Dar-Ma doesn't need to worry. Followers don't need to breathe. Nor do enemies, as we've seen in a number of screen-shots.

ghastley, I had to laugh when I saw Ghorbash’s game-issued inventory. He spawned with a necklace of waterbreathing! Dar-Ma is level 7 now, so hopefully by the time they hit Riften via Darkwater Crossing she will be level 14 for Deepest’s quest.

Ghorbash the Iron Hand so far favors his bow, so he is a great guard for Dar-Ma. Vigilance the war dog charges in like a true Nord while Ghorbash shoots over him. Dar-Ma was always worried that Erik would cut Vigilance in half with his big axe.

In Karthwasten Dar-Ma met one of my own NPCs who I always forget is there because she is usually sandboxing out of sight. Denelle Jeline! Denelle is just as sweet as Dar-Ma. The two hit it off immediately and Denelle decided to lend her bow to Dar-Ma’s endeavor. Denelle is a merchant without a shop in Karthwasten, so a new trade caravan is a great opportunity for her. Denelle is an archer-mage, though the mage part doesn’t happen as an NPC because she is an illusionist. Still, Dar-Ma plans to buy her some robes when they get to Whiterun.

They’re swinging around Lake Ilinalta through Falkreath Hold to get there. Dar-Ma wants to make contact with South Shore settlement (where my NPC versions of Alesan Mikkesson and good ole boy Otto live) and look for more nightshade. She’s working on a special new blend of tea.

I didn’t realize it until I looked Ghorbash up in the uesp, but Dar-Ma barely got him to come with her. She has the minimum Speech level to convince him, and she would never have tried to bribe or brawl him if he declined. Whew!

Love your Dar-ma tales, Grits. Too many things to comment on, but one of my faves was the fact that you added she was "chased by wolf, chased by Forsworn, chased by a mudcrab...

This post has been edited by Renee: Sep 11 2015, 12:28 AM

I am just waiting for Dar-Ma to be chased by Chases-The-Fish!

Lildereth and Jerric are in freezing, elf-hating Windhelm in Lil’s game. She has never been in better spirits. Maybe it’s the company, or she could be tipsy on Resist Frost potions. Lil has just chatted with grumpy old Oengul War-Anvil and agreed to get a Nord relic for him. I am amazed that she likes him. I suppose she respects his loyal heart, if not his politics.

In Dar-Ma news, Gorbash the Iron Hand mysteriously abandoned the group somewhere on the way to Lakeview Manor. Lakeview is the house of Clan Hammer-Helm in Dar’s game, populated by my NPCs and Jerric’s dog Ulfe. Ulfe wanders a lot due to me making and fiddling with her when I had no idea what I was doing (as opposed to now when I just know I’ve done something wrong ), and Dar’s mission was to bring Ulfe to Jerric at Breezhome. It took three trips to get Ulfe all the way to Breezehome from Lakeview, and when they finally got there and Dar-Ma told her to stay (sort of, it was mod dialog), Ulfe turned around and headed for the gate. Dar-Ma is done trying to corral that dog. Jerric is going to have to keep track of her himself.

The party is presently on the road just outside Darkwater Crossing. Dar-Ma hired an Argonian guard named something like Haj-Meer to replace the missing Gorbash, and he has been a good addition to the caravan. Another one of my NPCs (Crook Tooth of the blue feathers) lives in Darkwater Crossing, and I am excited for Dar-Ma to meet him. Also, Derkeethus! Woo!

Freezing in elf-hating Windhelm – that’s a familiar feeling. Poor Lil needs an enchanted toe ring.

Too bad about Gorbash. Heh, moving Ulfe around seems no easier than herding cats! I’m sure Dar-Ma will make friends in Darkwater Crossing – and she could come out of there with more tails & scales for her little team?

Sounds good, Grits. Just reading what's going on with your is whetting my appetite for Skyrim. Been craving this game latley. I mean lately.

Acadian, Jerric grins all over when he thinks of Buffy and her toe ring.

Renee, I am enjoying your Oblivion stories so much I hope you won’t completely migrate north for a while! But I know what you mean, as much as I love Oblivion, Skyrim is the only game I really think about playing when I’m doing other things.


Lildereth had a busy time between Falkreath and Whiterun Hold getting everyone settled, but that’s done for now. Thanks to a comment Acadian made I tried out JK’s Skyrim and loved it, so now the Bannered Mare has a lovely outdoor covered dining area from that mod. I used My Home Is Your Home to give the crew their daily schedules between Breezehome and the places where they work during the day, plus now they are all supposed to gather at the Bannered Mare’s porch every evening for dinner. I hope that works out.

Lil had to part ways with Jerric for a time to get this done due to no multiple follower mod in this set of games. Once she got back to Whiterun she looked for him in the Dragonsreach dungeon, but there was no Jerric in his usual cell with the mead barrels. (Jerric has a deal with the Whiterun guards. I’m not sure of the details other than mead.) There was a Nord guy in a Jerric-like pose (sprawled naked on the floor) in another cell. That gave her a shock because he was dead. Fortunately he was not Jerric.

Eventually the Nord turned up with as usual no explanation and no idea that the elf was stressed over him. The three (Jerric, Lildereth, Ulfe) spent the afternoon wandering around town and pretty much doing nothing. When they visited Darnand they found him taking some alone time, no doubt to get away from Farengar. Lil didn’t impose on his solitude. Hopefully they will see him tonight at the Bannered Mare for dinner.

Here’s a screen of Lil meeting Jerric’s uncle in Falkreath. All I could think was, “What do you want, little elf?”

Grits, love the pictures! So glad you like JK's Whiterun. Buffy can so identify with Lil - In the wandering around town shot, she's barely taller than those two kids in the shot. And 'What do you want, little elf?' is the bane of Buffy's existence in Skyrim.

For reference, as you know, Imperials are 1.0 height (as are vanilla Bosmer maidens). Kids are 0.80 and Nords are 1.03. Buffy is 0.88. What height is Lil? The reason I ask is that Lil and Buffy look to be almost the same height.

Thank you, Acadian! I think that Lil and Buffy are very close in height. I made an adjustment in my personal tweaks mod so that Lil and her sister wood elves should be .91, and using Showracemenu confirms that Lil is 1.0 of her race’s height. However the Getscale console command returns .95 with a base of .86 which would be .817, which I think would be a lot smaller than she looks. I have no idea where those numbers come from. The Racemenu mod allowed me to adjust various weapon scales downward to make her bow look less huge, so maybe that’s it?

Anyway, in the game she looks between Abiene and the kids in height, though with her minimum weight she has to be careful that the kids don’t bowl her over. I’m sure Buffy can relate! Lil completely disappears behind the lowest point of Jerric’s shoulder. As her NPC companion self she frequently tells Jerric, “I’m right behind you,” which is nice because when she’s following he can’t hear or see her.

I’ve noticed that screenshots make people look taller or shorter depending on where they are in relation to the camera and the camera’s angle. Here’s a picture of Lil fresh from the road talking to the Dragonsreach children from one side and from the other side and from a short distance. Most of the Jarl’s children are little jerks, so she has not bothered to get to know them. She has also not bothered to threaten that she will put them over her knee if they sass her again because frankly she couldn’t. Lil needs to borrow Buffy’s line about turning them into chickens!

That “What do you want” line does annoy Lil. She is usually fresh from some adventure that made Skyrim safer with no help from any guards, and she just wants a warm bath, a soft bed, and possibly a goblet of wine. Certainly nothing from whatever random Nord chose to grumble at her!

I can agree with GetScale giving bogus results. When I was developing Hulk Out! it took a lot of fiddling to make sure the player was properly restored to their initial size when the power expired, and I learned to ignore GetScale and stand my test characters in front of something that would act as a gauge. Admittedly I had more factors coming in: race scale, race menu override and then Hulk effect on top, but the numbers I saw in the console rarely matched any of them.

I also got the impression that just changing race with everything else set to 1 would result in a height change (if the races had differing heights) without a change of scale being reported. If you altered Bosmer Female race record to make them all shorter, they'd probably register as "1".

This post has been edited by ghastley: Sep 25 2015, 06:01 PM

Thank you, ghastley! I was still scratching my head over the GetScale results, and now I can just forget about them.

I have the same impression about racial height and individual scale. I had to do some fiddling with my NPC followers after I changed the racial heights so that NPC Lil would not be .91 scale of the new .91 Bosmer female height, but she would be 1.0 of it.

Grits, I too have noticed that screenshots are very size sensitive. Foreground = bigger, background = smaller; edges of the shot = bigger, center of the shot = smaller. Buffy will yell at me if I take a side shot of her while she is crouching while on the edge of the shot and facing toward the center. That puts her rump at the extreme edge of the shot and she complains that it makes it look too big.

Holy Cow, I never realized Lildereth was so tiny!







That is one HUGE dog!







This post has been edited by mALX: Sep 25 2015, 07:04 PM

Nice pics of Lildereth, especially the one where she's standing between two big Nords. She looks really good, both in Skyrim and in Cyrodiil. She made a right decision about avoiding Jarl's children, they are annoying brats.

"There was a Nord guy in a Jerric-like pose (sprawled naked on the floor) in another cell. That gave her a shock because he was dead. Fortunately he was not Jerric."

I didn't know there's a dead prisoner in Whiterun cells. Glad it wasn't Jerric, though.

Lil is tiny!

Maybe after she turns the Jarl's brats into chickens, she'll kill them and reanimate them. No wait, that is what Serana would do!

This is pretty neat, right?

Persephone returned to Skyrim today. She crossed the border from Cyrodiil somewhere north of Pale Pass, and found herself in the wilds near Fort Neugrad. The first place she discovered was Southfringe Sanctum. The spellswords she found there were anything but friendly. Nor were the bandits pretending to be Legionaries she came across on the road outside. Persephone had to use her dislike button.

This post has been edited by SubRosa: Sep 29 2015, 01:41 AM

I meant to say something on the other places you posted this screen - I love the way you took this shot through those tall grasses; the color - excellent shot!

Dar-Ma got a letter from her grateful Argonian friends! (ghastley's marvelous Argonian Hearthfires mod!) Next up she will go check out the site. She’s pretty excited about building her own place, which in her mind means all of them building everyone’s place. Dar-Ma likes to share.

I’ve switched to playing her the way SubRosa suggested using Calm and Healing Hands most of the time. It suits her much better, excellent call! She was scared to death by the Dwarven constructs in Avanschnitzel, but she led her team through anyway. Poor Vigilance gets the worst of it wearing only his fur, but heavily armored Haj-Meer gets in close and takes a lot of the pressure while Denelle, Crook Tooth, and Derkeethus shoot the crap out of everything. Including Dar-Ma who gets in close to heal her fighters. Then afterward she sweetly hands everyone their arrows back.

Derkeethus is pretty awesome. When he decides to get in there with his axe and shield, it always seems like it’s a good time to do that. Dar-Ma rarely gets targeted and overwhelmed in fights. She carries a shield just in case. (A pretty one, of course!)