Promises to Keep is a horse-theft job in the Rift. Louis Letrush paid Sibbi Black-Briar half the price of Frost, a prize breeding stallion, only for Sibbi to be locked up by his mother before the sale went through. Louis wants his horse, Sibbi wants to stay on Louis’ good side, and you get to break into a mercenary-guarded lodge owned by the most powerful family in Riften.
How to start
- Find Louis Letrush standing near the door of the Bee and Barb in Riften and listen to his offer.
- He asks you to visit Sibbi in Riften Jail and sort out the delivery of Frost.
- Talk to Louis before Sibbi; doing it the other way round can make Louis vanish.
Walkthrough
Speak to Sibbi Black-Briar
Get into Riften Jail by persuading or bribing the guard. Sibbi admits Frost is really a family horse rather than his own, and tells you the lineage papers are at Black-Briar Lodge. He also hands you the key to the Lodge Stash, adding an optional objective to steal it.
Optionally, you can go to Maven Black-Briar and tell her what her son is planning. She tells you to carry on and that she will handle the rest.
Get into Black-Briar Lodge
Two or three mercenaries guard the front of the lodge, typically an archer and a swordsman. You have a few options:
- Fight your way in through the front door.
- Sneak around to the basement door on the west side. If the third mercenary does not come outside, expect up to two in the basement.
- Come in from the rear. A small path runs along the east side of the hill that backs the lodge. Behind the building is a wooden lookout tower and a single guard walking between the two buildings; kill him, take his key and use the back door on the north side, top level.
The outside guards all seem to carry keys to the lodge. Inside, the building has three floors: bedrooms upstairs, a dining area in the middle and storage plus living quarters in the basement. Expect one guard upstairs and three or four on the dining level. A Stone of Barenziah sits on a night-table in the upstairs bedroom.
Steal Frost’s lineage papers
Head down to the basement. The papers are in a strongbox in a barrel at the back, or lying on one of the tables nearby. The Lodge Stash is also down here if you want it.
Steal Frost
Go outside and find Frost wandering in or behind the stables. Mount him and ride to Louis, who is waiting close by.
Return to Louis Letrush
Frost must survive the trip: if he dies, the quest fails. There are no scripted ambushes, but random encounters can still target the horse, and if a fight breaks out near Louis he joins in and will not finish the deal until it is over. If a dragon shows up, riding slowly may keep you off its radar. When you arrive, talk to Louis and choose how to settle up.
Choices and consequences
- Honour the deal: take the gold and hand Frost over. The quest completes cleanly.
- Intimidate him for the pay: demand payment by intimidation; you get leveled gold and Louis gets Frost.
- Keep the gold and the horse: threaten to tell Maven (this option may depend on having spoken to her) or threaten his life. Either way Louis leaves you Frost and the gold, but he later sends a thug after you “for betraying Louis Letrush”. The thug will go for Frost if the horse is nearby.
- Kill Louis: take Frost and loot the gold from his body.
- If you told Maven about the plan, a random encounter may later show one of her thugs killing Louis with her regards.
Rewards
- Leveled gold from Louis Letrush
- Frost, if you keep him through threats or by killing Louis
- The optional Lodge Stash
Tips and notes
- Until the quest ends Frost is not your horse, so he will not wait where you leave him and may bolt during combat. If he runs off the first time you dismount near Louis, reload.
- Sometimes Louis pays you and then runs off on foot without mounting Frost, letting you keep the horse without any speech check.
- The quest name comes from Robert Frost’s poem Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.
- Frost’s papers list his great grandsire as Sleipnir, a nod to Odin’s horse in Norse myth.
