I can't finish the quest after I killed the target guy in Bruma.
I am supposed to pick up my reward and next contract from a hollowed-out tree stump in the IC.
Problem is: that stump isn't hollowed-out, I circled it time and again, but I don't find anything clickable, not in 1st person, nor in 3rd. Not with my gray cowl on (which I had on when I commited the murder), nor without it.

I tried to force the quest finished with the console, but that didn't work out too well, either. I got the message that I finished the quest, but I didn't get the new contract. I'm not sure if I got the money, but since I'm not doing it for the money (already a bilionaire from my loot sales), I didn't care too much for it.

Any ideas how to hollow out that stump?

It should be hollow even before doing the quest, so I'd assume you're simply at the wrong stump. For reference, it's in the Market District garden-alley where Agarmir and Thoronir meet.

I was pretty sure it's the right stump. You know how the green arrow veers off, when you walk by your target? That's the case here. It's the little yard with an entrance to the market district sewers, is that the right place? I can't recall where exactely Argamir and Thoromir had met, it's been a while...

The GPS arrow is not exactly pin-point accurate, it will veer off like that even if your target is on the other side of a building from you. Check around a little more and if you think you really are at the correct place, try looking at it from a different angle. Lastly, there's the "DOH!!!" factor, which is make sure you are actually within arms reach of whatever you are looking at so that it registers.

But if I go around that stump, the arrow points the other way, again towards the stump before my very eyes. And I've been walking around that thing a hundred times, looked at it from all possible angles... *sigh*

I use a lot of mods, including natural envirenoments and stuff like that - could one of those be the culprit?

Go down this alley between Rindir's Staffs and Edgar's Discount Spells



Then look immediately to your right.



The stump is ALWAYS hollow so unless one of your mods actually replaced it with a new one, it should still be so. Even if your last hit victim was still alive, the hollow stump would be there.

You could try giving yourself the dead drop orders with "player.additem 00030195" (Dead drop orders #6)

Bugger. That IS the one:



The really bad thing is that it's not some random quest, but that I don't get to finish the whole Dark Brotherhood questline.

I tried that with setting queststage to 100 before and without doing so (of course without the ").
Every time I got this error:

missing parameter count
compiled script not saved!

I am not too versed with the console and only yesterday I first tenatively started to use the CS to alter some item's weight, so all I could manage, was to find out the number of the quest. So I have no idea, what this error means... splainy anyone?

Just a guess, I am not very good with the console myself, but did you put a number after the object I.D.? Your command should look like this (without qoutes, of course) "player.additem 00030195 1" I forgot to put the amount of items I wanted when I first used the console, maybe you did too.

I'm not sure what you did wrong (because I am not too familiar with the console myself) but you could also try starting the next quest in the chain with:
[setstage Dark15Coldest 10] (without the brackets) It should be the one where you have to kill some dude on the top of a mountain.

Yep, that was it!

Thanks to all you guys for your help, it's very much apprechiated.
I'll issue a round of kudos and then I need to kill someone (oops, just watched an ep of Dexter, was that obvious just now?).


Edit: Actually I needed all three commands, but now I am on track again. On my killing spree.