OK, I made all the aliases optional, and checked, and there is one alias that won't fill.

It's an "external Alias" from another quest..That quest IS running, and the alias IS loaded there when I try to start up the other quest when I check SQV, but the alias still won't load in the second quest.

I can't make it a direct reference, because it's created by the first quest.

Anyone have any idea what weird voodoo might be causing this to not work?

What do you mean? Is this a quest that is part of another ESP (mod)?

Could the check boxes 'Reserves Reference' or 'Allow Reserved' have anything to do with it? I'm not quite sure how they work, the wiki's wording about it seems off.

It's not from another ESP...as I said, my first quest creates the Alias (A quest item piece of jewelry) and is supposed to pass it on to the next quest so it can be used in a scene later. The first quest doesn't reserve the reference, and checking "allows reserved" doesn't affect the outcome anyway.

Can you just remove the item completely at the end of the first quest and recreate it instantly after in the second quest?

It's not that simple...this is filled from a set of random rolls...it could be a ring, amulet, or crown. If I just create it in the second quest, it will introduce the possibility of making the wrong item.

Anyway, this is a basic function of the CK, and by all I've been able to figure out, it SHOULD work. But it's not for some reason.

If you can't get it working, a global variable could hold the type of object created, and it could be recreated in the second script with accuracy.

Ewww...that's such a Kludge!

What I want to know is why it's not working. If you can't use an alias from another quest to fill an alias, then why is the functionality even there?

Oh, and the Kludge failed too. And I tried loading it through a third quest, and THAT quest can't grab it either.

Well after 8 hours of trying to get this to work, I have come to the conclusion that either this quest is completely messed up in some way (and it's a clean savegame, so it's not a corrupted save), or you simply cannot ever share a "created" reference between quests. The OTHER alias in my quest shares just fine, and it's a specific reference, but as soon as I Try to create a reference alias, it will no longer work as an Exterior reference.

I don't know why it won't work--I haven't tried external aliases myself, but certainly the way you've described things, it seems like it should work.

That said, if it is imperative to have a solution, another possible kluge might be to make the item alias optional in the second quest, and then have a script attached to that quest, with the reference alias from the first quest passed as a property. Then OnInit of the quest script, test if the first quest is running, and if so force that property's reference into the optional item alias. Again, haven't done this myself, but in theory I think that would work. Obviously not as elegant a solution as using an external alias, though!

I think I may have figured it out...you can't share a quest reference if it's in a container. If I put it AT the chest instead of IN the chest, it works.

But with all the fiddling I did today, my other quest will load the alias...but doesn't start properly...I don' t get the "Started...." banner, though it executes the code in the stage 0 block.