He's stuck in jail perma and never leaves, did they forget to put a script to let him out after awhile? maybe even a thieves guild guest to let him go?! they should update this in the next dlc!

Hes a leveled merchant in riften, he makes riften worth stopping by if you want to sell your wares seeing as hes a broad leveled vendor. But if he never leaves his jail cell you never get to see his inventory. He also has a unique quest, it would be nice to see him outside of jail.
I think jail makes him messed up.

Having him as a vendor again or be free is what you believe is going to happen but it never does! nothing you can do to free him even if you become a master of the guild thane of riften etc. ... except all powerful console commands which can mess your game up.


Please put a script in for him to leave jail in the next update!

Please support this if you agree.

reporting my own thread meant to post in a different area. could a mod please move this? sorry had multiple forums open to read.

No need for this to be in a DLC. A simple patch would work (I do believe the PC version has this fixed in he unofficial patch).

Just came back to Skyrim after a 4 month break and after looking through patch notes on what came while I was gone, I was surprised this was not one of the things listed. Though to be honest I expected a ton of other minor glitches to be fixed by now considering how often complaints of them pop up. In related good news it seems apparently the Louis Letrush clone bug has been seen to. That makes me very happy.

It is possible not to have him end up in jail at all.
What you do is put the ring back in the box or drop it as soon as you steal it, and never slip it into Brand-Shei's pocket.
The quest will fail but that means absolutely nothing, as the questline proceeds on as normal with Brynjolf wanting you to go through the Ratway.
Brand-Shei need never know how close he was to being framed and Riften doesnt lose a merchant

I Would put it in a patch or something. This as a DLC Feature would make no sense whatsoever.

I do feel a bit bad for him, though he's happier after you help him find out who he is and where he came from. They should have set it up so that they left him out after a month or two of game time.

Yes a life sentence for theft does seem a bit extreme. I went to the jail and opened his cell door with my lockpick but he doesn't leave. I used to trade with him quite a lot on my 1st play through due to the fact that the thieves guild quests were closed to me due to a bug, have missed trading with him on my next 2 runs and as the op says, having him there to sell your loot to makes it worth while stopping in riften every few days.
We should start the "free the Riften one campaign" immediately.

I'm not. It seems Bethesda are just worried about getting DLC ready now and refuse to fix quests that have been bugged since the game was first released. (Missing in Action, Tending the Flame, Under Saarthal, The Litany of Larceny, The Blessings of Nature and countless others.) Only thing I envy from PC is at least they have the option to play a fixed game, it's just too bad the company that makes the game doesn't seem to want to.

this is skyrim, they have a different justice system...we were about to be beheaded for crossing the border, brand shei is lucky not to go to the chopping block for stealing jewelry.

my only beef with this is that I found his book after he was locked up so it's another 1 of many essential items I can't drop

My thief also gives him every opportunity to escape, but he never does. I've come to believe he actually likes it there. To each his own, y'know? Who am I to judge?

Did you get the quest before he was locked up? If so, you can pick his lock (not too hart - Adept, I think?) and give it to him. If not, and if you're on PC, there's a console command to drop the item.

brand-shei has a cool backstory and side quest, chances are you wont hear about it unless you follow my instructions in the spoiler tab

eh, im sure the unofficial skyrim patch fixes this

Random thought: Free Brand-Shei would make a funny t-shirt.

My Khajiit simply bungled the opening quest. It was just bad luck, but it worked out well, he still has Brand Shei to sell to. With him still there and the Ratway starting to fill up with merchants, Riften's a shopper's paradise now.
My Imperial told Brynelf that he could take his guild and cram it somewhere best not mentioned. That worked too.

That's normally how I do the quest - its not a problem. Just mosey on down to Riften jail and hand in the quest through the bars of his cell!

Pro-tip: Fail the job that Brynjolf gives you. You can still join the TG.

I figured he must have done something really bad for someone to hire the Thieves Guild to frame him for a life sentence. I'm a bit of a softie so I let him know his roots before teaching him a lesson not to mess with the Guild.

I doubt he did anything particularly bad. The guy scraqes by in life selling random crap. If he did something, then he has little to show for it. The only thing he might be doing in Riften is what others in town are doing.. getting bolder against the Thieves Guild who invade their stores and demand a cut. The merchants know the guild is weak and deny them.... until you decide to change things or not.

I wish that Brand-Shei actually sold rarities and oddities from Morrowind.

aye but its supposed to be petty theft, you can go to jail for the same crime, the point is story wise- hes supposed to leave. he never does. taking abut skyrim's rules, if you go to jail you dont stay there for the rest of your life for stealing a ring. Brynloff promised.

Hes a valuable merchant and it honestly feels like they just didnt script it right or forgot about brand shei. Theres many bugs and incomplete actions still about. Why do we have to always use Un-official patches/mods to fix simple quest issues. Id prefer to talk about it here and hopefuly shine some light on this one aspect of the game an a certain character alot of people miss out on.

btw its never clear that he should be in jail for life. it is clearly said to the player that he will just spend a little time in jail.

Commands, scripts that make him leave jail can reset the quest to set him up again and that can cause issues.

aye! thats why they could fix this for dragonborn at least! makes sense lore wise etc

I overheard a conversation between Brand-Shei and Maven recently, that I'd never heard before. She threatened him because he'd reported someone for something, and he was begging her not to hurt him. I suspect that's who had him framed.

And the Unofficial Skyrim Patch does fix this, and allows you to talk to him to go on his quest.

Well you have him put in jail while joining the TG. Since the TG has a much better vendor I guess the Devs decided you really didn't need this guy anymore. Course you do miss his quest unfortunately.

Which I've accepted as a consequence on some of my thieves, since they couldn't care less about his background.

It also fits in with the Guild's way of thinking, in that anyone who doesn't go along is expendable.