Orgnar has sent thugs after me — WTF? [duplicate]

So I entered Riverwood, and was attacked by 3 “thugs”. On one of their bodies was a contract, that said

Here is the agreed upon amount. I expect you to faithfully carry out my request to teach a lesson to the thief Cyoce. You need not kill him, but I have no qualms about it if you deem it necessary.

-- Orgnar

I’ve looked around, and there are several answers, but I don’t understand why it’s happening to me. First, I have never stolen from anyone, let alone Orgnar. Also, this is the second time I’ve been attacked. Is there a way to stop it? Can I yield to them after a bit, and have it qualify as having been “taught a lesson”? Would killing Orgnar stop it? Is there a way to do so without incurring a bounty (I am a warrior; I doubt assassination would work)? Any suggestions? Or do I just need to deal with random attacks from thugs as well as dragons?

Solution 1:

The Elder Scrolls Wiki has an article about Hired Thugs.

Hired Thugs are hostile characters which can appear in any random event location. This is only supposed to occur after the Dragonborn has stolen goods from a character, repeatedly trespassed, assaulted someone, or murdered someone. Some characters, such as Belethor, may consider knocking over items or using a shout inside their shop as reason enough.

This event can occur even if the Dragonborn remained undetected throughout the incident in question.

Basically, there's a chance for every single character in the game to hire them, if you offended them criminally, with or without being detected

Furthermore, the bugs section says that on PC

It is quite common that the missive carried by one of the Hired Thugs may be signed by someone who the Dragonborn has not stolen from (in some cases not having even met them), or was dead at the time of both the theft and attack.

The article goes on to name a few odd examples of people potentially wanting you dead, such as "Whiterun Guard", children, and dogs. Even hostile entities such as Bandits can hire them, since pickpocketing a bandit is still stealing (contrary to killing them and robbing their corpses).

The thugs are not very smart and will always go for the kill.

While the contracts say that they do not necessarily have to kill the Dragonborn, only teach them a lesson, they will always attempt to kill the player, regardless of whether they resist or not.

Deactivating them

There is no (simple) way to deactivate them in game, as they are not part of a quest.

If you play on PC and really want to get rid of them, there is a mod on Skyrim Nexus called Hired Thugs Pacified which makes them non-hostile or turns them into hares.

Alternately, the Steam Workshop has No Hired Thugs which removes them altogether. Note that this mod makes some other, completely unrelated changes.