So I played Skyrim for a few days on my standard "figure out how it works this time around" sword and board plate armor warrior. Faendal was alive in Riverwood for that first character and I was able to do the love triangle quest with Camilla and Sven no problem.

Anyways today I started a new character cause I wanted to be a bit more stealthy and use a bow, I get to Riverwood, don't really even pay attention to anything just go talk to Gerder and get that out of the way then I head to the smithy to sell off my junk and do the crafting quests and right by the stairs, curled up in a fetal position...dead...is Faendal.

No one in the village seems to be alarmed at this dead body in the street. The smiths daughter sits there regaling me with tales of her intentions to be a blacksmith herself and all that...and theres a dead elf just sitting there.

So I reload a save I had in Helgen, ran through it again, ran all the way to Riverwood, and lo and behold, theres Faendal....dead in the street, just in a slightly different position.

So I was like...somethings not right with this at all, I deleted all the saves for that character, completely started another one, blew threw Helgen ran to Riverwood and.....Faendal is laying dead in the street again, no obvious reasons as to why.

I'm not using any .esp based mods that could be causing this inadvertently. So I'm not sure what the heck is going on.

Surprised no one else has seen this. Can only find a few non-gamesas forum threads about it, no one seems to know why hes dead, just that hes dead.

He was dead in my only time playing as well. his body was in the grass between the smithy and the building next to it. At first it seemed like nobody in town cared, but later i saw a woman crouching near his body and looked like she was mourning or praying over him... heh, thought it was supposed to be like that till i heard about the quest concerning him. weird.

How odd. I started playing the game after release on Steam probably around an hour or two after it unlocked and on that first game Faendal was alive when I arrived, and he continued to be alive in the village even on the times I returned there. But every new game I've created since my first game hes dead. Its super weird.

I've done the intro about 10 times and I haven't seen him dead yet. Interesting.
Does radiant story give his quest to anyone else? Can you still get the letter from Sven?

When hes dead no, theres no interactions with Sven or Camilla in regards to that quest.

Hmm interesting. I actually killed him on my only playthrough. I chose to rat Sven out and then to kill Faendal so I could take her as my prize.

Maybe radiant AI in action somehow? Seems unlikely but I wouldn't know why else he'd be dead.

Well there just doesn't seem to be any impetus that would cause him to be dead on first arrival to Riverwood. Dragon spawns don't start becoming regular until after you complete the chain to Dragonsreach and give the table to the court mage there.

After that I'd assume random dragon attacks could be to blame for showing up at Riverwood and finding a lot of people dead, but this is literally right on the first entry to the town.

I've moved all my saves to a back up directory this time and I'm going to try a run as if I've never played the game before to see what happens this time.

It won't explain the mistery but here's my personal story with Faendal. I did th Camilla-Sven-Faendal story reporting to Sven about Faendal.
Some time later I went to his house steal some stuff and I had to kill him.

Some hours laters

Faendal hangs near the edge of the town, I fought several wolves near there, It is very possible a wolf or bear killed him.