Children

Dorthe, a female child in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

Children are the young male and female offspring of adult characters in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Found in the four human races - Nord, Imperial, Breton, and Redguard - elven and bestial children do not appear in the province of Skyrim. There is also one child vampire, Babette.

While many children can be found in buildings or wandering around towns, many reside at Honorhall Orphanage. With the installation of the The Elder Scrolls V: Hearthfire expansion pack, children become available for adoption by the Dragonborn and their spouse.

Without the use of console commands, exploits, glitches, or mods, all children are invincible, unable to be harmed, killed, knocked unconscious, or pickpocketed. Because of this, they are flagged as essential personages.

Equipment

Apparel and appearance

Regardless of a child's race or economic status, all boys wear a collared sweater with brown trousers, and all girls wear a simple belted dress. However, the color of the sweater or dress varies from child to child. All children have the same physical features regardless of gender and race.

Inventory

Children have similar inventories. Some items they tend to carry are: quill, charcoal, rolls of paper, Broken Steel Sword Handle, inkwells, shoes, child's clothes, coins, iron daggers, drums, lutes, flutes, wooden ladles, various ingots (blacksmith Apprentices), leather strips, red or green apples, buckets, leather, sweetrolls, Long Taffy Treats, Honey Nut Treats, Boiled Creme Treats, and empty wine bottles.

Interactions

Some children can be given a coin. If given a coin, Sond and Bottar reveal a map location. Svari thanks the Dragonborn greatly if given a coin.

Although invincible under normal circumstances, if attacked repeatedly, some children draw daggers and defend themselves. Some children may hire mercenaries or the Dark Brotherhood to kill the Dragonborn if they are caught committing a crime.

Invisibility spells do not work on adopted children when they arrive home. Typically undetectable while invisible, children are always able to interact with the Dragonborn when they enter the door of their home, similarly to how City Guards in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion can interact with invisible players due to the scripting of their dialogue.

Hearthfire

The Honorhall Orphanage of Riften is home to many adoptable children. Grelod the Kind serves as the establishment's headmistress.

With the addition of The Elder Scrolls V: Hearthfire downloadable content, the Dragonborn may adopt children. When adopted, they may be sent to any home owned by the Dragonborn that has the appropriate child's room upgrade. After becoming a parent, the Dragonborn can engage in various activities with their progeny.

Adoptable children

Static residents

Orphans that statically appear at Honorhall Orphanage.

• Runa Fair-Shield
• Francois Beaufort
• Samuel
• Hroar

Conditional residents

Orphans that are sent to Honorhall due to the death or murder of their parents or guardians.

• Braith
• Britte
• Sissel
• Gralnach
• Hrefna
• Dorthe
• Frodnar
• Erith
• Clinton Lylvieve
• Aeta^DB
• Eirid
• Minette Vinius
• Svari
• Knud
• Skuli

New additions

Adoptable children made available upon installing Hearthfire.

• Lucia^HF
• Blaise^HF
• Sofie^HF
• Alesan^HF

Invincibility

Children cannot be killed, injured, or knocked unconscious, nor can they be pickpocketed. Dragon Shouts do not affect children, regardless of which one is used; however they can be hit, and the weapon skill can be increased from doing so. Their immunity mainly stems from cultural taboos because children such as Helgi in Morthal do die.

Although children cannot be harmed, attacking a child incurs identical assault charges as harming other innocents. If a child witnesses a crime, they warn the nearest adult or guard.

Exceptions

Changing a child's race through the console revokes their imperviousness. For example, entering "setrace khajiit" allows the child to be killed. Doing so causes cosmetic glitches. In this example, the child appears as a Khajiit with a human head; if the child is female, breasts and a bra appear on it. If the child's race is changed, they become naked. As they do not have clothing in their inventory, but instead, are skinned with garments on their avatar, and as such, they cannot be removed with console commands.

Doing a charged attack as a lycanthrope can sling back children like any other character; however, they remain unharmed as they get up.

When using a Frenzy spell near a child, they receive the effect, and every guard in the city tries to kill the child, eventually chasing them out of town. It is possible that the child may actually attack the guards back and kill them all, due to their inability to be harmed.

Notable children

For a complete list of children, see Category:Children.

• Aventus Aretino - initiates the Dark Brotherhood questline with his task to kill Grelod the Kind.
• Babette - an alchemist and assassin of the Dark Brotherhood. Although actually a 310-year-old vampire, she is considered a child because of her physical form.
• Fjotra - the potential Sybil of the Temple of Dibella in Markarth.
• Helgi - the deceased daughter of Hroggar who was burned in a fire. She exists as a ghost.
• Nelkir - the illegitimate son of Jarl Balgruuf the Greater Whiterun. He serves as a key role in the Daedric quest "The Whispering Door".
• Haming - one of the few survivors from Helgen. With his parents, Torolf and Matlara dead, he lives with his grandfather Froki Whetted-Blade in a shack.

Turning a Child into a "Child Adult" (PC only)

File:Frodnar Child Adult.jpeg

Frodnar,an adult child, wearing Tusn's armor and chopping wood

By using console commands on the PC, you can change your child into an adult. First, open up the console commands,right click on the child and type, setrace <race of the original child>. Once you do this, the "Child Adult" will have a big ugly version of the original child's head. To fix the head, do setrace again but this time it can be any race. Now, for the third and final time, use set race again and revert back to the child's original race,Nord,Benton,etc. Your "Child Adult" should now look like a normal Skyrim NPC but they will only be wearing underwear (This is due to them wearing Child's Clothes and shoes). To make them wear normal armor, right click on the "Child Adult" (in console commands) and type inv. The console commands should say that they are wearing child's clothes and child's shoes. Unequip these items by using the command, Unequipitem <item code>.Then go out of console commands and go back in. Do ,inv, again on the "Child Adult" and do the command, removeitem <child's clothes code> 1,and then do the same command again but now with the child's shoes code which should be provided with the command,inv. If you want to equip armor onto them, do the command, equipitem <armor code> 1. NOTE: DO NOT FORGET TO PUT THE 1! If you don't put the 1 at the end, the "Child Adult" will take the armor of. NOTE: There is a bug with the shoes and they come back on no matter what you do and part of their leg will be missing. You can also change the "Child Adult's" body weight by using the command, setnpcweight <0-100>. You can also change their height by using the command, setscale <0.01-10.00>, to revert back to their basic height, do setscale 1. The last thing you should know is that they have the same "kid" voice which cannot be changed unless using mods.

Quotes and dialogue

• When performing spells while in the presence of a male child, he asks to be made invisible. There is no way to make him invisible, but he can be lied to. He then run around the town and tries to scare people while thinking he is invisible. The console reveals that the child class has a fully-recorded, voiced line for being turned invisible for both male and female children, and even scripted conditions enabled to play these lines if turned invisible. The child exclaims, "Hey, I'm see-through!" when turned invisible. Conversely, the console can be used to add the expert-level Illusion spell Fade Other to instigate the event and trigger the dialogue. The spell was never made playable normally in-game.

• When standing atop furniture such as a bed or table, nearby children remark: "I'm not allowed to stand on furniture...".

Hearthfire-exclusive quotes

• "The lake here is so pretty." - at Lakeview Manor.
• "Dragonsreach is so cool! The kids there are mean, though." - if living in Breezehome, Whiterun.
• "I played with Lucia in the park today. I feel sorry for her." - if living in Breezehome, Whiterun and Lucia is not adopted.

Bugs

This section contains bugs related to Children. Before adding a bug to this list, consider the following: Please reload an old save to confirm if the bug is still happening. If the bug is still occurring, please post the bug report with the appropriate system template  360  /  XB1  ,  PS3  /  PS4  ,  PC  /  MAC  ,  NX  /  PS5  ,  XS  , depending on which platform(s) the bug has been encountered on. Be descriptive when listing the bug and fixes, but avoid having conversations in the description and/or using first-person anecdotes: such discussions belong on the appropriate forum board.

•  PC   360   PS3   When items are dropped near children, they say that something was dropped and attempt to give it back. No items are added to the inventory, however.
•  PC   360   PS3   After installing Hearthfire, all children have their clothes unequipped
  • Solution: subsequent patches remedied this.
• A child may interact with a Cooking Place, Alchemy Lab, or Arcane Enchanter, causing their model to stretch to the adult model and shrinking back down afterward.

Appearances

• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
  • The Elder Scrolls V: Hearthfire
  • The Elder Scrolls V: Dragonborn