DuskWulf

I appreciate the hard work you're doing on this, guys! I stopped by to see what this error was about, too. Now I know! I hope the updates go smoothly and that they don't give you too much trouble.

I want to preface this by saying that I'm ashamed of never having thought of this before. Preamble Are you having issues with a very specific area? Whenever you run through/near it, you'll crash? Yet due to having a large number of mods, you're having trouble figuring out which one it is via the usual 'disable X amount of mods' system? Please note that this fix only works for at least semi-reproducible issues which are linked to an area. As an example, how many people have issues when running past/into Whiterun? This also counts for city door loading issues, most of the time. Prerequisites The very first and most obvious prerequisite is to make a static save. Not a quicksave. I want you to go into the menu, and I want you to create a brand new numbered save. The next thing you need to do before you begin? You'll need to find out where your Skyrim Data folder is, that's up to you. Okay? Groovy. I also want you to have a system for disabling and enabling mods that won't try crazy things like downloading mod updates whilst you're doing that, so the official launcher is out (I recommend Nexus's own manager). So, you should have your Skyrim Data folder open, and you should have a mod manager open. Now open a notepad and we're almost ready to go. The Cool Stuff Okay, here's what you'll need to do. Switch to the Skyrim folder.Press Alt+D.Press Ctrl+C.You should now have the location copied.The purpose of that little exercise was so that you have the path to your Skyrim Data folder in your clipboard. Switch to the notepad and press Ctrl+V.You'll now have it in your notepad.I want you to split off the first two characters, usually that'll be something like c: or d: just so you know.So you'll have c: (or similar) on one line, and the rest of the location on the next.Now, I'd like you to put quotation marks (") around the rest of the location.You should have c: or similar on one line, and "\location\of\Skyrim\Data\" on another. Not exactly that, of course, since that's just an example.Then I want you to type cd and a space before the opening quotation marks, so you have something like: cd "\Location\of\Skyrim\Data"Okay, so that's cool. We can now actually get to your Skyrim folder easily via a command (or terminal) window. So let's open one of those! Hold the Windows key and press R.You'll get a Run window.Type this into the text field: cmdHit OK.You'll now have a new window open.This next part is a bit complicated since we'll be copy and pasting stuff into the command window. Sorry. If you have any questions about this, I'll try to answer them. I want you to highlight the first line in notepad.That should be the two characters (like c:).Then you should press Ctrl+C.Switch to the cmd window you recently opened (the black one), and right-click it.In the context menu that comes up, click Paste.Now press enter.Go back to notepad and highlight the second line, the one that looks like: cd "\Location\of\Skyrim\Data"Press Ctrl+C to copy it.Switch to the cmd window and right-click it.Click Paste.Hit enter.If you did this right, you should have something that looks similar to this, though parts will be different (like the starting letter, and like \Location\of for example): C:\Location\of\Skyrim\Data\>_If you see that, you've done it right.Well done, we're almost finished. Whew. Now we do the fun part. New versions of Windows (since XP, I think) have had a command in them which is similar to something Linux and Unix users have enjoyed forever. It's called find, and we'll be using it. Note which area you're having trouble in.This could be Riften, Whiterun, Markarth, or so on.Now, I'll refer to this area as [Trouble].So, type the following, but replace [Trouble] with the area you're having problems with: find "[Trouble]World" *.esp > Problems.txtIf you're confused about the last step, think of it this way as an example -- if you're having problems with Whiterun, you'd type: find "WhiterunWorld" *.esp > Problems.txtAnd now the last stretch. You can close that pesky cmd window because you won't be needing it any more, the same goes for the notepad. You're done with them. Now then... Look for the Problems.txt file in your Data folder, if you did it all right, it should be there.Open it by double-clicking on it.Clean it up if you need to so that it's easier to understand, but problem mods will have [Trouble]World (such as WhiterunWorld) below them.Once you're done cleaning it up, so that only mods with [Trouble]World below them are still listed, go to your mod manager and disable all of those mods.Now we need to run some tests.Start Skyrim and load the numbered save you made earlier.If you're having trouble moving through an area, jog back and forth through it.If you're having trouble going through a door, try going back and forth through the door a few times.Are you still having crashes? Then it's something I can't help you with, I'm sorry. But I imagine that you're most probably not.What you need to do now is enable the mods in your Problems.txt one at a time and do this test each time until you find the problematic ones.When you find a problematic mod, note it down, then disable it again and move onto the next one.At the end, you should have most of your mods enabled with only a couple of truly problematic ones disabled. Thus, no more crashes or freezes!I've used this system to save myself from crash/freeze hell at both Riften and Whiterun. And sometimes it's the weirdest mods that cause it, so don't worry if it's something odd that you would never have suspected. Closing Words So now you have a working Skyrim -- or you should, I hope. Keep in mind this system in the future if you ever have location-based crashes. If you have definitely narrowed crashes down to a mod or a small subset of mods, you should go to the mod author's page and tell them you used a system like this to narrow down very specifically what was causing your crashes and freezes. That way, they'll know it's not just by random chance, and that you're not using them as a scapegoat. I know how it feels to be in that position, believe me. Please, when you're informing mod authors of problems, please be courteous, polite, and understanding. A mod author puts months (sometimes years) of their life into these projects, and the last thing they want is an angry person raging in their comments section. Be nice for me if this helped you, okay? Consider that my reward. And I hope this does help you. To the Nexus administrators: Sorry if this is in the right place, but since I've used this to successful cure myself of crashes/freezes a number of times, now, I figured that others would find the process helpful. If it's in the wrong place, please accept my apologies and... could you move it to where it would be seen? Thank you!

One of my favourite things about New Vegas was how fatigue could be exploited to create weapons which would render a character temporarily disabled. In other words, they'd just lie on the floor for a bit and then get up later. Whilst in this 'downed' state, they could be robbed of all their worldly possessions by activating them, similar to pickpocketing, but all items would be on offer with no risk if the player had actually managed to down them non-lethally in the first place. Via this means, it was possible to complete New Vegas without making a single kill. (No, really. I had a killcount of 0. I even talked the Caesar's Legion General down at the end.) I'd love to see something like that in Skyrim. And I'm wondering -- with the current more advanced scripting options of the base game, SKSE, and the MCM for configuration, would a non-lethality mod be possible? Essentially, what I'm thinking is this. In the configuration menu you'd be able to flag weapons in your inventory as non-lethal weapons, you'd also be able to do this for unarmed (so you could literally knock people out). Instead of health, then, the attack system would work off of fatigue, which would take the place of health. Perhaps a system calculated from health could do that. Also, there could be dangers in sustained combat, where if combat goes on too long, it could start damaging health as much as stamina and you'd need to retreat rather than fighting on, or you'd have to make the decision to kill the target. That would add an interesting bit of tension to the proceedings. For stealthy characters, sleep darts and knock out blows could be added. I know there are already mods for stealthy knock out blows, though, and those are neat. I use one myself to avoid at least some of the endless murder. Here's the question, I guess: How do we disable an NPC? Here's what I'm thinking. The system first checks to make sure that you're using a non-lethal weapon in combat, if it does, it starts ticking over fatigue for that foe. Once the foe's fatigue reaches zero, it sets essential on the foe and then runs the kill command on them. This would make them double over in the same way that an essential creature would. Activating them then would silently add the pickpocketing perks to the player so that they could loot their downed foe, and so that all items would be available to them. After a set amount f time (perhaps calculated upon the foe's stats), they'd be resurrected, set to full health, and then their essential flag would be removed. I'm not sure how possible any of this is, let alone plausible. Thoughts... ?

Okay, so I'm working on a set of hand-to-hand animation overrides, so far it's coming along good and everything is working beautifully. I just have one problem. So, characters\animations\h2h_locomotionpose.hkx works when walking around in third person, I can actually see that the pose has changed and that's great. However, the first person pose doesn't change. According to Skyrim - Animations.bsa, the first person pose is characters\_1stperson\animations\h2h_locomotionpose.hkx, which is what I have. When walking around in first person in an attack stance, I should see my override, instead I just see the default, stock closed fists. The interesting thing is that every other first person animation I have (such as h2h_idle.hkx) is actually working flawlessly. I disabled all of my mods other than Skyrim.esm, Update.esm, and Dragonborn.esm in case that was the problem, and it doesn't seem to be. (Though wouldn't loose files in the meshes folder override any bsa-based mods anyway?) So... I'm confused. Every other animation works, and this is the only thing that stands between me and the release of a new mod.

So, this is interesting. This could also be titled as 'uh, Bethesda, what did you do?' I'm not sure if anyone else is seeing this, but I wanted to confirm my thoughts, because after days of testing using sets of mods, and developing novel styles of testing via enabling and disabling (oh, this has been a barrel of laughs, I assure you), it seems to be the case. And only a fool continues to test expecting different results. So you guys are my peer review. If you create content via the Creation Kit, and that content deals with placing objects into the world - if that mod places an object (however small) near an object placed by another mod, it doesn't cause an overwrite but a silent, errorless crash to desktop. This is a marked change from prior Bethesda games, which would merrily just replace the item with what the latest mod has. See, this all started when I began to wonder why New Vegas was so much less crashy. Now, I know Fallout 3 had some crashy moments, but that was due to spectacular bugs rather than mods. (Anyone remember that bug that made the bottom-right 20% of the map inaccessible? So if you stepped into it the game froze? Yeah. That was fun.) New Vegas... I had a massive mod list and I had it setup for A to overwrite B to overwrite C to overwrite D as I liked it, and it worked beautifully. Such overwrites cannot happen in Skyrim. If A conflicts with B, there's no overwrite, just a crash to desktop. You can test this by creating two mods which place an object in the same place and enabling them both, then approaching that area in the game (without teleporting there). You won't get the latest one overwriting, you'll get a crash. And the more far-reaching a mod is, the worse the crashes will be as it's possible that mods will conflict. I suppose what bothers me is the silent nature of this crash. I wish Bethesda, deciding that things crash now, would give us an error message saying that 'object W of blah-X.esp is conflicting with object Y of blah-Z.esp' Which would be nice. But here's where it gets interesting... Say a mod has dirty edits? Let's say a modder accidentally moves a rock near Falkreath and undoes it, and then doesn't touch Falkreath. Now let's say that another modder purposefully creates content for Falkreath. What do you think will happen when you approach Falkreath? Yup! CtD! Thus: What did you do Bethesda? This investigation begun not only because of my own CtDs, but because of hundreds of people complaining on tens of mod pages about endless CtDs. And... yeah, it occurs to me that no previous Bethesda game behaves in this way. So, is there something I'm missing, here? Could someone confirm this research? ---- And if this is the case, then this makes most load ordering redundant, since you have to pick mods which you want the most, and leave all others that make you crash out. For example: I've had to leave detailed cities and detailed outskirts out of my list. Why? They're far reaching AND they have some dirty edits. This means that they conflict with all sorts of other mods. When I was testing them for conflicts, I moved around 20 mods to a 'bad' list, versus just detailed cities and detailed outskirts. I ran this test by putting detailed cities and detailed outskirts at the top of the load order, then adding mods in ten at a time and watching for what causes a crash. And the ones that caused a crash pretty much are ones that put objects in the same places as detailed cities/outskirts either intentionally or unintentionally (dirty edits) did. So yeah, I ran that test and ended up with about 20-odd mods that conflicted. So I had to choose those 20-odd mods over detailed cities and detailed outskirts. And that's the way it seems to be right now. Is this a bug? Is it intentional design? I'm very confused by it, to be honest. Because it means that we can't have a series of mods overriding parts of each other with that being totally okay. That's a luxury we're used to having, and it's weird not to have it in Skyrim. --- Oh, for those wondering - I used a carefully edited plugins.txt to run my tests. And I verified my tests worked in game by checking for evidence of the mods in game. (This topic has been copied over from the official Bethesda forums, where I posted it as well. Hoping to get some eyes on this so that we can get some ideas together regarding it. Also: If this is in the wrong section, my apologies! Could you move it? I wasn't entirely certain where this fitted in...)

I wasn't complaining. There's no need for kneejerk, nasty responses. We're not a bunch of insecure children here, are we? :| No, the thing is is that some of my suggestions were misunderstood, and some of them point out that I'm right. I'll explain. 1. No, you can't search by downloads. You can provide a search term and then search by downloads, but you can't go to hot files and have that show you the downloads by the most downloaded files WITHOUT a search term, which is what I said. This is a necessary feature. 2. The advanced search isn't obvious to me, I've never seen it. I actually did bother looking, but I have poor sight. I'm also a coder/designer, and if I can't find it, then there's a problem there. It means that the feature has been obfuscated and hidden away, or that the text is small and placed in an out of clear sight location. That or there's some really weird Javascript going on which my browser doesn't allow. Either way, it means that the feature could be designed better. 3. Going into your profile to disable adult mods completely just to do a search which doesn't involve adult mods is incredibly counter-intuitive. We're not in the '90s any more. I'm trying to help, here. I'm highlighting areas of the site which, sites like Steam Workshop, have already taken care of. The thing is is that if I were new to Skyrim, and I had to choose between the easy to use, easy to understand Steam Workshop, or the obfuscated, and often confusing Nexus. I would choose the former for obvious reasons. Also, you may want to note that I'm a premium, lifetime subscriber. I'm just trying to help. But hey, if all you want to do is attack me, then perhaps it is best for the Nexus to just fade into obscurity. Look, this is coming from a long time fan. I don't want the site to die, but the site clearly has usability and accessibility issues which need looking at and addressing, and no amount of kneejerk attacking or character assassination is going to change that fact. I may not be the most pleasant person in the world, but you all know I'm right about this. And like I said, it's an easy matter to just forget the Nexus exists and just move onto the Workshop. And once most people have done that because the usability and accessibility of Steam's Workshop are way better, how many of the 'loyalists' do you think will want to stay on board? Even the most ardent, stubborn, and seemingly genuinely loyal will shift over once they find that their mods are being ignored. I am a user of the Nexus. I have been for years, and outside of this site I have been a vocal supporter of it. Sticking our heads in the sand is not the way forward. If we wish really hard Steam Workshop isn't going to just go away, it's going to still be there when we open our eyes. And right now Steam Workshop is gaining popularity as quickly as the Nexus is losing it. And a lot of that has to do with accessibility and usability. There's a lot about this site which is counter-intuitive and not friendly to the new user. Some time working on the design of the site could fix all that.

In order to compete with the Steam Workshop, search functionality needs to be looked at. (It's interesting that that got truncated after being posted.) The Nexus lacks search functionality, plain and simple. The thing of it is is that the Nexus is likely going to lose people in droves - not at the moment, because Bethesda needs to fix up their stuff, but in the near future. The reason for this is search functionality. The Nexus has always skimped on it, but the Workshop hasn't. This is where the Workshop could very easily win. Here are some points that make me want to use the Workshop: 1.) You can search inside description text. The Workshop does this by default, so if I search 'quest,' I get all the mods which mention that they're a quest or quest chain. You could have the option to either search by title or within the description. If there's an option to search in descriptions, I haven't seen it (it's obfuscated in that case). 2.) You need to offer non-adult versions of all of the hot files pages. For example, I want to be able to do a search for 'most endorsed files in the last 7 files, adult mods excluded.' I feel that I want to go straight over to the Workshop when I search for the most popular mods of the last three days and 90% of them are adult mods. Adult mods are fine, but once you've seen one of them, you've seen them all. However, the way they're dominating content on the Nexus means that stuff like valid game fixes and new content (dungeons and such) is buried. 3.) You need to offer a way to search by downloads, similar to the endorsements. So I can see the mods which have been downloaded the most in the last three days, rather than endorsed the most. This needs to be an option. That I can't do that makes me want to use the Workshop because that helps me find obscure new mods which deserve attention, but may otherwise get buried under the chaff. 4.) You need a way to offer more than 25 results in the above two cases. I think 100 results in both would be fair. But considering that the Workshop goes back through pages and pages of mods, you need to be able to compete with that. If the Nexus doesn't compete with these features, which the Workshop already has, then by the time Steam and Bethesda fix up their crap, the Nexus will fall into obscurity, and the only mods on Skyrim Nexus will be the ones that aren't allowed on the Workshop. That's not the sort of fate I want to see befall the Nexus. The Nexus has always fallen short with search functionality - now might be a good time to do that. Lest the competition wins, really. --- As an extension to this, you may want to hire a small staff to do things like 'mod of the day.' Where each day someone will pick one interesting mod to talk about. This provides people who work on content mods and such the chance to be seen. It would also entice people to bring their works over from the Workshop to the Nexus. Also, allow mod authors themselves to apply for a spotlight. They may not get in, but at least they can. This would be different from the featured mod of the month, since it would just be a positive review of a mod which stays up for a day before it's replaced by another mod.

Okay, necroing this because whilst reading stuff about Paarthy I spotted this and it's so full of nonsense, original research, and outright porkies that I just had to bring it up. It's so bad it's funny. This ultimately needs a [citation needed] because it amounts to original... research (and I use that term loosely). There was no evidence in the game one way or the other that Paarthurnax was omniscient and that he'd foreseen all of what was going to happen, as you're implying. You're stating factually that Paarthurnax knew these things, that he was somehow omniscient. It is your theory that he might have known these things. And going by the improvisational nature of his plans, it's a poor theory at best. If you base your entire claim upon flawed assumptions, then the claim itself is equally flawed. Incorrect. Paarthurnax waited there because that's where Jurgen Windcaller established the order of the Greybeards. Your knowledge of lore is suspect and dubious at best, and this only goes to show that this is the case. We'll come back to this later on, since you bring up this point again since you've gotten your lore in reverse order, and you've gotten some of the names and times wrong too. But for now... http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Jurgen_Windcaller "Jurgen Windcaller was a war leader of the Ancient Nords and Master of the Voice. He founded the Greybeards when he created the Way of the Voice." Paarthurnax was appreciative of Jurgen's philosophies as he'd said a number of times. (If you'd cared to listen instead of coming up with cockamamie reasons to damn the poor dragon.) He remained to learn more of the ways of Jurgen Windcaller, and when Jurgen passed on, he became the Master of the Voice. Then, and not before. This is why Paarthurnax is where he is. Thu'um has nothing to do with order of birth, because if it had then the dragonborn's thu'um would have been weaker than Alduin's. But it was acknowledged by Paarthurnax and Odahviign that the dragonborn's thu'um was indeed stronger. And it was the dragonborn's thu'um that destroyed Paarthurnax in the end. Again, this is another poorly considered... theory based upon flawed assumptions, without paying attention to the facts at hand. No. As was stated by the Greybeards, Paarthurnax was meditating upon the teachings of the Way of the Voice, and how to best use the Voice in praise to the gods, who provided dragons and mortalkind alike with it. Jurgen Windcaller was the first to do this, and did much the same as Paarthurnax. Paarthurnax was merely following in Jurgen's footsteps. Again, your... knowledge of lore is admirable. It's lead to yet another unsubstantiated theory. Check your lore. Paarthurnax was the first and possibly only dragon to rebel. Sheesh. http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Paarthurnax If you have any evidence to the contrary then I'd like to hear it, but if this mass rebellion of dragons that preceded Paarthurnax's rebellion actually happened, then you'd think it would be contained at the UESP of all places. The answer to this one is painfully obvious. Many sources in the game said that Alduin was an is egotistical and arrogant. Why would an egotistical and arrogant dragon not bother with Paarthurnax? For the same reason that he didn't kill off the Dovahkiin the first time he saw him: Alduin didn't consider Paarthurnax or the Dovahkiin a threat, and he believed that marshalling his army through dragon resurrections should be his prime and only concern. This remains the case until Alduin is challenged by you for the first time, the battle where the dragonborn first uses Dragon Rend. This puts fear into Alduin and for the first time he recognises the dragonborn and Paarthurnax as valid threats. If you think about this logically, it makes sense. Oh for crying out loud. See? This is your knowledge of the lore, in all its delusional grandeur. And I only call you on this because you claimed to be such an incredible lore master yourself. And if you want to make a claim like that, nad you can't back it up, then you have to expect someone to call you on it. As I explained above, Jurgen Windcaller created the Way of the Voice. No, Paarthurnax did not create the dragonborn, but no one other than you has made that claim. So you've set up a fallacious claim to knock down yourself? Good for you. And no, Paarthurnax did not teach 'the way of the voice,' either. Let me do a little filling in here, so that you understand the lore proper. Kynareth, the goddess, granted mortalkind the ability to harness the voice, but they couldn't figure it out on their own. In their darkest hour, Paarthurnax (yes, that guy, whom you hate so much) came to their aid and literally saved them. How did he do this? He was the one who taught them to harness the thu'um and turn it into a weapon that could be used against the dragons. With this new understanding of the thu'um, the warriors went on to create Dragon Rend, which ultimately lead to Alduin's defeat. Paarthurnax (whom you hate so much) was instrumental in saving the lives of every human on Tamriel back then, and he risked everything to do so. He lost his family (Alduin was his brother, as you should at least know), his friends, and all dragon allegiances, all to save mortalkind. If he had not taught them to harness the thu'um, then there would never have been a Dragon Rend, and Alduin would have consumed the world back then. Following this, Jurgen Windcaller claimed that the thu'um should not be a weapon, lest they would be the same as the dragons who use it. He believed that the thu'um should be used only in praise to the gods, and wove a set of philosophies, and soon thereafter a belief around that simple notion. He founded the Way of the Voice. (As I explained at length above.) So impressed was Paarthurnax that he too chose willingly to follow the teachings of Jurgen Windcaller. I don't have the energy left for sarcasm, so I'll just say that by this point you absolutely must recognise your lack of knowledge about Skyrim and the Elder Scrolls in general as much as I see that lacking in you. Now yer just fibbing. You can go back to Paarthurnax at any point after the main quest line and meditate with him. He's still peaceful, and he's always happy to see the dragonborn whenever he turns up. Well duh. >_> Ovahdiign's colour and design is drastically different from Paarth's, not hard to spot even when they're a good distance away. My conclusion? You don't have the first clue what you're on about. Please stop. Paarthurnax is an ethically charged good guy, a stand up dragon, a bloody great person, and an all around bro. Your irrational hatred of him speaks volumes of your absolute xneophobia. Really, I wouldn't have been so harsh, but everything you've cited as fact actually falls under 'made up,' and I have little tolerance for made up nonsense being paraded around as fact when it's designed to make a character that I like look bad. Paarth is a bro, you're jealous and hateful for reasons I can't begin to imagine. Go do your thing with those xenophobic has-been glam hounds you call The Blades.

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.

I'd like to see the extra marriage options in, too. The lore thing is a bit of a cockamamie reason, if I may state that this is so, because there were Khajiit and Bosmer in previous Elder Scrolls games who followed different religions. Hell, even Paarthurnax chose to follow a different system of belief. So to say that there's not one khajiit/Bosmer in the entirety of Skyrim that was raised as an orphan with Nordic beliefs is... just ridiculous. To me, it's laziness and nothing more. And that's a shame.

You may certainly link it! Feel free! I'll probably create a WIP thread when the CK is released and get the ball rolling.

So, let's preface this by noting that I learned that one could marry many NPCs in the game by clicking on them and using these commands in the console: addfac 19809 1 setrelationshiprank player 4 I wanted to grab a Khajiit for myself. Kind of fancy Kharjo and Dro'marash but, alas, there seems to be something mechanically lacking there that stops one from doing that with Khajiit. It's probably that the lines haven't been voiced. Bad Bethesda, bad! >8[ So I went with the next best: Werewolves! Problem is, the Companions are Nordly most of the time, so to speak, and all of the time once the Companions quest chain is completed (boo!), but I had an idea. There was one werewolf... Yes, Sinding. BEHOLD THE RESULTS! http://s12.postimage.org/vrfln8ua3/werewolf_wife_1.png http://s8.postimage.org/fnn3gx6dv/werewolf_wife_2.png http://s9.postimage.org/qqrjv68pp/werewolf_wife_3.png Yes, yes, I know, evil criminal and all that. But pfft, Hircine made him do it. Anyway, he's mine now. And he's hanging out in my house. No one reacted to him at the wedding, of course, since he's 'technically a Nord,' and no one reacts to him in Whiterun, either. So he's happily living his life in Breezehome, the first communally accepted werewolf in Skyrim. Roleplay, you say? How'd I manage to pull this off from my character's perspective? Pff... I don't know. I'll just put it down to mass mind-control and be done with it. There's probably a spell for that. Just like there's a spell for everything in that world. Like there's apparently an app for everything in ours. As you can probably surmise, this amuses me far, far, far too much.

Once or twice now, due to needing a zoomed in page size (poor sight), I've accidentally clicked on the un-endorse button. This has lead to a "CRAP! D:" moment, before quickly re-endorsing it again. I wonder if that happens a lot, or whether it's just me? It'd be awkward for Skyrim mod authors to see their amount of endorsements bounce up and down. If this is uncommon though and I'm just a clumsy lummox, then disregard. But it might be helpful to have a simple 'Are you sure? You didn't click this accidentally, did you, you fool?' popup there. >_>;

Let's see, Hircine... --- Werewolf. --- Why do you approach, hunter? This is hallow ground, and you are not yet my champion. Speak, before my jaws find your throat! I claim your pelt in the name of Ysgramor! A challenge! Well, I accept, of course! How could I refuse an audience that entertains me so? But know that I am no base prey, hunter. I am an aspect of the great Hircine, and this day may be your last. Savour it. And if my teeth find your neck, know that I will reward you by making you mine forever. Either way, the honour would be yours, hunter. Are you prepared? I am prepared, Hircine. Ready yourself! Your wilful, arrogant nature amuses me greatly, and I would have you at my hunting grounds. To arms then, brave hunter, let's see whom of us is truly the prey! Have at you! --- I am victorious, and I claim the spills. Indeed you are, and that was a kill as thrilling as any I've ever seen. I'll miss this particular aspect, but you have earned your spoils. Take them, then. I know what you seek to do with this pelt and I am disappointed, little hunter. I am very disappointed. But not all men are ready for the true gift of Hircine. Perhaps at your life's end you will well accept my summons to my hunting grounds, and there I will greet you with open arms. Perhaps so. Then hunt well, little one. In time, we may meet again. --- The Cure-All --- Why do you approach, hunter? This is hallow ground, and you are not yet my champion. Speak, before my jaws find your throat! I would bid you to withdraw lycanthropy from this land. Amusing. Would you now? Tell me then, little hunter, why would the great Hircine hear such a demand? Why would I even entertain it? And why would I not just tear out your throat right now for this affront? Speak! I challenge you, foul Hiricne! And should I win, I'll see that you meet my demands. Oh, is that so? We shall see, little hunter. But know that this aspect is powerful, and your fate will be to become nothing more than a red stain upon this pure, white snow. And once you're mine, I will seek your allies, your friends, your family, and I will make them mine, too. It will be a high price you pay if you should fail. Are you prepared? I am. Ready yourself, beast! So be it! --- Ha, I stand over you victorious! And now you will yield. Oh, will I now? All you've won is my amusement, as that was truly a grand hunt. You showed your mettle to me and proved your worth. I am certain that your tone will change in time, as is true of all of my children, none of them can at first accept the truth of their reality. So I-- No! I have defeated you, and by the will of Kynareth, the spirit of nature, the light to your darkness, you will listen! Well then, that's a novelty. It's been a few centuries since this has happened. As I recall, the last time wa sin Cyrodiil, long ago, and I was forced to withdraw my children from those lands. And yet I have since managed to worm my way around that particular obstacle, as no one can avoid a true hunter forever, and no lands or people can truly ever escape the will of Hircine. But for now I must submit, but there will be a time of reckoning, little hunter. An insult such as this the grand Hircine won't soon forget. You've made a very powerful enemy. So be it. The consequences are mine. Hrnf. I respect your arrogance at the very least. Pray that I never choose to seek you out again, little one, for if I do, it will be with my jaws wrapped around your throat as you sleep. ---

Hmm, how would old Vignar put it? Let's see... Aye, I knew about old Kodlak. And if he'd not told me then the smell would've given him away. I think most of us had an idea, at least those bright of us enough to, anyway. Old Kodlak didn't see eye-to-eye with you about this, did he? I wonder what he'd have to say about how things are now. And look at you, even Ysgramor agrees if the whispers I've heard have the right of it. And here you are, dragonborn, a true son of Skyrim, and... a werewolf. Can't say it matters to me. I don't think that's the answer you wanted, and I do owe you, so for any fool who'd question you, you can say that the Jarl of Whiterun stands with you. I shared mead with the Companions while many here were still whelps, and I know the worth of the word of Ysgramor. The Companions and us Gray-Manes have stood together as brothers, I don't see why a thing like a little more body hair and the smell of it should change that now. So go do what you do, dragonborn, werewolf, it doesn't matter to me. So long as you bring honour to Whiterun and Skyrim, it doesn't matter what you are. You've proved yourself time and again, and I'd say that to any son or daughter of Skyrim who've served Whiterun and me as well as you have. Well, the others will have to decide for themselves, but you've got my favour, and that'll count when it matters. In Whiterun you won't have to worry, hairy or not. Heh. And I'm sure that the word will get out soon enough. You're the Companions, and the best of us. That should be enough for anyone. And I think with that this old man has done more'n enough talking for now. So... off you go. Go do what you do. [Edited.] I've edited the first post to polish up the idea a bit. And it simplifies things by having the player fight the same creature no matter which choice they make, which would make the mod a little easier to create. Once the Creation Kit is available, should I start a WIP for this and start recruiting people to make it happen? Would the interest be there? I'd be more than happy to offer what writing skills I have, too. I'd be interested in some opinions on this matter.

So I was thinking about what the Jarl might say upon seeking his blessing. Probably something like this: Whiterun faces many threats, she and I have powerful enemies. Our friends and allies... too few, for my liking. But the Companions have always stood amongst them. Jorrvaskr stood long before Whiterun, with you as its defenders, and as Whiterun sprung up around it, you became her defenders. Whiterun and the Companions have long since been one and the same; Friends. The faces change, but the cause remains the same, you fight for your honour, and for ours. I have learned that you sought Ysgramor's blessing, and won it through blood and sweat. And now you seek mine. It is yours. You are the Companions, and you are now the White Wolves of Whiterun. Let it be known that those who would dare raise a sword against you raises a sword against Whitrun, and in turn, against me. And I do not take such lightly. Do as you have always done, Companions, and do so with my blessing. And as for you, Harbinger, I would tell you that Kodlak and I were close friends, this has been so with all the Jarls and Harbingers that came before us, and that honour now falls to you. Bring honour to the Companions, to the White Wolves, and to Whiterun. I trust that you will not let me down.

As an extension to this idea, Ysgramor could send you to take on Hircine's wolf, the embodiment of what you are. The idea here is that you'd go up against a giant white wolf, one capable of using frost breath (if we can get the animations/effects for that), and claim its hide. Said hide could then be taken by to Ysgramor, who would bless it, as part of changing the once-curse into something else entirely. He'd then have us send it to a talented arms crafter, to make armour from its hide. This armour would be an upgrade of the Wolf Armour that Eorlund sells. When you transform wearing this armour (and the armour can be upgraded via normal means), you'll transform into the white wolf instead. And you can transform as many times a day. The power will be granted in a similar way to how Hircine's Ring works. The benefits of the white wolf would be that you'd be more powerful, you'd regenerate a little, and you'd be treated as a 'normal person' by everyday townsfolk, perhaps with the odd line thrown in there about you being a werewolf. Like I said, you'd need to 'out' yourself to the Jarl to earn the benefit of being able to walk amongst the peoples, but that would be one of the benefits. So in either your base, normal form, or your white wolf form, you'd be treated normally. And the other side to this is that if you have a Companion (or Companions, should that happen) with you, when you transform into a white wolf, they'll transform. And you'll all be wearing this nifty new armour, to boot. Yeah, it would take a lot of effort, effects work, modelling, skinning, voice work, and perhaps even some animations, but... I think it would be worth it. Like I said in the title, these guys are the Companions, they're living legends and the greatest warriors Skyrim has ever known. They deserved better than the half-arsed fate Bethesda meted out upon them.

The Ring of Hircine provides similar functionality (unlimited shifts per day). I mentioned something along those lines in an idea thread of mine, but it went beyond that, including a way to actually do something worthwhile with the Companions.

Thanks guys. Maybe this can become a project once the Creation Kit is available. I'd be more than happy to do a little writing for it, that's for sure. I have a plot laid out in mind, with a few plot points, that I'd gladly share if anything gets underway. But as I said, I am indeed saddened at the incomplete nature of the Companions, as if to say that Bethesda started them with lofty goals and then decided to dismiss them in favour of other portions of the game. There's a lot of potential for the Companions and their story, and as you can guess, I'd have chosen to redeem the werewolves myself. I think that standing before the Jarl with an artefact of Ysgramor, having him order his men not to attack and having him promise the same, and then taking form before his very eyes would be an incredible scene. Especially followed by the right words, spoken by the player. It would allow the Companions to be legends again, and following this (or the completion of the other quest line), you'd have people turning up at your door, people whom you could train or send to others within your ranks to train, or turn away if you dislike them for some reason. And, once they're trained to your satisfaction, you could have them meet you in the Underforge to perform a slightly modified version of the ritual that Aela and Skjor performed for you. The end result of this would be, of course, that you could take a number of Companions into battle with you. Perhaps up to three. Hand-picked by you from the original Companions and perhaps some of the new ones you've trained. And when you shift in battle, they do, and you get to watch your foes set upon by three towering wolves, the pride of Whiterun, and of the Companions. That would be quite a sight indeed. Fighting the foes of the nordic peoples as the White Wolves would be something I could really get into, I think, and you probably feel the same way. It's just a shame that none of this occurred to Bethesda. Well, as is always the case... we may be able to fix that.

So I was greatly disappointed by the end of the Companions questline. And thus I have some thoughts as to how it could be improved with a continuation, one that would really do the plot idea some justice. This would all take place once the player is the Harbinger of the Champions, and it would centre around two quest lines. It would be a choice, essentially. The player would be presented with it and one of two mini-campaigns would spiral out from that point... The Reclamation of Glory The player opts to call lycanthropy a curse, and deigns that the Champions seek their freedom and vengeance upon Hircine. This quest has them seek out an aspect of Hircine, and upon its defeat, using some magicks acquired from somewhere (either from the Temple of Kynareth, or from that bloke whom the Jarl appointed as his court mage), they force one sole boon from Hircine. The boon chosen is that lycanthropy, as a whole, is to be stricken from Skyrim so that there would be no more were-creatures. This removes all were-creatures from the levelled lists. And the promise from Hircine that he will never inflict this curse upon the peoples of Skyrim again. The Champions would return to Whiterun to speak of this, that lycanthropy has been cured throughout the lands, and a statue would be erected in their honour near Jorrvaskr. The Redemption of Wolves In this take, the player opts to see lycanthropy as a gift, praising the boons it offers and seeing it as having become intrinsic to the identity of the Companions. However, Hircine's handling of it is perceived as a curse, and the thought is offered that perhaps Ysgramor could offer his aid. The spirit of Ysgramor would task the player, to see if they truly believe that the gift of the wolf is truly a thing that a true nord would consider precious, and upon answering definitively, he would send them on a quest. This quest would see the player hunting an aspect of Hircine, a giant frost wolf, for its mane. Upon returning the mane to Hircine, it would be blessed, and from there the Companions would have new armour made by Eorlund from it. This armour, when worn, grants a new wolf form. - The wolf form is white, in comparison to the normal dark brown-furred beast form. - The player can toggle on/off the beast form whenever they desire to. - As a story aspect, when wearing this armour, the player would no longer feel the blood craving of Hircine's wolf. Once this has been done, the Companions come before the Jarl of Whiterun to 'out' themselves as the lupine champions of Ysgramor. And the Jarl would give them his blessing to remain in wolf form unhindered by his guards whilst in Whiterun, and he'll send word that the White Wolves of Whiterun would only have swords risen against them if they wished to receive the ire of Whiterun as a whole. The end result of this questline would be that players could use their new wolf form in Whiterun and people would treat them as if they weren't shifted. And after a period of time, all civilised settlements wouldn't attack them. Say... a month in-game? Following on from there. After this, the player would open the doors of the Companions to new recruits. A procedural system would be used to have new recruits show up which the player could then interview. If the player is pleased by them, then they can be accepted as trainees, and eventually companions. If the player chose to retain their lycanthropy, then recruits can also eventually receive the gift as well, to become one of the White Wolves of Whiterun. Another functional element that would be nice is if the follower system were changed to allow up to three people to follow the player, and so that when the player shifted, anyone who'd been given the gift would shift with them. Imagine charging your foes as a pack of white werewolves. That would be something, wouldn't it? This, of course, would require some effort to do, and probably quite a bit of voice acting. I'll just leave this here to see what people think of it. (I've ediited this to polish the idea off quite a bit. I like how it reads better, now.)

This is going to be quite spoilerific, so if you haven't done the companions stuff you may want to pass over it. That said... on with my thoughts. The most disappointing thing for me in Skyrim thus far is having become the Harbinger of the Companions. Sure, I can order them to follow me, but those capable of werewolf form don't transform when I do. And I feel they should. I love taking Farkas around with me, but it was a massive let down the first time that I hit the Beast Form button and Farkas just stood there, doing nothing. How amazing would it be to have a few companions with you, to have them all transform at the same time and then ravage your foes as beasts of doom? Well, I think that would be fairly awesome. But Bethesda is, as always, more pedestrian than I am. I may look into this myself when the Creation Kit comes along. I did a little fiddling with the New Vegas GECK and I was marginally competent with the scripting there, it wasn't hard to pick up, so I might be able to work something out in Skyrim's CK. But if anyone wants to beat me to it, that's fine, please do! I'm sure it'll be a nightmare for a newbie like me to try and script something like that, anyway. So I'll just let this idea hang here, for now.

Ordinators. Has to be the Ordinators. I'm tossing my penny into the Ordinator hat. Werewolves? I ain't afraid of no wolves. I like them, really. They're probably nice once you get to know them. At least you know where you stand with a werewolf. Nice predator-prey relationship, it works out, but in the end... fluffy, it's not you, it's me. And I'm fleeing on the back of my rapidly trotting guar. Same for most of the aggressive critters, really. And werewolves are fun to go hand-to-hand with. Not killing 'em, just knocking them out and running like hell. Why do Ordinators bother me? *Ordinator magically appears.* "We're watching you... SSSCUM." "How--you--I... I WAS IN A CORNER. How are you behind me?! How did you make no noise? What this?! This isn't a lockpick!!! Hahaha... haaa... I'll be going now." @_@

Avoid the Steam version at all costs. D: I'm not being a hater, here. I love Steam. I pretty much use it as my digital download provider, but they dropped the ball with the installation. I found out the hard way that they installed the bloody expansion packs the wrong way around. This leads to much hilarity if you try to drop a construction set into it. And lots of facepalming. Not sure how they could've made such an amateur mistake. So I ended up having to dig out my GOTY version on discs anyway. Blargh. :P I got it on Steam for the convenience of it, in case my discs ever went, but... yeah, with the expansion packs installed the wrong way around, it's less useful. And if I'm right (which I may not be) it even effects the stability of games and mod functionality to a degree. But yeah, don't take my word for it, do what I do and drop the construction set into it. ...I know those errors well from when I'd installed the expansion packs the wrong way around. I'd expect me to make an error like that, but not Bethesda/Steam. So yeah... avoid. Buy retail.

I'd have voted for Suran, but since that's not on the list I shall go for Balmora. It's an art-direction/architecture thing for me. And whilst Ald-ruhn comes close, it was always just a tad too small and a touch too copy-pasted. I did love the architecture of Ald-ruhn though, but I wasn't at all very fond of the layout. I just think that Suran and Balmora are fantastic, visually speaking, and have some of the most interesting architecture I've seen in an RPG. (Of course, the settlement I've probably visited the most over the years I've played Morrowind is Pelagiad. Not because of the exceedingly dull and typical medieval Imperial architecture--no, no no no... definitely not, though the single-lane town layout is a bit nice, but generally, so boring--but rather more simply because there's where Ahnassi is. And I like taking the rarest finds that I won't use to stash in her house.)

You just had to give me a talking point, didn't you? I'm a strong supporter of intelligent deathclaws because it seems the natural way for their race to progress. I admit, I'm a romantic, and I'd love to see a race in Fallout which could present us with viewpoints which are entirely non-human. If handled by an intelligent writer, these beasties could be something special. I always saw it as a lack of imagination, and to a degree short-sightedness that their full potential was never recognised. There's so much that you can do with them, and they have a fairly storied history, if you work with it. Originally they were heavily mutated lizards, and I'd always imagined that their intelligence would've had a range. So one might have encountered a dense or particularly clever deathclaw in Fallout 1, but none of them had a word to say. In Tactics, we see a different strain of deathclaws, and these ladies and gents are interesting because of their composition. For one, they were hairy. It seems like the genetic make-up of a deathclaw isn't that stable, and you can have odd, random generation mutations such as hair, or intelligence. For that reason, they seem a highly adaptable race. It's said that the hair was to deal with the colder climes where the hairy deathclaws resided, and that hair was a result to the cold tends to prove that they're a step up on the evolutionary ladder over conventional deathclaws. Now, they also had a more primitive form of intellect, similar to early man. Except here's the interesting thing: They developed this form of primitive intellect over a very short period. This tends to say to me that they're evolving quickly, and they'll gain the ability to think and speak sapiently as a natural part of their evolutionary progression. As time goes on and more single generation mutations occur, those hairy deathclaws would likely have become more intelligent. Now we have the deathclaws in Fallout 2, they had a range as well. There were particularly dense deathclaws that could barely string a sentence together, and then you had mad savants with towering intellects like Grunthar and Goris. There was actually an ending that was cut for them, but I'll get to that later. I need to try and keep at least some order to my thoughts. Alright, if we consider that sapience and speech are indeed their evolutionary potential, then it's likely that all the FEV had to do to realise this potential is toggle a particular set of genes on and off to get the desired result. For me, this all comes together in my mind as saying that Deathclaws are naturally intelligent, and all that the FEV did was unlocked something that would've come along eventually with a few generations of mutations, anyway. To my mind, talking deathclaws were inevitable for this reason, it's just that the Enclave made it happen sooner than it would have normally occurred due to exposure to the FEV. Therefore, it's likely that all across the wastes, clutches of eggs could contain that particular sequence of genes, the one that lends them intelligence. And according to Darwinism, this is likely something that would spread. Consider that the intelligent deathclaws lived and mated, whereas less intelligent deathclaws would happily line themselves up in front of a sniper sight, it's most likely that the intelligent ones would shy away from human settlements and breed, even breeding with non-intelligent deathclaws, thus passing the sequence around and creating new strains. And there are other things that should be mentioned, because they're interesting. Now, there's a Restoration Project for Fallout 2 that restores cut content, content that some of the designers had egocentric fits over or simply didn't have the time to implement fully. One such bit of cut content was where you could kill Schreber in Navarro and actually save the talking deathclaws. There was even an ending in the files about this (more on this in a moment), so it was something they'd planned. However, it was cut because one particularly egocentric developer (I won't name names) decided that this shouldn't even be an option, thus going against the nature of Fallout games and choice in RPGs in general, they wanted it to stand to show the atrocity of the Enclave. Now that's fine! But it doesn't make sense for replays. On your first play through, you don't know to kill Schreber, so you have to watch the slaughter of the deathclaws anyway, but on your second? It just doesn't make sense. In fact, I'd even say it was an ignorant and ill-considered, perhaps even an idiotic decision. After all, the whole point of an RPG is to have replay value through offering choices and having different consequences, isn't it? Silly Black Isle. Though the person responsible did tend to have ego fits of the sort, and New Vegas suffered for this as well, but I won't talk too much about this. Right, in the Restoration Project, you can actually save the deathclaws and they plot out a purely peaceful plan of expansion and exploration, Northward bound. And they were fairly successful with doing this and with human relations. But it gets even better. You see, John Deiley (the person responsible for the talking deathclaws, bless 'im) told us that the gene sequence for intelligence could be passed on. It's male dominant, and Gois and Xarn survive even if you're not using the Restoration Project. But if you do use the RP... well... Consider all that I've said thus far, every element. Talking deathclaws expanding North, the ability to pass on intelligence, single generation mutations making deathclaws more intelligent, the alive and healthy hairy deathclaws from the Chicago area... give it a little while and the Americas would be flooded with intelligent deathclaws. It wouldn't take them that long after that to forge a society. This is actually why I shared an idea elsewhere about how I'd love to see that. Acolytes of the New Strain turn up in New Vegas with plans to introduce the deathclaws in the Quarry and at the deathclaw promontory to a particular version of the FEV, one designed to unlock the specific gene sequence that would awaken their minds and grant them sapience. It would be hard to do this with all the factions around, but not impossible. Some would be sympathetic to the idea, and others could be convinced to look the other way or even help out with a large enough bag of caps dropped into their lap. That we've gone back to deathclaws being simply savages is a shame. I'd daresay it's even a bloody crime. There's so much potential there, and as I already said, there's so much that a clever writer could actually do with an alien mind to actually screw with the player. Consider how different a society of deathclaws could be, and the fascinating issues it could bring with it. I had one entertaining thought about how forcing a deathclaw child to undergo a human upbringing could completely break it, and it might even make for a very interesting quest line, given some branches. But it shows just how different things could be. So, I'll share that. We'll start off with a fun conundrum: What if deathclaws had a degree of genetic memory? Now, the deathclaws might choose to leave their young to 'fend for themselves', essentially putting them in a monitored play pen wherein the adults never intervene, tools of learning would be provided there. Many of every clutch will live, some might die, but it's simply the best way for their young to work given the genetic memory angle. So they're provided for: there's food there that they can hunt, and things that would teach them about speech, society, and so on, spurred on by their clutches of genetic memory to do so. However, it might be a little harsh for them, and as I said, some might not survive. Now what if we had a particularly bleeding heart player who wanted to try things a little differently? With the deathclaws and some Followers of the Apocalypse convinced by a particularly nice speech to try something of an experiment, a few children from one clutch could be adopted and raised by humans, trying to give the children a good home and upbringing to see how it fares against the somewhat more 'savage' deathclaw method. Except here's where it gets interesting: It doesn't work. The children actually rail against constantly being watched, and being taught things which conflict with their genetic memory actually drives them slowly insane, they begin to see their parents as thought police, and the lack of total trust in them that a deathclaw parent might show eventually makes them insane. Of course, for each act they commit that exists outside of human children norms, they're punished. And they all go absolutely batshit insane from this, they break in particularly wonderful ways and they have to be put down. One escapes. And that one deathclaw goes on a murderous rampage, using its intellect to stay away from other predators, it starts murdering the parents of children. To the mind of that dathclaw, it's doing something right and just, it's freeing the young from the tormentors and torturers, and letting the young find their own way. The deathclaw sees these humans as trying to force the young into thinking and being a certain way, never allowing them to become whom they wish to be. This is due to the more independent nature of the deathclaw. And each time he'd encounter a parent punishing a child, they'd die horribly. Eventually the deathclaw is caught and he's angry and more than a little confused as to why people are labelling him as a monster. He believed his quest to be righteous and just, and he rants to such an effect. The law enforcement responsible for bringing him in can't see the creature as any different than any other criminal, they're intelligent now so they have to accept responsibility for their own actions. Either that or this is a rabid savage that needs to be put down. At this point, the player might either help the deathclaw escape and return it to its real parents, so that it might find comfort and eventually heal its mental wounds, or they could side with the local constabulary, alienating both the deathclaws and the Followers in the process. In the case of the latter, neither party would ever really trust the player again. But it's just one fun way in which human society might differ from deathclaw society, and how the two might rail against each other to provide for interesting outcomes as the humans learn just how different deathclaws are, and why they shouldn't hold them to human standards, but as an entirely new, but equally intelligent, race of people. You could really have all sorts of fun with this. You could go nuts with it. It's just a shame that Obsidian themselves can't see the potential. But anyway, I like intelligent deathclaws, and I'd love to one day see them reach their potential. But currently I'd settle for an acolyte of the new strain as a chatty companion who'd tell me of his society back home, and the trials and tribulations they'd faced. Even that a clever writer could have a lot of fun with. Right, VASTLY VOLUMINOUS WALL OF WORDS ENDS.