Familiar Faces is a free follower and companion mod for Skyrim that lets you encounter the past characters you’ve played as NPCs. You can set the Hangout location, which is where they’ll generally start from, and wander around player homes. You’ll see them move through the town and engage with other characters in the game as if they were there all along.

Besides being an idle citizen, you can also call on them to follow you. They’ll have the same weapons, armor, and skills as when you last played. If you don’t want them to level up while they fight, you can disable auto-leveling. For other Skyrim mods, you can try Heavy-Blade Combat Non-Combat idle, Birb Refurb- LE, UFO - Ultimate Follower Overhaul, and Simple multiple followers.

Summon your past characters

After you install Familiar Faces, you’ll be able to see any of your previously saved characters in a village of your choice. They usually spawn near the portal stone where you saved the file. You can also assign several characters to one Hangout, which means they’ll gather in the same location when you start the game. You have the option to let them walk between towns, but then you may have trouble finding them.

Set the follow command

If you need some assistance in battle, you can set the characters to follow you as companions. They’ll have the same skills and items from when you saved them, but you may want to disable shouts to prevent trouble with village guards. You should also disable leveling up in case you plan to play as that character one day. 

Mod requirements

You won’t be able to install the mod without support from other add-ons. If you’re running from Nexus Mods, you’ll need JContainers - data structures and storage, RaceMenu, and SkyUI. For an off-site installation, it recommends SKSE.

Join yourself in combat

Familiar Faces is an excellent way to summon your previous characters so that you can see them walking around Skyrim like other NPCs. You can even build shrines to each of them within Alcoves, while there’s a function to clear them all from your current game.