I absolutely love Skyrim, but even when it was new, I felt the appearances of its NPCs could be improved. Many excellent mods exist now to tweak those appearances, but I wanted to contribute as well. So I created a mod to give folks another option to improve the appearances of Skyrim's dignified elders. I hope you enjoy it!

Here is what I tried to accomplish. I chose the characters that were listed as elders in the creation kit, were referred to as older, or sounded or seemed older to me, and tried to improve their appearance in a lore-friendly way. I gave them haircuts from ApachiiSkyHair or KS Hairdos, and in a few cases, I also changed brows and beards and removed dirt from faces. I tried my best to keep any changes true to the character, often taking inspiration from Bethesda's choice of hair. I also tried to give each elder I touched a different hairstyle, so they would be more memorable. And I tried to be respectful to the character -- I like these people! They deserve more attention.

What do I mean by true to the character? Well, I tried to give the slightly more elaborate haircuts to the upper class elders. If the vanilla haircut had braids, I tried to find a haircut with braids. I tried to keep the long hair long and the short hair short. With several of the bald and balding male elders, I gave them a bit more hair. I imagine it is what they would have wanted, and there aren't many (any?) mod-added styles for the balding. Septimus Signus, who is just a bit crazy, got a wild and haggard looking hairstyle. Hilde, who Sven worries others might think is crazy, got hair that  is mostly well coiffed, but looks just a little unkempt so you might wonder, "Is she crazy?". Elgrim's hair is tied back so it won't get in the way of his work. So there are a few examples for you.

I also removed hats and bonnets from some characters so the player could see the hair. I think that probably made the greatest difference to me in making the elders distinctive and memorable, since there are only so many different hats and bonnets in the game. And in some cases (like Arngeir for example) , I was surprised by what I found Bethesda had selected for the hairstyle, but tried nevertheless to pick a similar hairstyle that better brought out what I thought they intended.

For more details, please see the screenshots in the Images section and check out the list of characters covered in the Articles section.

Please note that this mod requires the Unofficial Skyrim Special Edition Patch and forwards changes from it. It also requires KS Hairdo's SSE and ApachiiSkyHair SSE (main file and male hairs file) since it references hairstyles from those mods. Without these other mods, Dignified Elders will cause Skyrim to fail to start. 

I do not intend to publish a version for legendary edition, or for XBox or PS4. However, I believe I have selected permissions open enough to allow others to adapt Dignified Elders for those platforms provided they credit me and the authors of the required mods.

I have provided a compatibility patch for Consistent Older People, which is a staple of my personal load order. If you're using it, I would load Consistent Older People, then Dignified Elders, then the patch. I might provide other compatibility patches if there is enough interest and I have enough time. Let me know what's needed!

On a personal note, this is my first published mod. Constructive feedback is welcome and appreciated!

As of version 2.0, the following mods were active for facegen export:
♦ Better Makeup for SKSE 
♦ XCE - Warpaint and Dirt 
♦ PAINTERLY - a High Res Vanilla Warpaint Retexture 
♦ Forsworn and Blackblood and Boethiah Tattoos 2k