I just wanted to ask this before I started a new character. I have a level 19 Khajit assassin character that I have spent about 13 hours on now. I finished innocence lost about 6 hours ago. I have been playing the game since then and have been to many towns, slept many times, and no "we know" letter from a courier. I had a courier approach me once in that time but he gave me a letter to check out that museum in dawnstar, and when I talked to him again, he said nope, nothing. Do I have to restart now? Seriously the only reason I made the character was to be an assassin and now the DB won't activate. Is there anything I can do to spur it along?

Did you go the sanctuary directly sometimes that fixes the problem.

I can't even find this on UESP.

Some sort of fluke bug?

I looked on UESP also to see if it was in the notes section and if there was a fix. I think somewhere it did say that there was a bug that when you talked to a courier he would just say nope, sorry, nothing. There was no fix and that was all it said. I'm going to try going to the sanctuary anyways to see if maybe I can get something to happen, but I doubt that I'll be able to get in since astrid has not yet contacted me.

The thing is you don't need the note to progress to the next quest. You just need to sleep and the quest activates in a manner you cannot miss.

Try sleeping in a bed at one of your homes. If that doesn't work, rent a room at an inn and sleep on that bed.

I just went to Falkreath and rented a room and slept until 2 in the morning. Still not getting kidnapped. Checked the sanctuary and it does not allow me to give the right password either.

If you have other quests going, just keep going with those. If you don't have any other quest, pick up a small side one. I'm not saying this to say "distract yourself," what I'm saying is that sometimes scripting in the game gets weird and you need to do other things to get the first one to activate.

Don't sleep in inns. They don't like to work. Maybe they're not suppose. Sleep in your house, a lone abandoned tent or some bed where you are all by yourself. You don't have to get the note just sleep.