Marionette

Castle Skingrad is asleep when you slip quietly into the courtyard. You arrived in the city hours ago, still giddy from the completion of your last mission. It had taken weeks, but you had succeeded in eliminating every single member of the family named Draconis, and you were quite pleased with yourself. You were ready to receive new orders from your Speaker, hoping for some words of praise and an exciting new assignment, but you had forced yourself to wait. You knew the castle would be bustling with activity that time of day, and you did not wish to draw attention to yourself by rummaging around the well in plain sight. If someone besides you discovered the contents of the letter hidden there, there would most definitely be hell to pay.

Instead, you opted to treat yourself to some meat and mead at the West Weald Inn. You hadn't had a hot meal since you killed your third Draconis, so you helped yourself to two healthy servings of food and a flagon of their best drink. By the time you finished, most of the other patrons had sought their rooms for the night, and you knew you could pick up your orders without hassle.

The well is old and clearly dried out, but when you hoist up the bucket, it is obvious there is something heavy inside. 'Something heavy' turns out to be a sizeable bag filled with septims, your pay for a job well done. But what you're really interested in is the note placed discretely underneath the money, the orders from your Speaker that will lead you to a new opportunity to spill blood in the name of Sithis.

You don't inspect the paper until you're a safe distance away from the castle and its guards, but when you do, you are puzzled. Before you even begin reading, you notice the document is not properly sealed, much unlike your last two dead drops. When you do read, it takes a long time, as the handwriting is curvier than you're used to, and your Speaker has included far more details on this target than he has on the others. Altogether, the orders are strange.

Nevertheless, you don't question them. Lucien Lachance is a busy man, you know, and he likely had to place these orders in a hurry, which would explain the nearly unreadable handwriting and the lack of a seal. The excessive information is something he must have deemed a necessity for this particular contract, though you don't understand why he would want you to know who ordered the assassination and why. Regardless, some additional knowledge on a target could hardly hurt, you decide.

And so, with your orders safely tucked away, you mount Shadowmere and make for Bruma.

Your target's house is conveniently located in a rural area at the edge of town, far from the route most guards patrol. Breaking in is pathetically easy.

To your surprise, the house seems extraordinarily empty; not just because its occupant is nowhere to be found, but because it is rather poorly furnished. You had expected much more splendour from the nobleman your dead drop described.

However, when you poke around a little, you find two things of interest: a trapdoor hidden cleverly underneath a pile of cloth, and a large keg which does not contain drink, yet is secured with a heavy lock.

The thief in you tells you to check the keg first, as you might not have an opportunity later, and so you take out your lockpicks.

After your fourth lockpick breaks, you start to get frustrated. It has been a while since you've honed your thieving skills, you realise. Since you were banned from the Thieves Guild for committing too many murders while on the job, you haven't had much need to. The Dark Brotherhood pays handsomely, and you're sure you won't have to worry about coin again for as long as you live.

Still, the expertly locked keg is a hiding place even the most experienced thieves would likely not discover, and you crave to know its secret more than you care to possess its contents.

It takes nine lockpicks and a lot of muttered curses, but you are eventually triumphant. You pry away the lid to expose the treasure inside – and find your breath catching in your throat.

A regular thief would be disappointed by the meagre spills of a robe, a hood, and a book. But you, you know these items well. You carry a copy of the same book with you at all times, and the clothing you've only ever seen on one person. They are black as the Void, with a distinct resonance of magic only a powerful enchantment can emit. These are the robes of the Black Hand.

You flee the house immediately.

When you finally dismount your faithful steed, you're miles away from Bruma, deep inside the Great Forest. Here it is quiet. Here you can think.

You sink to the ground, your back resting against a tree, and you try to make sense of everything. The robes. The book. Your orders. The robes. The book. Your orders. The robes. The book. Your orders.

Perhaps, you muse, the Khajit had somehow taken the robes from a Speaker, and you were sent to deliver justice. It would make sense, only the dead drop specifically told you it was a noble family who had hired the Brotherhood, and it never mentioned retrieving the robes. Besides, it wouldn't explain why J'Ghasta owns a copy of The Five Tenets. It is not valuable like the robes, and its contents are meant only for members of the Brotherhood. A mere nobleman would not care enough to keep the items close together.

Then J'Ghasta is a member of the Family, you are forced to conclude, and if the hidden attire is any indication, he holds the rank of Speaker. Had you not given in to the urge to search the keg, a member of the Black Hand would have been killed. Considering J'Ghasta's superior position, that member likely would have been you.

Treachery.

You say the word out loud, your fingers digging into the wet earth. The Purification has been for nothing. You took the lives of your Brothers and Sisters in vain. The traitor lives.

And suddenly, everything unusual about your orders makes perfect sense. The unfamiliar handwriting, the unsealed parchment, the unnecessarily detailed description. The instructions aren't strange because Lucien had been in a hurry when he wrote them; the instructions are strange because they weren't written by him in the first place.

The traitor had switched the dead drop.

Your head is reeling, but one thing you know for certain: you have to inform your Speaker.

Now.

A/N: I was always bothered by the fact that you can actually find all of these clues that point to the dead drops being fake, but can't do anything with them. The first time I played through Oblivion and found that robe in J'Ghasta's house, I went back to Fort Farragut hoping to talk to Lucien about it (which had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I could initially not find the trapdoor in J'Ghasta's house. Nothing whatsoever). Considering the outcome of the questline, it is just really frustrating to have so much evidence that points you in the right direction without being able to use it. So I wrote this to be an alternate route within the Dark Brotherhood questline. There will be three parts to this little story. Thank you for reading; any feedback is much appreciated!