

Bethesda also refrenced the act of killing your friend in pre-release texts.Ī lot of unused scripts and dialogue, when viewed with the Creation Kit, show that Hrongar was meant to initially replace Jarl Balgruuf during the quest The Whispering Door. Unused quest date, dialogue notes and an NPC are all left in the files pointing to this. The original Dark Brotherhood initiation quest had the player kill one of their friends, instead of Grelod the Kind. Unused items seem to suggest that the player originally had to create Vaermina's Torpor rather than just finding it during the quest Waking Nightmare. The quest would randomly select one of these objectives, but only chooses the alembic in the final game. While this quest normally has you searching for an alembic misplaced by Tolfdir, it seems that it was intended to also have the player search for a book that Tolfdir had lost. With this path, Deeja could end up arrested, unlike the final game where she always ends up dead. If the player chose to help him and the guards, Captain Aldis would appear during the quest, and help the player fight the Blackblood Marauders at the Wreck of the Icerunner. Ma'zaka is the Khajiit that lives in the Solitude Lighthouse, but he never plays any significant role in the final game.

This quest originally gave the player the option between aiding Jaree-Ra, only to end up betrayed like the final game, or help Ma'zaka and the Solitude guard. In the final game this is merely reduced to talking to him. Originally, Ghorbash the Iron Hand would've sent you to retrieve an item known as "Ghorbash's Ancestral Axe" before agreeing to become a follower. Because the scene is deliberately disabled, the quest can only be started by encountering Cicero at the Loreius Farm. Originally, this quest could've been started by overhearing a conversation play out between Skulvar Sable-Hilt and Uthgerd the Unbroken at the Whiterun Stables. These quests still appear in the final game but have had one or more elements removed.
