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About this mod
This mod rearranges and reflags some conversations to add Serpent's Embrace options where I felt they were relevant or reworking a few I disliked. I cannot promise the changes will all be to everyone's tastes as it was done for my personal enjoyment first, but I still put it out there in case it finds enjoyers.
- Requirements
- Permissions and credits
This was done on a whim while working on another mod which might end up integrating changes in this. That said, this is a WIP as I intend to go further and am also in the process of touching up a small sidequest in Dazra, but the parts of it which are enabled work.
It adds or touches up Serpent's Embrace lines to several parts of Divided Loyalties, rearranges flags for Andreja's dialogues starting with the 4th companion conversation all the way to her romance and commitment quest, it also does a few Serpent's Embrace-friendly touch ups in some SS dialogues. It also fixes what I consider an egregious oversight in High Price to Pay.
This is a minor project done quickly on a lark so it goes without saying that while I tried to keep things somewhat elegant and I really did test the thing step by step as much as I could, the bulk of the changes are not exactly the tidiest. This also means I generally avoided messing with spoken lines because that is somewhat time consuming.
I am also doing a quick WIP to include a functional groat dagger - I will probably put a standalone version of it when I can be bothered to, along with a small Serpent's Embrace side quest.
I am also already thinking of adding another thing down the line as I clean up some of my plans for additional Va'ruun things.
It adds or touches up Serpent's Embrace lines to several parts of Divided Loyalties, rearranges flags for Andreja's dialogues starting with the 4th companion conversation all the way to her romance and commitment quest, it also does a few Serpent's Embrace-friendly touch ups in some SS dialogues. It also fixes what I consider an egregious oversight in High Price to Pay.
Spoiler:
For specific details
- In the event of Andreja's death in High Price to Pay, the Serpent's Embrace line at the funeral is now unique to her, it might seem superfluous due to the target audience but it still annoys me to no end that she gets the same as the faithless companions (I just realized I did not test whether the funeral flags work in the event of two deaths so this might require a quick fix).
- Divided Loyalties has minor changes with the dialogues - a few flags have been added or moved around for Serpent's Embrace, some vanilla dialogues have a Serpent variant (I did not really feel like messing with voice files on what is basically a quick idea for fun as that it time consuming) and the post Dazra serpent's embrace line in the final part has been changed because I thought it was incredibly stupid and significantly worse than the original and goes against the spirit of what the trait describes (i.e. someone who was raised as a follower of the Serpent, someone who is already a lifelong member of the faith) - and if we take every line at face value you are not supposed to already know about a thing you clearly have known about your whole life in the first Dazra quest - not that this is the first instance of Serpent's Embrace having weirdly contradictory dialogue outcomes, actually sifting through the trait's dialogues feels like reading a Cadavre Exquis when thinking about it too hard.
- The two companion dialogues before her personal quest have slight tweaks for Serpent's Embrace, the fourth changes Andreja's lines in a way which I think fits more how most people wanted things to go and also has the extra benefit of making things flow better, the fifth adds a Serpent's Embrace line; in both cases I have flagged out a few responses that are overtly insulting of your own faith due to them not making sense in the circumstances.
- Her romance is flagged in such a way that someone with Serpent's Embrace will always have the Va'ruun version of the romance even without having been to Dazra. A few lines have been swapped for Serpent-specific responses, a small handful have been dropped altogether for mostly the same reason as other dialogue options I dropped (mostly lines that are insulting to your shared religion). In a few cases I have even changed the way Andreja's lines go for Serpent's Embrace specifically. Yes this includes the commitment quest, although the serpent lines I added apply both pre and post Dazra anyway.
- The Shattered Space part of the mod is a bit of a work in progress, however some bits that have been changed already include dropping the "All must serve" line as some sort of revelation that you spoke with Anasko if you have Serpent's Embrace - my reasoning here is that as someone who was raised in that faith (the actual text of the trait), this line would be too familiar to feel particularly significant.
- While I can only do so much with the Va'ruun'kai intro quest, there are a few tweaks in some missions, both main and side. I think the biggest or at least most blatant changes are with the Ve'thaal questline (some might say it was done as much out of spite as it was done out of love).
- I have a love/hate affair with the lore dump dialogues and a few of them got axed amidst the cuts (mostly things that make literally 0 sense for SE) - I do wish Beth would finally borrow the lore library thing from ESO (which often only includes said lore dump questions as a mean joke) for its mainline games, because it is so much more elegant to cover basic concepts of the universe that you should know in character, but I digress.
"But Sibyl it almost looks like you reworked Serpent's Embrace lines so the Starfarer feels more properly Va'ruun"
Yes, you are very smart. In all honesty, there is a decent layer of spite to some of these edits. As much as I really liked SS, if I had access to even half the resources I needed to make a Serpent's Embrace B-side as an explicit return to the place of your roots paralleling the promo lore videos, I 100% would, because I think there is a level of banking on exoticism at all costs that strains the spirit of the Embrace trait as presented to the player in chargen (again it is explicitly not about being a convert) and gives the impression the writers are not confident enough in Va'ruun'kai's worldbuilding to let it stand without that.
Besides some references in the CK absolutely do reference SE as "raised Va'ruun" - I did not merely imagine that certain quests lean far harder into that interpretation of Embrace which is also what a lot of players hoped it would be on a consistent basis.
Show
For specific details
- In the event of Andreja's death in High Price to Pay, the Serpent's Embrace line at the funeral is now unique to her, it might seem superfluous due to the target audience but it still annoys me to no end that she gets the same as the faithless companions (I just realized I did not test whether the funeral flags work in the event of two deaths so this might require a quick fix).
- Divided Loyalties has minor changes with the dialogues - a few flags have been added or moved around for Serpent's Embrace, some vanilla dialogues have a Serpent variant (I did not really feel like messing with voice files on what is basically a quick idea for fun as that it time consuming) and the post Dazra serpent's embrace line in the final part has been changed because I thought it was incredibly stupid and significantly worse than the original and goes against the spirit of what the trait describes (i.e. someone who was raised as a follower of the Serpent, someone who is already a lifelong member of the faith) - and if we take every line at face value you are not supposed to already know about a thing you clearly have known about your whole life in the first Dazra quest - not that this is the first instance of Serpent's Embrace having weirdly contradictory dialogue outcomes, actually sifting through the trait's dialogues feels like reading a Cadavre Exquis when thinking about it too hard.
- The two companion dialogues before her personal quest have slight tweaks for Serpent's Embrace, the fourth changes Andreja's lines in a way which I think fits more how most people wanted things to go and also has the extra benefit of making things flow better, the fifth adds a Serpent's Embrace line; in both cases I have flagged out a few responses that are overtly insulting of your own faith due to them not making sense in the circumstances.
- Her romance is flagged in such a way that someone with Serpent's Embrace will always have the Va'ruun version of the romance even without having been to Dazra. A few lines have been swapped for Serpent-specific responses, a small handful have been dropped altogether for mostly the same reason as other dialogue options I dropped (mostly lines that are insulting to your shared religion). In a few cases I have even changed the way Andreja's lines go for Serpent's Embrace specifically. Yes this includes the commitment quest, although the serpent lines I added apply both pre and post Dazra anyway.
- The Shattered Space part of the mod is a bit of a work in progress, however some bits that have been changed already include dropping the "All must serve" line as some sort of revelation that you spoke with Anasko if you have Serpent's Embrace - my reasoning here is that as someone who was raised in that faith (the actual text of the trait), this line would be too familiar to feel particularly significant.
- While I can only do so much with the Va'ruun'kai intro quest, there are a few tweaks in some missions, both main and side. I think the biggest or at least most blatant changes are with the Ve'thaal questline (some might say it was done as much out of spite as it was done out of love).
- I have a love/hate affair with the lore dump dialogues and a few of them got axed amidst the cuts (mostly things that make literally 0 sense for SE) - I do wish Beth would finally borrow the lore library thing from ESO (which often only includes said lore dump questions as a mean joke) for its mainline games, because it is so much more elegant to cover basic concepts of the universe that you should know in character, but I digress.
"But Sibyl it almost looks like you reworked Serpent's Embrace lines so the Starfarer feels more properly Va'ruun"
Yes, you are very smart. In all honesty, there is a decent layer of spite to some of these edits. As much as I really liked SS, if I had access to even half the resources I needed to make a Serpent's Embrace B-side as an explicit return to the place of your roots paralleling the promo lore videos, I 100% would, because I think there is a level of banking on exoticism at all costs that strains the spirit of the Embrace trait as presented to the player in chargen (again it is explicitly not about being a convert) and gives the impression the writers are not confident enough in Va'ruun'kai's worldbuilding to let it stand without that.
Besides some references in the CK absolutely do reference SE as "raised Va'ruun" - I did not merely imagine that certain quests lean far harder into that interpretation of Embrace which is also what a lot of players hoped it would be on a consistent basis.
This is a minor project done quickly on a lark so it goes without saying that while I tried to keep things somewhat elegant and I really did test the thing step by step as much as I could, the bulk of the changes are not exactly the tidiest. This also means I generally avoided messing with spoken lines because that is somewhat time consuming.
I am also doing a quick WIP to include a functional groat dagger - I will probably put a standalone version of it when I can be bothered to, along with a small Serpent's Embrace side quest.
Spoiler:
Show
Once I have finalized Deep Within The Heart enough to feel confident about enabing it, details will be here (I had to rebuild it from scratch as the session I spent putting it together crashed without a single save over several hours). The NPC reactions are made to correspond roughly to prior attitudes of the companions only more extreme - Sarah is indifferent if dismissive as she usually is when dealing with the Va'ruun dialogue lines, Barrett and Sam hate it, Andreja loves it.
I am also already thinking of adding another thing down the line as I clean up some of my plans for additional Va'ruun things.
Spoiler:
Show
Namely, I also have ideas for Va'ruun NPCs I want to tweak as potential crew (Lucjan Volkar, Maaliyah Hajtal, Orahim, maybe even Mir'za - I would probably remove her ability to remove the Embrace trait once recruited, however) but that is a very basic wip at best at the moment, the testing bits for it are not even in the uploaded esm.