Skyrim Walkthrough: A Chance Arrangement / Unusual Gem / Join Thieves Guild

There are a few places in Skyrim that you can pick up what is called an Unusual Gem. It is a red gem that rotates inside a golden box. The first time you find one you unlock a Miscellaneous Quest with the objective, "Bring the Unusual Gem to an appraiser." If you activate this quest, you can follow the quest marker to a guy down at the Riften docks named Maul. If you are not already part of the Thieves Guild, all he will say is "Get in good with Brynjolf, then we'll talk."

This is mostly useless unless you've already done a lot of exploring around Riften without joining the Thieves Guild. Brynjolf is a guy who can be found in the Riften market selling a red elixer. If you talk to him he will offer you the opportunity to meet him during the daytime for some undisclosed (but shady sounding) activity. What he wants you to do is to steal a ring from a person named Madesi's stall at the market. Apparently these two people have some kind of feud going because of the elixer that Brynjolf sells.

As it turns out this quest is what is needed to get in Brynjolf's good graces as well as what is needed to join the Thieves Guild. When you talk to Brynjolf again in the day-time, he tells you that he is going to make a distraction and then you can steal the ring. It is relatively easy to do, but if you mess it up there is another chance to join the guild and to get on his good side. Skip to the bottom to see that if you mess it up.

Once Brynjolf starts distracting people, you just need to get behind Madesi's stall, pick the lock to get into the stall and then pick the lock to get into the box within the stall. If you just leave your lockpick straight upright on both, you will open them right away. Take Madesi's Silver Ring from the box (and everything else while you're at it) and exit the screen. Then head over in front of Brynjolf and go into sneak mode. You need to put the ring into Brand-Shei's pocket without him knowing it so you need to get into sneak and pickpocket him in order to add the ring to his pocket. Once you've done that, Brynjolf will disperse everyone and your quest log will be updated to tell you to return to speak with Brynjolf.

When you go back and talk to him, he will pay you for your help and will suggest that if you want to do more of this sneaky type of work, you could probably make good money at it. This finishes the A Chance Arrangement quest. If you investigate further he tells you that his "organization" is having some difficulties and could do with some help. If you think you're up to it, you should go for it. If you say that you can handle it, he'll tell you about the Ragged Flagon which begins a new quest called Taking Care of Business.

If you messed up something with the original plan with the ring, you can still go back and talk to Brynjolf and it will jump straight to giving you the Taking Care of Business quest.

Once you are into the Ragged Flagon, you can go ahead and talk to Vex about the Unusual Gem you found. She will tell you all about them. This conversation will begin the No Stone Unturned quest - SPOILER ALERT: my No Stone Unturned quest walkthrough has locations of the stones you need to find.

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