I have a question that's been bothering me for some time now, about the Dark Brotherhood. How do they communicate and get their targets?

In every province we hear about praying to the night mother and following the black sacrement in order to get somebody assassinated. Which I guess makes sense. But how does the Night Mother get those messages on to the DB shrines.

From what we've seen in Oblivion and Skyrim, there is but one listener. This listener literally needs to be within 10 feet of the Night Mother in order to get any kind of message. Meaning that at most times in the organizations history the night mother and the listener would have been in Cyrodiil.

In SKyrim there are also people asking the night mother for help, and the young boy who does it can be at it for days before an assassin shows up and the other guy from Cyrodiil (forgot his name) does stay at the place where he did the sacrement until you show up. Now these two could have each spend days if not weeks waiting around for an assassin to show up, now how long would something like this normally take in a further away place, like the Ashlands or Summerset Isle or a small village in the middle of Valenwood or the outskirts of an Elswyer desert, or god knows what...

What bothers me about this, is that it just seems incredibly unlikely that such a system would stand a chance of succeeding, it makes no sense at all. So I'm kinda hoping I missed something, are there more listeners does the DB have some kind of phone-by-sithis communication line open to other sanctuaries, or some magical communication means that I have missed?

You have to realize that Skyrim is a very bad time for the Dark Brotherhood. It's been mostly wiped out, and only the one Sanctuary still existed in Skyrim, and the Night Mother wasn't even involved, which is why it took so long for the little boy to get an assassin to speak to him.

Otherwise, the Night Mother speaks to the Listener, who then sends word to the appropriate Sanctuary to get the job done quickly. I'd say it'd take a few days at most.

I don't see this as being "incredibly unlikely" to succeed at all. I mean, after all, it's a request for someone to be murdered. It's not like you can say "eh, these guys take too long, I'll just go to this other faster assassin organization." If you want someone dead, waiting a couple of days isn't going to deter you.

When the organization gets more known, most likely the Night Mother will read off a list of whose the contact and who the target is. At least, I think that's how it worked in Cyrodiil. The Listener then gets it to a Speaker who will assign it to a qualified member(s)

The travel from Cyrodiil to Morrowind, High Rock, Skyrim you name it could take weeks. From there on an assassin would have to be assigned who could take days more travelling to the person hiring, who would then still have to track down the target or could even go back to the sanctuary to assign somebody else to take down the target. Overall the progress could take months, for a political assassination that makes sense but an assassination called out of passion? Normally that cools down after a few days...


Even so, I doubt the Night Mother saves up a long list of people and only then gives it out, and if so then how long will she save the list? And how much would it svck if a good hit comes up on the list the day after the speaker left for some far-away sanctuary? I mean, you'd have to wait until the guy returns and then immediately send him out again. It could also mean that there are a few people praying to the night mother everyday from each province, and the black hand sending out messengers each and every single day but that would mean almost constant DB messengers going back and forth between sanctuaries all across Tamriel just to tell people who'se going to be assassinated next. With just one listener and five speakers that still seems like a rather difficult task.

Especially when you keep in mind that the Black Hand also has to waste time recruiting new members...

My only explanation is teleportation and telepathy. At it's height, the DB must have employed magical means of communication to make the system work.

Dreamsleeve has secondary telecom utilities. We've also seen numerous examples of magical transportation methods.

Or just pigeons a http://www.opednews.com/populum/uploaded/pic3-6890-20081118-13.jpg postal service.

people word ?
rumors then they investigate ?
first DB quest i heard about the boy from Inn keeper .
during " Mourning Never Comes" quest , im pretty sure i heard some people mentioning that Muiri want to hire assassin to kill her ex-lover , so if people talking about it , DB will hear about it .
so they don't need Night mother or customer service center , Dark Brotherhood member only need to spend the night in town/city tavern to hear the "latest gossips" .
and i think drunk people best source of information lol

The Night Mother is the original listener. She listened to Sithis and then sent out assassins in his name.

In TES IV, Sithis speaks to the Night Mother who speaks to the Listener who tells the five Speakers of the black hand who tells the dark brotherhood assassins to kill a target. In Skyrim...

If you're hiring to kill someone, you don't cool off after a few days. If you forgive someone that quickly, then maybe you shouldn't risk pissing off a trained assassin.

The listener probably sends out a message to the speaker of an area, which covers up to the entire province. Skyrim had at least two areas, bringing up different possibilities. The Listener was in Cyrodil, which is the perfect location to send out a letter to any province. I'm guestimating it should take 3-5 days to answer, and in Oblivion I don't remember going to the one who prayed to her every time. Sometimes they get their prayers answered by finding out that person is gone.

EDIT-double post.

How do they agree on a price then? In Oblivion I just always assumed somebody else was getting the money for you...

The Listener contacts the Speakers, and then the Speakers hands out the assignments assignments either directly to a member or to the member watching over a sanctuary. It's unknown exactly how the Listener gives the information to a Speaker, but it can be assumed that most Speakers live close to the Sanctuaries they govern (Look at how close Lucien lived to the Sanctuary Oblivion). From what I gather, there is a Listener for each province. When we come to Skyrim, things are very much different. There hasn't been a Listener for over 200 years and the DB has basically learned who to kill from rumors and word of mouth. They've also abandoned the Five Tenets, the Night Mother and (possibly) Sithis himself. Really, they are only killing for money, rather than profit AND serving the Dread Father.

How can there be a listener in every province when you need to stand right next to the night mother in order to hear things...

Multiple Night Mothers? No, that's pushing things.

Well consider this. The Black Hand is made up of 4 Speakers and Listener correct? Well in Oblivion, there are 4 Speakers and a Listener in Cyrodill alone. So either the Speakers are in charge of multiple sanctuaries in different provinces or each province has it's own Black Hand. If we assume that they have at least one sanctuary in each province, and some have more than one, that can add up to alot. Of course, by the time we get to in Skyrim, none of it matters as the Falkreath Sanctuary is the last active cell.



Lol, no no no. There is only one Night Mother.

^^ this, in skyrim its different because skyrim is basically the only place where the DB is now..

That makes sense, I was still just looking into a way to get communications from the night mother/listener to the rest of the sanctuaries.. But it's probably just magic.

Well if each province had it's own Black Hand and handled it's business only within that province, it wouldn't be so hard to manage by courior or meeting.

It does get a little confusing when other provinces are added to the equation. From what the games suggest, there seems to be one Listener who the night mother specifically chooses. Its revealed in oblivion that the Listener listens to the Night Mother, he then tells the Speakers, who will visit the person who performed the Black Sacrament and negotiate a price etc. Then the Speaker sends an assassin from his Sanctuary, or if its a particularly dangerous task he might send his Silencer. Seeing as the Listener visits the night mother once a week, it is likely that the whole process stated above takes about that time. What confuses me, though, is that in oblivion we learn that each Speaker oversees a particular group of family members in a Sanctuary, so that means there should be four sanctuaries in Cyrodiil, but how do they then govern the Sanctuaries in the other provinces? The only thing i can think of is that the Speakers use the assassins based in cyrodiil to execute contracts in Cyrodiil. Whereas, say if he has to meet someone in high rock to arrange a contract, then he would visit the local DB Sanctuary in High rock to order an assassin to complete the mission.

Interesting discussion, I had wondered how they handled things before when they weren't only located in Skyrim, thanks for the insight.

The only other thing I can think of, is they assign a "head" of a sanctuary, like the female argonian in the Cheydinhall sanctuary. Then the Speaker gives each head the tasks related to their provinces.