Work-In-Progress
This quest is heavily inspired by “Wicked Eyes & Wicked Hearts” in Dragon Age Inquisition. However to be fair, I’d actually had the idea of a quest involving a grand ball, all the companions, intrigue, secrets and romance, for several months before even getting that game. I just needed the right inspiration to take off from. So NO, this is not a “rip” but a homage to DAI. There’s a difference!
In A Game At Court, you and 4 chosen companions set sail for a new island in the western sea, created for me by my pal DJ Red Rad, a very good island creator.
If anyone out there likes to do “Let’s Play,” feel free to give me the links. I’d love to see who and what you choose!
Quest ID: An_PalaceQuest
Quest giver: Courier
Prerequisites: Dragon Rising; have met at least 4 of the Followers (any 4)
Location: any town or city; Courier will find you after 3 days
| Objective: | |
| 10 | Speak to Elyndra about the Isles of Nen. |
| 15 | Recruit Elyndra and 3 other companions. |
| 16 | Speak to Elyndra about travelling to the Isles of Nen. |
| 20 | Tell Elyndra at the Solitude Docks when you’re ready to sail. |
| 25 | Tell Darion at the Solitude Docks when you’re ready to sail. |
| 30 | Introduce yourself and your companions to the announcer. |
| 35 | Approach the stairs down to the ballroom and the Paige will announce you. |
| 40 | (Introduction Scene) |
| 45 | Approach Queen Abarielle. |
| 50 | Speak with Mori, the Ayleid Ambassador, and your companions. |
| 55 | Explore the Palace for clues. |
| 60 | Speak to Queen Abarielle again. |
| 100 | You have chosen Abarielle. Tell her. |
| 200 | You have chosen the Ayleids. Tell Abarielle. |
| 300 | You have chosen Captain Mori. Tell Abarielle. |
| 400 | Join the Council in the Council Chamber. |
| 500 | Tell the Announcer when you are ready to return to Skyrim. |
| 600 | (Completed) |
Troubleshooting:
If the Introduction scene freezes (scripting is good, so it shouldn’t, but still might glitch), cc: SetStage An_PalaceQuest 40
Anna NPCs for Skyrim 
I will be anxious to see what you do with this quest.
I liked the idea of a ball at the Winter Palace in DAI, but Wicked Eyes and Wicked Hearts turned out to be one of my least favorite and dreaded missions. I really don’t enjoy anything about politics even in a game apparently. The only saving grace for me were the funny follower reactions and the humorous things that happened during the ball. Another downside for me was being stuck with Morrigan for the rest of the game (one of my least favorite characters).
Anyway, the DA series has always been one of my favorites. I recently played through DAI again because of Trespasser. I haven’t played DAO or DA2 for a while, but I can see a lot of those characters reflected in yours. Good game series to take inspiration from and a nice nod to them.
I don’t like politics either but in game I don’t mind so much. DAI (and whole series for that matter) is FULL of politics!
You’re right about DA being full of politics, or any RPG really. I guess for me I’m ok with it if it is dispersed through the game but it was so heavily concentrated during the ball.
I loved the music and dancing, seeing the Winter Palace with all the finery and the attendants with their fancy attire. My favorite part of the whole thing was skulking around the palace getting the intel for Nightingale and the incriminating evidence on the 3 contenders.
I have to ask have you found the nods to ME scattered through DAI? If you are familiar with ME.
As I said looking forward to seeing what you do with it.
Is ME Mass Effect? Not familiar with it, so no didn’t notice.
Yes and a lot of Cole’s odd comments were references to ME also.
Blackwall: You’re not so bad, but half the time I don’t understand what comes out of your mouth.
Cole: There once was a man who had bees coming out of his mouth.
Blackwall: (Laughs) an excellent example.
Ok, so the letter was for a future quest. Everything makes sense now, I was super confused when I got the letter. I have to say the concept of this quest is vary ambitious, I look foreword to it.
This is very odd the quest seems to go nowhere and after the quest ends it totally resets all of the quests in all of the mods as if Anna;s npc is starting for the first time !
No, that does not happen, it does not reset any other quests. Still in development, and this page explains where it comes from…
Thanks for the quick reply but the game was?is impossible to save while at the Ballroom but as soon as I left it restarted the whole mod and the meadery vanished. No big deal as I setstage and finished it that way.
I have idea what was going on, but I ASSURE you, it is NOT impossible to save in the ballroom, and the quest DOES NOT RESTART ANYTHING, or REMOVE ANYTHING. The problem was something else.
I entered the ballroom but Eylinda didn’t come with me to the island for some reason and the introduction scene won’t start. My character is stuck. I will try to prid her ref id and see if that solves the issue. I will also reload and try to start quest again.
I can also attempt to set stage past that scene.
I will keep you posted on troubleshooting but I thought you may want to know. I took Darian the pirate and that dialogue option is how I got to the island.
Strange I never had that where Elyndra didn’t come, and I tested with several combinations of followers, prolly just Skyrim being Skyrim… The scene though should be fixed in the latest version. Else, yeah, setstage.
I have an update. After getting the quest to recruit followers I recruited just Darion and take the sea hawk (the only decision I made to travel to the island), I was able to bypass stages 16 and 20 altogether. I did not recruit any other followers (stage 16) nor did I tell Elyndra (stage 20.) In all these attempts stage 20 was never set. I’ve been monitering the stages with the sqs console command. I think the option to take the sea hawk may be the problem. I’m going to try again without recruiting Darion and see what happens. Also if I have multiple followers from the mod and I haven’t dismissed them before picking the dialogue option to go to the island, they all come with me. I’ve noticed in skyrim if you have a ton of followers (even vanilla quest related npc’s you gather and never drop off) you spawn a fair ways away from an entrance point to a cell. So in this case I spawn right where the remote walking comes in without talking to Paige. I will drop off anyone who I don’t recruit as per the quest dialogue options, not recruit Darion and see if anything changes.
Hm, good to know. I had tested both ways (Elyndra hiring a ship, and Darion’s ship) and never had problems, and having dismissed all followers and recruited them new. Very odd about the spawning, never had that either, I always spawned in the proper place just inside the doorway…
Edit: I just checked, Stage 20 gets set when you tell Elyndra to hire a ship, rather than get Darion and his ship.
The simple answer to the issue ended up being setstage <questid( = an_palacequest) 45. Having said that, You can skip stages 16 and 20 by simply recruiting Darion and taking the sea hawk. In vanilla skyrim I was able to recruit like 14 followers including Serana, Mercer Frey, Delphine and Esbern, Barbas and others because they are temporary quest related followers (so they never die) and simply never take them where they are supposed to go. The consequence of this is that if you exit say blackreach from one of the dwarven towers, you spawn outside the gate that you have to open from the inside. Because all your followers take up that space. The consequence is you can never open that gate and use that fast ravel location as a shortcut back into that area of Blackreach. Being able to recruit all of Anna's npc followers simultaneously produces the same effect. So in this case I was spawning at the stairs. For whatever reason both with Elyndra or without, the quest wouldn't go past taking remote control of the PC. Like Mara's temple wedding for example, and it got stuck. I just wanted to post my troubleshooting experience not only to show the mod author that there may be an issue with this or this but to show people who get stuck on situations like this, that with some savy console command knowhow you can usually figure it out for yourself. Sometimes you may need to bug the mod author for the quest id if you are having trouble finding the right keywords to search for it. Thanks Anna for your quick responses and I love Zorya's sound of music reference 😉
Thanks for the insight, and I’m happy you like the song! And yes having all of my followers at once can definitely produce some congestion and script lag, which is why for this quest I recommend only 4, maybe 5 tops. I could make Darion mandatory, but then you’d be limited to only 2 or 3 other choices instead of 3 or 4.
I’m stuck at quest stage 50. Spoken with Mori, Ambassador and all my companions. I’ve been to each gossip location and overheard the servants. But quest not updating. 😦
Quest still needs refinement, use this:
I’m updating soon.
Same thing here, took Zorya, Anduniel and Dorion with me, the max number of followers for this one, after talking to everyone, nothing, just stuck. So I finished the quest using setstage… A few notes :
– you are sent to the bath house way too easily, even by just taking the left stairs you are sent there, very disturbing !
– On the positive side : it was nice seeing everyone with an outfit for a reception like this. Of course it was only for the show since there was almost no dialog, and dancing was broken (tried it, my character stayed stuck a few seconds downstairs, Elyndra walked away and finally I got my control back). Also I noticed the illusion mage is selling adept spells although my level was only 26 in illusion, so I used this opportunity to get quite a few spells, very expensive, but using mysticism, so I started by buying charm and cast it… Also quite a few interesting alchemy ingredients at the lab and in the garden, everything is set up to use this as a house, it’s funny… by the way the red roses and the white ones have exactly the same properties, it’s not really a bug, but an oddity.
Except that the quest really feels unfinished, but it could be interesting later… !
Ah also at the stage 55 of the quest (find some clues), I had already taken the spy letter in the coucil room, I didn’t know if these were the intended clues but I had no pointer and I didn’t want to visit the whole thing again and be sent again to the bath house so I used setstage to pass this too. When talking to the queen, telling her that I take her side or tell her that I want to think over it has the same result, the quest jumps to the final stage, tell the announcer when you are ready to leave, so that’s what I did…
There is no actual “max number” you could bring all 10 if you wanted, but it would likely get laggy with so much follower scripting going on, which is why I recommend only taking 3 (which is also the typical party size for Dragon Age, which this quest is inspired by). Three is the number that will advance the quest, but it is not *restricted* to three.
Bath: you know why? b/c when I put an activate-able door like any other, though perfectly set up in CK, in game was completely non-existent for some annoying reason, no idea why, and you couldn’t get to the bath at all. So I had to resort to putting an auto door.
Dialogue: there is quite a lot of dialogue actually. You can speak to the Queen, her brother, and the ambassadors and see a bit of their story. You can also talk to each of your companions, who all have different dialogue according to their personality.
Dance: not yet completed, going to incorporate Haomii’s dance animation later.
On the whole, yes, not perfected. Admittedly I bit off more than I could chew trying to set all this up with multiple endings, so for now it’s just dialogue. It is a LOT OF WORK scripting multiple endings, and then TESTING THEM ALL!
Gossip quest: yes, reported before, I’ve tried to fix for next time.
I pretty much had to setstage through the whole quest as it’s in development. tip enter console with tilde ” ` ” help palace then sqs an_palacequest. The dancing dialogue option doesn’t work for me and i’m not sure what (w.i.p) is in brackets. I have fnis animations so is wip a new mod?
I’m having an issue where I’ve completed dragon rising, met more then 4 people and still am unable to get this quest
Need more details, have you gotten ELYNDRA? Gone to a town after 3 days? It definitely works…
Yes probably should have given more details! Yes I have Elyndra, she is even in my party. It’s been about a week, I am going to different towns to see if something will change, still nothing. Do I need to also complete the greybeards?
Nope, just Dragon Rising.
Is there any commands I can do to trigger the quest?
Use the cc up on this page to set the stage to 10.
You’ll also have to manually add an “invitation from the queen” to your inventory for later. Search for it in console.
There’s a (new?) mod on nexus called ‘A Skyrim Waltz’. It’s a bit stiff in the animations atm, but It also has some details that i really adore.
Don’t know if you can use this info, but thought I’d mention it. Also, can’t say how supper delighted I was when I saw the ‘dance’ dialogue mere seconds after thinking how much I wanted a romance dance scene like in DAI.
Yup I know about it, saw it on the Hot Files, and already dl it and the Kiss mod by same author, in both LE and SE just to endorse 🙂 Been talking with the author and he gave permission so I can use it in the mod in the future! Can’t do it yet though, I’m with family atm, but I CAN’T WAIT TO PUT THESE IN THE MOD!!!!! 😀 I’ve written whole conversations already for the dancing.
I was given this quest and everything seemed okay at first but Paige has no voice (I’m not sure if has one) and once I go down the stairs I become stuck and my character does not move, overalll the mod is very well and I quite enjoy it as a whole.
No the paige doesn’t have a voice. Going down the stairs has been addressed several times on the Nexus mod page, and was fixed in the latest version.
question how do I get rid of The Walls have Ears quest. I finished the main but that is still there and I don’t think I can get back to the isle. That and when I tried going to the spot to eavesdrop something starte d to happen then quickly stopped