well shit
Well I tried Mantella with both Piper and xVASynth and there's a problem with some of the characters/voices where it craps out after a few lines of dialogue. Nobody seems to know why it does that either but it's a known issue. Which means it doesn't work right with Hadvar. 😭 I get a few lines out of him and then it breaks. So right now my options are either keep going with it and keep restarting Mantella from the in-game menu when it breaks, or shelf it for now and wait for an update and hopefully someone figures out what's wrong with it. There's another one I could try called AI Follower Framework, but it's a lot more involved to set up and my brain can't handle any more of this bullshit right now. Modding is hard, yo. But I did get him and Kharjo talking to each other a little bit too.
Oh well, there's a few other mods I want to try out anyway so it's back to playing normal Skyrim for now. I'll have to content myself with having them talk to each other in c.ai I guess.
I think I'm close to getting Streamlabs set up how I want it, and I have another game I want to play--Destroy All Humans! I've never played it before but I've seen some gameplay of it, so I might start streaming that one next week.