A Kiss Before Dying

Your goal here is to kill Ungolim, a Wood Elf who visits the Lucky Old Lady statue in Bravil every day between 6:00 PM and 1:00 AM. Head to Bravil and take him out! Ungolim is an archer who's going to be automatically hostile to you when he spots you, so be ready for a fight. He's a master archer, complete with knockdowns on some successful hits, so if you're worried about taking too much damage, a good strategy, as always, is to hit him with a powerful Damage Health poison and avoiding him while it does its job.

You can charge Ungolim if you wish, but it's a bit more fun to get into an archery duel with him.

After Ungolim is dead, Lachance appears, and claims that you've actually been killing members of the Black Hand! He says that you stopped visiting the real dead drops, and have instead been diverted by forces unknown to take down the high order members of the Dark Brotherhood. But who could've known so much about the business of the assassins guild?

Following A Lead

Lachance asks you to head to your next dead drop location, in Anvil, and...wait. Wait to find out whom has been diverting your efforts towards wiping out the Black Hand.

Travel to Anvil and find the wooden barrel that's highlighted on your compass. If you sneak back there, then wait for one hour, you should find Enilroth, a little Elf who says he was paid to put the instructions in the barrel. Sensing imminent doom, Enilroth wisely decides to tell you all about the bad man who paid him. If you further threaten him with death, he'll tell you that the man was living in the cellar of the lighthouse in the harbor, and that it was probably rented to him by the lighthouse keeper, Ulfgar Fog-Eye, who may be able to provide me with a key to the cellar.

Someone's got some anger issues.

Head to the Anvil Docks and track down Fog-Eye's house under the lighthouse and track him down wherever he may be. With a little coaxing, he should yield up the cellar key to you, so head back outside and find the entrance.

With a little poking around in the Corpses R' Us, you'll find the Traitor's Diary, which details the plot. Apparently the person who's been fooling with the dead drops is a member of the Black Hand itself, and has risen in the ranks of the Dark Brotherhood simply to take revenge on it for the murder of his or her mother many years ago. It's up to you to find this infiltrator and shut him or her down for good!

Two on one? Easy-peasey.

Return to Lachance. You'll discover that you're a bit too late to save him from the plotter. Since you're not sure which of the remaining members of the Black Hand is the traitor, all you can do for the moment is to play along.... Note that you'll net a Black Hand Hood and a Black Hand Robe, which are essentially the same items as you obtained earlier, but which add an additional five points to each of the skills that your Shrouded Armor did. They're not considered armor, though, so you may still want to keep the Shrouded Armor around if you're a light armor user.

Honor Thy Mother

In order to move the Dark Brotherhood quests, you need to speak to Arquen here between the hours of midnight and three in the morning. Agree to follow her to the Night Mother's location...which lies beneath the Lucky Old Lady statue in Bravil. Take the trap door down to the crypt and wait for events to unfold for themselves.

When Mathieu Bellamont reveals himself to be the traitor to the cause, quickly poison him and take him down with the help of Arquen. At this point, the bulk of your task is complete, so feel free to loot the bodies and, at the invitation of the Night Mother, loot the crypts as well, then speak to the Mother again. She'll upgrade your Blade of Woe and teleport you back to the Cheydinhal Sanctuary.

Whispers of Death

'Pay attention, Murderer! There'll be a test on all this later on.'

At this point, you've essentially completed the Dark Brotherhood series of quests; your only job now is as a quasi-administrator, overlooking the operations of the Cheydinhal Sanctuary. With Arquen around, though, even that's a pretty low-stress job: all you're required to do is to visit the Lucky Old Lady statue once a week, grab the list of names of people who've prayed to Sithis, and return it to Arquen. In return, you'll get a share of the profits that the cell generates. Nice.

As Listener of the Black Hand, you have some unique benefits to take advantage of. While the ability to speak to the Old Mother and relay her commands to Arquen will net you some cash, another cool aspect of running the Dark Brotherhood is the fact that it lets you obtain the services of Dark Brotherhood Murderers. If you speak to one of them, they'll follow you and act as teammates during your travels. Pretty handy!