A strange dream haunted my sleep. I was there, sitting alone on my bed, as the women who'd been sitting at the bar the night before barged into the room. 

 

"Well, look at the birthday girl," said the Dunmer woman.

 

"I think we should give her something special," said a woman dressed like a tavern wench, her face covered by a dark cowl. Glowing red eyes peeked over the top, watching me hungrily.

 

"Yes," the older Nord woman said, "I think she needs a birthday spanking."

 

Wilhelm and another man followed the trio into my room. Wordlessly, they watched as the women produced broad wooden paddles. I couldn't move. In retrospect, perhaps it was Edippa's cuddling in the waking world that held me fast in the dream world. In any event, I cried out as the first blow fell, printing a burning square of agony on my rear end. Even as I rubbed at the angry welt, the old Nord wound up to deliver another blow. Down they rained, again and again, and all I could do was sit there on the bed as they struck. The men were content first to watch hungrily, and then to begin cheering on the women. 

 

 

After an eternity of agony, the Dunmer crossed her arms and with a satisfied expression whispered, "I think she's been tenderized enough."

 

The masked woman spoke again, "Yes, look at all that hot, red skin. Now let's hold her down and... play with her." 

 

Laughing breathily, the Dunmer woman grasped my shoulders and pulled me down onto my back. Before I could try to resist she stood and planted her feet on my elbows, pinning me in place. Only then did I see that she and the Nord woman were now bare-skinned, but with smooth, black phalluses belted about their waists. The red-eyed woman was content to watch, but as I rolled my head to the side I could see that now Wilhelm was fornicating with a woman -- the other man was nowhere to be seen. 

 

My distracting was only momentary, however, as the old Nord woman, bushy silver hair running all the way up to her navel, held my legs back and apart, maneuvering her false member to enter me. I tried to struggle, tried to cry out, but still I was held fast. I felt the smooth tool brush against my inner thighs, and it felt for all the world like the pressure of the warm stones of the dragon mound as I had ground my body down on them. I saw her hips draw back as she prepared to break through into my deepest recesses, and then...

 

 

...I awoke with a shout. Before I had fully regained my senses, I felt firm but gentle hands turning me, rolling me onto my back. I shook my head twice before I could really focus properly, and I saw Edippa looking down on me with concern.

 

"It's alright, you're fine," she soothed. "It was just a bad dream."

 

I realized I was breathing rapidly and with an effort of will I forced myself to take slow, deep breaths until my heard started to slow.

 

"I dreamt they came for me in the night. That they beat me and forced..."

 

"Who?" Edippa interrupted.

 

With one arm I motioned out towards the common room. "All of them. Wilhelm, the regulars, and a woman I hadn't seen before. She hid her face, but I saw she had piercing red eyes." 

 

Edippa thought on that for a moment. "That sounds like the undead. I wonder... could it be..." She seemed to drift off, her attention going somewhere else.

 

"What is it?" I asked.

 

"Daughter, how much do you know about Ivarstead?"

 

I paused and thought back to what my father had told me about our lost homeland. "It's... a vassal of the Jarl of Riften. At the foot of the Throat of the World."

 

Edippa nodded. "Aye, all that's true, though Layla Lawgiver, Jarl of Riften, has seen fit to make her brother a Jarl in name if not reality and seat him on the Falconrest throne. But I meant more about the history of this place."

 

I shook my head. "No, I'm sorry. I know next to nothing."

 

"Well, maybe you should ask Wilhelm about the old Barrow on the hill just outside town."

 

I felt a moment of hesitation, the strange and frightening dream still fresh in my mind, but then I shook that worry from my mind. It was only a dream. 

 

"Yes, that's wise," I conceded. "But I think I need a drink first. Is any of that mead left?"

 

Edippa smiled. "Daughter, I hope you aren't one to drown your fears in a bottle. But yes, I think there's enough to whet your throat."

 

She offered me the now-much-lighter bottle and I took a short swig; my thirst felt diminshed almost immediately, and after straightening my clothes a bit I returned to the main hall. Sunlight broke through gaps in the rafters, and I realized that I'd overslept the morning by some time. Wilhelm was there, washing out some mugs, and he turned to me with a smirk.

 

"I would have thought after all that time passed out in the corner, you wouldn't have needed much more sleep."

 

I shrugged, "I'd have thought the same, but apparently I was still dead tired." I flexed my fingers and toes, adding, "But I think I've well and truly overcome the frostbite. But I'm curious about something else. My companion tells me there's an old barrow just outside town. Know anything about it?"

 

He grimaced at that, before answering, "There ain't much to tell. They're haunted and you should stay away."

 

I must have made some expression or rolled my eyes a little because he quickly added, "Look, I've seen one of the spirits with my own eyes. When it glared at me, I swear it burned right through my soul."

 

"Eyes?" I asked. "Red eyes?"

 

Wilhelm paused for a moment. "Per... haps. Truth be told, everything I remember about that night is shadows and torchlight. But, maybe. Why do you ask?"

 

"Do the spirits haunt the town as well?" I pressed.

 

"Fortunately, they stick to the barrow. I think they're guarding it. Not that it's helping my business at all. Who'd want to rent a room near a haunted barrow?"

 

I thought about leaving it be, maybe just moving on to another town, but I remembered how Edippa said she had a knack for fighting the undead. And that strange woman... even as the details of the dream were fading from my woken mind, her piercing eyes were still fresh, like I'd seen them but a moment before. I glanced over at Edippa, and she was watching us intently. No, watching me intently.

 

Turning back to Wilhelm I suggested, "I could investigate it for you."

 

He let out a short laugh, but then settled his mien and answered, "If you think there's anything you can do, then be my guest."

 

"Fair enough. I'll let you know what I find."

 

When we'd gone a few steps from the bar, Edippa put an arm around my shoulder. "I knew you'd take on the challenge. Like mother, like daughter, I saw. Shall we go and root out some undead?"

 

"Yes, mother," I answered with a bit of a smile, "let's. And maybe we'll find my red-eyed night visitor while we're at it."

 

At that, we left the tavern and stepped out into the late afternoon sun. I had overslept, and by quite a lot, but more shocking were the sights and sounds. The snow-bare trees, the chirping birds, the cool - but not chilling - wind. These were all foreign things to me, and I had little choice but to stop and relish them.

 

 

"Mother..." I asked, "Is all of Skyrim like this?"

 

"Like what?" she answered before quickly amending herself, "oh, I forget that you're an outsider. I take it you lived somewhere cold? Solstheim perhaps, or Roscrea?"

 

"Northpoint," I said, "in High Rock." 

 

Edippa nodded slowly. "I understand then. The north of Skyrim would be very familiar to you, especially the Pale. But venture south and you'll find climes more like this. Go further south, into Falkreath hold or the Reach, and the temperature can be downright comfortable in the summer."

 

I laughed at that, "let me tell you, this is comfortable enough. Any warmer and I might start to cook."

 

She shrugged. "Well, my daughter, believe it or not, but you aren't required to wear that smelly old fur cloak. Indeed, go to Markarth and you can wear as little as you want. Between the warmth of the dwarven machinery and the enlightened teachings of Lady Dibella, you'll find yourself free to live in your skin alone if it suits your fancy."

 

"Markarth," I whispered.

 

"You know if it?"

 

"My father was from Markarth, but I was practically newborn when we left. I never knew the city. You'll have to tell me more about it, but..."

 

"...but we have a barrow to explore right now, is that it?" Edippa said it with a smile, "I agree. Let's free this spirit from its suffering, then I can tell you more about your long-lost homeland."

 

The barrow wasn't too hard to find. At some point - as the town had grown, I assume - the outer pallisade had incorporated the stone edifice of the barrow's upper level into its fortifications, so the entrance actually resided within the perimeter of Ivarstead. I checked my bow one final time, then slipped within.

 

 

The interior of the top level followed a concentric layout, and we carefully circled the exterior until we found a door that promised to lead within. I checked it as quietly as I could, and it gave way to a firm touch - not locked. With a final look to Edippa, we drew our weapons and - as silently as we could manage - pressed into the interior of the barrow.

 

"Amazing," Edippa whispered. "This is a Nordic ruin - thousands of years old - and yet it not only stands, but the carpentry of these stairs doesn't show any sign of rot. There are indeed magics of some sort at work here." 

 

"I see what you mean," I said as I carefully descended the central spiral staircase of the ruin. At first I'd set my weight on each step with the utmost caution, expecting them to disintegrate and give way at a fraction of my weight. But each plank was solid underfoot, and with growing confidence I sped my descent. 

 

"Shh, wait a second," Edippa said as we reached the bottom. She pointed down a narrow, gently sloped passage that branched off the central staircase. "See that? The brazier?"

 

"It's lit," I observed. "Good luck for us, we'll be able to see our way."

 

"Good luck and ill," Edippa countered. "Did your father ever tell you tales of the Draugr?"

 

I nodded, thinking back to scary stories that seemed a lifetime away. "Walking dead. Like... zombies."

 

"Worse than zombies, daughter. Zombies are just mindless husks, animated with dark magic. Draugr... they are ancient traitors who sold their souls to dark priests. Their minds, or some twisted remnant of them, live on. And so they maintain their masters' lairs, countless ages after the last of them departed. Be careful, don't underestimate them."

 

I took a second to absorb that before answering. "Thank you, I'll be watchful. I didn't realize..."

 

"Don't worry," she said, "you'll learn all about them soon enough."

 

Deeper we delved, until we reached a gate and Edippa held me back. "Look," she whispered, pointing along the corridor, "do you see it?"

 

I followed her pointing finger to an alcove, dimly lit by glowing braziers. At first I thought the shape within was a statue, but on closer examination it was clearly a preserved corpse.

 

"Draugr," she whispered. "Put an arrow into it now before it wakes to our presence." 

 

I didn't think for a moment to argue. Drawing back my father's bow, I loosed an arrow into the dead man. It sunk into his ribs with a thunk, but the creature remains motionless. I loosed again, with no greater effect. Then a voice returned from the shadows.

 

"Leave this place," it whispered. Then again louder, "leave this place!"

 

 

I looked left and right, and just at the edge of my vision off to my left I could see a glowing blue cloud, already fading away. Was this the spirit Wilhelm had spoken of? The warning called forth thrice more, and then the glow vanished.

 

"Very... interesting," Edippa said.

 

I looked to her, trying my best to convey that I had a question without having to put it to words. 

 

"See, daughter, these Draugr are... inert. Their spirits are gone. And now a ghostly voice speaks to us in the common tongue. Something strange is afoot. Be careful."

 

We did indeed proceed with great care, stepping lightly and watching for any sign of traps or pitfalls - or more Draugr. At length, we came to a fork between a locked door and a gate with an obvious pull chain. Having no lockpicks to work with, I had to leave the door be, and so we carefully pulled the chain by the gate. With a whisper of metal on stone, the gate retracted into the ceiling. A moment later, the value of our caution was concerned, as steel spears lanced into the hallway from hidden alcoves, clearly meant to strike down any over-confident intruders. Waiting for them to retract, we carefully proceed through the murder-hole and deeper into the barrow. 

 

And then, moments after cautiously opening a door, I saw the spirit! More problematic, he saw me at the same moment.

 

"No one hides from the dead," he sneered. He had the sharp features of an elf, swathed in ghostly furs, blue haze and smoke pouring off his body.

 

I didn't hesitate. I shot one arrow, then another into him. He staggered, then rallied - with a pointed finger, a bolt of lightning leapt from his hand and straight into my chest. It knocked the wind out of me for a moment, and with a cry I fell back. Edippa started to push past me, mace in hand, but the spirit threw up a glowing barrier that deflected her blow. Still, the ward flickered for a moment, and before it could recover its full power I pulled back my bow again and put a final, fatal bowshot into the spirit. I was struck then with a powerful gust of wind as blow light billowed off the creature. An instant later, the light was gone, and what remained was... a dead Bosmer.

 

 

On watch for any sign of further foes, I crept into the chamber and examined the fallen elf. He had little in his possession; a simple dagger, some rather comfortable looking shoes, and... a swirling purple potion. 

 

"I don't like the look of this," Edippa said, carefully checking the corners of the chamber.

 

I worked off the dead elf's shoes and retrieved the potion, before rejoining Edippa in her search.

 

"What are we looking for?" I asked. 

 

"An explanation of what just happened," she said in all seriousness. "I was expecting Draugr, maybe ghosts, but not... this. Wait, do you hear fire?"

 

I concentrated for a moment and... "yes, I do. That way, down the hall."

 

We proceeded and soon saw the glow of a hearth as we turned a corner. In fact, we'd found a small apartment of sorts, nestled in the bowels of the barrow. Clothes, potions, a lamentably empty beer keg, a rather nice looking dagger, and... another potion.

 

"Well now," Edippa said, "what's this?"

 

 

Retrieving a small journal, Edippa began paging through its contents. 

 

"What is it?" I asked.

 

"Hold on, daughter, don't be impatient," Edippa mumbled as she read further. Then she closed the journal with a sense of finality. "I think we've solved the spirit problem here at the barrow."

 

"Oh?"

 

"The elf you struck down earlier? He was some sort of researcher, trying to find something called "the claw." He used those potions to glamour himself into looking like a ghost, and scared away anyone who entered the barrow."

 

That gave me pause. Did we just murder some kind of scholar? I did, after all, take the first shot when he saw me. I asked Edippa, concerned.

 

She shrugged. "Maybe, if you look at it one way, but I'd say he brought this on himself. Pretending to be a ghost, threatening you, to say nothing of all the fear he instilled in the villagers? Beyond being a stupid plan, it was a reckless one. And, if his journal's any guide, I think he was rapidly descending into madness."

 

"I suppose that would explain how he behaved. But... I wish we could have found a better solution. It would have been enough for Wilhelm, I think, to know that the barrow wasn't haunted."

 

"But is it?" Edippa challenged me, "Is the barrow not in fact haunted? Between this one's creeping madness and the clear signs that this was, at least once, a Draugr tomb, I'm not convinced we've seen everything that's hidden within. Tell me, daughter, how are you with locks?"

 

I hesitated. I wasn't sure how much I wanted to admit. Would she judge me if she knew I'd learned a thing or two about... less than legal pursuits? Maybe, but by now I was feeling like I could trust Edippa with something small like this. So I gave her a wrye grin and said, "Surely my own mother is aware that I've picked my way into a place or two that I shouldn't have."

 

"Surely," she purred, sliding towards me a satchel that was resting on the late elf's desk. "Now look in there. Do you think you can pick that locked door with just one pick?"

 

I shrugged. "Only one way to find out." 

 

"In that case, daughter, what do you say about us breaking into that locked wing of the barrow and seeing if we can find this claw the elf was so obsessed with. I suspect there's more to it than simple riches, and I am very curious to find out the details."

 

Troubleshooting & Conflict Resolution

 

Crashing After Sleeping

Almost immediately in this session, I ran into an unexpected problem. After sleeping for eight hours, the game crashed to the desktop. Here in the Net Script Framework crash log, we can see some insight into what happened.

 

 

So we can see that the logger is indicating a problem with a generic (template-based) NPC from Skyrim at War, and with a package from the same mod. This kind of CTD is often the results of navmesh, landscape, or object placement conflicts. If we look down a little further in the log, we can see some further clues:

 

 

This looks like the game is trying to path this scout to a location, but can't find a valid route - likely a navmesh issue. I wasn't able to replicate the crash on reload, so I've put this down as a back burner issue for now, but down the line we'll probably need to patch one or more navmeshes to ensure compatibility. For now, I've saved this to my crash logs folder for use as future evidence.

 

While annoying, diagnosing lurking conflicts and compatibility problems like this is a major reason for this playthrough, so it's nothing to be concerned about. 

 

Missing MCM Menus

The Bondage Furniture World birthday spanking scene that triggered early in this playthrough wasn't actually something I intended to have in this game. When this occured, I realized that not only had I never set up the BFW mod configuration menu, but that it hadn't appeared on my MCM list. I also noticed during the spectator sex scene in the background that Wilhelm's ejaculate didn't use the Cumshot settings I normally apply. Indeed, it turned out that the CS menu was also missing. 

 

The first-line strategy for dealing with this issue is the use the console command setstage ski_configmanagerinstance 1. 

 

Unfortunately, this did not cause these menus to respawn, so further investigation is going to be necessary. Since a more intrusive fix would require a new game, we'll back burner this one until after the playthrough is complete; however, before my next playthrough I'll definitely want to put this to bed. It may also simply be a case that I have too many MCMs getting registered and that I need to go in and patch out some of the MCMs that don't offer actual functional benefits -- in fact, when I spawned a throwaway start for facegen testing (see below) BFW and CS got their MCMs, but Sexlab Eager NPCs was missing. So this does sound like we might be running up against the MCM count limit, and that's something that we can only really fix in conjunction with a new game as it'll require intrusive changes to the quest data within some of our mods. Curiously, I learned in my research that a fix may exist right here on the Lab, so I'll have to give that further investigation.

 

 

Broken NPC Face Color

Outside the tavern, we passed an NPC whose face texture did not match up with her body color. Changing the actor's weight in the console did not reset the face texture, so this likely isn't the "blackface bug" that occurs when data in the head mesh doesn't match the plugin.

 

 

Here's the base record; as you can see nothing is conflicting it or overriding it. She also doesn't use a different actor as a template, so the face data found here is what the game is trying to use. This baseform gets distributed to the actual NPC via a leveled list, and it gets loaded as a template. As you can see further down, the top-level character also is unconflicted and is rigged to import the baseform's template data. 

 

 

So the question is: does this actor have broken face data in the actual game, or is there something else at play. Let's open her up in the creation kit and see...

 

 

Clearly this actor isn't supposed to have the face complexion that she has in-game. The corresponding facegen file is packed in the BSA file and isn't getting overwritten by anything. Let's open it up and see if it looks right.

 

 

 

This looks correct, when compared to the creation kit. We can also see that there aren't any exotic head parts that might complicate regenerating the facegen data, so our first-line fix will be to do just that: output new facegen. We can see in MO2 that we did successfully create new facegen, so now we need to test it in-game. To do that, we'll just start a new game and spawn her in the AP startup cell. 

 

 

So far, so good. Now let's load into the live game and see how it looks.

 

 

Whoops, small problem here. The good news is that the actor's face looks fine, but its clearly not the same base actor - my last save was too far back and she got dynamically generated fresh when I came into contact. So for now, we'll have to pencil this one in as "probably fixed" and just keep an eye out for this or similar issues in the future.

 

We'll finish up by moving the generated file out of my override file and into a holding folder for facegen.