And before you ask, no: I am not on any Civil War quests.

I just booted up Skyrim for the first time after it patched to 1.5.26, and to test the new 12.3 AMD drivers. To do so I walked from Rorikstead to Whiterun. Imagine my surprise on loading up the Whiterun cell when I found a trio of Legion soldiers milling about near the front gate.

These are the three guys you usually see when you get a non-prisoner transport Imperial Legion random encounter out in the wilderness: they're either marching from one place to another or all standing around in the road, talking about why they signed up with the Legion. Except for some reason they've all decided to stand around doing that in Whiterun, and show no indications of leaving.

Anyone have any theories? Just weirdness caused by the patch?

I do run with a few mods, but nothing that should mess with spawns or need an update to the latest patch afaik (I've checked, and they're all up to date anyway.):

I had that happen as well, but they were gone the next day. Just weirdness with the patch, I guess.

I know a guy at Bethesda, who said they're there to make sure the patch didn't cause an outburst of criminal scum.

I suspected as much, but always good to make sure. Glad to hear they eventually disappear, too.


Guess they must've heard my character's been consorting with some shady characters in Riften lately.

Imperial bastards!

Correct me if im wrong but after the battle to either defend or invade whiterun soldiers from one of the major faction will then spawn there. For example if you chose imperials to side with and defend the city from storm cloak invaders after the battle is won don't some imperial soldiers remain? I seem to remember something like that happening. Then again i could be wrong, im not quite sure. But it is a possiblity.

AI pathing got some form of change(ninja fix) during the original 1.5 and this is probably a result of that. Are they just stuck there? I have the two Redguard dudes perpetually stuck inside the gate of Whiterun(the scripted encounter) even though the quest is far from complete(In My Time of Need). I just ignore them but you could maybe mark those soldiers for delete etc. using consoles to get rid of them if it bothers you lorewise. I am not a master of console commands and thus couldn't say for sure.

As I said...I'm not on any Civil War quests. At all. Haven't started them; haven't picked a side yet. So I doubt this is what happened--more likely it's a patch oddity that should hopefully sort itself out. I haven't had a chance to play the game for a good stretch of time yet to see if they go away or not.

And I on the other side did the Imperial Civil War Quest first so I wouldn't have to re Thane and have only seen this type of stuff since the recent 1.5......so either side of the fence same crap diff NPCs stuck same town.