When I made the Bear Riders for Oblivion, there was a major problem that I never surmounted. The gallop animation for the mounted rider worked well, but the walk had a glitch that I could never track down, which made it unusable. Skyrim's bears needed adaptation to make them rideable, but it had already been done by others and just needed a bit of cleanup, and adaptation to my needs. So I made a start on a mod for the new game.
Progress was good at the start, and I dropped a tavern mesh in a suitable location, figured out the vagaries of re-making the local navigation mesh, and created some NPC's to inhabit the place. A bear-trainer was placed in the Falkreath tavern, who used a variant of the stables scripts to sell the player a trained bear at the appropriate point in the quest. In return, the player had a radiant quest to find her lost amulet, which gave me practice in doing those. So far so good.
The hold-up came when I wanted to add the recruitment of new riders. They would need more bears, and it proved to be harder than I thought to re-start the trainer's script to train and sell bears. And the patrols gave me an issue where the riders would not re-mount the bears if they ever got off for a fight. At that point the project went on hold, and it was never completed.
What does exist is a forge for the special Riders' armour - skimpy the way the bears prefer - and a couple of start-up quests to induct the player. I've worked on a SexLab variant where the induction process is a bit more elaborate, and the bears have conditions for their consent to be ridden. That's a separate mod, and the plain one is the one described here in the Fake Wiki.
The majority of the new content is skimpy outfits for the riders. The Manual explains that the bears prefer bare skin next to their fur, as plate and chain pluck the fur from their back, and leather smells of dead animals, and ... So the outfits are essentially bottomless, except for a minimal thong and weapon belt. The tops can be anything from hide to dragonplate, and mages and vampires get appropriate gear, too. All of these need to be made at the Riders' Forge at their Headquarters, and before you can buy a bear, you'll need some.
Location on map, close to Pale Pass, and Southfringe Sanctum
Bear Riders Lodge.
Bear Rider in Steel Plate, outside the Lodge.
The special forge in the Lodge basement.
Rider's Bedroom.
Rider in Eleven.
Mage Rider.
Serana as a vampire Bear Rider.
Meija the Bear Trainer.
The Captain's Ebony.
- Associate bears with riders via quest alias
- Script for trainer to re-supply with bears.
Still a WIP - nothing yet.