Today In Skyrim (Spoilerific), Like the other one, but with added spoilers!!! Options

[Renee]

Tirdas, 1:46 PM, Heartfire 23rd, 4th Era 201



"Helgen. Destroyed by a dragon. Haad to believe, isn't it?"

"Would you look at that!"

"What happened here? So the rumors are true. Helgen was indeed destroyed by a dragon. But I haven't seen any dragons about, have you?"

Brelyna shrugs while Hugh Mann pouts. Hugh is the latest addition to their group; a warrior with typical warrior talents. Isaac and Brel had taken him into their little group after Sir Hugh insisted. We don't need another Isaac had argued, and Brel had not agreed. Just because Isaac could now summon basic draugrs did not mean he and Brel would now be one-hundred percent safe. There were all sorts of dangers out there, dangers which the pair had only begun to hear about a few days prior.

Helgen lies deserted, while Isaac and his two comrades trek right through to Falkreath..

"In just a few hours, I can crawl under some furs."

"Don't mess anything up while you're here."



This post has been edited by Renee: Feb 20 2016, 08:30 PM

[Grits]

Oh my gosh, I can hear Brel and Sir Hugh giving their lines. I’m glad that the warrior insisted on coming along. I suspect fights will get lively.

[ghastley]

I decided to check out the combination of a follower and a summoned housecarl, so Mignonette has rescued Illia from Darklight Tower. That gives us two-handed, archer, and mage styles in the group, as M herself is using an enchanted Ebony Battle-axe even though she's putting slightly more points in Magicka than Health or Stamina to keep her housecarl using a bow.

Illia is over-fond of Ice Storm, and frequently blows already dead foes out of reach before they can be looted. She also wears a Frost Cloak and obscures a lot of everyone's view with the bright cloud around her. I was getting that effect with Sudi the Archer's male housecarl using Fireballs and Flame Cloak, too.

However, if you give Illia a circlet to wear, she takes off her hooded cloak, so I may keep her just for the eye-candy.

Heidi and Aranxa are also still running around with their housecarls, and checking out how they level. Each game is around 20-30 hours and about the same in levels.

Aranxa is a Dremora herself, and I've been trying out new hairstyles, that could possibly get merged into DHF later. The latest is a long ponytail (Koala from the KS Hairdos mod) and there's a HDT version with havok physics that lets it swing around as you run, so I tried that one. It has some nice features, like if you swing around quickly, the hair may end up over her shoulder. However, I can't call it much more realistic than the rigid hair. It may be possible to adjust the parameters to make it move better, but I have other work that's more important. I have to modify the hair mesh to clear the horns, and my attempt to do that broke the physics set-up, anyway. The static version works nicely, but trying to copy over the other blocks in NifSkope left it hovering a few inches over her head.

This post has been edited by ghastley: Mar 8 2016, 02:24 AM

[Renee]

Whoa nelly, a dremora with a ponytail. Wicked!

Ah, the spoilers thread. I don't have to dance around occurances here. Bjorn Tubewyyld is returning to Riften from Whiterun. He was supposed to do a couple Thieves Guild quests, but only managed to get one done: the poisoning of one of Honningbrew's vats. The other quest involves good old-fashioned thievery: stealing some sort of statue from House Grey-Mane. Only problem is he sucks as a thief. Keeps getting caught. KD He also can't pick locks very well yet, and I'm pretty sure the statue lies behind the one locked door in Grey-Mane's house.

Yeah, Bjorn is worse than Kahreem. Kahreem may make a lot of blunders, but at least he ultimately gets jobs done.

[Grits]

ghastley, I’m late to the party, but I love that ponytail!

Renee, I’m in delicious anticipation of some of the TG quests with Bjorn.

[Renee]

Morndas, 9:54 AM, 8th of Heartfire, 4th Era 201



Bjorn Tubewyyld

Level: 11

Days Passed: 22
Days Jailed: 0

Location: Solitude
Current weapons[/u]: iron battleaxe, Bow of Soul Snaring

Bjorn Tubewyyld emerges from Radiant Raiments, looking good and feeling fine. He literally feels fine because he's wearing the fine clothes he'd just bought. They were an expensive buy, but he's going to need these clothes.

He'd managed to swim to Solitude the day before. Unsure of which road actually goes to this town, he'd merely swam to it, after seeing its spires and windmill from a distance. Being a Nord, he'd felt the cold after getting out of water, but hadn't been slowed or bothered by it much.

And now that he's here, and blew even more gold on a room at the Winking Skeever, he got lucky, and had managed to find the slimy Argonian the Thieves Guild had been cautioning him about. But this Argonian, whose name is Gulum-Ei, had been straight-up, and easy to approach. Bjorn's initial attempts to persuade Gulum had gone no where, but Golum-Ei had hinted that if Bjorn would break into the Blue Palace and steal a case of a special beverage, he would tell Bjorn what Bjorn wants to know.

.... still though, one can't trust a slimy, hookah-smoking liazard. Brynjolf and Mercer had both emphasized that Gulum-Ei cannot be trusted, and should be kept under watch, and Bjorn isn't disagreeing with this.

Tirdas, 1:33 AM
Bjorn finds the case of Firebrand Wine wanted by Gulum-Ei. This case was so easy to find, Bjorn had walked by it at least 4x. We assumed it'd be locked up somewhere, so he had been trying to pickpocket a key from somebody. No keys, but Bjorn had managed to pickpocket plenty of other useful items; mostly lockpicks. Why would almost the entire staff at the Blue Palace go around carrying lockpicks? *shrugs* Dunno. But now Bjorn's got a half-dozen new ones.

2:41 AM
Gulum-Ei is sufficiently pleased when Bjorn brings him the stolen case of alcohol, but Gulum only gives vague information about "a lady" who tried to negotiate the sale of Goldenglow Estate. So as his superiors had suggested, Bjorn now follows the lizard, to see where he goes.

This post has been edited by Renee: Mar 27 2016, 05:55 PM

[Lopov]

I enjoyed this quest, I still remember it as if I did it yesterday. Bjorn has advantage of being a Nord - if he doesn't know which road to take, he'll swim to his direction.

[Acadian]

Ghastley – When someone describes Aranxa as the naked Dremora with a bright red pony tail, there are probably very few responses of, “Which one?”

Renee –
Fun to follow Bjorn’s thiefy stuff!
’..at the Winking Skeever, he got lucky..' – Why does this instantly make me think of the lovely and talented Lisette?
’... one can't trust a slimy, hookah-smoking liazard.’ – Spoken like a true Nord!

[ghastley]

Ghastley – When someone describes Aranxa as the naked Dremora with a bright red pony tail, there are probably very few responses of, “Which one?”

More likely "She has a ponytail?"

[ghastley]

Currently trying to recreate my Freija character from Oblivion, the immortal one who challenged the CoC for his Arena title. She's one of the few humans who would have survived, and is also a Nord, so she might want to come "home" to Skyrim.

She arrived at Gweden wearing a grey robe, and apparently unarmed, as she relies on conjuring a bound sword and skimpy armour (enchanted with a shield spell to make up for lack of coverage) with a single custom spell. So now I need the same spell for the Skyrim game.

It will probably have to be a mixture of "bound weapon" with a modified werewolf/vampire/hulk transformation script, so I can get it all to happen together. My first attempt left her unarmed, as there are problems with trying to use leveled lists for bound items. It looks like I'll have to code the weapon selection inside the script, but then the sheathing of the weapon won't dispel the rest.

Meanwhile, I'm playing her without the spell, and manually swapping her equipment, to make sure all the meshes etc. are good. Once the spell works, I'll probably publish the code as a resource, rather than make a mod of my character using it.

Edit: It's generally working, with progressive magical resist damage supplementing the fixed and minimal amount from the outfit, and a levelled Greatsword that self-equips on her back. The last thing I need to do is to allow the spell to toggle back to a robe on demand, instead of having to wait for it to time out. I decided not to attempt the dispel-on-sheath like the bound weapons, as she'd want to use the armour with a bow for times when she can't reach her foes. That should just need a global variable to track the state.

I took a couple of screenshots, but forgot to put them on the web server. They're there now. In her robe, and in her armour.

This post has been edited by ghastley: Apr 2 2016, 09:24 PM

[Renee]

Ha ha je, she conjures some skimpy armor, nice! I love the robes-to-skimpy armor transformation.

I had a character on Xbox who could do something similar. She could switch from foul-smelling necro-robes to ordinary town clothes. I didn't have mods 'cause this was on Xbox, but I could make the change happen in blink of an eye with voice commands.

This post has been edited by Renee: Apr 3 2016, 12:04 AM

[ghastley]

Freija, my immortal Nord from the Oblivion mod, has just reached that annoying level where she's meeting Draugr Deathlords that have the Disarm shout, and she's not yet at a level where it fails. Carrying a reserve weapon, and searching for the dropped ones is getting tiresome.

Then I remember that her weapon is part of her summoned outfit, and she can just dispel and re-cast it all. D'oh!

(Of course, she's really vulnerable in the period where she's reverted to her robe, so she's doing a lot of strategic withdrawals.)

This was all just as I was thinking her outfit was getting OP. The Disarm shout changes all that, and it's looking about right. She is at level 25 and has 240-ish of armour equivalent, no magic resist apart from her Nord racial one for frost. Her summoned weapon is now an Ebony Greatsword of Leeching, and her Two-Handed skill has reached 88.

I've taken her collecting Dragon Priest masks, although she can't complete the set without doing the CoW and Main quests. Those quests seem like the sort that a Nord would do. She won't take sides in the Civil War, as neither really appeal to her. She bought Proudspire, but leaves Jordis at home, and has also made herself a wagon, which she hasn't yet used (no horse). Delphine is still waiting for her to start the Embassy quest. Lydia is still at Dragonreach.

Walking around unarmed in a grey robe without any followers is not attracting the bandits as much as you'd think, and she has more encounters with the Hired Thugs from the Khajiit Heathfires mod than anything else. She'd really like to meet a few Thalmor assassination squads, but they're always rare.

[Acadian]

Ghastley - Just noticed you edited in a couple shots of Freija. Heh, I didn't notice her face in her 'armor' shot, but the gray robe really showcases her pretty face. Every time a DrugLord shouts at Buffy, she's grateful for her mystic bow, which cannot be disarmed.

[ghastley]

Darwen and Enilwen are still (alternately) roaming around Skyrim, doing the Bosmer sneaky archer thing. Even though Darwen is taking every other level up in Stamina, she's still getting weighed down by her bear pelt collection, and is desperately in need of a larger home with some storage.

Enilwen isn't collecting pelts, but she's been making things (mainly Dwarven bows) to advance her smithing, as she really wants to make at least an ebony bow to use against dragons. So she has similar issues carrying those (or the materials to make them) from Shor's Stone where the smelter is, back to Riften, where she can sell them and buy smithing lessons. Her preference would be a home with its own forge and smelter. And the forge would need to built with bone in place of the wooden parts, please.

I need to find a nice semi-cave they can both use.

[Renee]

This one is apparently supposed to be a letter written by Hugh Mann, the warrior guy Isaac met while on the road. It aint much, and I think I was planning on making several of these sort of updates. Didn't happen though. The next update (Labyrinthian) should be more stellar.


Turdas, 3:32 PM, Frostfall 9, 4th Era 201




Micah

Right now I in some inn, along way to cave. Find pen, pen wtih feather. Find me paper I can write. Now, I write.

traveling with me a group latley, you would be *roud. one dark elf and one breton, both are wizrds. Yes, wizards. I am with tarvel two wizards. crazed, yes I know. But what can be said? no others. Not other jobs to have, no be with. Meet man long go, name go by Lord Have Mercy, man Have Mercy employ others make follow. No know word this language. Yaravnek itavi un yarsetchi. No know word. But man Have Mercy no need make follow me.

Man Isaac say "make follow". Utavikchi nutavnesque e sualni. Man Isaac ask me come with. I say "Yes, I come with." Man Isaac make much magic. And one other. Lady by name of Crystal Beth make travel with. Crystal Beth and Isaac make much magic.

I make with sword. Good stell. Good sheild. And gold. Make with sword for gold. Much gold.

Uvaski.

This post has been edited by Renee: May 8 2016, 05:20 PM

[Acadian]

ghastley –Bosmer sneaky archer thing. Happy cave hunting!

Renee – Lol. Looks like Hugh went to the Rugdumphian Academy of gourmet talkibits. Much magic Isaac and Crystal are probably lucky to have his steel.

[Lopov]

Find pen, pen wtih feather. Find me paper I can write

find me honey nut treat too when im hungary

[Renee]

I'm glad you two see the humor here. That whole update began when I noticed Hugh had sat down and began using a feather pen to write. I suppose this is part of the Amazing Follower Tweaks mod... NPCs do stuff even if we don't tell them to. I saw him writing and that's how the whole thing began.

[Grits]

Renee, I love that Hugh really picked up a pen even though he doesn’t seem to be the correspondent type. Once he did that, you almost had to share his letter! Love it!

[ghastley]

My latest character is using a (mod-added) Absorb health spell as her primary weapon, and wearing Dwarven armour (admittedly not a lot of it!) so she wants to collect dwarven scrap metal to smith it up. Imagine the fun, when she discovers that the automata are immune to her fave spell!

It appears that the way I put the spell together makes it inapplicable to inanimate creatures.