After listening to my dear friend Lucien talk about my assassination plot on Gaius Maro, I got to thinking: Should I join the blades? The Dark Brotherhood seems to consider any of the guards of the Emperor, past and present, as incompetent... and being that I'm a Stormcloak, I've wondered whether it would make more sense to stay with the Greybeards or go the Blades route. Can anyone offer any suggestions on the logistics? Obviously being a soldier at the same time as being an assassin is a stretch, but that's not my main concern.

Thanks!

If you go with the Blades you will lose the ability to find World Walls from the Greybeards.

I'm not worried about that. I'm just worried about the logistics of my type of character siding with the Blades -- other than bringing the fight to the Thalmor.

The current Blades are unaffiliated with the Empire, and probably want to strike back at the Thalmor eventually. The Greybeards wouldn't care for you seeking out a war though.

There's no reason to believe the Blades would not just sign up as Ulfric's lackeys, so I say go ahead and join them.

Really... It's you, and two other people who claim to follow you, yet throw a hissy fit if you tell them "No" when it comes to killing the dragon that pretty much allowed mankind to rule Tamriel, simply because he was, at one point, Alduin's right hand man. Over 5,000 years ago.

The Blades are dead. The two pretenders aren't worthy of the title.

You can't really join the Blades, the most you can do is obey their order to and thus stay in their good graces, which will allow to recruit new members for Delphine (if you haven't finished with that already) and continue to do whatever remaining quests you can get from Esbern.

If you do that, you will no longer be welcome in High Hrothgar (altho I don't think the GBs do anything to you other than give you the cold shoulder if you go there) and Arngeir will no longer give you the locations of additional words of power, as already noted.

If you are on PC there is a mod that allows you to refuse the Blades' requests mentioned above and convince them to accept that, resulting in their disposition towards you returning to what it was initially and allowing you to do all the Blades related stuff that you might not be able to do otherwise.

Regarding their history as servants of the Empire/Emperor, that's pretty much null and void at this point - they were disbanded if not totally disavowed by the Empire 30 years ago per the terms of the WGC and ceased to have any official function within the Empire from that point on. Given Delphine's character and temperament I'm guessing she harbors little if any lingering sense of loyalty to the people who basically left her and her comrades high and dry after the war, forcing them to go into hiding for their own protection and as far as I can tell turning a blind eye to Thalmor attempts to find and kill them. Esbern doesn't seem like the bitter, hold-a-grudge type but he's probably too wrapped up in his dragon obsession to give it much thought. Both of them seem intent on reforming the Blades as a dragonslaying outfit with little interest in anything else.

Makes a lot of sense. Thanks guys! Blades it is.

The Graybreads just sit atop a mountain drinking dreadful tea.
The Blades want to murder all dragons.
Whos the winner?
THE PREDATORS OF SKYRIM WHO FEAST UPON DRAGON CORSPES AND DRAUGR CORSPES