What is the exact process of Dark Brotherhood's service, and do they also kill innocent people?

[shukla]

So, the clients prepare a mutilated body to send a message to the Night Mother (some sort of deity, daedric I guess), and then the Night Mother tells the brotherhood which targets to kill? Is this correct? And does the Night Mother accept every assassination request, or does she decline some requests?
 

[FauxFurry]

Theoretically, the Night Mother is supposed to judge the worth of contracts and decide which 'prayers' that she heeds but in practice in-game, it might as well be so.

[karlpaws]

It depends on whether you are asking how it should work, how it did work in Oblivion, and how it works after you have completed the faction quests in Skyrim, or if you are asking how it works while working for the faction in Skyrim.

 

The Night Mother, and Sithis, are supposed to hear the prayers and then communicate the target to the Listener.  As it is in Skyrim, the Night Mother is not present at the sanctuary until you have started the quests, and there isn't a Listener there, has not been one for some time.  The Dark Brotherhood you join in Skyrim are little more than bandits with better uniforms, listening to rumors and people with grudges, and killing for pay.

[Gameplayer]

The Dark Brotherhood may as well be that Assassin movie with Angelina Joelea.  That is effectively what happened Dragonborn, you kill everybody off in the brotherhood for not obeying the strands of fate.

[Count Chocula]

15 hours ago, karlpaws said:

The Dark Brotherhood you join in Skyrim are little more than bandits with better uniforms, listening to rumors and people with grudges, and killing for pay.

Whether a Dark Brotherhood contract comes from the Listener's interaction with the Night Mother or from rumor, the end result is the same: killing for pay. The DB as portrayed in Skyrim makes more sense to me than the one in Oblivion (never played Morrowind long enough to see them there). In Skyrim they are a tight-knit family who are loyal to each other. In Oblivion, they are a group of paranoid whack jobs who might be subject to summary execution by their leaders at any time.