Karura's Dark Brotherhood Refined

(Update January 18th, 2025--All NPCs are now using vanilla race, which should mean better compatibility with EasyNPC. Refined body textures and some minor changes. Separated out Babette into her own file.)

In my never-ending quest to slowly overhaul every prominent Skyrim NPCs to suit my extremely niche taste, here's a personal take for the Dark Brotherhood members (minus Veezara, i'm anxiously waiting for allonsywisegirl's upcoming Children of the Hist for him sorry dude)--Cicero, Astrid, Nazir, Babette, Arnbjorn, Gabriella, Festus Krex, Amaund Motierre, and the two Dark Brotherhood Initiates.

The facegen files might suggest there are 15 NPCs covered--it's 10, actually. Cicero has three 'variants' exist in the game, Nazir has two, Gabriella has two, and Motierre has two. Dunno why Bethesda didn't just use the template method when creating the clones but then again Bethesda does a lot of strange things these days. Like the newest update.

If you want to combine this with another replacer (say, an individual Cicero replacer) just load their mod after mine.

I changed their weight data--best installed on a new playthrough, or a save where you haven't met these NPCs yet. Otherwise, open console, click on the NPC whose weight needs to be updated, type 'setnpc weight ', disable, enable.

Amaund   35

Festus      30

Gabriella  30

DB Initiate (M)        65

DB Initiate (F) 85

What-you-need-to-knows:

- Most NPCs have been given stat boosts and proper combat styles so you'll have a (slightly) harder time killing them. All potential followers are given perks and some stat boosts. Cicero should be able to dual wield now.

- The Dark Brotherhood Initiates are given names: Mor (Imperial female) and Fel (Breton male). Intentionally vague so you can fill in your own headcanons about them. Mor is an ice mage, Fel is an archer who can also dual wield. If you don't like the names just change it from the esp.

- Amaund Motierre looks the same in both versions.

- The follower version of Cicero (CiceroDawnstar) has his base height reduced to 0. 90, to keep him around the same height as his two earlier versions. Why does Bethesda make him have different heights in the first place, I have no idea. He also has his hood removed (and added to his inventory).

Technical details/known issues:

- Babette's scarf is there to hide the neck transition between CotR head and child body (it doesn't blend well). Don't remove it.

- Cicero's "hat/hooded" hair has some clipping to the sides, see screenshots. But Cicero is not Cicero without his jester hat, so I refuse to part him with it.

Credits:

special thanks to draqqable for helping with conver