#if you want to headcanon karliah being entirely open with them & telling them everything as they travel to riften

[sky-scribbles]

I just read your post about you gushing on Skyrim's Thieves Guild Questline, I'm sorry, I don't know if it's something really old or if it's pretty recent, but then I wanted to seriously ask you something about it.

I love Karliah as npc, her and Serana are my absolute favorite of all Skyrim and like they're my top top top everything..! But while reading about Karliah all over the internet, I found some users speaking about how at the end of the day she used us. And since you seem to love the questline and the character as much as me, and having a pretty decent insight of the plot, I'm turning the problem to you, curious on what are your thoughts.

Basically, first thing is: Karliah turn us Nightingale to fight Mercer, even if Nocturnal's power are still blocked bc of Skeleton Key. She basically force us a bit, saying it's something we must be if we hope to survive against Mercer, which at the end of the day it's not true. (Another point is that no one said anything about serving Nocturnal in the afterlife, but my Dova wouldn't care about that).

The thing is, for how much I want to deny it, it's true. We don't gain absolutely anything for being Nightingale (apart the armor) at this point of the story. Karliah instead present 2 new warrior, rebuilt the Trinity, and thanks to this obtain the forgivness of Nocturnal.

The second point is 'but at the end of the day she saved our life'. True but. Why Mercer try to kill us in that moment? Because we're incapacitated. What if instead of us Karliah would have pierced Mercer? Mercer would have fainted, we then attacck Karliah, and a) kill her b) she kill us. If the b is true, she just have to tie Mercer and took him out and took him to Riften, while hoping to try to read the diary? At the end of the day, Karliah said this herself: 'Even if I carry out Mercer in front of the Guild I don't have any proof, it's just my word against his'.

So, Karliah both using the arrow on us and saving us after (because she come back after running away) are due to convenience. But that's is okay, it's afterall the first time she see us, she don't have any obligation toward us, and she is dedicated to her purpose.

What bother me more anyway is the first point. At that moment we aren't stranger with Karliah anymore, we maybe don't know the complete story but we have travelled a pretty amount of time with her. So yeah, she don't lie to us, but she don't tell us all the info.

I have my theories about it, being:

- if she was killed by Mercer, the Nightingale would have died with her. At least like this we're somehow involved and would carry on the legacy.

- at the end of the say she didn't know us and still didn't trust us.

- she was ready to do everything, and everything meaning ometting truth to anyone to accomplish her revenge.

After all this papyrus, sorry about it really, what do you think? I'm sorry it has to be you but I need a new prospective..! 🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏 Thanks even for having read till here!

Haha, no worries, I'm always in a mood for talking about the Guild questline!

Here's the thing: Skyrim's character writing is... honestly a bit thin. It's hard to know what Karliah's intentions are, because the game just doesn't go into that amount of detail. Which means that a lot is open to interpretation.

Looking at the Guild questline from a Doylist, out-of-universe perspective... let's be real, the reason Karliah comes across as having lied about us needing to be Nightingales to defeat Mercer is that the game writing isn't good enough to make us feel like we need to be Nightingales. Whoever wrote that quest didn't think to, y'know, give the players actual powers at that point and make those powers essential for defeating Mercer. I love Skyrim, but it isn't subtle in its writing. We're meant to believe that we Have to be Nightingales to defeat Mercer, because the writers (through Karliah), say so. The real reason Karliah shoots us rather than Mercer is so we can be a captive audience to the writers' cool reveal cutscene.

So... we're just left to interpret logic into the very thin reasons the game gives us for Characters Doing Things.

One interpretation for Karliah's actions is that she's using us. Karliah does actually tell the PC and Brynjolf about the serving-beyond-death thing; after getting the armour, she then explains how 'in life and in death, you must serve as a guardian of the Twilight Sepulchre.' But she does still bring you to Nightingale Hall to accomplish her own goals.

And I think this is a perfectly valid interpretation. I adore her with my whole heart, but yes, she is a career criminal, she's a pretty decent manipulator (seeing as how she set up the first half of the questline through her 5D chess game), and she is absolutely fixated on avenging Gallus and herself, and regaining Nocturnal's favour.

But because the writing is so thin in regards to her character (and she's one of the more fleshed-out characters in the game!), we can honestly interpret anything else we like. If we want to believe that there is a benefit to the PC, Karliah and Bryn becoming Nightingales - even a subtle one, like luck playing in their favour in Irkngthand, making some falmer distracted, helping arrows strike true - we can absolutely choose to believe that. That's a valid explanation too, imo.

What do I think? I do think Karliah uses the PC to an extent. I think she is fixated on her goal, and respecting the PC's agency is a second priority to her. And... I like that. I like the idea that she's flawed, and so obsessed with her plans that she can't think beyond them, and that she fucks up, and manipulates perhaps without meaning to because how can she be otherwise? She has been alone for twenty five years. She has not trusted anyone in that time. Her plan is the only thing that gives her any semblance of control. Manouvering others is the only thing that's keeping her alive. She has lost some of her ability to treat others like people because she has not been treated like a person for twenty five years.

I think she wasn't thinking clearly in that moment in Snow Veil Sanctum. Why should she be, with the bones of her lover not fifty feet away and his murderer approaching? When the PC appears in the doorway and her plan goes all to hell? She probably could have shot Mercer. Maybe 'I never had a clear shot' is what she tells herself so she doesn't absolutely break with fury at herself when she thinks of how she had her chance to avenge Gallus, and she let it go.

Maybe she does bring Brynjolf and the PC to Nightingale Hall for her own reasons - because she has to see this done, she has to see Mercer dead and the trinity restored, because that vow is all she's been for a quarter century and who even is she if she stops?

Karliah is filled up to the eyes with self-loathing. She constantly talks as if she's responsible for Gallus's death. As if by loving him, being loved by him, she distracted him enough for Mercer to kill him. Killing Mercer and restoring the Nightingales isn't just about her own desires. It's also trying to restore everything Gallus created, to ensure that his death isn't the end of all he worked for - because if that's gone, so is everything he was. Like he never existed. Every trace of him in the world gone, except for her grief. And she cannot fail him again.

Restoring his legacy is the only way Karliah could ever even begin to forgive herself.

So yes, I do think she uses the PC to an extent. Her behaviour was, however, coming from a place of deep pain, and while that doesn't justify it, it does explain a hell of a lot about it.

But perhaps there's something more important to consider: how do you think she acts after Mercer is dead, the Trinity restored, and she's reunited with Gallus's spirit? After she's seen that he's not lost forever, he loves her as much as he did before, doesn't blame her for a moment, and knows she will see him again?

We don't have anything canon to go on, really, because at this point the game practically forgets that she exists and shunts her into Nightingale Hall, but that means we can decide whatever the hell we like. And personally, I think she heals, slowly, tentatively. I think she slowly comes back to the Guild, works alongside the PC again and again, forgives herself at last. Realises that she is not responsible for anything that happened.

And after a bit of time of being treated like a person, like she matters, like she's cared for... maybe then she has the emotional energy at last to look at the PC and Brynjolf and think I just assumed you'd go along with my plans, and it was for me, for my purposes, not for you. And that wasn't right. Perhaps to talk to them, and tell them she's sorry. To resolve to deal with others better from now on. But also to understand that she made the decisions she made in one of the most painful and stressful periods of her life. To not hate herself for making flawed choices, and resolve to move on, looking forwards, not back.

I like to think she does.