Hello there. Can anyone please tell me was DB really formed by Morag Tong? I just can't believe it, but I need to know the truth. So please help me, it's very important to me.

To continue, the "Night Mother" is but a persona of Mephala so she can pull a fast one on his "Dark Brotherhood" sect for her own perverse amusemant. He's that kind of Prince.

Is it really perverse? The Dark Brotherhood is basically the TONG except more indulging in the sorrow and despair of their victim.


Mephala might like the DB more as they are unscrupulous and love murder a lot more for the sake of murder. Compare to the Tong that's more like a job, however revering they are on Murder herself, because of their place in politics and how they are accepted as the proper way to sort feuds.


Mephala seem the kind to enjoy being Night Mother not only for laugh.

Dark Brotherhood broke off from the Morag Tong just as previously quoted from the text that was listed.


What is more interesting is the question of when they developed into what we would recognize today as the Dark Brotherhood. In Morrowind, it is mentioned that they have a connection with Mehrunes Dagon, as part of the Tong questline. Also, how did the whole Cult of Sithis thing start?


To date, I don't believe these elements of the Dark Brotherhood have been given a history, though they make sense as beliefs that a murder cult disconnected from Mephala would adopt, if, for example Mephala was not the Night Mother. Which is another question that I believe has been left open-ended.

The thing that gets me about "Mephala is the Night Mother" is that, in the games, they're clearly seperate entities. At least, since we've been seeing the Night Mother in Oblivion.


I mean, the Night Mother's literal ghost pops out and berates the Black Hand for getting duped in Oblivion, while her preserved dead body speaks to you in Skyrim. And neither incarnation sounds like Mephala when you do their quest, nor acknowledge your role in the Dark Brotherhood.


I know ES lore is often fluid, contradictory, and ambiguous, but this seems like an unambiguous case where the game is outright showing that a specific lore standpoint is incorrect or requires significantly more mental gymnastics to make fit than some of the other stuff.

Mephala is an E'tada. He/she can change their gender/ physical appearance at will. So I assume they can change their voice at will also. Plus Daedric Princes love meddling in mortal affairs.

I get this. What I don't get is the lack of ambiguity in this situation. We get a whopping one bit of lore that says there's a connection, and then stop any attempts at further thinking on it by saying "Yeah, Mephala WOULD do something exactly like this."


It'd be fine if we were contacted by the NM if she dud it indirectly, say via dreams. But she doesn't. Or if we only saw one or the other. Or if there was some ambiguous references between the two questlines "I see you have the black blade. A fine tool for my Listener." "Ah, but this task of mine would hardly be challenging to the Listener of the Dark Brotherhood, no?"


But we don't see this ambiguity happening, nor any further proof beyond that one bit of lore.


Yes, it's in-character for Mephala to do it. So where's the proof to counteract what we see in the games?

I don't think there's just "a whopping one bit of lore." In Daggerfall, they're specifically praising Mephala and invoking her name for a successful mission, and I believe there's a book in Skyrim (or maybe ESO? I forget) that makes the claim that the Night Mother is Mephala.

There we go! That's what I wasn't seeing- that info from Daggerfall.

As plausible as the Night Mother = Mephala is, I would speak against it.

I would be much more attracted to the idea of the Night Mother as her own entity. If the Night Mother is just Mephala, then the Dark Brotherhood is completely discredited as a bunch of dupes. Which, I suspect, was the original intention of the promotion of this theory anyway. As popular as the Dark Brotherhood was to a large portion of the audience, a lot of TES vets as well as lore masters were disappointed - to say the least - with the Dark Brotherhood's portrayal in Oblivion. Where they had hoped for a guild of professional assassins, more akin to their presentation in Daggerfall and Morrowind, they had received a cult of psychopaths. On top of that, the presentation the Dark Brotherhood gives of Sithis in Oblivion (and later Skyrim) is completely different from what is (and had been) presented elsewhere; furthering this idea that the Dark Brotherhood is suffering from communal disillusionment. The theory that Mephala is behind it all conveniently erases these problems because "lol she's just trolling them."

Whether or not my suspicions hold any water, I must say that I like the idea of the Night Mother being her own entity. A powerful ghost ( or something!) in a series (and genre) where liches are waaay overdone. We also know surprisingly little about ghosts in TES. Our experiences range from weak enemies we can hit with our enchanted swords to intelligent apparitions unaware of their own death. We're also unsure of how ghosts fit into the ever opaque and complex afterlife. How does one become a ghost? How does the Dark Brotherhood prevent ghosts from materializing? What powers do ghosts have that others lack?

There is plenty of room in TES lore for the mystery of powerful entities like the Underking, Umbriel, and the Night Mother to exist and flourish alongside more recognizable entities of the lore. And I for one enjoy trying to decipher the philosophy of the Dark Brotherhood and try to find the truths woven within their perspective. Just as with Mankar Camoran, I am not willing to dismiss them as crazy fools with nothing to contribute to our understanding of the world. And while my own DB head canon and the DB of Bethesda may not align, I think the Dark Brotherhood is cool idea. And the Night Mother is a big part of that.

1 - Mephala is duping the Dark Brotherhood.

2 - Mephala is not involved, and the Dark Brotherhood is just totally wrong about everything.

3 - Sithis does exist in the way the DB believe it does and is one of the most emo and lamest things Bethesda has ever written.

I'll take option number one. Number two is ok, and the hidden option of the Night Mother just being some fancy ghost is enticing, but it is the exact same thing as number one, just with Mephala being replaced with some other powerful entity. Number three is awful; Sithis is far removed from regular mortal life. That it would talk to people and be interested in murder like that just seems off. Like, '80s cartoon villain off. It's Skeletor with black lipstick and a Nietzsche tattoo.

I'll take #3. Mainly because it gives a unique clique in TES and legitimizes some of the best quest lines (and one of them is the best imo) in the series. Writing it off as an emo thing is just scoffing at the possibility that a god that is greater than the Aedra/Daedra actually wanting to have influence in the center of the universe that they were instrumental in it's creation. 2ndly, you seeing what the DB does as murder is not how a god would look at it. It's not even how the DB see it. The concept of murder is a mortal one, and for the DB the killing a target in the name of Sithis means a collection of a being directly to Sithis. Instead of sending them to Oblivion or to one of the Aedric afterlifes, they get pulled BEYOND those realms and into something much greater, and much darker. On top of that, Sithis has no real influence over the mortal world because of the seperation and therefore needed a intermediate - hence the Night Mother to teach mortals how to do it but also why they were doing it.

Actually, upon reconsideration, no that doesn't really prove that the Night Mother is Mephala, just that the DB originated from a cult of Mephala worshippers/assassins, likely from the Morag Tong. If the NM was Mephala, then what's with the name change? Where did the whole Sithis concept come from? Why does Mephala continually favor a group of assassins that strike terror all over Tamriel and she's not getting credit from said assassins? The Morag Tong openly worship her, and they're limited only to Morrowind.

Again, the only specific thing we have that "proves" that the Night Mother is Mephala is that one book, and that literally flies in the face of everything we're seeing from the Dark Brotherhood and Mephala questlines. Yes, it would be in-character for Mephala to take her revenge on a rogue cult by trolling them in this manner, but we're not seeing that proof beyond literally one book, and neither the Night Mother nor Mephala seem to recognize the PC having done favors for them previously.

In addition to Daggerfall having the Dark Brotherhood explicitly worshiping Mephala, they will also sometimes refer to her as 'Night Mother'.

Dark Brotherhood worship of Sithis dates back to Arena, in which the following can be found in the manual:

There we go! That's the smoking gun, the solid proof here! Now we can say that the later differences and issues is Mephala's doing, now that a solid link has been established.

There must be a division between the Illiac Bay Brotherhood and the rest. They explicitly worship Mephala, and the rest of the Brotherhood explicitly doesn't.

Jeez, getting a straight answer for this is like pulling teeth.


We're not debating CHIM, the Earthbones, or the whole Anu-Padomay thing here, y'know. Just a simple question- what proof is there beyond that one book that links the Night Mother as an aspect of Mephala?

It's an idea that has stuck around on the forums. Personally, I think it's a combination of that one book, the DB's history linking them to the Morag Tong, and enough people just liking the idea of the Night Mother being Mephala.

And also the whole PSJJJ, the Chimer endeavours that result to another spin to an old concept that is Sithis.

I recall one post basically sum up why the Dark Brotherhood broke off and why they shared similarity even though their view is so far apart from another. Unfortunately, Bethesda does not have a good search function. It was made by one of recurring senior member, during Skyrim younger years.

I'm sure Fiore and Huleed, maybe Dargor were participating in the thread in which the person has form a very strong hypothesis on why Dark Brotherhood's Sithis is behaving like some god instead of a powerful force. It did tie to the old lore with Lorkhan being the soul of Sithis, and explained the hollow heart in the Dread Father, despair, betrayal, tragedy and death motifs.

And it did explain Mephala's part as it involve why the Chimer following their Better Ancestor when it comes to Lorkhan endeavours.

That post was amazing...

Not sure if this is the thread in question, but it does have some interesting discussion on the subject. http://www.gamesas.com/sithis-god-and-primordial-force-creation-t141139.html

Unfortunately, I couldn't find the original thread here on the actual forums, only the copy of it on that stupid website that steals whatever's posted on this forum.

Almost, yeah the thread touches what the post had. But the post basically summarized and link the relevant sources as well had a bit more going, it was written like an article that I would've expected to be posted on the Imperial Library, just like Arden Sul theory.

The dude was like Malak the Orc, except instead of focusing on Malacath, this guy just added insight to the nonsense idiocy in lores and its execution. Could have been proweler since the dude is always deep in this stuff.

Damn, I was quite naive to think Bethesda has a good search engine. I should've bookmarked the thread. Lots of good posts with well-explained insights in lores are lost in the depth of this forum server, and I don't have time to dig it, not to mention I swear there's a limit cap to how far back you can go, which is a damn shame.

I recall the search function working better a few years back. It was just broken one day and it looks like it hasn't been fixed. Probably has something to do with this forum being abandoned in favor of the new one they've been working on.