What manner of mod conflict is even capable of doing this sorcery?!

[Mud]

So Skyrim is capable of some bizarre glitches sometimes, that's nothing new, and that tends to only be exacerbated by those of us whose games are inundated with mods. But this error I'm running into just takes the cake.

 

A while ago, I created a custom follower who I placed in Jorrvaskr, and all was well. In my previous file, I went in, recruited her, and was on my merry way. In my current file, I went without her until now. Earlier yesterday, I happened to enter Jorrvaskr while testing mods on my starting level 1 file, and she was there, fine and dandy, but when I went back to my actual play file, she had mysteriously disappeared. I thought she had simply gone somewhere else by some manner of mod conflict, so I loaded up my previous playthrough file in order to get her RefID to move myself to her with the console. But upon loading up my current file again, saved before entering Jorrvaskr, her RefID... was now empty. The console still had the ID targeted, but MFGconsole's usual NPC information wasn't displaying, and trying to use any commands like moveto on it gave me the error that nothing with that RefID existed. I loaded my level 1 save again and went into Jorrvaskr, and indeed, she was missing then, too. Peculiar, no?

 

But wait, there's more! Thinking I had somehow loaded something that changes the Jorrvaskr cell after my follower's ESP between my previous test run and now, I exited the game to shuffle around a few ESPs, then loaded my level 1 save again and entered Jorrvaskr. She was there, normal as can be. Loaded my play file, checked the console, her information was still there. I moved myself to her location to find her standing in Jorrvaskr, nothing out of the ordinary, but because entering the hall this way makes the introductory brawl scene not play, I reloaded my save and trotted over to Jorrvaskr.

 

And she was gone. RefID missing from the console again once I entered the hall. Reloaded the save again, and still no information. Now the console once again couldn't find anything with her information, and commands no longer worked on it. Loaded the level 1 save again, and... she's gone from here too! It's as if something is deleting this instance of the follower the moment I walk through the doors of Jorrvaskr on my level 12 save, even retroactively from all previous saves of this same character! Yet there's no discernible trigger. I enter the doors at level 1, she's there. I enter the doors at level 12, she's gone, as if just a fever dream. What in the world could do something like this?!

[visby]

Do you have SKSE's save game cleaner running? That's the only thing that I can think of that might do what your describing though I've never noticed an issue with it myself.

[Mud]

Anytime she disappeared on other saves, it was from not exiting - it takes exiting completely to get her to appear again. Her RefID should be the same across all saves, though.

 

I don't have SKSE's cleaner going, but as far as I know that's supposed to be for orphaned scripts anyway, not NPCs.

[Niobia]

Have you tried entering (seeing the brawl scene) then leaving and then coming back in when there's no brawling event happening? That probably wont help, but it was the first thing I thought of when you mentioned it. Could go the other way too. teleport to her, recruit her, leave and then come back and see if the brawl scene will play then