Allies of the Fifth Blight - Dragon Age: Origins Standalone Followers for Skyrim SE, merged

[karurawasabi]

That is officially the longest title I've ever made for a dreamwidth post.



If you ever peruse the #ann made a mod tag on this blog and scroll down a bit, or visit my Nexus profile, you'll know that I once published standalone followers for Dragon Age: Origins followers (Alistair, Zevran, Leliana, Morrigan) for Skyrim SE. At that time, I was still figuring out how to mod things (heck, right now I'm still figuring out how to mod things) and while they're useable, they're certainly not my best work. Mostly with how they're all in different ESPs and BSAs with a bunch of duplicate files... and my not-so-great sculpt of Morrigan.

So I redid things from scratch (well not really, I still have their presets and textures and stuff). All four companions in one ESP and with their own voices (using KCFV). Consider this a belated celebration of Veilguard's release... or Skyrim's 13th birthday, whatever. I actually had the idea when my Dragon Age: Origins installation suddenly refused to load for some feckin reason (says it couldn't detect my graphics card or something, which was weird) and then I was like, well if I can't play DAO anymore, might as well bring these four idiots to my Skyrim installation, amirite.

(don't worry about the double Read more links, Dreamwidth formatting confuses me and I'm an idiot)


 LIST OF CHANGES:

Appearances:

• IMPORTANT--in the header image, Morrigan is wearing ShinglesCat's hair--IT'S NOT INCLUDED by default due to permission woes (and I'm too lazy to change the header). By default, she wears Ks Hairdos' "Picky" hair. I might include an optional file with SC's hair if someone asks nicely, but you gotta have their mod installed first or it'll be missing textures. And if SC sees this page and subjects to the usage, I will take it down immediately. (I'll figure out how to get a better hair with open permission for her eventually--maybe someone can help me port stuff from Inquisition?)
• Still on Morrigan, she underwent the most changes. More wrinkles that match her Inquisition look better (I need Leliana's skin care routine ASAP, she's the most baby-faced NPC in the whole game with nary a wrinkle on her face after 10 whole years, it's a miracle). The others are more or less the same.
• (Some) degree of uniqueness in body textures (CBBE and HIMBO/Better Males-adjacent only, sorry), although some parts are shared between characters to save space. Morrigan has nail polish, Leliana has freckles, Alistair has body hair and Zevran doesn't, etc (no, I don't know how to make a good tattoo design for Zevran, sadly).
• Body meshes are not included, they use your default. As I said, the girls are only compatible with CBBE (sorry), and the dudes with HIMBO or any Better Males-adjacent body replacer. If you're using anything other than those and don't want to see skin seams, just don't give them anything skimpy to wear.
• Leliana has that hair by default now. It's not a 1:1 match with her Inquisition look, just pretend she grew it out a bit.

Combat:

• Friendly fireproof spells for Morrigan, unless you gave her more spells to use. Just don't mess with her spell load out (with SPID, console commands, whatever) and everything should be good. If friendly fire still happens, try disabling her then enabling her again and it should reset the hostility.
• Alistair's Holy Smite ability is heavily buffed because I'm insane (-25 Magicka damage per hit, extra stagger against enemies in the middle of spellcasting)
• Leliana's Song of Valor cloak is still there, though I haven't checked extensively. 50% Magicka and Stamina regeneration for allies on a 1000(ft?) radius.
• Zevran's stealth ability is also still there, but Skyrim is Skyrim and it doesn't always works (it's been that way in the original mod too). His attacks damages the target's magic resistance by 5% and armor rating by 5 points per hit, and it's non-recoverable.
• Everything's friendy-fireproofed to the best of my ability.
• Even stricter combat restrictions: Morrigan will only cast spells and use staves. Alistair will do most anything (even magic, if you give him a very low-cost spell for some reason), but will not use staves. Zevran will use strictly melee and ranged weapons (not even unarmed). Leliana's the same thing, except she can use a little bit of magic (again, if you give her a very low-cost spell).

Locations (actually no change):

• Alistair: Riverwood. He wanders around and sometimes works at the mill.
• Leliana: Solitude. Can often be found at the Temple of the Divines, but sometimes browses the marketplace, visits the inn, or walks along the Solitude ramparts (or walls, whatever they're called)
• Morrigan: Morthal. Sometimes found at the inn, or travels the various spots at the swamp.
• Zevran: Falkreath. He sandboxes around town and sometimes takes a break at the inn.

(I'll add more screenshots when I have time. For now, refer to their original mod pages on Nexus please)




REQUIREMENTS:
Karura's Custom Follower Voices
(so I figured if you even bothered to check my Dreamwidth, you probably would have gleaned at that framework at some point. And honestly, the followers don't have the same charm with vanilla voices. I'll put an alternate patch with vanilla voices if you want to marry them, and/or if you don't care about KCFV or can't make it work).
(and yes, I could make it a Skypatcher patch to make it the best of both worlds situation. But for this mod I don't feel like adding yet another requirement to the mix--especially if you want to backport it to LE or something.)

Recommended mods and stuff (not needed, just mods I use to make them have more pizzazz):

• Sidekick is Ninja (the new abilities fit Zevran like a glove)
• Sidekick is Guard (if you want Alistair to actually be your defender and not off chasing bandit #5342657)
• NPC Spell Variance (if you want Morrigan to use all of her unique spells, but especially Vulnerability Hex, which reduces target's magic resistance by 25%)
• Swiftly Order Squad
• click on the NPC you want, open console, and type setrelationshiprank player 4, enter, to make them use lover-related greetings to you (with KCFV, obviously).

Download (Mediafire)
Alternate ESP for vanilla voice types

Credits:

- m4mk203 and the entire CotR team for Charmers of the Reach
- DamiLovesSunflowers for High Poly CotR and CotR Overhaul
- Enaya13 and Bioware for the face textures
- Khisartin for ALT1 for Men, Women, Eyes mod (can't remember which eye mod I used the textures from but probably 3)
- Kalilies and Stealthic for KS Hairdos
- HelloSanta and Skysims for SGHair (Leliana's hair)
- Apachii for ApachiiSkyHairMale
- Nostromo79 for Pierced Ears, xxTainxx for the SE port and MorningsDawn for the CotR adaptation


Mods seen in the screenshots:
Dwemer Armor SE
Kozakowy's Falka Armor
Fuse00's Raven Armor
Dragon Age Sorceress Robes from a Patreon post that I can't find anymore atm :-(
ShinglesCat's Witch of the WIlds (for Morrigan's necklace)


(excuse the terrible layout, I just finished babysitting two anklebiters and am running out of oxygen... and energy....... and brain cells)