In Which Kenna is Left for Dead by Her Bandit Bastard Father

So yeah, as of this writing, I have three, count ’em, three different playthroughs in progress involving the Tuxborn modpack for Skyrim.

I’ve got Nona still running for Tuxborn 0.5.2, the version Tuxborn was at when I originally discovered it. Alecto is active for Tuxborn 1.0.1. And this is now the inaugural post for Kenna, with Tuxborn 1.1.1.

Let’s get this party started!

Play by play

• Play date: 5/25/2025
• Session number in this run: 1
• Took Left for Dead option in Alternate Start
• Spawned in Falkreath, and decided to haul ass to the west to try to get to Riften
• Found a shrine of Akatosh in the wild, and got a bump to Enchanting off a skill book there
• Found the caravan torched by dragonfire
• Found Cemetery Homestead, and gave that a WIDE berth
• Passed some necromancers and pissed them off, so had to run like hell
• And found Auri’s pod! OH HEY HI DON’T MIND ME BARGING IN LIKE THIS
• Chatted with Auri and she expressed interest in following me, so I took her on
• (So in case some necromancers try to hit us in the face with a fireball when we go outside, be ready to duck, mmkay?)
• Marked Glathe for the map
• Pretty much made a hard sprint towards Riften, with Auri following
• Passed a guy by an unfamiliar door near Falkreath (I think this was Glathe?), and he was hostile, wound up taking him out
• Passed Talsgar the Wanderer
• Took out the bandits near the Guardian Stones, and got the Riverwood treasure map
• Leveled up to 2 and took first Agent perk in Sneak
• Slept at that bandit camp since it was dark and they had bed rolls right there
• Nabbed Night Falls on Sentinel copy at the camp and got the bump in One-handed; kept book for later once Kenna gets to Dawnstar
• Reached the Guardian Stones and took the Thief Stone, though I also activated both of the others for museum display purposes
• Also nabbed a few things there since I don’t think Kenna is exactly reverent about them, LOL
• Found Riverwood and sold Alvor some stuff
• Proceeded onward in the rain and went past Imperial patrol with prisoner
• Found Honningbrew Meadery
• Triggered dead Bouncer and pit wolves encounter near White River Watch
• Got the Crackle spell off the Bouncer, and put on his chitin armor since it was definitely better than what I was wearing
• Cleared the structure around the Ritual Stone and activated that one, too, for museum display purposes
• Got the Raise Zombie spell off the enchanter table there
• Blew up an item on that table to get the Fortify Restoration enchantment
• Had enough on me though that I realized I should probably go to Whiterun and sell stuff, so turned around and went back the way I’d come
• Took out a wolf
• Passed M’aiq the Liar
• Found Pelagia Farm
• Found Whiterun Stables
• Khajiit caravan was on site so sold stuff to Ri’saad
• Entered Whiterun and triggered initial conversation between Idolaf and Adrianne
• Shopped at Warmaiden’s and Belethor’s shop, and whipped up a Leather Scout set of gear for myself, and green and brown Nord Tribal gear for Auri
• Hired carriage to take me and Auri to Ivarstead
• Rented a room at the Vilemyr Inn
• Hoofed it over to get Rains’ Shelter
• Found Snapleg Cave
• Found Sarethi Farm
• Found Clearspring Tarn and got Rains’ Shelter, and loot out of Rains’ Knapsack
• Hoofed it eastward to aim for Riften
• Found Boulderfall Cave and went in, had conversation with Among-The-Hist, but did not launch his quest yet
• Leveled up to 3 and took first Scout perk in Light Armor
• Then looted the cave since it was a former necromancer/vampire den, so their stuff is fair game, says Kenna
• Found Alchemy skillbook Herbalist’s Guide to Skyrim
• Headed onward to Riften, found unmarked ritual area with cranky conjurer, and Racial Phylogeny Restoration skillbook
• Also found a Shrine of Syrabane there
• Finally reached the Riften Stables
• Got a courier with a notice about “Find the Suspicious Dark Elf”, a thing I’d seen before in Nona’s run, but not yet in this one
• Riften Guard of course hit me up for the visitor’s tax, and I couldn’t pass the Speech check
• So headed around to the backside of the city, since I was at Riften to hit the Shadow Stone anyway
• Found Snow-Shod Farm
• Found the Shadow Stone, though I had to fight the cranky mages there
• Activated the Shadow Stone, accepted it as my sign, and got the Jinniya of the Lamp power off of it
• Since I had Rains’ Shelter and it was dark, slept in it
• Got the Ominous Nightmare but declined to accept the blood offering in it, as I did not want to be a werecritter
• In the morning, headed around to the Riften Docks
• Found Viriya behind the fishery
• Went inside and talked to Swims-In-Deep-Water, and got his initial quest too
• Helped Wujeeta with a healing potion
• Then confirmed I could in fact get into Riften via the back door of the Black-Briar Meadery 🤣
• Shopped at the Pawned Prawn
• Talked to Maul, since he auto-greeted me on my way out through the Riften front gate; picked his brains about the Thieves Guild
• Then realized I should just go ahead and follow up on the skooma dealer thing
• Went into Mistveil Keep and got a bounty from Anuriel
• Then tried to talk to Laila Law-Giver, but realized I had to get Wujeeta to tell me who her skooma dealer was first
• Went back outside, found Wujeeta, and got that information
• Told Viriya I’d take her bounty
• Then went back in to talk to Laila Law-Giver about the skooma dealer
• Got her directive to go clear the warehouse, and did so
• (Though heh, not without stealing the skooma and moon sugar)
• Returned to the Jarl and reported my findings; got her directive to go hit Cragslane Cavern
• Headed out with Auri
• Found Shor’s Stone and took quest to go clear out the spiders from the mine

Commentary

I hadn’t actively planned on getting Auri as a follower right out of the gate, but it worked out that way, and it was very convenient. Because Auri is one of the followers friendly to thievery, so she’s a very good one for this alt to have! Because yes, I’m going to try to run the Thieves Guild with Kenna.

Which gives me an opening to discuss her backstory. Like Kendis and Kendeshel before her, Kenna is half-Redguard and half-elf, but her elf half is Bosmer, not Altmer. And she is the child of a pair of bandits who never actually bothered to marry. Plus, her Bosmer father was a slimebucket and split up with her Redguard mother after Mom got pregnant… only to try to come back at them much later to try to capture them as slaves for a new group of bandits he’d joined.

Kenna and her mother did not take kindly to this, and a fight ensued that resulted in the deaths of both Mom and Dad. And Kenna discovering she had an ability to call up an amorphous spirit shape that would in fact fight for her.

It cost her, though. Her father slashed her face badly and left her for dead, only to then be killed by the thing his daughter summoned. And despite her father’s best efforts, Kenna survived.

And ran like hell to try to find shelter.

First shelter she found, it turned out, was Auri’s pod! Because I got too near some necromancers, which pissed them off, and that was not going to be a good fight for a level 1 character fresh out of the gate. So it was a damned good thing I found Auri’s pod when I did, and that Auri didn’t bat an eye at a wild-eyed, disheveled woman bursting in on her house.

It was a little disappointing that Auri’s initial questions about whether you’re from Skyrim don’t really account for possibilities like “yeah I was born here, for values of born here meaning my parents were bandits”, LOL. But this is what I get for coming up with off-the-wall backstories like that.

I was also a little surprised to find that this Tuxborn build’s version of Auri did not look like the one in Tuxborn 0.5.2. But I shouldn’t have been, given that what version of Auri Tuxborn is running did advance between 0.5.2 and 1.1.1! And I think I actually like Auri’s look better in 1.1.1.

I did raise an eyebrow though at her wearing tavern wench clothes inside her pod. Which I suppose does fit her very relaxed and body-positive personality, though I would kind of quibble about whether those clothes are Green Pact compliant!

Next, I’d learned from the #txbn-general channel on Tuxborn’s Discord that it is possible to bypass the guards hitting up you for the visitor’s tax at Riften’s front gates, if you go in through the back door of the Black-Briar Meadery. So naturally I had to try this out, and it absolutely works. 🤣 Take that, guards!

I initially thought this seemed like a huge security hole, and surprisingly lax of Maven Black-Briar–until I realized that this might even be Maven’s way of sticking it to Brynjolf. I could totally see her deliberately leaving access into the meadery open on that grounds alone. Not publicly, of course. She wouldn’t advertise it. But I could totally see her doing it.

Even in that scenario, though, I’d expect her to station somebody to keep an eye on that back door, and telling anybody who came through that if they wanted to enter the city, they’d be happy to let them do so for the low, low price of one bottle of Black-Briar Mead.

Last but not least, Viriya in this build of Tuxborn has scars on her face. That by itself is an interesting visual choice, since it makes her one of the few NPCs in Tuxborn’s load order that a) isn’t a warrior, and b) still has visible scarring. So that raises interesting questions about her backstory! Did she get attacked by a pissed-off mudcrab or what?

Mind you, I think I’d actually seen this first in Alecto’s run, with the 1.0.1 build. But in Kenna’s, it actually struck me more strongly. Viriya is, after all, a Redguard. And so’s Kenna, even if Kenna is half-Bosmer; her Redguard side is the dominant one! So I think Kenna couldn’t help but immediately sympathize with Viriya, and be all the more willing to help her out with her bounties.

Next time

Kenna’s next post will feature her clearing out the spiders at Redbelly Mine, and the skooma dealers at Cragslane; getting a little light-fingered with some guards; taming a wild horse; receiving a letter from some Altmer guy who wants her to get museum relics; and taking on Xelzaz as a follower!

Screenshots