Legate Cipius is missing.

[Koural]

Every bug post I've seen about the Message to Whiterun is about Cipius not talking to them and giving them the update for the quest. For some reason, Cipius just isn't spawning at all for me. The Imperial Soldier runs in, and is talking to thin air. I'm not sure what removed him, but I'm afraid it may mean that there's something far more serious going on with my game. I've never done the Civil War quest and I don't want to just use setstage to get ahead, for fear something might break.

[Hyacathusarullistad]

First, save your game before doing any of the following, just in case.

 

Open the console and type prid 000844D1, then moveto player. This will bring him to your current location, and should allow you to progress as normal. It will not, however, repair the root of whatever problem led to his failure to appear in the first place.

 

The only thing I can think of to help figure out what might have gone wrong is to move yourself to him, rather than moving him to you. Open the console, type prid 000BF560 (note this number is different than the one above) then player.moveto. After a brief loading screen, you'll be warped to the NPC's current location.

 

That quest in particular is one of the most notoriously unstable in the game. What mods, if any, are you using that might affect the civil war? Are you using the Unofficial Skyrim Patch?

[Koural]

The reference 000844D1 did not seem to register, and it didn't recognize it. It recognized BF560, however he didn't talk to me at all to update the quest. The actual quest marker remained on the floor, as if he was supposed to be there, but nothing was there. I even used noclip to try and see if he got stuck under the scenery itself, but no luck. I have idea what's causing this, but I can't even just skip to the Battle for Whiterun, because the setstage refuses to work for some godawful reason. I'm not sure if I'm typing it right, or if I'm just screwed to ever complete the Civil War quests. I couldn't finish it on the console, and now it looks like I can't on the PC.

[Hyacathusarullistad]

If 000844D1 didn't work, then I'd guess the game didn't spawn him for some reason. I couldn't hope to tell you what that reason might be, though. Like I said, the civil war is a crazy delicate quest. Even more so if you're using mods.

 

The only thing I could think to suggest would be to spawn the Legate, then use setstage CW03 210 and see what happens. That should, in theory, let you skip reporting to the Legate and advance straight to Battle for Whiterun. It might simply end Message to Whiterun and not start the next quest; if this is the case, try setstage CWSiegeObj 1.

[Koural]

As I said, I already tried to use the setstage. The Battle for Whiterun does not start and setstage with CWSiege tells me "Expected end of line, complied list not saved." It absolutely will not work. I've opened up TES5edit to try and look for for any issues with it, but it's seriously starting to get frustrating.

[dasistrunt]

God this is going to get hate for being so late. 5 years late in fact. If anyone else is going through this now. Here's how it went down: I was using a bunch of war restoration mods, I used console commands to quick travel to give ulfric the axe and return it and the Legate was missing. I had the same limitations as the OP of this post, I just went out onto the Porch where you capture the dragon and went back in and he spawned in.

[Lycol1997]

Not too late stranger! This worked for me. It seems like such a simple solution, but I had actually tried entering and exiting Dragonsreach several times. Only entering and exiting through the porch worked.