Skyrim: Killing These NPCs Breaks EVERYTHING

Saadia

Saadia is a Redguard character players first meet in the Bannered Mare in Whiterun. She's a friendly enough NPC, shown as knowing her place by running around the tavern, doing what she's told by Hulda and making sure all the patrons inside have their tankards topped up. On the face of things, she looks like just another friendly face in Skyrim offering a couple of lines of dialogue, but Saadia is actually one of the most secretive and interesting NPCs in the game.

The Redguard woman is right at the heart of one of the best side missions available from the early game, In My Time Of Need.

Once players have completed the mission Dragon Rising and return to Whiterun, they will be greeted by a couple of Alik'r warriors who will explain that they are looking for a Redguard woman. There naturally aren't too many Redguards found in Whiterun, the proclaimed home of the Nords, and Saadia will buckle almost as soon as the warriors are mentioned to her.

In My Time Of Need establishes itself as one of the most unique questlines in the game by splitting off and diverging in two different directions depending on what players think of Saadia as a character. The Alik'r Warriors will explain how Saadia is supposedly a member of the powerful and respected House Suda, who supposedly betrayed the city of Taneth to the Aldmeri Dominion.

Saadia however, will try to convince players that she had actually been speaking out against the Dominion, and the warriors are in Skyrim simply to put her to death.

There are reasons to doubt both these stories, and the game won't explicitly say which is the right choice, but this is one of the more original and enjoyable side quests going and, with only a couple of tough sequences inside Swindler's Den, also one of its most lucrative.

However, should a rogue group of vampires or cultists make past those eagle-eyed Whiterun guards and kill off this non-essential barmaid, this entire story and questline is completely lost from the game. To add even more insult to injury, there'll be no one on hand in the Bannered Mare to bring the Honningbrew Mead over.