#tes canon is what i want it to be bc like 90% of lore comes from 2nd hand sources

[c4tto626]

prompted by @partyatsanguines‘ very good post (x, hope it’s ok to tag you!) here’s my take on the dark brotherhood and the night mother specifically:

(all my personal opinion and not confirmed canon)

there are multiple night mothers, a long (nonhereditary) lineage that reaches back all the way to the very first night mother, the one who ritually killed her five children to bind herself to sithis, which allows her to hear when the black sacrament is performed. the first night mother founded the dark brotherhood to send souls to sithis in worship, which eventually resulted in the assassin cult we know today. i can see the first night mother as a former morag tong assassin who turned away from the organisation and maybe even came to hate mephala for some mysterious reason, instead finding a new patron in sithis and causing the split from the morag tong. each night mother commonly performs her duty until well after her death, communicating with the listener as a spirit or sometimes through her mummified corpse. eventually however she will choose another woman to be her heiress and guide her through performing a ritual murder that passes the bond to sithis on to the new night mother and allows the soul of the previous night mother to pass on to the void.

in my opinion we have seen at least 4 night mothers throughout the games: severia magia in morrowind, the ghost in oblivion, the corpse in skyrim and the statue in eso. it’s my headcanon that the eso statue is actually hollow and contains the corpse of that night mother, which is why the current listener is always in that chamber of the sanctuary. yes the ghost from oblivion and the corpse in skyrim could be the same woman but that’s boring and i don’t care lol. there is also the khajiit night mother mentioned in daggerfall, but personally i find most pre-morrowind lore rather... cliché outdated, wonky and annoying to work with so this one is a maybe. (then there’s also the lucky old lady statue in bravil but i prefer the tale told in “daughter of the niben” so she’s no night mother.)

why go for “night mother = mephala” when you can go for “there is an ancient line of mysterious women who are bound to the very concept of change and the void in a way that is unlike any other magic, who are able to use this bond to hear when people anywhere in the world wish to hire assassins, and who lead a cult of said assassins which they send out to murder people in worship of the aforementioned concept of void and change.”