Who is Asya'la?
The story of Asya’la goes back well over a year. For ages I’d been bugging my wife to try out Skyrim because it is one of my favorite games ever and I really think it would be something she might enjoy. After much badgering she finally caved. Upon leaving the cart from Helgan she immediately pick Khajiit. After a long period of character customization it was time to name her character. This begun a long serious of Googles trying to find the perfect (and lore-friendly) name for her new cat. My wife settled on “Asya’la”, meaning favored maiden.
Nearly all of my wife’s adventures have been livestreamed on Twitch, she enjoyed interacting with a crowd and it seemed to improve her Skyrim experience greatly. We never got too many viewers, one or two a stream, but when they were talkative it was always a good time.
I thought putting an Asya’la easter egg in my modlist, Keizaal, would be a fun thing for users who watched the stream to stumble across. I made a short quest where Asya’la (voiced by my wife) and the Player would capture Silent Moons Camp and she would move in and make it her home. However, after this little experiment I was just left wanting more. It was really fun working with my wife to make this little mod and I just thought there was more potential here. So I began to work on making Asya’la a follower.
My scope expanded greatly as I became more efficient with the Creation Kit. At first Asya’la would be a simple follower with some fun interactions, then she was follower with conversations and a trust system, then she was a follower with a simple quest, then finally she was a follower with an entire time travel dungeon attached. It became really important to me that this mod had some type of personal quest. After playing games such as Mass Effect and using mods such as Lucien I saw the importance of a follower having a storyline to follower as a reward for interacting with them in meaningful ways. I didn’t really want Asya’la’s personal quest to be a quick ten minutes endevour and eventually I realized I wouldn’t be satsified without a dungeon… but the dungeon is a story for another day.
So that is how this mod came to be what it is, but what is the character of Asya’la like? Our titular follower is a Khajiit, but not like one you are probably familiar with. Asya’la was raised by Nords on the northern island of Kottheim, an isolated layover for East Empire ships traveling from High Rock to Morrowind. You may be lead to believe that she would have almost no piece of Khajiiti culture in her, seeing as she was raised solely by Nords far from Elsweyer. However, when she was old enough her parents saw fit to find her a teacher to educate her on Khajiiti culture. What has resulted from his is an interesting cultural blending.
This leads us to Asya’la’s primary conflict: she does not know who she is. Asya’la is neither Nord nor Khajiit and she feels as though she doesn’t quite fit in as either race. If you were to ask her, she would tell you she was a Nord, she was raised a Nord and was only taught to be a Khaiit, however that does not silence the fact that she is different from any Nord.
The main reason that Asya’la has traveled to Skyrim is to find herself. Skyrim is the homeland of the Nord and she had a feeling that it may contain the answers as to who she is. The Player meets her during a very transformative time in her life, she isn’t sure who she is or where she is going. Asya’la will be up for just about anything, being a Nord at heart she is brave and couragous, sometimes to a fault, and wants to prove herself. Her adventures here is Skyrim will define who she is, weather it be a daring hero or a dastardly rogue.