Snowpoint Beacon, Skyrim
____________________

"Thanks again for your help. By the way, the name's Tikrid. And yours?"

The Dark Elf that rescued Tikrid from the captivity, seemed perplexed at the question.

"My name?" he uttered after a few seconds, during which Tikrid wondered, whether her question made him feel unpleasant.

"Yes...I'd like to know the name my rescuer. If that's fine with you."

"Oh. Of course."

But I don't know what my name is! I remember nothing! I don't know my name or where I come from. I woke up a few days ago in some ruined shack, without remembering anything from my past! My body hurt and is covered with deep scars that someone or something inflicted on me! I remember only dim scenes from my past but I can't recall them. There's only one word playing in my head, I don't know what it means. Bafhtee. Is this my name? Or is this something completely different? Maybe this is the cause of my amnesia. Maybe I should tell Tikrid this word. See her reaction. But by doing so, the word becomes my name.

"So...is your name that long?" Tikrid smiled. The Dark Elf seemed to wander away in his thoughts.

"My name...is Bafhtee."

"Bafhtee, it was a pleasure and I thank you once again. If you ever come to Dawnstar, find me at my sister Beitild's house."

"I'll come. I promise."

"Until then. Safe travels," waved Tikrid and descended the slippery stairs of the lone tower.

A neat girl. I should really visit her in Dawnstar to make sure that she made it there. I offered to escort her but she declined. I understand her - she wants to prove to herself that she can make it back home on her own. It was embarrassing for her that bandits got the best of her.

Earlier that day, the Dark Elf came to the Snowpoint Beacon with an intention to kill the bandit chief.

Why did I accept the bounty? To get some septims.

Why did I need septims? To pay Nelacar for the information about the brightest star as black as night.

Why do I want to know about this? Because the priestess of Azura set me on a path.

After gaining consciousness and realizing that my memories are gone, the statue of the Goddess of Twilight felt like a beacon in the darkness. So I traveled there and the priestess told me that I was expected at the shrine??? But she offered no further explanations.

I needed to repeat these events, to make sure, that my memory works. For now.

Bafhtee.

Bafhtee.
____________________

Shrine of Azura

Tikrid and her savior

Lopov, this looks like a mysterious opening for a new character? Neat that about all he remembers is related to Azura and her Star. Brrr! Skyrim looks cold!

Lopov, you promised you weren't going to roleplay!

Kidding. It's nice to see you RP to the point you're inspired enough to share a moment with us. Maybe now that you're here, you can explain what Bafthee (BAFTI) means. I just tried Googling it and all I got were a bunch of links to Facebook and other social sites which were started with somebody who's name is Bafti.


Brrr!!!!

I don't think Lopov can explain this to you! Bafhtee has amnesia, see... But perhaps Azura would know? Ask her!

Thanks for a warm welcome in cold Skyrim.

The race and appearance of my latest character were completely randomized. I would cover the half of the screen so that I didn't see his face / body and then I would randomly choose options. Only when I was in the actual game, I checked what I've created. The end result was a Dunmer Nightblade. I gave him a start from the Live another life mod (Attacked and left for dead), I only added the amnesia part. Being a Dunmer, it was very fitting for his roleplay to see the Statue of Azura in the distance. His name was derived from the word that was stuck in my mind that day and it's about a score for some illness, I only spelled it differently.

There's quite loud on the Nexus forums, people complain, because some Steam update, meant for the AE, made most of the SKSE-dependent mods incompatible with Skyrim SE (or AE, whatever it's now called), even SKSE as such didn't work anymore. Then SKSE got updated from the creators but another Steam update kicked in, and it didn't work again. Now SKSE works AFAIK, but lots of mods need to be updated or readjusted for the new update. My goal now is to find the original Skyrim SE (if it's even possible to find it in a legal way) and then reinstall Skyrim, I won't wait for this AE mess to be solved.

Blah, that sucks.

That's exactly why I gave up on Skyrim. After several having to rebuild my modded game episodes I gave up on SE and the experience even soured me on the original.

{Edited by Acadian to remove discussion of illegal gaming/piracy.}

My goal is to play again the awesome Beyond Reach mod, I'm actually not that interested in playing Skyrim as such. That mod was next to New Vegas Bounties for Fallout New Vegas of course, the only mod that deeply touched me, I was totally awed by it, its story it's beautiful but also full of despair and brutality, way more brutality than we find in any Skyrim quest. I've played through it with Souissi 3-4 years ago but the mod wasn't polished then, so we needed to use console commands a lot to advance through quests because some of them were bugged. Regardless, I really want to replay through it agan. I did notice that the mod author added a warning as the mod loads that the mod contains lots of dark content that some people can't handle and it's not recommended for people that are emotionally instable, because it might affect them in a negative way. For me it was just the opposite - I never really got truly over the death of my son (and probably never will) but experiencing a similar event in a video game helped me in a way - hard to say why, but maybe also because one of the messages that Beyond Reach brings is, that sometimes in life regardless of how and why you do some stuff, things just turn out the other way, or maybe they were destined to turn out in such a way from the start.

"Confront your demons" is an old mantra, and I believe that's what's happening for you with this mod. As long as the demons don't destroy you, there's nothing wrong with that, and this is the beauty of a video game - if you get slaughtered, you just reload, go away, train up your character, level up, come back and try again. Much better than in real life. I have been known to make deals with demons during real-life confrontations though, because in real life you can't just reload...

{Edited by Acadian to remove discussion of illegal gaming/piracy.}

Lopov, I totally understand why you did what you did. As you know, going around the official ways make me leery, but it also makes no sense to me that they are changing things now, years after the SE version was released, and that these changes are causing havoc within the entire community.

Also We are here for you, buddy. There are no words really to express how awful that time was. It's good you were able to at least get through some of the past, even if it was "just" in a video game.

This winter my motto in Skyrim is "Where one adventure ends, the next one begins".

In other words, when one of my characters dies, I jump into the "head" of the one that was close to him. My first character during this winter was Verdil, an undercover Thalmor agent, whose task among others was to find recruits for the Thalmor. One of them was Jenassa and as they were traveling to the Thalmor HQ in Solitude, where Verdil intended to reveal Jenassa his true identity and her future purpose, they got attacked by bandits at the Robber's Gorge. Their chief killed Verdil and since I stick to the Dead-is-dead rule, I didn't continue his story, instead I switched to Jenassa. Since Verdil never revealed her his allegiance with the Thalmor, Jenassa couldn't figure out who was he working for, so she continued adventuring on her own. However, after the fateful meeting with the blind priestess of Mara, who begged her to travel to the Eastern High Rock to prevent the oncoming disaster, Jenassa heeded her words and traveled east, despite not knowing at the time what the priestess was talking about.

There she is now, in the Eastern Reach, fighting against the mad Witchmen, while at the same time trying to uncover the reason behind the insanity that plagues the mind of Lord Mortifayne, the cruel leader of the town of Arnima, once known as Raven Springs.

I started a new Skyrim game with Blood Raven a few weeks ago. I was finally able to get a castle house mod that I had tried to use before, but just could not get to work with Hearthfire adoptions. This time I finally figured out what I was missing, and now I can have kids live there.

I decided to do the main quest with her this time, since I did not the last time. However, after a couple of weeks of just exploring and leveling up, I finally get around to doing the MQ stuff. It was instantly a nightmare. The first dragon outside of Whiterun would not appear. After use of the console, it eventually did show up as a corpse, near Bleak Falls Barrow (it was not easy to find).

More console use got me past that quest and further down the line. Then at Kynesgrove I had more problems. Alduin never showed up, and the dragon that gets reanimated just circled around in the air sideways. Again, I had to console myself past it.

Eventually I figured out that it was problem of an old mod I had. But even after removing it, I still had the issues when I went back to my older saves. So the changes it made were stuck in the game.

So I started over again from scratch. I am trying again to do the main quest. This time I have gone into it much quicker. Thankfully the first dragon did appear at the Western Watchtower outside of Whiterun just as he is supposed to. I fought it, killed it, and...

That is where game farted again. I could not absorb the dragon soul for some reason. Which basically brought the quest to a screeching halt. I tried a number of recommended fixes, but none of them worked. Including redoing the fight numerous times. Once more, I had to use the console to get past it.

This one looks like a pretty well known bug that is caused by Dragonborn and older versions of the unofficial patch. The new versions of the patch are supposed to fix it. So of course I tried it, and wouldn't you know, it did nothing.

So I am keeping my fingers crossed that the other dragon stuff will work this time.



Edit: I found the fix for my inability to absorb dragon souls. I had to go into my Scripts folder and delete the following file:

mqkilldragonscript.pex

Also, if you have dragonactorscript.pex delete that as well. Both are known to cause this problem if you also have Dragonborn.

Yikes, some of that sounds awful! What a lot of work. What the heck could've caused the Whiterun dragon to not show up?

I find that Skyrim is definitely the most stable of the modern Beth games once it is up and running. But yeah, it's also a pain to get running in the first place, sometimes.

Oh I see, it was an older mod in the load order. Are you using Wrye? If not, you can install and uninstall anything (including those pesky scripts) with two or three clicks. But even so, sometimes when the save ITSELF gets screwed up, even Wrye tricks can't save it.

Cool, glad you solved the problem.

Wasn’t sure where else to put this but I’ve encountered a small annoyance with the quest menu. I made the mistake of talking to Sidgeir about doing his favor before actually reading the letter his courier delivered. After doing his favor, I read the letter, and now I permanently have “talk to the Jarl of Falkreath” in my miscellaneous section of the quest menu. Anyone know how I can clear that out of there? I figure it can probably be done with console commands, but I’m not sure which commands to use.

I think I can help. Which quest is this you're referring to? Also, do you have the Creation Kit?

It’s the first part of the “Build your own home” quest for Falkreath. I’ve actually already built the one room cottage (which is all I plan to do with Lakeview Manor).

In the console: SetObjectiveCompleted BYOHHouseFalkreath 15 1

It won't harm the quest, just takes the objective out of your journal. Watch for the double H in the quest name.

Ah, thank you! I’ll try that next time I play!

I have been playing Blood Raven in Skyrim for a few months now. I went full into Enchanting with her and got it up to 100, and took the Twin Enchantments perk. Now I regret it. She has become so overpowered nothing is challenge anymore. I tried scaling back and now creating new magic items using just one enchantment, except for adding the increased carry weight as the second on a few items. But even still, just having the skill at 100 makes for some insanely powerful single enchantments on items.

I think I am going to take pains to avoid this in the future. I think one of the things that made it possible, or at least so easy, was that I am using a mod that gives you a spell to fill magicka gems. So its really easy to just cast it and fill them. Then turn around and enchant all the loot I picked up before selling it off. I think I am going to stop using that in the future, as well as just not focus on enchanting beyond level 50 or 60 or so.

I am probably done with Blood Raven in Skyland now. Though I did find the Deathbrand armor and wore it for one session, instead of her regular uber outfit. That did make the game more challenging. I moved on to playing the Shadows of Undrentide expansion for Neverwinter Nights 1 with Blood Raven. But it is short. Once I am done I might try going back to Skyrim with Blood Raven.

Or I might go back with January. I am getting the itch to play her again. She is such a nice person, it always feels good to spend time with her.

Cool, I've had a few charactres dabble with Enchanting but never all the way. I wouldn't worry about trying to correct this.

I've had 'toons become OP before.... their game is still fun, but maybe only for an hour (instead of my usual 4 to 6 hours back in the day). My Grey Wizard (CoC) in OB could merely summon a daedroth, go invisible, and watch the fun. Cast a Control spell, make somebody turn against his buddies, go invisible, and watch the fun. Repeat on whichever NPC was next, until one person was left standing. His game was still fun, but I couldn't dig into it like I could with a weaker guy or gal.

This is why I play multiple characters. As you said, you've still got January.

The incarnation of Brenna that I’m currently playing focuses on Illusion, Conjuration, Enchanting, and One Handed (swords and daggers), with Restoration and Alchemy as slightly lesser focuses. She also uses (but taking no perks) some Destruction and Alteration spells, and wears some light armor (namely select pieces of the Old God’s set, depending on the situation). Otherwise she is currently wearing a white padded fur mantle and the Chef’s Tunic (I have plans to enchant the Chef’s Tunic with magicka regen once her Enchant skill is high enough to get a decent % on it). We’ve been taking our time, for the most part. We are Thane of Whiterun after killing a dragon threatening the city, and we just became a member of The Circle with the Companions (what serious group of adventurers doesn’t need a mage in their number? Especially one who is handy with a sword?). We’ve also helped Madanach escape captivity in Markarth, which as a result, has given us friendly status amongst the Forsworn. Otherwise it’s just Brenna and Lydia, traveling the country side and collecting alchemical ingredients! And souls. There’s a good bit of that too.

Anybody here besides me get really annoyed with the Companion questline?

Rest assured, you are not alone.

It's warm beer. Note: beer, not mead.

What I recall from the Companion questline was near the end when the going got tough, the two burly brothers wimped out, leaving the two Gurlz to handle things alone.

Annoyed? Not at all. Disturbed? Yes. I did not want my character becoming a werewolf. Fortunately, the first time I did Companions, the warrior guy I was with (Thor a'Zaene) sort of fit the questline. I could see him becoming a werewolf, I just wish there was more of a choice. 🐺

It's partially because of the deluge of fans requesting Bethesda bring werewolves back. They got their wish, and I'm happy for them. I can picture all the werewolf-wanters being totally like "Whooooa!!" the first time they saw Vilkas (or whomever, I forget their names) turn into a beast. Didn't bother me, but when MY character got forced into the role...

I did think our character became Harbinger way too fast. I remember enjoying the questline, rushing through it. Two weeks later Gunter (my second try at Companions, Thor got killed) was leader of the Companions. Which, okay, that'd maybe work due to the accomplishments he performed. But where was the uproar about this? The long-timer Companions should've been upset about this; challenging my guy to a fight at least.

Why, what were you annoyed about, CheshireKhajiit?

The Werewolf questline did nothing for me. I was annoyed that it pretends to be the Skyrim version of the Fighters Guild, but in actuality is just the werewolf guild. Like Renee, I don't want to be a werewolf. I might have completed it once. Now I just completely avoid the whole Companions building and the skyforge.

Oh, I see - the Companions werewolf thing. The way we played that involved some head canon. Buffy turned into a werefox, hid under a table until it wore off then got herself cured most quickly.

I had a lot of characters in Skyrim. Only one ever did that line, and did not remain a werewolf. Much the same with the Vampire thing, just one tried out Vampire Lord, and eventually took the cure.

Werefox!

The lycanthropy stuff is all fine for Brenna. As a devotee of Hircine, it just fits her. What I was most annoyed about is that these “warriors” can’t seem to do anything for themselves. Kodlak wants to get “cured”. Ok, so why does that need to be Brenna’s problem? Then he asks us to kill WITCHES?! Why on Nirn would Brenna kill witches who are also fellow Hircine devotees? You can’t advance the quest line unless you acquiesce to his request so I guess Brenna is done with the companions (unless it still lets you do the radiant “work” quests).

I feel this quest line could’ve been so much more. For starters, having to do more jobs before getting promoted would help a lot. As it is, you become a full member after only one job, then you become a member of the Circle after completing your initiation and doing only one more job. Doesn’t feel right. Also, I feel the Silver Hand should’ve been a joinable faction and their story should’ve been more fleshed out. As it is, they are just a bunch of werewolf hating brigands. Maybe they should’ve been an offshoot of the Companions themselves, trying to cleanse the group of the werewolves?

Gosh, this gives me ideas, Khajiit! For my Skyrim in Oblivion. I built Whiterun but I haven't filled it in yet. Companions are currently "out of town". But yeah, that Werewolf vs. Silver Hand line certainly lends itself to a whole new story!