Is it possible to RP a "good" character and join the Dark Brotherhood?

[Homer]

This question has been around for years and I have finally found an arc that allows me to play through the entire Dark Bortherhood storyline, along with the Thieves Guild, while RPing an overall 'good' character.

First off, the Dark Brotherhood is evil. Period. Any character that joins the DB is also evil, because they are willing to commit cold-blooded murder. The player has to kill Grelod the Kind, a hateful but defenseless old woman, just to get the opportunity to join the DB. Whether the other assassination targets are good or bad is irrelevent since the player is never told one way or the other. And killing Vittoria Vicci on her wedding day is simply a means to get the emperor to visit Skyrim. So, to be clear, the DB is an evil organization and anyone who joins is a cold-blooded murderer.

Likewise, there is nothing noble about the Thieves Guild in Riften. They are a ruthless and nihilistic gang of back-stabbing creeps who extort the poor citizens of Riften for their own personal gain. This does not change throughout their arc, and is only taken up a notch when the player is ultimately inducted into the Nightengales. Rumors that Maven Blackbriar has connections to the Dark Brotherhood pan out when the player learns that Delvin Mallory and Astrid have a working relationship, so the idea that the Thieves Guild is akin to the 'Merry Men of Sherwood Forest' is simply a delusion.

Nevertheless, a prospective 'good' character can join both of these corrupt factions and dilligently work through their entire questlines provided they join a third faction - the Companions - at roughly the same time they join the Theives Guild, and progress far enough to become a werewolf before joining the Dark Brotherhood. Also - and this is key - the player MUST AVOID learning they are the Dragonborn prior to completing all three faction storylines.

To illustrate how this works, allow me to briefly describe my character's RP experience. An Imperial ventured to Skyrim seeking fortune and glory. His initial encounter with Alduin left him terrfied of Dragons, so he stayed away from Bleak Falls Barrow despite being asked to retrieve the Dragonstone. Instead, he ventured to Riften, joined the Thieves Guild and began looting his way up the ladder. Though not a 'good' man at this point, he was not yet evil enough to begin murdering people. When life as a thief started to get a little boring, he decided to join the Companions to seek even more fortune and glory. Eventually he discovered the Circle were all werewolves and leapt at the opportunity to join them.

The beastblood turned our hitherto wayward adventurer into a bloodthirsty monster, for whom murdering innocents was not a problem. When the blood of silver hand bandits was not enough to sate his appetite, he began searching for an alternative means of acquiring two-legged snacks. Enter the Dark Brotherhood. The werewolf visited Aventus Aretino and played out the scenario that ended him up in the abandoned shack staring at a three-course meal. Thus, he was wlecomed into the DB with open arms and took to the bloodletting like a fish to water.

Fast forward to the end of all three questlines and our monstrous hero finds himself the head of the Theives Guild, the Companions, and the Dark Brotherhood. A rich and powerful man in Skyrim, he is nevertheless distraught by the fact that his soul is now claimed by three separate deities - Nocturnal, Hircine, and Sithis. Much like Kodlak Whitemane, he determines that he must find a way to save his soul. Remembering the dragon crisis - which has not amounted to much since his first encounter with Alduin at Helgen - he embarks on the quest to retrieve the Dragonstone and eventually discovers he is the Dragonborn.

This changes everything! Upon learning from the Greybeards that he has been chosen by Akatosh to destroy Alduin and save the world, our Imperial sees an opportunity for redemption. Long story short, he cures himself (and other Companions) of lycanthropy, leaves management of the Thieves Guild to Brynjolf, visits the Twilight Sepulcher one final time to choose and appropriate parting 'gift' from Nocturnal, and never returns to the Dawnguard sanctuary.

At this point in the story, our hero embarks on a quest to redeem himself from past sins by saving the world from dragons, dragon priests, vampires, and anything else that might seek to cause harm to the citizens of Skyrim and Solstheim. He is now a truly 'good' character in the sense that he has become more than simply a 'good Samaritan' drifting through the landscape. His actions are born out of deep introspection and a desire for atonement, and for this reason he can identify with Paarthurnax at the end of the main quest. He may also be drawn to aiding the Imperial Legion in the Civil War out of guilt for having assassinated their emperor and throwing their ranks into disarray, rather than some selfish, ideological bent for one side or the other.

To be clear, I was around lvl 12-15 when joining the Theives Guild, lvl 15-20 when I joined the Companions, and lvl 20-22 when I joined the DB. I was somewhere around lvl 34 when I completed the DB and started the main quest. For most players, myself included, this constitutes the first third of their play-though, leaving the final two-thirds of the game to RP as a truly 'good' character. Think of this as Acts I, II, and III in an epic story, with the character becomming 'good' at the end of Act I. I made sure I completed all of the Daedric quests I could find while my character was still a werewolf (i.e. evil) so as not to be tempted by them after he'd seen the light and changed his ways. I also tried to avoid as many 'good Samaritan' type quests as possible early on to give myself more opportunities to perform good deeds later in the game.

All in all, it was a satisfying play-through and one I would happily repeat. Content-wise, my character experienced pretty much everything Skyrim has to offer. I hope this will help someone if they are struggling to justify joining the DB with a 'good' character. I guess the main take-away from my experience would be this: a 'good' character would never join the Dark Brotherhood, but leaving the Dark Brotherhood can be the first step a 'bad' character takes toward becoming a 'good' character. Skyrim offers plenty of milestones on the road to redemption.

[fauxpas]

Originally posted by deucey d:

You could RP as an operative for the Stormcloaks. Infiltration of sorts, super covert. Killing innocent people to maintain your position in the dark brotherhood, as a means to an end of course. Because (spoiler alert) you eventually end up killing the Emperor himself Such a blow to the legion / stability to the imperials would definitely be a good RP reason for having to kill a couple innocent people here and there. Good people can do bad things for a good cause!

Also if you are an imperial I don't think this would work the other way around, wouldn't make much sense to kill the emperor whom you serve . I hope this helps or gives you an idea of something similiar!

Also TLDR that was a hella long intro

Not really because you don't know you are going to get a contract to kill Meede until well after you've joined.


Also a decent argument could be made that killing the current weak emperor is paving the way for a stronger leader.

[Homer]

Originally posted by Dylan the Cartographer:

Originally posted by Homer:

And I'm not sure what 'lawful' good means.

Refers to the good-evil/lawful-chaotic alignment chart, which most people know from either memes or tabletop games. The idea is that good-evil makes up one axis and lawful-chaotic makes up a second. A chaotic good character might be willing to do things for the greater good, but be willing to break the law to do so--Such as robbing to coffers of a rich jarl and giving it to the poor. Think Robin Hood.
Meanwhile, a lawful evil individual follows a sort of code or standards despite being totally evil--Like the Oblivion dark brotherhood, which was very strict about who died and why, or basically any evil emperor.

Okay, by this logic my Imperial began the story as chaotic-good since he ran to Whiterun to tell Jarl Balgruuf about the dragon even though he didn't have to, and generally did helpful quests for the first few levels.
He teetered between chaotic-good and chaotic-evil for a while after joining the Thieves Guild, ultimately landing firmly in the chaotic-evil column after becomming a werewolf.
Once he joined the Dark Brotherhood, he progressed from chaotic-evil to lawful-evil (assuming lawful-evil is the more sinister of the two because it demands a level of conscious awareness of one's actions and subsequent consequences).
Finally, upon realizing he was the Dragonborn and that it was his destiny to save the world, my Imperial aligned himself with the lawful-good and spent the rest of the game conforming to this role.

[fauxpas]

Nope, lawful evil isn't anymore sinister than chaotic evil is.

Just as lawful good isn't any more moral than chaotic good is either.

[Homer]

Originally posted by Mountain Man:

Very disturbing post. This is a game about navigating your tripod through caves and hitscanning guys to death, not Crime and Punishment.

LOL...I guess that's true, but some of us just want to know why the tripod is in the cave to begin with and which guys should be hitscanned. For me, it took Crime and Punishment to sort that out.

[fauxpas]

As an example.


Lawful good probably wouldn't mug someone because its illegal and wrong.


Chaotic good problably wouldn't mug someone because it's wrong. ... They might rob from a tax collector to give to the needy however.


Lawful evil probably wouldn't mug someone because the risk of punishment isn't worth the reward. ... They might rob from someone if they were sure they wouldn't get caught.


Chaotic evil probably wouldn't mug someone if they thought the "victim" might be tougher than they are.

[Homer]

Originally posted by fauxpas:

Nope, lawful evil isn't anymore sinister than chaotic evil is.

Just as lawful good isn't any more moral than chaotic good is either.

Okay, so I just looked up the old D&D alignment system on Wikipedia and, in accordance with their descriptions of the terms, decided that my Imperial became lawful-evil upon joining the Thieves Guild and progressed to chaotic-evil upon becomming a werewolf.
There he remained until discovering he was the Dragonborn.

[Homer]

Originally posted by fauxpas:

As an example.


Lawful good probably wouldn't mug someone because its illegal and wrong.


Chaotic good problably wouldn't mug someone because it's wrong. ... They might rob from a tax collector to give to the needy however.


Lawful evil probably wouldn't mug someone because the risk of punishment isn't worth the reward. ... They might rob from someone if they were sure they wouldn't get caught.


Chaotic evil probably wouldn't mug someone if they thought the "victim" might be tougher than they are.

I was just trying to make some sense of the alignment system that was proposed in an earlier post. Personally, I don't subscribe to the whole alignment thing. In my view, and the way I play my characters, there is only good and evil. My Imperial started off good, turned evil, then got even more evil, then became good again.
Whatever alignment can be applied to that development, so be it.

[Homer]

Originally posted by Homer:

Whatever alignment can be applied to that development, so be it.

If I had to subscribe to an alignment system, I would probably go with the old Warhammer system instead of D&D.

[Homer]

Originally posted by Sevrojin:

ewww werewolfs why would you play the lesser of the 2 sub races?

Really? Playing as a werewolf is a blast! I hated being a vampire the few times I tried it.

[Sevrojin]

i thought the melee spam got boreing. on the other hand i loved grabing people with telekenesis and launching them into walls and repeating till they died then useing that corpse as a weapon and shooting it at other npcs.
vanilla vampires did suck.

[Malsvir Ixen]

My character is good because he is the hero in his own story. Everyone else's opinion about him doesn't matter. Besides Nazeem was asking for that dagger in the back with all his gloating and taunting of the poor.

[GrimCat]

Originally posted by Dylan the Cartographer:

Originally posted by Homer:

Uh-huh... I'm pretty sure murder is still bad in Tamriel,

Only about 1000 gold or a few days in prison bad, really. Funny thing, nobody seems to care after that.

I like doing the 1% assassin playthrough. Console command up a ton of gold. Who needs stealth when gold makes these problems go away so much faster?
Walk up, blade, spell, sweetroll to the face. Pay your gold and of you go on another adventure.
The system works!

[CoolLew]

a Good read!

[Legion]

To be fair the concept of good or evil with the DB is really..well not black and white. They are simply a tool to be used by someone.

[alexander_dougherty]

Originally posted by Malsvir Ixen:

My character is good because he is the hero in his own story. Everyone else's opinion about him doesn't matter. Besides Nazeem was asking for that dagger in the back with all his gloating and taunting of the poor.

Everyone is the Hero of their own story, I'll agree that other people's opinion doesn't affect whether you are good or not, BUT your actions decide if you are good or evil.

And if you kill for reward (money for example) you are evil.
Your self justifications are irrelevant, nothing can make those actions good, you committed murder.

You might redeem yourself at a later date, but that evil is always going to be there.
(please note I'm talking about your character, not you personally)