiting and left you"; or something close to that. It is only up for 1-2 secs. My housecarl was in the breezehome and had not left. So that message is really odd. I also don't recall any NPC following me that did not report back to their quest location.

Have the game devs ever recognized this bug and posted a fix?

I have:

told my housecarl to leave

restarted the game and computer

reverted to a couple of saves back and repeated the bug

went looking for some bandits to kill (that post was really way out there in WTF land)

killed a traveller that jumped me on one meeting with Serena

searched the little tower nearby for some NPC (also a nutty post suggestion)

killed all the outside guards at the docks

bowed to the north star five times

bought a Big Mac

Nothing has helped.

Sorry for being long winded and thank you.

Happy Trails

According to the http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Chasing_Echoes, if you still have a follower...any follower...assigned, you can't advanced this quest. The follower has to be dismissed rather than told to wait somewhere.

I did try to dismiss my housecarl; that was my first fix attempt. She was the only follower I knew about. It did not help.

It would be great if I could list any followers and dismiss them from some dialog box. I am suspicious of a follower in an earlier quest that is glitched.

FIX FOUND

I found a respectable fix in a distant forum that is a response from Bethesda Support.

1. I went back to my save after first discovering this bug. To eliminate all the fooling around I had done.

2. Checked my playerfollwercount variable via the console (tilda key upper left) with "help playerfollowercount" ; but NO quotes.

It was 1.

3. I did NOT dismiss my housecarl. Lydia is in my Whiterun Breezehome house.

4. Standing along side of Serena at the castle near the boat I used the 't' time wait key and waited for 24 hrs THREE times in a row.

This posted the message "Your follower tired of waiting and leaves"

5. Talked to Serena and the interloper problem is gone and we went to the back door of the castle.

I checked the playerfollowercount again and it is still 1. But now Serena is following me and I can command her.

6. I took Serena back to Whiterun and into Breezehome to see Lydia was still there waiting.
Lydia would not take orders but said, "looks like you have someone with you". Lydia will wait for me to finish the quest.
My playerfollwercount is 1 even with both Serena following me and Lydia waiting.
Lydia has waited for me when I hired a thug from an Inn so I was suspicious of dismissing her as a requirement.
A hosuecarl is not a typical follower and NOT the reason for the interloper bug. It must be caused by a glitched quest.
Now, what quest in that huge list is unfinishable because the follower did not go back to somewhere?
Oh boy, I can hardly wait to find out the answer.

***************
Here is the text of the message from Bethesda Support I found after about 5 hours of web surfing.

"Hi,
Jon,

To remove followers from your service, use the in game wait function and set it to 24 hours. Do this 3 times to

wait 3 days. If you have any followers, they will leave you.

If you have any quest specific followers, you'll need to complete those quests first (For instance, "A Cornered

Rat" requires Esbern to follow you. This would count as a follower).

Best regards,
Greg A."
***************

Happy Trails,
GrumpyGnome

Thanks. !!!