On Skyrim’s Parasite NPCs
You may not know it, but Skyrim has a little thing I’ve decided to call “Parasite NPCs”. What does this entail? Well, in the general context of games I’d call a “parasitic NPC” an NPC that has fully replaced another NPC’s previous role in a quest or faction, making the former basically obsolete.
Mark in Telltale’s The Walking Dead Season 1 Episode 2 took over David Parker’s role as the plot twist dinner victim. And as such, David is no more than a random one-off character you meet briefly, and soon after he dies. Due to the nature of the following seasons’ developments, you’re bound to encounter more examples even when just looking at the Telltale Walking Dead series. (Mike from Season 2 comes to mind.)
In Fallout 4, basically every unique NPC besides Cait and Tommy in the Combat Zone got overwritten by generic raiders. Even in Skyrim, Nirya’s original role as the College’s gate guard got taken over by Faralda. But those examples don’t really go far enough. Sure, you’ve severely crippled one character in favor of another, but it’s just that. These examples feature “parasitic” NPCs, not full-on “parasite” NPCs. No, because Skyrim has this really odd little quirk with its parasites, let me explain.
A parasite NPC in Skyrim, as I’ve discovered, starts their life out as nothing. They only come to life when Bethesda decides that they want to change the role of a specific character which they had already recorded dialogue for. But, as this dialogue doesn’t fit the character anymore, they decide to just repurpose the lines, mostly wholesale, and create a different speaker for said lines. That’s when the parasite effectively gets born. They exist only to repurpose either dialogue or a specific role, and nothing else. If not for the original NPC getting altered, the parasite would’ve never existed.
You’re likely not familiar with the NPCs Gloth, Nimriel, Wilmuth and Gwendolyn, right? They’re all generic farmhands working at the various farms outside of Whiterun. Only Nimriel’s existence ever gets acknowledged, but none of them ever get any unique dialogue, and they exist for just one singular purpose: to make the farms look less empty than they are in reality. These aren’t actually parasite NPCs, but they don’t fit in with how farms are designed in Skyrim normally, so it’s possible that these guys are very early concepts that survived into the final game. All other farmhands found in the final game have at the very least a bit of unique dialogue, which makes these four stick out even more. And hey, when else would I ever get to mention them otherwise?
There’s also Idesa Sadri, who fully replaced the NPC Sings-of-Dreams, but due to not repurposing any of the latter’s dialogue, I wouldn’t fully call her a “parasite”. Oh, but you can call her a badly-made NPC though, I won’t mind at all. And besides, we’ll be returning to Windhelm’s character roster soon enough. I also feel like I gotta acknowledge that not each and every one of these cases are as strong as the other, but by looking at the game’s files for years upon years, I’ve kinda gotten good at spotting these, so make of my results what you wish.
Dryston
The first parasite is actually one I’ve been breaking my mind over for years, but only recently found a logical explanation to. And that’s Dryston. You know who that is? Dryston is the Reachman sent by Nepos the Nose to intimidate you during the Forsworn Conspiracy quest. And that’s all he ever does, in fact, he only gets enabled during the quest, and once it’s over, he returns to live in the Warrens. But he doesn’t actually have a room there, he instead reuses Weylin’s room. And of course, no one ever mentions Dryston’s existence, nor does he ever speak to anyone else in-game. So, he’s an afterthought. That much has been clear for ages. But with my recent findings on how different the original Markarth storyline was, I got to thinking. Whose dialogue did Dryston originate from? The few lines that he has always struck me as odd. They’re really short and almost feel unfinished.
However, due to his voicetype being MaleBrute, I have always thought thought that he was an offshoot of Yngvar the Singer, y’know, the Silver-Blood enforcer. But there’s a couple of problems with that theory, one is that Yngvar is a pretty important character, especially with him being the backup housecarl. And secondly is that there’s a pretty important split in the quest in who works for Nepos and who works for Thonar, implying that Yngvar likely wouldn’t go around smashing heads for Nepos. But then it hit me. There actually is a candidate that’s way more likely than Yngvar, and that’s Hathrasil. Hathrasil is another Reachman with the MaleBrute voicetype who also lives in the Warrens. Most noticeably though is the fact that Hathrasil speaks with these very short sentences, it’s a quirk of him that isn’t really replicated by anyone else in-game. Except, of course, Dryston in the few lines he has. Also, the Markarth Mysteries video showed that Hathrasil originally played at least some kind of role in the overall conspiracy. Maybe the developers repurposed him for this generic fight scene, only to decide at a later date that they rather have someone else entirely for the role.
Some more interesting tidbits about this theory:
- Hathrasil doesn’t have a unique face, while Dryston does. It’s quite possible that Dryston received Hathrasil’s face, either by accident or on purpose, similar to what we saw with Malborn and his copy.
- Dryston also has a note that can only be found upon his death. This note is addressed to a generic “friend”, and mentions drinking a pint at the local inn. In the final game, Hathrasil has a specific friend, namely Omluag, with whom he heads to the inn on a daily basis. It’s quite possible that the note originally had the generic “friend” as “Omluag”, and that the writer was originally Hathrasil. Besides this, you wouldn’t need to change a thing. Also notable is the fact that this note is the only thing besides Dryston’s actual ref to mention him by name in the files, which is a big red flag.
- If you search for Dryston in the Creation Kit by using his Form ID, you can see which NPCs were created alongside him. These being Donnel, Garvey, Morven, and Tynan. All of these NPCs are also related to the Forsworn Conspiracy. And, due to their form ID, we know that they were all created at a later date, likely when the Forsworn Conspiracy quest was being tweaked. The only one of these NPCs to play any kind of major role is Garvey, who you get referred to in order to get access to Weylin’s room. The others though… both Tynan and Morven are basically pointless NPCs that were in all likelihood just added to make the fight scene in Nepos’ house either more difficult, or more impressive, or both. Donnel is the same thing, although he at least gets three unique lines of dialogue. He’s otherwise just a generic cleaner at the treasury House. Besides Garvey, though, they’re all just filler NPCs that don’t really add anything. It’s also important to note that Ildene and Uaile aren’t present here, as they were created alongside the bulk of other Markarth NPCs due to them having been intended to play major roles from the very start.
Jarl Korir
Yes, Jarl Korir of Winterhold is a parasite. Of who, you ask? Well, of Kraldar, actually. And before you ask, no, I have no idea who thought it was a good idea to make one of the most disappointing towns’ already meager amount of residents basically have a clone of one another, but alas. If you didn’t like how speculative the last entry was, this’ll change that. As I’ll be completely honest here, this isn’t a case of “Oh, maybe he was originally spun off from Kraldar.” No, this time it’s very clear that this was the case. In fact, I can actually pinpoint which dialogue belongs to which character almost exactly to a tee here.
For a bit of context, in the final game, Jarl Korir is the initial Jarl of Winterhold, and he is Stormcloak-aligned. His only other character trait is that he really, really doesn’t like the college of winterhold, holding them responsible for the Great Collapse. His possible replacement is Kraldar, a man who appears to have been at one point part of a noble family living in Winterhold, although that doesn’t mean much anymore now. Like you would expect, he doesn’t actually speak of any sort of political alignment, but he does think highly of the college, seeing them as an asset, and he tries to keep up appearances with current Arch-Mage Savos Aren. Notably, Kraldar has a lot more relevant info when you ask him about the former city, which you can ask him about at any time, unlike Korir who just dodges the subject entirely and pessimistically states the city has been fully destroyed. And this is where it gets interesting. There are actually a lot of leads, I don’t quite know which one to start with, so let’s go with Jarl Korir’s clothes. So, in Skyrim, most unique clothing combinations are grouped together as “outfits” with a specific name. Jarls usually have this as JarlClothes, followed by the respective jarl’s name. You can already guess what Korir’s clothes are called, right? JarlClothesKraldar, indeed. Then there’s also the case of Kraldar’s House. This dwelling is internally known as Korir’s house instead, suggesting that Korir’s family originally lived there. In fact, the scenes between the family are also referred to as “Korir’s House Scenes”. Their house’s dwelling data also refers to the location as “Korri’s House”, but let’s just assume that one is a typo. On the flipside, all of Kraldar’s scenes with Thonjolf are instead known as “Winterhold Jarl’s Longhouse Scenes”. Then there’s also a heaping ton of context clues, such as Korir visiting the inn, which in itself isn’t that remarkable, but it’s quite strange behavior for a jarl. Innkeeper Dagur also states that Korir could drink “at home”, which is a line probably meant for the original context.
You also have the Dunmer Malur Seloth. And in case you don’t know who that is, he’s actually the Steward of Winterhold, despite, you know, Korir hating elves and such. Malur never mentions any Jarl by name, and neither Korir, Thaena, or Assur ever mention him. None of those three have any scenes with him either. You know who does have a scene with Malur though? Thonjolf. Which is very strange, if I do say so myself. Malur is also one of these weird people that stays in his government role, regardless of whether the Imperials or Stormcloaks are in power. You could explain that away due to him being pretty independent, but I’d say it is due to him not getting a replacement created on time, so they just kept him as-is.
Oh, and when I mentioned Thaena, she is actually Korir’s wife as well as the housecarl, despite looking about as effective for that role as Olfina Gray-Mane, and not ever mentioning this role to you. You know who does refer to themselves as housecarl? Indeed. Thonjolf. Thonjolf is actually Kraldar’s manservant in the final game, but it appears like he was always intended to serve as housecarl instead. Ultimately, Bethesda just added a condition to his more housecarl-specific lines so they won’t play unless he actually is housecarl, but his character is otherwise virtually unchanged.
Our second to last point of interest might be the most damning evidence of all, and that’s tied to Korir’s dungeon delivering quest. The basic premise in and of itself is already a giant red flag, as Korir speaks of trying to restore the city’s former glory — but, uh, remember, Korir only actually speaks of hating the college, not so much about the city itself. I feel like I don’t even need to say this, but you know who does have dialogue about restoring the city to its former glory, right? In a moment of Bethesda shooting themselves in the foot, they actually forgot to change one of this quest’s lines from Kraldar to Korir, basically showing that the quest was carried over in its entirety. That actually makes a lot more sense. Kraldar would’ve been focussed on restoring Winterhold’s glory and building up repertoire, while Korir was just depicted as an obsessive pessimist. I’m not saying these are particularly ground-breaking characterizations, but in the final game they’re a mishmash of both. And then finally, there’s unused dialogue tied to Season Unending. To keep it short, this quest has a lot of unused variables, and it was originally random which holds could’ve been handed over during negotiations. In the final game, the holds being handed over aren’t randomized, and this means that a whole slew of dialogue goes unused. From Arngeir, Tullius, and Ulfric. For Winterhold, though. This dialogue is a bit strange. Just take a look:
“We want Kraldar removed as Jarl of Winterhold, and an Imperial candidate put in his place.”
And there you have it friends. The ugly truth. The most smoking of guns. This basically confirms what everything else has been hinting towards. All the unused dialogue refers to Kraldar as the intial jarl, and a Stormcloak one to boot. The quote seen above comes from Ulfric Stormcloak, but all parties involved refer to him as such. I will have to say that it is kinda weird to have Kraldar be the initial Stormcloak jarl with his College of Winterhold-alligned views. Though I suppose he’s less xenophobic and moreso focused on rebuilding his hold. While the Imperial replacement Korir was to be very much against the college. I suppose this is only so weird because Korir’s character was never fully developed, with him instead of just absorbing a big chunk of Kraldar’s. Maybe he was to have better motivations if they had some more writing passes, I don’t know. Maybe it was exactly this narrative dissonance that caused Bethesda to switch Kraldar and Korir around, before ultimately moving on and saying they would circle back to finish their transitions properly only to never do so.
There are actually only two “new” lines that were probably recorded after this switch, one for Thonjolf, and one for Dagur, that imply that Kraldar can become jarl, rather than already being one. And even these lines are extremely vague. Almost like they didn’t want to commit to their changes. It’s weird that with a bit of tweaking, you could completely revert these changes and have the original Winterhold vision almost fully restored. I wonder at what point they stopped trying with Winterhold; as on the one hand, it has its own little unique jail, which is cool. On the other hand, Winterhold of all places doesn’t have a court wizard, which always raises some suspicions in my eyes. Just look at the political mess that is Falkreath, or Morthal. Actually, yes, let’s go to Morthal for our next parasite.
Sorli the Builder
I’ve spoken about her before, but I feel the need to do her justice, and that’s Bryling, thane of Solitude. Or, as she was originally envisioned, Bryling, Jarl of Morthal. Back when I made my original video, people generally didn’t agree with my opinion about this early iteration. But that’s the problem, it’s not my opinion. I’m stating facts here, so that’s why I decided to go over the facts once more, since I’ve also made another cool discovery since. You may be wondering who or what is related to Bryling that can be considered a parasite, and, well, to me that’s easy. That would be Sorli the Builder. Sorli is Idgrod Ravencrone’s Stormcloak replacement, with Idgrod being Morthal’s initial jarl. But now it becomes a bit more difficult. As unlike with Dryston, where his editor ID gave his creation time away, or Korir literally having the dialogue marked, Sorli and Bryling don’t actually appear to be afterthoughts on that level. You see, looking at their IDs, we can find that Bryling was created alongside a whole slew of Solitude NPCs, which matches how she appears in the final game. The same thing goes for Sorli, she was created alongside all the other NPCs in Stonehills, including her husband Pactur and son Sirgar. Fun little factoid I discovered while checking this is that the Stonehills NPCs and Anga’s Mill NPCs were created in succession with Teeba-Ei actually sharing an ID with the latter, rather than the former. Of course, this can mean that he was simply created a bit later than the others, seeing as there is no evidence he was ever meant to appear at the mill, but still, it’s interesting.
But, uh, now it’s time to address something. While all these NPCs seem to have been created at the same time. Their concurrent existence effectively clashes in the final game in a very strange way. You see, Stonehills suffers from a problem that plagues Skyrim, and that’s NPCs not feeling like a cohesive unit. I could list many examples here, but the easiest comparison I can make is to Darkwater Crossing, a place which I’ve also dissected very intensely in the past. There are basically two groups or “iterations” of people living there: one group is the duo of Verner and Annekke, Sylgja’s parents who mostly exist for quest purposes. The other group is Tormir, Hrefna, Sondas and maybe you can also count Derkeethus among them. Both groups, despite living and working together, never speak to each other, mention each other, have relationships set up internally, or interact in any way. They live together, but exist completely separately. This is simply due to Annekke and Verner being added to the settlement at a later date and not being incorporated in the overall design of the location.
Stonehills takes this problem a step further though. So, you have a small camp where all the mineworkers sleep. These are Jesper, Swanhvir, and Teeba-Ei. Their boss is a man known as Gestur Rockbreaker. All four of these NPCs have the very strange theming of not wanting to talk about their pasts, and only being interested in work. And not like the general Skyrim NPC kind of dismissal, they almost sound like they’re in a cult. Weird theming or not, their theme is consistent, and they all talk to each other and feel like a cohesive unit. Then there’s also a single house belonging to Sorli and her family. Sorli herself, her husband Pactur and their adult son Sirgar. Again, neither group mentions each other, or interacts in any way. But, in a weird twist, in dialogue, Pactur acts as if he is the mine overseer, rather than Gestur, whose existence he doesn’t acknowledge. Sure, all three acknowledge the fact that there are miners, but that’s about it. Even weird is that Pactur seems to have a bit of duplicate dialogue from Gestur, as both weirdly the mine not being for sale, despite that never even being brought up at all. Also, both men will refer to the mine’s owner as Bryling.
Either way, it seems that the mine was always meant to be under the control of Bryling. But if that was the thane iteration or the jarl iteration, I honestly couldn’t tell you. Those were about all the context clues we have for Stonehills, does Morthal offer us a more concrete lead? Well, yes actually! Just like in Winterhold, we have to take a look at Jarl Idgrod’s outfit. I previously mentioned that each jarl has a unique outfit, right? Well, Idgrod is actually the exception to that rule. There are three generic jarl outfits set up, likely for testing purposes at some point, and for some reason, Idgrod instead uses one of those. This is most easily noticeable due to her lacking any kind of circlet. You can guess where I’m going with this, right? Bryling is the only NPC that isn’t an initial jarl that has the distinction of having her own unique jarl outfit in the entire game. Then there’s also her dialogue — oh boy. I’m just gonna say it now, I’m 100% convinced that every single one of these lines are just repurposed from when she was a jarl. Just look at this.
“I can always find time to share a word with a warrior.”
“Many condemn the Stormcloaks, but I refuse. There is honor in fighting for what you believe.”
“This godsforsaken war is dividing our people and destroying our land.”
“It’s been an honor.”
“I’ll get back to court business, then.”
And remember in my video about the DialogueViews where I referred to the removed Morgus Ghoruun?
Well, I stated that the Ysgramor’s Axe line was just an earlier iteration of Idgrod’s line. This is actually incorrect, or at least, I now believe otherwise, as there is actually a line that’s still very close to this, and that one belongs to Sorli the Builder in the final game. Here are the two compared to each other.
“By Ysgramor’s axe! It’s true. Thank you for stopping her vile plot. Unfortunately the town is still in danger. The journal mentions Morgus. That must be Lord Morgus Ghoruun. I’ll gather together some able-bodied warriors to clean out Ghoruun Hall. They’ll be waiting outside for you to lead them.”
“By Ysgramor’s axe! It’s true. Morthal owes you a debt. Here is your reward for solving the murder, but I have another request. Unfortunately Morthal is still in danger. The journal mentions Movarth, a powerful master vampire that I had assumed was destroyed. I’ll gather together some able-bodied warriors to clean out Movarth’s lair. They’ll be waiting outside for you to lead them.”
Meanwhile, Idgrod’s line does exist in the views, but it already mentions Movarth, rather than Morgus. This implies that Sorli’s line existed before Idgrod’s, or at the very least that Idgrod’s line didn’t go through as many iterations. Of course, I say “Sorli’s lines”, but just like with Kraldar and Korir, I fully believe that Sorli’s quest-related dialogue was actually just ported over from Bryling, although I have no such smoking gun to prove it this time.
Like with Winterhold though, the developers clearly stopped caring when they had to come up with the backup government. With Bryling now gone and her lines repurposed for Sorli, they made Pactur her steward which kinda makes sense, but they chose Teeba-Ei the miner as her housecarl. Like I previously stated, this doesn’t really make sense, as they don’t interact with each other, but even with the change in government, neither Pactur, nor Sorli will ever acknowledge Teeba’s existence, and to top it all of, he’s the only character that doesn’t gain any kind of new dialogue or interactions after becoming a part of the ruling government in the entire game.
And it’s precisely at this point that this case changes from a mess, to an unmitigated disaster. I’ll try and explain this as clearly as I can. So, at some point, Bryling was created as what I believe to be Morthal’s initial jarl. Then at some point at a later date, Idgrod and her family were created, with her taking over as initial jarl. Unlike in Winterhold, Bethesda actually fleshed out the family, making them feel a lot less like afterthoughts. It also seems like this change was done much earlier in development, as for example, the similar dialogue for Morthal in Season Unending does correctly refer to the jarl options as Idgrod and Sorli, not Bryling. With Bryling now no longer the jarl, they moved her over to Solitude, to act as a thane. Meanwhile, Idgrod acts as the initial Empire-aligned jarl. Bethesda then realized that they would need a replacement for Idgrod in case of Civil War turnover. They came to the conclusion that they had no-one for this purpose, so they then created Sorli’s family in Stonehills at a later date. They gave a majority of the dialogue recorded for Bryling to Sorli, and with that, their jarl problem was fixed. Just like in WInterhold, seems like this process could’ve used a few more iterations though, as Pactur isn’t even correctly set to move out to Morthal in the vanilla game, showing just how much of an afterthought this all was. But. And here’s a big but. Bethesda wasn’t quite done with Bryling yet. They had just scrapped a damn Jarl. That would be a bit of a waste, wouldn’t it? So, they then made Bryling the backup Jarl for Solitude! If that isn’t a promotion, I don’t know what is. I mean, it would be a cakewalk, right? They still had Bryling’s jarl dialogue which they could keep from Morthal. They added her to the faction which could grant thaneship of Solitude and recorded the dialogue for that quest, it all went great. The only other thing they needed was a few more scenes to signify her new position and bam, they’d be set. The following two dialogue exchanges seem to come from this point in development:
Bryling: What news have you heard from the war, Irnskar?
Irnskar: You won’t like it, my lady.
Bryling: I’m well aware that I won’t like it. But it’s my duty to keep my people safe. Tell me.
Irnskar: Possession of the holds change on an almost daily basis, but I can report that Haafingar is still secure. Your people are safe.
Bryling: I’m not just talking about my subjects. I’m talking about my people: the proud Nords of Skyrim.
Irnskar: I told you you wouldn’t like the news.Irnskar: My lady, I’m pleased to inform you that you have a new gown for court, specially tailored by madame Endarie.
Bryling: Really? How did we afford that? Besides, I like the gown I already have.
Irnskar: Madame Endarie insisted. She made it free of charge, in honor of your lenience about last month’s rent discrepancies.
Bryling: That was suspiciously nice of her. I thought she hated everyone.”’’
Irnskar: She does, my lady. But apparently, she hates you just a little less than the others.
Again, they’re just out-of-context enough to work, but we’re really getting close to obvious cut territory here. Bryling literally refers to the people of Haafingar as “her subjects”. I don’t think a thane is supposed to do that. Ultimately though, the developers opted to not go through with Bryling as a backup jarl in any case, and in what appears to be an attept to make sure her lines about “court” still made sense, they made her a prominent visitor to Jarl Elisif’s court. The only thing that seems to have been created after this demotion seems to be a subplot involving a hidden romance with steward Falk Firebeard, that’s it. Bethesda took a big risk, hoping nobody would discover this, and in all fairness, it worked, for the most part.
Like Kraldar, it’s kinda sad seeing Jarl Bryling wasted like this, as an actually honorable female Stormcloak-aligned jarl is sorely missed. Laila just doesn’t cut it with her stupidity. Bryling actually comes across as a solid leader. Speaking of the Solitude court though, when Bryling is talking of “her people”, she does so with her personal housecarl, Irnskar Ironhand. Irnskar himself also appears to be another parasite NPC, being a branch off of the actual Solitude housecarl, Bolgeir Bearclaw.
Irnskar Ironhand and Bolgeir Bearclaw
In the case of Bolgeir and Irnskar, I honestly can’t tell you who came first. Both men are vicious warriors with the MaleNordCommander voicetype, and both have remarkably few lines. Also of note is that Bolgeir only gets referred to by name in scenes with Elisif, while Irnskar does so in both a quest and the previous scene with Bryling. One very noticeable quirk is the fact that they clearly were once copied off one another, as you can see that their faces still have leftovers of being identical. It’s funny, both men have exactly four unique lines of dialogue, and both are involved in exactly two scenes. They also both would’ve played the same role in the removed Boethiah’s Bidding quest, although Bolgeir was meant to get another reference there. So, in this case, I don’t fully know. Feel free to make your own conclusions. I personally feel like Bolgeir existed first, but I’ve always preferred Irnskar’s design. Bolgeir’s editor ID is also earlier, but I don’t quite know how trustworthy that info is. Irnskar is also involved in a quest, while Bolgeir is not. And with that, we can move on to our final stop of today. The den of parasites itself: Windhelm!
Rolff Stone-Fist and Angrenor Once-Honored
I’m starting off with a bit of an honorable mention, as I feel this is a case of a parasite NPC, but I just have no substantial evidence except for context clues, and that’s the case of Angrenor Once-Honored and Rolff Stone-Fist. The first one is a former soldier, now a beggar, and the second is just a random racist citizen. You’ll likely encounter both when first entering Windhelm, as they’re involved in a scene with Suvaris Atheron, addressing Windhelm’s supposed general xenophobia.
Funnily enough, Rolff shares most of his characteristics with Idesa Sadri who I mentioned at the beginning, as I feel like they just randomly gave him a family tie to an existing character, in this case Ulfric’s second-in-command, Galmar. Only to never address this fact or do anything with it, seemingly instead just having it there to justify a character’s existence. And of the two, it does indeed seem like Rolff is the parasite of the pair, as Angrenor was created alongside the initial batch of Windhelm NPCs, while Rolff was created way later. Despite this, Rolff is the better integrated of the two, with him having more dialogue, and getting at least a couple of mentions in. One of those mentions is also a bit of red flag, coincidentally. Like Balgruuf talking about his son when you specifically ask him about his “children”, Suvaris only mentions Rolff when you specifically ask her about “those Nords”. Both cases seem to be instances of the developers rewriting player dialogue after the NPC’s dialogue already got recorded, in an attempt to hide inconcensistencies with the writing.
Angrenor on the other hand, is just a generic beggar with a couple of lines, who was supposed to gain more dialogue but this can’t be accessed in the vanilla game due to bugs. He’s also a marriage candidate… for some reason, and the only beggar with this distinction. Angrenor is also one of only a handful of NPCs in the final game that has a relationship marker set up with a character from Windhelm’s removed Pit, which not only confirms that he has been around for a while, but also implies to me that his role changed substantially from start to finish. My theory here is that at one point, there was a character in Windhelm that was a former Stormcloak soldier, who now can’t fight anymore due to a wound he sustained during battle. To cope with the pain he turned to alcohol, and due to this, his already pretty racist beliefs turned into full-blown rants he goes on when stumbling around outside at night. This role was seemingly originally written for Rolff, while Angrenor was a completely different character with most of his dialogue tied to the pit. When the Pit got thrown out, so did basically all of Angrenor’s dialogue and purpose, but Bethesda patched this up by giving him some of the more generic lines from Rolff, effectively distributing parts of his written character. And I know this is just speculation at this point, but it does seem like it holds some merit.
I mean, with these cases it’s often that they took a multidimensional character with depth, and then split them up, making two one-dimensional characters instead. With Angrenor it’s really obvious too since he’s just… kinda there? Neither man has a house, but Angrenor is just a random beggar, or at least, he acts like one. He ain’t fooling me though. Windhelm already has a dedicated beggar character in Silda the Unseen. And Riften is the only city that was actually designed with two dedicated beggars in mind. Him being a beggar seems to have just been an afterthought, I mean, he doesn’t even wear the correct clothes! He’s wearing prisoner attire instead of beggar robes. Nice try faker!
It’s at this point I realized that my next case also isn’t really based on any evidence? I’m… quite sorry about that one, but if I had about 75% faithfulness in my last explanation, then this one I’m 95% convinced this is how it happened. You remember Luaffyn? I made a short critique about her once, but of course, there isn’t much to say about her, since she’s essentialy just a generic bard without any unique dialogue, AI, or even any mentions at all. At the time, I mostly focused on the strange implications her existence had, but I never really thought about a logical explanation as to why she existed. But now I’m pretty sure I know why.
Luaffyn
Let me explain. In the final game, all the bards you ever meet are of the bard class. Lodi and Larina being exceptions, but you don’t even know who they are, so my point still stands. However, there are three notable exceptions in-game that are members of the bard class, but aren’t bards. Instead, their inclusion is a leftover of their earlier role as bard. These three people are Cedran in Markarth, who got replaced by Ogmund. Louis Letrush in Riften, who never got a replacement, and it’s just never addressed that Riften is the only place with an inn lacking a bard, and then in Windhelm, there’s Arivanya, who was in all likelihood replaced by Luaffyn. Of course, you have the basic signs like the shared voicetype and the fact that Luaffyn was created at a later date while Arivanya was created alongside the first batch of Windhelm citizens. Again, this theory isn’t always waterproof, but it seems to work out most of the time. But then comes the weird stuff. Just like Cedran, Arivanya was banished to the stables. But instead of the stablemaster, she became the wife of the stablemaster Ulundil. Also, to the person who made the stablemaster of the most racist city a High Elf only to do absolutely nothing with this fact… You disturb me.
But just like Ulundil, no one ever mentions Arivanya. In fact, even her husband doesn’t. She does mention him, at least vaguely, but that’s the most either of them ever get acknowledged. But Arivanya has another weird quirk, especially for a person living outside the city gates. She has a very intricate schedule set up for visiting the local taverns. The only other person living at stables who ever enters their respective city in the final game is Shadr from Riften. Yet, despite her constantly being seen by everyone in own, no one acknowledges her, strange isn’t it? Well, even stranger is the person that Arivanya mentions. While she doesn’t name her husband, she does actually name… Viola Giordano. Why is this? Well, because Arivanya was actually created to play a role in Blood on the Ice, the infamously buggy quest. If you had Wuunferth falsely accused, then Arivanya becomes the fourth canon victim. This is something set in stone, as there are even unique wounds made for her corpse, similar to those found on Susanna’s. If you go and look at Arivanya’s relationships, you will see that she’s actually marked as being on friendly terms with both Viola and Tova Shatter-Shield, another NPC tied to this quest. To me, this all implies that she was once meant to be at the very least mentioned more, rather than just existing and then dying when the game expects her to. This could’ve been the case if she was… You’know, the bard at the local inn? This even makes sense too, as the Butcher claims to have been watching the inn for Susanna, so it makes sense he might target the same place for another easy murder. However, at some point this idea was thrown out, Arivanya was repurposed, and her generic bard options were given to another completely new NPC. Now, to the person who made a High Elf bard for the most racist inn in Skyrim, only to then scrap her and replace her with a Dark Elf bard, while the voicetype also works for humanoid NPCs, what in the actual fuck were you doing??
Jorleif
And then we finally arrive at the most famous case of parasites, arguably the most well-known too. Jorleif and Captain Lonely-Gale. This is once more a case of layers upon layers of cut content, and I have also previously covered Lonely-Gale’s case in detail, but I do feel like they needed to be included here, as this portion of the story I originally didn’t address. But here’s the short version.
Captain Lonely-Gale appears as a retired ship captain in the final game. He doesn’t really do anything noteworthy, and like Rolff and Angrenor, he doesn’t even have a house in the city. This is because he was originally designed as the local guard captain, similar to Caius and Jod. There are many leftovers from this version of the captain, such as a scene in the final game, unused dialogue with Ulfric, and more. This role was then scrapped entirely, and the captain would go on to be repurposed as the Imperial steward, but due to Bethesda rushing this new role, it would go unused as well, meaning he would forever get stuck between two character iterations. I don’t need to tell you that this is extremely lame. Then there’s Jorleif. Even just from a basic creation standpoint, he’s a big red flag, with him being a default level 1 character, and wearing merchant clothes of all things, something seems off.
And while he doesn’t even have that much dialogue, it’s his involvement in the aforementioned Blood on the Ice quest that does it for me. Tell me this, why in the world would a guard tell you to report a murder investigation to the steward? Oh, I’ll tell you. Because the more logical option of a guard captain was deleted, and his lines were given to another NPC without much thought. This line, specifically, seems to have been carried over verbatim:
“These are difficult times indeed, when men stalk their brethren like beasts. My men are stretched thin as it is. If you offer your aid, I gladly accept. The guards will be told to assist you as necessary. I’m happy to lend a hand as much as I can, as well.”
Why would the steward refer to the guards as “his men”? Especially Jorleif, who will himself tell you that he has no mind for court business (great trait for the steward, I know). Also, he states that he’s happy to lend a hand, but he doesn’t really do anything of any kind, besides going with a guard to possibly arrest Wuunferth, which is also a task which seems to fit more for a guard captain, but alas.
In fact, I’d go almost as far as to say that Jorleif was the original first name for Lonely-Gale before someone decided that they would just refer to him as “captain”. I mean, I have no proof of this, but it just fits in a bit too well. I mean, for Talos’ sake, Jorleif, the steward, states that he doesn’t do anything in any official capacity for Ulfric, uhm, hello? Was the writing team so overworked that they wouldn’t notice an error of that magnitude? It doesn’t seem like they went through all too many writing passes here, if I’m completely honest.
Post Mortem
If you want the less pessimistic take, at the very least, all the dialogue that Jorleif uses during Blood on the Ice was repurposed from Lonely-Gale’s original iteration. His scenes with Ulfric and normal greetings may have been recorded at a later date if they weren’t lifted as well. And, that’s about the end of this tale. I’ve mentioned this in the past, but I generally dislike people explaining a game’s bad writing in the final product by saying “Oh yeah, it all has to do with cut content. The better written version was left on the cutting room floor.” as I’ve seen that done countless times. You know, the cutting room floor is supposed to be the place where the badly-written stuff ends up, y’know? Or generally the stuff that no longer fits with the current project vision.
Skyrim seems to be one of the exceptions to this, however, as they have just… Well. Let’s just say it like it is: A lot of Skyrim’s shortcomings seem to come from the fact that a lot of its basic design was just plain-out misguided. Its focus on radiant dialogue, the fact that it prioritizes a world filled with quests rather than a world that feels cohesive. Now I understand a lot of these decisions, even if I don’t agree with them, hindsight being 20/20 and all that. But. The decision to split up these NPCs and have just a tiny bit more characters in your world, only for those characters to be largely pointless, soulless, and not involved in the world either way? I don’t know. I don’t really see that as a boon in any way, shape or form. Luaffyn doesn’t really need to exist. Arivanya could’ve perfectly kept her original role. Same goes for Jorleif and all others I’ve mentioned. I much rather have one well-written and cohesive NPC in my game than two half-baked ones. It’s cliché, but in this case, more really is less. I’ve been UnknownG, and I hope you’ve enjoyed this deep dive.
