Dampened Spirits
Quest Giver	Brynjolf
Location	The Thieves Guild The Bannered Mare Honningbrew Meadery
Prerequisite	Loud and Clear
Next Quest	Scoundrel's Folly
Reward	Enchanted leveled sword, dagger or mace Mallus Maccius becomes available as a Thieves Guild fence
Faction	Thieves Guild
Type	Thieves Guild main quest

After completing the quest Loud and Clear, Brynjolf will say that Maven Black-Briar wishes to speak to the Dragonborn.

ObjectivesEdit

• Speak to Maven Black-Briar
• Speak to Mallus Maccius
• Speak to Sabjorn
• Poison the nest
• Poison the Honningbrew vat
• Attend the tasting ceremony
• Identify Sabjorn's silent partner
• Return to Maven Black-Briar
• Return to Brynjolf

WalkthroughEdit

1. Speak with Maven Black-Briar.
   • She will be waiting upstairs in the Bee and Barb or in the Black-Briar Meadery. She asks the Dragonborn to shut down a competitor, newly opened Honningbrew Meadery, and to find out how its owner Sabjorn has managed so quickly to fund its opening.
2. Speak with Mallus Maccius.
   • He will be waiting in the Bannered Mare in Whiterun. He tells the Dragonborn to ask Sabjorn for work clearing out pests that Mallus has lured into the meadery. The Dragonborn is to complete this job, poisoning the meadery vat in the process.
3. Poison the nest and Honningbrew vat.
   • Speak with Sabjorn, who will give the Dragonborn a key to the meadery's basement with instructions to kill all the pests and to poison their nest.
   • Getting to the nest is straightforward, but there are quite a few skeevers and some frostbite spiders along the way. The real challenge is dealing with Hamelyn, however—a mage living next to the nest. He uses a fairly powerful magic attack (which appears to be random, but may vary depending on the player's race). If the player is a werewolf, transforming may be a good option: growling will cause him to enter a state of  "fear", offering an excellent chance to kill him. Sneaking past Hamelyn is also a possibility: Shoot an arrrow down the tunnel to the left of his alchemy lab. When he moves to investigate, quickly poison the nest; then retreat and wait for him to return. Go around him and enter the tunnel.

     

   • Continue through the tunnel to the Honningbrew Boilery. Go up the stairs and pour the poison into the vat. The door's key hangs right next to it.
   • Go back into the meadery and tell Sabjorn the job is done.
4. Attend the tasting ceremony.
   • Commander Caius or Sinmir tastes the mead and is unhappy with it. He puts Mallus in charge and drags Sabjorn off to Dragonsreach Dungeon.
   • Talk to Mallus, who will help locate the books identify Sabjorn's 'silent partner'.
5. Identify Sabjorn's silent partner.
   • Go upstairs and find a promissory note in Sabjorn 's dresser.
   • Unlock the door to the right of the dresser. Inside this room you will find the Honningbrew Decanter (a Larceny Target), which can be sold to Delvin Mallory.
   • Travel back to Riften and give Maven Black-Briar the note.
   • She tells you to take the information to Brynjolf, who acknowledges your findings and sends you to Mercer Frey (who he feels will be able to identifty the symbol on the note and shed some light on the Thieves Guild's anonymous adversary). The quest Scoundrel's Folly then begins.

RewardsEdit

Upon returning to Maven Black-Briar you will be given a leveled enchanted dagger,sword or mace and Mallus is available as a fence

BugsEdit

• If you do not speak to Maven Black-Briar shortly after being given the quest, the quest will bug out and you will not be able to continue with the Thieves' Guild quest line. This is an issue as of 11/17/2011. (A not so elegant but effective solution is to open the console and enter the command "setstage TG04 1". That will allow you to skip the bugged quest entirely (if it´s not showing up for you) and continue with the Thieves Guild line). (confirmed on Xbox 360, PS3, and PC (for PC only occurs if you click to make the dialogue skip untested on Xbox 360 and PS3)
•  PC   360   PS3 To complete Thieves guild quest "Loud And Clear", the player must talk to Brynjolf. Unfortunately, Brynjolf does not assign "Dampened Spirits" despite providing the necessary dialogue and task. Speaking to Maven as Brynjolf asks will not trigger any new dialogue on her part, and there is no known fix to this bug, so save before talking to Brynjolf, then try talking to him, and if it doesn't work load again and complete other quests until Bethesda fixes this bug. Patch 1.4 fixes this bug on PS3. If your quest is bugged, download the patch and let it run for 20 minutes. The quest will automatically start.
• When going through the caverns, near some bear traps, there is an un-activated tripwire. If the player dies sometime after tripping it, and respawns, the wire will appear broken as if already tripped, however it is indeed un-activated. (confirmed on Xbox 360 and PS3)
• After completing the quest correctly and continuing on with the Thieves Guild storyline, in some cases Mallus will never operate correctly as a fence. He has dialog options that correctly correspond with the quest being completed correctly, and other dialog that indicates he will buy things from you if you ever need someone to sell to, but he never opens up a merchant window.
• After Commander Caius Escorts Sabjorn out there is a likely chance Commander Caius will not Spawn in Whiterun anymore. ( He may disappear completely)
• Sometimes, if you have a bounty for whiterun, when you go in to do a part of the quest, it freezes
• Sometimes Maven will not give a leveled weapon, instead giving an extremely low level weapon, such as an Iron Dagger. (Tested on Xbox 360, she gave an Iron Dagger of Dismay, at Level 59)

TriviaEdit

• When going to Sabjorn's room in his office to collect his notes, under his bed in a bedpan, one will find a bottle of Black-Briar Mead. It can be assumed that Sabjorn disliked the competition's brew.
• On Sabjorn's desk, there is a note from Maven Black-Briar regarding his meadery. It can be assumed from the note that Maven has repeatedly tried to buy Honningbrew from Sabjorn without success.
• If Serana is brought in the Meadery after completing the quest, she will occasionally approach the barrel Caius drank from, pour herself and drink a flagon of mead from it.
• Caius will always appear for the tasting, even if the quest Battle for Whiterun, on the Stormcloak side, is completed, and Sinmir replaces him.