In Which Nona Reunites a Dog With His Master

I feel like blogging today, so let’s get a bit further along on Nona’s playthrough in Tuxborn 0.5.2, shall we?

Main action covered here is familiar territory: running the end of A Daedra’s Best Friend. But there’s a big side helping of meeting a couple of the characters from the Interesting NPCs mod, who did, in fact, live up to the label on the tin.

Play by play

Play date: 11/30/2024
Session number in this run: 9
Picked up again at Orphan Rock
Headed from there to Haemar’s Shame
Got in, and started running the place
Got Destruction bump off Response to Bero’s Speech book
Barbas had already mopped up the place, as he does
Had the convo with Vile as per usual, and got objective to go get the Rueful Axe
Headed out again
Marked Fort Neugrad for the map
Marked Thalmor Prison for the map
Took out the zombies at the ritual site as per Rise of the Dead plot
Leveled up to 11
Spent 38 points all over the Static Skill Leveling UI
Took Magicka bump
Dropped perk point onto Alteration Mastery
Read Conjure Zombie spellbook
Lucien had commentary about the plot, which I remembered from Elessir’s run
Continued onward
Marked Southfringe Sanctum for the map, and took out the spellsword in front
Boinged from there back to Falkreath
Took a look at spells sold by Willow Nightshade in Dead Man’s Drink
Talked to Thadgeir to pick up his quest to take Berit’s ashes to Runil
Took the time to talk with an unfamiliar NPC, Jerulith, who turned out to be a former Thalmor!
Met a second unfamiliar NPC, who turned out to be a dying mother trying to find a safe way to hand off her child to new parents before her death
Rented a room and slept at the inn
Set out to go about my business–and, Blood Dragon! Team Dragonborn dispatched it forthwith
Headed into Zaria’s Grave Concoctions shop to sell her stuff
Then headed over to the Hall of the Dead to talk to Runil
Saw initial scene with his delivering the eulogy for the slain child
Handed off Berit’s ashes to Runil
From there, boinged to Whiterun to sell more stuff
Then boinged back to Falkreath, just so I could buy the land for Lakeview from Nenya
Bought the land and then headed over to start building Lakeview
Built until I ran out of logs, and then boinged to Half-Moon Mill to buy more logs from Hert
I think this is where I had a museum crash that threw me back to the beginning of the session 😓
Re-did running Haemar’s Shame
Re-marked Fort Neugrad and Thalmor Prison for the map
Re-did taking out the zombies at the ritual site
Re-did taking level up to 11, and taking Alteration Mastery perk
This time through, the dead necromancer had a Shadow Chains spell tome! 25% debuff to enemy movement speed, nice
This time, instead of going back to Falkreath, I returned to Solitude
Headed into the museum to drop off stuff, though I had to work around perf issues by saving and restarting
Made it to 159 displays
Took a sleep in the Safehouse
Told Gore to get some archery into his combat routine, since he had dialogue options to do that
Auryen found me and gave me the Cleaver of St. Felms
Did another reboot to proceed through museum stuff
Found the gift shop and LOLOL it has Auryen dolls!
Found Sorli the Builder wandering around the Armory, LOL, and she critiqued some of the gear there? Lady, if you think you can do better, the museum will welcome your donations 😉
Sold stuff to Beirand and got everybody out of wait mode to go back out
Found the East Empire Company Warehouse for the map
Right about here was where I discovered that the Seasoned Traveler’s armor set I’d made for Nona had problems with female body shapes, oops
Blood Dragon! Took it out with the help of the team
Headed to Broken Oar Grotto to get Noster’s helmet back for him
Ran the place fairly easily
Got some Silver Boots out of a loot chest
Once we cleared the place and I started looting it, LOL, Gorr took a nap in one of the bandits’ beds
Got Pickpocket bump off a skill book
Headed out from there for further adventuring
Made a campsite and slept there
Discovered Rimewake Grotto, a mod location
Found Ravenscar Hollow, not a mod location
Found random horse and dead bandit
Found Steepfall Burrow
Found the Bird’s Eye tower
Found Lost Echo Cave
Spotted an ogre tromping around in the distance, on the way to Rimerock Burrow; fought and engaged same
Passed random Imperial soldier patrol
Found Meridia’s Sanctum and spoke with Initiate Garin outside
Then went inside and spoke with High Priestess Alara
Headed from there over to Rimerock Burrow and ran the place
Took out Sebastian Lort and got the Rueful Axe
Got Conjuration bump off a skill book
Returned to Haemar’s Shame to hand off the Rueful Axe and Barbas
Leveled up to 12 and dropped perk on Sneak Mastery
Boinged back to Solitude
Gave Noster back his helmet
Met Avram back at the museum, HI AVRAM
Displayed a lot of things and reached 199 displays
Made myself a Beryl version of the Seasoned Traveler cuirass
Stopped there until next time

General commentary

Aside from unfamiliar followers, first new-to-me thing I ran into this session was a Thalmor Prison. I didn’t investigate it at the time, but oh my yes, it became plot-relevant later. More on this to come.

Took a moment to browse the spells offered by the vendor Willow Nightshade, who hangs out in Dead Man’s Drink. All of her Power Tomes were very expensive, although I thought her Aspect of the Deer tome, which gives a speed bonus, looked real tasty. Didn’t have the gold to get it at the time, though!

This was one of many sessions in Nona’s run where I ran into issues with crashes trying to enter the museum. Since I got involved with Tuxborn, and have helped playtest its 1.0 release, I can say that we think we’ve fixed that crashing problem… but yeah, it’s still going to be an issue for me as I try to finish up Nona’s run. So more incidents of museum issues causing me to have to re-do stuff will show up in more of Nona’s posts.

Also, this was the session where I found that the Seasoned Traveler armor, which I otherwise quite liked, had a significant issue when worn by female characters: serious enlargement of the torso. Another player and I investigated further, and narrowed down the problem to not the actual original mod for the armor, but a patch that was trying to give CBBE settings for it. Disabling the patch made the armor look normal.

This issue has likewise been fixed in Tuxborn 1.0, but for my still-functional 0.5.2 playthrough, I kept that particular patch turned off.

Jerulith

Next new-to-me thing was another NPC hanging out in Dead Man’s Drink, an addition from Interesting NPCs, Jerulith. She caught my eye because she was wearing Thalmor robes! So I had a bit of fun cognitive dissonance here–because as a player, I was side-eying her going “Why is a Thalmor hanging out here…?” But as Nona, who likes everybody, I was all “Oh, someone to talk to! I’ll go talk to her!”

Jerulith, rather unsurprisingly, turned out to be haughty. And had a huge chip on her shoulder, with lines like “You seek vengeance for your loved ones. That’s why you want to talk. That’s why everyone wants to talk.”

(Well, y’know, lady, you were a member of the Thalmor, so you can’t be surprised that people around Skyrim are feeling pretty fucking salty? Why are you hanging around Skyrim still? Questions going through my mind that it would not have been in character for Nona to ask, ha.)

Took me a bit to dig into her backstory, but I finally got her to tell me she’d disobeyed a direct order from her superior. But this wasn’t a mark in her favor. She was still very much on board with Thalmor politics, and for mass executions, and for shutting down the worship of Talos. What apparently booted her out of the Thalmor was being used as a scapegoat for some nasty murders.

So she seemed like a real piece of work. I noticed with interest, much later in Nona’s playthrough, that she was apparently friends with a different NPC, and she does have involvement in a quest. As of this writing I haven’t picked up that quest yet, so I can’t comment on it. But this character is definitely one I’m going to keep an eye on.

Melea Entius

But Jerulith wasn’t the only new NPC hanging out in Dead Man’s Drink. I also met a woman named Melea Entius, who confessed to me that she was dying of an illness. And she was apparently trying to make arrangements for her daughter Henrietta to be taken care of, prior to her passing. In fact, she explicitly mentioned hoping to leave Henrietta in the care of Mathies and Indara, who lose their child as part of Ill Met By Moonlight!

Her dialogue indicated that she’d done a lot to try to battle the illness, up to and including speaking with Danica Pure-Spring, who apparently couldn’t help her. Which raises the question of what, exactly, her plotline is intending as her illness? Because what kind of illness would be beyond the reach of Skyrim’s most powerful healer?

My immediate instinct is, this woman has stage 4 cancer of some kind, though of course Skyrim’s culture wouldn’t have the terminology for that. I could very much see Danica sensing terminal cancer in Melea’s body, though, and realizing unhappily that it wasn’t something her magic had the power to fix.

Which in turn raises the question of whether any power in Skyrim could heal a terminal cancer. That feels like the kind of thing that’d require the intervention of a Daedric Prince. But if Melea is a faithful follower of the Divines, that is almost certainly not an option. (Though I bet that if the plot was the kid having a terminal cancer, I could also see Melea in a heartbeat being willing to bargain with a Daedric Prince if it meant her daughter got to live!)

Possible weird bug with unvoiced dialogue?

During this session I saw one of a scattered series of incidents where a subtitle fired off for a line that looked like it should have belonged to Auri, namely:

Your death will be my gift to Auri-El!

In this particular session, this line was attributed to Gore. I also periodically saw the same subtitle attached to animals, as Nona’s playthrough proceeded.

What’s notable here is that as of this point in Nona’s playthrough, I had not in fact picked up Auri yet as a follower.

Mind you, I’m also not a hundred percent sure that this was a fault in Auri’s follower mod either. But I’m not sure who else this line should have been coming from. Also, it was a rare enough occurrence that I couldn’t really get enough data to go by to nail down a cause.

I’ll have to see if I spot it some more as I catch up on Nona’s sessions.

Meridia’s Sanctum

Found a surprise very close to Rimerock Burrow: Meridia’s Sanctum, an entire buliding with an outdoor camp in front of it, and various worshippers of Meridia living there.

I immediately figured this was some kind of plot-related location, and later on in Nona’s playthrough I did confirm that. In this particular session, though, I just spoke with a couple of the NPCs just to get an impression of the place.

And really, the big question I had about it was, how on earth were they living that close to Rimerock Burrow where a necromancer was hanging out, and not aware of him? I should think that would be of very specific interest to Meridia followers.

(Though, given what I learned about this group in a later session, that Sebastian Lort was hanging out so close to them undetected may have been plausible after all? More on this to come!)

Notable follower lines

Gore demonstrating he’s got a quick wit, re: our visiting Orphan Rock to get Nettlebane and take out some hags and a hagraven:

It’s not just a rock, it’s my rock!

Lydia has opinions about necromancers (although I couldn’t help but notice that she kept pronouncing it with a long o, which was distracting):

These bastards rip our ancestors out of Sovngarde to fight for them instead of doing it themselves. I can’t think of anything lower than that.

Gorr gets a callback to his arena career:

Two fans of the Nord Myrmidon I killed were here honoring his grave. Let’s just say they didn’t find my presence to their liking.

A Lucien line I think I missed in Elessir’s run! Lucien does not look favorably on Falkreath:

Did you know Falkreath used to be a part of Cyrodiil? If it was as dreary then as it is now, I’m not surprised we let the place go.

Gore has some opinions about the Imperial Legion:

The Imperial Legion used to be a force to be reckoned with. Now look at it.

Gorr has some opinions about Solitude:

Bards, fletchers, wine..I don’t like this city.

Gore, son, hang out with the Dragonborn long enough and you will, in fact, get to see that:

I’m sorry, but the thought of a guy getting ‘shouted apart”… I’d like to see that.

Lydia looks a lot more kindly upon the Legion than Gore does:

My father was in the Legion. He said it got him off the streets of Bravil and turned his life around. I have a lot of respect for the soldiers here.

Gorr’s fitness routine, apparently:

Caves are a good place for exercise. Lots of bandits. Lots of mages. And lots of death.

A short but evocative line out of Gore:

Magicka in the air, smells like burnt copper.

And Gore had something to say about finishing up A Daedra’s Best Friend. The missing word “he” here is intentional, it’s exactly what I had in my screenshot. But Gore’s actual voiced line was correct, so this was a subtitle issue:

I’ll be honest. I’m a bit sad to see Barbas go. He was welcome company… even if didn’t let me pet him.

Next time

Nona’s next post will feature re-doing buying the land for Lakeview and starting building it, proceeding with the rest of the Blessings of Nature quest, and then heading to the Abandoned Grotto to continue Carved Brink!

Screenshots