So i just read that you actually can't become a werewolve in skyrim unless you drink the blood in the companions quest. I can't speak for ohsorryoldhorse but i would like to make it more like Sanguinare Vampiris, where you contract the disease and you have a few days to cure it before you turn.

Making it a normal disease would help, bt another part of the problem is that it's also impossible to even encounter werewolves without joining the Companions.

Doesn't seem like much of a problem (can't be sure because ck isn't out yet) , they can be placed in the game as regular appearing enemies.

Actually, you can - in the Silver Hand headquarters (in the cages)

I have a suggestion for the main Silver Hand character. He or she could be splaying on Companions when you meet her/him near their base. Let's say it's a woman so I can write easier... She wouldn't want to talk with all the wittinesses so she would go to the inn and wait for you there. She would tell you about the abomination hidding in plain sight in this town. She knows about their recruting place, and ask you to follow. When companions have silver hand attack Walkas, she would be attack by him when player is trapped - she would survive but her trough would be shattered - making her the first victim you take revenge, and changing her voice into more disturbing one. later it turns out that skinner was her father - no matter what kind of person he was, she loved him and wants revenge, however she is injured so you take her place, later it would turn out that she is now infected and you need to find a cure for her.

When you're done with Silver Hand I have a new project you could work one - Thalmar's Mages guild takes over Collage. This would require to change the agent's voice and personality so you could possibly like him if you choose to help him instead of focusing on advancing in collage of winterhold. You'd be doing the research for him and gaining artifacts for him...

This all sounds great, keep it up. I always felt guilty about murdering so many Silver Hand members during the companion quests, especially that hunting werewolves seemed like a reasonable "mission" to have in the world of Skyrim. Actually I wanted to do it as well, the first reason being that werewolves would be pretty epic opponents, second that I disliked most of the Companion members.

About detecting lycanthropy - ordinary npc's comment in game about hair sticking out of the player's ears etc. and as a werewolf one cant have a good night sleep (I suppose one behaves in the sleep like a dreaming dog) so I guess that after some time it should become evident to the more knowledgeable members of the Silver Hand that the player is a werewolf.

I must say that I really like the idea that you want to include some spy-like elements into your mod. I remember how excited I got when in Thrallmor Embassy I found notes on Ulfric Stromcloak, pity nothing followed from them quest wise. Secrets, conspiracy, tough choices and grey areas is what this game lacks and why it does not feel as real as it should.

@karpikk: our mod is changing the location of the silver hand HQ to a more remote location. That will simply be an outpost. The location will be...shall we say, unique and interesting.

Ideally you'll want to begin our questline fresh, without having done the companions because joining the silver hand will fail the first quest of the companions and vice versa. This makes sense. We will be adding werewolves as regular enemies, and making it possible to become contracted. At the moment were going to only be dealing with a single questline where the character isn't a werewolf so that way we can nail down the basics. Later on well go back and add in options for a werewolf character.

@twowujo: spying and intel gathering has always fascinated me and the thalmor embassy quest was a great nod to it. I envision the silver hand as being a secretive but completely self-sustaining entity, with it's members being selected rather than open recruitment. Theres so little official lore, so we might as well come up with our own

I had an idea when reading this, sent a PM your way since I don't think posting it in the thread would be very smart.

I will be following this mod to see how it unfolds

I would love to have the Silver Hand as a playable faction. I had alot of the same feelings as y'all did when I first ran into them. Just a few things:

Re: Recover the fragments of Wuuthrad and choose to either destroy them or reforge them into a completely new weapon - Wuuthrad was Ysgramor's weapon, there would be no reason to destroy it. If the Silver Hand are a Nordic faction, they'd want it restored. Doing so would make the next thing easy...

Cure the Companions - why not? The Silver Hand, if they learned of the origin of the Companions' wolfishness, would surely want the same thing as Kodlak? Gets you the cure the same way vanilla does. Makes it easy to cure the Comapnions who want cured (and helps leave the Companions' leadership more intact by leaving more of the main NPCs alive). So you gotta kill Aela and Skjor - they LOVE being wolfies, so off with their heads! The other three wolves all indicate they wish to change, and the Companions' questline already allows that. Therefore, the dialogue is already in place for those NPCs, making it easier to integrate into a mod.

Change the Companions questline - Any Silver Hand questline would disrupt the Companions questline (obviously). Are y'all going to work on the Companions questline to make it compatible with your mod? If you wipe out the leadership of the companions (the Circle), who will be around to give even the radiant companions quests? Sure, membership in the Silver Hand can bar one from the Companions, but it would seem to be a shame to just waste 'em all. On the other hand....

Destroying the Circle would leave the Companions with a bunch of scrubs in charge. It would be easy for someone to waltz in and bully those punks into shape. Actually, a much more meaningful way to become the Harbinger of the Companions than the vanilla Companions questline gives you - restoring the Companions their honor, etc. Maybe Kodlak can STILL make you Harbinger - just delay certain parts of his dialogue.

my 2c

The Silver Hand don't strike me as altruistic enough to consider curing their enemies. Knowledge of a cure is supposed to be exceedingly rare. Rarer than werewolves themselves. The Silver Hand want to get rid of werewolves, and they do that by torture and killing. A cure wouldn't be as effective, especially if some people wouldn't want it. It's far easier for them, and more in line with their apparent philosophies, to kill first and ask questions later.

The Silver Hand aren't good guys. Restoring the honor of the Companions is probably the furthest thing from their minds. They don't show much in the way of honor and fair thinking. There's a reason why you find them in crumbling forts and hideouts rather than cities, and why they take names like "The Skinner" with pride.

Hi all,

the 2 above posts gave me an idea. AFAIU werewolving is a criminal(and capital) offence in Skyrim. A werewolf would be, according to old scandinavian legislation, "fredl?s", "peaceless". Meaning anyone including thralls can kill him on sight without any negative consequences whatsoever.

How abt. a possibility to denounce the Circle in such a way that the jarl must arrest(perhaps with SH assistance) and execute them. That would make for lovely cut-scenes wouldn`t it?

Rgds, Haldir

I know - I was commenting on the situation in the vanilla game.



Actually it could be reforged for a different reason - if one of the Silver Hands would apper wielding Wuuthrad and the Shield of Ysgramor, people could be convinced that the Companions had strayed from the patch set by the original 500 (and thus the relics were given to the SH - marking them as the true "descendants" of Ysgramor & co). If played right, it would deal a mighty blow to the reputation of the Companions, making further actions againts them much easier.

I know that antagonasing Silver Hand is easy to make killing them justified, however in Civil war both fraction has their motives, and all soldiers have wifes (or husbands) and children, and yet a good character is still justified to kill them in masses.
Just because Silver Hand was eager to kill the werewolfs doesn't make them evil, many of their families might have been torn appart by werewolfs - probably all of their members have a history with them.

Taking name like "The Skinner" doesn't make them evil - those aren't current civilisation times where there are nuclear bombs, and civills involved casualities - Skyrim is the time of sword (Unfortunetlly non-eruoasia countries missed out on it, by invention of gun powder) and in time of the sword killing and even torturing your enemis for informations makes you a hero - the winner writtes the history.

The Companions are a well known and respected clan with a very dark secret - for Thalos sake, you kill an innocent person the moment they let you join the cricle, and they call it honorable. The Silver Hand has to work in the shadows, batteling inhuman foes that their strenght is no match for. As far as we know "the Skinner" might have been a knowleadage healer (non-magic tyle) that wanted to learn a way of curing this curse by surgery - back then there were no other way to perform an operation.

The Silver Hand aren't evil because of their motives, but because of their actions. If you want to make them more sympathetic then at the least they'd need to stop attacking everyone on sight like bandits. The fact is that currently they don't act like werewolve hunters, they act like a band of outlaw murderers and cutthroats that just happen to have a grudge against the companions. They don't even seem to be particularly good at the whole werewolf hunting thing, seeing as how they apparently never realized that werewolves aren't weak to silver and they get, what 2 kills against the companions while losing what, 30, 40 men of their own?

You know, that's another thing I'd like to see addressed. Why are the Silver Hand so willing to throw away their lives en mass against such massively superior foes? Why do they hate the Companions so much?

I believe this is only the case because 1. the Circle portrays them this way, and 2. The game never really gives you any indication that they may be more than just a seemingly more focused group of bandits. In my mind, Bethesda needed an antagonist for a player doing the Companions questline without thinking to give any sort of back story or views from within the Silver Hand. For all we're led to believe, some of them could be nothing more than mercenaries or bandits who just want simple payments for killing werewolves (the ones doing the torturing, for example), and some of them could feel they are doing a righteous and beneficial act to all of Man and Mer. It's never really specified within the vanilla game.

That's not a bad idea, although for now we're focused on strictly nailing down just the Silver hand part. Having all of these different outcomes depending on if you're a member of the Companions or not, is something nyself and mgel.runs are looking into. Personally, it's something I would love to explore as a writer and a gamer; I say this because many vanilla quests have a few outcomes but not many. If we can do multiple outcomes (such as your suggestion of the Jarl making an arrest) without causing an assload of bugs and glitches, we'll do such things.

To me, Fallout: New Vegas is a great modern example of a game who's quests contain multiple outcomes and decisions, and it's put together very well. How the quests were done in that game will be my inspiration for creating multiple outcomes for our mod (this will be much later, of course).

Exactly. As I mentioned above, some members of the Silver Hand could just be simple mercenaries and some feel they have a legitimate cause to fight for. It's never stated in the vanilla game, and it's something that I'm going to address. The Companions have a great reputation, and while they may not have big numbers, they do have the support of Whiterun's Jarl and his guard force, something that the Silver Hand would not want to be brought on them.

When you join the Silver Hand, we're going to change the dispositions of all of the members that are normally hostile to you so that they don't attack you outright. The fact is, when not even doing the Companions questline on my first playthrough, I came across Driftshade Refuge and they were hostile towards me regardless (which I take as being an oversight).

As for the Silver Hand throwing away their lives en mass, again I feel as if this is an oversight on Bethesda's part for not giving more character to the Silver Hand. Skyrim is a damn good game, I'll say that, but when looking at this from a designing perspective and from making a mod, they really do leave it open to interpretation. As such, this openness is allowing me to write them how I feel they should be written...a morally grey organization. Granted, no one group is truly good unless it's a Priest Order, so the Companions can be seen as just as morally grey as I see the Silver Hand being.


Hope that gives you guys some perspective. I'll try and answer as much as I can.

Well, the problem is that all silver hand members that you meet are based on bandits with every aspect - but that's a mistake on creating dungeons mostly. The best way to go with this quest is to allow the Companions to whip out the main base, so you wouldn't meet not modified members.
The reason why it takes 30 or 40 normal people to kill a werewolf is because they are inhumanly stronger than man, and when it comes to the companions they are even stronger since they combine great warriors and beasts.

The reason why silver hand hates so much the companions why in move "Revenge of the Nerds" the title characters hates the popular kids - they are popular and everybody likes them despite that the main charcter's are their victims and they are the only ones that know how cruel and evil they really are inside. Kardlak said about the circle of hate, and when you come in to their home ordered to kill them all, they try to defend themselves with all the hate they have for you. Werewolfs in Skyrim have to kill people - it's implaneted through gameplay mechanic that you can stay a werewolf as long as you eat bodies of deceased humans (or mer, or beast kind), but you don't feed on animals to do so. Hiancine questline have a werewolf character that killed a little girl just because she was small, weak and easy to hunt like a deer.

Wanting to kill werewolves doesn't make them evil, but the methods they employ do. Werewolves cannot help that they need to hunt and kill, they can't control themselves in beast form, and in human form most are often repulsed by and remorseful of what they've done. The problem is the Silver Hand tortures the victim*, and in addition, they are likely to kill innocent people themselves in their hunt for werewolves.

* In human form, werewolves are victims of themselves. They know what they do but it's impossible to control themselves in beast form, and have to live with the memories for the rest of their lives. Most would jump at the chance for a cure or some control, but few ever learn of a cure or method of control (eg, Hircine's Ring), let alone get the opportunity to try. And depending on who they have to deal with, the price could be worse than the curse.

I doubt they saw it as "honorable" to have you rampage through Whiterun. At most they'd see it as a necessary evil... a person losing control like that only happens on their first change, and they get substantially more control afterward (this of course only applies to the Circle's unique brand of lycanthropy). It's not good to let you loose in Whiterun and kill innocent people, though, no.

I do wonder, however, if you were meant to go back into Whiterun. If you look in the Underforge, there's a back exit that leads outside of the city and away from people. It's quite possible that they intended for you to go out the back after changing, but you unexpectedly forced your way back into the city for whatever reason.

Though just about all interactions you have with the Silver Hand show them this way. It's not the Circle's bias that paints them as "bad guys" that work outside the law.

You see them assaulting Farkas without knowing for sure that he's a werewolf (all they knew was that he was a Companion wearing Wolf Armor; one guy even mentions that he doesn't recognize him, and another responds that he doesn't care). We see them decorate their hideouts with werewolf heads and skins (even if werewolves are demonized, bloody werewolf heads on pikes isn't normal decor). It's been a while since I played the quests, but I'm pretty sure they have some normal people locked up, too. I don't really think it's a mistake on Beth's part that they attack non-Companions on sight.

You could say this is just a fringe element of the Silver Hand, but it would still be something the "upper management" has to be aware of and tolerate to a degree. I get the impression that what you see the Silver Hand doing in-game has been going on for a while.

I understand that people don't always choose if they want to become a murderous killing machine, but after a while all the murders that they commit as a werewolf are on their hands - they could kill themselves instead of constantly giving in to their lust for hunt and human blood.
Companions are even worse in this aspect because they embrace their beast lust, and it involves killing people - although companions might have a different lycantropy than others.

I know that there is a back door in the Underforge, and changing people there is more sacred, but the problem I have is that they really don't care about the possible bad outcome. For me it was son of the new jarl that got killed and few guards by rampaging me, but I didn't know that right after the transformation - the first person I saw after it was Aela and she was pretty sicked about me being more violent in first transformation and says that not to worry cause in the future I will get a hang of it, and just after that she orders me to kill a bunch of people for being a werewolf hunters - at that point I find the notion on being a werewolf hunter pretty noble, and I imagine that it takes quite some balls to hunt a werewolf since they all have alchemy ingredients to cure themselves in case someone gets his arm or leg bitten off. So I kill all of those werewolf hunters and I suppose to feel good now since their methods might have seem harsh to 21st century man, and just when I get back to the Whiterun I see the bodies of people I ripped apart last night. I am in shock because I knew the person I killed and I helped to free his brother (if it wasn't him).
It's good that at this point you only worry about the cure, cause I might not be a willing full killing machine this time around.

I've seen castles with wolf and bear heads on the walls, so I can't see why putting a head of something that was even harder to kill and might have killed your friend, a bad thing - next thing you know people will condemn the jarl of winterrun for having a dragon scull on the wall, because dragons have feelings and they have to eat something.
Since we don't meet many werewolfs in game we don't know much about their habits, and it's possible that torturing is done to get to more werewolfs without endangering innocent people.

Silver hand wanting to kill companion's member without a certainty of him being a werewolf could be a sign of them being the thoughtless bad guys, but then again the so called innocent person would be already in possession of trade marked companion armor (I don't know if you can even buy it without joining them) or just a low ranked companion - in which case Silver Hand might not know who is companions is a werewolf and who's not - maybe all of them all, maybe only few - maybe this person isn't but with enough time he will be convinced that becoming a werewolf is just a part of being a companion. It's safer to kill a fake companion even if he's not a werewolf.

I joined Companions myself, but I'm justing trying to make the choice to join silver hand a reasonable solution.

And that is why we're making this.

Hi Huleed,

we`re not torturing the poor misunderstood overgrown doggies at all...

Just a wee bit of vivisection now and then for the sake of science... We only want to gather knowledge for the common good. Vivisection is used in RL even today after all.

Myself I hope it will be possible to vivisect( I IS scientist you know!!!) in this mod. Nothing explicit of course, the screen goes black and appropriate sounds are heard. And the final results of the research become visible, maybe stuck on the wall...

Rgds, Haldir

The Circle's lycanthropy is different, as they have more control over it due to their pact with the Glenmoril Witches. They aren't forced to change (except for the first transformation) and they don't need to kill to survive.

It's not that they don't care about bad outcomes, it's that bad things sometimes happen regardless. Their lycanthropy makes them much more effective at doing what they do, so who can say how many lives are actually saved by them being werewolves? How many violent criminals or bandit groups have they been able to take care of because of their lycanthropy, to ensure they won't harm more people? They don't want to hurt innocent people and they do what they can to avoid it, but your escape into the city could very well have been an accident they tried to avoid.

These are the same group of werewolf hunters that tried to kill you and Farkas, even though they didn't know if you two were werewolves (and of course, you weren't one at the time). With attitudes like theirs, I have to wonder just how many people they've killed/locked up/tortured that weren't werewolves. They show no honor and have been an on-going thorn in the Companion's side. Aela just took a pro-active stance in solving the problem.

It's not so much that they have werewolf heads as decoration (although I would consider that werewolves are people -- who's to say if that werewolf head is your neighbor's sister), but the crude method with which it's done. Stuffing and mounting a animal head as a trophy is different than simply decapitating a werewolf and shoving its bleeding head on a pike to show how much you hate werewolves.

The majority of werewolves are innocent people. They don't usually become what they are on purpose, and they can't stop themselves from changing or from killing when they change (and not everyone is able to bring themselves to suicide, and instead hope and look for a cure, or go insane). I honestly wouldn't be surprised if http://uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Physicalities_of_Werewolves came about because of the Silver Hand's work.

The issue here is that not all Companions are werewolves. I doubt most of them even know about the werewolves or Circle, let alone are one. Killing someone because he's a Companion and may be a werewolf (without knowing for sure), or because he may be convinced to become a werewolf, is very much a sign of them being thoughtless bad guys, in my view.

Oh, I have no issue with that at all. I think fleshing out the Silver Hand more and making them playable would work very well to add more to the game. I just don't think it would be good to try and change the Silver Hand into something they weren't meant to be... they are far from being a group of noble, well-meaning werewolf hunters. Their hands are very dirty, and they're more inline with bandits and criminals who just happen to have a cause people could get behind. But just because they're "bad guys" doesn't mean they can't be interesting to explore or anything.

Don't forget that torture is widely accepted in Tamriel. Just because it's 'bad' doesn't mean it isn't done. Shoot, one of the first scenes in the game takes place in an Imperial torture chamber.

Re: wolf armor - if I'm not mistaken, only the Circle wears the Wolf armor, so if the Silver Hand knew that the Circle were all werewolves, it would make perfect sense for them to go by the armor alone (as far as identification purposes).

Hi Huleed,

werewolves are not innocent people. At best they have been innocent people once. Now they are a threat to society pure and simple, to be exterminated.
Accepting the risk of collateral dam for the sake of greater good as the Circle does makes them a very dubious organisation.

When speaking to Aela(?) after killing of the giant she says something abt. the Companions doing good if the coin`s good enough.
They are a bunch of hypocrite though courageous mercs, nothing more. The Cirlce doesn`t deserve mercy or special consideration.
And thx for mentioning those witches, hopefully they`ll get what they deserve too.

Rgds, Haldir

It all boils down to a question: Does the end justifies the means?

Lycanthropy is as serious disease as vampirism and in Oblivion we could only join the vampire hunters, and it was never morally grey as it is done with the companions. Lycanthropy of the companions is what makes the discussion so hard, because they are different than normal werewolfs with control, but we don't know how well their control is - a Dragonborn that consumes and enslaves the power of dragon souls doesn't express his thirst for blood (due the blank slate nature), but we don't know what Aela does whenever she goes to hunt, and what or who she hunts.
However the difference between normal and companion lycanthropy does not matter - it's a huge secret and while we as player character talk about it next to non circle members we don't know if they even suspect anything. So if Silver hand members that are a band of hard man working outside the law to get rid of the werewolf menace somehow found out that the prestigious Companions are werewolves - while even working helping those foul creatures is a hideous act - I can't blame them for taking every opportunity and any possible solution to take them down, e.g. killing them by separating them and attacking one at a time in a bigger group - it's called tactics.

The worst part is that people see humans along with werewolfs inside cages and they assume that they aren't infected and just turned back to normal. The werewolves you free there attack you to feast on your flesh, so I wouldn't care if someone that tried to kill me dies - and I would like to point out that this is the way that in TES we differ the honorable self defense and murder.
In Oblivion we were destroying a Nacromancer's guild for trying the resurrection magic (their main crime), while in Skyrim the Collage teaches you how to do that, and your teachers suggest to find a specimen outside the cities to not bring too much attention to yourself. The law officer ordered me destroy the Dark Brotherhood, because it's a secretive assassin guild - they don't care if by the end of the day they do good deeds by justified force, and it's almost the same guild as the Companions except the later hide the fact that they use evil curse.

The reason why the Silver Hand and the Companions didn't work things out by talking isn't because SH is full of evil thugs - I bet that with the law on his hand the leader of companions could resolve all dispute and ask for help in lifting the curse. The reason why this dispute grows to dramatics escalation is because companions are blood lust driven beasts by their curse, as much as silver hand is by their hatred towards the werewolves - they both are in the grey spectrum, and the reason why we pain Companions as good white characters is because they are the only ones we get to join and know.

Well actually the reason we paint the companions as "good guys" is because we know they are decent people and their lycanthropy is unique and allow them to remain in control and not go on a rampage beyond the first time. They don't need to feed on people to survive or out of bloodlust, so their "curse" is really more of a "cursed with awesome" situation, at least until the afterlife.

Of course you are absolutely right that no one else knows about their special lycanthropy, so the Silver Hand is perfectly justified in assuming they are all ravenous beasts that go out preying on the innocent every night and are using their guild as a front to cover up their crimes and keep the Jarl and the people duped into supporting them. (though if they actually bothered to investigate the city some, they'd probably realize that the distinct lack of people complaining about werewolves attacks and hiding in their homes at night in terror would be a good indicator that the Companions aren't doing this, but then again they might just assume the Companions are smart enough to hunt someplace far away from Whiterun)