ScrabJoseline

Acheron: The Market

Added 2023-08-09 13:01:00 +0000 UTC

Acheron's Market is a small building hidden in a secluded cave offsite the road near the eastern border of Skyrim, featuring a total of 5 unique NPC (currently, only 4 accessible) alongside a new option for Acherons Hunter Pride (Captures) which can be used to kidnap defeated NPC and carry them along with you.

The NPC in the Market all carry their own personality and backstory, however my goal was to keep the mod within a small scope with the main focus being the Captures system itself, to establish a gameplay loop that allows you to make active use of your Captures system and also offers reasons to come back to the market for other reasons.
Hence, the Markets merchants:

Charon

A crude Khajiit that doesnt use a lot of breath introducing herself, representing the Market and showing little interest to anything but the Market. And as leader of the Market, Charon takes care of all the more sensitive transactions, most notably: the bounties.

Scrooge

Charons right hand, a seasoned warrior with a love for anything wild and untamed. Scrooge is responsible for dealing with outsiders, spotting potential new recruits and ridden those unworthy of their curiosity (and anything else they have on them - and in them).
Once you join the Market, Scrooge will be more welcoming and allow you to recruit a variety of tamed animals that you can take with you as companions. These companions operate independently from any other follower system and you may only have one of them with you at a time.

The Alchemist

An arrogant merchant at home in the market, sure of their talents and obsessed with their goals. The Alchemist is a merchant offering various potions, poisons and ingredients, including Jarrin Root.

Charlotte

A fragile wood elf that I honestly have no idea how she ended up in the market, but she's here and arguably the only thing the Alchemist truly cares about. Charlotte does not offer any services but shines some light in the otherwise gloomy atmosphere of the Market.

Cellmaster Lokk

A restoration mage with a strong sense of morality. He takes care of the prisoners held captive in the market, treats the injured and comforts those rotting behind bars. Of course this bears to question: How did he ever end up in this place, as part of the Market?
Lokk is living in a currently inaccessible part of the Market that will be available in a future version. Then, he will offer some additional utility to manage your Captures and be of service as a merchant.

Compared of this mods previous iterations, I turned back a lot on anything that does not concern "transactions" directly. I did leave some open questions to come back to this mod should be interested in learning more about any of these characters, but "learning more about them" is by no means a requirement to make use of the Markets features and I don't on ever having any majorly important features be locked behind some quest line.

The Captures system is added to your Hunter Pride Menu when you load the game; it allows you to kidnap up to 3 (non essential) NPC and carry them along you, Included is a second menu that can be accessed through a key bind (default: Shift + H) which allows you to view and spawn these captured NPC in front of you. You can also go to the Market and talk to Charon to sell them for gold. Only non essential and non reserved NPC can be sold. Unique NPC are more valuable than common ones and pay extra, just note that a sold NPC is a dead NPC, there is no turning back.
Also note that there is no MCM for this mod. To change the key bind with which you access the menu, you need to go into "Data/SKSE/AchMarket/Settings.json" and change the associated key codes there.