Okay, so I'm in Riften, smithing up some Ebony armor, a perk in the smithing tree that I recently acquired. As I enter the forge, banging my hammer and all that, I hear a conversation, or argument rather, break out between two or so people in the market. I can't really make out what they're saying, as the sound of the hammer banging drowned most of it out, so I don't bother myself with it. However, when my guy stopped banging his hammer, I heard one line very clearly. "If it's a fight you want, it's a fight you'll get." I immediately exit the forge, knowing a fight is about to break out, and I want to stop it, or if I can't, watch it. As I turn around, I see the Dunmer shopkeep you get the Ice Wraith teeth for, and Bersi and his wife (owners of the Pawned Prawn), all draw daggers and get into a knife fight. Bersi and his wife gang up on the shopkeep, and quickly down her, and then kill her. Then Bersi and his wife casually walk back to their shop, with no interference from the guards. Then later, I get a note from a courier saying that I have an inheritance from the death of the shopkeep. So now I have one question. What in the world happened?

Hrmm, did you drop anything that they might've decide to quarrel over? That's the only thing that could've sparked the fight I can think of right now.

Good ol' radiant AI.

Well, yes actually. There were tons of items on the ground that I had littered over the course of several visits. Small things I didn't want to store in my home or sell as they weren't worth much. NPC's will actually fight over items I drop? That's pretty cool.

Riften is shady. Ghetto Nords all out of line, hatin' on the elves.

That inheritance thing is odd though. Never heard anything about that before...

Maybe if you help out an NPC they "put you in their will" per say and if they die you get a random sum of gold?

Yes, you get an inheritance from people if you become their friend and they die.

You get inheritance letters from NPC friends when they die. (Usually 100 gold.)

Unfortunately for me the scumbag Jarl of Riften took a tax out on it. Not that it made much of a difference in my amount of gold. =P

5000 gold wouldn't even be worth a shop owner dying... Especially since Riften is my favorite town/house. Ill remember not to drop things in the streets...

Yeah, I'll remember too. Don't want to lose anymore shop owners or misc quests. =/

Aye, I can attest to the ghetto nords in Riften. I dropped an enchanted blade in the Bee and Barb to see what would happen, and three people drew blades and fought over it. One got killed, and they left the sword and went back to drinking. It was quite amusing, yet quite pointless.

Interesting... what if they die in... mysterious ways... lol

If you drop weapons on the street, guards usually get mad over it. Depending on how you react, you can go to jail.

Also, you can murder a friend and still get the inheritance money.

I don't even know what they were fighting over. There was so much [censored] on the ground. Being as how I don't really like Riften the whole place became my trash dump.