...so how do the guards know who I killed? Muiri's boyfriend, for example? I cleared out the entire dungeon without being seen once and left no survivors.

I understand that it's nice to be reminded of your accomplishments, but did Beth have to do it that way? They could have just said in passing "Oh, I heard that bandit leader was assassinated". But they insist on making you feel like a [censored] assassin, since the whole [censored] world seems to know what you did. You were so unstealthy that your actions echoed so loudly out of the ruin that every guard in Skyrim heard the deathblow. Way to go.

maybe Muiri bragged about it?

Maybe the DB should start killing their contacts, then, if they're going to blurb about their actions and identities to the whole province.

As Leader of the newly refurbished Dawnstar Sanctuary, I second this notion and shall amend it to the list of Tenets.

I will personally uphold this tenet for all future contracts.

So the db kills for [censored] and giggles? Kill the contact, kill the need.

Kill the mark, receive payment from contact, silence contact by sending them to the Void. Its not for [censored] and giggles, its for Sithis!

Well its obvious. Youre not the greatest assassin of all time. I am.

I have done some research, and I now understand that contacts for The Dark Brotherhood Forever radiant quests pay up front for the contract to be completed. Regardless, once the Black Sacrament and Payment has been received from a contact, they may be silenced.

Also, after reviewing The Five Tenets, I have concluded there is no need to add a sixth tenet that demands all contacts to be silenced. Instead, silencing contacts will simply be an act of upholding Tenet 2: Never betray the Dark Brotherhood or its secrets. To do so is to invoke the Wrath of Sithis.

Silencing contacts ensures that the DB's secrets (such as the identity of both members and targets) shall only be known to members, thus decreasing the chances of such information being leaked to the general public.

The DB don't kill people. I do!

Skyrim guards aren't fully psychic like Oblivion guards, but they do seem to have basic telepathy at least.

I don't take anything a guard says as fact, they're just lame one-liner dispensers. I doubt EVERY guard in all of Skyrim took an arrow in the knee. Guards are just there to annoy and kill you if you get out of hand. They're the trolls of the game, even bigger trolls than well... trolls.

Doesn't. The Dark Brotherhood doesn't kill people. When you are talking about a single entity, even if it is a group, you use doesn't. Now you could say the Dark Brotherhood Followers don't kill people because there you are referring to multiple entities.

Sort of hard to drum up future business though, wouldn't it be?

Why kill for people then? Why not just kill for the lols?

i never saw db kill anyone veesra parried a few strikes and the rest got whupped i killed everybody still am the guild npcs do nothing

Got that line too. Maybe there was a chicken somewhere that i missed

I know the feeling.
"I heard you were at the wedding of the emporer's cousin; that must've been terrible"

"No, I think you'll find you heard wrong. I didn't arrive in solitude til the following day on buisness with Falk Firebeard; and that is my story and I'm sticking to it - I crept all the way across solitude using a mixture of stealth and invisibility, took up my firing position on the position overlooking the wedding without ever entering the ceremony area, assasinated the bride with a shot to the throat without detection from extreme range (Not to mention I was fully garbed in a way that made my identify hard to guess) AND got back out the city without so much as a wedding guest turning hostile. I was most certainly "Not at the wedding" as far as any witness is concerned, I wasn't even in Solitude.

I didn't manage to kill her with a bow without getting a bounty, so i killed her by dropping the gargoyle on top of her. No one saw me enter or leave Castle Dour, the death was a tragic accident.

But guards know everything, and the guards see everything. They're here, they're there, they're everywhere. So beware!

Distantly related (or not), why the hell does "Master Criminal" achievement require having abounty of 1000 gold in every hold? Sounds more like a "Master Screw-Up" to me

Pssst, I know who you are... Hail sithis.

I had a similar problem.

Nazair asked me to eliminate the guy who runs the meat stand in Whiterun, who is also the brother of the guy who sells you arrows in the Drunken Huntsman.

I was told the guy goes hunting and I should kill him then. Well I waited for days and days and the guy never went hunting. So, I sneaked into the Drunken Huntsman, closed the door and killed him-silently. I snuck back out of the building and went on my way.

Since then every time I purchased arrows from his brother, he would say to me, "Something you need, you miserable wretch?" I have no idea how he knew it was me, no one saw me, no one knew it was me. Hell, he could have died from a skeever bite in his sleep.

But then yesterday after days and days (in-game time) the brother finally decided to attack me, and died by the guards. No more arrows for me. :/