What's with the Boethiah cultist?? I found her in the mountains and she wanted me to get a friend, het them to grab this shrine then stab them with a dagger or something. WTH?

Ok, so I started a fight and lost bigtime. Reloaded, then left Sven at the bottom of the hill and kept running back up, goating one of them to follow me until all were dead. This deamon thing told me I better get someone and do the shrine thing. I reloaded and got the heck out of there. I wanted to ask first.
Did anyone actually do this? I know it's a game but using a friend for fresh meat doesn't seem right somehow.

Boethiah, prince of plots, rules over deceit and conspiracy, so of course she wants me you to murder a friend in order to show your loyalty.

In reward you get the Ebony Mail, which stat-wise is very good, a heavy armour chain mail.

My main character hired a mercenary and then murdered him instead of actually murdering a friend.

Also, there was supposed to be a continuation of the questline where you had to go and murder Elisif the Fair but it was scrapped.

its a mission for your darker side, as most of the daedra missions are. if you have someone that'll follow you that kind of rubs you the wrong way its a prime opportunity to get rid of them. i used j'zargo from the mage's college because he tried to knock me off with his flame cloak scrolls. i can't think of a daedra mission on the game where you don't have to kill someone,(except 3) friend or not and they usually involve you turning on someone or killing followers of that daedric prince

I took the elf from Riverwood and killed him there cause he kept visiting my wife (the riverwood trader's sister) in my home in whiterun. I then had to do the quest afterwards for the ebony mail.

Oh, but Madeskir knows of lord Boethia's bidding. Madeskir visit Elisif when she's alone in her room and slit her throat from behind.

OMG! I remember you posting that in another thread. I haven't got married yet but if he visits MY wife then off with his head. I'll stick him to the post in a second.
I'm trying to be a good guy but it's not working. Now this guy in Riften wants me to do something crooked involving a ring. I can't figure out why and until I know the whole story then I'm now siding with him.
I don't like his character anyway and I think he needs a dirt nap BIG TIME.

My current character is going to give Faendal to Boethiah because of all the crap he has done while a follower. He is more of an annoyance than Barbas and Anska combined. He has got my character killed five times, ruined more ambushes than I can remember, and he is either to far away to help during a fight or standing around doing nothing. He has the worst AI of the lot.

OT, as stated above, Boethiah is evil. Like most of the Daedra princes, her quest is going to have you do something bad. If you are playing a good character, avoid all their quests except (maybe) Meridia. Sanguine isn't too bad (more of a big prank), but the others are trouble. Nelacar explains why Azura is bad.

Did you first recruit Faendal when you were low level? If so, he might have poor skills because of that (which would explain his poor combat decision-making).


I have to defend Azura - if I was a Daedric Lord and someone started messing around with MY creation, I'd put the bugger through the wringer for sure!

Neither does killing people for money. Yet this is exactly what my assassin does for living (she's also a Champion of Boethiah, by the way )

So you've discovered the nefarious goals of Daedra Lords. Good. Now you can http://imperial-library.info/content/spirit-daedra and discover that they're not as bad as they seem - yes, even Boethiah. In a way they're like naughty children, playing around with their toys. Death means nothing to them; they cannot die. But they enjoy messing with mortal minds.

As for your unfortunate encounter... Well, what else would you expect from a cultist of Boethiah, "whose sphere is deceit and conspiracy, and the secret plots of murder, assassination, treason, and unlawful overthrow of authority"?

I picked up Faendal when my character was 10th. He became total crap when my character reached 20th.

The problem is she just didn't put him through the wringer. Because of what she did, others died. If she had only punished the one guy it would have been fine.

I've never tried it, but someone once posted a 'work-around' for this:

Basically, get a follower and go to Boethiah's shrine. Make your follower touch the pillar, then KILL ALL BUT ONE of the Cultists (You may want to use stealth or calming spells). Make sure the cultist focuses solely on you, and doesn't touch your follower. Whittle their health down to as low as possible, so that you can one shot kill them in the next step. Have the Cultist attack your stuck follower (standing so your follower is between you and the cultist works best), and AS SOON AS YOUR FOLLOWER DIES, KILL THE CULTIST. If you did it right, your follower will get revived, but will act like nothing happened, and Boethiah will speak from one of the dead cultists.

Note: Use a follower that doesn't have some kind of bonus dialogue (like training or quest assigning {Aela the Huntress}), as they will most likely lose all dialogues options that don't pertain to following you. I think it also resets the character, so their inventories will reset to normal, and their level will reset to match yours.

I copied it and saved it because I plan on trying it if the cultists respawn - I've killed them already on both characters so it may be too late for me.

You can fail the theft and still continue the quest if you don't want to frame Brand-Shei.

Err, bit a hijack sorry there... BUT Those who were killed were this guy's students and knew what he was doing. Their fault, no one else's loss.

I'm also talking about the people whose souls he was fed. There is no telling whether his students at the college knew what he was doing. {Those at the Deep knew and they are culpable.} Azura has a habit of using a shotgun when a scalpel is all that is needed. She curses an entire race instead of just the few who were responsible. She drives Malyn insane and not only are people killed, their souls are destroyed. She could have easily taken him out. She has the power. She prefers to play games. Azura is not good. She is vindictive, vain, and cruel.

Thanks for the link Rosveen.
I'm at level 45 and have been using Sven from the beginning. Is it better to drop him and go with another? I kind of like him but he likes to rush in when I'm trying to sneak. i thought that was just the game and not just his personality. (?)

AFAIK, Beth hasn't changed the problem with followers not levelling, so it is probably better to find a replacement, or 'recycle' Sven. If you are on PC, you can use the console to do that. If you are on xbox or PS3, you will need the Wabbajack. Full details can be found here: http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Followers#Follower_Stats (If you have no clue about how to get the Wabbajack, I won't spoil it for you! However, details can be found here: http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Wabbajack)

Edit: Read further down the page about followers for a breakdown of all available followers and their particular skils and abilities.

There! Now I won't feel so guilty about hijacking your thread... umm sorry...

The only person at the College who was hurt was a student of his who was killed during one of his experiments on the Star. While her innocence is debateable (did she know what she was getting into? Or not?) the incident led to him being banished and going to Ilinalta’s Deep, where all of his latter victims were disciples of his.

Malen Varyn's punishment was appropriate, even if there was unfortunate collateral damage. If he had merely been 'taken out', future research on the Star (or other Daedric artifacts) might have been allowed at the CoW, but by making a horrific example of him, Azura attached an extremely negative stigma to fooling with such things. I am sure that this, in turn, made the merely curious realize the risks involved in such research, keeping all but the most selfish from attempting anything further in this area. In other words, Azura made it quite clear that Daedric artifacts were not appropriate items for experimentation, and anyone attempting to do so would meet with dire consequences. Merely killing him would not have accomplished this.

If you listen to some of his disciples in Inalta you will hear them discussing capturing more locals to feed to Malyn. They then say it is to soon to do it again so they will feed him an apprentice instead. Locals are being fed to him not just his disciples. The fisherman whose skeleton you first find is one of them, and frequently you will find the body of a bandit at the foot of his throne. [Yes bandits are bad guys, but they are not his disciples.] Nelacar tells you that Malyn killed the female student during a fit of rage (not because of his experiment).

If Azura had either appeared in person/directly destroyed him or sent some Dremora Lords to rip him apart it or sent her champion to kill him it would have sent the message - mess with my artifact and I will kill you. Sending a "champion" after the fact is stupid. She was content with letting all those people die and waiting. Nelacar tells you that the damage done to the star would cause it to fade back to oblivion, back to Azura. If Sanguine can appear in Skyrim, so can she. Her driving him mad did not attach a stigma to experimenting on her star. Malyn having disciples shows that. And that is the other flaw, needing disciples to feed him souls. Without them he dies and the star fades back to Azura faster. People who don't know about the star will only think of Malyn as another crazy necromancer; if they know about him at all.