something that stuck out to me was her rant about player NPCs because it seemed out of place and more about a specific player than just the player npc management

I had her create her smithy as I felt uncomfortable by player-driven developments in this NPC setting that were not communicated to me. I was uncomfortable that an NPC I had no involvement in creating (and had created, but was not asked if I had created to fill the position of Head Blacksmith, despite being the only player character who stayed consistently under the blacksmith heading) and was thus under the full control of that player had an opinion on my character. (How much of that NPC's opinion was the player's when the mods made it blatantly clear that player-driven NPCs were under the control of the player who created them?)

And then when you look who created the head blacksmith npc, it turns out it's Eppy/Nikolai's player, so there really does seem like there's been cast issues forever now