Steward (Hearthfire)

Stewards are individuals who offer their service to protecting and maintaining a homestead in.

Choosing a steward
Once a homestead includes a basic Small House, the option to appoint a steward becomes available. Once a steward has been chosen they cannot be dismissed unless they die, however they can be moved to a different homestead by recruiting them as a follower, then following the same recruitment procedure at the new homestead.

Stewards can be recruited as followers again at any time, and this will not interrupt their stewarding duties. If a trainer or a quest-giver is hired as a steward, they do not lose these roles.

Several followers are available to serve a steward and they can only be appointed to three homesteads in Skyrim:
 * Windstad Manor located near the salt marshes of Hjaalmarch.
 * Lakeview Manor located in the forests of Falkreath.
 * Heljarchen Hall located in the snowy tundras of The Pale.

Followers who can become Stewards
If a follower is within close proximity of the homestead, and they qualify for stewardship, they will initiate dialogue and remark that such a fine homestead needs a steward and will offer their service. Alternatively, a new dialogue option will appear for the follower while on the property if the follower qualifies for stewardship. Followers who qualify are listed below:

Interactions
Once a steward has been chosen, they can perform several tasks that can be considered too trivial or time consuming for a lord of a homestead. These include the following:

Housing improvements
Stewards can arrange for several additions to be added to the homestead. These include:


 * Carriage - 500 - A personal carriage that can travel to several major and minor settlements.
 * Bard - 1500 - A personal Bard who will live in the homestead and perform upon request.
 * Horse - 1000 - Requires a stable to be built first, where it will stay.
 * Cow - 200 - Requires an animal pen to be built first.
 * Chicken - 25 - Requires an animal pen to be built first. A maximum of 3 can be bought.

Buying supplies
Stewards will arrange for building supplies to be delivered to the main chest located next to the Carpenter's Workbench. These include:


 * Clay - 20 bricks for 20
 * Quarried Stone - 20 stone for 100
 * Sawn Logs - 20 logs for 200

Furnishing the homestead
Rather than buying materials and crafting all the furnishings in a homestead, a Steward will offer to deal with the whole process for a flat rate. If this option is chosen, the furnishing won't appear instantly as they do when crafted, rather, each piece of furniture will appear over a period of many days.

The total base cost of buying all the materials and crafting the furnishings yourself is a fraction of the cost, albeit more time consuming.
 * Small House - 1000
 * Main Hall - 3500
 * Library - 1500
 * Trophy Room - 1500
 * Bedrooms - 2000
 * Greenhouse - 1500
 * Enchanter's Tower - 2500
 * Alchemy Laboratory - 2500
 * Armory - 2000
 * Storage Room - 1000
 * Kitchen - 1500

Bugs

 * Purchasing furnishings from your steward will sometimes say "You can't afford that", even though you have enough. This can also occur when you remodel your home into an entryway before hiring a steward at which time you will be unable to purchase the furnishings for your entryway. There is no known fix for this bug yet.
 * Steward may not give option to hire bard in Windstad Manor and Heljarchen Hall. (A way to fix this is to kill the cow then enter and exit the house so that the corpse disappears. This will bring back the option to buy the bard. Just make sure you buy the bard before buying the cow again)
 * Purchasing furnishings from your steward will sometimes not work and the furnishings will not appear.
 * Marcurio may never give the dialogue option to be hired as steward.
 * If hired as a Steward, Marcurio may offer no dialogue options other than to become a Follower again.
 * If hired as a Steward, Ogol at Lake View Manor may cause the Xbox to lock up when he is seen inside. One work around for this is to have him join as a companion then wait outside. This bug seems to affect the adopted children also, causing the game to lock up if the children see you.
 * If hired as a Steward, Aela the Huntress will eventually follow you around your house and draw her weapon and interupt the Dragonborn at any time. While she is following the Dragonborn around the property, the system treats her as a pursuing guard, preventing fast travel even though she will not attack. If you have her as a follower & steward, after you dismiss her as a follower, she may sometimes return to Jorrvaskr instead of the homestead you hired her for as a steward.
 * There is a bug in which all the "paid" followers are unable to become proper stewards: they either don't offer the steward dialogue or only offer to become your follower again.