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SPOILER INFO
Mild spoiler. The article tells about the behavior of a few NPCs in a couple of game situations.
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The NPCs whom you have taken up as your followers are your allies. They will not prevent you from raping people. In fact, they will stand guard and defend you when someone tries to disturb you during sex.
Unfortunately, the same doesn't apply to people who ask to accompany you temporarily to a certain place for a certain purpose.
When I was about to set off for Eldergleam Sanctuary, a dude called Maurice asked me politely to take him with me. I saw no reason to decline. What a horrible mistake!
We took off. It was obvious that Maurice would have never made it alive to Eldergleam without me. We were repeatedly attacked before reaching Valtheim Towers and he clearly had no fighting skill whatsoever.
At Valtheim Towers was that bandit girl who demanded money from me. I knew she was a piece of cake to kill, but she was also an adorable piece of ass. Killing her would have been an appalling waste. It occurred to me that I could just pay her off and then I could creep up behind her and G-assault her. I did so. Unfortunately she managed to resist and shouted for help. I noticed a red dot somewhere on the other side of the tower whom my (permanent) follower appeared to be fighting. Meanwhile the bandit girl had resumed her previous position, standing calmly before me with her back turned. I G-assed her properly this time and tied her up. Then I went to check out that other bandit. Imagine my astonishment when I saw that the "bandit" was in fact that sissy Maurice. He had ran away every time he saw a wolf, but now he was fighting my follower because he had seen me G-assing a highway robber. When I approached, he was running into the river with his fists raised begging for mercy. (Meaning, he didn't even have a weapon.) I had been notified of a 100 septim bounty. I thought if I kill that ungrateful son of a bitch, I will get rid of the bounty, as he is obviously the only witness. For some reason the bounty did not disappear, though. (It's a game bug, corrected by the mod NARC, but I didn't know it back then.) And outside Hviterun I was actually attacked by a guard. What an outrage! She was the criminal, not me! And the nerve that abominable coward Maurice had, biting the hand that was protecting him from getting eaten by the wolves.
I would not accept being punished for having done nothing wrong. So I reloaded a previous savegame and this time turned Maurice down. (Back then I didn't know you could pay off your bounty with a console command, and then take the money back.)
The other times, I managed to avoid such conflicts. However, when I was liberating that kidnapped girl Fjotra, it was such a pity that I had to kill one woman after another. Almost all the enemies were female and none of them would let me G-assault her. It was only on my way out with liberated Fjotra that I encountered a lonely bow shooter who had somehow missed the main action. I managed to capture her alive – not, mind you, by creeping up on her but by pressing G while looking at her and them injuring her enough to make her get on her knees. When I began to rape her, Fjotra started to scream for help and my follower killed her. I decided that since she is a child and thus cannot be always expected to be able to control her spontaneous reactions to unexpected violence, I will forgive her. I reloaded and tied Fjotra up. That way I was able to rape that bandit in peace.
It seems to be routine behavior of temporary followers to get hostile when witnessing a crime of yours. That is quite insolent. First they ask you for help and protection because they need to do something important and can't do it alone. Yet they think that they are entitled to tell you what you are or aren't allowed to do. That is rather poor character writing. Realistically, they would of course realize that they can't force their rules on someone who could easily kill them. So if their gratitude isn't sufficient to keep them from attacking me, then their fear should certainly be. Too bad the developers of the game didn't think of something as obvious as that.
That is why reloading in such situations can't be considered cheating.
[originally published 2017-02-25]
