"The following events will take place in the near future regarding the most awkward and nerdiest individual of the College...That can't be me, right?"



※ Link to SE version: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/90768


※Attention for players who downloaded ver.1.5: Some of the mod's files were unnecessarily installed twice in two separate folders. It won't directly affect gameplay, but since it will clutter your hard drive I recommend removing the following folder:
(Skyrim install directory)\Data\01 Common
(This problem has been addressed in ver.1.5.1)


<Description>

This is a fully voiced follower and dialogue expansion mod using base game and AI cloned voice files (and edited versions of base game files from other mods).

Gives you an insight into Brelyna Maryon's wild college life by adding new dialogue, interactions with the player and other characters!

Also adds a Stormcloak exclusive follower called Lilija Snow-Shod. You know, the long-lost daughter of the Snow-Shod family in Riften? Turns out she was alive!

With over 400 lines of additional dialogue, including several new scenes, you can find out:

- What happens when you take Brelyna to people like Master Neloth, Jarl Elisif, and Rolff Stone-Fist the Dunmer hater
- That Brelyna and J'zargo has a curious relationship
- How Brelyna came to be called High Elf and Decimator of Privacy
- That Brelyna's teacher, Phinis Gestor, is a lousy person who uses his skills for all the wrong purposes
- That Tolfdir is a dirty old man
- That Nirya hates Brelyna for what she did to Nirya and Faralda (re: Amorous Adventures)
- What Brelyna was really up to when she was casting the "Green" spell on the player
- The bizarre process of creating a certain Telvanni specialty
- That after becoming Arch-Mage, you get to teleport Brelyna to your side whenever you want, to her annoyance
- That you also get to teleport Lilija as well, by learning a spell her mother didn't use for some reason
- That you can bring Lilija back to her family and show she's alive
- That not all Stormcloaks are racist pigs
- But are pigs that dare mock Elisif in front of her eyes

Features detailed in-game guidebooks written by our very own Brelyna!

Nearly 100 lines of newly added idle comments, many of which are location/situation aware, which you can toggle on/off through a dialogue menu!

If you want to see what the mod is like, visit my Youtube Channel


<How to get started>

Brelyna's College Days

Most of her new dialogues appear after you finish her quest "Brelyna's Practice". After that you can ask her about the book she's writing, and she'll give you the guidebooks. You can refer to them to navigate through the contents of this mod.

Lilija the Battle-Maiden

She stays next to Ulfric's throne in Windhelm. Unless you finish joining the Stormcloaks by taking the oath, she will not speak to you. Afterwards, a dialogue option about recruiting her will be available.
If you join the Empire, and go down that route, you'll eventually have to kill her alongside the rest of Ulfric's court. (For this reason she's not set as essential nor protected so keep that in mind when recruiting her.)

According to her family she was originally a pure healer who never lifted a sword, but after her near-death experience apparently she became a hardened battle-cleric. She uses healing spells/potions a LOT, so can be a pretty tough foe.


<Difference between the Brelyna Change version vs No Change version (you can pick one during installation)>


1. Brelyna Appearance Change version: Changes Brelyna's face to look like the screenshots. Also changes her class into Telvanni Mystic which better matches her dialogue and spells, and gives her more magic perks. Slightly alters her base inventory by removing her hood and adding a few more books. (If you already met her in the game this won't apply so no need to worry if you already changed her stuff.) Sets her level peak to 81 (but don't worry, if you already have her level higher than that it won't decrease).

2. No Brelyna Appearance Change version: Does not change Brelyna's appearance and stats. Use this one if you want to keep your original look of Brelyna.

※ The screenshots were taken without any cosmetic mods except Face Light.

※ The Faces are based on Moolgogi's Follower Bell and Moolgogi's Valerica Replacer, both by proarmine

<Requirements>

Dawnguard DLC
Dragonborn DLC


<Strongly Recommended Mods (based on LE version)>

Female Facial Animation by Nao4288 - Without this mod the character's eyebrows will look weird during conversation.

Better Dialogue Controls by ecirbaf - Without this mod the dialogue window will become quite buggy when too many dialogue options are present.

Face Light by tktk1 - The only mod I used in the screenshots. Makes a huge difference to how faces look in-game.

Amorous Adventures by FoxFingers - Some of the lines are direct references to Brelyna's quest from this mod. So if you play both it adds to immersion.


<Compatibility>

This mod was designed to be compatible with other mods. With the exception of the Brelyna appearance change version which would obviously conflict with other Brelyna altering mods, it should work with practically anything as it tweaks nothing in the base game other than placing Lilija at the Palace of the Kings. (So it MIGHT clash with mods that alters the Palace layout heavily.) Mods that add dialogue to Brelyna, or tweak her original dialogue, would work fine along with this mod.

I tested it along with other dialogue mods such as Follower Commentary Overhaul, Relationship Dialogue Overhaul, Skyrim Reputation, Guard Dialogue Overhaul, More to Say, Amorous Adventures and it all works fine. Loading order shouldn’t be a problem unless you’re using the Brelyna appearance change version, in which case you’ll have to load it below other Brelyna altering mods.


<Install/Uninstall>

1. How safe is it to use?

Although this mod does use some scripts, none of them are of the background running or altering globals type so it’s safe to install/uninstall at any time. Also, since none of the quests are flagged ‘start game enabled’, you can install this mod during an existing playthrough without any problems.

The Brelyna appearance change version overwrites the following facegen files (2 in total):
Data\meshes\actors\character\FaceGenData\Facegeom\skyrim.esm\0001C196.nif
Data\textures\actors\character\FaceGenData\FaceTint\skyrim.esm\0001C196.dds
so if you are going to install manually, you may want to make a backup of these in case you want to uninstall later. (most mod managers handle this process automatically.)

2. Installation (Manual)

Unless you’re using the the Brelyna appearance change version, just overwrite anything if there’s something to overwrite. The only thing this mod overwrites (other than the aforementioned facegen files) are resources from my other mods, and since they’re all the same files, it’s safe to overwrite them. 
If you’re using the the Brelyna appearance change version, first make a backup of the aforementioned facegen files, then overwrite everything.

3. Uninstall (Manual)

 - Before uninstallation, if Lilija is following you, fire her.
 - If you’re using my other mods, I recommend you the keep the “BrelynaCD” folders in the “Meshes” and “Textures” folders, respectively. This is because my other mods are still going to use the same files in these folders. If you perform a total uninstall by removing everything from this mod, then you may have to re-install my other mods.
 - If you’re using the Brelyna appearance change version, you’ll have to restore the aforementioned facegen files backup if you uninstall manually.  

※ You won’t have to worry about all these things (except the firing Lilija part) if you use a mod manager.


<Troubleshooting>

1. The character's eyebrow looks weird when making certain expressions!

-> Install Female Facial Animation by Nao4288

2. I can't scroll down to the bottom of the dialogue list! The dialogue window is too cluttered and buggy!

-> Install Better Dialogue Controls by ecirbaf


<Mod Backstory>

This mod is actually two of my personal mods merged into one: a Brelyna dialogue mod and a Stormcloak follower mod. I initially merged them to make more room for other mods, but then it grew more and more in that state that it eventually became unseparable. 

[About the Stormcloak exclusive follower]

This mod sets out to fix one of the biggest things I didn’t like about the base game: the underdevelopment of non-canon factions (namely, Stormcloaks and Volkihar Vampires).

It's pretty obvious the game developers saw the Empire and Dawnguard victory as canon. That's OK, but the blatant ill-treatment of the non-canon factions is pretty ridiculous. Take the Dawnguard for example. They get an entirely new weapon category, bunch of new followers, and even armored trolls. And what do the vampires get? Nothing, except for a few generic rings. The Vampire Lord ability should have been the crown prize for the Vampire side, but even that gets handed to the Dawnguard evenly. There's basically no reason to join the vampires other than pure curiosity.

Same goes for the Stormcloaks. Almost all of the better and interesting Jarls belong to the Empire's side. There is no contest in the liveliness between Elisif and Ulfric's court, even when Ulfric is supposedly the more seasoned ruler and his court doubles as a war room. The Stormcloaks are painted as a bunch of ignorant and racist pigs and gets a bulk of the most repulsive characters in the game, when in real history many rebellions against foreign Empires happened for good reason and native collaborators were often in fact selfish opportunists. 

My goal is to slighty fix this lopsidedness and give players a small reason, no matter how humble it may be, to join the "other" side. Hence the faction specific content: you can only play the contents of the mod if you join the Stormcloaks (for Lilija Snow-Shod) or Vampires (for Lucrezia Volkihar - my other mod in this series). If time allows I'd even like to do ones for the Thalmor, Forsworn, and Orcs as well, but at the moment I'm focusing on these two.

[About Brelyna's dialogue]

Another thing I disliked about the base game was its wooden cardboard characters. As I play mages most of the time and often tend to be drawn to 'nice' and 'brainy' characters, Brelyna naturally became one of my favorites. Her background is pretty unique: a Telvanni in a mage school, a Dunmer nobility in a land where they are treated like beggars, a friendly mage who is not snobbish nor narcissistic, talented and eager yet clumsy and funny. A whole bunch of story material right there, and none fleshed out. Not to mention, her incredibly sweet voice! (lol) I searched to see if there were mods that expanded her story or dialogue and came across Amorous Adventures and More To Say. I liked the idea and wanted more, hence the creation of this mod.

[Why is the mod quality so rough?]

Although I’ve been personally tweaking/creating mods for years, the tweaks were highly interdependent on each other so were not fit for others to play. So I’m pretty much a beginner when it comes to making mods refined enough for pubic release. This mod was initially a personal project which grew into a learning experience in creating dialogues, quests, scenes, and standalone followers. I tried to keep things as simple as possible though, and stuck to things I clearly know, to avoid any bugs. But there still may remain some unexpected problems (although nothing game-breaking I hope) so keep that in mind.

This is largely a dialogue mod, but as English isn’t my native language the lines may look pretty crude. Also, since I don’t know how to edit voice files yet, I was stuck with the original voice files which gave me extremely limited dialogue options. As a result, you’ll probably have to suspend your disbelief or use some imagination to make sense of some of the lines, sorry for that! :-)

[Why do the dialogues persist? Can't you make them appear only once?]

This was a deliberate choice. I want my characters to carry their history with them, as I think it's what makes them interesting and unique. 

Take Serana for example. She probably has the most lines in the game, but once you finish the Dawnguard questline she becomes a mere shell of herself. She loses all her spark and becomes an extremely generic NPC with nothing interesting to offer. This is because all of her lines disappear after their relevant quests. IMO keeping the key lines are crucial to making the characters feel lively; it shows who they are and what they have been through.

Also, the nature of my dialogues is that they're designed to show the character's personality. Each character featured in this mod has a certain theme to them. For example, Brelyna is smart, good-natured but somewhat naive due to her sheltered upbringing. J'zargo is the ambitious social climber who is always trying to scheme his way up. Lucrezia (from my other mod) is cultured and intelligent but extremely tired of the perennial boredom which inevitably comes with longevity. Lilija is undergoing internal conflict due to the contradiction between ideal and reality of the Stormcloak rebellion. The dialogue, books and events in this mod are all set to work in unison to give atmospheric hints of the characters' lives and motives. Making the dialogue go away after showing up once will remove this atmosphere IMO.


<Permissions>

As a beginner modder, I know my mod is very rough around the edges. So I’d be very happy if others offer to improve it or tweak it however way you see fit, or convert it for SE edition. You don’t need my permission for it, but giving credits to me and some other authors I credited below (especially Foxfingers, abramcf, and proarmine) would be polite.

If you improve it and tell me about it, I may be able to create a link to it on this page.

Also, if you want to use the voice or face resources from this mod you should credit the relevant authors I listed below as I’m not the original creator of them. 

As I stated above, this all started as a personal project and I merely decided to release it as I thought others might enjoy it too. So as long as you have fun, that’s good enough for me. Use it whatever way you’d like. :-)


<Credits>

As a beginner in modding, I don’t know how to edit voice files yet, nor do I know how to sculpt faces in detail. So I had to rely on the excellent work of others. These are:
 
- Amorous Adventures by FoxFingers: One of the two main inspirations for this mod. Many voice files were borrowed from this amazing work, and especially Nirya's line about Brelyna is a direct recreation of one of it's most hilarious scenes that I thought was too good to be played only once.
- More to Say by abramcf: Another awesome work which was one of the two main inspirations for this mod. It all started when I tried to figure how to get this mod work without starting a new game; the mod was so good it was worth the struggle. Some of the voice files I used are taken from this mod. 
- Moolgogi's Follower Bell by proarmine: for the stunning face which I used as the basis for Brelyna's appearance.
- Moolgogi's Valerica Replacer by proarmine: for the stunning face which I used as the basis for Lilija's appearance.
- Relationship Dialogue Overhaul by cloudedtruth: voice files
- Follower Commentary Overhaul by terzaerian: voice files
- Skyrim Reputation by dcyren: voice files
- Lazy Voice Finder by BowmoreLover: Wouldn't have been possible to create this mod without this extraordinary tool.
- xEdit by ElminsterAU and the xEdit team: Invaluable tool for creating/checking mods.
- KS Hairdos by Kalilies: hair
- ApachiiSkyHair by apachii: hair
- Mikan Eyes by nerune2525: eyes
- Fair Skin Complexion by HHaleyy: skin texture
- SG Female Eyebrows by hellosanta: eyebrows