With the main function of the mod now in place, a larger emphasis in the support thread turned to just that: support. With that in mind, I want to take a moment from the story to give a special thanks to the people who I haven’t yet mentioned who took it upon themselves to answer support questions:

@Kenjoka

@gaggedgirl123

@CliftonJD

@WaxenFigure

You’re all fantastic people, and you have my undying gratitude.

The main questions were: what do I do once I’m in the cage (because there is no reason to read a mod description, which clearly stated how to get the auction started) and the still-popular “nothing happens when the auction begins,” which is always because Fuz-Ro Doh – Silent Voice is not installed  (or, in the current SS++ era, it may be installed but it is the wrong version. Damn Beth). Bigger issues (like a short-lived problem where John Randall* could only be talked to from the full cage, not through the bars leading to the platform) were fixed by Kana Red.

Since I had the basic framework working, I started to actively search for mods that would logically fit as slavery outcomes. One such mod that seemed to sort of have potential was called PetCollar, which was just contained a collar that you put on and your follower would treat you like a pet. That particular mod never went much further but it did help inspire a different mod author, @alexvkj, to try to recreate the Fallout New Vegas mod msex Veronica D/S. He named the result of his labors Play Submissive, which turned almost immediately into the original version of Submissive Lola. I contacted alexvkj and brought up the possibility to a connection to Simple Slavery.

I was afraid of the new MCM version of the mod at first because I wasn’t sure if I would be able to figure out how to work the code to add new scenarios but it turned out to be written in a very clear way and it only took some copying-and-pasting (and then changing quest names), so on October 10, 2015, version 3.71 pulled in @DocClox’s SLUTS (that’s a mod that turned the player into a ponygirl delivery service) and alexvkj ‘s Play Submissive (the precursor to Submissive Lola). Both were unique for SS because they both required the player to do something in-game that was not entirely immersive: both needed a book to be read to activate them - if the player had not read that book before going to auction, the mod would not start (this was fixed for Submissive Lola in SS version 3.93).

Further, Play Submissive had the same concept as Lola (which alexvkj created soon after – the original Submissive Lola was added with SS version 3.81) – a consensual slavery experience, where you ask your follower to enslave you. Which is still a weird concept to me, but who am I to judge kinks? I like to pretend I’m being sold at a slave auction. We’re all a little abnormal, here in LL. 😉

This led to a bit of a conundrum – how to connect the player to a master? Sanguine’s Debauchery was my only experience with a mod that had multiple possible masters but it was different because those masters were forced upon you. PS/SL did not have that function. My solution was to create a bunch of possible masters and put them in one place, transport the player there, and let them pick their own. I didn’t want them to clutter up the auction cell, so I chose Nightgate Inn.

Slaverun also made its grand entrance at this point @pchs kindly created a small quest for SS to send the player to.

This was accompanied by my first divided version of the mod because there was a hue and cry to remove Death Alternative as the primary way to get enslaved. My solution was to create two versions of SS – one that had DA interaction and one that did not. I quickly realized what a pain the ass it would be to have to update two different versions with every single change so I switched it to one mod and a patch that would, in theory, add the DA functionality. This was also before Defeat had a direct connection to sending the player to SS, so

However, I could not get the non-DA version to work because, no matter how much I tweaked it, it somehow always remembered it was once connected to DA. It was, once again, @Bane Master who came to my rescue. The funny part was, he just kind of tossed it as an aside while discussing something completely different:

There were some global bugs during this time, most notably one that started two auctions at once for some people for some reason that has been lost to the annals of time. The other big problem people had was with the multiple potential owners from both Sanguine’s Debauchery and Submissive Lola.

For SD, I decided there was no point having them scattered all over the place, especially since there were many reports of the player and/or owner being attacked by something the moment the connection was made. My solution, implemented in version 4.1 , was to move all of them to a spot near the Thalmor Embassy. What I failed to take into account is the horribly cold and snowy weather in that area and all the people who used Frostfall or other survival mods.

With Lola, all the potential masters were in Nightgate inn, although sometimes they moved en masse to the basement for some reason. Eventually I moved them to the auction hall itself.

Other, more minor changes happened during this time, including the door to the auction, which I installed backward, and the default outcome of being freed if no other outcomes had been picked in the MCM. I originally tried making a very simple farm slavery mod to use as the default outcome, but I am even worse at worldbuilding than I am at coding, so I gave up on that one.

I was also invited to a group meeting of mod-makers to discuss the integration of all the various slave mods. The big thing that came out of that was the introduction to most of us of a then-seldom-used function buried (as I recall) in ZAZ Framework called “dhlp,” which marked when a player was enslaved. We agreed as a group to add (and remove) this setting to the player, as applicable, so other mods had a way to tell if the player was already a slave.

Compared to the issues from earlier, this all amounted to maintenance work. New outcomes were being added (welcome Deviously Cursed Loot, Raven Beak Prison, Sexlab Stories, and Things in the Dark!) and bugs were getting stamped. All was going smoothly, with little suspicion that the next great evolution was about to slam into existence thanks to an innocent PM sent on November 26, 2016 to an author whose mod I thought would make a nice connection with SS.

*John Randle, whose name has been removed in SS++, was named after the primary antagonist of the Outlander series, which I was reading at the time.