The story of Hold it

Hold it is one of the first mods I released and one that taught me a lot. Interestingly, it's one of the by-products of my dream house – if you remember, I wanted people with tools. Soon enough, I realised other NPCs should have tools as well, and voila! Hold it was born.
Or in the slow process of being born... That's when I discovered Nifskope which I learnt by trial and error. In this particular case, I would modify the position of a mesh, then have a look in-game to see if it clipped or simply if it even was in the NPC's hand. Some items were modified to fit as a shield, others as a lantern so the NPC would carry something different during the night.
It was rather long and tedious but that was only half of it. Once the meshes had been modified to fit in NPCs' hands, they had to be organised into levelled lists by class and gender. You guessed it, that was tedious. After that, I only had to give those items to NPCs. Not all of them mind you, I carefully avoided scripted and blocked NPCs. I set it up in such a way that with every new game, NPCs would get a different item or none at all.

The low down of Hold it

Hold It adds some pauldrons, shields and lanterns that look like common household items to npcs (pacific, non-scripted and not blocked NPCs, 50% chance to get an item).

Installation:

• Unzip in your Data file folder
• Activate the esp(s) of the esp. in the data files option of the launcher. You can choose between the following:

1. Hold it - replacer.esp: This is the base esp. It gives vanilla NPCs random items based on class and sex via levelled lists. Also adds 5 abandoned babies in front of temples in Balmora, Suran, Gnisis, Ald-ruhn and on front of the Skyrim Mission in Ebonheart. It is required for all the following addons.
2. Hold it – SF npc addon (OPTIONAL): randomly gives items to the NPCs added by Starfire’s mod Starfire’s NPC addition. Do not use if you don’t have Starfire’s mod activated.
3. Hold it – MCA8 addon (OPTIONAL): randomly gives items to the NPCs added by Morrowind comes Alive (v8.0) by Neoptolemus. Adds new MCA related items (baskets, backpacks, lutes) to the Hold it levelled lists. Requires MCA.esm.
4. Hold it – NOM addon (OPTIONAL): randomly gives items to NOM NPCs. Adds new NOM related items to the Hold it levelled lists. Requires Necessities of Morrowind 3.0.
5. Hold it – COM addon (OPTIONAL): randomly gives items to COM children. When a kid is offered a gift, they will hold it unless they already holding something else. Adds new COM related items to the Hold it levelled lists. Requires MWChildren_1_0.esm.
6. Hold it – TR addon (OPTIONAL): randomly gives items to TR NPCs. Adds new TR related items to the Hold it levelled lists. Requires TR_Data.esm, TR_main.esp (August 2014 release). HOTFIX: mekirbyish fixed the filepaths to mirror the changes in the latest TR version, find it HERE.
7. Hold it – Resources: only adds a barrel in Pelagiad's tavern with all the Hold it items with the exception or those made from TR, CoM, NoM or MCA meshes.
8. H.E.L.L.U.V.A. Handy Holdables: Randomly adds the Hold it items to traders. Requires HE.L.L.U.V.A. Merchant containers.esm.
9. Hold it – Dreamers: Gives Hold it items to Dreamers, requires Aoimevelho's Dreamer Expansion.
   Important: remember to merge levelled lists (using TESTool, wrye mash, or tes3cmd for example).

Detailed content of the mod:

Important note: if you choose to give the lantern items to an NPC or companion, they will display the said lantern only in some dark surroundings or outside during nighttime. The shields items will always be displayed unless the npc has a better defense without shield or with one he already possesses.

Items added with specific addons will be randomly given to vanilla NPCs as long as the addon and the esp/esm it relies on is enabled.

Lantern items:

Babies (!), basket, Daedric banner, ash statue, fish, bucket, small chest, piece of folded cloth, drum, flower, shiny globe, gold coins, hourglass, incense burner, iron pan, kettle, loot bag, piece of scrap metal, mortar, parchment, pie, pitcher, platter, quill, skull, wooden staff, Daedric staff, glass staff, tankard, bath towel

• TR lantern items:
  Nails, scales and hackle-lo pipe
• CoM lantern items:
  Lollipop, teddy bear
• NoM lantern items:
  Apple pie, food platter, red teapot, string of sausages

Shield items

Fish, bone, bottle, loaf of bread, broom, Bath salts, folded cloth, coda flower, fishing rod, flask, blue flower, yellow flower, book, hammer, coat hanger, hourglass, iron pan, kettle, lute, piece of scrap metal, parchment, pitcher, potion, quill, rolling pin, sack, scroll, muck shovel, Soap, soul gem, wooden staff, Daedric staff, glass staff

• CoM shield items:
  A candy, A cookie, An Azura doll, 4 fairy tales books, A nix hound toy
• TR shield items:
  A black rose, a brush, a cookie, a guar toy, a hackle-lo pipe, a rope, a bottle of wine, a broom, a lute, a shovel
• NoM shield items:
  Cookie, onion, kagouti skewer

Baskets

• Back Basket items filled with:
  cloth, corkbulbs, Kwama Eggs, Fish, flowers, hay, logs, pillows, bottles or nothing
• NOM Back Baskets filled with
  apples, grapes, hay
• TR Back Baskets filled with:
  bettle parts, dry fish
• Handbaskets:
  empty, alchemy supplies, bread, clothing, golden kanet, kitchenwares, sewing material, logs, writing supplies
• CoM handbasket:
  toys and candies
• NoM handbaskets:
  juice ans oranges, muffins and bread
• TR handbaskets:
  TR clothing, TR flasks, bathroom supplies

Version history:

• 1.0
  Original release
• 1.1
  Added spiked club, miner’s pick, spyglass, lock pick, crossbow and ebony
  Completed the read me (credits section)
• 1.2
  Tweaked some meshes for a better fit
  Couple of typos corrected
  Created a shield replacer
• 1.3
  Added the Daedric banner and the ash statue
  Tweaked the replacer
• 1.4
  Completely reworked the replacer making use of levelled lists for greater randomness and avoided giving the items to hostile NPCs
  Created optional addons for MCA 5.2 and Starfire’s NPC addition (1.11) and NOM (2.13)
  Tweaked the value of all items (now 1g), gave the lantern items a black light, reduced the health of shields items to 1 (they’re not meant to be fought with after all)
• 1.5
  Added an addon for Children of Morrowind as well as the following items: an apple, a candy, an azura doll, an nix hound toy, 4 fairy tales books and a cookie
• 1.6
  Added an addon for Tamriel Rebuilt, maps 1 and 2 as well as the following items: a black rose, a brush, a cookie, a guar toy, a hackle-lo pipe, a rope, a bottle of wine, a pot of nails
  Added new icons for a number of items, tweaked the levelled lists
• 1.7
  Updated the NoM and MCA addons to reflect changes in the latest versions of these 2 mods
  Added new items (food platter, red teapot, sausages, onion braid, kagouti skewer, wooden bowl, shopping baskets)
  Redid icons to give them transparency
• 1.8
  New items: the back basket, carried on the back and the hand baskets
  New TR items: broom, lute and shovel
  Optimised meshes
• 1.9
  1 new optional esp, courtesy of Fliggerty: a H.E.L.L.U.V.A.patch
  New unique icons for all the baskets
  5 holdable babies added
• 1.91
  Updated Hold it-MCA.esp to Hold it-MCA8.esp to be compatible with the lastest Morrowind Comes Alive
• 1.92
  Hold it - TR updated (to include map 3 NPCs)
  Hold it - Nom updated
  Hold it - MCA updated (removed Hold it items from hostile npcs, increased chances of seeing Hold it items on MCA NPCs)
  NEW! Hold it - Dreamers, gives Hold it items to Aoimevelho's Dreamer Expension