The Dark Side of Neon - An Ebbside Overhaul

Features

9 hidden Aurora stashes for you to find on the rooftops of Ebbside

5 stashes with contraband and legendary loot, guarded by the Syndicate and Disciples

Adds unnamed Striker gang members to the inside and outside of Madame Sauvages Place and Euphorika. Now the 4 named Strikers aren't the only ones in the gang. They will defend their turf if any Disciples chase you into the area.

Dynamic crowds - crowds start disabled in Ebbside (Neon Core is unaffected) to reflect the dangerous state of Ebbside before the player arrives. If you complete the Ebbside Strikers quest line and side with the Strikers, crowds will return to Ebbside as a result of it becoming a safer place. If you side with the Disciples, crowds will stay disabled. This does apply retroactively to save files if you have already completed the quests.

Supporting Lore

I tried to base this mod on what we learn through dialogue with various Neon NPCs. We are told that Ebbside is a dangerous place, and that the Disciples have the Strikers penned up in Madame Sauvage's place, and kill people for fun. The Disciples control the east of Ebbside, stopping at Ryujin Tower.

Meanwhile, the Syndicate defends their holdings on the west side of town, protecting the rooftops near the Trade Tower and their hideout near Frankie's Grab and Go.

The only people on the streets of Ebbside are beggars and Aurora addicts, too poor to afford to live anywhere else.

If you choose certain dialogue options during the Crimson Fleet quest line, Myka tells you that she uses the Ebbside Strikers as muscle to deal with unruly patrons. The Strikers now have a small presence inside and just outside of Euphorika.

Load Order

This is mostly load order neutral, but you should make sure to load it above any other mods that affect Neon and contain deleted references.

Compatibility

This mod is designed to be lightweight and compatible. 90% of what is does is adding new NPCs and new loot containers. I have minimized vanilla form edits as much as possible. It does not touch Neon Core, only Ebbside.

Starfield Community Patch - Yes

Rabbit's Real Lights Neon - Yes, load it below this

Neon player homes, both vanilla and modded - Yes

Neon Vertigo - Yes, load it below this

Expanded Cities - Yes, load it below this

Gameplay Notes

I have tested this on saves both before and after completing the Ebbside Strikers quest. If you install this on a save where you have already completed the quest line by siding with the Strikers, there will be some narrative dissonance, because this adds Disciples to different areas of Ebbside. If you install this on a save where you are in the middle of or haven't started the Strikers quests, the narrative will work fine.

I have hand placed all new hostile NPCs to avoid directly interfering with any vanilla quest NPCs. However, this doesn't mean you won't have to get past bad guys to get to a quest objective.

The Syndicate and Disciples added by this mod will not immediately aggro on you. If you approach, they will warn you to go away and give you a narrow window of opportunity to leave. If you do aggro them by getting too close, or by not leaving the area, they will attack and alert any friends they have nearby.

If you are in [DANGER], enemies can and will follow you through load screens. This is vanilla behavior and not controlled by this mod. It is possible to lure Disciples into Striker territory, and vice versa. If you like chaos, you can even get them to chase you into Neon Core. If you are feeling cheesy, you can put landmines in front of the doors right after you go through.

All Disciples, Syndicate, and Strikers are leveled to the player, so expect them to put up a decent fight. There are no conflicts with NPC leveling mods because this mod uses custom NPC records.

Technical Details

The change to the position of a lamp post inside Madame Sauvage's is intentional, it was interfering with NPC pathfinding.

All added NPCs are not flagged persistent, and are not set to respawn, so bodies should get cleaned up when the cell resets. However, the Disciples that spawn as part of vanilla quests are flagged for respawn by Bethesda, and I have not changed this behavior in the spirit of minimizing vanilla edits.

Credits

Bethesda for CK jmpz11 for Plugin Bridge Elminster and crew for xEdit JRamos, his tutorials showed me how to get the "warn, but don't attack" behavior working for enemies, as well as sandboxing 510deshawn and Darkfox127 for more CK tutorial vids