Mephala's Hideout
Current objective
Find the way in
A voice in the web
Three whispers, little fly, and two of them are true. Show me you can hear the lie, and I will let you in.
Secrets are the Spinner's coin.
The Dunmer count Mephala among their Good Daedra, and still they are careful how they say her name. The Webspinner, the Lady of Whispers, the Princess of Secrets - she has worn many titles, and every one of them is a little true. Murder, lies, desire and everything people would rather keep hidden belong to her. It was Mephala who helped raise the Morag Tong, and the old Temple of the Tribunal named her the Anticipation of Vivec.
This hideout was built for her in the courtyard of an old Indoril house west of Mournhold, behind red-leaved trees. From outside it looks like any other noble house in Deshaan. Inside, the way runs from a hall hung with red ivy through storerooms where someone has left a spinning wheel by the hearth, then upstairs to an alcove where spiders sit on the lanterns and to the rooms under the roof, where letters lie on the floor that should have been burned.
And in the cellar, below everything, is her shrine: looms along the walls, cocoons hanging in the half-dark, and an idol nearly lost under its webs. Past it waits one last room, lit by fire. The door at the start will only open for a lie. After that, nothing in the house gives up a secret unless you go looking for it.
The Spinner and her web
Ask a scholar what Mephala rules and you will get a careful answer: her sphere is obscured to mortals. Ask anyone else and they will tell you plainly - murder, lies, desire and secrets. She is the Webspinner, the Spinner, the Spider, the Lady of Whispers, and her realm, the Spiral Skein, crawls with spiders.
The Dunmer have long counted her among their Good Daedra. She helped found the Morag Tong, who kill in her name with a writ in hand, and the Temple of the Tribunal taught that she was the Anticipation of Vivec. There are even those who whisper that the Night Mother of the Dark Brotherhood is only another of her faces.
This is AhzidalThrones’ own vision of her house. Who the woman in red might be, and what the idol under the webs stands for, is his story to tell.
- The Morag Tong
- Assassins sworn to Mephala, who in Morrowind may kill lawfully, so long as they carry a writ. The Dark Brotherhood began as a schism in their ranks.
- The Ebony Blade
- Her ebony katana, called the Vampire and the Leech. It drinks the life of those it cuts and gives it to whoever holds it.
- Eight arms
- She is shown as neither man nor woman, with many arms. The Khajiit call her the Eight-Clawed.
- Her day
- The Witches Festival, on the 13th of Frostfall. If you mean to summon her, that is the night - and you had better bring something worth whispering.
Lore & artwork credits
The Ebony Blade shown at the end of the tour is game artwork from The Elder Scrolls. © Bethesda Softworks / ZeniMax Media.
The Courtyard
A quiet garden, and a door that watches back.
Lanterns on their posts, trees gone red with the season, a path somebody sweeps every morning. Crates and a cart stand by the wall, as if a merchant lived here and nothing more. The only thing out of place is the round door on the left. Stand in the courtyard long enough and you will feel it looking at you.
Photographs of this space · 3
The lantern swings, though there is no wind. Somebody has just walked past it - somebody you never saw.
The Red Hall
Somebody is always standing very still.
Red ivy spills down over the stair, and a banner hangs between the lattice windows. By the desk stands a hooded figure who has not moved since you came in, and may not move until you leave. On the wall by the archway is a painting of a shadow slipping past a lit window. Of all the faces in this house, it may be the most honest.
Photographs of this space · 2
He does not answer. Either a very fine statue or a very patient guard - and in this house it is wiser not to find out which.
Look away, then look again. The shadow in the painting is one step nearer the window than it was.
The Storerooms
Enough laid by for a long wait.
Crates stacked to the windows, rugs rolled and tied, a fire banked low in the far corner. Beside the hearth stands a spinning wheel with the thread still on it, as if the spinner stepped out only a moment ago. In the barrel room beyond, candles burn under a painting too dark to make out. In the Webspinner's house, nobody spins only wool.
Photographs of this space · 2
A silver thread. The wheel turns once on its own. What it spins is not wool but silver, finer than a hair. They call her the Silver Spider, too.
The Ivy Alcove
Count the shapes on the lantern.
Up on the second floor waits a wall of red ivy, a cauldron gone cold, a low table set with incense and a blue vase. Over it all hangs a paper lantern, and on the paper are dark shapes that look at first like a painted pattern. Watch them for a while. They are spiders, and one of them is not painted at all.
Photographs of this space · 1
Three spiders. Count again. Four - and one of them has noticed you counting.
The Upper Rooms
Letters that should have been burned.
Further along the second floor the ceilings rise into wooden vaults under the roof: a folding screen, a round table, a violet lamp at the lattice window. In the far room great urns stand along the walls, and papers lie scattered across the floor between them. Someone left here in a hurry. Or someone wanted it to look that way.
Photographs of this space · 2
Of every light up here, only the violet lamp throws no shadow.
The Webspinner's Shrine
Looms, cocoons, and an idol in her webs.
Down in the cellar, beneath the whole house, lies its heart. Looms stand along the walls, a skeleton hangs by the door, and cocoons sway on either side of a red banner. The far wall has vanished under webs. On the stair down, by a glowing lattice, a basket holds a spindle; beyond it, eggs wrapped in silk lie at the feet of an idol the webs have all but swallowed. The banner above bears a spider, in case anyone still wondered whose house this is.
Photographs of this space · 3
Something inside the cocoon turns over in its sleep.
Eight arms. Under the webs the idol has eight arms. The Khajiit, who call her the Eight-Clawed, would know her at once.
The Last Room
A woman in red, and a spider on the wall.
The last room is lit by fire. A woman in red waits by the door, as though she has been standing there all evening. In the corner a figure of flame burns without scorching anything near it, a skull keeps the papers on the desk in order, and on the wall above them clings a great spider. Whatever the Spinner hides in this house, she hides it here.
Photographs of this space · 1
It burns and burns, and nothing near it so much as smoulders.
The spider does not stir. Not until you hold five threads of the web. 
The Ebony Blade. The spider steps aside. In the niche behind it lies a black katana - Mephala’s own. It drinks the life of whatever it cuts, and the tales say it grows strongest when it is turned against a friend.
Visit it in the game
Copy the command, paste it into the chat in The Elder Scrolls Online, and you are inside.
/script JumpToSpecificHouse("@AhzidalThrones", 21)
Music on this page
Every track belongs to its composers and rights holders and is credited here. If you hold the rights to one of them and want it removed, write to us: contact
- City of Shadow and Ash Brad Derrick. The Elder Scrolls Online: Necrom (Original Game Soundtrack). © ZeniMax Online Studios. Recording: Maitsukas Official release - City of Shadow and Ash Plays during: The entrance, The Courtyard, The Red Hall, The Ivy Alcove
- Dark Sanctuary Brad Derrick. The Elder Scrolls Online: Music of Tamriel, Vol. 2 (Original Game Soundtrack). © ZeniMax Online Studios Official release - Dark Sanctuary Plays during: The Webspinner's Shrine
- Voices in the Vaults Brad Derrick. The Elder Scrolls Online: Music of Tamriel, Vol. 1 (Original Game Soundtrack). © ZeniMax Online Studios Official release - Voices in the Vaults Plays during: The Storerooms, The Upper Rooms
- Beneath the Skin of the World Brad Derrick. The Elder Scrolls Online: High Isle (Original Game Soundtrack). © ZeniMax Online Studios Plays during: The Last Room
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