Adventures in Oblivion - What's That Mother? You Want Me To Kill Everyone?

[...Posted by Ted H]

I wanted to tell a joke making fun of a certain singers death...realized I dont give a shit though....

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[Adventures in Oblivion - What's That Mother? You Want Me To Kill Everyone?]

So not long after I defended myself against that Skingrad guard, I went to bed only to wake up with some robed asshole watching me sleep. He said he represented the Dark Brotherhood and offered me a chance to join. All I had to do was take a dagger and kill some old guy. He then disappeared and I was alone again. I ignored the offer because with the special exception of the guard I killed in self defense, I wasn’t rolling a character who killed. That was the case until I joined the Fighters Guild.

Pissed off at how pointless and useless my life in the guild had been, I needed to take my frustrations out. I had already worked my way up through the Arena in the Imperial City and became champion, but that was all official and fair. The game just fucked me over with the Fighters Guild and now I wanted to hand out some unfair punishments. Then I remembered the dagger, remembered the old guy I was asked nicely to kill, and remembered that now was a good time to work out some anger issues.

After several stabs, many of which were applied postmortem, the robed asshole visited me and told me where to go next to continue my initiation into the Dark Brotherhood. A few words and my own uniform later, I was a full fledged member of the Assassins Guild. All my early contracts could be completed in one of two ways: the direct approach where I walk in and stab a guy till he stops breathing…or I could stealth kill the guy. To this point, I had actually built up my sneak skills quite well and I had acquired a ring that gave me a cloaking style like in Predator so now I too could blow a hole through Jesse Ventura!

Not all missions were as strait forward like “Kill this schmuck.” One had me fake some guys death so he could avoid a loan-shark. Another, and my favorite quest in the entire game, had me participate in a murder-mystery in which I was the murderer and everyone was as good as dead. That quest was so awesome, Imma give it its own post…

Anyway, one day I got a letter from the robed asshole saying I needed to meet him at his crib for a special assignment. The assignment: I needed to kill everyone at my HQ. Apparently there’s a traitor in the ranks, and instead of investigating and gathering clues on the matter, apparently it’s easier to just kill everyone suspected. I’m reminded of an old saying: “Would you kill 99 innocent men in order to ensure one asshole gets his?” I think we all know what this guy would do…

Seriously though, how hard would it be to take a few minutes to try and figure who the traitor is? I’m not entirely on board with this train of thought. Hell, if this traitor is trying to bring down the Dark Brotherhood, what’s to say that this isn’t part of his plan? This is like flooding out your house because a smoke detector went off. Are we sure there isn’t a less homicidal way to deal with-wait, what’s that? No, this isn’t the “Let’s think it over Guild”…we’re the Assassins Guild. I guess we do solve out problems by killing. Don’t ask a plumber to cook you a meal, and don’t ask an assassin to be Sherlock Holmes. Fair enough.

So, how do I go about killing everyone in my guild? I could go for the straightforward approach and stab everyone, but if I’ve learned anything here, is that there’s always a more diabolical tactic to use to get your way. Todays killing tactic du jour is this pile of poison apples!

To use the poison apples effectively, they must be the ONLY thing to eat anywhere. My inventory was pretty full at the time so I had to eat everything else. Nobody seemed to question my sudden binge eating, or the fact that I ate all the apples while replacing them with different apples from my pocket. No one else thought it odd either that I was watching them with glee as they inevitable ate the only food available, or the sudden epidemic of sudden death that was suddenly going around.

At one point there were only three people left, including myself. The big, loud orc must’ve caught on to what was going on because he suddenly decided the talking cat was the culprit and killed him. I was very thankful for him saving me the time and energy and made sure to tell him as much when I was pulling several of my arrows out of his corpse moments later.

I returned to the robed asshole who thanked my by giving me a promotion and a new horse. Apparently he broke into Middle Earth and stole Shadowfax, dyed its hair black and hoped Gandalf wouldn’t notice. I didn’t really care since Fuck-Your-Mountains was still around and I didn’t really need the speed upgrade. A nice gesture though. Anyway, I was now the private assassin of the robed asshole.

The way I go about carrying out assassinations from here on out seems a bit retarded though. Instead of going to a superior for the mission, I was to instead head to some random location and get instructions, then kill the poor sap that needs killing, then head to a third location stated in the instructions to pick up my reward and next assignment. I assume there’s something in play here preventing me from skipping the assassination and just picking up the reward but Christ, what’s the secrecy for? I hold a position previously thought unknown and shit and what’s to stop some random passerby from stumbling across the reward before me?

I take it in good faith because while the Dark Brotherhood tale was starting to get bumpy from the emerging plot holes, the missions were still interesting and fun as opposed to the Fighters Guild which were grinding and riddled with plot holes from the get-go. Anyway, I hammer out a bunch of assassinations until the assassination quest that takes me to Bravil.

At this point in the game, I’ve set up Bravil as my HQ of sorts. I bought the house in town, I do all my trading with the two shops (one right next door to my house, the other right at the entrance for when I fast travel) and I make sure to hit up the statue every chance I get because it grants a boost to my luck skill, and I am a luck stacking mofo. So naturally I was already familiar with my next target, the elf that had an unhealthy fascination with the statue because he would always be staring at it whenever I come by.

Anyway, the quest stated he needed killing and that he paid off the guards so it would be ok to start a knock down-drag out brawl with him in the middle of town. Fuck that, I say. Like I said, Bravil is my town, and I already know how I’m taking this bitch down. My predator-type stealthed ass took position overlooking the statue and waited him out. When the target walked over, I bowed up and arrowed his ass from the shadows. Over before he could kiss the statue.

“Oh fuck! What did you do?! Shit! Why would you do that?! Ffffffffuuuuuuuu-!”

Uh-oh.

The robed asshole, my supervisor, jumps in and starts chewing me out for killing that guy, who turns out to be a really really REALLY important dude for the Dark Brotherhood.

“Why would you assassinate him?” the guy screamed

“I dunno! You wanted him dead!” I screamed back, still cloaked BTW so the robed asshole is only screaming to himself to anyone looking over.

“I didn’t want him dead! Why would you think I want him dead?”

“You totally told me to kill him! See? *hands him the assassination order* That’s you wanting that guy arrowed.”

“I didn’t send this order. Lemme see all these orders you have….FUCK! None of these are from me. What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Could it be that hiding orders under a rock and not telling me in person turned out to be a BAD idea? Turns out, since my promotion, I killed a shit-ton of people and only about six of them were actually official, the other dozen people were someone else fucking with me. All the unofficial killings were actually ranking members of the Dark Brotherhood, apparently dropping membership all the way down to me, the robed asshole, and four other people.

So once the robed asshole and I are done yelling at each other, we decide we need to track down the fucker who’s been giving me fake assassination orders. My job is to travel to where my next order is and confront the guy who plants the next fake order. The robed asshole meanwhile will be keeping it on the DL since a lot of people are angry at him since they think it’s him sending me after the targets.

I head to Anvil and wait out for the guy dropping off my next target. When I catch him and shake him down for info, he sends me to the lighthouse to where the man behind all this lives. Inside I find dead bodies, a rotting head and a diary. “Dear Diary, wah wah wah, some dark brotherhood asshole killed my mommy. I vow revenge. Here’s how I’m gonna do it…” Yeah, pretty standard.

The Dark Brotherhood has a traitor and it’s one of the six remaining members. This guy wants the DB completely wiped out, though between the fake orders and the cleansing I did with the apples, it seems I’ve been doing most of the leg work for someone else’s revenge plot.

I high-tale it back to the robed asshole only to arrive too late. The other four surviving members got to him first, stripped him, raped him and killed him…or something like that. He’s dead, that’s all that really matters. Great news for me though since it means I get another promotion. I get a fancy black robe and everything. One of these people is the traitor since the diary explicitly talks about how they’re gonna bring down the DB from within.

Remember that rotting head I mentioned before? Yeah, I totally took it with me because…well the only reason I took it was because the game said I could. I then dropped it on the floor in front of everyone thinking I was clever. Maybe the traitor will see his mothers head and start freaking out, maybe do a couple scenes from Psycho, revealing his traitorish identity…but no. Instead I had to play along and let the game do things it’s own way.

Everyone else starts patting each other on the back saying how wonderful it is that they tracked down the traitor before it was too late. Meanwhile, I was having trouble finding a dialogue option that allowed me to shout out “WE STILL HAVENT FOUND THE TRAITOR!” They have good reason to believe the robed asshole was the traitor, but when I have evidence that contradicts those beliefs and the game simply doesn’t give me any opportunity to present such evidence, then I call shenanigans. I just dropped someone’s mothers head on the ground and can show you their mother fucking diary!

Nope, instead let us go to the tomb of the Night Mother (aka: Jesus fucking Christ to everyone in the Dark Brotherhood) and speak with her in person…which is exactly what the traitor wants to do so he can take a shit on her corpse, which he totally said he would do in his diary…which I can show you guys…if ANYONE wants to see! No? Fine, let’s do what the bad guy wants like idiots.

In a completely SHOCKING turn of events, the traitor reveals himself in the tomb and easily kills off two of the three idiots who ignored me screaming about how we haven’t found the traitor yet. At this point, I'm willing to let the traitor do what he wants. He hasn’t harmed me in any way, in fact, I’m much better off now than when I was just a low level lackey in the DB. If at this point he were to let me go, I’d do it. If the DB is dumb enough to get themselves killed despite my best screaming efforts, then there’s nothing more I could have done for them.

No…again…Instead the traitor decides that EVERYONE must die before he can shit on the Night Mother. He picked a fight with the wrong assassin and once again I find myself having to kill someone in self defense. I didn’t kill you, buddy, over ambition did you in. Afterwards that lone surviving idiot and the Night Mother ghost all praise me and thank me and give me one last promotion. The Dark Brotherhood and all two of its members live to kill another day.

The Dark Brotherhood quest line got kinda dumb at the end, but it was waaaaaaaay better then anything the Fighter Guild shat out. And while the Mages Guild (I’m not gonna get into that one here) has a much tighter plot, the Dark Brotherhood was just more fun. Nothing topped the one mission though……

Next time: One of us is the real killer....and...let's just say it isnt you...