he Pardoner’s Guild was almost a Heretic cult; indeed the Pardoners themselves looked on their work with a quasi-religious zeal. In the Guild’s heyday, the iron lanterns marking a Pardoner’s available services were everywhere. Even today, no Hierarchy soldier arrests a Pardoner for hanging out her iron lantern. The Pardoners are indispensable – without them, Oblivion would have swallowed Stygia long ago. The older Pardoners tend to describe Castigate in almost religious or spiritual terms; newer wraiths prefer a more psychological approach to the Shadow. Pardoners are recognizable by their inky fingers, stained from the contact with the wraiths’ dark sides.