LE Marrying a Khajiit

[Kohdi]

I don't post often on the forums, but when I do, I request something difficult to do for little to no reward.

 

Now that the meme is out of the way, I have a request to make for an enterprising modder, currently one who has seen the matrix-like insides of Skyrim. There are very few Khajiit in Skyrim, from what I've seen only two major caravans and the guy at the College of Winterhold, plus bandits and peddlers on the roads. Out of those very few Khajiit, only one, Kharjo, is recruitable as a follower. Luckily he's a nice guy, a good fighter, and doesn't look half as mangy as most of the Nords. The problem with Kharjo is a) if you receive a mandatory follower (like Farkas at the end of the Companions questline) he disappears back to his wandering caravan, and you could be days finding him. I met Kharjo first outside Windhelm, then in Riften, lost him in Whiterun, and found him in Dawnstar. The guy can move. And b), Kharjo and all Khajiits cannot marry the player due to the lack of dialogue options for some odd reason (before you ask I have tried the "addfac 19809 1" and "setrelationshiprank player 4" tweaks", they don't work).

 

My request is for someone to find a way, whether through console commands or however the few .esp's are being made, to initiate the marriage dialogue/questline for either Kharjo, or Khajiit in general, however it works out. The lack of voiced dialogue is no problem, I'm well-used to that from mods for Oblivion. If this can be done I would be open to testing whatever you can come up with, to see if it works or bugs out or whatever. The only thing I can offer as a reward is the knowledge that you rooted out and fixed some of the underlying code of the world, like some kind of eldritch demi-god with a passion for numbers. I can also supply a payment of Septims in whatever quantity you desire, valid throughout the empire.

 

Thank you in advance to any kind soul who undertakes this challenge, or to anyone who can offer meaningful advice.

[mindinavoid]

According to Bethesda, the reason you can't marry a Khajiit or Wood-Elf (lore-wise) is that it's not an aspect of their religion; they don't follow the Eight-and-One as the rest of the world does. Wood Elves won't even chop down trees or eat plant-based matter that originated in Valenwood (although wood and foodstuffs from other lands are fine). Their homeland is sacred to them, and the basis for their peoples' spiritual mythos. (This mentioned in A Dance in Fire, v1 by Waughin Jarth.) Not sure about the Khajiiti way, though, as I haven't yet found any information in-game beyond K'vata! K'vasta! Vakis! (I may have the title wrong, I apologize, drawing from shoddy memory here) about their homeland and their ways.

 

Of course, if you were looking for lore-based excuses, you wouldn't be asking for a mod.

 

If the dialogue structures from Oblivion are of any indication, giving an NPC a new set of dialogue from existing sets shouldn't be too hard for someone who knows how. I am not one of them, unfortunately. I was a coder once, before I took an arrow to the knee. Now I leave it to those with the gumption and time.

Gags aside, I can just about guarantee that one of the first mods out there will be a "Marry Anyone" mod, right up alongside the half-dozen other "marry a Khajiit/Argonian/Spriggan/Snow Troll" mods that will crop up. Adding dialogue options through TESSnip is borderline hair-pullingly frustrating, from what I've gathered, so non-console or non-.bat mods of the sort won't be likely to occur any time soon, unless someone figures out how to hexedit a dialogue tree.

Edited December 3, 2011 by mindinavoid

[Kohdi]

Thank you for the advice, and you're right, I'm not really looking to keep with lore-mandated "marrying religion". I may just have to wait until December when the CK comes out, but then I can do it myself. ;)

[mindinavoid]

If you want a "workaround" of a sort, it's possible to change an NPC's race through console, although I've yet to hash out how to change them from the default appearance of that race.

Open console, select the NPC in question, and type "setrace dremora" followed by "setrace khajiit", say, if you were making them a khajiit.

 

I think that adding a variable changes what preset form they take (maybe), based on rough extrapolation on hearing somewhere that when you setrace to, say, a draugr, a number variable (setrace draugr 3, for example) sets it to one of a number of presets the game recognizes. I've not tested this.

 

You have to do the dremora switch if changing from "humanoid" to "beast" races, if I recall correctly, although I use it every time just to be safe. And yeah, they should appear as a naked "Vitruvian Man Pose" normal human with a Dremora face. Or at least, Lydia always does if I change her, and I don't leave the console while she's in the "Dremora" transition. I'd advise if it's a companion clearing their inventory as well, just in case something goes funky on you and they reset inventory.

 

Changing an NPC's race doesn't affect their voices or dialogue at all, which is a plus (and the lip movements translate fine, too). I made a Khajiit into a default Argonian and he warmly greeted me with "Khajiit welcomes you," when I got near him. Lydia still has her reverent-yet-slightly-annoyed "I am sworn to carry your burdens," as a kitty.

Edited December 3, 2011 by mindinavoid

[Kohdi]

Ah, that's clever. I may try that, I'll just have to find someone who's voice isn't totally out of place. It would be pretty weird to be walking around with a Khajiit, ask to see his inventory, and hear Eorlund's "Gods be praised!" I laugh every time he says it.

[BatBatBat]

Well, I haven't seen Bethseda comment about why you can't marry a Khajiit/Bosmer, and I've been looking everywhere, but their religious values from their homeland shouldn't apply to all of them. It's silly to say that literally everyone from some country worships the same god or behaves in the same mannerism.

 

And as I have said many times before on other forums, this logic seems to defeat itself when you take into account that you can play -as- a Khajiit or Bosmer, marry anyone else of any other race or gender, run through towns, and own property without even being known as the spectacular Dragonborn.

[LukeSkyrimmer]

What happens in Skyrim, stays in Skyrim. So Khajiit religion shouldn't have any effect.

[Kohdi]

Alright, I've let Kharjo go for the only one of my followers who looked decent as a Khajiit, Argis the Bulwark (Housecarl of Markarth). His voice even fits pretty well, so it's cool having him around. One thing I've noticed, however, is that his race switches back to Nord when I load a savegame after quitting. It's easy enough to switch him back, but any thoughts on this?

[DuskWulf]

I mentioned elsewhere and I'll mention here that the lore excuse for not having a Khajiit or Bosmer marriage option is cockamamie at best, and that's being charitable.

 

Yes, I'm familiar with Elder Scrolls lore, and probably moreso than most people (read the books, and so on), but there are a few things that are being overlooked, here:

 

a.) Beliefs are not passed along genetically, contained within some form of genetic memory.

b.) There are no cults out to brainwash the newborns of every race so that they will follow the religion of their race.

 

The reason that these elements are important is because, using our reality as an example, even though someone may be born Catholic, they can eventually decide to follow Atheism. In the Elder Scrolls reality, a Khajiit may find a reason for wanting to worship the divines, and thus they'd read upon and follow the tenets and rules of that religion. Another possibility is that young Bosmer/Khajiit raised in a Nordic orphanage or by a Nordic family would be taught to follow the nine divines.

 

The only reason the Bosmer and Khajiit follow the beliefs that they do is because they are taught to.

 

Even in the games, we ourselves pick whether we worship the Aedra or the Daedra, and the Khajiit gods and goddesses aren't actually that different (look it up!). It's just that the Khajiit pantheon is a mix of Daedra and Aedra. So, again, a Khajiit may decide one day that they wish to follow the beliefs of a certain culture.

 

Here's another possibility: A Khajiit's life is turned around by a priest of Akatosh and the Nine Divines, a Khajiit who had until previously been an unlucky drunk, a thief, and spent most of his or her time either in jail cells or doing things that would land them in jail cells, or gutters. Their run of bad luck lead them to that point, and he/she decided to emulate his/her emancipators. We've seen plenty of examples of this in our reality.

 

Belief is not set in stone.

 

So using belief as a reason for why the Khajiit and Bosmer can't marry is really silly. Because that implies that belief is transferred by genetic memory and all newborn Khajiit and Bosmer immediately know which belief system they belong to. And we already know that this isn't at all the case. I'd even say that Khajiit and Bosmer in organisations like the Dark Brotherhood have already set a precedent for choosing a different system of belief.

 

I suspect that the facts involved read more like this:

 

"Oh, well... if we offer Khajiit/Bosmer relationship options, we're going to have to come up with interesting reasons for why they have different beliefs, and we don't do that a lot. This would require actually fleshing out a character and writing a proper backstory for them, and giving them a lot of personality to convey. That would take a lot of time, effort, and money. We're just too cheap and lazy to do it."

 

---EDIT---

 

I'd love to see this fixed by mods, too, but... well, frankly it's a shame we won't be able to grab Andre Sogliuzzo to do some voice acting for it. :P The voices of the Khajiiti men are simply sublime.

[Harryoe]

I like to play a stealthy Khajit (blame Thief: Deadly Shadows, perhaps my all time favorite game), and I was amused by the marriage options in Skyrim.

 

I tried the setrace console command to change Iona to Khajit. but received an error message like "no compatible form" so I changed her into a dog. A cat married to a dog? Sounds like something Sheogorath would like.

 

Here is my Khajit character marrying a dog. She cant open doors now, she just says she is going to follow me, or go home, but she just lays there in the Temple of Mara, barking and talking at the same time...