A glitch ruins my Dark Brotherhood quest.

[The Tempest Inspector]

I'm at the point where I'm supposed to take the role as the Gourmet and poison the Emperor's food, but when I talk to the cook, the game exits the conversation even though I'm not pressing any buttons to cancel it. This makes me unable to continue with the quest and the Dark Brotherhood questline in general. I have never had this problem with any other quests or NPCs in the game.

[AC Denton]

This can happen when an NPC decides something else is more important than you. I.E. if they're scripted to eat, sing etc. just a small bug. Try talking to the cook while he sleeps, or is not doing anything at all.

[The Tempest Inspector]

I was able to fix it with a command. It seems I'm not the only one who has trouble with reporting to Gianna during the quest: To Kill an Empire. The problem was due to a comment relating to the character's race and since I use a Mod race (Daedric Prince), the conversation was broken. The command I used is SetStage DB09 30.

[223Ghost]

This worked! thank you

[alexander_dougherty]

Originally posted by ac_denton:

This can happen when an NPC decides something else is more important than you. I.E. if they're scripted to eat, sing etc. just a small bug. Try talking to the cook while he sleeps, or is not doing anything at all.

Won't work, the conversation the OP is talking about needs to happen while they are cooking in the kitchen...

but by the look of it the problem is solved

Originally posted by HNI Shuta:

This worked! thank you