Tainted Grail: Dead as Dreams Quest Guide and the Yorath Choice
Dead as Dreams puts a necromancer named entity:yorath in your hands and asks what to do with him. The Keepers fear he is raising an undead army. He is not. Yorath researches making the dead useful to the living, and once you understand that, the quest gives you three ways to end it. Kill him for the best loot, including necromancer armor and the Skull Staff. Convince him to embrace undeath himself. Or convince him to abandon necromancy and leave, which rewards the Hexbounce Wand. Afterward you decide whether to lie to Quartermaster Fearghas about killing him or tell the truth.
If you want the strongest reward, kill Yorath. Here is what each path gives you.
Picking up the quest
Dead as Dreams comes from Quartermaster Fearghas during Shadow of the Horns. The Keepers believe Yorath is building an undead army out of the cemetery dead, and they want the threat handled. When you reach Yorath, you learn the truth: he is not raising an army at all. His work is about making the dead serve the living, a far less villainous project than the Keepers assumed. That reframing is what opens up the three outcomes instead of forcing a single fight.
The three outcomes
Kill Yorath for the best loot. This is the reward path. Killing him drops necromancer armor, the Skull Staff, and several spells, and it carries no stat requirement, so any build can take it. If you are optimizing for gear, this is the clear pick: the necromancer armor and Skull Staff are the best rewards in the entire quest, and nothing else here comes close on pure loot value.
Convince him to embrace undeath. Help Yorath understand death and he transforms himself into an undead, which resolves the problem on his own terms. After he turns, you can leave him be or kill him anyway. This is the path for players who want to honor what Yorath was actually trying to do rather than cut him down for his belongings.
Convince him to leave. Talk Yorath out of necromancy entirely and he departs the cemetery for good. This route rewards the Hexbounce Wand. It is the gentlest ending for Yorath and the right call if you want a caster-friendly reward without taking a life.
Lie or tell the truth to Fearghas
However you resolve Yorath, you report back to Quartermaster Fearghas, and you choose what to tell him. You can lie and say you killed Yorath even if you let him live or leave, or you can tell the truth about what really happened in the cemetery. The lie covers for Yorath when you spared him; the truth is the honest report the Keepers expected.
This second choice only carries weight if you let Yorath live. If you killed him, telling Fearghas the truth is simply reporting what happened. If you spared him or talked him into leaving, the lie is what keeps the Keepers off his trail, a small mercy on top of the larger one. Pick the lie to protect a Yorath you chose not to kill, or the truth if you would rather not deceive Fearghas about a man who is still out there.
The recommendation
For loot, kill Yorath. The necromancer armor, the Skull Staff, and the bundle of spells make it the most rewarding outcome by a wide margin, and there is no requirement gating it. Pick one of the talk-him-down routes only if you would rather Yorath live, in which case the leave path and its Hexbounce Wand are the better consolation.
For the full kill-or-spare decision cluster and how it connects to the rest of the game, the choices and endings hub lays out every major call, and the walkthrough hub tracks the surrounding quests.