Cicero's mother is a psychic undead monstrosity that whispers to his friends but refuses to speak to him? Stranger things have happened, I suppose, but it's a bit odd nonetheless.

Mothers-in-law are known to do that, though.

There's a lady behind a permanently locked door who whispers to a small child dark secrets and chides him to kill. A man who hears his mother, even though it's just a decayed head. A man who was being driven insane with disturbing nightmares each and every night, only to go completely off the deep end when they finally went away. A woman who killed her children because a voice told her to.

Indeed, there are plenty of odd things that have happened, all of which are completely within the abilities and character of a prince, or madman.

It's really Sheogorath screwing with you all.

What? He does that sort of thing.

Alright, I'll buy the 'Mephala's talking through the dead woman' idea. I would still like to know whose corpse it is, but I'll let it go.

Where did Lachance's shade come from? Or Rufio's, for that matter?

What is Shadowmere?

Mephala is involved in the dark brotherhood. She simply has to be, secret murder is her sphere. I've always been of the opinion that Mephala was trolling, but Proweler brings up some really good points. Though if the dark brotherhood's Sithis is really Lorkhan, why the prominent display of the book Sithis, which draws a dichotomy between the two, in their
Headquarters?

Point being, regardless of who they revere, killing someone in secret is literal sacrament to Mephala, even if she's not directly running the show.

I guess this is the problem when a Prince is even hinted to be on the periphery of a storyline, as the Prince of secrets pretty much anything not physically smacking your head in during the DB storyline could be down to Malphala feeling bored.

Creating Sithis would fit with Malphala’s modus operandi, a few whispers here, a couple of corpses there, and hey presto your very own cult who worship you by killing for you without knowing who you really are. Perfect for the “web spinner” Prince of the obscured and fictitious.

Is there anything, for example, to stop her from duping Lucian Lechance’s spirit? He was one of the few things during the DB quest line that seemed to support the existence of Sithis.

It could very well be that Lucien bound his soul to Mephala, thinking it was actually Sithis, and now she keeps him locked in a closet with a sign on the door saying "This is the realm of Sithis, stay inside unless I, Sithis, tell you to go somewhere."

Or it could just be Sithis and you guys could just be talking a bunch of nonsense..


Just sayin..

The problem is the same as the one surrounding the Jygallag mess: how can you tell if someone who is literally made of the concept of Lying is telling the truth? How can you understand the motivations of Madness?

You guess.

One could say the same thing about anything. How can one tell that Tiber Septim really wasn't a half-dreugh hermpahrodite? Nobody can prove anything.

This discussion is hurting my brain but I'll give my two cents. Firstly, why would Mephala actually be behind the Dark Brotherhood? She is the prince of lies, secrets and murder, yes, but death and murder are everywhere in Tamriel - it doesn't mean she is behind it all. In addition, if you go by the stories of her teachings to the chimer on which the Morag Tong were founded upon, the Dark Brotherhood's methods completely pervert these traditions of honour etc. Proof that the Webspinner values these traditions is when she tasks the player to kill the freelance assassin in Morrowind.

Also, why would the two guilds be at war in the first place if they both worshipped the same deity? We know that they hate each other, and the book 'Fire and Darkness' references an instance where a Tong assassin was killed. We know the Night Mother is involved in how the brotherhood get their contracts, so why, if she is Mephala, would she order the death of one of her worshippers? Ruling over two guilds that plan to destroy each other doesn't make sense.

The Night Mother in Oblivion, the expanded lore on her in Skyrim, and the book 'the Night Mother's truth' all seem to show that she is not Mephala and was once a normal Dunmer woman. Nothing suggests Mephala is speaking through the corpse either, as ghosts and spirits certainly exist in the Elder Scrolls universe, so the generally accepted story of the Night Mother's past isn't suspect in the Tamriellic sense of things. As for Sithis, I'll have to agree with others on here that the games do suggest he is capable of consciously interfering in some way, even down to tiny seemingly insignificant things like the shrine in Deepscorn Hollow that blesses you - obviously the devs seem to see Sithis as some manner of being.

*Sarcasm incoming:*
Morag Tong and DB are fighting because Mephala is the webspinner and she made it that way, because that's what she does: Spins webs and lies.
*Sarcasm ended.*

I agree with you here completely. To say that mephala is behind the DB means you ignore all the facts known of the cult.

From hearsay, or the Cult itself. All in favor of the Chatty Sithis Theory will have to excuse we obvious morons in the Intertextual anolysis Clique for being skeptical of such an absolutist viewpoint in such a plastic universe.

Single-malt sarcasm. Goes down smooth.

One need not believe every word the Dark Brotherhood says to believe that Sithis is the force behind it. Nuance is available to both sides of this subject.

I think this whole "Mephala is behind the Dark Brotherhood" thing is just backlash because people do not like the Dark Brotherhood's religious beliefs, and they would rather it be all a lie instead of it being partly true.

I would wager that its less disdain for the Brotherhood and more that they think that pinning it on a ominous void is a tad underwhelming. Even so, its good for discussion, eh?

I would give you money for being so right, but I can tell from your avatar that don't need it.

I'll be perfectly honest, I prefer the notion that Mephala is behind both the Tong and the Brotherhood, deliberately setting them against eachother, because we've seen 'her' do that kind of thing before. It was the heart of 'her' quest in TES:IV, for example, and central to how 'she' is effectively driving the jarl's son to murder him in TES:V. Mephala isn't the just the web-spinner in the sense of being the Prince of Lies, but also the literal weaver-of-the-web, the monstrous spider sitting at the center.

Also in the vein of honesty, I don't have anything against the notion of Sithis being behind the brotherhood. My disdain for the brotherhood arises out of their coke-headed emo-clown mentality we've seen since TES:IV, which is admittedly not a result of the sithis worship; I just think they're simple-mined sociopaths, and that the worship of the primodrial void (and getting off on it like a bunch of weepy adolescents) is a sign of their stupidity. They're a cartoonish caricature, hence my earlier label for them.

Completely agree. Saying Mephala is tricking them into thinking the DB is actually worshiping Sithis just takes all of the evidence that is presented and throws it out the window. There's not any evidence to support the other side. It's just a bunch of stuff that some guy made up to sound cool and some other guy went along with it because he thought it would make him sound cool too.. eventually, we end up with a bunch of people believing something that has absolutely no backing in game.

There is evidence to support both sides of this debate, actually. I don't quite understand why this is such a volatile issue, to be honest. Can't we all just agree to differently misinterpret?

Try to stick to the issues at hand in the future. Trying to discredit your opposition with personal attacks only reflects poorly on your own self.

But our contention with the Dark Brotherhood isn't some lore-stunt-piloting-dike-measuring-contest. We recognize the corpses, the literature, the testimony - but that's all ipse dixit, lots o 'telling, not a shred of showing.There is no empirical evidence of Chatty Sithis, is the point.

However, we do have plenty of examples of Webspinner compelling people to obscene hijinks, further, the collective-unconscious anamnensis of graven un-images of the Doom Drum are well-documented. To ignore that evidence (a great deal of which we, the player-character, have experienced first-hand), in a universe where every story is a fractal pattern of THE story, is to move totally against four games worth of backstory.

Man, I'm pretty much done here. Thought the lore forum would be a good place to read up on TES lore, but it's more like a place for people to debate their interpretations of the lore. NTY!