**1.0.1 - Released an update to fix an oversight in my original .esp release, in which the markarth guard helmets were invisible.
**1.0.2 - fixes erroneous texture paths in .nif files, everything should be working as expected now.
Remodeled the guard helmets with open face and added a new arming cap I made from scratch, for a more realistic and detailed look. Because I opened the face by creating a new mesh, it is compatible with any guard texture replacers.

This helmet is higher poly than the vanilla one so it might be a bit more resource intensive than the original, but it works fine on my machine and I'm running Skyrim with a few higher poly mods on an actual potato right now so your experience *should* be better. It should also be compatible with anything that doesn't touch the same forms in my .esp, which are the helmet forms as well as their armor addons. It should be placed lower in your load order than any mod that modifies the same records in order for my models to appear, but your computer shouldn't explode if you don't.

Compatible out of the box with Town Guards armor retexture by Gulchanar and Frankly HD Stormcloak and City Guards by FrankFamily (Both are highly recommended!)

The Fine Print:

I have not yet made meshes compatible for beast races, but I will probably get to it sooner than later. In the meantime, the helmet will look like the regular vanilla steel helmet as a placeholder. There is light clipping (not too noticable) on the male orc face and any extreme orc facemorphs will probably be worse. Will fix this as well, in a future update.

Future plans:

beast races - 4/25/2021: models finished, just gotta put them in the game
Make a new coif - currently WIP
Possibly chainmail variants as well - currently WIP

Credits:

Bethesda - for Skyrim and the original guard helmet mesh I edited

Blender
Nifskope
Outfit Studio
Textures.com for the base texture used in my arming cap
Crazybump to make the normal map