Possible minor spoilers here...

Hello folks

I know this is a notoriously bugged quest, and there has already been several threads about it, but I was unable to find a good solution. Apologies if I've missed it.
Anyway, my problem appears to be slightly different to those of others:
The very first time I travelled to Windhelm, Susanna the Wicked was already dead and lying in the cemetary surrounded by the three villagers - and no guard comes up to me and starts telling me about the murders. And that's how that situation has remained. No means of progression.

I've tried leaving and returning to Windhelm several times, though I gather that is more for kick starting Susanna's murder in the first place, but as I said she was already dead the first time I visited the city.

Any thoughts??

And once again, sorry if I'm scrubbing well burnished grooves.

hello i hope this helps but for me to get it to trigger i fast traveled to whitrun and then back to windhelm 5 times then i went to graveyard and you see a guard and some people and you will see a dead body talk to the guard and that will trigger it

Thanks for the response LarryB, but as I said the body and the bystanders are already in the graveyard. But there is no guard to talk to. Fast travelling numerous times has not changed this.

Anyone else having this particular version of the nigh on ubiquitous 'Blood on the Ice' glitch?
Any more suggestions would be most appreciated.

Thanks folks.

Hmm... Well I've seen the suggestion that the guard has wandered away, back to his usual schedule. So maybe hang out in the guards quarters talking to all the guards you can? Use kill command so you don't repeat talking to them, and just talk to every guard in Windhelm until you find the right one?

THat could work...

I can't even get the people or the body to show up

I had this because I did the Imperial quest to take over Whiterun. When she finally appeared there was no guard, because the guard is scripted to be a Stormcloak, but now there are none in the city. My solution was to advance the quest via console.

Thanks for the suggestions folks.

Yeah, maybe I'll just try talking to every guard, I just wonder if the trigger requires the guard (maybe even just a random guard rather than a flagged, quest-essential guard) to be in that specific location in the grave yard. I'll play about and see.

Yeah, ErikCola, your problem seems to be the more common version of this issue. And one possibly solved apparently by the 'fast travel between Windhelm and another city 4 or 5 times' routine. Maybe try that if you haven't already.

I haven't done any quests yet which tinker with Stormcloak/Imperial politics. All the guards in Windhelm are still Stormcloak. However, what console tomfoolery will advance this along? I dont want to resort to it yet, but I'd like to know there is at least a last ditch solution.

In the meant time, anyone else got any thoughts on this?

I really appreciate the suggestions.

i see you cant get the guard to show up well humm did you do any darkbrotherhood quest because if you did it mite not trigger thats what happen to me i did all darkbrother hood and it bugged blood on the ice quest i had to start over and i did not start any darkbrother hood quest and it work for me i read online if you start the darkbrother or complete there quest line it will bug this quest

I had the same problem as the OP. body there no guards. NOthing worked and I wasn't in the dark brotherhood either. Nor theives guild. I had just barely started the main quest and was hopping around doing misc objectives, still wouldn't trigger. So now 40 hours later, there is still a dead body in the graveyard and no guard has any info for me either. It's just plain bugged.

Hmph. Nope. Not done the Dark Brotherhood quest.
I'm wondering whether to avail myself of some sort of eldritch console command, or just bide my time on the off chance that Bethesda may remedy this in a future patch.

the guard should be by the dead body in the grave yard the guard mite be there at night thats when i talk to him

Yep, I've tried waiting there all night for a guard. Nothing.
Silly guard. I expect he's weaving a hammock and soaking in the fragrance of quiche.

Righty-ho.. weary of this now.
I'm standing in the grave yard, the body of Susanna the Wicked sprawled in front of me, and Calixto, Helgird, and Silda standing around endlessly - no useful guard in sight other than the one who just walks his patrol and spouts the usual sequence of small talk.
So, what console tomfoolery do I need to inject at this point to kick start this quest??

..... anyone know of console commands to get this moving?

Thanks.

Yep, here ya go . . .

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Blood_on_the_Ice

Thanks Waen

At the very bottom of that page it says:
'On the PC, it is possible to use the console to advance through the quest by entering setstage MS11, MS11b stage, where stage is the number of the stage you wish to complete. It is not possible to un-complete (i.e. go back) quest stages.'

I'm pretty unfamiliar with quest related console commands. What are the two lists of stages - MS11 and MS11b?
Basically what exactly do I have to type in (when I'm standing in the graveyard as described above) to get the guard to talk to me about the murders?

Thanks for your help, and apologies for my buffoonery!

No apologies necessary, I get buffooned a lot myself.

Ok, here's what ya want to do . . .

1. Press the Tilde key to open the console commands screen.

2. Type "player.setstage MS11 250" without the quotes. That's what you would enter to complete the quest altogether and be done with it. Choose what stage and which ending you want if you just want to move on to a certain part.

3. After you've chosen what you want to do, press the Enter key.

4. Press the Tilde keyagain to close the console commands window.

Done.


EDIT: Sorry, i didn't completely answer your questions. MS11 and MS11b are the two different ways to go with the quest as outlined on the page link. Read them and choose how you wish to proceed. You can't go back steps you can only proceeed further. So, I would choose the numbers after 40 if you want to try and do most of it.

Example: "player.setstage MS11 41"

Then proceed on with the rest of the quest.

Ah this is splendid, thanks Waen.

I'm still a little confused by the quest stage structure as detailed by that table on the webpage.
If I want to start the quest from the beginning (In the graveyard with the body and the townsolk), why would it be best to jump to stage 40 onward?
How come I dont start at stage 1? Ofcourse, according to the table stage 1 involves Jorleif. But according to the quest breakdown he doesnt enter the narrative until slightly later.
My reading of that table would suggest that stage 10 might be the best place to start: 'Question the witnesses' - as apparently that is what the first (in my case missing) guard suggests.
Am I missing something? Why did you reckon stage 40 onwards to be better? I dont want to miss out on anything y'see.

Thanks

Ah, I think I see.
I was under the impression that once the quest had actually started and you were at a distinct and acknowledged 'stage', then the relevant players would automatically be there. In other words I thought even though the guard isnt there now, he would magically appear once the quest started rolling and he was subsequently required.
But I'll try this when I get home.
Hoorah for this coalescence of counsel!

The quest has already started, or the body wouldn't be there, it just hasn't been added to your questlog at that stage.

Of course. Thanks folks!

Just as a matter of interest, would there be a console command to make the relevant guard appear? I know there are the kill and resurrect commands so I wondered if there was one to make this specific guard present, but then I suppose that would depend on the relevant guard being a distinct and specific quest character (with a code), where actually he's probably more likely to be a generic guard who happens to have specific scripting just at that point.
Ah.. I'm just mindoodling now. I'm bored.

Thanks for your help.

^ This.

Like Grimsonius stated, since you were encountering issues with the guard, specifically, not being able to find and be addressed by him, I just picked a starting point past that.

Hello again
Finally returned to this little conundrum. I used player.setstage MS11 10 rather than MS11 40, just to see if anything would happen with the missing guard. I questioned the witness and the next stage kicked in - Return to the Guard.
As expected there was no guard to speak to, but there was a mysterious inaccessable marker position.
The marker lead me out through the main gates of Windhelm, but then somehow still seemed to be within the model of the city as viewed from outside.
To cut a long story short I used the console to turn off collision detection so I could get to the marker, and found the up to now missing guard had fallen through the world and was standing about 50 feet below the cemetery!!

I could talk to him and continue the quest, but is there anyway I can go back to an earlier save then, using a console command, have him appear somewhere sensible? Targetting him in console gives the ID 000d3c13.
I know there's a command that does this by making a duplicate NPC appear, but it would niggle me to still have a guard lurking beneath the world like that. So is there a command to actually move that NPC? So he disappears from beneath the world and reappears in front of me??

But yeah, other's who are having similar problems with this quest should look to see if the guard has fallen through the world!