After making the transition from Morrowind to Oblivion, Emma sought to create a companion for herself. This resulted in the creation of
Vilja, a Nord alchemist designed to keep Emma company as she traversed the world of Oblivion. While Emma originally created Vilja for personal use, even voicing the character herself, she eventually released her to the public with the help of fellow modder Charles "CD" Cooley. Vilja received a lot of admiration from avid players, but a particularly intriguing email titled "Praise for Vilja" came a few months after Vilja 1.0 launched.
"The first letter from Terry arrived in March 2010, only three months after the original release," Emma told Eurogamer. In this message, Pratchett mentioned how enamoured he had become with Vilja, specifically mentioning his appreciation for the way in which she would acknowledge small gifts such as strawberries. "He also praised the modding community as a whole, mentioning how impressed he was by the effort put into mods, and how much he enjoyed using them."
Emma didn't know if this was the real Terry Pratchett, but she responded anyway and the two struck up a regular correspondence. Pratchett gradually started to make small suggestions of his own based on his experience with Vilja. "He described how he had been exploring goblin caves with Vilja, and how he wished that he could study the goblins without having to kill them," Emma said. "The day after, I made him a 'goblin peace amulet' to make the goblins non-hostile and allow him to explore their dungeons without having to kill anyone." As it turns out, the reason Pratchett was fascinated with goblins in the first place was due to research he was conducting for his 2011 novel, Snuff.
