The Elder Scrolls: The Secrets Of The Dark Brotherhood

In order to understand The Dark Brotherhood and The Night Mother’s present, we first must look at their past. During the Second Era, there existed a religious order called the Morag Tong, a secret society located in the province of Morrowind, who worshipped the daedric prince Mephala. Mephala was seen as one of the rare “good” daedra, and encouraged the guild to commit ritualistic murders in her name.

Eventually, some members of the Morag Tong decided they had higher ambitions than simply assassinations for religious needs, and decided to focus on it as a business for profit. Thus, a splinter group formed from the Morag Tong and became The Dark Brotherhood, also cementing the traitors' place as the Morag Tong’s sworn enemies. The Brotherhood turned their back on Mephala and instead worshipped the avatar of death, Sithis.

Sithis goes by many names, most notably The Dread Father. He is a deity representing emptiness and the void, an absolute representation of misanthropy, believed to have created the daedra themselves. He is depicted as a skeletal being, despite not possessing a physical form.

In the beginning of The Dark Brotherhood, they were governed by their matron known as The Night Mother. She was the one to first realise the potential profits from killing for hire and create the split from the Morag Tong that became the Brotherhood. The Night Mother was the title for the matron leader of the Brotherhood. It has been passed to many women throughout the ages, with sparse information about them to piece together.