Now THAT is a truly wonderful idea!

Hmm. Horse races in Whiterun. Ice Festival in Winterhold. Bear hunting in Windhelm. Spriggan springfest in Falkreath. Who am I missing? Oh, let's see - Dawnstar could be Summer Solstice something or other. Markarth.... um. Dunno - don't like the Reach much, and not impressed with Markarth. In Morthal, a Seer's Fest for budding mages? Not sure about that one either.

Wow, in all years I've played Skyrim I never saw anything like that. Saw it several times in Oblivion though.

No shortage of Thieves in Riften... Although there was no Thief corpse, and we were relatively far from the canol, the Guards certainly don't have a 100% kill rate. I have to infer, since I found the Report note in Bolli and Nivenor's house, that the trigger event was from them. Dunno, though, Ingun was sketchy. Maybe she was trying out some nasty potion on Edda? As a cranky short-timer guy used to say over in Asia, "Yah don't know, do yah? Makes yah wonder, don't it?"

I had done the little quests for most of the dead folks. Ingun's ghost is still brewing me some potions. Next time, I'll back up the tape (this stuff happened when I had just gotten done with either Kill Mercer or Return Skeleton Key, so a do-over didn't occur to me).

Aaaand, now that I have the Nightingale Subterfuge spell, I could start some stuff--requires an enemy, I think, but maybe not. I won't, though. As noted up above, the NPC population is sparse enough already.

For me, these riots always seem to happen in Riften, and it's always those random thieves running past my followers that start the war. The last time it happened nearly all of the central square people ended up dead, and invincible Mjoll got into a 1-on-1 with my nearly-invincible Sofia, who's a good 30 levels higher and instantly dropped her to a knee and kept her there. Reload time... again