I really enjoy doing the DB quests.

I have bonded with my new brethern, especially the Dark Guardian.

Do I really have to do what I think have to do to appease Lucien in the Purification quest?

I'm starting to wish I could just walk away and keep the Brotherhood the way it is!

If you want to keep the quest line going, you have to do it. You can choose to not do it, but then the quest line stops, so all you can do is hang around the sanctuary - there won't be any more contracts or anything.

I stop the quest line just before Purification. Then all my buddies stay right where they are.

Clearly the OP is an awful assassin and not worthy of the Dark Brotherhood.

A true DB assassin would kill their mother, sister, wife or daughter without any hesitation, if they had a contract.

And any of the DB members would be perfectly fine in killing your character.

Yes, you really need to do it in order to advance the DB questline. So now its a matter of where your loyalty truly lies, with your brothers or with your mother.

I know that this would never happen due to quest structure but in real life holding off on these quests would give Lucien Lachance time to show up and put a stop to the rampage.

Save, complete the quest line and reload your save, that way you went through the quest line and you get to keep your friends around.

This.

But yeah, sadly, there's no way to prevent this. I don't have a problem with most questlines in Oblivion only having one outcome, but I really wish the DB offered alternatives. If not to prevent the Purification then...(spoiler for the OP and anyone who hasn't gone past the Purification questline)

Pausing the questline by refusing the purification is a fine idea. It may be a touch boring, but not nearly as boring as being in the DB after the entire questline is completed. Just sayin'.

It really broke my characters heart the first time she had to did this but what had be done got done :mellow:

If your character had a heart, then she wasn't cut out for the DB in the first place. Savlian summed it up nicely, as he always does on this subject.

To me, there only seems to be 2 ways to rationalize the questline through to completion.

1) Your character is just as psychotic as the rest of the Cheydinhal DB. Kill away.

2) Your character is an infiltrator. This is perfect, since your goal is to eradicate this hive of pestilence in the first place. You're probably still psychotic, but with delusions of being a Saviour of some sort. Whatever. Kill away.

I believe that The Night Mother is Mephala anyway, so regardless of how you go about completion, you always end up as his/her/it's chesspiece.

Savlian- I guess you are right. I have always played good characters, and this is really pushing the envelope for me. I think that's why I like it. I guess I'll be hacking away tonight!

I prefer good characters too.

I recommend trying to get in the mind-set of a DB assassin. Remember you are not your character and vice verse. Maybe think of it as directing a movie or writing a book about a cold blooded cult assassin and figure out what he (or she) would do.

And remember Lucien also knows all those people, and he has no problem ordering their deaths.

I always found that quest kind of Stalin-like. When Stalin thought there was a chance that someone it a group could possibly be a traitor, he'd just kill everyone in that group. That way he was sure he got the possible traitor. Same (horrible) principle. That he killed a bunch of innocents didn't really bother him. And in this case you're not even killing innocents.

But Lucien didn't really give the quest.

No, he did give this quest. It was the Dead Drops that were fake.

Not all of them. The first one or two were legit, IIRC. After that the traitor found out about them and set you up with fake ones.