Xel

What actually ended up working for me on this was quitting the game and restarting - worth trying. Otherwise, yeah, the "don't do either side" option works.

I'd recommend coming back at level 5 with a full party, yeah (that's what I had to do). It's probably doable, but you'll need some massive luck and it's not really worth the hassle.

Hi - so I don't know if this is intentional or not, but if so, it's really bad and will make me lose 15 hours of gameplay so I don't screw up the quest. During The Man Who Waits, I talked to Theos. Then, after the cutscene and fighting my way through some guys, I talked to Azo and told him I wasn't going to keep silent about his experiments. He attacked me. Now, when I go upstairs, everyone in the room attacks me, I lose a ton of reputation, and I can't talk to Ethelmoer - he says "you've done enough". I really stupidly don't have a save anywhere close to this point and quicksaved AFTER killing Azo, so I'm going to have to go back 15 hours if there's no way to fix this. I'm willing to put in whatever console commands necessary to fix it, I don't care about achievements. Please help! Savegame is here: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0Bx1zZ4oCxO7eU0pxVzNpYi0yZVE/edit?pli=1