The History of the Silver Hand - Speculation

I was reflecting recently on the Silver Hand of Skyrim. I found it odd that their motivations were never explored or explained beyond that they "hated werewolves," when there seems to be good chunks of lore available for just about any other antagonist group in the game.

I've been digging into the audio files of the game recently for a mod I am working on and I was struck by the some of the things the Silver Hand members yell out during the confrontation where you see them the first time (and consequently where you discover the lycanthropic nature of the Circle):

"Ysgramor would be ashamed of you!" "I'll rip you apart, Companion!" "He wears that armor, he dies."

If they were simply a group of lycanthrophobes one would expect that they'd just stick to simple slurs, but those three lines in particular, I think, point to something more.

I posit that the Silver Hand is in fact a splinter group of the Companions, in a fashion similar to how the Dark Brotherhood allegedly split from the Morag Tong; that the earliest Hands either were privy to or discovered Harbinger Terrfyg's deal with the Glenmoril coven and rebelled, albeit unsuccessfully. Consequently, they were reduced to being an outlaw band which has since survived by hook and by crook until the present day.

The clips I mentioned support this: appealing to the legacy of Ysgramor is the strongest indication. It seems odd that a group recently founded would make an appeal to the authority of a quasi-mythic figure from the First Era, unless they shared with the Companions a sense of inheriting his legacy. In the same way you'll see both Stormcloaks and Imperials appeal to the authority of Talos: the former that they are the true heirs of his legacy by not abandoning his worship, the latter that they are true by remaining loyal to the material Empire which he founded.

Secondly, this animosity specifically aimed at the Companions. While it becomes clear in-game, when you're clearing one of the ruined forts occupied by the Hand, that they have been capturing and torturing "feral" werewolves not associated with the Companions, overall they display a seething contempt and hatred that is aimed specifically at the Companions - declaring that anyone wearing their armor is a legitimate target, for example. As well, their raid of Jorrvaskr late in the Companion quest chain is singular in focus: you don't find any bodies of town guards scattered around the area, just Hand, and a certain important member of the Companions.

Thirdly, their obsession with the shards of Wuuthrad. It doesn't make strategic sense that the Silver Hand would be willing to sacrifice so much manpower just to spite the Companions in their search for the shards of Wuuthrad; if they were merely lycanthrophobes, Wuuthrad's shards are just bits of metal which the Companions dote over, and would be secondary to the cause of wiping out werewolves, and the raid of Jorrvaskr becomes a rather senseless and very costly act of spite. But they seem actively engaged in the search for the fragments at the same time as the Companions, which would indicate that recovering the shards is a vital strategic goal for them. One can reasonably assume that Wuuthrad's fragments are as equally important a symbol to the Hand as they are to the Companions, and that possession of these fragments would confer on them legitimacy, in much the same way as allowing Ulfric to possess the Jagged Crown confers legitimacy to his bid for the kingship.