My plan is to create an NPC companion creature that transforms when prompted in dialogue. I'm assuming that the best way to go about it is to create two different creatures for the different forms, and then use GetPos and enable/ disable. Maybe even use some fancy vfx nonsense. I've never done a script like this before, though, and I don't have a reference. Am I heading in the right direction here? Or is there a better way?

if you wanrt it to work in interiors you probably would need placeitem/placeatme and setdelete instead of position/positioncell/setpos, as you can't get/use the current interior cell name with standard scripting (you could use MWSE, but if you are not experienced with standard scripting it may be even more difficult)

Yeah, MWSE is probably beyond me right now lol. How do you use items to control NPCs? Is it similar to how mods allow the player to pick up and place mannequins?

*okay*

So I'm looking at these commands here http://www.uesp.net/morrow/editor/mw_cscommands.shtml#placeatme and here http://www.uesp.net/morrow/editor/mw_cscommands.shtml#setdelete , and I think that I pretty much get these two. I really like this page; it even gives tips for how to make them work well. I looked at the placeitem page as well, but I'm still not really sure how that one applies to this situation.

placeitem may be more precise than placeatme if destination is not "safe" (e.g. on the air), it needs some support variables/extra code to get object coordinates though e.g.

float x1
float y1
float z1
float a1
set x1 to GetPos X
set y1 to GetPos Y
set z1 to GetPos Z
set a1 to GetAngle Z
PlaceItem itemId x1 y1 z1 a1