I am doing in my time of need quest

kematu and saadia each tell me the other is evil

am not sure who to believe

some places like http://www.rarityguide.com/articles/articles/1002/1/Skyrim-Walkthrough-In-My-Time-of-Need/Page1.html say to side with kematu and others say to side with saadia

i searched everywhere and couldnt find the correct answer? Please help as I cannot complete quest until I know who is telling truth

official guide says you never find out whos telling the truth.

its a grey world out there

There's no way to know who's telling the truth. Welcome to real life

Saadia is the one who wants you to kill people.

Just kill them all, problem solved, that's a good general rule of thumb for this game, if you can't divulge someone's motives, just kill them to be sure you don't make an error in judgement.

who do you feel is right? i mean thats what it comes down to. I sided with the mercs because after reading up in the history of the conflict in some in game books i turned her over to them but who knows i might have been wrong

Who gives the bigger reward? Or can you get it from just killing them all?

I'm also facing this dilemma. Both parts say the other is working for the Aldmeri Dominion.

I found strange that such a big hunt is organized to capture but a single person, especially if she has already betrayed her country so the greater harm is already done

I had the problem as well ... I sided with Saadia in the end, but had a bad feeling about it. Kematu was very convincing ... but well, women have to stick together

You find it strange? I find it perfectly natural that if someone betrayed their city/country, the others would want justice.

Sure but you put a bounty on her head, you don't send a whole army! Especially if she's already fled outside the province.

It seemed to me that these men were to worried she could spill the beans on something, like a witness that can reveal the right infos to frame a crime cartel. That's why I'm more inclined to believe her story. Maybe she learned about some Dominion scheme, denounced it publicly, wasn't believed and had to flee. It's no coincidence that she came to Skyrim where there are strong anti-imperial, anti Aldmer sentiments and people more than willing to listen to her story.

When I went to the prison to pay for the guy to be freed from jail, I paid, but I button mashed away the subtitles, so it didn't show up -- the option then disappeared, and if I tried to open his jail cell with the jail key it didn't work. : I

"Going to Kematu is certain death" according to one of his own men.
Meanwhile the nice maid DIDN'T stab me in the back as I was walking away from her in the dark distant corner of the inn. I don't really care if she is the liar, the world is a safer place with Kematu gone and Saadia isn't hurting anyone, let her repent doing busy work at the inn. Besides she went through all the trouble to pull the strings to get Redguards "banned" from Whiterun despite several living there openly.

The giveaways in these cases are if you kill the person and the face value innocent and they don't have some sort piece of incriminating evidence on them when you loot the corpse, they probably were innocent. I have seen Saadia's inventory; she is clean as a whistle.

Go with Kematu. Saadia just seems guilty and wont even give a clear reason why people are after her. Kemtu does.

Kematu is the way to go, there is no legitimate reason to help a supporter of the Aldmeri Dominion.

I thought it was odd that an army of a'kir were hiding out in a bandit cave, if they were the righteous ones. I sided with the girl, probably because she fluttered her eye lashes at me. I have a soft spot for women in trouble

Anyway, as other posters have said, it's a grey world and thats the whole point.

I was going to side with Kematu, but I wanted his sword and turban.

What I dont get from this quest is

when you killed kemeto.....

Those azrik warriors are still everywhere....I found some in a forrest asking a red guard woman(who wasnt saadia)

I found some standing at entrance of whiterun


isnt it odd that you kill their leader to make them go away..but after u did it they are still there?

It doesn't seem she won much from betraying her country.. hiding alone in Skyrim and working at an Inn. For a second I thought Id just let them all be alone, but then I decided to kill them. Beacuse I don't really care if she sold out her country or not.

Well consider the facts of their stories.

Both claim they come from Hammerfell - so definitely true
Both claim that it has something to do with the dominion - so definitely true

Saadia claims the Dominion wants her dead because she helped her people
Redguards claim she betrayed her people

Now that's a contreversy but based on what we know it's relatively easy to get a very likely answer.

Hammerfell is mostly free from the Dominion with the exception of a few minor cities, all who fight back. Meaning that if she betrayed the Dominion she could have gone to any of those other cities without problems. She didn't, she ran to another province making it more likely that she betrayed her people.
The Dominion has plenty of agents in Skyrim that can walk through every city (Thalmer agents) none of these agents are coming anywhere near Saadia, they don't seem to care. That seems odd. They are willing to send a lot of Redguard troops to find her, but not willing to send one Altmer agent into the city to confirm her identity?

Another thing to consider here is how many Redguards would trully end up fighting for the dominion? I don't think as many as we see during this quest... Leading a nation wide manhunt takes time and manpower. Does the dominion trully have that many redguards in their employ? And more importantly, do they really believe this one woman is important enough to hunt down with so many resources?

For Hammerfell (the original government) this is far more important because it's one of their cities and one of their own that betrayed THEM. For the dominion it would just be another random person not joining up with them as they probably anticipated.

So it's not 100% sure, but Saadia is likely lying her ass off.

I turned in Saadia, though it was a difficult judgement call. Kematu says at the end that my character shouldn't be so quick to trust a pretty face, which seems realistic. My character got him to promise to take Saadia back alive for trial. I'm still a little doubtful about who was telling the truth.

i havn't approached the quest yet, but my husband turned in Saadia.

i used the exact same reasoning. even when RP'ing a character with no prior lore knowledge, it still seems like WAY too far of a journey to take in order to run away. surely if she had any good standing with her people, she'd have gone to them instead of skyrim.

i wanted to believe her in the beginning but that part of it was too great to overcome and she paid the price.

This quest went slightly wrong for me.

I picked it up in Whiterun a few days ago and spoke to Saadia and did nothing more. When I came to do it last night my quest marker sent me to Rorikstead, so I went there and found 2 Alik'r in the tavern. They asked me about Saadia and the only option I had was to tell them she is in Whiterun. Then they asked me to bring her to the stables. So I spoke to Saadia and only had the option to lie to her that the Alik'r were coming and she should leave town. She came with me to the stables and Kematu was waiting for her and zapped her with the staff. Only then did he explain why he was a looking for her.

So there was no cave of Alik'r and no option to speak to Kematu beforehand and decide what to do. Did I miss something or do something wrong?

the choice comes in when u decide to either go speak to the alik'r or speak to saadia. u "made" ur choice to help the alik'r by telling them where saadia was.

quest markers are nice but u shouldnt follow them blindly. if u want to help saadia, the logical thing to do is to talk to her. or go kill kematu like she asked u in the very beginning.