Heyo! I’ve added a torrent of what I have right now. It’s not exactly a playable release, it’s basically to bug test the dialogue overhaul, which has seen nearly every NPC’s dialogue tree re-organized for better gameplay. About 10 quests are included as well, but most are still in the experimental testing phase. You can try them at your own risk, but most are connected to Darkened Steel which starts at Orphan’s Tear if you’ve met the prereqs. Idle Dreams is probably an easy one to test though, just head to Haelga’s Bunkhouse and talk to Amicus. With the exception of 1 song for Alassea, no new bard songs are included as they’re still being made.

For those intrepid souls who want to help test this thing and get it working, here are some things to look out for when talking to folks:

• Getting kicked out a conversation for no reason - This is not to be confused with going back to the top level. I mean a random, forced goodbye, which is either a symptom of dialogue not being connected properly or the NPC is a jerk.

• Stuck in a dialogue loop – A symptom of things connected when they shouldn’t be. For instance, if a bard asks you “What would you like me to play?” and the choice is “Can I make a request?” That’s not a catchy new song title, it’s a bug.

• Questions not matching answers or just out of place - Example: If an NPC tells you bandits killed her brother, and  the only available response is “Does this dress make me look fat?” then that’s a bug.

• Top-level questions showing up prematurely - For instance, you meet an NPC, and right away a question about his/her choice of lube is at the top before the topic of masturbation has even been broached. Also a bug.

• Missed Stuff and Other Dialogue Tweaks – I may have missed a tweak here and there, so if you see anything else that needs fiddling with let me know. Even if none of the above things show up, you may notice a conversation seems halfway finished, or perhaps you’ve spoken to an NPC before and certain stories are unavailable. Stuff like that.

One of the things I don’t like about the vanilla taverns is the fact that they’re so quiet. I wanted to make Robber’s Refuge more like a normal bar, and fill the halls with a chorus of words, songs, and laughter, without the player ever having to engage anyone.

While I want to experiment with a number of tools, the first thing I played around with was the concept of prolonged skits. Over the course of several scenes, these characters can be given the same dimensions and depth as the other NPCs and still be part of the background.

Of course to shoot this scene, I needed a bit of quiet, so I had to kill everyone else off save Ortheim. You may notice the corpse in the top right corner. This is just one of 7 scenes between these traveling adventurers, and just a small sample of the kind of goodies I want Robber’s Refuge to have.

A few weeks back, a user asked me to contact someone. She was an aspiring singer who did covers of fantasy stuff(no, not that one), and expressed interest in being part of a mod. The user thought it would be a good match.

I contacted the person, and we were both initially excited to be working together. However, as time went on, it seemed we had different goals. She wanted to expand her profile as a singer, namely by putting her likeness in the mod. I wanted to make the bard as unique as possible, which meant avoiding any similarities to existing NPCs or living humans in general. Things were starting to unravel even before I made my suggestion of giving her NPC humongous boobs. Long story short, we decided it was best to part ways.

Now the question was, what to do with the NPC I created? I had already added her to the cell, and given her a routine. I could delete everything and remove the edits, but it seemed like such a waste. So, I decided to turn our would be busker into something else entirely.  And as much as it disappointed me to lose the bard and possibility of new music, if I had to do it all over again, I wouldn’t change a thing. Caylene is that awesome, as is her voice actor, Elisabeth Hunter.

Elisabeth, who has been voice acting professionally for some time, is volunteering to do a variety of characters for the non-beta release, but we both agree this one’s our favorite.

Often times people will hold the mod to a different standard than vanilla Skyrim. One of earliest complaints was the use of the word ain’t. The user(artist rendition above) never even played the mod, but swore it off as the devil based on a screenshot which had the term in the subtitle. His argument was that ain’t and ain’t no were slang phrases, and that he would sacrifice his first born child before I polluted his pure, fantasy playground with my jive-talking cyberpunk NPCs. It was then pointed out that the words are centuries old and are commonly used by vanilla NPCs, and much hilarity ensued.

Of course, there are complaints such as these that are completely baseless, and those that are derived from changes made in Skyrim. One common misconception is Khajiit only speaking in the third person, when vanilla Khajiit, immigrants directly from the motherland of Elsweyr, will never use their first name.

In fact, I too was guilty of this belief. Which is why the early Khajiits all spoke in the third person. It was Dar’Rakki thinks this and Dar’Rakki wants that. Then I overheard a few caravan conversations and realized this third person orgy simply wasn’t happening. Here are some examples for your persual:

Now, it’s entirely possible this decision was made in order to allow various NPCs to use the same voice. Still, it’s a decision that alters the lore nonetheless.  So, when trying to reconcile which NPCs should use the first person as opposed to the third, I decided that some Khajiit were likely Imperialized as a result of growing up outside of Elsweyr. With NPCs like Qa’Dojo, I chose to use first person – as opposed to someone like Dar’Rakki or Gnives, who migrated from warmer sands.

Similarly, the word “N’wah” is pronounced entirely different in Skyrim than it is in Morrowind. This mod being a Skyrim mod, I believe I opted for consistency. So please, send your EN-WAH complaints to Bethesda. Or be like me and shrug it off.

Download: dialoguegeneric__000854d7_11.wav

This isn’t to say there aren’t mistakes. The irony is, fewer people notice the actual parts where I screwed up. NeoNudel I believe pointed out that I’ve been calling the White-Gold Concordat the White-Gold Concordant. I’ve also been referring to Thalmor Justiciars(Jus-ti-see-ars) as Thalmor Justicars, and the NPCs reflect that mistake. I blame Mass Effect, of course, because I certainly can’t be held accountable for my own foolishness. Interestingly enough, there are vanilla Nords who also dabble as Commander Shepard in their spare time. So that makes me feel a little better.

Shiiieeet, did you hear that? This here is a vanilla NPC and he said Justicar. Let’s all blame this guy.

Sometimes NPCs are jerks. They will see you clearly engaged in a conversation with another person, and yet still find the need to rudely babble in the background about the layout of the city or the rich history of their underpants. It would be nice if there were a way to prevent this, and there technically is. It’s just a ton of work.

The problem is there is no single condition that stops the quest when appropriate – it has to be applied to individual NPCs and scenes. At least, as far as I know. I could be wrong. Please let me be wrong.

The video above demonstrates how this brute force tactic works. A condition has been placed on the DialogueFollower3DNPC quest to not run while MorthalInitialScene is playing. A similar condition IsInDialogueWithPlayer can be run on individually referenced NPCs, such as Al’Hassan in the picture below.

The reason I’ve been slow in implementing these conditions is because I’m not entirely sure this is the only way to go about it. It certainly isn’t the most efficient. So it’s a low priority, because eventually someone smart is going to make all of this brutality a complete waste of time. It’s possible someone already has.

EDIT: It appears that the scenes are considered “playing” if you’ve never seen them. Meaning, the IsScenePlaying condition has to be applied to individual comments instead of an entire quest. So it’s useless.

Just want to share some changes that will be a par of version 3. This is a blurb I was working on for the description page, hence the tone.

Interesting NPCs began as a project to bring color and life to Skyrim. However, the early characters were rather modest creations – a direct result of my own limitations with the CK. Over time, as my modding skills have improved, those NPCs have evolved into companions, spouses, and quest givers. Yet as a product of this unusual development cycle, any quest that involves an older NPC may require having met them previously. As I am still unable to create new lands, it may require clearing vanilla obstacles to prevent the possibility of conflicts.

To help rectify this, many of the innkeepers will provide notes directing you to Quest NPCs that are harder to find. Meeting them will ensure you can meet the prerequisites organically. This will result in many small quests whose only goal is to meet the NPC.

For instance, if you start the game and go directly to Zora, upon speaking to her a quest “A Field of Cotton” will complete in your journal. This may seem peculiar to long time users of the mod. New users, however, might first talk to Orgnar, who will give them a note to search Brittleshin Pass. Reading said note starts the quest, finding Zora completes it. This is a huge help in finding Gorr after his initial departure.

Couriers will also help guide you to NPCs when two are involved in a quest. Find one, and a courier will lead you to the other. Another thing I’ve added are filler NPCs that just point you to the quest starter.

This NPC, for instance, voiced by SageHalo, will direct you to two harder to find quest starters. Ytharil in particular is extremely hard to find given the location of her barrow is not on any map. Having a quest marker point the way is extremely convenient. In hindsight, I probably should have used NPCs like this as opposed to the innkeepers, but at least the notes will be less resource intensive.

The other primary changes that need to be noted are thus:

• Duraz is the only NPC who did not make it. She will still be in the Old Hroldan Inn, but as a deaf/mute. “Setstage 3dnpcenable 1″ will turn on her dialogue as well as other silent commentary and conversations with Valgus and Qa’Dojo.

• Similarly, there is also a mechanism to remove NPC dialogue, by setting the quest that holds their base dialogue to stage 500. For example, to remove Yushari’s dialogue, simply type “Setstage DialogueYushari 500″ and she will be a mute. Scenes with other NPCs will remain.

Quest names can be found using the HELP command in the console.  However, essential/quest NPCs cannot have their dialogue removed, as the player may not be aware exactly how much content they are removing.

• If I think of anything else, I’ll update here. There should be increased compatibility with other mods, including Convenient Horses and EFF, in addition to AFT and Simple Multiple Followers.

Fig (Anna Castiglioni) and Whig (Incoherencel) are two patrons that are available via the Robber’s Refuge tavern. Simply talk to Ortheim about altering the drink menu, then get the approval of Evette San in Solitude. This will add the more “posh” patrons, just as Black Briar Mead will bring in the adventurers.

In the video, I’ve done a lot of the requirements for adding new folks, so the tavern is bustling with activity. By altering everyone’s schedules, I also think I can keep adding more people without overloading the area. Right now most patrons are there 3 days a week, but that can easily be altered to 1 or 2, with the weekends being the busiest.

This is Acidrica bringing the Orc Duraz to life. Duraz is one of the original 10 or so characters in the mod, and the last of 200 or so to be unvoiced. Hopefully. I mean, I don’t want to jinx things here, as we’re still not even halfway through the recording stages for this one.

The fact that she’s still unrecorded tells you something. It should also tell you why there aren’t many female Orcs in the mod. Which is why Acidrica is a special snowflake, and I thank Malacath every night that she exists. She is awesome.

Over the past year and a half I’ve learned a lot of tricks. It’s safe to say if I had to start all over again, Interesting NPCs would look nothing like it does now. While I don’t know if that’s a good thing, a bad thing, or no thing at all, what I do know is that with Dragonborn, I essentially have a clean slate and plenty of toys.

With version 3 released, and version 3.01 cleaning up the last of the bugs, I decided to dust off my old follower Alphena Dren and tinker around a bit. I wanted to design her in a way that allows her to interact with everyone in town, and even partake in quest conversations, especially since so many of the vanilla player choices are limited to a single response. So instead of mindlessly clicking on a sentence, why not let Alphena ask those questions? The following is a concept video of how this would work.

In the first scene, Milore and Alphena chat for a bit while the player stands off to the side and picks his nose.  In scene two, we have a quest starting conversation with Glover Mallory that turns into a three-way conversation instead.

It doesn’t have to be limited to a single person either. Using the same techniques I use for the bards, I can take any NPCs in the room and make them have a conversation with Alphena. The one caveat is I have to play Dragonborn first, and frankly I don’t know if I’ll ever find the time.

One thing that has bothered me for a while now has been Tikrid’s AI. Her character is supposed to be physically awkward but effective, but the standardized animations belie that. She fights normally, she moves normally, as does every NPC in the game. So for the most part, for narrative purposes, I’ve resorted to breaking the cardinal sin, telling you why she’s awkward instead of showing you said awkwardness.

Without being able to alter her fighting style, the best I could do was make her gangly by dropping the weight slider down. There’s also the tan lines I’ve placed on her face – a story I will elaborate on further in v3.01 since most people seem to assume it’s dirt (Basically, when I constructed her face, I thought it’d be typical of her to try on war paint on the hottest and brightest day of the year, and come home with a tan line that stayed on her face for months).

In Darkened Steel, I was able to direct her a little more and have her commit faux pas – knocking urns over, crossing sacred boundaries, and stepping on traps – but she still does them with the same grace that is intrinsic in all NPCs. In other words, she feels a little more clumsy than awkward. After all, she’s bound to the matrix of the game, and the people who designed its animations wanted them to look impressive. For the most part, they succeeded.

However, while explaining this on the Nexus forums, I realized I’ve come across animations that aren’t really utilized in the vanilla game, mostly because they are patently ridiculous. For example, in the video below are the IdleLaugh and IdleGetAtttention – idles that for whatever reason do a head-first dive straight into the uncanny valley.

There are some animations though, that fall in the tenuous space between the impressive and the absurd. Animations that are just realistic enough to simply be, well, awkward. While it’s impossible to change Tikrid’s fighting style, in the next version I hope to add little touches here and there that unintentionally match her character. Given her background as a guardsmen, the IdleSalute and IdleSnaptoAttention actually fit perfectly, and having her stand at attention whenever you speak to her is one way to show her awkwardness instead of telling it.

One of the things that didn’t make it into version 3 was the re-write of Ignar the Lucky’s mage story. In retrospect, I felt it showed way too much concern for his fellow sellswords, and Ignar only cares about himself. So, here it is redone and ready for the next update, with Serithi providing the voice.

As I mentioned before, Ignar was somewhat influenced by Jade, in that I didn’t want another character who felt cursed or encumbered by his odd circumstances. Ignar is someone who embraces his situation, and thinks himself the luckiest man alive, even if the people who work with him feel the opposite.

Originally, I wanted to do a census of all the NPCs added by the mod, but that was too much work. So I whittled it down to data on the followers alone.

The pie chart is more or less what you would expect when factoring in the location of the game. Still, minorities collectively make up more than two-thirds of the mod’s followers, which is fine given diversity is lore friendly on such a micro scale. The chart shows I definitely need to add more Elven followers – Raynes and Rumarin are the only ones of their race, and both are male.

Surprisingly, Orcs make up the second largest contingent, although that includes Duraz. The Undead, at a healthy 7%, may also have a say in the coming election.

This chart lists the followers by class. In the interest of space, the Thief class bundles together both thieves and assassins, which interestingly enough are split along gender lines, with males (Raynes, Vawkes) being the killers and females (Morndas, Jade) being the cutpurses.

The most common classes are Mage and Warrior, but this chart doesn’t break it down by type. Meaning, given there are five schools of magic and heavy/light weapons and armor, it makes sense these two would have greater representation.

The one part that might be a bit skewed is the number of male mages, but males in general outnumber women by 2 to 1. This is because female voice actors are harder to find, and the issue of whether women exist on the internet is still up for debate.

Children should go to amusement parks. Roller coasters, bumper cars, sugar rushes – it’s an experience designed for a certain age. By the time you’re a teenager, the cotton candy doesn’t melt like it used to. The gravity doesn’t tug the same way. 

In real life, there’s a time and a place for everything. Indie rock, Bukowski novels, ironic T-Shirts and Harlem Globetrotting always struck me as things best done by young adults. Backpackers of the world need to hop on a plane before they sell their soul to careers, spouses, and movie night with the kids. Even if you’re single, hostels, drugs, and all-nighters are a young man’s game. You don’t want to be the creeper who travels the world in his late thirties. Or in the words of William S. Burroughs:

Have you forgotten something gramps? In order to feel something, you have to be there. You have to be 18. You’re not 18, you are 78. Old fool sold his soul for a strap-on.

You have to be awake.

When you’re young, you want to be in a place where it’s okay to scream. You want to have late nights and good tacos and watch the night bleed out on a fading scrim. Where were you when you weren’t there? Somewhere you shouldn’t be? If you’re young, attractive, and have cash to spend, then more often than not, you were. The rest of us though – old, ugly or poor – we’re still fucking with a strap-on. We’re traveling the world on paper airplanes. 

Yet there’s one thing the virtual world grants us that the real world cannot. Agency. In our little sandbox, we can run over hookers and eat cotton candy and ride dragons to work, and it will all make sense because it doesn’t have to. The rules are ours to make, the roles are ours to play. You can read one book and burn another, grow a beard and shave your legs. There is no great watcher to govern our behavior, no clock to tell us when it’s time for bed or time for work. We’re flying high. We’re free.

This is why people lose their shit when you make an essential NPC. It’s a violation of that fundamental contract, the notion that your game is to be played your way. The problem is, while the choices are yours, these decisons are made half-blind. Essential NPCs are always involved in quests. There’s no reason as a developer to give the player the freedom to shoot themselves in the foot, no matter how green and rancid and athletic it looks at the time.

And while there are essential NPCs, there are none that are permanently so. The tag is removed the moment the applicable quest is finished. They can all be killed eventually, but not until they’ve played their part. Because sometimes, even when the world is your playground – and all of us are nothing more than toys for your amusement – there is a time and a place for things.

You just have to wait until you’re a little older. Then you’ll understand why.

SPOILERS contained in video for the quest To Warm Sands, as well as minor stuff for the Raven of Anvil and Idle Dreams.

This is something I was dicking around with a few months ago, but never really implemented – mostly because by the time I decided to make it, many of the actors had already moved on to other projects or were uncomfortable voicing the lines. So I might as well show you what I got, since it probably won’t be expanded much further.

In less than a month, the blog will be a year old. One thing that’s been helpful is that unlike my previous failed websites and misadventures, this badboy is self-sustaining. I installed WordAds in December and despite a few misplaced commercials – there was once a half-naked woman under a post about Zora’s female empowerment – they’ve generally been rather benign.  I’m not entirely enthusiastic about the placement, however, as they take away from the gravitas of certain posts – but there’s no changing that apparently. In any case, while the revenue is still rather piddling, it’s enough to pay for the domain name and the various upgrades I’ve purchased.

I’ve also added a partner post section in the sidebar that is essentially for paid advertisements and will feature sponsored links. I doubt I’ll get much more of these, but just having one sponsor was a coup, especially considering how non-invasive the blog post/link is.

Some other news and notes:

• The Wiki is still not up to date. It’s a long grind. I have no idea how Blauwvis managed to do all those tables, but without her I feel like a cripple.

• Additional Tags – I’ve added a storytime tag, because I want to write more word sketches in addition to working on the mod, which is entirely dialogue-centric.

• Anna Castiglioni has started her own blog for her companion mod, Anduniel.

• As for the mod, I’ve mostly been working on super follower commentary. I made a new quest, but decided to scrap it. Some of the characters I liked, so I might use them for something else. At this point though, there’s no reason to add quests just for the sake of adding them. Quality over quantity.

• I don’t know when the release of Fallout 4 will be, but I’ve decided to throw some lines together in preparation. Again, it’s kind of therapeutic to get away from fantasy and drop a few F-Bombs here and there. Here’s Damien Lacambra providing a sample:

• Lastly, I’m considering altering the theme because I don’t like how the comments nest. They sort of tab everything to the right until your comment gets squeezed into the corner and looks like a scroll bar made of letters. Good for Tetris, bad for reading.

• I want to contact some artists about making alternative or straight fan art of characters, maybe even commission it using extra funds from the site if the artist is professional grade. Or maybe hold a contest of some sort. Although right now the mod just isn’t notable enough to garner that kind of attention.

I’ll probably throw up another update soon, just kind of hoping for more voice work to come in. Here’s a video that shows some of the new stuff, a few additional conversations for Alassea, more greetings and goodbyes for Valgus and some interaction with vanilla NPCs using the same technique I used in the Dragonborn NPC trailer.

First I want to mention I added a new volunteers section to the sidebar for anyone who’s interested in helping out. Basically right now the main thing I am looking for is wiki contributors, but I’m not going to say no to any talent of any kind, whether you want to provide blog stories or fan art and the like. I’ve already added an author – which means I need to figure out how to place a byline. First world problems.

As far as new content, I’ve gotten a little quest fatigue so I’ve returned to adding follower commentary. This can take a while though, because it requires playing Skyrim again, forcing myself to dungeon crawl instead of say, hunting antelope, then writing the lines, then waiting for them to get voiced.

Another thing I want to go back and do is add more scene interaction between vanilla and mod NPCs. Who I do this for will depend on actor availability, as well as how natural I can make the vanilla tracks sound. Splicing up lines can take hours to get right.

Most of these scenes have to be reverse engineered. For example, today I was playing around with having Ysolda speak to Larkspur, the former bandit. Rather than construct the scene and hope there was audio to match it, I just looked for a line that mentioned bandits, and built the conversation from there. This is the track – spoken by Muiri – that forms the basis for the conversation:

Of course, while there’s plenty of meat in this track, in order to make it work for the scene, I had to splice it together with two separate tracks so that Ysolda is addressing Larkspur directly instead of talking about Alain Dufont. This is the end result:

The tone of all three tracks in this situation is similar enough that the sentence flows smoothly. You can’t just pick any track from a specific actor, as the emotion and voice can change depending on the NPC. For example, Elisif’s tracks can’t be used for Ysolda, and vice versa. Either way, now I can build Larkspur’s dialogue around this.

In any case, more conversations that don’t involve the player always helps the surrounding environment feel more alive, and including vanilla NPCs helps integrate the mod ones into the world. It’s just given all the variables, it isn’t the easiest thing to do.

Whenever someone is critical of an NPC in ways that are ostensibly subjective, the first thing I try to do is understand why, and perhaps figure out ways to improve the experience. Why do some users hate an NPC that others unconditionally love? Sure, it’s easy to ascribe this to taste and opinions, but that would imply it’s an unsolvable quandary for which I can only toss my hands in the air and curse the Gods for making people different.

However, if you’re like me (for your sake, I hope not) and are unsatisfied with such an answer, there is another explanation. Even if the world was filled with emotional clones who felt the same and thought the same and were in love with the same person, if you think about it, there is still one variable that often changes depending on the playthrough, and could account for some of these varying opinions. Location, location, location. In other words, where you meet an NPC is just as important as what they’re saying.

For instance, when I added daily schedules way back when, it may have compromised your first impression of certain NPCs, especially the folks in Whiterun. Meeting Iria outdoors in the sun results in a completely different mood than if you’re meeting her in the Hall of the Dead. Even in the crypt, if she’s sitting down chowing on a piece of bread, that doesn’t feel particularly morbid. As a result, the deadpan, gallows humor can get misinterpreted.

On the other hand, if you meet her in the crypt first, then see her parading around Whiterun, suddenly it adds a second layer of depth. All right, she’s a creepy, ghoul of a woman, but she also doesn’t mind the occasional walk in the park. So, minor tweaks like the one pictured are aimed to enhance the experience. In the next version, she’ll stay here mulling over a corpse (I considered the open coffin being taboo, but fuck Andurs asks you to kill skeletons so whatever) until you speak with her. Only then will she depart. The same could probably be done for Eldar, although it would be somewhat bizarre for him to run the shop in the middle of the night. Larkspur too will have his initial encounter moved to the dungeon.

Another thing I want to correct is the generic combat dialogue for super followers. Bethesda used generic combat lines because the same files were utilized across multiple NPCs. Since Aela has the same voice as Uthgerd, it’s convenient for them to share the same battlecries.

Conversely, there’s no reason for unique voice types to do the same – it was probably laziness on my part that I had the actors share a list of generic babble. This results in hilarious incongruities like Valgus screaming “Why won’t you die already!” despite him being a healer who advocates peace. The video also shows him heal you at the end of battle, which yes, isn’t the same as him using the spells in combat, but I’ve yet to figure out how that’s done – hence no animation or magicka use involved. It’s solely for immersion.

In any case, these are some examples of what I’m working on as I take a break from quests and new NPCs. I think the mod can always find ways to get better, and not just by adding new content. In other words, it’s more about turning my brain sideways as opposed to upside down. Yeah, that metaphor makes no sense.

It’s no secret the chairs are soaked in ale. Wet and rotten and filled with bugs. Probably. That’s the theory, anyway. Degaine, for one, is a believer. That’s why he’s crawling on the stone, sniffing the chairs, inhaling their musk.  He finds one that’s damp. Sticky. He clings on to it for dear life. He licks its thorny stems.

Sometimes he’ll get too excited and bite into the wood.  It’s soft, splintery.  Degaine doesn’t chew. Not at first. He clumps them in the corner of his mouth like bales of hay. Then he presses them with his molars. Squeezes out that last bit of juice.

On this day though, his bite severs the chair’s artery. Sweet, golden barley pours out from the wound. Kleppr sighs. The innkeeper only sees a mess to clean. Luckily Degaine’s clothes are made of old rags. Frabbi, Kleppr’s wife, spears his back and uses the beggar to wipe the floor.

The Khajiit doesn’t find this behavior odd. Not after Ysolda told her of the tree. She has cradled it many times, tasted its purple nectar. The tree sleeps. The soul dreams.

A chorus of sneers fill the inn as Frabbi’s mop soaks up the last of the malted syrup. This mop, which once had a name, Dejohn or something or other, was said to be a liar. Perhaps this was so, the Khajiit thinks, but the drink changed him. In the end, the mop was true to his feelings.  It was the ale that made him honest.

When she’s alone with her thoughts, the Khajiit sometimes gets anxious. She wonders if the last time will be just that. Her body shudders. Her whiskers go limp. She tries to say goodbye, but her mouth can’t even form the words. Yet with each breath, all of her doubts are trapped in a chrysalis of smoky white. And when the cocoon tears so does time itself, transporting her far beyond, to a place where she too has lost her name.

In that vision, she finds herself laid out in front of an old hearth.  Her owner, a High Elf, ambles slowly across her pelt, his bare toes wading through her gentle fur. He falls into his velvet chair before falling asleep, counting the crackle of flames as they warm the curved stone. As his body grows still, his grip loosens. He drops the bottle in his hand. It barely makes a sound.

From the lip of the bottle, a milky substance drops onto the pelt. An old friend. And the Khajiit realizes, in this life and the next, that she has no need for parting words. She’ll never have to say them.

This video shows a few extra tweaks I want to implement for the next update. Previously, the console could be used to mute NPCs, but now they’ll be given a vanilla voice type and turned into clutter. All scenes involving the NPCs will also be turned off as well.