"As there is nothing more productive than defeating one's boredom, the vice of all vices, it is a noble responsibility to play hard and have fun. Decadence is therefore the greatest benevolence."

※ Link to SE version: www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/90926


<Description>

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

Adds a Volkihar Vampire exclusive follower named Lucrezia Volkihar, a half-sister of Serana she didn't even knew she had! Harkon is a sleazy and ambitious man, so you get the idea.

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

Features:

- Nearly 200 lines of unique dialogue!
- Lucrezia actively interacts with other court members when she's idle at the castle! Such as: teasing Orthjolf, discussing magic with Vingalmo, and consulting Serana of her worries!
- Comes with a teleport spell to call her to your aid!
- Conjure fresh cattle to feed on whenever you feel thirsty!
- You can turn the Dawnguard members into summonable thralls after you destroy their base! You can even drink their blood!
- She and Faralda of Winterhold College can give you lectures which boosts your magicka!
- You can offer her to bite your neck, which boosts her stamina and health!
- She's aware whether you're a Vampire or not!
- You can introduce Brelyna to her if you bring Brelyna along with you!
- A detailed in-game guidebook written by non other than the Princess herself!
- REMEMBER, YOU MISS ALL THIS FUN IF YOU JOIN THOSE IMBECILE VAMPIRE HUNTERS!


New Features in Ver. 1.4:

- Dawnguard players can now summon Harkon and Lucrezia as Thralls after they are defeated, with Serana's help.
- Added numerous idle dialogues, many of which are location/situation aware, which you can toggle on/off.
- Her Power Spell now has a unique visual effect.
- Fixed several voice files that were out of place.


How to get started:

 - Talk to any of the court mages in each hold, or Brelyna, about a book. This will start a mini quest which leads to the guidebook. After receiving the book, look through its contents to see what you can get with the mod. (This quest won't start if you already destroyed the Volkihar vampires.) You can also obtain the book by directly speaking to Lucrezia, unless the quest has already started.

- Although it's possible to acquire the guidebook even after you joined the Dawnguard, you can only get Lucrezia and her related content if you join the Volkihars. Lucrezia resides at the castle hall, and will not talk to you unless you accept Harkon's gift. If you joined the Dawnguard, you'll have to eventually kill her along with the rest of her clan. (For this reason she's not set as essential nor protected so keep that in mind when recruiting her.)

- Once you join the Vampires, talk to her about offering your blood. This makes her available as a companion.

- Lucrezia is a powerful destruction mage who has been honing her magical skills for centuries.  While cultured and intelligent, she is extremely tired of the perennial boredom which inevitably comes with longevity. She possesses a strong sexual drive which is related to the vampirical instincts of sucking blood. She levels along indefinitely with the player and can conjure Wrathmen and Mistmen to her aid.

※ The screenshots were taken without any cosmetic mods except Face Light.
     Face is based on Moolgogi's Follower Ahri by proarmine


<Requirements>
 
Dawnguard DLC
Dragonborn DLC (as of ver. 1.3)


<Strongly Recommended Mods>

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.

<Compatibility>

This mod was designed to be compatible with other mods. It should work with practically anything as it tweaks nothing in the base game other than placing Lucrezia at the Volkihar Castle. (So it MIGHT conflict with mods that heavily alter the castle layout.) Any dialogue related mods will 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, Serana Dialogue Add-on and it all works fine. It shouldn't matter much where you put this in the Load order.


<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 OK to install/uninstall at any time (except when you're currently under one of Lucrezia or Faralda's buff effects - see the uninstall section).
Also, since none of the quests are flagged ‘start game enabled’, you can install this mod during an existing playthrough without any problems.

2. Installation (Manual)

Just overwrite anything if there’s something to overwrite. The only thing this mod overwrites are resources from my other mods, and since they’re all the same files, it’s safe to overwrite them. 

3. Uninstall (Manual)
 
- (Important!) Before uninstallation, check your active magic effects list. If you see "Volkihar Wisdom" or "Spellcasting for Dummies" or "Blood Loss" or any of the Summon spells currently running, wait for them to wear off. (this can take a while though since the buff time is quite long! Especially "Spellcasting for Dummies" have up to 2 real-time hours to wear off.) If you uninstall while these are in effect, you might be permanently stuck with them.
Also, if Lucrezia is following you, fire her.

 - If you’re using my other mods, I recommend you to 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.  


<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 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 - my other mod in this series) or Vampires (for Lucrezia Volkihar). 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.

[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, Lucrezia is cultured and intelligent but extremely tired of the perennial boredom which inevitably comes with longevity. 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 Ahri by proarmine: for the stunning face which I used as the basis for Brelyna'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