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Selmina D'Archon, a lore-friendly, balanced, Breton female mage follower

This mod creates a new female Breton elemental mage, for use as a follower. It places her in the Sleeping Giant Inn, in the town of Riverwood. She is a balanced, lore-friendly follower, with minimal dialogue, for a no-nonsense, straightforward and uncomplicated companion.

[Prefer a male? See my Jacil D'Archon necromancer follower mod, found at: Steam Workshop ( https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=13497 )].

[If you intend to down-vote this mod for any reason, please do me the courtesy of telling me why in the comments. I am fairly responsive to feedback, and would like the opportunity to improve what you perceive as flawed. It is fairly discouraging as a modder to get negative votes with no explanation.]

Her abilities as a mage fall somewhere between Aranea and Marcurio. So she is slightly stronger than the former and slightly weaker (in Destruction magic) than the latter (thanks to Marcurio's Augmented Shock perk). However, she is more versatile than Marcurio, since not only is she well versed in all three elements of destruction magic, she also is a capable conjurer of all three atronach types, and has more robust options for self-healing and protection spells. Plus, she doesn't charge 500 gold each time you hire her. Besides Augmented Shock, she has roughly the same perk set as Marcurio.

In addition, I have given her the "Light Foot" perk, which prevents her from setting off traps (just to circumvent annoyance) and set her aggressiveness such that she should not attack everything in sight, but instead defend herself and her allies only when attacked. Both of the latter features should make her more suitable for sneaky types that don't want their followers charging ahead and waking up half the dungeon on you. She is not a sneak-thief though, she is a mage; thus she does not have a high sneak skill.

She has been set to level with the player all the way up to maximum level, just like J'zargo in the vanilla game.

She is also able to join the Blades.

If married, she will become a general merchant to buy your loot, and this behavior carries over into the field. Be sure to open her trade dialog to confirm she has gold before inviting her to rejoin you as a follower, after the wedding.

Finally, she is marked as "protected," which means that in most circumstances, only the player should be able to kill her (just the same as the default followers in vanilla Skyrim). If you wish her to be essential, simply open the console (default "~" key), type "help Selmina 0" and hit enter, record the <base ID> that matches her name under the "NPC_" category (this will be an eight character alphanumeric code, such as "4d000d62"), then type in "setessential <base ID> 1" and hit enter.


TROUBLESHOOTING NOTES:

Marriage: If you have a problem relating to marrying Selmina, particularly with her leaving the altar the minute the ceremony is concluded, this is a problem with all stock Bethesda followers. There is a mod called "Marriage Mod WIP" ( https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=11579 ) that seeks to correct this problem, if you're interested.

Following: If you find that Selmina cannot keep up with you very well, this is yet another problem with all stock Bethesda followers. I know of a mod that seeks to resolve this issue as well, and should be compatible with my mod. You can find it here: "Followers Keep Up" ( https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=10172 )

Dark/gray/discolored head: There is a well-known bug in the official Creation Kit (which I used to create this mod) that produces dark/gray heads, which do not match up with the body coloration. As an NPC modder, this is on my top list of wanted fixes for the CK. If you agree, feel free to weigh in on the chorus of voices clamoring for this to be fixed, here: http://forums.bethsoft.com/forum/184-the-creation-kit/ . I have done all I could on my end, so if you find yourself encountering this bug, it falls to you to do something about it. Simply open the console (default tilde ~ key), click on the NPC of concern, type "setnpcweight 51" (no quotes) close the console, reopen the console, then type "setnpcweight 50". If this doesn't fix your problem, then you're stuck with it until Bethesda fixes the bug.

UPDATE: Updated with current Creation Kit on 2017/07/22, including FaceGen data files to avoid "gray face" bug. Hopefully, this resolves the problem. If not, it's out of my hands to fix.

This follower uses the very same mechanisms as stock Bethesda followers in the vanilla game. Thus, if you have crashes or other serious problems, it is highly likely that another mod you have installed is the culprit, or is simply a bug in the game itself. This mod does not touch sensitive areas of the game, and in fact is kept deliberately very simple so as to avoid problems. Bearing that in mind, if you still believe there is a problem you have encountered directly relating to the follower in this mod, please let me know so that I can address it.

FINAL NOTE (all followers):

Not all magical item enchantments work on NPCs. For information on what enchanted equipment is effective to give NPC followers, see the article on UESP Wiki: http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Followers#Enchanted_Follower_Equipment

Thanks for reading!