is it possible to start "destroying the dark brotherhood" without killing grelod?

Afaik, nope.

You can turn her into a chicken using Wabbajack. She dies, but you didn't really kill her directly, did you. She just died from the shock of transformation.

Didn't I see this exact same topic posted by the same person? IDK...

I just searched 10 pages of the Forums and couldn't find it.

Do what abacus said, with Wabbajack. Never even knew that was possible.. but that is HILARIOUS. Good find.

If you're on PC, try this in the console:
setstage db01 100

If you're on PS or XB, then there's no bypass.

She deserves to die, or go to jail... Since option 2 is not possible... Do option 1! When I went into that place for the first, I killed her happily with no guilt. NO ONE should be that mean to children.

No one's going to miss Grelod.

I hate how you have to be a cold blooded murderer in order to take down the DB. Just doesn't make sense to me why it would progress in that way. I would love to destroy the DB, but butchering an old lady because I was asked by a child just doesn't add up for me.

What is so cold-blooded about killing Grelod? have you met the woman? She takes joy in making orphans suffer and denying them the opportunity to be adopted. Go talk to Grelod and you'll see there is nothing cold blooded about killing her.

Thus why her name's a contradiction in itself. Grelod "the Kind".. when she's anything BUT that. She is THE coldest woman in all of Skyrim that i've met so far.

"There is a murder in Riften. Some old woman running an orphanage being murdered. The poor children must be so upset."

YEA RIGHT. You should see their faces when i bleed Grelod like a stuck Pig

The word you're looking for is IRONIC

I have a massive issue with taking her out. Not only don't I think that she "deserves it" at all - she didn't attack me first, and my characters prefer to just to kill whatever tries to kill them, first. But also, listen to what these ugly little brats say afterwards: "Assassins are so cool!", "I want to be an assassin, too, when I grow up", "Can I have your autograph, dear assassin?"

Now, presuming that I just took out the old hag to eliminate the DB, then all these chubby little brats adoring "assassins" are a massive problem for the future. Give them a few years to turn from ugly zombielike 10 year old brats into semi-decent looking advlts, and they'll be off to re-form the DB.

Except with the old hag dead they'll have the opportunity to be adopted by decent folk. Being forced to live in the orphanage until they are old enough for Grelod to throw them out into the streets is just as likely to create murders and theives. I doubt the old hag is teaching them anything they'd need to survive as advlts. And sense Astrid was aware of the potental contract anyway it stands to reason they'd have gotten around to it eventually. But with Astrid and her troop dead no one would remain to keep the dark brotherhoods memory alive. The black sacrament would go completely unanswered and eventually people would cease performing it completely.

That's right. But at least they wouldn't have any reason to think that "assassins" are the coolest of the cool.

I don't think that they ever get adopted though, do they? Months later, they still just sat around there in the orphanage and talked about how cool that assassination was. If they grow up like that, they're SO going to turn out to be the next generation of Sithis-worshipping psychopaths.

If they on the other hand grow up with Grelod, they'll be the next generation of miserable, depressed sociopaths. Sounds like the average Nord to me.

You really expect a game to include that? Alright then using your logic they'll never grow up to become assassins because no matter how much time goes by they never actually age. If they can grow up sometime in the future to become assassins then they can be adopted.

They're young, have been emotionally and physically abused by an old woman, and some guy comes in and kills her...and starts telling them that he has come on behalf of one of them to stop her. Yeah, they're gonna think him a hero. The fact that they do this should tell you how cruelly Grelod treated them. She wasn't just a strict, demanding woman. I wouldn't be surprised if starvation was one of the many punishments she doled out to them.

Many of my characters feel that there's a fine line between picking on advlts and picking on children. If you picked on children or the elderly, you have crossed that line, and you shall feel my character's mace.

Yes, we don't see what happens to them later, but I like to think that the assistant takes over and raises them right, and gives them opportunities to get adopted to loving families.


I thought this to myself when I heard that line:

"No, they're having a fiesta right now...complete with music, lights, and dancing."

Actually, this is where Bethesda falls short over and over again. It wouldn't take much to have the children disappear a game week later and have a note on the door that reads: closed, children given out for adoption. That would be immersive and make you feel your actions have had an impact. Little 'tying up of loose ends' notes and comments and changes would go a long way to increasing player immersion and not take much programming.

You know, if anybody except that bunch of brats would actually suggest that the death of Grelod would be a good thing to happen, then I might actually consider working for that goal. But a bunch of kids? There's a reason why underagers aren't allowed to vote or to do important decisions (like: "I'm going to have this medical procedure done to me even though there are risks involved" - the kid is not allowed to decide that. It's the parents or legal guardian who does that).

So, if kids aren't allowed to decide such things, we're going to let one socially peculiar kid decide if another person is allowed to live or to die? I call him "socially peculiar" because I don't think that it's quite "normal" behaviour when someone bangs his head against the floor for months, sitting in a pentagram and trying to conjure a devil or something.


"But she's a horrible old hag!" - yeah, a lot of people are. Do you run around and murder them just because they are?

Kids have less of a filter though. Constance and a few other people (Riften guard come to mind) seem to think the kids would be better off without Grelod, but they aren't going to say it out loud, and especially not to a random stranger. It'd make them suspect.

The kids on the other hand, have a lot less social conditioning controlling what they will and will not say to others.

"You just stole my candy. I wish you were dead!!!!!"

This is also something you might hear from one of the innocent youths of our species. Do you think it would be right if a DB assassin would appear then out of thin air and do the whining whelp's bidding?

Not at all, but that has nothing to do with what we're talking about. Do you really think that Grelod's actions are on par with taking candy away from a child?

Grelod is in a position of power over these children, and has a responsibility to take care of them. Instead, she abuses them and gives them one meal a day. She has a closet with shackles to bind the children and leave in a small confined space.

Also, I never suggested children are innocent. They can be terrible little monsters.

Just let your companion kill her or something or use a rage spell on her. Use your imagination, you have to ... since the quests are quite linear.

I think the idea was, you were supposed to pay attention to your surroundings and decide if she deserved to die. Because its fairly obvious she does. (this assumes you remotely consider yourself "good", assassin-for-hire is a valid playstyle in this game)

Correct, traumatized, possibly crazy kid asking for some old woman to be murdered should give a "good" person pause, so start poking around. Walk in (sneak is a good idea, but not necessary) listen to her talking to the kids. Listen to the kids' responses, particularly tone of voice. Check the closet with buckets and shackles on the wall. If that doesn't make you at least consider killing her, you've gone from "good" to "willfully oblivious to evil actions".

Even at that it can be borderline, she is cruel to the point of outright sadism, and clearly a terrible influence on helpless orphans. But does that justify her death? I think barely, but if you really want proof, save your game, kill her, and see what happens. I never got the "yay assassin! I want to be like you!" lines, likely because I sneak and position out of sight when I kill her. I get closer to "I can't believe he actually went through with it!" "Finally!" "Oh, thank you!". Once the other woman calms down (takes days sometimes) she *very* half-heartedly sounds upset at Grelod's death. "I know she was awful, but to be murdered in cold blood? I dunno." That's an anologue to "damning her with faint praise" to me. Yes, there is a standard world-wide guard response of her being murdered, and feeling terrible about it. That's because those are guards who never went to Riften, and just heard of an old ladies' death. There's a Riften-guard specific response of "If you ask me, those brats in the orphanage are better off with Grelod dead." The point is no one in the game world at all thinks her death was a bad thing, and there's good reasons for this. No regrets for the boy who hired you, all the kids are relieved they will suffer less, not the woman who worked with her, not the city guards. You may be right your character can't be absolutely convinced her death is righteous while Grelod is alive, but she absolutely deserved to die.

^This