» Fri Apr 12, 2013 6:47 pm I just read all of Cicero's journals, where he explained how he was chosen to be the Night Mother's Keeper, a position the Black Hand reinstated to compensate for the lack of a Listener. He was both deeply honored and deeply saddened, because becoming Keeper meant the end of his contracts. He wrote that he'd "be lucky to ever lift a blade again."
Now, when you really think about it, this doesn't really make a whole lot of sense. Not the fact that a keeper can't have contracts; that makes perfect sense. No, instead, what doesn't make sense is... why would Sithis choose Cicero to be Keeper when he didn't want to be Keeper?
In 2005, Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI. He remarked that he didn't want to be Pope, but still took the job nonetheless because it's what God wanted of him. That's a little different, though. Benedict didn't choose Christianity because it was his personal favorite of all the worldly religions; he chose it because he was convinced that Yahweh was the one and true God.
In the TES universe, however, there are multiple gods, and as http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1448833-why-dont-the-thalmor-recognize-talos/page__fromsearch__1, the Gods in this universe are physically observable and can speak to you.
So, in the TES universe, people don't worship a god because they feel that said worship is the only path to salvation. These characters can pick and choose which god they wish to worship, based on which god offers them the best life and/or the best afterlife. Members of the Dark Brotherhood, for example, choose Sithis to worship because they love to kill, and Sithis promises them a lifetime of killing in exchange for loyalty and an afterlife in the Void. They joined because they were offered a very clear material benefit for joining: Doing their favorite hobby for a living, for the rest of their life.
So, when Sithis chooses a person to fill a position that requires they no longer kill, isn't he breaching the lure that drew that person into the Dark Brotherhood in the first place?
For that reason, shouldn't Cicero have had the right to refuse the position, since it wasn't what he signed up for when he sold his soul to Sithis?
