Assassination contract

[Nyran]

First: I saw that old witch like b*tch.

Second: I never even went near her, since I had a bad feeling about her.

Third: My conjurer has been attacked by thugs AND the dark brotherhood. (before joining later one)

Fourth: What makes ANYONE think it's a good idea to charge the archmage at the entrance of his very on academy?

Fifth: Attacking someone who fights a dragon AND has 100% sneak + invincibility potions is NOT a good idea!

 

So, what do thos ladys have against me and why are their hired hands so damn dumb? :D Still love this game, after all seeing a dragon eat a assasin send after you is brilliant!

 

maybe bethseda simply assumed that no one whold be able to keep their dirty fingers in check once they saw the stuff in her hut?

Personally I'm more annoyed with how you meet assassins from the dark brotherhood chasing you, with messages signed from astrid. And yet, she never talks about that once you meet her...

 

Well, I think it's not her style to talk about the past :D you live, they died, you're qualified to live and eventually join

[Daytona675r]

Hey i killed a couple of hired thugs sent to teach me a lesson, one of them had a contract from Asta. I think she

said i was a murderer of thief i cant quite remember. i paid no attention to it (figured it was because of the eldergleam sap i took)

although she was found dead as i left the area. then not long after she started appearing

after i quick traveled just standing beside me. she would say the same things as when i first

saw her at the eldergleam tree. but when not talking to her she would sound like she was in

pain 'uhh' or somewhat possessed. i got sick of it so i killed her, as she died she struggled to say 'free again'

 

got any idea what was going on?

[Perraine]

Ahhh Bethesda ...

 

The Hired Thugs, hired by a non-existent (at the time you usually first find the cabin) sister, who don't seem to have any more skill than a lowly bandit peon ...

The Thalmor Death Squads, who seem to talk to some of there brethren, but fail to mention your name to any of the high ranking Diplomats scattered throughout Skyrim ...

The Assassins, set upon you by that two faced, backstabbing b**** Astrid, though no mention of WHO performed the Black Sacrement is ever made ...

The Random Thief, who, although your standing there in full Daedric Armor + equipped with a Daedric Battleaxe of Fire and with a follower ALSO in full Daedric Armor with a Daedric Bow Life Stealing, is never intimidated by you ...

The Random Mage Apprentice of Questionable Skill, who seems to think 'testing his skill' against the Archmage of the College of Winterhold would be a good idea ...

The random Redguard, Breton, Darkelf, Imperial or Woodelf who seems to think that you stole some necklace or ring from the corpse of a fellow member of their race in some obscure corner of Skyrim with absolutely no witnesses.

 

None of them seem to recognize the fact that your a lvl 73 Dragonborn FFS! with most (if not all) combat and magicka skills at 80-90+, can singlehandedly take on an Elder Dragon and survive, and could probably rip the whole continent a new a** without breaking a sweat, and despite the fact that even city guards recognize the fact that you are a high lvl mage/archer/swordsman in armor, they STILL attack you?

 

It's fun butchering the cretins, but it does get a bit tiresome after a while ...I'd love to be able to say (once your at a high enough level to get the "Intimidate" Perk/Achievement) "Walk away ... right now ... and I may just let you live to see another sunrise" and have them stammer and back off, then turn tail and run for their lives! Wishfull thinking I know, but you gotta' have dreams ...

[RedRavyn]

OK, I read this thread for the first time and I think it's time to put a few things in order.

 

First of all "Asta" is not the hag who lives near Riverwood. She the woman in Eldergleam Sanctuary. The woman with the hut is named "Anise". Her "sister" isn't going to take out a contract on you if you steal anything from the hut, either. Anise doesn't have a sister (at least there's nothing listed in "relationships" in the CK for her). The problem is that the ownership of items in Anise's hut is set to the Hagraven faction (Anise is a member of that faction). The person who takes out the contract on you is "Moira", who is an actual Hagraven who lives (when she lives at all) in a shack in the hot springs district -- half the country away from Riverwood. The problem is that Moira doesn't even exist in the game until you start the Daedric quest "A Night to Remember", but this doesn't stop Bethesda from having her hire thugs to get even with you for stealing something from someone she probably doesn't even know.

 

This all amounts up to one of my main pet peeves with the game, and I set out to fix the problem. I'm currently running a privately-created mod that, at present, changes all ownership in Anise's cabin (including the cellar) to "none", so that taking anything won't be classified as stealing. I've also removed the dripping water, puddles, and fog from the cellar and added an additional alchemy satchel (for preferred ingredients) and a strong box (for soul gems) near the alchemy and enchanting stations. This is still a WIP, but when I've got a little more work done on the place I'll be releasing the mod to the public. No more hired thugs from Moire! Oh, and you can kill Anise without incurring a bounty. Some people might not know that. You don't have to make her go aggro on you. Just a nice, simple, one-shot sneak attack usually does the trick.

 

Now, for people complaining about assassins with notes from Astrid, but no indication of who took out the DB contract on you, these are random events spawned by the gamesystem and have nothing at all to do with what you have or have not done in the game. Blame Bethesda for this. I'm sure they thought they were being clever in having you hunted down by everyone in the country, but it's not clever. At least not in my opinion. It's just random BS that they put into the game, probably to make it "interesting". To a lot of us it breaks immersion because we're left wondering what in the blazes we did to deserve it, or how in all the Planes of Oblivion did anyone find out?

 

Thugs are a different matter. As far as I've been able to determine, you actually have to do something bad to someone in order to have a gang of thugs attack you. That makes sense. What doesn't make sense is that it can happen even if there are no witnesses to the crime -- yet another instance of Bethesda not being clear about the whole concept of cause and effect.

 

@ Daytona675r: You were a bad boy in Eldergleam Sanctuary, weren't you? If you took anything that belonged to Asta she's going to hire thugs. All that stuff in and near the napsack belongs to her. It doesn't even matter if the spriggans kill her. I guess her ghost hires the thugs. Blame it on poor game design. I understand she might hire thugs if you opt to get the sap, rather than let the monk convince the tree to give you a sapling, instead. I can't really verify this from personal experience in the game, though.

 

The "Free, again" is one of things that thralls will say when they are killed by the PC. I'm not sure what could have enthralled her, though. Spriggans, to my knowledge, are not able to enthrall humans -- just animals. I think you've experienced a glitch of some sort.

 

Sometimes a character that is in dialog with you will travel with you through a transition (either a door or via. fast travel). And, sometimes the game gets confused about such things. My guess is that the game thought Asta was speaking to you, even though she wasn't, and warped her along with you. I've had this happen on a few occasions with other NPCs, including one quest-related NPC who kept following me all over Skyrim. She wasn't essential and she would set out walking back to her home every time I fast traveled. I knew she wouldn't make it back, alive. I was finally forced to travel back to where I knew she belonged and use "moveto player" in the console to get her back "home" and then reset her AI, so the game wouldn't get glitched. Skyrim is full of little quirks like this. At least PC users can fix a lot of them. I feel sorry for console users who have no choice but to sometimes revert to saves much earlier in the game before the bugs occur.

[landy8]

In my different game incarnations I've met the same thugs, but they were hired by DIFFERENT persons.

Added: To RedRavyn's respected notion. If you want to fix this issue by mod, note that almost anyone can hire that thugs.

 

Once it was a "Whiterun Guard"!

 

As for the Highwaymen (oredring you to hand over you belongings), assassins (single and triple), and, of course, that hired thugs... My favourite answer is FUS RO DAAAA!!! :biggrin:

 

PS: Spare that Novice Mage! He just wants a little practice! After hitting your Ward three times he thanks you and leaves.

Edited May 28, 2012 by landy8

[RedRavyn]

@ landy8: Yes, the Anise/Moire issue can be fixed by a mod. The reason Moire takes out the bounty on you if you steal something from Anise's hut is because all the grabbable objects in the hut (exterior and cellar) are set to ownership by the Hagraven faction. I've gotten these thugs four times, already, and they've always been hired by Moire -- never by any of the other named Hagravens, so my assumption is that she's just the default Hagraven to do this. By removing ownership from all those objects the game is prevented from promulgating that contract.

 

I've been dealing with it for most of my playthroughs by meticulously hand-changing every object in the cabin with the console "setownership" command. I finally got tired of this, especially after missing one object once and accidentally grabbing it before I realized it (the last time Moire sent thugs after me) and decided to make a mod so that ownership is removed from the very beginning of the game. I left the trigger in place that makes Anise go postal on you if you enter the cellar, just so you can kill her without incurring a bounty (I think I got a bounty for doing that during one of my early playthroughs, when I did a sneak attack on her). So far I'm at level 16 and have yet to have her thugs meet me, although I don't expect it to happen, anyway, since I know what's going on with this particular contract.

 

Thugs are sent by specific people with respect to specific things which you do in-game. I'm not saying that there aren't random thug encounters, but I've never had one of these. At least with me they're always by a particular person who I can identify as someone I've crossed in the game. At least once I understood what was going on with Anise's Cabin after investigating it with the CK I was no longer mystified by Moire's involvement. It's random whether or not you'll be targeted, but as far as I know you have to actually do something bad to someone before you'll get it. This is in total contradiction to the mechanism that spawns DB assassins and characters with names like "Khajiit", "Redguard", and "Breton" who attack you without warning. Those all appear to be truly random events, determined solely by a roll of electronic dice.

[landy8]

Well, I haven't actually got inside that Ansie's hut, so I've never had any problems with Moire. As for the other encounters, with three thugs hired by some unnamed Whiterun Guard, for example... I think, well, it was his right to hire some thugs. And it was my right to kill them since they haven't tried a fist fight, but simply attacked me on sight. So I've never modded anything about it and most likely will never do so.

 

I have a self mod with something useful for me, short duration Apprentice level Invisibility spell, for example. But I think that creating a mod that corrects every bug of this game will take no less time and effort than creating the game itself. So I salute you! :thumbsup:

[BrettM]

Apparently the dead can send thugs, too. I once had to deal with thugs carrying a contract from Septimus Signus, though I never touched a thing in his outpost until after Mora turned him into an ash pile.

[Stemin]

Isn't this a very simple situation? You enter her hidden room in the basement and that is enough for her to decide that you know her "secret". That she's a witch. Thus her affiliation with the hagravens. So she attacks you when you come out of said basement. There IS a note in the cellar that suggests her sister will be coming soon and it is written to someone named Helgi (sp?) who is also not in the game at that time. There's no evidence one way or another to suggest Moire IS her sister (who will be arriving soon) or isn't.

 

I'm no expert, but I believe the hired thugs in this even to be scripted outside of the normal random hired thugs.

 

I also don't seem to understand why people keep lumping the DB assassins and hired thugs into the same category, unless it's to point out that they may both be random events.

 

There are a few exceptions where I believe hired thugs are scripted, such as with Louis Letrush (sp?) and the brothers in Falkreath. But some are just random when you steal from someone such as with the mage at dragonreach.

 

To me the whole "there was no witness" complaint is sometimes overrated. I don't understand how people will complain that these things break immersion because they don't make sense, but then refuse to use their own imagination to figure out how they might fit. For example with Anises Cabin... Anises is ready to attack you the moment you leave the cellar and the cabin, so there's no reason to believe she didn't send a carrier pigeon or some type of magical message to her "sister" prior to the battle.

 

If I steal something from Farengar and the game says I'm sneaking and undetected, fine I got away with it, there are no witnesses. But if I'm the only one in the study that day, then it makes sense that Farengar should suspect it was me and send thugs after me.

 

Not to mention these are supposed to represent people, so there's no reason to believe common sense or reason is necessary.

 

Which is even more important when looking at the DB assassins.

 

ANYONE can perform the black sacrament for any reason or no reason at all, and apparently if they have enough money Astrid will take the contract. It doesn't matter how much of a saint you are. Good people don't hire assassins. Therefore an evil person must have hired the assassin. Therefore there doesn't need to be anything "fair" about it.

Edited May 28, 2012 by Stemin

[Stemin]

Apparently the dead can send thugs, too. I once had to deal with thugs carrying a contract from Septimus Signus, though I never touched a thing in his outpost until after Mora turned him into an ash pile.

 

This is at least a legitimate complaint, and while I haven't personally seen it happen, I have read about it and its documented on the wikis.