The Silver Dawn vs. The Silver Hand

SirGrunty · March 2019

What with the Wolf Hunt DLC having come out a few months ago and me actually getting around to doing the quest regarding the 'Argent Mine' in Wrothgar, I've had a questions gnawing away at the back of my mind.

Is the Order of the Silver Dawn the pre-cursor to the Silver Hand which is prominent during the Companions Questline during the events of TES V: Skyrim?
Or are the two just coincidentally named similarly due to them being werewolf hunting orders and the former having a weakness to silver?

Aristocles22 · March 2019

It has more to do with ZOS wanting to name them something familiar to get people's attention.

Number_51 · March 2019

I don't think so. Or maybe I should say I hope not. As I recall the Silver Hand were little more then a collection of bandits.

Shadow_Akula · March 2019

Number_51 wrote: »

I don't think so. Or maybe I should say I hope not. As I recall the Silver Hand were little more then a collection of bandits.

While I agree that they are most likely unrelated, please do not forget there are roughly 800 years between eso and Skyrim, things can change a lot in less time.

Organisations rename themselves, organisations gain or lose the backing of benefactors, etc.

Real-World Example: The Order of the Temple of Solomon (Knights Templar or Templar’s) for example, they started with 9 knights then rose to power in the following years until eventually they lost their backing, and went from a powerful and influential knightly order to a disbanded group of outlaws on the run from the king of France and the pope until the remaining members dissolved the organisation altogether. And that was all roughly within 200 years. Never mind 800.

WhiteCoatSyndrome · March 2019

Daarjo wrote: »

Or are the two just coincidentally named similarly due to them being werewolf hunting orders and the former having a weakness to silver?

This, IMO is the most likely. If they wanted to make the two related it would have been really easy to name-drop Gallows Rock or some other Silver Hand future fort as a current base of operations for the Silver Dawn, or make some obvious reference which as far as I can recall they never did.