What I found: When I looked at the zEdit program's about, it had a comment that zEdit was built off of xEdit's codebase. Good guess on the cause, Mike. When I deleted all the files in the cache folder, like you stated, "nothing to do with Vortex", Vortex operated the same as always. When I redeployed the mods, zEdit immediately repopulated the cache folder with all the .json files I had previously mentioned in my OP. Now I need to find out why I installed zEdit and if I can remove it without losing functionality.
