Paranoia is one of the most tragic quests inOblivion Remastered, because there’s no way to give everyone a happy ending. That is,unless you believe that Glarthir is actually being spied upon, which is a whole different kettle of fish.
To resolve the quest, you need to kill an innocent citizen of Skingrad or allow Glarthir to be slain by the guards, or Davide Surillie. It’s unfortunate because, as the quest title suggests, Glarthir is suffering from paranoia rather than any malicious compulsion, and the guards do appear to be heavy-handed with him, likely strengthening his delusions and ‘me versus them’ mentality.
Happy Endings
However, as discovered byReddit user CodesCash, there’s a way to solve the quest without anyone getting hurt. If you enter and exit dialogue options rapidly, the game acts as if you’ve advanced the quest, despite having done nothing.
Following this exploit through to its logical conclusion will make Glarthir ‘believe’ you’ve killed one of the people he accused of conspiring against him. You’ll get the quest reward, and he’ll wander off happily, while Bernadette Peneles, Toutius Sextius and Davide Surillie remain alive and well. Perhaps Skingrad will have peace, after all.
The appearance of uncommon dialogue made the original poster think this was a secret ending, but this theory was quickly debunked. The dialogue in question appears when you’ve already killed one of the people Glarthir suspects before he casts suspicion on them.
The dialogue is, “You certainly earned this. Take it with my thanks. I believe it must have been fate that brought the two of us together. Goodbye.”
You can easily trigger this dialogue by killing all three of Glarthir’s victims before ever speaking to him. To him, that must really seem like fate, and what else could an omniscient, divine being imparting impossible knowledge upon their mortal vessel be called, but fate?
Still, if there was ever a reason you wanted everyone involved in the quest to survive, there’s now a way to do it without mods and console commands. I like to think that Glarthir got the help he needed, and eventually befriended his neighbours Bernadette, Davide and Toutius.
