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About this mod
A transformation of the quest "Destroy the Dark Brotherhood!" into a full questline and the Penitus Oculatus into a faction that's at parity with others in the game. 6 main quests, 5 side quests, 5 reoccurring quests, 1 follower. Seamless IFD - Lydia Integration. Nearly 1500 lines of dialogue and loads of player choice.
- Requirements
- Permissions and credits
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Translations
- Spanish
- Russian
- Portuguese
- Polish
- Mandarin
- French
- Changelogs
Introduction
The Dark Brotherhood is widely regarded to be one of the best questlines in Skyrim, both in terms of writing and gameplay. However, it's counterpart, "Destroy the Dark Brotherhood!" is, for lack of a better explanation, a very brief and lackluster quest - the player is able to waltz into the Dark Brotherhood Sanctuary in Falkreath and kill the entire cult in one fell swoop. This leaves players like myself who prefer to make morally righteous characters with less content overall in their playthroughs - and the content they're left with isn't of the same quality.With this mod, Commander Maro does not just know the password to get into the Dark Brotherhood Sanctuary anymore. You must help him track down the Brotherhood throughout Skyrim and stop them from carrying out their contracts on the province's innocent residents. Even after that, should you choose to, you can continue to aid the Penitus Oculatus - the left hand of the Emperor - in their clandestine efforts against the Empire's most prominent rival: the Aldmeri Dominion.
Player Considerations
This mod needs to edit a lot of the base game's scripts and records in order to function. There is absolutely no other way to do it. The only thing it really affects are Dark Brotherhood quests, and thus, I've provided a lot of patches that combine .ESPs and scripts from other mods with this one. The one thing I can't do is make a patch specific to everyone's load order if you have at least one mod that edits the Dark Brotherhood. There are just too many different possible combinations. Most of you shouldn't have compatibility issues, but see below for all the mods that have patches.
On a much lighter compatibility note, this mod has out-of-the-box integration with Improved Follower Dialogue - Lydia. There is no patch needed. Lydia already has over 100 lines of dialogue in this mod, and behaves as if she was a character edited by this mod rather than IFDL. Now, let's say you don't like the fact that I gave Lydia stupid things like convictions and agency instead of just making her a submissive waifu or you're upset by the slight inconvenience of having to make a patch for appearance mods and as a result, you don't use IFDL. That's totally fine (it's not) - vanilla Lydia will just act like her normal self and not interact with this mod. All you need to do is have SKSE, have the latest version of IFDL (at least 4.0.4), and make sure that you don't add this mod to your playthrough before adding IFDL. To be on the safe side, place this mod later in your load order, closer to the bottom, than IFDL. That's how I had it set up during testing.
Also, I feel like I've seen a bunch of people say they want to go to Vittoria Vici's wedding without killing her. You can do that in this mod.
Compatibility
-JaySerpa was kind enough to make an alternate version of Destroy the Dark Brotherhood - Quest Expansion that essentially patches this mod and Innocence Lost - Quest Expansion-No Patch necessary for With Friends Like These - Consequences by OldKottor
-Patch for The Choice is Yours by Kryptopyr provided
-Patch for Your Choices Matter by WhiteWolf424242 provided
-Patch for Save The Dark Brotherhood by EmperorW provided
-Patch for The Brotherhood of Old by TomTesoro provided
-Patch for Better Skyrim Parties by Mhalrek1 provided
-Patch for Dark Brotherhood Reformation by DisclinationEvent provided
-For compatibility with At Your Own Pace - Dark Brotherhood by Agd25, you need to delete the file "QF_DBDestroy_000934FB.pex" in the scripts folder for that mod. It should be easy to find if you installed with MO2.
-In terms of writing, this is not compatible with Muiri's Revenge by Tarlazo, so no patch will be made
-In terms of writing, this is not compatible with Vittoria's Alternate Wedding by AndrealphusVIII, so no patch will be made
-In terms of writing, this is not compatible with Dark Brotherhood Rising Revengeance by EpicCrab, so no patch will be made.
It should be noted that these patches are simply to prevent the mods from breaking if you have both installed simultaneously and don't want to switch load orders for different characters. This might come as a shock to some of you, but you can't save the Dark Brotherhood and destroy it on the same playthrough.
Video Showcases
Major spoilers in this, but it shows the content of the mod end to end, minus a few possible story paths, but SayberPlays covered a lot.
Bards' College Graduate's coverage has few spoilers (Starts at 4:50)
EnragedBard's Coverage has no spoilers and some comparison with DDBQE by JaySerpa. (Starts at 1:16)
Credits
Commander Maro - Chris Mitchell
Gaius Maro - Artorius6504
Avita Helvius - Kassioppia
Ulrand Nileri - Alex Cain
Emperor Titus Mede II - Daniel Hodge
Ivar Shore-Charger - Will Maloy
Serla - Thea Solone
Gjorn Steady-Hand - EggsBenedict
Inquisitor Meracanil - Chasz97
Aerja Pirate-Bane - Thea Solone
Emissary Caena - DawnGlyph
Fednar - DaveVA
Unnamed Penitus Oculatus Sergeant - Goredev
Local Fighter Ringleader - Nyx Izanami
Lydia - LMG Wilson
Also, special thanks to my patrons on Patreon.
This mod makes sporadic use of ElevenLabs AI to recreate the voices of characters from the base game. In total, there are 84 lines added to the following characters:
These characters also utilize re-purposed audio from the base game.Gaius Maro - Artorius6504
Avita Helvius - Kassioppia
Ulrand Nileri - Alex Cain
Emperor Titus Mede II - Daniel Hodge
Ivar Shore-Charger - Will Maloy
Serla - Thea Solone
Gjorn Steady-Hand - EggsBenedict
Inquisitor Meracanil - Chasz97
Aerja Pirate-Bane - Thea Solone
Emissary Caena - DawnGlyph
Fednar - DaveVA
Unnamed Penitus Oculatus Sergeant - Goredev
Local Fighter Ringleader - Nyx Izanami
Lydia - LMG Wilson
Also, special thanks to my patrons on Patreon.
This mod makes sporadic use of ElevenLabs AI to recreate the voices of characters from the base game. In total, there are 84 lines added to the following characters:
Spoiler:
Hern - 5
Sybille Stentor - 13
Gabriella - 9
Babette - 25
Veezara - 1
Arnbjorn - 1
Festus Krex - 8
Beitild - 3
Muiri - 2
Commander Caius - 7
Asgeir Snow-Shod - 2
Vittoria Vici - 1
Show
Hern - 5
Sybille Stentor - 13
Gabriella - 9
Babette - 25
Veezara - 1
Arnbjorn - 1
Festus Krex - 8
Beitild - 3
Muiri - 2
Commander Caius - 7
Asgeir Snow-Shod - 2
Vittoria Vici - 1
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Is this mod Stormcloak-friendly?A: I would say it is - I put dialogue options in the mod to indicate that you're character is disgruntled about having to work with the Empire, but wants to get rid of the Brotherhood regardless. You will also have the option to not some quests that don't involve the Brotherhood and are just in service to the Empire. That being said, I have not written the Penitus Oculatus to be an anti-Stormcloak faction. Their enemies are the Brotherhood and the Thalmor. You'll work with rebel forces multiple times in this mod.
Q: How do I start the quests?
A: Like you normally would. Go to Aventus Arentino's house and complete "Innocence Lost." If you have IFD - Lydia installed, I HIGHLY recommend sleeping in the same cell as her roughly 24 hours (that's roughly when Astrid comes to kidnap you) afterwards if you married her. I promise you, it will be worth it.
Q: I went to Ivarstead in "Hunting the Hunters" and can't figure out how to progress the quest or help Narfi.
A: Try going to see Hern and Enodius Papius.
Q: Why do I have to kill Grelod the Kind? The purpose for mods like this is so that I don't have to murder random NPCs to play the game.
A: She literally has a closet full of shackles in the orphanage. I don't think killing her is a "bad guy" thing to do. If you think that the workload for Constance Michel will be significantly too much, just make another NPC to work in Honorhall with her or something. It'll take like 5 minutes in CK. I won't add it to this mod because it would feel like feature creep.
Q: How do I make IFD - Lydia work with this?
A: Just have both mods installed at the same time and it will just work. I actually made this entire mod in the last 3 weeks after people got mad that they couldn't bring their self-righteous housecarl with them while they join a guild of assassins. I wanted to give everyone an alternative. I promise, this wasn't something I started in summer 2021 before IFDL 3.0 was released, then shelved in 2022, and then picked back up this past September when Goredev found Ram Ranch lyrics in the annotations for a script in one of my mods, thought it was hilarious, DM'd me, and then we started making a patch between Gore and Lydia and I got back into Skyrim modding. It's my biggest quest mod ever, and I made it in 3 weeks.
Q: Okay, three weeks ago, Anbeegod announced he was making a Lydia dialogue extension mod, and your completely unironic response to that was essentially, "fight me irl." Considering that wankingSkeever has already made "Penitus Oculatus" and CommanderShrekard already made "Destroy the Dark Brotherhood - Enhanced", that's kind of hypocritical.
A: I'll fight either of those other authors in real life if they challenge me. Not bare-knuckle (that's not worth it), and if either of them live outside the U.S., it might take a bit because I don't have a passport (America moment). Also, I wanna make it clear that I don't hate Anbeegod - I think that what makes a great mod author is having a mixed skillset (writing, level design, implementation), and that absolutely applies to him. I'm just a competitive person, and thus, have an open offer to fight him.
Q: How the fuck do you not have a passport at almost 25 years of age? Weren't you in the Army?
A: Okay, first off, I never deployed, and second, the distance from New York to Arizona is about the same as the distance from Essen, Cologne, or Dusseldorf to Azerbaijan.
Q: Did you seriously make the .esp name not the name of the mod again? Did you not learn your lesson from IFD - Lydia?
A: I'll be honest with you, I had no idea about CommanderShrekard's mod when I started making this. The name change was kind of a last minute thing. That's also probably going to keep happening, just because I have lots of ideas for mods but not proper titles for them yet. CommanderShrekard's .esp has spaces in the title, mine doesn't.
Q: How do I start the side quests in this mod?
A: After you complete the main quest, go back to Commander Maro in the Penitus Oculatus Outpost. He'll give you one last quest related to the Brotherhood. Then, you can be more involved with the Penitus Oculatus as a faction and their operations against the Thalmor. One of the Penitus agents, Avita Helvius, will give you radiant quests where you'll fight the Dominion and occasionally find sensitive documents when you kill them. If you can bring 5 of these back to Avita, her and Commander Maro will have enough intelligence to cross-reference and start the second side quest. Return to Commander Maro after the 2nd quest to start the third. After the 3rd, go back to Windhelm to start the fourth. The fifth will start 24 hours after the fourth via courier. All that being said, certain outcomes in quests will lead to the ones further down the line being locked.
Q: Are you serious with the unnamed characters with generic voices in the Penitus Sanctuary? That's a very lackluster feature.
A: They kinda got slapped in at the last minute. I wanna go back and give them custom voicing at some point, maybe add some quests for them. There are a few small things I want to add to this mod, but I have other projects I want to make first.
Q: Jesus Christ, will you stop putting so many Star Wars references in your mods?
A: Star Wars dialogue just has so much in common with TES dialogue that I can never resist the urge to. That said, there are some other references to previous TES games and real life history in this mod, and I will give kudos to the first people to find them.
Q: The battlemage artillery system in "Gate to The North" makes no sense. Why couldn't you just make it so that we can call in artillery wherever we want?
A: Mostly technical reasons, but I think I can potentially get around them in future mods. I really want to try. Goredev helped me come up with the how to make that system work, though, and he was a forward observer in the Army for 16 years.
Q: Do you have a discord?
A: I have one with just the voice actors I work with in it, and I'm constantly debating whether or not I should open it to the public. I'm leaning towards no because I already have the problem of people reporting bugs to me in every possible way except just commenting on my mods. I see your comments. I took a break from responding to comments once in my 8 years of posting mods on the Nexus. I really prefer that you all just put your bug reports there so I can see what version you downloaded and so other users can confirm the bug or say they don't have it. Stop DMing me about bugs or trying to report them in my Youtube comment section.