I have had DB assassins come after me before, but never this quick.


I just got to Riverwood. I accepted the quest for the Golden Claw. I gave the letter Sven wrote to Camilla, but I never even went back to Sven about it.

I went to the mine you pass on the way to Riverwood for some quick loot. Finish it and head across the river to kill a witch. On the way home I am met by a DB assassin. Really? I haven't even gotten the claw yet or been to Whiterun. Can can only assume that Faendal sent them after me since he is the only one I've wronged in any way, but technically that quest is still on my list since I haven't been back to see Sven yet.

Could that be what triggered the attack or are these things really just totally random?

The DB assassin is just a random event. There are some spots in Skyrim where you'll always find a random event taking place. The spot that you're referring to is one of them, and the DB assassin was randomly chosen for your encounter.

Only the 3 hired thugs are triggered by your thievish or murderous nature.

^ This

I love the DB, and play their Quest Lines every chance I get with every character. I relish the times with a new character when i get to face down the random DB assassin. It's a great test of combat capabilities to see if I've made a quality character build, IMHO.

The black sacrement was performed by that imperial captain's ghost.

That is very possible. My character is actually carrying around her helmet and I plan on setting it on a skull and placing it on display in my house.

Hmm. Can you put helms on skulls? I can never figure out quite what to do with them. I won't put them on mannequins for the same reason I won't put them on my toons....

If you read the letter in the witches hut it seems to trigger the db assassin, after you kill the witch of course. I think since the letter is to the witches sister...the sister hired the db.

I had the db jump me a day after I read the note and then killed the witch "defending myself". Maybe that combo triggers the db scripted attack?

Sometimes the DB assassins are tough, sometimes they're cupcakes. Either way, you can't take their armor when they're dead, which is gay.Same with the random thieves. Apparently I'm talented enough to remove the hide from a bear but am completely inept when it comes to removing particular types of leather armor.

I didn't have Anise send DB assassins after me, but on one of my playthroughs, she sent thugs after me after I had killed her and ransacked her house. The common thread in all the thug/assassin encounters in my games is that they all happen at very low levels. And since Anise's Cabin is kind of right there when you get out of Helgen, that was an early stop for me.

And due to this, finding an unenchanted cowl is terribly difficult. All the NPCs which carry a cowl (beginning with the inquisitor in the Helgen dungeon) have it perma-glued to their skin!

The roadside thieves that tend to wear glass armor also tend to have unenchanted mage hoods if that can work for you.

If you kill Anise or steal from her hut, her sister Moira sends the thugs to teach you a lesson. I had the three thugs attack my level 6 mage at the behest of a bandit, however, without ever discovering her hut. The DB assassin is to make you aware of the Dark Brotherhood. Otherwise, you'd probably never encounter them until you committed a certain deed in Riften as part of a certain quest from Windhelm.

Actually no. I finally bought a place last night and tried it. After about 10 minutes of trying I gave up, so I just sold the skull and have the helmet sitting on my shelf. I seriously can't believe how hard it is to place anything in Skyrim. It's actually much worse than the prior two games.

You know, DB is such a jerk now that I think about it. They kept the kid waiting only to make us feel guilty after doing their job for 'em
Are they understaffed or something? I also know that Maven hired Astrid to kill somebody, and they seem to have failed. No wonder

I actually like Oblivion's system better. You get tracked because you showed promise as a killer, not because you did a good deed

Thus lies the Dark Brotherhoods problem during the time of Skyrim.

They are severely understaffed, and their numbers drop a little more each year. The Night Mother doesn't talk to them anymore, they have no Black Hand (no Speakers, no Listener, no Silencers...), no Tenets, no direction, no one fears or even much respects them any more, and only one partially active Sanctuary.

The Dark Brotherhood are very much in a bind... until [i]you[/u] show up.

The Dark Brotherhood has quite possibly the best written Quest-line in the game, and the stories you get from people and books while merrily romping through the quests thoroughly tells you what happened in the 200+ years since Oblivion. And from the DB's perspective, none of it is good.

But once you start into the Quest-line, you have a massive part in turning around their fortunes (or making sure they never have to worry about it again simply by going to visit an Imperial Officer in Dragonbridge...).

Trully great storytelling in the Dark Brotherhood quests! I highly recommend it.

I have to admit, I don't like playing evil, but the DB was by far the best faction out there.

And you didn't have to become a werewolf, or a nightingale ... ... course you did have to sleep with a corpse.

Naw... you just cuddle for a bit.

Well.... POO. Another good idea down the drain. But thanks for the update!

That's one aspect of moving items around in Skyrim that I always found kind of hilarious. Just thinking what the NPCs think of the Dragonborn when they're doing things like shoving a book spine first and horizontally onto a bookshelf, or lifting a sword up by the blade and wildly swinging it over their head until it goes in just the right position.

Lol. Imagine how much easier it would be if we had two broken wrists and no thumbs. Come to think of it, that's how it feels now.