Skyrim:Boethiah's Calling

Become Boethiah's new champion. Quest Giver: Book: Boethiah's Proving Location(s): Sacellum of Boethiah, Knifepoint Ridge Reward: Ebony Mail ID: DA02 Required Level: 30

Adelaisa Vendicci being sacrificed to Boethiah

Quick Walkthrough

1. (Optional) Read Boethiah's Proving.
2. Travel to the Sacellum of Boethiah and speak to the Priestess of Boethiah.
3. Sacrifice a follower on the Altar of Sacrifice.
4. Kill all the cult members.
5. Go to Knifepoint Ridge and kill Boethiah's current champion.

Detailed Walkthrough

Starting the Quest

You can start the quest any time after reaching level 30, either by reading a copy of Boethiah's Proving or traveling directly to the Sacellum of Boethiah and talking to the Priestess of Boethiah or killing every one of the cultists. If you wait, you may be attacked randomly in the world by Boethiah cultists, who will have a copy of Boethiah's Proving on their corpse.

Note: See Boethiah's Proving for other locations of the book. The various copies of the book appear once you reach level 30.

The Shrine of Boethiah

First, you will have to make your way to the Sacellum of Boethiah. Follow the road northeast from the Windhelm Stables up to Traitor's Post. Nearby is a road that leads into the mountains, up to the Sacellum. When you arrive at the Sacellum you will find two cultists fighting in a small arena. There are some more cultists and a Priestess of Boethiah watching them. Speak to the priestess. She will tell you that you need to prove that "your tongue can wield a lie". If you kill the followers of Boethiah, the Daedric Prince will appear and give the quest instructions herself; this will only change the order in which you complete the tasks.

The Sacrifice

The priestess will tell you that you need to gain someone's trust and then sacrifice them before Boethiah. She will give you the Blade of Sacrifice to use for the deed. Lead any non-essential follower to the shrine and activate command mode (holding 'use' or via the "I need you to do something" conversation option). Highlight the pillar and you should see "Use the Pillar of Sacrifice". Tell them to do this and they will move towards it and be pulled in and stuck to it. If the follower is essential, the pillar will not be triggered.

Kill the follower using any means (despite what the Priestess says, you do not have to use the Blade of Sacrifice). Once your follower is dead, Boethiah will use the body as a conduit to tell you and all of the cultists that she has a task for whomever is left standing after a battle to the death. This results in all the cultists attacking one another (and you). Be prepared for a tough fight, as they can be formidable opponents. Alternatively, you can leave your follower on the Pillar of Sacrifice, kill all of the cultists until one is left, lead the last cultist to the Pillar of Sacrifice, get the last cultist's health to low, then kill your follower and the last cultist simultaneously. If done correctly, your follower will survive, their services should be available once again, and Boethiah will take the form of the last cultist instead.

If you have already killed all the followers of Boethiah, she will then possess the corpse of the last follower you slew and the quest proceeds as normal. See Notes.

The New Champion

The Ebony Mail

After making the sacrifice and killing all the cultists, Boethiah will again use a body as a conduit (it may not be the same one) and tell you she needs a new champion. To become the new champion you must kill the old champion and his bandits at Knifepoint Ridge, northwest of Falkreath.

Despite Boethiah's order to kill them stealthily, being detected does not result in quest failure or any other penalty. Nonetheless, most of the bandits inside the mine are busy with their backs to you and can be assassinated. A few are standing in pools of flammable liquid that can be ignited with fire spells. It's difficult to sneak up on Boethiah's Champion because of the direction he faces when sitting, but if you climb on top of his shack, you can drop down behind him. Once you defeat Boethiah's Champion, you must equip his Ebony Mail. Boethiah will then speak to you one last time, telling you that you are her new champion and giving you the Ebony Mail as your reward.

Notes

• Boethiah would have either given you a second Daedric Quest, or a second part to this one, in which you would have killed Solitude's Jarl Elisif the Fair. The quest is (mostly, see Bugs) inaccessible in the final game, but data for it can still be found in the game files.
• One or more of the bandits in Knifepoint Ridge might start a fight with the old Champion if they get close enough to him to be hurt by the poison damage done by the Ebony Mail when they are searching for you.
• It is possible to get the Blade of Sacrifice without having to start the quest by looting the body of the dead cultists found in the fight pit. With the Misdirection perk, you can also take the blades of the other eight cultists.
• If your follower survives using the alternate method, they will revert to their original equipment, and anything you gave them may be lost. To avoid this, remove everything from their inventory except for their original weapons and armor.
• While killing your follower as a sacrifice does not result in any bounties, faction-specific reactions, such as Rejoining the College if you kill any of the apprentice followers, may still get triggered.

Bugs

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• Should you attack Jarl Elisif the Fair under any circumstances during this quest, she will flee combat and all of the Blue Palace's guards will turn permanently hostile to you. This is caused by leftover code tied to removed content. (see Notes)
  • The Unofficial Skyrim Patch, version 1.2.7, fixes this bug.
• If you refuse the quest and kill the cultists or something happens to cause Boethiah's current body to enter combat mode (such as a dragon attack), she will be stuck in the same conversational loop repeating the line "You've gotten my attention mortal, that is most unwise" when approached. ^?
  • To get around this, kill all the cultists and priests.
• If you sacrifice a Companion leader at the Pillar, the game may not register them as killed, breaking the radiant quests from the Companions. Though the follower dies and the quest for Boethiah proceeds as normal, the other Companion leaders don't acknowledge the death, and they still respond with "Aren't you already running a job for (name)?" when asked about work. ^?
• If you kill the priestess before talking to Boethiah, one or two of the current fighters may become unkillable.
  • Open the console and for each fighter that's unkillable, click on them and then type kill. The quest will proceed as normal once all the fighters are dead. If that does not work, open the console and type damageactorvalue health 500.
• On entering Knifepoint Ridge, possibly due to having been there before beginning the quest, you may be presented with a wall of iron ore veins blocking your path to the remaining bandits and the Boethiah Cultist, making the quest impossible to complete.
  • The Unofficial Skyrim Patch, version 2.0.1, fixes this bug.
  • A known workaround is to look at the bottom right corner of the iron vein wall, where the option to mine a corundum vein will be presented. Mining this vein will pull you through the wall, allowing you to continue with the quest as intended. This will only work for as many times as you can continue to trigger the mining animation, so you should either cancel the animation before the vein is completely emptied or make sure you have completed everything before heading back up this path — as soon as you have walked through the location of the wall the iron vein will reappear, making the rest of the mine unreachable.
• The Miscellaneous Quest objective "Investigate the Boethiah cultist" may not ever be marked as completed, even after completing the main Boethiah's Calling mission.
  • The Unofficial Skyrim Legendary Edition Patch, version 3.0.10, fixes this bug.
  • Reading the book after looting it from the body prevents this.
• The Champion of Boethiah will re-equip his armor if he is killed and revived with Dead Thrall, which can be exploited for infinite gold and powerful armor for your followers.
  • The Official Skyrim Patch, version 1.5, fixes this bug.
• Upon talking with Boethiah your vision field may be stuck in the distorted oval it creates when talking to the daedric prince.
  • Completing the quest might fix this.
  • Opening the console and typing rimod 00106a73 or rimodcf might also fix it.
• Your follower's inventory will be reset upon being used by Boethiah, and any items you gave them will be removed.
• The Champion of Boethiah may disappear after being killed. His body passes through the ground beyond the wall, making it impossible reach it and retrieve the Ebony Mail.
  • By using the console commands prid 000834FF followed by resurrect the champion will be resurrected but still be stuck in the ground. He will eventually free himself and can then be killed again (e.g. with the console command kill).
• When Boethiah's conduit is killed after she's done "using it", you may incur a bounty.
  • The Unofficial Skyrim Patch, version 2.0.4, fixes this bug.
• If you use beast form and eat the Champion of Boethiah the game may glitch making it impossible to collect the Ebony Mail. ^?
• During the step of Retrieving and Equipping the Ebony Mail, if you equip it right away from the body of the Champion, or have it sent to secondary storage after looting and then get the armor from there, the quest will not proceed.
  • If you are using mods with secondary storage disable them temporarily. Once you have, drop the Ebony Mail on the floor, then pick it up again and equip it. Afterwards the quest will proceed.
• After sacrificing your follower, upon being asked to slay the other cultists, one of the markers may appear inside the ground or the mountain. A cultist may have spawned underground and the quest cannot be completed past this point. ^?
  • One possible fix is reloading to a save prior to the fight and affixing your follower to the Altar of Sacrifice. The cultists will all gather around the altar waiting for you to strike the killing blow. Engaging the cultists before killing your follower in this manner is a possible fix.
  • Another possible fix is to use the resurrect console command on one of the cultists and kill them again. This should trigger the next step of the quest and Boethiah should talk to you through the cultist's corpse and continue the quest as normal.

Quest Stages

DA02 Hook (WEDA02)
Stage	Finishes Quest	Journal Entry
Unknown		Objective 10: Investigate the Boethiah cultist
Boethiah's Calling (DA02)
1		I found a book that mentioned a cult of Boethiah in the mountains near Windhelm. Objective 1: Find the shrine of Boethiah
5		I have discovered a shrine to Boethiah in the mountains near Windhelm. Objective 5: Find the cult of Boethiah
10		I am to lead someone to the Shrine of Boethiah, instruct them to touch the Pillar of Sacrifice, and once trapped by it's [sic] magic, slay them. If I do this Boethiah will appear. Objective 10: Lead someone to become trapped by the shrine and slay them
15		Boethiah has appeared using <Alias=DeadFriend>'s corpse as a vessel. She will give a special task to whichever of her cultists are left alive after we fight to the death. Objective 15: Slay the other cultists
17		Objective 101: Speak to Boethiah's Conduit
20		Boethiah revealed herself to me. I am to slay her previous champion, and having done so, don the Ebony Mail. So doing, she will make me her champion. Objective 20: Slay everyone at Knifepoint Ridge stealthily
30		Objective 30: Retrieve and equip the Ebony Mail
31		Objective 30: Retrieve and equip the Ebony Mail
40		I have proven myself to Boethiah, and she has made me her new champion.
50	Finishes quest
100	Finishes quest
Unknown		Objective 50: Slay the Jarl of Solitude Objective 100: Speak to Boethiah's Conduit

• The following empty quest stages were omitted from the table:
  • WEDA02: 0, 1, 255.
  • DA02: 0, 4, 6, 7, 9, 11, 12, 21, 41, 60, 70, 80, 81, 200.

Notes

• Any text displayed in angle brackets (e.g., <Alias=LocationHold>) is dynamically set by the Radiant Quest system, and will be filled in with the appropriate word(s) when seen in game.
• Not all Journal Entries may appear in your journal; which entries appear and which entries do not depends on the manner in which the quest is done.
• Stages are not always in order of progress. This is usually the case with quests that have multiple possible outcomes or quests where certain tasks may be done in any order. Some stages may therefore repeat objectives seen in other stages.
• If an entry is marked as "Finishes Quest" it means the quest disappears from the Active Quest list, but you may still receive new entries for that quest.
• On the PC, it is possible to use the console to advance through the quest by entering setstage DA02 stage, where stage is the number of the stage you wish to complete. It is not possible to un-complete (i.e. go back) quest stages, but it is possible to clear all stages of the quest using resetquest DA02.