SO at first I thought that was it! I re-dl'ed EVERYTHING and fresh installed - All was right with the world, until I had a hunch, upon loading Rottendubs preconfigured save - versus the NORD I just made, the shields were invisible again and the *animations were off* compared to the Nord character. Whatever has been setup in the preload is configured for NORDS - had shield probelms with Bretons and Wood Elves - Nords = GG even under pressy pressy spam spam mode of equipping shield sword combo. At least we can do Nords EZ - maybe make a completely new save? Try that out? Im not versed even *remotely* enough to know how to configure the 45, 47, 35 etc positions for the animations - the NORD reaches for his back and the back sword - Ill tinker some more and put the sword position on the back with the other races and see what happens.