Since Darwen and Enilwen are preoccupied with the Bosmer Den mod construction, I've started a new Sword and Board Nord Broad, based on Freyadis Guthrun's Daughter, a.k.a. Bloodsong, from the Hel books, so I'll have a character to actually play. She needs a witch side-kick, so I'll probably add Huld, too. I've started another throw-away game to develop her, too. She seems to prefer shock spells so far.

Since the books are heavily based on Nordic mythology, and their pantheon, I have to work a bit to make her fit into TES, but a necromancer- and undead-hunter seems to fit well enough. The dead belong to Hel, not to these necro-dudes! She's sort of a Conan-style warrior, who wants to leave the magic to someone else, but she's aware of needing magical protection from magical attacks. That may require a mod to let Huld buff her. I just have to avoid starting another major mod before I finish off BHF.

I'm avoiding the MQ, but Bleak Falls Barrow is full of undead, and she'd really like to clear them out. I steered her to a few necro dens instead, like Ranveig's Fast, and that appears to be satisfying her so far. She's also busy smithing herself up some equipment, especially weapons, as she'll be light-armoured. So a visit to Markarth for early training, and Nchuand-zel for material has her doing Dwarven at the moment. Ebony is a target, because black suits her, but that's heavy, which doesn't. She'll need more custom armour to replace her black fur/hide mash-up with mail and light plate when she gets there. I'm unsure how she'd react to Daedric weapons, but we'll find out later.

Huld being a mage, can cast wearing whatever she likes, but will want fortifying enchantments on it, and jewellery with more enchantments for the extra slots. Her outfit will probably get skimpier as her confidence increases, replacing cloth with gems (for their magic-holding properties).

Grits: I was wondering where you were. Wow, computer problems? Well good that you beat 'em anyway. That is neat you can compare ESO's interpretation of Skyrim to what Beth created.

ghastley: Yeah I know what you mean. You get to the point that you just wanna play!

I just looked in my White Wizard folder, and was surprised to find three unpublished stories. What the hell, Renne?

----------------------------

11:11 am, Turdas, Frostfall 7

Locations Discovered: 50
Dungeons Cleared: 14

Days Passed: 51
Hours Slept: 504
Hours Waited: 313

Gold Found: 7,944
Current Gold: 244



The orc sat at his desk, poring over the latest finds. Journals, books, notes. Most of it junk. Or copies of works he'd long had on his shelves. It had been awhile since any of his minions had managed to find something as worthy as the collection memoires brought in about a month ago, the ones detailing the adventures of a long-ago 3rd Era warrior who had helped end the Oblivion Crisis. Now that had been a day to remember.

But today, it was more junk. Scraps. At best, some had managed to find some books which could easily be placed on his shelves, but the orc known as Urag did not bother to take these in. If he bought them, they'd wind up sitting on his shelves for all eternity. Those who did manage to come to the College of Winterhold only did so for two reasons: to join, or to buy one of its fancy spells. Nobody came all the way here to purchase yet another copy of 'The Firmament', or one of the Barenziah editions.

But today, finally something else would come in; something worthy, almost priceless. Isaac had returned, the others were saying. And he had managed to find the writings Urag had requested.

"I don't think we should bother the Arch Mage about this, unless absolutely necessary."

"A beggar. A common beggar, managed to find that book," says Nirya.

The secret was out. Brelyna and a much more adventurous sort calling herself 'Crystal Beth' had leaked this secret, and now everybody knew it. This news had shocked the College. But if the rumor was true, if Isaac had procured the manuscript which nobody else could grasp ... well, that was something which could not be ignored.

"I don't want to see any of you mistreating that book, are we clear?"

"As a bell, Urag."

Urag sat back and smiled, knowing the rumor was true. And he'd soon have one of the most valuable tomes ever to grace the lands of Tamriel.

What a tease you are, Renee! Now we can't wait for your next installment to find out what WW has found. If Crystal Beth and Brylyna think it's a big deal, then it must be so!

Whoa, I'm curious too what Isaac had found.

Nice reference to Oberon.

Oh it was nothing. He found Shalidor's Insights, as per the main Mage Guild quest. I just found a more interesting way to write about this.

Yes, that was a reference to Oberon.

9

“The Forsworn Briarheart at Bruca’s Leap Redoubt is headless.”

The loud voice woke up Jarl Igmund of Markarth. He looked to his left and saw the Bloody Noble sitting on the fine chair next to his night dresser. Confused, he glanced at the magical hourglass on his nightstand – it was 3 AM. He looked at the Bloody Noble again and apparently it didn’t seem to him that this hour was a bit unusual for delivering news. Before sleepy Jarl could say anything, the Bloody Noble went on...

“I expected you’ll be happy. It’s not about the reward, but I wanted to tell you good news. I wanted You to be the first to know.”

“I…well I didn’t expect to…”

“Ah, I can see where this is going. You didn’t expect me to bring you news at such time. But the Jarl has to serve his town and hold day and night. And I wanted to make sure that you’ll sleep easier, knowing that the Briarheart neither has his head nor his briar heart anymore.”

“I’m most pleased,” said the Jarl, feeling odd because the Bloody Noble was staring at him while he was wearing only loincloth.

“I assumed you’ll be successful so I filled a coinpurse earlier this day. Since you’ve already came to my own quarters uninvited, you can as well take the purse from that table by the fireplace...”

“Uninvited?” exclaimed Ubarda. “Doors to your quarters were wide opened and not a single guard stopped and asked me where I was going. I think you should protect yourself more, Jarl. What if I were a Forsworn? I could get in easily, cut your throat and you wouldn’t even feel it, and then get out just like I came in. Nobody would stop me. Really, take this as an advice of a seasoned warrior – find yourself some proper bodyguard. Looks like Faleen isn’t up to her task, neither are your guards, standing next to your throne, asking people about sweetrolls. What are they guarding at night – that piece of stone called the Mournful Throne? They should guard You instead. It would be a terrible shame for entire Reach and my coinpurse he he he… if you were butchered. A terrible shame indeed.”

Having finished his speech, Ubarda stood up, went over to the table and after getting the full coinpurse inside his magical bag of holding, he nodded in the Jarl's direction, then left his quarters, closing the heavy doors behind him. The Jarl, now fully awake, had to admit there was some truth in Ubarda’s words. He was indeed an easy prey. Despite good news about another victory against the Forsworn, he couldn’t sleep anymore until the morning.

A rather rude and disconcerting early wake up for the Jarl!

BN is right though in questioning the Jarl’s security. Faleen’s probably off making dwemer poetry with Calcelmo, and I loved you pointing out the guards’ concern with everyone’s sweetroll as they guard that empty concrete chair at night.

Yes, I can well imagine the Jarl not getting back to sleep after that! I bet he’s hoping to soon run out of Forsworn so he no longer needs BN.

I've been playing a couple more potential NPC's for Bloodsong's game. Freyadis has Huld as follower already, and I'll add these two (via AFT) when I get them the way I want them.

Ulfhilde is a big nordic shape-shifter i.e. werewolf, who runs around without a lot of clothing because the transformation tends to rip things up. She's a redhead, and her werewolf fur matches (custom race, with new texture, so it doesn't affect the others). When not wolfing, she uses twin war-axes. Since I don't have Dawnguard turned on in her game, so no perks, the war-axes are a stronger offence than the beast form at present. The balance may change at higher levels, hard to tell yet.

Guthrun is Freyadis' teen daughter, and so she's a smaller version of Ma, with the age dial at zero. In the books, she's 15, but mine is a few years older. Unlike her mother, she does use magic, and I'm playing a "right-hand sword and left-hand spell" style with her. I'm looking for a mail-over-leather suit for her, may have to make one.

There are several other characters in the books that might make good NPC's, but these are the ones that travel with the protagonist.

More interesting characters from the mind of ghastley! A lycanthropic lass! And it makes total sense that she would dress skimpily given how hard the transformations must be on her wardrobe. Oh, and I’m so glad that you ensured her carpet matches her drapes – again, I can see the importance of this in her ww form.

SPEW !!!!

Not my inventions. C Dean Andersson was a colleague until he retired recently, and became a full-time part-time writer.

Renee, it was fun to read about Isaac’s book quest from the librarian. Woo, Oberon reference!

Lopov, maybe that early morning visit will get the Jarl to lock his door. Yikes, no wonder he couldn’t sleep after that!

ghastley, have you tried the AFT follower transformation features? I haven’t, but I think it will be a lot of fun to have your own werewolf pack.

I have AFT, but I may need to tweak it a bit for Ulfhilde. I've been using a custom power/race so she can transform to a red werewolf. That probably won't be supported without an edit.

The red is very important. Must keep her matching!

At present, I have Ulfhilde doing the transform the way I want by editing the WerewolfBeastRace to use her skin as the female one. However, that means that any female werewolf would look the same, so I'm still fiddling.

Ultimately, I'd want my personal mod to take over from AFT, so that I can more easily tweak things. For example, there aren't really enough choices for when Ulfhilde transforms, and i'm using the 50% health one as an interim solution. I'd really prefer something like "when enemies are undead" if I could do that.

This is all too custom to ever be a published mod, but I want to separate it from everyone else's so I can confine it to the one game. I may do the Grits model of having a collection of games where each of the party is the player character, and the others are NPC's, so it could become four different mods with shared assets.

ghastley, that sounds like tremendous fun. I love the chaos that happens with a group of followers, and I can only imagine how having one transform without being told by the player would add to the fun.

Chaos it is, especially when the "ignore friendly fire" setting isn't working properly, and there is argument in the ranks. Essential companions take a lot of effort to make them calm down.

And whenever there are one or more mages in the party, they will prefer to use AoE spells for maximum chaos. Especially if that means that the player character can't see what she's doing. Staves that create flame and shock walls everywhere add even more fun. I think Huld has one of each at present.

Oh that’s awesome. Dual-wielding staves of mayhem. Throw in a Flame Atronach staff to really annoy the melee fighters.

NPC Jerric regularly got into fights with NPC Darnand before I worked out the friendly fire issue, and of course I’ll never forget NPC Jerric chasing NPC Lil into the woods near Morthal while she backed up still shooting at him. When he came out his shield was bristling with arrows.

I got out Jerric’s original Skyrim game on the PS3 today, with Marcurio in the role of Darnand. It was fun to see Jerric in his steel plate and Adept hood with a silver sword on his hip. It was less fun to remember that Lil and Abiene are completely absent, and then to try to figure out where he ‘lives.’ Not at Breezehome, though that’s where he left a bunch of food. Not at Lakeview, though that’s where he planted his garden and left his flour supply. Eventually we remembered that he and Darnand had rented the cottage from Uthgerd.

Now, on the console we don’t have a headtracking mod, but I’d swear he turned around and gave me a look. I think tomorrow we’ll ignore today’s saves and just start over where I found him this morning.

How fun to open up Jerric's retrogame! Heh, whenever I see Marcurio, I think of him as Darnand now. Kind of like with Kharjo - he's adorable but Buffy knows he belongs to Aravi.

Cool, this sounds neat! Although I lost all my PS3 characters (original Claire Voyance, Crystal Beth, etc.) when my PS3 died, it would be cool to go back to Xbox. My Skyrim / Xbox games were more intense, oddly, than my gaming on PC. And more intense means more imm--, well you know. Immersive (there I said it).

I started another Orc to build the Stronghold again, just because I hadn't for a while, and with the intention of doing that and nothing further. It turned out that she has an attitude to go with her purple mohawk. She's just defeated Miraak, and has reached 100 in both one-handed and smithing (because she wanted dual Dragonbone maces). Hopefully she's satisfied now, and I can get back to the mods I'm working on.

She'll probably demand to be the character that tests out the new dungeon for the Wise Woman, once it get it cluttered and nav-meshed.

Step 1 - Get mohawk
Step 2 - Dye purple
Step 3 - Profit!

An orc with a purple mohawk and an attitude? Isn't that redundant?

Acadian, Kharjo is Aravi’s in my world too, there’s no other way for me to see him!

Renee, I know what you mean. I think it’s having to use my imagination to fill in or ignore (glitches) so much that makes the console characters’ games so imm.. immer... yeah, for me too.

ghastley, I shall now comb the whole site for pictures of your purple Mohawk orc lady. Wise Woman dungeon, that sounds great!!

Unfortunately, I didn't get any work done on the dungeon for the Wise Woman, because I installed the UUNP setup instead.

It all started because I wanted gravity to affect the women, and there was no slider to do that, without the whole bodyslide complex to adjust everything, so I took the plunge, and installed the extended skeleton and all the rest. I already had Ethereal Elven Overhaul to swap in when I wanted a change of faces, and a few home-grown ones for the humans.

So I built half-a-dozen new characters to play with body shapes, faces, etc. An extremely leggy Altmer, a petite Bosmer, a very angular Dunmer, and an overweight, saggy, Imperial. There's also another Orc, and a Khajiit in there, that are less modified from the standard, although the Orc does have female animations, instead of "opposite gender".

I'm also trying out some combat choices I don't usually run, such as an Illusionist, who uses Frenzy spells backed up with a bound weapon for the last one standing. I started the Imperial as an unarmed, fists-only character, but ran out of viability very quickly. You probably need a Khajiit, or mod assistance, for that. There is an enchantment to enhance unarmed, but it's on a single item in the whole game, the "Gloves of the Pugilist". Those, curiously, don't count for the armour perk that improves unarmed damage.

UUNP needs a new wardrobe of garments that also react to the sliders. I may get distracted further.

ghastley - perky, saggy, scrawny, overweight. . . too many choices! Happily, I only need one setting for my twiggy elf.

*

As you know, Buffy, Acadian, Superian and Kitsune are almost constantly traveling the roads and trails of Skyrim. Along one of the roads leading to Falkreath, they came upon an interesting encounter today. It seems three random road spawns all spawned in the same spot. The first was a Thalmor patrol excorting a prisoner. The second was a normal Legion patrol. The third was a noble on his horse with Legion soldier bodyguard.

It seems since all three groups spawned on the same spot, they didn’t quite know what to do. Everyone was just quietly looking at each other as Buffy and Superian rode up. I knew we had a recent save in case something went weird/wrong and turned Buffy loose to handle things however she wanted.

Not surprisingly, she rode up to the Thalmor leader and chirped “So, what’s wrong with worshipping Talos anyway?”

“Blah, blah, blah and only a heretic would thing otherwise,” smugly replied the lofty Altmer. “And so you shall die a heretic’s death!”

Well, the fight was on. And it was a pretty wild one. Only the Thalmor went hostile on Buffy. Kitsune did a fine job of distracting which allowed Buffy and Superian to maneuver and deliver arrows from the saddle. At one point she cursed the noble on his horse as they scurried past for blocking a good shot on the Thalmor leader.

When it was over, only the three Thalmor were dead. It seems the prisoner successfully melted into the Falkreath forest - good for him. No sign of the Legion patrol or noble.

Buffy continued on her way. Not too much later, she caught up to the noble doing battle with a cave bear. By the time Buffy got close enough to influence things, the noble, horse and soldier bodyguard were dead and, as the wounded bear turned on Buffy, she killed it.

"Acadian, the sun's getting low now. There's a nice little campsite just up ahead."

"Buffy, doesn't that site normally host three bandits?"

The elf kept her bow summoned and across her lap as she rode. "Oh, I'm sure they won't mind sharing."

And from this month's picture, it looks like the Falmer don't mind sharing either!

The Falmer were sharing a little too much info on themselves, me thinks!

Well, I tried dialling down the Argonian to flat, and it was ... weird. She didn't have any, but they still jiggled. Since the skeleton to enable the extra sliders adds the motion, you can't have it any other way.

The person of restricted growth (0.8 height, mostly subtracted from the legs) looks much more normal. Munchkin (temporary name) is also trying out unarmed, which I found to be non-viable in vanilla, but I added the Unarmed Helper mod to give me extra options. It was still very difficult to get a non-beast race past the initial stage of reaching the Fist of Steel perk, but sparring with a mudcrab, with a lot of healing, managed it at last. Now she's just punched out Gunzul, and I'm finding a whole lot of kill-moves I've never seen before. They're in the vanilla game, but since most players only brawl unarmed, don't get seen.

I can't post any screenshots until I put together an outfit that follows the dials. Right now she only wears boots and gauntlets, because anything else changes her shape drastically!

I played a game of Fallout 3 using only fists and Pushy (plus some great unarmed perks) - hard, but fun.

That adorable child follower Ramy in Oblivion had that issue, the clothes gave her a huge bustline,

That is pretty wild you & Buffy can do archery from horseback. I love moments like that, when everything goes to [censored] within moments!

Vanilla mounted archery can be very frustrating. With a helper to serve as a distraction on the ground (Buffy's fox familiar), some extra speed on the horse and literally thousands of arrows downrange, Buffy's gotten really good with it. It will never be quite as accurate as on foot, but the height, speed and maneuverability help compensate for that.

It does have some challenges to get used to when archer and target are on differing elevations regarding aiming higher or lower than intuitive. Another challenge is that you can only shoot about 30 degrees above the horizon, making killing a dragon with a bow from the saddle one of our biggest challenges - much harder than on foot but Buffy's done it several times.

Hello all! Well it's been a while since I've been here... but with the announcement of the Skyrim special addition it rekindled my love for Skyrim as i eagerly anticipate the game!

I'm currently exploring the story of a new 'Andrea'. She is a 22 year old Nord who, currently is only skilled with bows and daggers. She prefers fighting from the shadows, but will happily use her trusty dagger to fight up close if necessary.

Her story started with her being a hunter in the wild (i used the live another life mod with a random choice, which had her start like this. I deem it as her fate and am rolling with it.)

She lives in the wild because her family were killed by a pack of vampires. She blames herself for not being able to protect her family, so as some kind of subconscious punishment she now lives a life away from people, although she happily goes to towns and settlements to sell good she finds.

She spends most of her days dungeon diving, hoping to find vampires to kill.

She recently heard rumors about the Dawnguard, and with them being dedicated to eliminating the vampire threat she is on a journey to check them out.

I'm not sure how often I'll post, but with Skyrim slowly becoming my addiction again I'm pretty sure you'll hear from me quite a bit!

Hi Andrea! I was just reading the news about the Skyrim Special Edition. At first I thought it was just going to be for the consoles, but apparently it is for the PC as well. And it will be free to all people who have already bought the game on Steam with all of its dlcs.

Have you done the Dawnguard questline before? I bring it up because my first time trying it out was with Revansch, an undead character who was tortured and killed by vampires on her honeymoon. Then she came back from the dead for revenge. Yes, I totally stole the idea from The Crow. Anyway, the DG questline completely derailed my hard-core vampire slayer. I just could not do it, because you have to be nice to and team up with a vampire right from the start, and are given no reason to do so other than the goodness in your heart (later you find that the vampire is important to events, but at the time you meet her, you know nothing about her).

On the other hand it worked great for my other undead character Persephone. She did not have any bones to pick with vampires, so becoming best buds with one was not difficult at all. In fact, Persephone could relate to another immortal much better than anyone else.


Edit; I just saw a vid with Bethesda's E3 announcements. The Skyrim Special Edition is at the back. I hate to say that I am massively underwhelmed. I thought the game looked far better on the old systems. The new version looks like it is covered in a bright haze that washes out all the individual colors, and the clarity of the image. But maybe that is just the sunrises and sunsets, and not how it looks all the time.

Andrea: Welcome back!

Acadian: Yeah, I bet mounted archery takes some skill! It's must be amazing once you get it right though.

SubRosa: Yes, Dawnguard certainly does fit well with some characters better than others for sure. I could see Persephone getting involved.

Hi Andrea! As Renee said, great to have you back! I'm delighted that you're enjoying Skyrim. Buffy moved there in early 2014 and likes it so much she's still there with no interest in moving on yet.

Thank you guys! I'm glad to be back I originally left because I had discovered I was pregnant, so obviously that took priority, but now my baby (well, not so much anymore!) is old enough for me to allow her into day care for a few hours a day i get a lot more down time. It wont be long until pre-school so that'll mean even more time!

BUT anough about my personal life

Andrea, Andrea, Andrea... well i'm going to change her name for a start. I'm just waiting for the right moment for her to tell me where it is! I'm also slowly reworking her face. I know she is beautiful, but I'm finding a way to add some character to her face to give her a less 'generic' beauty. I'm thinking a scar or something.

She started her game in a camp not far from Helgen, and she decided to head to Riverwood to sell some goods she had accumulated. On the way, however, she discovered the Embershard mine, so ever the curious cat she decided to explore. Which she did.

There were a few bandits in the mine, but nothing a talented marksman like her couldn't handle. She found a few gems and trinkets which she could sell, but other than that she was pretty disappointed with the lack of stuff. however she did discover that the exit of the mine led right out to Riverwood, which meant she didn't have to backtrack through the cave.

Once she was in Riverwood she went to the trader and sold all the gems and trinkets she had, which led to her getting 400 gold, which she was happy about. She was saving for a horse, and at 900 gold she was almost there!

She spent the night at the inn and is now traveling to Whiterun.

Congrats on your little girl!

Wonderful to see Andrea adventuring in Skyrim! I hope she grabbed the one spellbook in Embershard and enjoyed her night at the Sleeping Giant.

Andrea just happens to be about a day behind Buffy who also cleared Embershard, spent the night in Riverwood and continued the next morning to Whiterun. On the way to Whiterun, she got jumped by three of those pesky cultists in funny masks who keep calling her a false dragonborn. Clearly they have her confused with someone else. She then cleared White River Watch on a bounty quest before collecting the bounty up in Dragon Reach. After exchanging some College correspondence and supplies with the court’s mage, Buffy did some shopping and reprovisioning among the wonderful shoppes of Whiterun.

She then rode north, clearing both the small smuggler camp along Whitrun’s eastern walls and those horrible mammoth poachers (she loves mammoths) from their palisaded encampment and mine as well.

She’s just entering Volunruud now. . . .

Congratulations, Andrea! Welcome back.

Acadian, that sounds like a lovely couple of days in Whiterun Hold. Plenty of big sky and some exercise for the bow.

Congrats on your baby girl! Maybe you could drop her off at Riverwood for a few hours with Lucan while you go adventuring?

Aw, congratulations on your baby/toddler now! That is Awesome news!

Thank you guys! She's an amazing little kid. Bit of a handful at times but that's to be expected with a toddler 😂😂

Anyway, Andrea made it to Fort Dawnguard after a day of travelling. Once there she was quickly recruited and she was sent on a mission to find a bunch of vampires in a cave up north and find out what they were hiding. Andrea wasn't too bothered about their secrets, she was just happy to get a chance to kill the things.

I've also discovered more on her back story. Her family were killed by vampires when she was 15, but she was then kidnapped by them and taken to their lair. Turns out they were a bit more twisted than shed origionally thought. The vampires in question enjoyed taking kids, keeping them as slaves and having them fight to the death, one on one, in their arena. Andrea was their slave for five years, winning every fight and becoming quite the fighter. She eventually escaped, killing all her vampire captors and spending a year in the wilds.

I'm looking forward to learning more in detail. Maybe even writing a story about it. I'm glad her back story didn't turn out the generic 'family killed, seeks revenge' like I thought it would be.

I love Andrea’s back story – it elegantly answers the motivation for her vampire hunting and origin of her skill to do so. I like the Dawnguard DLC very much for a few reasons:

- It suits a character named Buffy to a tee.
- You are not ‘The Chosen One’. You just help Serana.
- With Serana, BethSoft took followers to a whole new level of interactive sophistication – despite her imperfections/quirks.
- You do not become the boss of the guild! Rather, you get to just continue along as a vampire hunting knight with endless radiant quests.

I think it would be wonderful to see you writing again! I well remember your fan fic here, 'Jess of Valor'.

*

Buffy’s games are very long. I mean she has +3500 in Skyrim and her current playthrough is well over 1000 hours alone. I also have our dungeons set to respawn every three days since she is so voracious about clearing them. Many of Skyrim’s dungeons have an exit as well as an entrance to avoid so much retracing of steps. So what’s my point? Well, Buffy will often clear a dungeon ‘backwards’ for variety. A simple example is good old Embershard Mine, but there are many dungeons that lend themselves to this, especially for an elf who rides a horse that can negotiate terrain that would terrify a mountain goat to get to some of the remote exits (like White River Watch). One of our faves to clear backwards is Volskygge.

I fully agree with all your opinions regarding Dawnguard! My biggest problem with the factions was that you become head of them upon completion. I'm glad Dawnguard shook this up.

Ahha Jessika. That was around the time I found out I was pregnant and took my hiatus 😁 I'll most likely not return to that, as I've moved on from Jessika. Jessika is my oblivion girl, and I don't see myself returning to that unfortunately... but thank you! I'll probably start writing bits here and there for Andrea, but nothing solid enough to post.

Hehe I've only managed to clock 40 hours with Andrea so far! I spend my free time I. E when mini-me is at day care, my mothers, or asleep.
In skyrim nowadays.
My hubby doesn't mind that I game. I have really bad social anxiety issues so he is just happy that gaming relaxes me. So luckily I have no reason not to travel skyrim

EDIT: Oh dear. My first corrupt save! Andrea's most recent game wont load. I still still play the game as long as it's either a new or old save. Very annoying.

ANOTHER EDIT: It appears the issue is Markarth related. I just tried using a carriage to Markarth and the game crashed. I tried a couple of times and it kept crashing. Hmm...

So I'm starting an Andrea #2. Probably with a name change. After doing a lot of research I've decided to use SkyRe, which requires a new game. I just hope I can get Andrea looking how she does now!

I've also added a mod which uses the Oblivion class creating system, so i'm looking forward to trying that out.

Sorry you lost Andrea I. The times I've started Buffy over, I've found to be great fun. I use ECE to save her presets and it only takes me a couple seconds to perfectly recreate her when I start a new playthrough. I think Race Menu can do the same thing. I sure hope you get her look back okay.

I prefer Oblivion's leveling to Skyrim's and my solution is a mod that lets me set individual caps for each and every skill. Many of her skills are capped permanently at 0, some at moderate skill levels and only a few up to 100. One effect of this is that she gradually rises to about level 30 and stays right there. Even if she reads a heavy armor skill book, her skill with heavy armor remains at 0 for example. Really helps sharply define her strengths and weaknesses.

You can make a copy of Andrea #1 very easily, and turn it into one of the face presets.

Load up the save for the face you want to save to use in other games.

Open the console.

Select your character (this should show as an id of 14)

Type spf <filename you want> and press enter. This can be any name you want. For example typing spf Andrea creates a file called Andrea.npc in your Skyrim directory.

Load up the creation kit and choose any one of the character presets that matches your original save's race and gender under actors. So if Andrea is a Breton: BretonFemalePreset01.

Open up the properties window for that character (Just double click the actor in the list)

Click the tab Character Generator Parts (You may have to scroll all the way to the right in the tabs)

Click import in the top right.

Select your Andrea.spf file, in the root of your Skyrim folder.

Click Ok on the bottom left.

Save the plugin as any name you want, for example Andrea Character Preset.esp

Enable the plugin in a mod manager or the Skyrim launcher.

Load up your new game or another save you want to reuse the face in.

Bring up the console and type showracemenu.

Go through the presets until you see your face.

Seems the problem was with a city mod I had. I uninstalled it and now the crashing doesn't happen... but I still went ahead with Andrea 2 regardless.

Here she is. She looks the same, although i gave her green eyes and a more practical hairstyle.

Oh, and although her name is still Andrea, it is now abbreviated to Andi.

Also in my game Crossbows aren't Dawnguard exclusive, so she started off with one in her inventory. I know this messes with Lore, but whuteva haha.

She is still going to join the Dawnguard though. I just thought that if I have the crossbows non Dawnguard exclusive, it would make more sense how she is able to use one upon obtaining one, as crossbows are Andi's weapon of choice.

EDIT: Thank you SubRosa for the advice! But as i managed to fix my save I just saved Andi's preset to the racemenu Sincerely, I thank you for the time you took for all that advice you wrote haha