I feel violated... My Nord came across a Vigilant of Stendarr (excuse spelling) and he needed help. Being the kind-hearted Nord that he is he decided to help this guy out because he was looking rather desperate.
So Justinian goes in there to see what's going on. While inside the house starts shaking and things are flying off the walls and all around in the air. I then hear a voice telling me to kill this poor fool next to me. We both fight the voices as long as we can but the Vigilant comes at me. I only killed him out of self defense.
Then I move further "into the bowels" of this evil place and come upon an alter with a mace. I step closer and become enclosed within a trap with spikes. I learn this is not just any Daedra haunting this place, but Molag Bal. He tells me I will do his bidding and I refuse and tell him I don't want to be here, leave me alone. But before letting me go he tells me about a priest of Bohthea (spelling). He tell me this man is trapped and to bring him to him. I refuse but in the back of my head I know I need to go free this man.
So I travel all the way to him which was quite the walk. When I come upon him he asks me if I'm going to kill him. I tell him I'm going to set him free and that Molag Bal sent me. I was hoping this would deter him away from visiting that cursed place, but no, this guy begins traveling toward Markarth, so I followed him hoping he wouldn't go in there but he would not be deterred.
Once in the house he goes right up to the alter and gets trapped. This is where it gets bad. I was forced against my will to kill this man and send his soul to Oblivion. Afterwards I dropped his cursed mace and sprinted out of the house as soon as possible. Justinian is forever scarred and will never be the same after that.

Now to the point. WHY was I forced to kill this man? Why is there no choice in the matter? I only wanted to free him from imprisonment. Why didn't Bethesda give me the freedom to choose how I wanted I handle that? I don't like quests without a moral choice. Don't get me wrong, I love this but they should have allowed some choice I'd you're trying to e a good character. I'd rather know my character made the right choice than have the ugly ass mace of Molag Bal. Opinions?

Molag Bol Is the Daedric Prince of Domination and Submission. He ultimately made you submit to his will without you even having a choice.

I struggled with this quest too (from an RP perspective). My last character was of a chaotic good alignment, so it bothered me that I didn't have a choice. Skyrim isn't really about choices, though, at least not in the storyline. Look at how limited all the dialogue options are...

I suppose you could rationalize it by saying that you could not prevent the priest from going to the alter (his free will), and it was the priest's poor choice that put both you and him in the predicament.

I got to ask.

Despite there being a big bold text saying "DON'T POST SPOILERS ON THIS BOARD", what made you decide that this and not the spoilersection was the right place to post this?
And yes, this IS a genuine question

You could have left the house and never looked back.

You could have freed the guy (who himself is a priest of Boethiah, quite the evil Daedra, and who is the one personally responsible for corrupting Molag's altar by performing human sacrifices dedicated to a different Daedra) and let him go his own way. You didn't have to return to the house to see what happened.

You had no less than 2 choices that would have allowed you to not kill the guy. You didn't take them.

Oh well.

This forum has more traffic. OP put a huge warning in the title, if someone is anti-spoiler and dumb enough to click the link they deserve it.

Ah, I see your logic...

You gotta love the irony: he (probably) knows he's not allowed to post spoilers in general, so he justifies it by posting "spoiler"..... In general

I like it. Show's true daedric prince influence and power.

I really don't think it's a big deal...

My thoughts exactly.

True. I guess that helps me justify it from a RP perspective.

do you know where you are?

"cheats, hints, and spoilers" forum... HELLO!!

spoilers ARE allowed here.

Yeah, the thread got moved from general

I was a bit annoyed at this too. It was fine up until the very last part, as before then Bal was forcing you to do as he says, but at the end you should have had the option to just sit back and let the Boethiah worshipper defeat Bal again, as they both reference him capable of doing should no one else interfere

This, plus the Priest of Boethia is an idiot. He talks to you like he's all high and mighty... I guess I showed him who's boss hahahahaha

Ah, but your being there has interfered with the Priest's plan. Molag Bol is basically powerless without a corruptible source, which is you. It's not entirely your fault, as the Vigilant of Stendarr sort of forced your hand by attacking you first, but make no mistake, you've done exactly what Bol expected of you. You spilled blood in his name, and he now knows that you are corruptible. I was bummed out too, but then realized that I was being played. The best that you can do is not return or intentionally fail the quest. Just don't expect any special rewards from the Daedric Prince of Domination and Submission.

Don't worry about it, he is a priest of Boethiah, the daedric prince of plots, deceit, [censored] and murder.

The Boethiah quest is even worse than the Molag Bal one, so killing that priest is no worse than killing a bandit, a necromancer or one of the forsworn.

Its a shame about the Vigilante of Stendarr though, but he was the one who cracked and attacked you, so you had no choice but to defend yourself.

I actually had to bribe the priest to get out of his cell. He deserved everything he got

Don't want to kill someone? Don't do the quest. There's your option.

It's weird how many people play this game but have such hangups about violence and killing people in a video game.

I dunno why you don't really like the idea of killing the dude. Killing is in most of the quests...killing the good or the bad...you can't always play the good guy. And hey, he attacked you first.
But I might just be saying that because my charater is a crazy, blood-thirty, killing assassin.

Original poster... you're right. This was a badly written quest and you are not crazy. I'm not sure when Bethesda decided that giving the player no choice was a "roleplaying game," but it didn't use to be like this and it's sad and stupid. Today I took a screenshot of the moment my husband's character was offered the "choice" to sell his soul to Nocturnal.

There's only one option: "I agree." That's the moment your player makes the choice.

To be fair that's arguably not as bad as it's part of a guild questline. It would be nice if guilds included choice but this has been rare since Morrowind (usually right at the end if at all), this one was a side quest that you might easily pick up as part of a 'good' character and then be a bit annoyed about. Yes bal was corrupting you, but really there should have been more indication that you had no choice, I dunno, maybe Bal could have messed with your head a bit until you went into a hallucination in which the priest did attack you.

Some people like to play a character in a consistent role. So playing a "good" character, it would be breaking character to make a human scarifice to an "evil" Daedra. My character, in my opinion would be quite conflicted with the dilemma of killing a priest to satisfy Molag Bol, so he just left the house and never followed through.

Even though I'm a big proponent of having choices and being able to do things your own way, I think Bethesda's decision to railroad you in certain situations makes for some consequences to your actions. Want the nice shiny Daedra trinket? Well, you're going to have to do something that might be against your morals, or cost you your soul. I still regret putting that Brand-Shei dude in prison to satisfy the TG. Like in real life, you shouldn't expect to have everything handed to you. You're going to have to pay a price, and in this case, it's giving away your freedom to be the good guy (especially when dealing with Daedra).