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There's a couple ways to beat this quest and it's underlined with somewhat of a political topic. The Forsworn were evicted forcefully from their homes and destroyed for their beliefs from what I understand. This has turned them into a hostile faction to the player, but you're still given the choice to help Madanach anyways.

I kill all of the escaping Forsworn before exiting to the surface to receive my reward; but I was wondering if you guys do anything different?

I always side with the forsworn and get their armor I never wear. I just don't like the Silver-Blood and the corrupt Markarth guards. I don't like the forsworn neither, but I like when they escape and cause a Markarth guard genocide.

Depends on what character I'm playing really.

Bruenor, my Nord warrior, would probably just kill them all, a little bit because he wants a reward from the Silver Bloods, but mostly because: #SKYRIMFODANORDZ

But Celian Karnum, my Breton Mage/Spellsword, would probably sympathize with them, seeing them as people trying to get back their home.

I haven't done the quest yet, but I'm going to side with the Forsworn, because I think their cause is more just than either of the ones the vanilla game gives you the option of supporting.

I'd help them if they didn't attack me on sight everywhere else. It's too bad Bethesda made them a hostile faction.

ElderSkillz wrote:I'd help them if they didn't attack me on sight everywhere else. It's too bad Bethesda made them a hostile faction.

Also depending on the character.

When I don't side with them I kill Madanach, loot the key and leave the others to rot in jail.

I always kill Madach and his friends as i do not agree with their view of killing every nord in the Reach and targeting innocent people. Granted, Margert was an Imperial Spy but to others, she would have seemed like an innocent person.

If there was a way for him and his followers to not attack everyone on sight, i may have sided with him.

Depends. My last character (Breton witch taught to worship the Old Gods by her mother, a Reachwoman) helped Madanach and his buddies and joined the Forsworn (thanks to an awesome mod, Forsworn Faction Pack). My current Bosmer archer/thief/assassin killed Madanach and collected her reward from Thonar, then killed him in his sleep the following night in revenge for putting her through all this.

Thelastdovah wrote:Granted, Margert was an Imperial Spy but to others, she would have seemed like an innocent person.

To be fair, Margret's murder, while executed by a Forsworn agent under orders from Madanach via Nepos, was ultimately commissioned by Thonar to prevent her from reporting his secrets to the Empire; Madanach, Nepos and their agents were just tools he used to get rid of his enemies (hence the poetic justice of the Forsworn turning the table by raising him as a zombie against the guards in the jailbreak).

I fished both ways just depending on how strong my character is at the moment and what I want to do at that time.
The rewards don't really interest me, I sell the armor and I always hold on to the ring but never use it really

I've only done this once, with my Dunmer mage. He went along with the forsworn to get out of the mine, but held back once they were fighting their way out of the city. He 'healed' (resurrected) the victims once the forsworn had gone.

I tend to use Sinister's method. Every now and then I will take a third approach. I help Madanach up to the point I get my gear back and all his follower go out the door. Once he is alone I will kill him then exit myself. Then I take out Thonar after getting the reward from him. Two prizes and two dead greedy bad guy types on the ground. Of course I end up with a bunch of angry Foresworn and Guards after me but hey, who said a Hero's life was easy.

Thonar is a greedy jerk. He arranges to put innocent people in prison just because they are competitors in a financial or political way. Madanach and the Foresworn are worse because they worship Hagravens and do human sacrifices. The same reason I take out Eola and her coven of Namira worshipers. By the time I am done half the population of Markarth dead and gone.

My Altmer killed Madanach and made herself enemies with the Forsworn. She lives in Markarth and hates being attacked by them on the roads, so to her it was revenge to kill their stupid king. As for Thonar, she lets him live since he's her neighbor, but the fire of hatred burns strongly for him in her heart.

My Imperial (in her current incarnation), tried to pickpocket his key and failed. So she had to kill him. In her other lives, she always sided with Madanach to get help escaping prison. And months after all was said and done, she went to his hideout and slaughtered him and his buddies. It was pretty much his fault that she was landed in jail. And let's not forget Thonar. He always gets it with her.

There is no use for the pc to side with the Forsworn. Only Madanach's crew is nice to you afterward and the Forsworn have a rotten agenda anyway.

sinister wrote:I always side with the forsworn and get their armor I never wear. I just don't like the Silver-Blood and the corrupt Markarth guards. I don't like the forsworn neither, but I like when they escape and cause a Markarth guard genocide.

This

The forsworn want to kill all Nords? Did I miss something? Because I never got that impression. I know they want to kill the Nord leadership and replace them but not average people. Want it to be like it was before Stormcloak attacked the city 20 years ago. They didn't kill everyone back then.

Anyway I escape with the Forsworn. Big part of the reason is that we both want to escape prison, it is why I go with the Stormcloaks at Helgen despite siding with the Empire later. If I want to escape prison I may as well go with the people who are also escaping prison. I make sure to escape at night, so only Silver-Blood and corrupt guards get killed. I'd kill Silver-Blood anyway.

Ideally we could come to a compromise where The Reach becomes a Province of the Empire like what happened to Orsinium. So they have some autonomy while still following Imperial laws that would deal with some of the more questionable things (murder) Forsworn do. I sympathise with their cause but don't agree with their methods. But I can see why they use their methods.

I've only done this once, with My character Hrolf. Anyone who knows about him will not be surprised that he eliminated every single forsworn in the prison. It was time to finish the job he and his comrades had started in 4E 176. He's not too fond of the Silver-Bloods however, and can only hope that Ulfric chooses someone else to run the Reach soon.

I've only ever done the quest on one character, and that was my pacifist character, so she escaped with Madanach, and then was promptly horrified by all the death that came from her actions. She refused to ever wear her reward, and I think eventually got rid of it.

Most of my other characters aren't interested in the skulking around nescesary to reach the end. I think my assasain would go through with it and just kill everybody involved, though, after claiming every reward he could.

Knight Captain Kerr wrote:The forsworn want to kill all Nords? Did I miss something? Because I never got that impression. I know they want to kill the Nord leadership and replace them but not average people. Want it to be like it was before Stormcloak attacked the city 20 years ago. They didn't kill everyone back then.

Exactly. And when Ulfric retook the city, he and his men didn't have the same restraint. I tend to side with the Forsworn because I sympathise more with them, especially with the information from Braig.

The Forsworn in general have a lot more potential than what was done for them in Skyrim, with all that happened in the aftermath of the Markarth Incident. I think they should've been a factor in the civil war, and that siding with Madanach should've had a greater effect.
And of course, they could've had more functional armor.

You know, I do realize that the Forsworn aren't everybody's cup of meat, but I'm getting just a wee bit tired of hearing what horrible rotten people they are (here and on the other current thread).

So yes, they deal with hagravens and let them turn them into undead killing machines. They sacrifice humans. They attack random people on the road indiscriminately.

Quite unlike us, of course. We would never have dealings with, say, Daedric princes who delight in tormenting mortals. We'd never torture and kill a priest who has never harmed us to get a powerful mace, or sacrifice a trusting innocent for a nifty mail, would we? We'd never let anybody turn us into a vampire or werewolf. We'd never go on a killing spree and obliterate a dozen strangers in the name of Sithis or just for fun, would we? Hands up who has never done anything of the above, you can go on bashing the Forsworn. As for the rest of us, I suppose we did what we did for what we deemed a good cause, right? So do the Forsworn.

They're no worse than us.

Well, I took the Kool Aide and thought helping them would help me, and we would be friends after. But NOOO. It was worth a try. (They did help me get out, and that group left me alone, so that's something)

I think probably the "correct" way, from a heroic standpoint, is to kill Madanach and then discreetly backstab Thonar right after he's given you your reward. I've never actually done that, though.

^You're not saying my greedy, unscrupulous, utterly materialist Bosmer actually happened to do the right thing from a heroic standpoint, are you? That would be too horrible to contemplate.

My similarly unscrupulous Altmer would have done the same thing but for some reason at the time it never occurred to me that she would definitely kill Thonar as revenge for framing her for like six different murders. And I can't go back and do it now because a) she had a change of heart about being evil and decided to settle down as Champion of Solstheim, but more importantly b) the game glitched trapping her in Apocrypha for all eternity.

Pickpocket the Skooma or Shiv (and I think you can also take the key if I'm not mistaken),

Converse with Madanach (You can kill him?! Now you tell me.)

Help them escape

Attacked a guard upon exiting, acquired bounty -.- He even drew the sword.

Hm I've went through killing Madanach the first time around, just because I wanted to get out of there ASAP, but since then I've pretty much always sided with them - I think the Forsworn are pretty interesting, and I don't think they're necessarily "worse" than the other factions. Hagravens are gross, but they're also witches that decided to undergo a ritual to become "stronger" so... I guess in that sense, it's not too different from someone deciding to become a vampire or a werewolf, now are they? The human sacrifice isn't something I'm fond of, buuut it seems like most (if not all) of the sacrifices tend to be willing forsworn that become briarhearts?

Honestly... I think the Forsworn could have had a really nice questline. It seems like 20-something years beforehand, when they actually ruled the Reach, it was actually doing pretty well. I don't really see them as wanting to kill all the nords per say, but being able to rule over themselves - which isn't too different from the Stormcloak side of the questline, imo. Also, a bit understandable since the Silver-Bloods own a LOT of the land etc. in the Reach, and the Silver-Blood family is pretty corrupt.

But yeah I like to side with Madanach since you get a better reward (armor is worth more, afterall), and I don't deal with people who frame me for murder. He'll have another thing comin'.
Too bad I can't kill Thongvor Silver-Blood too, though. xD