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My character is a big, blonde, sexy, blue eyed Nordish lass. She was just out picking pretty blue flowers just north of Chorrol when a nasty bandit charged her with a great big warhammer. So she cast Soul Trap on him, then Nordic Frost and killed him dead (you don't want to mess with her when she's picking flowers). Now, she had 2 empty Common Soulgems and one empty Grand gem on her. The game said "no gem big enough". WTF? I know I soultrapped a bandit before, and the bandit had a common soul. That's exactly why she had the common soulgems on her. Do some bandits have NPC souls? That seems bizarre.

All bandits have NPC souls, because they're human. You can't trap a human soul in anything but a black soul gem - see here: .

Quick rule of thumb: If they have the ability to speak/yell actual words at you, you'll need a Black Soul Gem. This includes humanoid NPCs, Dremora, Aureal and Mazken.

I've often wondered why my Azura's star didn't catch souls. Now I know; thanks. The more I play this game, the more I realize how one dimensional my play has been. I'm still playing the first character I ever made, which is an Altmer mage born under the lady currently level 41. I've recently discovered the hidden fun in using fortification and enchanting magic as well as charm spells. Early on I discovered alchemy. I'm researching new possibilities for a character that can enchant items, trap, detect and silence souls, go invisible and paralyze, and deliver deadly ranged attacks while falling back on some good old hand to hand from time to time. I think I'll enchant a bow to silence an opponent and apply a poison to the arrow and after the sneak attack, blast them with lightning.

To get Black soul gems, go to the Dark Fissure with multiple soul gems of any type, wait until nightfall, you should see a beam of light coming down from the sky and hitting the altar in front of the entrance to the cave. Place your gems in there and cast soul trap. Presto! Black soul gems. The light hits the altar every eight days.

Ft Isturus west of Skingrad (just past Fyrlight Cave) is easier to get to. I think Dark Fissure is one of the hardest caves to get to in the game and I just want to smack Raminus Polus every time he askes me to go there.

I thought that you could only use grand soul gems? If you can use any soul gems I have been making the game very hard for myself.

There's a for making Black Soul Gems. You can make basically unlimited numbers, as long as you have two filled Grand Soul Gems which stack together in your inventory. I've made 50 at a time before. Just sat there until either I was bored, or forgot to remove and replace the Grand Soul Gems.

Not that I'm suggesting you use exploits. Or Black Soul Gems. Necromancy is evil, and banned by Arch-mage Traven! It's just that if you're going to use Black Soul Gems, you might as well save some time...