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Trying to join the Dark Brotherhood, I finished the "Innocence Lost" quest and received the "Mysterious Note" from the Courier. Going to sleep does prompt the beginning of the "With Friends Like These..." quest, as my character wakes up in the Abandoned Shack with the captives and Astrid, and Astrid does make the proper initial comments, which advances the stage of the quest to 10. Killing any of the captives advances the stage to 30, with the new objective of speaking to Astrid, but it seems to be impossible to speak with her: all she does is utter two generic greetings while remaining perched on the shelf.

I've tried using the console to advance the quest through the setstage command or the sayto command, and this does result in the new objective of entering the Dark Brotherhood sanctuary outside Falkreath, but it is impossible to gain access through the door; trying to activate the door has no effect, and there is no voice asking for the password. If I use the console to enter the sanctuary, then I continue to run into problems with Astrid and Nazir not having the proper dialogue to advance the Dark Brotherhood quest line. I've also tried using the AddTopic command on Astrid, but this seems to have no effect whatsoever.

It's been more than 10 hours of game time since I finished the "Innocence Lost" quest, so reloading a save before that point isn't much an option (I've tried to reload a more recent save and trigger the arrival of the courier, but I get the exact same problem with Astrid once in the Abandoned Shack). Does anyone have any ideas on how to fix this problem? Is there some trigger in the scripts that should be activated prior to the arrival of the courier? Is there some way to fix Astrid once in the Abandoned Shack so that she has access to her proper dialogue? This is probably the worst bug I've ever encountered in an Elder Scrolls game, and I've been playing since Daggerfall.

Thanks in advance

I tried an old save with a different character who had never started the "Innocence Lost" quest, and for that character the "With Friends Like These..." quest works perfectly. Even skipping over the "Innocence Lost" quest by using the console to teleport that character into the Abandoned Shack, I can then kill one of the captives and speak to Astrid. This seems to be true for any save with this character.

However, for the character that I want to join the Dark Brotherhood, even a save from before completing the "Innocence Lost" quest runs into the exact same problem: after completing that quest, the courier never delivers the "Mysterious Note", and whether I use the console to have the note delivered or to teleport directly into the Abandoned Shack, I encounter the same problem with Astrid not entering into normal dialogue after killing one of the captives. I even tried a save for this character created immediately after the tutorial in Helgen but to no avail.

For a third character who had never started the "Innocence Lost" quest, it seems the "With Friends Like These..." quest works perfectly in any save after a certain point, but that in any save before a certain point the same problem occurs with Astrid not having proper dialogue, the sanctuary door not activating, and so on.

It turns out there's an unmarked quest called DarkBrotherhood that's supposed to be set to stage 1 at the beginning of the game (the Quest Data tab in the Creation Kit has "Start Game Enabled" checked and "Run Once" checked), but for some reason hasn't been in my latest game. Using the console to set the stage to 1 activates a script that sets the DBEntranceQuest stage to 20, which prompts the appearance of the courier bearing the Mysterious Note, followed after sleeping by the abduction to the Abandoned Shack, which in turn starts the "With Friends Like These..." Quest. However, I'm still experiencing the same problem with Astrid not having dialogue after killing one of the captives and the resulting inability to join the Dark Brotherhood.

Oddly, in one of my previous games, the DarkBrotherhood quest was likewise not set to stage 1 at the beginning game but somehow it was set to stage 1 later on. Any saves from after this point can join the Dark Brotherhood without problems, but any saves from before this point run into the same problem with Astrid not having her proper dialogue even if I use the console to set the stage for DarkBrotherhood to 1 and then complete the "Innocence Lost" quest normally. I'm now trying to determine how DarkBrotherhood was set to 1 in this game and if I can replicate it in my current game.

Using the console commands stopquest and resetquest on DarkBrotherhood seems to have fixed this problem.