OLeverage — W.I.P. (Patreon)

OLeverage 0.7.2 — W.I.P.

Someone has something on you. What they want for it is not always coin.

This is the first playable build of OLeverage, and it is a work in progress — I want it in your hands while the shape is still being argued about.

What it is

Debts, disputed bills, errands and a three-sided secret, all handled in real dialogue with the people involved. No menu wall, no spell to start a conversation.

And then the part the mod is named for. When you can't pay, or when you refuse a bill you never owed, the honest ones wait and remember. The rest keep the paper and name a different price.

An agreement can ask for coin every week, a favour, your silence, or you — and it can ask for more than one at once. Who asks for what depends on who they are, not on a dice roll. With OMind installed it reads their actual personality:

the greedy opportunist wants gold, on a schedule

the one who likes being obeyed wants you, whenever he feels like it

the manipulator would rather use you than have you

and the genuinely fair ones never blackmail anybody — that is content, not a bug

Four ways out, and none of them is free

This is the thing I most wanted to get right, because a mod where you only ever get cornered is victimisation with extra steps.

Break itGet the evidence back into your hands. Pickpocket it, steal it, take it off a corpse — the mod does not care how, because the proof was always a real inventory item. Every agreement resting on that paper dies at onceBuy itCoin for silence, once and for all. The deeper the hooks, the more it costsTurn itSpeech or Illusion, and win and they owe you. One attempt per agreement: fail and the price hardens and that road is shut for goodBurn itTell everyone yourself. The leverage dies instantly, because its entire value was your silence — and you eat the consequence

Burning is the only one that needs no skill, no coin and no theft. If you have nothing, you still have that.

The law

Ask a guard whether there's a problem with you, and he may well invent one.

Pay the fine. Deny it — which puts a real bounty on your head with that hold, the vanilla kind, and the guards there will treat you accordingly. Or suggest there might be another way to settle this.

He's holding nothing you can steal back, so his lever can only be bought or turned.

Things that climb, and things that go stale

A recurring price goes up. Not because you failed at something — because he gets greedier. Sitting quietly on an agreement is not the safe play.

And a lever built on nothing but someone's word goes stale on its own. Nobody cares what you did three seasons ago. A lever built on a paper he is still holding does not — and that is exactly why getting that paper back matters.

Requirements

SKSE matching your executable

Fuz Ro D-oh — every line in this mod is unvoiced; without it a silent line flashes past before you can read it

OStim NG

Optional, and each one makes it deeper without being needed:

OMind — real personalities, and what decides what each person asks you for

OStim Sexual Fame 0.7.0 — so the city actually hears you when you burn an agreement

Light plugin, Skyrim.esm as its only master. No NPC, package, cell or worldspace edits, nothing vanilla overridden.

What is not in yet

Being straight about this:

Three of the six pressure points have no content yet — the Jarl, a follower, and bandits. The shopkeeper, the moneylender and the guard are in.

Nobody comes looking for you. You open the conversation, even with someone who has you cornered. That's the next big piece, and it needs the most care, because it has to share the road with every other mod that approaches you.

Refusing one term of an agreement you already made still costs nothing.

No voiced lines, no lip sync. Subtitles only.

Adults only, everywhere, and that check isn't optional.