Skyrim: Here’s How To Get Shadowmere (Horse) to Stop Following You

Horses are a great addition to Skyrim, they are a practical way to travel they can be used to haul your loot from one place to another and assist in combat. Sometimes, they get so attached to you that they just won’t stop following you. Such is the case with one of the unique horses in Skyrim, Shadowmere. Players are often complaining that Shadowmere is following them incessantly, often snitching on them when they commit a crime in his presence (yes, horses count as witnesses if you commit a crime!). In today’s guide, we’re going to see how to get Shadowmere to stop following you in Skyrim. 

Shadowmere is, to put it simply, an evil horse

Shadowmere is a unique horse in Skyrim. He is owned by Astrid, leader of the Dark Brotherhood, but eventually, she gives him to you during the Dark Brotherhood quest, The Cure for Madness. 

This is Shadowmere’s second appearance in the Elder Scrolls games, he appeared in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion as a personal horse of Lucien Lachance. Just like Astrid, Lucien Lachance gives you Shadowmere as a reward for quest Purification. History does indeed repeat itself. 

Shadowmere is a pretty unique horse, he is mostly associated with Dark Brotherhood. He has glowing red eyes and incredible health regeneration, which makes him extremely difficult to kill. Even if Shadowmere dies, it’s a matter of days until he respawns from the black pool near Dark Brotherhood Sanctuary again. 

How do you get Shadowmere to stop following you?

As we’ve already mentioned, even though Shadowmere is a non-essential NPC it’s still difficult to kill him, doable, but difficult. You can usually ride him off a cliff or something like that, but the problem is, Shadowmere just won’t stay dead. You can get Shadowmere to stop following you either by summoning another horse, Arvak, or by disabling Shadowmere. 

Summoning Arvak 

If you don’t want to use console commands, you can use another horse to get rid of Shadowmere. The perfect horse for that is Arvak since he is technically a summon and will eventually disappear back into the void. The only downside to this solution is that you need to go through a lot of quests to get Arvak since he is the reward for completing Soul Cairn Horse Quest.  

The disable command 

Another, quicker, way to get Shadowmere to stop following you is to simply disable him by using the console commands. This is an instant solution that requires only a simple command. 

1. Approach Shadowmere and open the console by pressing “~”
2. type disable 
3. If everything went according to plan, Shadowmere should be gone for good. 

There’s always a small chance that after you kill him, Shadowmere won’t respawn, so you can try that approach as well, although I wouldn’t recommend it. If you try the Arvak fix first, and it fails, you can always rely on disable fix although it might be difficult to retrieve him if you want to ride him again. 

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