I Want Mjoll As A Steward

[DirebearCoat]

So, apparently there seems to be dialog for Mjoll The Lioness to become a steward of one of your manors.  However, for whatever reason, it doesn't trigger when you take her to one of your manor estates.  So, you can't get her as a steward.

Also, this guy that keeps hanging around her is annoying.  I kind of want to get rid of him, or maybe not...

So, how about a mod that has three possible endings?

The mod kicks in after you part ways with Mjoll.  You have to ask her to follow you.  Go out and do a couple of jobs.  Then part ways with her.  She goes back to hanging around Riften, trying to clean things up in that corrupt town, with that puppy of a guy following her around.

Then 5 to 15 in game days later, you're walking down a random road, at night, and come across a group of suspicious travelers.  They're merchants, but not the ones you usually run into.  There are two Khajiit.  One does all of the talking, buying and selling.

The other walks around giving orders to the others in the group, saying shady and suspicious things.  The others in the group are male and female bodyguards or henchmen.  Sometimes the henchmen are Orc, sometimes Dunmer, sometimes, Woodelves, sometimes, Argonian, and sometimes human (Nord, Bretin, Imperials, Redguard, etc), and sometimes a mix of all of the above.

They never have a place where they set up shop.  You only run into them randomly on the roads, and it's always at night.  They buy and sell stuff from and to you, but it's all illicit goods.  Stolen goods, illegal drugs, etc.

You'll encounter them randomly on on the road, and they'll only have a limited amount of items for sale (1500 Septims worth of illicit goods), and will have a limited amount of credits to buy stuff with (750 Septims).

However, after randomly encountering them, a few times, on the road at night - if you've bought up to 7500 Septims worth of stuff from them AND sold 3750 Septims worth of stolen and pickpocketed goods to them, a special condition will be met.

One night, while looking through their illicit wares on one of your random encounters with them on the road, the merchant makes a casual mention of work that is available, for skilled sellswords, if you're interested.  You ask, "What kinds of jobs?"

Then you get certain quests that open up.  Three jobs given one at a time, randomly, as you encounter them on the road.

You get one job to help with kidnapping a random NPC (Not a named NPC, a random one that can respawn later, like a Hunter, an Orc Hunter, a random Imperial, Stormcloak, or Thalmor patroller, a Bandit, or one made up specifically for this quest) on the road or on a farm, or in an unwalled town.  You are given a net that you Use ( E on keyboard) while facing the victim.  The net automatically gags, blindfolds, and hogties the victim.  Two henchmen show up out of nowhere and quickly take the victim away.  You get paid, 2,000 Septims for the job.

Then you get a job to kill a "targeted" (Not a named NPC, a random one that can respawn later, like a Hunter, an Orc Hunter, random Imperial, Stormcloak, or Thalmor patroller, a Bandit, or one made up specifically for this quest) npc on the road, or on a farm, or in an unwalled town.  You do the deed - without getting caught, and get paid, 5,000 Septims.

You're third job is to plant a rumor with a targeted (Not a named NPC, a random one that can respawn later, like a Hunter, an Orc Hunter, random Imperial, Stormcloak, or Thalmor patroller, a Bandit, or one specifically made up for this quest).  This rumor causes an argument between the targeted individual and some other individual that causes them to never speak to each other again.  You get paid 2,000 Septims.

Then one day, on a random encounter on the road, while looking through the illicit goods, the merchant mentions certain special services that are available, but such services are a bit expensive.  You ask, "What kinds of services?"

You get a new set of dialog that didn't exist before, offering to kidnap (to be sold to some necromancer for their experiments), murdered, or to have an embarrassing incident that causes the end of a relationship or friendship.

Now, here's your chance!

Option 1) You can hire these thugs to kidnap that annoying guy, making him permanently disappear!  Until his body is found on an abandoned necromancer's lab in a failed necromantic experiment (he stayed dead).  That costs 8,000 Septims.

or

Option 2) You can hire these thugs to murder him.  You have to ask Mjoll to follow you, and you go out on a several quests, around Skyrim.  Then you part ways with Mjoll.  She goes home to Riften.  Then one day, you got back to Riften, and you learn from Mjoll that the annoying guy was murdered while you two were away on adventures.  His body was found in the water in the canal, below.  It looked like an armed robbery gone wrong.  That costs 15,000 Septims.

or

Option 3) You can hire these guys to set that annoying guy up in an embarrassing circumstance so that somehow Mjoll gets really mad at him, and the two split up.  Mjoll moves from Riften to Rorikstead, but sometimes you might finder her in Whiterun at The Drunken Huntsman.  While he moved on to Cyrodiil.  That costs 5,000 Septims.

(Good riddance to that annoying puppy tag-along guy!)

Now you can ask her to be your steward!  You ask her to follow you to do a couple of quests.  Then you take her to the manor you want her to be steward of, and the necessary dialogue happens, so that you can hire her to be the steward of your manor (any manor, not only the Hearthfire manors).

Then one random night, on a random encounter with the shady merchant, you get some random dialog with the merchant.  Then, before you get a chance to open a dialog to buy and sell stolen merchandise, an ambush happens!

Suddenly, a large raid is sprung!  Imperial soldiers, or Stormcloaks, or the Jarl's men (depending where you are in Skyrim, and where you are in the Civil War, etc) descend on the caravan of suspicious travelers.  The Khajiit merchant accuses you of betraying him.  He attacks you, and forces you to fight back.

After all of the suspicious travelers are dead, you get a dialogue to - quick dump all of the stolen and illicit crap you have on you around the bodies of the suspicious travelers before the raid leader approaches your character (you don't want to be caught with all of those ill gotten goods on your person).

The leader of the raid approaches you, and thanks you:

If the raiders were the local jarl's men, and you are a thane of that hold, then your character is thanked - as Thane.  If you aren't a thane of that hold, yet, the jarl's man thanks you for your aid, and cautions you to be careful when traveling.  The roads are dangerous.

If the raiders were Imperial Legionnaires, and you are on the Imperials' side, then your character is thanked - as the current rank of your character during the Civil War, or if you've already completed it, as Legate.  If you were on the enemy's side, or haven't started the civil war quest, they thank you for your aid, and caution you to be careful when traveling.  The roads are dangerous, Citizen.

If the raiders were Stormcloaks, and you are on Ulfric Stormcloak's side, then your character is thanked - as the current title of your character during the Civil War, or if you've already completed it, as Stormblade.  If you were on the enemy's side, or haven't started the civil war quest, they thank you for your aid, and caution you to be careful when traveling.  The roads are dangerous, Kinsman (or whatever your character's race is).

(If you chose Option 3: Mjoll gets a letter from annoying tag-along guy, two in game years later.  The next time you see her, she tells your character about it.  He found a nice woman, got married, has two kids, etc., and he is terribly, terribly sorry for the awful things he's said to her.  Mjoll is happy for him, and says, one day, she'll write him back and tell him how happy she is for him, and that she forgives him, while asking that he forgive her for the nasty things she said to him.)

[Or, if you don't want to do all of that modding, just make a mod that makes tag-along guy stop tagging along, and that lets Mjoll do the dialog so that she can be a steward in one of my manors.]

[scorrp10]

Well, if you install "Amorous Adventures", their questline paints Aerin as a bad guy, and eventually you get to eliminate him.   (And get affections of Sapphire and Ingun Blackbriar as well).   

As far as getting her as Steward:   that is a general feature of Hearthfires.    If you bring a current follower to one of Hearthfire manors, and you don't have a steward there yet, you should get an option to offer stewardship to this follower.

 

[DirebearCoat]

Mjoll is broken.  She won't start the dialog to ask to be steward.  This is a known bug that hasn't been fixed - or Bethesda has chosen to not make her available to be a steward even though the dialogue for it exists.

I'm asking for the bug to be fixed, or for the option to make Mjoll a steward available.  The rest of that long story was just an interesting (interesting to me) idea of including a nice quest line to go with the fix.

EDIT:

Also, make it so that Aerin WILL NOT hang around.  Make him stay in Riften, or make him move to Cyrodiil, never to be seen again.

Edited August 20 by DirebearCoat

[Inthesaaand]

I seem to remember asking this question myself years ago and iirc it turns out that Mjoll cannot in fact be a steward, she was never meant to be able to be one. The confusion here is that the dialogue is present when it shouldn't be, I think. Honestly I'm not 100% on this because I'm dragging up old memories here but this seems to play right in my noggin. Not exactly what you were looking for I know but it might help with why.

BTW there is, sort of, a way you could have her, or an approximation of her at least. If you're familiar with Proteus read no further, if you're not you can use it copy her likeness to yourself, be sure to save your own likeness first of course. Now save your new (Mjoll) likeness and then re apply your own. The saved Mjoll likeness can now be applied to any NPC you choose, including those who can be steward. Proteus will also let you choose voice types. Might not be nailed on Mjoll but...

I got nothing for Aerin really except what scorrp10 said. Oh and kill in console obviously, if you're into that.

Edited August 29 by Inthesaaand

[DirebearCoat]

14 hours ago, Inthesaaand said:

I seem to remember asking this question myself years ago and iirc it turns out that Mjoll cannot in fact be a steward, she was never meant to be able to be one.  The confusion here is that the dialogue is present when it shouldn't be, I think.

In light of this information, is it impossible for a mod to be made that could make her into a steward (and get Aerin move to Cyrodiil)?

Edited August 30 by DirebearCoat

[Inthesaaand]

In light of this information, is it impossible for a mod to be made that could make her into a steward (and get Aerin move to Cyrodiil)?

Well there's no mod author over here, a lowly end user is all you'll find in these shoes. That said I'd say impossible seems unlikely given the astonishing things that can be done. Whether or not someone would is a more likely question I think.

Incidently I had a look around to see if I could find anything to corroborate my dusty old memories. Heaps of people saying she can be steward, heaps more complaining they can't get it done and this https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Followers . Only thing I could find that states she cannot be steward.

[scorrp10]

Ok, I know exactly what the issue is.   When filling the alias for the follower in the stewardship offer quest,   the voice type of current follower must be in 'BYOHVoicesNonUnique' list (3005E57)   And Mjoll's (FemaleNord) is in it.

HOWEVER, the actual spoken line for the stewardship offer, requires that Follower VoiceType is in 'VoicesFollowerAll'   list (C87E7).   And it does not have FemaleNord in it.   Basically, in order to be a steward, the follower must have one of those voice types:
FemaleSultry
MaleNord
FemaleCommander
MaleOrc
FemaleCondescending
MaleEvenToned
FemaleEvenToned
MaleYoungEager
FemaleYoungEager

The fix could have been as easy as adding FemaleNord voicetype to VoicesFollowerAll list, but the issue is that there are no steward voice files for femalenord.   I suppose one could extract the hearthfires files for femalecommander, which seem to be sounding close enough to femalenord.   

EDIT - I have replaced the attached file.   It now contains all Steward-related dialogue lines, regenerated in 'FemaleNord'  style using AI.   With this mod, any follower with this voice type (including Mjoll) can become an HF steward,  and sound their usual self.

Not sure if this mod will work on a game in progress (it should), but it definitely should not mess anything up.     The attached file should allow any "FemaleNord" voicetype follower to be an HF steward, except they will sound like 'FemaleCommander'  when talking about steward-related stuff. 

 

MjollBYOHSteward.7z

[DirebearCoat]

Does this mean that someone would have to make a special category for Mjoll, and then add it so that Mjoll will sound like Mjoll and not like a FemaleCommander?

[scorrp10]

Mjoll has a generic 'FemaleNord' voice type.

This mod will not make Mjoll (or any other 'FemalNord' voiced NPC) "sound like  FemaleCommander"  - only when saying the lines specifically related to being a steward.   (I.e. ordering a lumber of hiring a bard)   

And that voicetype does not have any recorded lines for being a steward.    So the potential solutions are:

• Just add  'FemaleNord' to the list (which is what my mod's  .esp does) - but then Mjoll will just be silent during steward dialogue. 
• Copy the voice files from another voice type that has them (which is what my mod does)
• Have someone who can do a passable imitation of FemaleNord voice, record the lines and include them
• Use an AI site such as ElevenLabs to train generating FemaleNord voice (by giving it  a 2-3 minute chunk of spoken conversation from that voice), and then generate the steward voice lines.
   

[Inthesaaand]

In the highly unlikely event that scorrp10' clever little mod doesn't work mid playthrough there is another way. After reading that post and having previously mentioned Proteus here it got me to thinking, turns out you can in fact use it to the same ends.

Collect Mjoll as a follower and change her voice to one of those listed by scorrp10, go to your chosen homestead and make her steward then change voice back to Female Nord. As with scorrp10' mod the steward dialogue will be silent but all else will be Mjoll.