Rossum

For various reasons, Alduin decides to postpone his 'devour the world' plan and instead bring about a new age of dragons and restart the dragon cults, to start with that he plans to ally with one of the two sides in the Skyrim Civil War. So, he gathers together a bunch of dragons and some dragon priests (to do the actual speaking to the puny mortals he will be dealing with) and offers an alliance with whichever of the two factions are most willing and capable of showing the God of Dragons the respect he deserves. Who gets the honor of being Alduins ally and how do the other factions in Skyrim react? (Namely, the Dawnguard, Vampire Clans, Daedra, Aldmeri Dominion, Dark Brotherhood, Thieves Guild, the Dragonborn, and other factions?)

How about a misc quest titled "Pay your follower their wages." which points to your follower and gives a dialog option to pay them some money (either a set amount like 100 gold or some leveled amount depending on their level). Paying them gives them that money and also they might spend it to buy themselves some healing potions, ammo, or whatever. So basically, every few days you get a misc quest to pay your follower. Paying them adds a fraction of the money to their inventory while simultaneously converting some of it into potions or items they might use. Ideally, those potions are there so they can heal themselves once they get knocked down (I think followers drink healing potions). Alternately: They buy 1 daedric arrow to use with their bow. If they have a great deal of money in their inventory, they buy themselves some better armor or weapons (ebony or glass... I doubt they would be able to buy daedric or dragonbone due to the rare components). Random little things like lockpicks or sweetrolls or whatever.

Or water could be hot steam jets like what the Dwemer Centurions fire. I figure that a spell version of Unrelenting Force would make a decent Air spell. Or anything that specilized in knocking back enemies. Maybe an Air Cloak spell would involve whirling air that pushes back any enemies who try to get close without necessarily doing damage.

Or maybe something like that one Enchanter guy in Winterhold? Basically: 1. People send their requests to him off-screen. 2. He tells you what the order is "X wants Y weapon smithed for him" 3. Then you smith the weapon, upgrade it, then deliver it to the customer. 4. You get payed a base amount for the weapon with a bonus depending on how much you improved it (maybe just have them pay you as much as you would have had to buy it yourself from a merchant?) They want a specific item and you can upgrade the heck out of it to make it more valuable and they pay full price for it. Have a similar thing for enchanted items. Some guy wants a specific kind of weapon/armor piece with a specific enchantment. You craft and sell it to them. They payment you get is directly proportional to how valuable the item you crafted is. Of course, you could always bring them an item you found somewhere, but you'd want to improve it anyway to maximize they money you get back.

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Me? I really like the books and bookshelves, specifically how you can find a bookshelf, put books in it, and the game auto-shelves them. Its nice that I can store things in useful containers without them disappearing completely from the game world. My decorating skills are fairly poor and I can't imagine myself individually placing potions and items on shelves, but its nice that there is a sort of compromise between hand-placing items and shoving them all into chests. I'm sure there are mods for things like auto-sorting alchemy shelves or whatever, but the fact that the bookshelves work in the default game is really nice.

Or alternately, they get their salt from seawater using salt ponds. Basically, sea water is poured into shallow pond basins where the sun and air can extract the water to increase the salt concentration. That water is then poured into other basins where it gets further evaporated and the sodium levels increase. Keep sending to more concentrated basins until at the end workers can just scoop the salt out of the water in baskets. . Note that during this process the basins are never allowed to go dry because then the salt would crystalize onto the ground where it would become difficult to harvest. Alternatly, the salt water could be dumped into pans with a fire going to quickly evaporate the water to leave the salt. Obviously, using the above salt pond basins would decrease the amount of burning fuel needed to extract the salt. In Skyrim, they could have some things setup to extract salt from seawater, most likely around Solitude since Winterhold and Dawnstar are freezing cold (though blowing air over a pan of salt water could extract the moisture from it as well). Dawnstar and Winterhold could use burning fuel to boil away the water to make salt as well... or the mages could use magically created fire for that.

There is a mod that does something similar, and you can see a youtube video of it here. The mod itself can be found here and the author just posted the source code for modification. Here are the source code docs in case they get lost. From what I understand, the author did it by making an invisible fox that follows the player around. Then a second function occasionally spawns the statue whenever it detects the player isn't looking in the invisible foxes direction. I suppose you could pull something similar off if you had a weeping angel statue (or better yet, several different models in different poses). Then have a similar invisible enemy that follows the player and leaves the statues behind them. Then... maybe have an option where the invisible enemy can attack the player and if they succeed it teleports them somewhere. That is to say, the weeping angel/invisible enemy doesn't deal damage but instead triggers an event that can send the player somewhere. Most likely the middle of a dungeon somewhere or a remote area of Skyrim. Obviously, you can't have the Angels send people back in time, but a teleportation effect could be doable. Or maybe it sends them to some plane of Oblivion, Sovengard, or the Soul Cairn if you've got Dawnguard? The thing that makes the weeping angels so scary is that you can't see them in action and while they can't kill you, they can potentially take you away from everything you know and love... all in the blink of an eye.

Would it be possible to get the horns, slitted eyes, and tail from the argonian race and put them on a breton body? I'm sure it would need some fine tuning to look good (like change the tint of the skin and such).

Alternately, you ARE on the side of the Thalmor and are backing Ulfric just so he can further weaken the Empire? The civil war that Ulfric is waging is costly and resulting in the deaths of both Imperials and Stormcloaks alike, if Ulfric dies then there is the chance that the Empire would keep control and eventually rebuild their army to a point where they could stand against the Thalmor. If Ulfric wins then the Empire pretty much falls apart and is no longer a threat to the Thalmor, letting them build their own army wage another war against mankind and wipe them out. Basically, if the Empire wins then they would have more resources and perhaps be able to field a sizable army to defend themselves when the Thalmor inevitable wage war again to wipe them out. If Ulfric wins then you'll have Skyrim and a severely weakened Empire each standing separately and thus easier to wipe out when the Thalmor attack. At the very least, siding with the Stormcloaks prolongs the civil war and gets a whole lot of humans and people killed without the Thalmor having to invest resources into it. The Thalmor are already planning to wage another war and are building up their forces. This civil war simply tires out the human nations and means the Thalmor will be on better footing the next time. Really, spreading discord amongst your opponents can only help your guys back home. Plus, in a best case scenario then your example of backing Ulfric will let you or other Thalmor agents better infiltrate the resulting independent Skyrim.

I do know that there are knives and forks that can be used as weapons, but they are basically unique weapons and are hard to get without console commands.

If you can turn corpses solid, I'd suggest also adding a way to dispose of them. You don't want to wind up stuck somewhere because of dead bodies blocking the way out. Though tripping over bodies in a battlefield could be "interesting". Anyway, I think the easiest way would be somehow being able to disintegrate of cremate bodies, possibly with fire spells since I think every race starts out with a fire spell already learned. Maybe burn the corpse with fire and it turns into ash. Either that or some kind of burying mechanic. Like if you select a dead body while you have a shovel in your inventory you can dispose of it (maybe replace it with an urn that has all the bodies items in it).

Not sure about costumes or spectral horses, but I do know you can remove your head by toggling immortality mode (type "tim" in the console using ~ ) and then get decapitated by someone (like a bandit or anyone wielding a two-handed battle axe). The result is you are immortal but get your head chopped off and afterwards you can go around without a head even after leaving immortal mode. Problem is I don't know how you can get your head back short of restoring from a previous save (though I never really investigated it that much) I suspect you could restore yourself using console commands that let you change race or facial features. So, I'd recommend saving your game, use TIM to become immortal, get decapitated, have a side-save where you can run around headless and feel free to try on whatever sorts of outfits you feel might work.

My current character is a redguard vampire and I've found a few ironic things: Random Passerby: Your skin is like snow, are you afraid of the sun or something? Me: It's broad daylight and I'm black! What is your problem?! Then I joined the companions primarily so that I can have easy access to someone to feed on. Imagine a vampire joining the companions (a group of elite warriors, some of whom are also werewolves) so that he can drink their blood as they sleep. Its actually a lot easier to feed off them than to find people sleeping at inns or feed on bandits. Plus there's the whole thing where I kill dozens of people a day and clear out bandit camps but can't drink their blood unless they are asleep (Yeah, I could probably get Dawnguard but I don't have the money now). Right now I'm pretty much a mage specializing in restoration (with archery and sneak... plus stuff like smithing and enchantment). I can go around during the day because my mage robes let me replenish magika and I use that to heal myself. I would make a pretty good healer if anyone asked for my services. Also got Meridias beacon and intend to clear out the necromancer who set up shop in her shrine. Its not necessarily ironic that a vampire is helping a daedric prince who hates the undead... because I hate them too.

It could be that the other vegetables aren't in season at this time of year... or the farmers are having trouble planting crops due to all the rebellion and bandit, monster, and dragon attacks. But yeah, it would be totally awesome to plant things. Personally, I would totally start a farm growing all the ingredients for health potions. Then mass produce that stuff. I mean, your average arms dealer can sell weapons and stuff during a war but magical healing potions should be sold year round. Its like, wheat blisterwart, and some mountain flowers. There should be whole gardens of these things all over Skyrim for the benefits that health potions give.

I suppose you could have a few people who send hitmen after the player if they see them using necromancy. It wouldn't be due to it being illegal but more that they don't like necromancy.

I think having him be a wolf (perhaps with a different coat color) would be best. I'm not really fond of the dogs you get in the game as it is. I've gotten Meeko before and he's a good companion but he barks all the time and his mouth opens up really wide when he does. Its just offputting. Dogmeat from Fallout 3 was a monster of a dog (due to the glitch that gives him massive HP as he levels up) so I think it would fit for him to be mostly wolf in Skyrim, like some ridiculously powerful variety of wolf who's gotten tamed. Make him a wolf with absurdly high hitpoints and enough loyalty that you don't have to worry about him turning on you and it should be okay. Hmm... maybe you find him during a fight with bandits or giants or whatnot. In Fallout, you found him in the junkyard fighting raiders and its possible for the cars to explode, treating you to the sight of Dogmeat walking unfazed from a fiery explosion with a trail of dead raiders. I suspect the only equivalent you could have in Skyrim would be him facing off against a Dragon (see a dog get up in the face of a dragon that torched his owners family) or have him face giants (walk along to see a dog fall out of the sky, get up, then rush back and start mauling the giant that sent it into orbit ten seconds ago). Man, if it could be somehow set up so that Dogmeat could get repeatedly sent to the moon by giants, survive, and keep fighting that would be sweet.

Count me among the ones who think a Keyblade would be amazing. However... from a lore perspective I would go with those who prefer it to be a bound or summonable thing instead of something you craft. The keyblades were all big cumbersome things that didn't look like they would work as mundane weapons. It was mostly their magical aspect that made them so good at beating the Heartless. So, a spell to sommon a keyblade would be best... or perhaps a power. Like one of the shouts, racial abilities, or guardian stone powers you can use and bind to 'Z'. Also, (I know this would add a bit of work) but it would be cool if the ability to summon a Keyblade was linked with something like the Guardian Stones or divine shrines. You can only have one keyblade linked to you at a time (or it could be that you have one keyblade that is changes each time you select a different stone). Perhaps have the keyblade binding spell linked to the Divine Shrines, and selecting different shrines also grants you access to a different type of keyblade. With Talos granting a powerful version of the origional Kingdom Key while others have keys based on their respective domains.

I think it would be a great idea. I'm not a modder or really know how this would work, but... maybe have a special crafting menu device that uses the blacksmiths Smithing level and perks instead of the players? It opens up the same crafting menu that all the armors and default stuff are in and items added by mods. The only difference is that the default crafting menu uses the players skill levels while the new one uses the NPCs skills. Of course, it would also have to use the NPCs perks for crafting (since the player likely wouldn't have the various smithign perks) and that would limit their ability to craft things that use mod perks... but then again it's unlikely that your average blacksmith would be crafting robots or whatever. If necessary, you could add smaller mods that just add NPCs with modded crafting perks. The issue would also come up with the raw materials used in making the new items... so maybe the special crafting menu uses the NPCs skills and perks but checks the players inventory for the materials. The player would thus have to get the raw materials and then maybe pay the smith a flat commision for his skills regardless of what specific item you want. So, a low level smith who just does Steel and Dwarven stuff would have the Steel Smithing and Dwarven Smithing perks and some level. If the player wants an item from him, they talk to him, use the crafting menu to see what he can make and what materials are needed, then get those materials (he probably keeps a large stock of material on hand they can buy normally) and then use the crafting menu to make the item. If they do make an item, they have to pay his commison that is just for the use of his time and skills. So a low level smith might require 500 gp or whatever to make anything if its a steel bow or dwarven helmet or whatever. Higher skilled blacksmiths do the same thing, just with higher skill, more perks, and they cost more money to hire their skills. Getting a Master smith to make anything costs 5,000 gp weather its a steel dagger or dragon mail.

Agreed. An enchanter would a really nice thing to have. Why should the one best qualified dragonslayer in Skyrim have to learn blacksmithing and enchanting and stuff instead of focusing on saving the lives of all those people who should normally be doing this stuff. And as far as being imbalanced or whatever, you could make the enchanters mostly accept their payment in the form of filled soul gems or the like instead of using gold. That way you'd still have to kill powerful enemies in order to get the enchantment made. Or you could have some "black market" enchanters who deal in Black Soul Gems which can be filled with the souls of any random bandit. They would be a bit more questionable to deal with but let you get better stuff enchanted easier.

The truest thing I have read all day. ESPECIALLY true when considering the children of Skyrim. At least its not like in Fable III where citizens will regularly ask their own king, warlord, and area-spell spamming wizard to pick up stupid crap they buried in the middle of nowhere before they consider him to be their friend. Even if said crowned king is the only thing between them and total annihilation by cosmic monstrosity and he happens to own their house and place of business. Though considering that most of said kings conversation options consist of whistling like a retard, dancing suggestively with people regardless of their gender, and who's idea of idea of civilized debate often includes flatulence... I can kind of see their point.

Just yesterday I completed Laid to Rest while I was still level 2 (I used the Altered Start: Live another life mod so I started the game owning a farm near Morthal). I managed to beat all the vampires and thralls there using a hunting bow, the conjure familiar spell, and Meeko the dog. The one villager who decided to follow me was worse than useless and his only contribution was to complain about how he just wanted to run his farm, complain when I was sneaking around a vampire lair and accidentally look at his backside he occasionally shoves in my face (he probably thought I wanted to pickpocket him, as if he'd have anything of value) and constantly get in my way and shove me off ledges when I tried sneaking up on the vampires. I killed Alva, she might have been hostile but since she was responsible for this whole mess, got an innocent girl killed, and was obnoxiously aloof every time I talked to her before this, I figured it would be morally wrong to let her live otherwise. Plus, she's a vampire and in-game if I let her live she'd just spread the plague and cause more trouble elsewhere. Technically there is a cure for vampirism but I think it requires using a filled black soul gem... which requires killing someone and stealing their soul. So even it I hadn't already made up my mind to kill Alva the second it was legal to do so, then leaving her alive without risking another outbreak would technically require killing someone else and sacrificing their immortal soul to give her a second chance to screw up. I just don't like her enough to do that.

He's spent the last few centuries getting junk mail from couriers and eating them for wasting his time. Or he orders pizza, either one.

I agree with the above. Though on Steam Workshop there is the mod "Improved Smithing" that lets you improve iron armor the same as you improve steel weapons and armor. I don't think it will fully replace needing to upgrade to non-iron armors but it should help extend their usage.

Me: Yeah, see I had the foresight to learn a healing spell before I went adventuring. You took an arrow to the knee and dropped out like a pussy? I took an arrow, I healed it, then I chopped up the son of a *censored* that shot me! Then I wiped out the bandit camp he came from and became Thane of Riften! Now get out of my way so I can craft these dragon scales into a decent suit of armor cuz none of the limp-wristed pansy blacksmiths around here are man enough to do it for me!