Thieves' Guild (Scoundrel's Folly through Darkness Returns)

Scoundrel's Folly

As I pointed out in my Anniversary Update post, this quest presents some significant challenges to the moral agent.  I was able to avoid the initial problem of stealing from Jarl Elisif in order to gain Gulum-Ei's information by simply Intimidating the Argonian.  Following him into the warehouse, however, was much trickier, but I managed to complete it without killing anyone other than the bandits inside Gulum-Ei's hideout.  I spared Gulum-Ei because, despite the gauntlet I had to run to catch up to him, he did not attack me directly, nor did he even know I was tailing him. 

Speaking with Silence

Speaking with Silence is far more interesting plot-wise, but presents very few moral challenges.  Nevertheless, the revelations in this quest shed some light on the morality of the Guild as a whole.  Without detailing all of the intricate plot elements, I will simply say that The Thieves' Guild as it first presented in Skyrim is a hollow shell of its former self, mainly because of Mercer's betrayal.  Therefore, many of the less charitable first impressions may have been based on an incomplete picture of the Guild.

Hard Answers

The next quest, like Scoundrel's Folly before it, presents a single moral challenge: trespassing into a friendly facility without being caught by the legitimate guards of said facility.  I did not even have to steal anything this time; I made a charcoal rubbing of the artifact I needed and sneaked back out.

Nope.  Not even with a hundred Fortify Carry Weight potions.

The Pursuit

This quest presents a minor dilemma in the person of Vald, the hired thug at Mercer's house.  My options for getting past Vald consisted of the following:

• Kill him
• Persuade him
• Pay his debt to Maven

Vald is initially non-hostile, so killing would have been wrong (he's obviously not very bright, so he probably has no idea that Mercer had betrayed the Guild).  I failed to Persuade him, so paying his debt was the only viable choice.  It turned out to be a minor chore (finding a special quill that Vald lost in transport), and Vald was grateful enough that he vacated his post.  The rest of this quest pitted me against bandits in Mercer's employ, so there were no further moral dilemmas.

Trinity Restored

This quest reveals the deeper essence of the Guild, which confirms my earlier suspicions about it being much more than a gang of criminals. Even though I was required to enter into a contract with the Daedric Prince Nocturnal, devotion to this entity consists of doing what I was doing anyway: thieving.  Other than that, there are no further opportunities for moral agency.

Blindsighted

Aside from killing some bandits and a bunch of Falmer, we had to confront and kill Mercer Frey.  Very straightforward.

Darkness Returns

None of these tests of strength, wit, and stealth are morally complex.

These quests form the main part of the Thieves' Guild line, and are engaging from both a moral and an narrative perspective.  By completing them, I learned that the Guild exists to honor stealth and regulate crime, not merely to line the pockets of its members.  When it is running at full strength, it is an organization that stabilizes the community by setting standards of criminal behavior and driving out destabilizing elements.  As a moral agent, I was able to find justification for their existence, but that justification was about to be tested in the final part of the questline: Under New Management.

Update: Boethiah's Calling/Unearthed

I am interrupting my treatment of the Thieves’ Guild questline in order to provide an update on one of the Daedric quests that has been a real thorn in my side: Boethiah’s Calling.  In my first post on this quest, I declared that I would not complete the quest unless I found a follower who deserved to be sacrificed – a condition I did not expect the game to meet.  While some of the available followers inhabit a moral grey zone (e.g. Janessa), no one outside of the Dark Brotherhood really deserved to be deceived and murdered, and I could not justify joining the Brotherhood (and committing the prerequisite murders) just to sacrifice one of them.  Therefore, I resigned myself to leaving the quest incomplete (since there is no failure condition) for the remainder of the game.

The Dragonborn DLC, however, provided exactly the kind of follower I was looking for.  Most of the Dunmer NPCs  I met in Skyrim were either enemies or grim figures who, while perhaps on my side of the moral spectrum, were nevertheless prone to a kind of nihilistic cynicism.  My visits to Solstheim fleshed out my picture of the Dunmer, but still, I became accustomed to their overall lack of transcendent idealism.  Therefore, when I first met Ralis at the beginning of Unearthed, I felt comfortable funding his excavation project in spite of his obvious avarice and the distinct possibility that he was skimming off the top; after all, even if he was bilking me out of my gold, he was spending it in an economically depressed area and providing jobs for the locals with money that I would never miss: I was carrying about 120,000 gold at this point and had far more than that in loot at home. 

As the quest haltingly progressed through its stages, I became more concerned about Ralis’s seeming lack of regard for the safety of the miners, but I had little choice other than to provide more funds for the project.  By the final stage, I was in for 11,000 gold, but at least a half-dozen miners and guards had died at the hands of the draugr they awakened.  Of course, when I returned to the project site, saw the additional carnage, and read Ralis’s journals, I realized that Ralis had been slowly possessed by the Dragon Priest Ahzidal.  The truly unnerving part for me was that, unlike other similar possessions in the game, I had actually been speaking with Ralis as he slowly succumbed to Ahzidal’s influence; I had assumed he was just a sociopath.

After defeating the resurrected Ahzidal, I was able to speak with the now clear-headed Ralis about what happened.  Although his memory was clouded by the experience, he was aware that he had killed several of the miners himself as part of the resurrection ritual.  The fact that he was possessed would have exonerated him as far as I was concerned, but he completely failed to show any remorse; instead, he seemed far more interested in making sure that no one ever found out: 

If you choose the dialogue option "I can't let you go unpunished," Ralis flips out, claims that Ahzidal will "command us all" and attacks.  So, you can have a sociopath for a follower, or defend yourself from a raving lunatic.

 Tamriel is a hard place, and people sometimes commit great acts of evil.  Some characters, such as Erandur, are willing to do penance for their crimes, and should be permitted to do so in peace.  Others, such as Sinding and Ralis, lack the appropriate moral horror that should accompany their misdeeds, and therefore deserve punishment commensurate to their sins.  Therefore, the question was not whether I would kill Ralis, but whether I would execute him directly then and there, or gain his trust, then sacrifice him at the Saracellum of Boethiah.  I chose the latter:

• As much as I dislike doing the will of a Daedra, killing someone I would have killed anyway hardly seems like an act of devotion.
•  I also dislike deception, but given the fact that Ralis himself deceived the miners, and that, as a Dunmer, most likely worshiped Boethiah anyway, leading him to sacrifice feels like poetic justice.
• Furthermore, my reward was to hunt down a gang of bandits and kill their leader in order to obtain the Daedric artifact (the Ebony Mail) he was wearing – something I would gladly have done anyway.

Certainly, my decision was a calculated and brutal one, but ultimately a just one as well.  Now that I possess the Ebony Mail (along with several other Daedric artifacts), I can be sure that it will not end up in the wrong hands.

Thieves' Guild (Loud and Clear/Dampened Spirits)

Because the next two quests in the Thieves' Guild line dealt almost exclusively with shadier characters, it was paradoxically easier to justify my actions.

Loud and Clear

Loud and Clear boils to corporate espionage and sabotage, and the moral profile of my character doesn't really account for these kinds of dealings (see The Rules of Engagement).  Admittedly, destroying the property of a Thieves' Guild/Black-Briar business partner may not be paladin-like, but there are a few other factors to consider beyond the necessity of advancing in the quest line:

• If done with sufficient stealth, the quest does not demand bloodshed.
• All of the parties involved are willing participants in ethically questionable dealings rather than innocent victims.
• Destruction of a business's property is reversible and open to compensation if need be.

One unexpected side benefit of my earlier procrastination was that my Sneak, Pickpocket, and Archery skills were now high enough that I could actually complete the quest without engaging in battle. I entered Aringoth's house undetected, pickpocketed the safe key, stole the bill of sale, and set fire to the prescribed three out of five apiaries (using my fire-enchanted bow from a safe distance) -- all without battling a single mercenary. 


Dampened Spirits

Dampened Spirits continues the plot of the previous quest; Maven Black-Briar, the Don Corleone-esque head of the Black-Briar Meadery, asks the PC to ruin her main competitor: Sabjorn, the owner of Honningbrew Meadery.  She has an inside man (Mallus) who suggests that I poison the batch of mead Sabjorn has reserved for a special tasting he has arranged with an Imperial dignitary.  The moral quandries here were as follows:

• I didn't know if the poison was lethal.  Given Maven's ties to the Empire, I suspected that the poison was meant to nauseate rather than kill, but I couldn't be sure.
• I was again helping to ruin another neutral NPC's business.  I should point out, however, that my interactions with Sabjorn prior to poisoning the mead indicate that he is both dishonest and mean, and therefore a more palatable target than the truly neutral Aringoth.
• The Honningbrew Meadery lies just outside the walls of Whiterun.  As I had feared earlier, I was now engaged in criminal activity right outside the gates of my favorite city.

As in the previous quest, I decided to complete the objectives, despite my misgivings.  Fortunately, I was right about the poison; Commander Caius got sick, but recovered fast enough to arrest Sabjorn on the spot.  The business itself survived with Mallus in charge, but I still felt apprehensive about any further Thieves' Guild involvement in "my" city.

Did I forget to mention that I poisoned an Imperial Commander?

By now, my actions have clearly led me out of Lawful Good territory.  While my original definition of Lawful Good in the context of Skyrim may be arguable (e.g. killing and stealing from enemies is morally justified), I was now destroying the legally-owned property of essentially neutral characters in order gain a position in an important faction.  At this point, Lothar Ironfoot had taken a pronounced turn toward the Chaotic.

Thieves’ Guild (Taking Care of Business)

After my impressive display of thieving skills in the marketplace, Brynjolf invited me to the Ragged Flagon, the Guild’s hangout underneath the city.  There, he finally gave me all of the information I was looking for; he directed me to where Esbern was hiding and he introduced me to Vex, the Guild member who knew about the Stones of Berenziah.  Eager to advance my progress in the main quest, I spoke to Vex quickly, then set about finding Esbern deep in the Ratways under Riften.  I will detail that adventure in another post.  For now, it is enough to note the delay itself; as I pointed out earlier, my ambivalence led me to postpone the next quest in the Thieves’ Guild line until I finally concluded that leading this third crucial faction was necessary.

In order to become I full-fledged member of the Guild, I would have to complete several jobs, the first of which was to collect three debts from local business owners.  Brynjolf made it clear that he preferred non-violent methods (my first hint that there was more to the Guild than crime), but that I was free to do whatever was necessary.   

The biggest hurdle for me here was the nature of the debts.  If the Guild was shaking down local shopkeepers for protection money, then I really couldn’t justify collecting the “debts.”  If, on the other hand, these were voluntary loans (albeit to a loan shark), I could probably manage to collect the money in a morally palatable way.  Unfortunately, the game provides little clarification on this issue.  Like most of the citizens of Riften, all three business owners seem a little on the shady side.  On the other hand, their complaints about the Guild could be read as an indicator of extortion.  I decided to give Brynjolf the benefit of the doubt.

The first debt I collected came from Keevara, the Argonian innkeeper.  In my pre-Guild procrastination, I had helped her boyfriend, Talen-Jei, assemble an engagement ring, so I felt bad about having to lean on her.  Still, Keevara is not a very pleasant woman, and I had a sure-fire, non-violent method to get the money.  Talen-Jei had told me how worried she was about her family, who lived on a farm just beyond the Morrowind border.  As soon as I mentioned them to her, she handed over the money right away.  I suppose that what I did was technically a threat, but I never went beyond implying that I knew of her family’s whereabouts nor did I have any intention of doing anything to these people, so I think I remained in the grey on this one.  She fulfilled her obligation without anyone being harmed in any way.  I must admit, however, that Talen-Jei’s habit of alternately thanking me for helping me with the ring, then berating me for what I did to Keevara is rather distressing.

The second debt was easier on my conscience.  Bersi Honey-Hand, the owner of the Pawned Prawn, caved as soon as I destroyed his prized Dwemer urn.  I have a much higher tolerance for destruction of property than I do for other kinds of violence; things are merely things and can be replaced, and if this thing was so important, I would think that Bersi would have stopped me well before I destroyed it.  I threatened to break it, then I hit it several times, thus giving him every opportunity to pay up before I shattered it.  

The final debt was easier still.  Haelga, owner of Haelga’s Bunkhouse, is pretty clearly a madam and/or a prostitute, and, as I found out by talking to some of the girls in her employ (including her niece!), not a very nice one at that.  Threatening to drop her statue of Dibella down a well was all it took to get her to cough up the money.  Given Haelga's profession and disposition, I had no qualms about collecting from her.

In case you missed the "pretty clearly a madam and/or a prostitute" part.

Without a doubt, my behavior in this quest was the most "grey" it has been so far in this playthrough.  While I had certainly done some questionable and even some bad things, this quest presented a very murky picture for me.  Unlike previous quests in which I had to decide whether or whom to kill, this quest asked whether I would commit nonviolent acts of a potentially criminal nature against people with whom I had no real quarrel.  Were it not for my desire to join the Thieves' Guild, I doubt that I would have engaged in these actions.  While I could dismiss Riften as a "wretched hive of scum and villainy" (with apologies to Star Wars fans everywhere), I feared that I might have to commit more serious crimes in places that I actually loved, such as Whiterun.

Not surprisingly, the next few quests pushed my boundaries a little further.

The Thieves' Guild (A Chance Arrangement)

For the moral agent, the Thieves’ Guild questline provides a veritable minefield of ethical problems.  I almost did not join the Guild for precisely that reason, but as I revealed in a previous post, I thought that joining was necessary for completing the main quest and that the Dragonborn should tie together as many factions as possible; while I was mistaken about the first point, I still stand firmly by the second.

Joining the Thieves’ Guild involved going to Riften – a town so rife with corruption that the first guard I met tried (unsuccessfully) to shake me down before I even passed the gates.  Once inside, I met a proud warrior name Mjoll the Lioness who lamented the dissolute influence of the Guild on the town, and vowed to bring the thieves to justice.  Eventually, I asked the right person the right question, and learned where I could find Brynjolf -- a friendly, high-ranking thief who could lead me to Esbern (the former Blade who would help me defeat Alduin) and who could provide the information I needed in order to solve the mystery of the Stones of Barenziah I kept finding all across Skyrim.   Brynjolf’s help, however, came at a price: I needed to help him frame a Dunmer merchant named Brand-Shei who had been making trouble for the Guild – the same Dunmer merchant whom I had helped with a personal matter just the other day.

The task was designed to not only eliminate a potential threat, but also to test my Sneak, Lockpicking, and Pickpocket skills.  While Brynjolf distracted the shoppers in the marketplace, I was to break into a jeweler’s strong box, steal a necklace, then plant the necklace on Brand-Shei – all in broad daylight.  When I completed the task, the town guard arrested Brand-Shei and Brynjolf gave me the information I needed, and then invited me to join the Guild.

The moral ramifications here are obvious.  I committed a crime and sent an innocent man – one whom I had befriended earlier – to jail. What follows is a list of rationalizations:

1. I (mistakenly) believed that I needed to join the Guild in order to complete the main quest.
2. I (mistakenly) believed that I needed to complete the crime successfully in order to join the Guild.
3. I figured that Brand-Shei would eventually be found innocent or simply allowed to serve a short sentence and be released.  I was wrong, but this appears to be a bug; he is scripted to leave the jail after 10 days, but he has not left to date (several in-game weeks later).
4. I figured that, if the above turned about to be incorrect, I could break him out of jail.  Wrong again; even when I open the door, he won’t leave.

Sorry, dude.

All four rationalizations are troubling. The first is a purely utilitarian argument: sacrificing one man’s freedom for the greater good.  The second points to a desire to please that trumps conscience: assuming that Brynjolf would reject me if I didn’t succeed.  The third softens the first: Brand-Shei would only suffer a minor inconvenience relative to the greater good.  The fourth suggests that I would be willing to break another law in order to “undo” a previous crime.  The most galling aspect of the whole affair is that all four rationalizations were based on faulty information.  I other words, if I had paid attention better, I could have avoided the Guild entirely, and if I had chosen to fail Brynjolf’s task (as I had already done in several Daedric quests), I could have joined the Guild without framing poor old Brand-Shei.

Not surprisingly, the next few quests further complicated matters.

Anniversary Update

I started playing Skyrim about a year ago, and, given the fact that my posts have fallen far behind my actual playing, I thought it might be worthwhile to write an anniversary post with some content that never quite fit into any of my previous posts.


One of the most significant developments for me came about six months ago when I started to let my eleven year-old son play.  Even though the game comes with an M rating, by June I felt that I had a sufficient handle on the game's content to permit my son to play under my supervision.  While I wasn't going to force him to copy my playstyle, I have occasionally required him to explain and/or justify his actions, which has led to some fascinating debates.  What follows are some of the more valuable aspects of his playthrough.

The Character

Before I let him play, my son had already formed some strong preferences.  In contrast to my "ranger" playstyle (predominately Warrior, with enough Rogue to specialize in Archery and Sneaking), my son expressed an interest in running a "battlemage" character (primarily Mage, with enough Warrior to survive without magic).  Accordingly, he chose an Altmer character in order to take advantage of the High Elf racial benefits (extra starting Magicka and enchanced Magicka recovery).  I helped him choose an appropriate Altmer name ("Erefor"), then assigned him his first narrative task.

Because every PC, regardless of race, gender, or playstyle, begins the game as a prisoner of the Empire, facing execution for sneaking across Skyrim's closed southern border, the role-player has to create a believable backstory in order to explain his predicament.  My backstory was easy to compose; a Nord returning to Skyrim needs little explanation.  My son, on the other hand, faced a more complex project.  Why would a non-Thalmor Altmer travel alone to Skyrim in violation of the Imperial order?  I was impressed with the depth and inventiveness of my son's answer.

Erefor, having grown up under the Aldmeri Dominion, became a member of the Thalmor in order to serve his homeland with honor.  Over time, he grew disillusioned with the goals of the Dominion -- in particular, their obsession with the eradication of Talos worship seemed pointless and wasteful.  When Erefor voiced his objections to his superiors, the Thalmor rewarded him by stripping him of his position and gear, beating him senseless, and dumping him just inside the Skyrim border, where he was discovered by the Legion.  This backstory not only explains Erefor's presence in the game, but also demonstrates a nuanced understanding of character motivation and a clear moral standpoint -- particularly for an eleven year-old player.

The Civil War

Although I was not shocked that my son and I ended up on opposite sides of the Civil War (the contrarian apple doesn't fall far from the tree), his rationale surprised me a bit.  When Erefor joined the Stormcloaks, I challenged my son to provide one good reason for an Altmer to join an army of Nords who hate his kind and wish to drive them out of Skyrim; he gave me three:

1. The Empire tried to execute him for something that wasn't his fault.
2. The Empire had acquiesced to the Thalmor, who had betrayed him.
3. Freedom of religion is an absolute.  The Empire relinquished its right to rule when it forgot that.

The first two are personal, Stage Two moral reasoning, but the third demonstrates Stage Four abstract fundamentalism.  Erefor sided with Ulfric in order to protect the religious freedom of people who harbor a distinct prejudice against him, and who practice a religion that he not only does not practice, but that he actively disputes.  As a left-leaning Catholic, I have to admit to a certain pride in my son's rather progressive rationale...but I stand by my original decision to side with the Empire.

Followers

Another area of difference between my playstyle and son’s concerns the role of the follower.  For me, followers are like colleagues: we partner for a specific purpose to achieve a specific goal, and once the quest is complete, we go our separate ways.  

I have a number of reasons for using this model – some pragmatic, other more role-playing oriented.  On the practical side, unless I am heading into a large battle against multiple opponents (Civil War, Dawnguard) or situations in which I am likely to be ambushed and outnumbered (Blackreach, In My Time Of Need), followers often get in the way more than they help.  Some of them don’t sneak well, and my Ranger/Rambo style of play suffers when a follower starts tripping booby traps.  From a role-playing perspective, I get nervous unless my follower is clearly prepared for a dangerous quest.  My first follower, Sven, was a nice guy, but I wasn’t sure that a small-town bard was really prepared to go dungeon-delving, so I didn’t employ him until after I cleared Bleak Falls Barrow, and then only to help me loot the bandits and draugr I had already killed.  My housecarls, on the other hand, are trained bodyguards, so I have outfitted each with specialized equipment to help me with certain types of quests – Argis the Bulwark, for example, is my Dwemer ruins partner, and therefore I have given him Dwarven equipment enchanted with fire damage and shock-resistant magic (especially useful against Dwarven automatons). Furthermore, if I'm being honest, I have to admit that I like the "lone hero" narrative for my character.

My son, however, has yet to dismiss his first follower, Faendal.  He sided with Faendal during A Lovely Letter because, as a Bosmer, Faendal might well have the same antipathy toward the Thalmor as Erefor.  My son has really enjoyed having a follower NPC, so his playthough has become a "buddy adventure" starring Erefor and Faendal.  On a practical level, Erefore is essentially a Battlemage archetype, so his desire to create a small army makes sense, as doing so maximizes power and minimizes risk.  During dungeon crawls, for example, he continually casts Conjuration spells (mostly Flame Atronachs) so that he has at least two allies backing him up at all times.  While I would find that kind of playstyle chaotic and difficult to follow, he finds it rewarding and reassuring; each successful quest is a kind of team victory.

Crime

I have noticed an inconsistency in the moral aspect of my son’s playstyle, specifically around the issue of crime.  Generally, he plays a Chaotic Good character: benevolent and compassionate, but with little patience for the rule of law.  If he needs to increase his Pickpocketing skill, for example, he sees nothing wrong with lifting a few gold coins or a sweet roll from the town guard [in fact, I tortured him during my Thieves Guild quests by stealing the required item in order to fulfill the objective, then replacing it with an item of equal or greater value], but he criticizes his friends who arbitrarily kill shopkeepers and other non-hostile NPCs.  The inconsistency arises when he does something that violates the (admittedly unarticulated) moral code of his character. 

An instance of this contradiction occurred during our separate playthroughs of Scoundrel's Folly.  The stage in which the Dragonborn follows Gulum-Ei into the East Empire Company warehouse in Solitude was very challenging for me as a moral agent.  The warehouse guards, all mercenaries (as opposed to Solitude town guards), were immediately hostile to my presence, but I could not justify killing them; they weren’t doing anything wrong, and, my good intentions notwithstanding, I was in fact trespassing.  Through a combination of high Sneak skills, Invisibility potions, and a well-timed Battle Cry, I managed to navigate the warehouse without a single drop of blood spilled.   My son’s character, however, lacked the skills to avoid detection, and found himself in a battle fairly quickly.  When I pointed out that he had just killed a bunch of guards who hadn’t done anything wrong, he reminded me that playing with moral agency is my project, not his.

What interests me about his answer is that he didn’t even attempt to justify his character’s actions, which, while difficult, was not impossible.  Instead, he distanced himself from the moral aspect of the game and razzed me for taking it too seriously.  I suppose, given his age, I should have expected his reaction; a child’s first forays into moral abstraction (Stages Three and Four) are frequently marked by rigid absolutism, which makes moral dilemmas very hard to negotiate.  Faced with mutually exclusive choices – murder the guards and fulfill the objective, or spare the guards and fail the objective – he opted out of the exercise; killing the guards no longer mattered because it was “just a game.”  By excusing himself from the moral task, he inadvertently highlighted the power of the game as a moral laboratory.

Reflection

Despite its M rating, Skyrim has been a useful and rewarding point of connection for my son and me.  It has allowed us to have conversations about religious tolerance (the Thalmor), drug addiction (skooma), racism (the Grey Quarter), and many other topics that can be utterly daunting in the real world.  In the low-stakes setting of a video game, moral issues can be considered and debated without the emotional weight of personal history and anxieties.  I hope to continue the conversation for a long time.