Adventures with Balazar (Balazar's Bitch) - Beta

[Gristle]

29 minutes ago, danna233 said:

I always think about it. Almost always, the character has no choice; or rather, the choice is either to submit or to happily submit. This makes the character look mentally retarded and makes them uncomfortable to play in the long run.

I think (?) we are agreeing, i.e., that the PC should have more agency and choices in quests, and that even where the PC chooses to do something submissive, it should be in service of some larger goal. This provides both PCs who are submissive and those who are not with motivation. For example, in this quest line, I think I need to go back and rewrite the end of Part II a bit. Balazar really should reveal why he needs to gain more power in Skyrim in Part III (to combat a larger evil threatening Skyrim) to give a PC who is not the submissive type a reason to assist Balazar on his hold quests, despite the way he treats her as a subordinate. (Also, the long-term plan is to have Balazar gain greater respect for the PC, so the relationship may change somewhat over time.) 

[danna233]

23 minutes ago, Gristle said:

I think (?) we are agreeing, i.e., that the PC should have more agency and choices in quests, and that even where the PC chooses to do something submissive, it should be in service of some larger goal. This provides both PCs who are submissive and those who are not with motivation. For example, in this quest line, I think I need to go back and rewrite the end of Part II a bit. Balazar really should reveal why he needs to gain more power in Skyrim in Part III (to combat a larger evil threatening Skyrim) to give a PC who is not the submissive type a reason to assist Balazar on his hold quests, despite the way he treats her as a subordinate. (Also, the long-term plan is to have Balazar gain greater respect for the PC, so the relationship may change somewhat over time.) 

This is good, but still not enough for playing a neutral evil character). Sex with a dog? Seriously? Devouring a priest for an artifact is always welcome. But this... I understand that this is a bestiality mod, so if the heroine doesn’t care who she sleeps with, including animals, then I think she doesn’t need any motivation to spread her legs. It's logical.

[69Setsunaxcross69]

4 hours ago, Gristle said:

The wild man (a vanilla NPC) is enabled when she says "follow me" and starts walking. There's nothing enabled or triggered on the way to the door. She does have dialogue available when she gets to the door, but it's passive and optional. I don't know why the game would freeze when she gets to the door. She's just being given an AI package to walk to the door and wait. Do you have any Riften town mods that change the manor?

no I don't have anything that changes the manor. I can fully walk around the manor and go through all the rooms its just the moment she gets to the door after initiating the dialog it freezes up. I have no idea what is causing it. most of my mods are just cosmetic or upscales but I don't have anything that physically changes anything other then upscalling of appearances

[wayandean]

4 hours ago, Gristle said:

These are all good ideas, but most involve the PC being captured, enslaved or restrained in some way. One constant issue with (submissive) quests in Skyrim is that many PCs are super strong and it's difficult to set up believable situations where they can be subdued, captured, etc. Also, like with the Riften quest, while it's easy enough to come up with some way to capture them and put them in a cell (e.g., drugs, magic), it's then hard to let them out of the cell to do anything without letting them use their powers to kill everyone and escape. Even an unarmed PC might have a ton of magic and shouts, etc. In the Riften quest, the mod takes control of the PC (using a weakened-by-drugs rationale) to deal with this, which is fun for a bit, but then it removes the player agency and turns that stage into more of a cutscene. That's not a terrible thing, but I don't want to do it with every quest.

 

Of course the quests need to find ways to motivate the PC to go forward with the quest, Ideally, that would mean motivating the PC to do something, rather than forcing the PC to do something against their will. Some of the latter is OK, but the former allows for more open-ended quests and more player agency. So, for example, looking for some precious or historical heirloom or artifact is a great quest motivator, which might force the PC into all kinds of situations to find it, but I'd rather not actually sell the PC into slavery, because then I have to deal with the 'why doesn't she just kill everyone and escape slavery' question. For example, sending the PC to an orc stronghold as a peace offering or to negotiate something sounds like a good quest, or at least quest start. 

 

The other issue is that Balazar was left behind on the Riften quest specifically because of similar issues (i.e., why wouldn't Balazar rescue her, kill everyone, etc.?). And, it would be great to include Balazar more on other quests. Again, leaving him once and a while is fine, but I don't want to do it for every quest. I could see the PC asking him to hang back from time to time, of course, as he's going to disrupt some schemes. 

The way I looked at it is that the PC is volunteering to be sold as a sex slave or whore to help Balazar's cause with the Jarl, and as he controls her completely, she has little choice and he doesn't care how she is used. Afterall she has already been forced to have sex with creatures against her will and take part in a sex party.

 

As the PC has already been restrained voluntarily, it's easy for her to be transported around as she's pretty much helpless anyway. Maybe the first quest for the heirloom requires for the bandits to stay alive so she can't just kill them. Maybe she can't reveal that she's a spy for whatever reason so therefore has to endure it. And as Danna suggests, tie her to a stock with her legs open for all to use. With the right restraints and some kind of anti magic collar there's nothing she can do about it no matter how powerful.

 

This is done in many mods here such as simple slavery, public whore, sexlab survival, slaverun etc. In theory the PC could take out everyone but she can't usually due to a simple collar that stops all her powers etc

 

Balazar would only really intervene if her life was in danger and in all my scenarios, it isn't.

[danna233]

3 hours ago, wayandean said:

. And as Danna suggests, tie her to a stock with her legs open for all to use. With the right restraints and some kind of anti magic collar there's nothing she can do about it no matter how powerful.

It was sarcasm.😐

[Khrusaor]

Here's a couple of quest ideas for your consideration:

 

1)  The Jarl asks you to deal with animals harassing the townsfolk, preventing them from entering the woods. After some investigation you find out that the locals have angered a Spriggan who then took control of the animals and now you need to pacify it somehow.

 

2) Some females have dissapeared in the certain area recently, so the Jarl asks you to act as a bait and find out what happened to them. Upon arriving to the aformentioned area you're getting ambushed and kidnapped by the Falmer. You wake up in the Falmer lair among other captives and need to find the way to escape.

 

The second one could also be utilized for the Forsworn.

Edited January 31 by Khrusaor

[wayandean]

4 hours ago, danna233 said:

It was sarcasm.😐

I kinda saw that on a reread lol but the idea still works. 🙂

 

But I was really just trying to say that, any story can be made to fit in this world, even for a level 100 PC. Most of the mods on here require a suspension of disbelief to a certain degree. Even in this mod, our PC is raped by a dog in the first minutes of the quest and there's nothing she can do about it, even if she's just came back from killing Alduin.

 

There's a lot of rape mods on here that are very popular. Your PC is in town and gets raped by a bunch of peasants and there's nothing she can do about it, but if your PC is level 100 how does that even happen? I play all of these mods on level 1-5 to at least make it plausible.

 

Why is the Dragonborn even needed to save the world, when a couple of town guards will stomp him/her for stealing an apple? Just send them out to wreck the local Draugr Death Overlord. 😀

 

Anyway, this is a great mod and kudos to Gristle for putting in the hard work. I wouldn't even know where to begin. I just hope Gristle can get some ideas and continue this great mod.

Edited January 31 by wayandean

[danna233]

23 minutes ago, wayandean said:

There's a lot of rape mods on here that are very popular. Your PC is in town and gets raped by a bunch of peasants and there's nothing she can do about it, but if your PC is level 100 how does that even happen? I play all of these mods on level 1-5 to at least make it plausible.

Oh yeah. I noticed. But it’s not interesting to play as an idiot in the long term. Especially when some vanilla epic scenes happen with the hero being assigned important tasks, you look at her and think what you want from this shameful fool. Of all the mods on this topic, only SD+ looks like lore, but unfortunately it doesn’t work without DD.

[wayandean]

36 minutes ago, danna233 said:

Oh yeah. I noticed. But it’s not interesting to play as an idiot in the long term. Especially when some vanilla epic scenes happen with the hero being assigned important tasks, you look at her and think what you want from this shameful fool. Of all the mods on this topic, only SD+ looks like lore, but unfortunately it doesn’t work without DD.

I agree. I don't think I could play most of these mods with my PC that I finished the game with, as it wouldn't make any sense. That's why I always play these mods with a new heroine as it just fits better.

[Gristle]

10 hours ago, wayandean said:

The way I looked at it is that the PC is volunteering to be sold as a sex slave or whore to help Balazar's cause with the Jarl, and as he controls her completely, she has little choice and he doesn't care how she is used. Afterall she has already been forced to have sex with creatures against her will and take part in a sex party.

The PC volunteering to do submissive things is fine (like volunteering to be the town whore in Riften), and I'm not opposed to forcing the PC (through magic or drugs or whatever) from time to time, I just don't want every quest to be forcing the PC. The long-term theme of the quest is intended to be Balazar luring the PC down a path of corruption, while at the same time the PC may try to lure Balazar down the opposite path. 

 

Thus, Part I is forced (through a magic curse that Balazar learns to control in Part II). But then the curse is lifted and the PC volunteers for Part II (whether to get revenge or to stop an evil cult). And, the PC again volunteers for Part III (for motivations that I will make more clear). So, after Part I, nothing is truly forced (except the cave scenes in the Riften quest).   

10 hours ago, wayandean said:

As the PC has already been restrained voluntarily, it's easy for her to be transported around as she's pretty much helpless anyway. Maybe the first quest for the heirloom requires for the bandits to stay alive so she can't just kill them. Maybe she can't reveal that she's a spy for whatever reason so therefore has to endure it. And as Danna suggests, tie her to a stock with her legs open for all to use. With the right restraints and some kind of anti magic collar there's nothing she can do about it no matter how powerful.

 

This is done in many mods here such as simple slavery, public whore, sexlab survival, slaverun etc. In theory the PC could take out everyone but she can't usually due to a simple collar that stops all her powers etc

I'm only familiar with Simple Slavery and Public Whore. In quest terms, Simple Slavery is just a (short) cutscene that moves the PC around a bit. Public Whore can take away a PC's weapons and armor, but it doesn't do anything to stop the PC from picking up a weapon, or from killing anyone with magic. Also, although I love Public Whore (check out my comments mod for it), the forced aspect of the mod is really not at all immersive for a powerful PC, who could easily take out the Thane and guards.

 

But the main point is, yes, there are several ways to weaken or restrain a powerful PC, but it's very hard to let the PC walk around without having the ability to kill everyone. And I don't want to turn every quest into a cutscene where the PC has no control and is just fade-to-black teleported and/or auto-walked from place to place. Like you mention, I'd rather give the PC a motivation to do something voluntarily.

[Gristle]

7 hours ago, Khrusaor said:

Here's a couple of quest ideas for your consideration:

 

1)  The Jarl asks you to deal with animals harassing the townsfolk, preventing them from entering the woods. After some investigation you find out that the locals have angered a Spriggan who then took control of the animals and now you need to pacify it somehow.

I like this idea, but it would ideally be part of a larger quest, as it might be pretty short otherwise.

7 hours ago, Khrusaor said:

2) Some females have dissapeared in the certain area recently, so the Jarl asks you to act as a bait and find out what happened to them. Upon arriving to the aformentioned area you're getting ambushed and kidnapped by the Falmer. You wake up in the Falmer lair among other captives and need to find the way to escape.

 

The second one could also be utilized for the Forsworn.

This is actually similar to an idea I had for the Falmer (and there is a Falmer cave close to Whiterun). I like the bait idea.

 

As for the Forsworn, I had an idea of them sneaking into Markarth to conduct raids on the city, with the Jarl tasking the PC to figure out how the Forsworn are getting into the city and then taking out the raiders. This could involve old Dwemer tunnels and automatons, of course.

[Gristle]

3 hours ago, danna233 said:

Oh yeah. I noticed. But it’s not interesting to play as an idiot in the long term. Especially when some vanilla epic scenes happen with the hero being assigned important tasks, you look at her and think what you want from this shameful fool. Of all the mods on this topic, only SD+ looks like lore, but unfortunately it doesn’t work without DD.

I don't know anything about SD+ but I think what is missing from this mod at present is the important epic task for the PC. We have the initial Part I and II tasks of breaking a daedric curse, getting revenge, and taking out an evil cult, which are fine, but Balazar should, at the end of Part II, inform the PC of an even greater threat to Skyrim from another daedric prince (Molag Bal comes to mind), and seek the PC's help in building Balazar's power in Skyrim so that he (and the PC) can combat it. This will provide the "epic hero" PC with motivation to assist a creature (that treats the PC as a plaything, at least initially) that the "epic hero" PC otherwise would not assist.

[Khrusaor]

14 minutes ago, Gristle said:

I like this idea, but it would ideally be part of a larger quest, as it might be pretty short otherwise.

Hmm, maybe during the quest the PC would find out that it were not the villagers who have angered the Spriggan, but a Necromancer or a Hagraven who have desecrated a sacred place in the forest by performing some vile ritual?

14 minutes ago, Gristle said:

As for the Forsworn, I had an idea of them sneaking into Markarth to conduct raids on the city, with the Jarl tasking the PC to figure out how the Forsworn are getting into the city and then taking out the raiders. This could involve old Dwemer tunnels and automatons, of course.

To expand on this idea, the Forsworn could have an undercover agent inside the city (one of the nobles perhaps?). The PC would have to figure out who that agent is and get the information on how the Forsworn are getting into the city out of him.

[danna233]

5 hours ago, Gristle said:

I don't know anything about SD+

This is a mod about slavery, but there is freedom of choice. If you want to kill the owner, you want to have a little fun with him, play slave and slave owner, and then kill. Sanguine is in charge of all this disgrace; he chose the heroine as his toy and periodically does dirty tricks on her. By the way, animals can be completely disabled there.

Edited February 1 by danna233

[danna233]

5 hours ago, Gristle said:

We have the initial Part I and II tasks of breaking a daedric curse, getting revenge, and taking out an evil cult, which are fine, but Balazar should, at the end of Part II, inform the PC of an even greater threat to Skyrim from another daedric prince (Molag Bal comes to mind), and seek the PC's help in building Balazar's power in Skyrim so that he (and the PC) can combat it. This will provide the "epic hero" PC with motivation to assist a creature (that treats the PC as a plaything, at least initially) that the "epic hero" PC otherwise would not assist.

Well I do not know. I wouldn't help him like that anyway. Molag Bal is the father of vampires, this is no longer suitable for a vampire character. The souls of vampires end up in Cold Harbor, so the torment in life continues after death, why does the hero need this?) The same with Hircine, you can start bestiality on him, he loves it, but you can’t imagine how epic evil he is, he is the father of werewolves . Maybe Dagon (what again?)

[killer905]

Hmm, we can also add something from Nocturnal, e.g. she wants the world to be covered in eternal darkness without sun and we, as the player, have to prevent this (and here we could add that if we gave her the Skeleton Key, she will be more willing to abandon her plans in another we have to convince her to do so) Yeah, I know it probably doesn't fit the modification, but who knows, maybe the idea will be refined :3

[danna233]

8 hours ago, killer905 said:

Hmm, we can also add something from Nocturnal, e.g. she wants the world to be covered in eternal darkness without sun and we, as the player, have to prevent this (and here we could add that if we gave her the Skeleton Key, she will be more willing to abandon her plans in another we have to convince her to do so) Yeah, I know it probably doesn't fit the modification, but who knows, maybe the idea will be refined :3

We actually have a magic bow and we can arrange this eternal darkness whenever we want).

[danna233]

Hermius Mora is almost untouched by mods. But he has his own servants, these are not ordinary Daedra, but the Lovecraftian theme is quite exciting. Perhaps this will be a new mod. The story should go two ways, according to the vanilla choice. You recognize Hermaeus as your master and he gives you any tasks, or you refuse to serve and he punishes you)

 

Suppose, along the path of service, you need to corrupt Skyrim and persuade the inhabitants to worship Hermius Mora. I think this should happen in guilds, anyway, when you have done everything in them and become the head, there is practically nothing to do, so there will be something to do.
Along the path of refusing to serve, you cannot do without a curse. Some kind of dementia, which can only be gotten rid of by corrupting your guilds)

 

It should go smoothly with the Mages Guild and Companions. But in the guild of thieves and the dark brotherhood, the hero may receive a response from their patrons. And here Sithis and Nocturnal come into play))

Edited February 1 by danna233

[killer905]

50 minutes ago, danna233 said:

We actually have a magic bow and we can arrange this eternal darkness whenever we want).

Yeah but we still see a sun but i mean darkness whre you not see anything like night in normal word

[danna233]

4 hours ago, killer905 said:

Yeah but we still see a sun but i mean darkness whre you not see anything like night in normal word

This was already in TESO. At the end of this plot, we kill her reincarnation champion and lose our lover, he turned into Dawnbreaker, that same sword.

Edited February 1 by danna233

[killer905]

1 hour ago, danna233 said:

This was already in TESO. At the end of this plot, we kill her reincarnation champion and lose our lover, he turned into Dawnbreaker, that same sword.

Yeah but she can again ^^

[Gristle]

14 hours ago, danna233 said:

Hermius Mora is almost untouched by mods. But he has his own servants, these are not ordinary Daedra, but the Lovecraftian theme is quite exciting. Perhaps this will be a new mod. The story should go two ways, according to the vanilla choice. You recognize Hermaeus as your master and he gives you any tasks, or you refuse to serve and he punishes you)

 

Suppose, along the path of service, you need to corrupt Skyrim and persuade the inhabitants to worship Hermius Mora. I think this should happen in guilds, anyway, when you have done everything in them and become the head, there is practically nothing to do, so there will be something to do.
Along the path of refusing to serve, you cannot do without a curse. Some kind of dementia, which can only be gotten rid of by corrupting your guilds)

 

It should go smoothly with the Mages Guild and Companions. But in the guild of thieves and the dark brotherhood, the hero may receive a response from their patrons. And here Sithis and Nocturnal come into play))

Hermaeus Mora would be great to build a quest around, and very Lovecraftian, as you note. Perhaps in such a quest a PC might also struggle not to go insane from knowledge granted (maybe seeing monsters that aren't there). But I agree that this would be best as a standalone mod.

[RileyAP]

I've finished up the Riften quest, and had two issues.

 

1) The pit basically didn't grab me me and walk me back to the cages but worked the 2nd time so I don't think it's an issue with this mod, just that I have 1700+ plugins in my LO and sometimes it grinds a bit.

2) This one happened both times and I have seem some mention of issues with the Fox and Sylgja.  I walked in and she was naked but no scene happening with the quest marker over her head.  No topic for conversion so I advanced the quest stage to the next and it teleports her off into "space" while the fox bangs her.  If I TLC and walk out I can watch them going at it, the scene ends and then she says the line about getting caught, etc.  I can move them back into the house and all is fine, and I can have sex with both her and the fox.  I do of course have working fox animations but not sure why they move.  Apart from that an excellent extension of an excellent mod and I'm looking forward to the next installment!!!

[blahity]

46 minutes ago, Gristle said:

Hermaeus Mora would be great to build a quest around, and very Lovecraftian, as you note. Perhaps in such a quest a PC might also struggle not to go insane from knowledge granted (maybe seeing monsters that aren't there). But I agree that this would be best as a standalone mod.

I could see Mora using some Lurkers to "inject some knowledge" into the PC.

[Gristle]

20 hours ago, RileyAP said:

2) This one happened both times and I have seem some mention of issues with the Fox and Sylgja.  I walked in and she was naked but no scene happening with the quest marker over her head.  No topic for conversion so I advanced the quest stage to the next and it teleports her off into "space" while the fox bangs her.  If I TLC and walk out I can watch them going at it, the scene ends and then she says the line about getting caught, etc.  I can move them back into the house and all is fine, and I can have sex with both her and the fox.  I do of course have working fox animations but not sure why they move.  Apart from that an excellent extension of an excellent mod and I'm looking forward to the next installment!!!

Thanks for the note. I think I found the issue. It doesn't cause any issues on my setup, but it looks like I have some residual code that starts the Fox sex when the PC is leaving Odfel's house, and then starts it again when you walk into Slygja's. The first code seems to be pointless, because it's a different cell and the actors are not loaded. I assume that's the source of the wierdness. I will remove the duplicate code in the next version.