Samuel - Master of Dark Arts (WIP)

[Selene310187]

I'm turning my first Skyrim character ever, Samuel, a Breton, into a follower, giving him custom equipment and a dark destruction spell to round up his role as master of dark arts.

Oldrim screenshots of Samuel


Some years ago, I retired him and started a new Oldrim playthrough with a Ningheim. But this playthrough didn't last long and I started a third one - with my Argonian Scalez. I managed to tranfer Scalez to the Special Edition at the end of 2021. About one year later, I began to write a Skyrim short story with the name "Samuel's Story". Scalez plays a major part in the story. I wanted that Samuel and Scalez can be seen together in one picture. That's why I came up with the plan to make a follower out of Samuel. Edit: Wait a minute, I totally forgot that I had another female character before Alice, a test character named Nephis, who I played only a short time, too.

Unlike my previous companion (and sparring) mod SESM, I will use the default follower system of Skyrim so it's possible to assign additional features from modded follower systems like Amazing Follower Tweaks. I already found a tutorial which explains how I can get his face onto a NPC and how to create a companion with the default follower system: https://levelskip.com/rpgs/Hot-to-Turn- ... a-Follower

I decided to work on Samuel's outfit first before I dedicate myself to the companion creation part.

Here are some WIP screenshots which I took in NifSkope:

Samuel's outfit


And yes, I will include the heart stone harness, too.


There will be a second variant of the outfit with only the bottom part of it and I plan to create an equippable scarf as well which I separate from Ildari Sarothril's robe. As you can see, I used the bottom part of her robe to build the outfit mashup. The upper part comes from the Master Robes. I made some color adjustments to each part so they fit better together.


As a side note, I found out what armor mod I used in the first two pictures in this thread. It was "Male Cleric Armor" and there's also a Special Edition version available. I will link the mod in the description of the final follower mod under mod recommendations.



I admit, that I broke the promise to myself to not have more than two mod projects in the pipeline (because I tend to spread myself too thin). But I really need the follower for the screenshots which illustrate the next part of my short story. So I make one exception, secretly knowing that I will probably make more exceptions in the future .

[smr1957]

Excellent!!!!! I have well over 200 follower mods in my game (probably closer to 300) which I use to populate my game world, and there is a serious dearth of male followers available - let alone good ones! (I estimate that the percentage of male follower mods is only around 3 - 5 % - the remainder being female followers - this is for all follower mods which are available anywhere based upon my actually having looked at every single mod there is on Nexus, Lover's Lab, and AFK mods for Skyrim/Skyrim Special Edition, not just based upon some "perceived impression.")

Am really looking forward to your work on this - as the fact is, he looks really good and sounds interesting.

[Selene310187]

I added some other pieces to the outfit:





(I only merged everything together for the preview)


The scarf is from Ildari Sarothril's robe, the hood from Nocturnal's outfit and the crown is a slightly modified Jagged Crown.


Next, I will test the equipment in the game.

[Selene310187]

Transferring Samuel's savegame to the Special Edition was easy. All I need to do was copying the Oldrim savegame to the savegame folder of the Special Edition and load his savegame. It did the same with Scalez' savegame at the end of 2021.


Let me introduce you Samuel, level 80, Breton:

Being in the Bee and the Barb together with Serana



The last time I played him in Oldrim was in March, 2014. Seeing and moving him again after so many years gave me feeling that I can't describe. I think it's a mix between joy and guilt. I rejoiced the good memories when I played him in Oldrim but felt guilt that I had retired him in favor of a female Ningheim. I wanted a second playthrough so the game felt fresh again. But I noticed that I prefer playing Skyrim with male characters sometime later. That's why I started a third playthrough with an Argonian, with Scalez. I learned to love this Argonian and play him to this day.

Samuel and Scalez already met in my short story. They will met in my game the first time soon.

[Selene310187]

I was able to create the Samuel follower and to get the outfit into the game:




Getting the weight painting of the skirt, the heart stone harness and the scarf right took hours. The skirt did clip a lot in sitting position. The original mesh comes from the Dragonborn DLC. I think the developers didn't have much time to test every piece of equipment in different kinds of positions like I did. There could still be some minor clipping in some poses from pose mods. Before my perfectionism goes overboard even more, I stop tweaking and get the remaining parts of the mod done.

I'm not sure yet, how I implement the various options of the outfit. I want to keep it as simple as possible. At the moment, I only did the full version which you see in the latest picture. I plan to create a variant without the jacket at least or rather recreate it. The upper rim of the sash belt of this variant was tighter than in the full version of the outfit. But I made several tweaks to the skirt of the full version afterwards which the variant without the jacket didn't have. The same applies to the separate heart stone harness and scarf equipment parts which need to be recreated, too.

Edit:

I thought I had finished tweaking the outfit. Then I noticed that the jacket clips through the sash on the back side when the upper body is turning.

Edit 2:

I fixed the clipping at the back of the satchel by copying the bone weights from the lower part of the jacket to the upper part of the satchel and I used Outfit Studio's mask tools to limit the area (I didn't want to copy all bone weights from the jacket).

[Selene310187]

Yesterday, I started to make Samuel's outfit modular. The scarf, the harness and the Heart Stone will become separate items which can be toggled in "Samuel's Quick Menu". The menu will be activated by default and opens as soon as you talk to Samuel (adjustable) or if you use "Samuel's Flute".

The layout of the menu is finished so far:

Page 1

• Talk
• Wait/Follow*
• Favor
• Summon**
• Inventory
• Outfit***
• [ Page 2 ]
• [ Close ]

* You will see either see the Wait or Follow button depending on Samuel's waiting state.
** Summons him to your location
*** Opens the "Samuel's Outfit" menu - the toggling of the separate outfit parts happens there

Page 2

• Quick Menu*
• Bow Removal**
• Custom Sandbox***
• [ Back ]
• [ Close ]

* enables/disables the menu which appears when you talk to the follower
** adds/removes the follower's hunting bow and arrows
*** When enabled, he will not use special furniture and idle markers in dismissed state. He will also stay at the location where you dismissed him.

Samuel's Outfit menu

• -> Full*
• Jacket**
• Scarf
• Harness
• Heart Stone
• Hood
• Crowned Hood
• -> Custom Outfit***
• [ Back ]
• [ Close ]

* all parts except Hood/Crowned Hood
** Determines if the base outfit has a jacket or not
*** Gives you the possibility to assign a custom outfit to Samuel. Clicking the button will open chest where you can put the armor/clothing items, which should be part of his custom outfit, into

The next steps are completing the remaining modular parts of the outfit (I only did the harness yesterday) and scripting Samuel's Quick Menu and its functions.

[Selene310187]

I finished scripting the first and second page of Samuel's Quick Menu. Furthermore, I added the Custom Sandbox option to the second page of this menu:

*** When enabled, he will not use special furniture and idle markers in dismissed state. He will also stay at the location where you dismissed him.

[Selene310187]

The toggling of the modular parts of the outfit is working:




Edit:

Thanks to my previous work on Better Untold Legends Rewards, the implementation of the custom outfit was easy as I could adopt most of the scripts that control the assignation of the custom outfit.

Put apparel items of your choice into the "Samuel's Custom Outfit" chest (which opens as soon as you choose the "Custom Outfit" option from the outfit settings submenu) and Samuel will equip the parts which are inside this chest when the chest is closed.




Edit 2:
I added combat behavior settings to the to-do list (see previous post). As with the edited Dremora Merchant from the upcoming Better Untold Legends Rewards mod, I'm thinking of giving Samuel different combat styles to choose from.

[Selene310187]

The two hood options (normal and crowned hood) are implemented including the corresponding outfit toggle part in the menu script. I finally regard Samuel's outfit as finished now after countless hours of further tweaking (the harness and the heart stone this time).

crowned hood


normal hood



So another item is ticked off the to-do list.

[Altbert]

Nice shots! Last one even on the island! Once the first two quests are completed there's an unlimited source of food and drinks!