The Elder Scrolls series is one of the most famous RPG series today with its influence touching possibly thousands of games. However, with many people working on the series over the decades of its existence, some of the quests that lie inside these games are more horrifying than expected.
The scariest type of horror is the kind that one doesn't expect. This makes some of the more disturbing quests that players can find and complete throughout the Elder Scrolls series just that more horrifying, yet this also makes these quests stand out in players minds and make them unforgettable. Throughout Tamriel, epic quests and horrors await players throughout multiple titles. The following are the most disturbing quests and adventures that players can take on in the Elder Scrolls games.
Oblivion - Where Spirits Have Lease
In the Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion, there is a quest called "Where Spirits Have Lease" in Anvil that will expose players to a haunted manor filled with ghosts, corpses, and necromancy. Players can begin this quest by buying Benirus Manor from Velwyn Benirus in Anvil for 5,000 septim. After players sleep in the manor for the first time, they will be attacked by ghosts.
After the ghosts are defeated, players will hear a vase crash downstairs. Among the pieces of the broken vase is a scrap from a diary and a skeletal hand, an the diary scrap reveals that the manor is haunted. Players must then track down Velwyn to confront him about selling the player a haunted manor. Eventually, the quest will lead players into a secret passage under the manor where they will find a tome covered in bloody hand prints and stains. The player will then be tricked into reviving the manor's original owner as a Lich that players must defeat.
Skyrim - With Friends Like These...
"With Friends Like These" is a quest available in the Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim. Like many of the quests related to the Dark Brotherhood, this quest is on the disturbing side where players are tasked with performing an action they didn't expect to do.
After players complete the quest "Innocence Lost," they will eventually be visited by a courier. The courier will give the player a note with a black hand imprinted on it with "We Know" written on it. Once the player goes to sleep, they will wake up in a shack with three hooded figures tied up in front of them, where players will meet an assassin from the Dark Brotherhood named Astrid.
Astrid explains that while the Dark Brotherhood is pleased with the events that occurred during the "Innocence Lost" quest, they consider the player to be someone who stole one of their kills. The player is tasked with questioning the hooded figures and figure out who has a contract on their life so that the player can kill the right one.
Killing any of the tied up figures will allow the player to begin the steps to join the Dark Brotherhood themselves. However, the player can also kill Astrid to begin a quest line to take down the Dark Brotherhood. Either way, waking up in an abandoned shack in front of people who are tied up and being told to kill them is a disturbing concept for a quest.
Oblivion - The Purification
Another disturbing Dark Brotherhood quest comes from Oblivion. In "The Purification," the player is tasked with purging the Cheydinhal Sanctuary in order to find the traitor inside Cheydinhal's Dark Brotherhood. Of course by purging, the player is really tasked with killing every single Dark Brotherhood member located inside the sanctuary. The player is given a scroll that summons a ghost and a poisoned apple by the quest giver, Lucien Lachance, to help with the task.
There are multiple ways to kill all of the members, but the player will eventually discover that the one who gave Lucien Lachance the task in the first place was the real traitor who used the suspicions of a traitor to kill off multiple members of the Dark Brotherhood. This means that the player never killed the traitor and massacred people unjustly the entire time.
Morrowind - Mission to Morvayn Manor
Many players would say that the Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind is one of the more unsettling Elder Scrolls titles, as one quest that has stuck with many a player over the years is "Mission to Morvayn Manor." In this quest, players are tasked with obtaining an Ash Statue from Morvayn Manor, which is overrun with Corprus beasts because of the statue. Corprus is a disease in Morrowind that causes growths to form on the afflicted's body. As it gets worse, the victims lose their sanity and become extremely violent. With the manor being abandoned and overrun with these zombie-like creatures, it provides very disturbing and memorable visuals for players as they go through it.
Skyrim - Death Incarnate
If players go down the Dark Brotherhood quest line in Skyrim, they will eventually have to complete the quest "Death Incarnate". The idea of this quest doesn't seem to disturbing, as the goal is to rescue surviving members of the Dark Brotherhood after a raid on the Dark Brotherhood's sanctuary.
After killing invaders, players will begin to come across the mutilated corpses of the Dark Brotherhood members killed by the Legion soldiers. In order to survive the fires in the sanctuary, the player ends up having to take shelter inside the Night Mother's sarcophagus and rest next to her corpse while the fires die down.
Once the player is freed from the sarcophagus, the player will find Astrid burned to a crisp as seen in the above image. She reveals that she betrayed the player and begs them to kill her, and the next objective is to kill Astrid before returning to the Night Mother. The visuals of this quest are haunting, from the scripted deaths of many Dark Brotherhood members to Astrid's barely alive corpse begging the player to kill her. It continues the series trend of quests involving the Dark Brotherhood being the most disturbing of them all.
The Elder Scrolls 6 is in development.