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I am trying to avoid all criminal activity and have thus far succeeded. It seems I cannot complete the Cheydinhal Mages Guild Recommendation Quest without stealing Falcar's two black soul gems. Is there any way around this?

its legal for you to take them. in fact you MUST take them to complete the quest.

I quicksaved beforehand. The drawers in which they are found are marked with a red icon. When I take one of the black soul gems my "items stolen" score becomes 1. My character finds this blight on his record unacceptable, but it appears there may be no other way into the arcane university.

Think of yourself as a cop in this instance, you've just searched an evil person's stash and uncovered incriminating evidence. Nothing wrong in that, just an inaccurate journal entry is all.

It's virtually impossible to keep the "items stolen" counter at zero even for a character with outstanding ethics. Some non-thief quests still require you to steal things to finish the mission. Even worse, even when the hand icon is white (meaning you won't get a bounty if someone sees you take the item) there is no way to tell if taking it will add to your "items stolen" counter. There are plenty of items (like the stuff in the crates on the waterfront) that have a white hand icon and you won't get in trouble with the law for taking, but still add to the "items stolen" counter.

When I'm running a lawful good type character, I pay more attention to the "highest bounty" and "murders" (both of which must always stay at zero, of course) and ignore the "items stolen" score (I ignore "assaults" too, because unintentional friendly fire during combat is also virtually impossible to avoid, but that's another thread). I think of it less as moral relativism and more of a glitch in the game, but maybe I'm just in denial

Thanks for your input everyone. It appears I will have to suffer the indignity of having at least one item stolen on my record. Like Belthan said, it must be accepted as a glitch in the game. I'm just worried that once I have that one item listed as stolen, it will be easier to justify the next one and the next one. You know that whole slippery slope argument. For now however I will continue checking my character stats page on a regular basis.

If roll-playing a Paladin type is your goal Holy Roller (which seems to be the case, and you're doing an admirable job apparently), then I'd strongly recommend avoiding the fighter's guild after the initial three quests.

PS I should also warn you that it is likely to get worse as you progress through the Mages Guild quests. Spoiler, highlight to read

Spoiler

For instance my current character, a straight Mage has 5 stolen items according to the log, now two of them I'll hold my hand up for, I did nick a couple of Katanas from Cloud Ruler Temple, but the others are glitches. It gets much worse though, according to my sheet I've also commited 98 assaults and two murders. Yet I've not attacked anyone that didn't attack me first or were perpetrating crimes. The two 'murders' were as result of a glitch in one of the later mage guild. quests (Necromancer's Amulet quest) which resulted ina visit from the Dark Brotherhood tool, needless to say he died too.

End of Spoiler

Thanks for the info. If I remember I'll post my transgressions that were unavoidable on this thread later on. You may be surprised to know that so far I have also kept my creatures killed and people killed to zero through the careful use of high ledges, traps, and the assistance of Martin. I don't expect this to continue being possible as the game progresses however. We'll see. I'm only level 7 right now.