The Dark Brotherhood is the next step in your sneaky journey through Oblivion Remastered. After joining the stealth-focused Thieves Guild it’s only natural to hop into the next big evil thing — the Dark Brotherhood. This evil faction of assassins helps train you to become the best-of-the-best. You’ll earn powerful equipment and hone your damage-dealing skills to become an unstoppable killer in the shadows. It’s also one of the most textured, interesting factions in the game, with a strange cast of characters and some truly dark missions to take part in.
If you’re looking to hop on the Dark Brotherhood bandwagon early, here’s everything you need to know about joining ASAP and getting that awesome set of armor. This is the ideal faction for stealth archers and anyone else that doesn’t mind getting their hands dirty — there are some amazing artifacts to earn here, and it’s the one faction that’s actually very easy to miss. Here’s how to join.
How To Join the Dark Brotherhood
You can’t find the Dark Brotherhood. The Dark Brotherhood finds you. Joining the Dark Brotherhood is done the same as the original game — and the same as other games in the series. It also doesn’t prevent you from being heroic in other factions or getting the best possible ending. Joining the Dark Brotherhood has no negative consequences — other than a fine or possible jail time for doing crimes.
- Kill An NPC: To join the Dark Brotherhood, you must commit a murder against a noncombatant NPC. You cannot simply witness a murder, and you cannot kill an NPC in self-defense. You must kill an NPC with your own hand.
Any NPC will work, but you’re better off murdering a NPC in town that isn’t associated with a storefront. It must be an innocent citizen and can be done in both Cyrodiil or the Shivering Isles. Both locations count toward the murder crime.
- TIP: Any random Adventurer that spawns in dungeons will count as a murder if you attack them — because of the location, you won’t be charged with a crime. These adventurers are UNRELATED to all quests and are totally safe to kill without affecting any other content.
Murder is a serious crime in Cyrodiil, but the crime does not need to be observed by anyone. It can be completely secret. Many NPCs you’ll need to fight or kill in side-quests will count toward joining the Dark Brotherhood.
- Joining The Dark Brotherhood: Commit a murder against an innocent citizen. Random, unnamed NPCs count. For the best possible chance, you must murder an NPC that is a noncombatant — you must land the first strike.
- If you successfully murder an innocent NPC, the message “Your killing has been observed by forces unknown…” will appear.
- Rest in bed at a safe location (such as an inn or player-owned home) and a representative of the Dark Brotherhood will appear mid-sleep. The NPC Lucien Lachance will talk to you and recruit you into the Dark Brotherhood.
If you don’t want to join the Dark Brotherhood, you can simply fight and defeat Lucien on-the-spot. You’ll be able to get a set of Dark Brotherhood faction armor without joining if you defeat him. Murdering Lucien will permanently block you from joining the Dark Brother hood and resolve the side-quest.
