Empire. They're not a bunch of radical, crazy racists. They're more powerful and seem to genuinely care about keeping order within their borders. In time they'll probably sort out all the Thalmor stuff and praying to Talos will eventually be allowed.
While what you say about the Stormcloaks are true, they seek religious freedom denied to them by an oppressive regime. You can't deny a people they're religion, no matter how good your intentions are.
But seriously, fuck Ulfiric. He's a strong leader, but the dude has issues.
> While what you say about the Stormcloaks are true, they seek religious freedom denied to them by an oppressive regime. You can't deny a people they're religion, no matter how good your intentions are.
Of course. The Prophet Muhammad protected himself with arms when the Makkans came at him for his religion. However I have a problem with the Stormcloaks' Neo-Nazi esque idealogies, particularly the Nord-superiorism thing (seriously is it even possible to join them as an argonian?)
> Dark Elves don't deserve fancy houses in Windhelm because they don't help. In fact, a dunmer farmer in Eastmarch has a perfectly good life.
Okay, define "help the city" (sorry if you're referring to something specific as I haven't completed the game yet, there's just so much stuff to do.) And what if a dunmer didn't like their farmer life?
> Argonians are kept out of the city to keep them apart from the dark elves. The races do not like each other because of slavery history. There are more Dark Elves, so it makes sense to have them there first.
That sounds like some BS the Stormcloaks cooked up to give them the right to be racist against everyone that isn't a nord. Not all Argonians hate Dark Elves, and the only reason someone should be kept from entering would be what they have done, not who they are.
> Skyrim belongs to the Nords. If that is racist, then is saying Elsweyr for Khajiits and Black Marsh for the Argonians racist too? Or Morrowind for the dark elves and Hammerfell for the Redguards?
Uh, I don't think it's right to deny people entry into a land just cuz of their race, no matter which race was birthed in that land. That's quite an ancient and outdated ideology. Skyrim doesn't belong to the nords, it belongs to whomever wishes to live there and is willing to work for that.
> If Skyrim was independent, they wouldn't have to worry about the Thalmor. It is nearly impossible to conquer Skyrim, especially by the high elves who are used to the tropical environment of the Summerset Isle. If you recall, the 500 Companions of Ysgramor conquered the Snow Elves. This shows how powerful they are.
There's no reason for Skyrim to be independent when the Empire is fully competent. I think it's obvious the Empire doesn't actually like the White-Gold Concordant and is just letting it slide so as to prevent full-scale war between the Aldermi Dominion and themselves. Eventually Talos worship will be allowed.
Yeah what are you talking about? The dark elves in Windhelm contribute to the city economy. They own a general store & a cornerclub.
The only reason they let you join the stormcloaks as an argonian is because you're the dragon born / the player character.
Okay, also that's a terrible analogy, saying ysgrammor fighting snow elves means Nords could defeat Altmer.
That's like saying because the Romans conquered the Picts, Italy would be able to defeat England.
The Romans didn't conquer the Picts, actually.
Few Nords have jobs! Look at Windhelm! All the ppl with actual jobs are Dunmer, Argonians, Imperials.
And did you just seriously argue "they may not be treated fairly, but they're not any worse off than beggars?"
Do many Nords have jobs? I can't really tell white people apart by ethnicity, but I've never heard that many Nord voice actors in shops or the like. I know that there's one guy who owns an outdoor supply shop, and then two racist fucks who own a general store, and that's it. The rest of the economically influential people in Skyrim seem to be all different rainbow colors. The reason few Dunmer have jobs is because there are few Dunmer in Skyrim anyway. Hell, what do you mean, "They should help the town in other ways"!? They aren't hired because the bosses are prejudiced fucklords. Even then, the Dunmer own the goddamn Horse Shop. I know the Dragonborn is a rough motherfucker who can walk for miles without giving a damn, but most real people in Medieval times needed those things to survive several-mile-long-trips in the frosty wastes of death, be it for carrying large amounts of things or just making the trip shorter. Logically, no one would get in or out of the city or have any productive activities in commerce if they didn't have horses. Yet the Dunmer own the horses in Winterhold. Is that helpful enough for ya?
And the Argonians have it just fine. I mean, the Beggars are absolutely LIVING IT UP in the cozy warmth of their Not-houses. At least they don't have to work for their coins! Oh wait, the Argonians are like the Beggars, but not only do they have to work for their shitty lifestyles, they also can't beg? I suppose they're just as bad off as beggars, but they don't get to indulge in the two best things about being a beggar: Unemployment and the ability to beg.
And of course it should be governed independantly by those born in Skyrim! When are people going to realize that everyone else of nobility should be sent back to their home kingdoms!? When are they going to elect a Native American president!?
Does Talos even really matter? I mean, I get that he's supposed to represent Jesus or something, but he doesn't pull it off well, and all the other gods have actual proof of their existence in Tamriel. They're all filthy heretics!
What about my other points? Like, y'know, the point that Dunmer are already doing a pretty fucking big job in Winterfell by controlling the most important economic/communication/transportational resource a medieval city has? Hell, what happens when the Nords aren't working as soldiers anymore? Do they take those jobs? You do know how jobs are taken back in the good old days of swords and Jew-burnings, right? Genocide. And then whatever schmuck is lucky enough to come up on top in the power vacuum gets that job, whether they're qualified or not. People will starve to death in the economic collapse that happens when the inept Winterhold Guards are the ones running all of Skyrim's fucking trade.
Yes, but it will inevitably come to an end/They won't need as many soldiers. You might not see any logical reasons for them to lose those jobs, but medieval cultures don't work under the common rules of logic. The economy of small villages in the medieval ages pretty much consisted of allowing people of business to live in your village long enough to establish some coinflow, and then chasing them out/lynching them and then letting a native townsperson of influence take over. Now, the Elder Scrolls' civilization is a tad higher than that, but they do have mob mentality (Killing livestock warrants the death penalty from the common man and guards alike) and a massive upheaval based on Nords being pissed off at all other races is going to result in a bunch of clusterfuckery that will most likely end up with all the non-nord business owners being killed off by the Medieval Boot Party, only to be replaced by members of the Medieval Boot Party, who likely have no idea where to begin with all the finer points of shopkeeping or other such things. When Johnny comes marching home, the economy will collapse.
Maybe they won't do it, but mass communication, especially back then, is far from instant. With this racism, and the vast amounts of extremists fighting for the stormcloaks, Ulfric has got a ball rolling that he likely has little to no control over, just like the Pope got a ball rolling that he couldn't control when he suggested everybody go on a crusade. And then the People's Crusade happened, just like the Common Nord's Crusade throughout all the village and city businesses will likely happen.
He does a minimal job protecting the other species, but that's mainly to keep the peace. When bandits attack a Nord settlement or caravan, he sends out his troops to deal with them swiftly, while he ignores those smart enough to target those belonging to any other race.
He's also a power hungry leader who uses his ancestry and religion to ignite his people into revolution. He does this more so to gain control of Skyrim than because he genuinely desires change. He claims to want to take Skyrim back for the Nords, but in reality, he mainly wants to take it for himself.
That said, the Empire are a bunch of beuracrats who sit around all day with their thumbs up the ass, and have no business running Skyrim. Ulfiric might be a power hungry racist, but he's a strong leader with good intentions for those he serves, personal motivation withstanding.
Hey. Titus was a cool guy, for the thirty seconds I knew him before his untimely assassination.
I didn't even soul trap him like all my other targets.
That, and there would be lynch mobs and an economic depression for the ages.
Me?
Okay then.
1. Become a Vampire/Some other kind of immortal.
2. Join the Dark Brotherhood disguised as an alter ego.
3. Kill both Emperors.
4. Fake the alter ego's death and murder any and all witnesses, absolving you of all blame.
5. Make a claim to the throne as the last guy with Dragon's blood.
6. Win the War for the Imperials.
7. Set shit straight throughout all of Skyrim for hundreds of years and/or until Cicero finds out who you are and kills you.
OR:
1. Win the War for the person of your choice.
2. Put basket over leader's head.
3. Steal Skyrim.
4. Sell Skyrim to a reputable fence.
5. Track Skyrim down to the legit business that bought it.
6. Buy Skyrim from the legit business.
7. Congratulations, you now own Skyrim. What you say goes and the moral qualms of either side are now null and void, because you own Skyrim and they don't. Suckers.
Empire.
While I'm sure it would have been more restrictive from a game mechanics standpoint, it would have made more sense story wise, if you couldn't even join the Stormcloaks unless you were a Nord, or at the very least a human.
If they had gone that route, they could have made the Thalmor a faction you could only join if you were an elf (Or Khajit I suppose)
And of course the Empire would have been joinable for everyone.
They're similar to Republicans and Democrats.
Ulfric's afraid of the Hist, is he? Right, because literally none of the other provinces are, he must be enlightened. You also must know that 90% of the shit people say about the Hist is bullshit, right? You know, like when The Infernal City credits everything the Hero of Kvatch did in Oblivion to the trees, and says that it called all its children back to the marshes. Yet there were still at least 20 Argonian NPCs left in Cyrodiil, and that's not even counting the randomly generated ones. It's also said that the Hist "Purges" all of its insubordinates to death, and the Argonians who rather stalwartly made their homes elsewhere during the Oblivion Crisis don't look particularly dead, (Or psychically pining, for that matter) to me. Glim also says that the trees made them basically into super-soldiers so they could cope with Mehrunes' onslaught... Yet they have pretty much the same equally balanced starting stats that other races have.
To say that he's keeping them outside of the city because he's afraid the Hist is going to turn them into an unpredictable hivemind is absurd, since, at most, they're only as present as any of the Divines, which isn't that much unless you count the odd blessing or small influences that people pray to them for, and if you're seriously afraid that you've pissed off the Hist so much that you're going to kick people outside your walls just because they might assassinate you or some shit, you're either a paranoid schizophrenic, a racist, or you've done something really, really wrong. Anyone claiming to have been possessed by the Hist is far more likely to be a delusional religious extremist, a liar trying to justify their actions, or simply insane as balls.
The point is, the accounts of mass possession causing them to invade happened a long time ago, and the more recent the account of something that happened a long time ago is in TES, the more of it is likely bullshit spread by an overzealous propagandist/storyteller. It's probably an exagerration more easily attributable to mass religious zealousness and/or drug use, just like the Hashassins were motivated because of how they "Visited Heaven" under the guidance of their old man in the mountain. This is supported even more by the fact that the An-Xileel (the slave uprising that invaded Morrowind to begin with) were radical religious extremists who probably needed any excuse to raise their morale and frighten everyone else that they could get, and what better way than to pretend/convince your followers that you're all paladins becoming embodiments of the boundless tree gods?
I don't have proof, but neither do you. You merely have evidence, (an account that says the Hist made the Argonians attack Morrowind) and I have more. (Experience playing Oblivion and historical perspective that says your account, along with several others, is probably BS, and Ulfric should probably know better.) The things I said were from the canon games and the books and folk tales in and surrounding the game. Y'know, the parts of the universe that actually explained that the Hist controlled Argonians. An-Xileel was a radical group of religious extremists who hyped up their image. I doubt any transcendant force other than Skooma was involved, otherwise many more would have arrived, and under the command of vengeful gods they would have conquered most, if not all of Morrowind rather than stopping and holding some small part for the rest of their existence as an organization.
Even if the hist can control Argonians, it is in no way limited to them specifically. If memory serves, the Blackwood Merc company was controlled by a sickly/rogue Hist Tree in their basement who had them take Skooma and other narcotics so it could do its hallucinations and mind control. If Ulfric is worried about the Hist, he should issue the death penalty for drug use of any kind.
Yeah, those damned Hists, being so powerful and unpredictable all the time! The Imperials shouldn't be allowed in Argonian cities, because the Imperials worship the Divines, and apparently the divines can turn into dragons and kill people. That makes them a potential threat.
The Hist are said to do a lot of things. The Argonians are also said to have solved the Oblivion Crisis, when they really didn't. I never meant to try and counter your other points, it's just that this one is BS in specifics. Akatosh not only beat Mehrunes, but he came back hundreds of years later to take Tamriel for the dragons and enslave Man/Mer/Beastkind. Now, I'm not sure about you, but that sounds pretty fucking harmful to me. Not to mention that Stendarr lead/inspires vigilante mobs, Magnus used his staff of Magnus (which sucks other people's mana away... And then their health), and Sithis... Well, he's fucking Sithis. And again, I'll reiterate for the fourth time that the tales of the An-Xileel being possessed by the Hist are probably bullshit. In fact, a lot of the uprising wasn't incited by the trees, but by the Thalmor, who convinced them to rise up against the Dunmer in large numbers (and then eventually lost influence, because they too got a ball rolling that they couldn't stop).
Alduin and Akatosh are both aspects of the greater element of time and are essentially the same being in different skinsuits. Sithis is the guy who created all the divines and the Daedra in cooperation with the first god, because he is the element of change. The Dark Bros. might worship him directly, but most religions in the game worship him by extension, as they do with Magnus.
In fact, the wiki page for the War of Accession, (The one where the Argonians invade Morrowind and kill Dunmer) Nor their sources (Excluding maybe Glim, who, as I've said, is telling tales of religious symbolism is not a credible source.) never mentions the Hist, nor does it in the UESP list of all conflicts. The story goes that these people were just pissed at the Dunmer for enslaving them for thousands of years, so they decided they'd had enough and would start sacking the place when Red Mountain exploded, and if Ulfric would like to blame trees for the fact that sometimes people get upset when they're treated like that, maybe we'll find smarter leadership in the emperor.
Wish thy had put in a independent faction like Mr. House in new Vegas. Not independent like Ulfric, but like a merchant mogul making a mercenary army kind of, idk it's hard to explain.
Just wondering, but lore wise is it ever stated who wins the alliance war in elder scrolls?
I figured it was the Aldmeri Dominion, but it said the AD around during Skyrim's events wasn't the same alliance.
(Don't know much about the online game in general except that everyone says it sucks a lot)
It's like someone took the taste of a dick in the mouth, bottled it and waterboarded players with it.
The Empire is better. Ulfric just wants the throne, and wants to kill the Thalmor. The Empire is fair to all races, and they are better trained, better equipment, and better hygienically. They are not as aggressive, like Stormcloaks. They are trained, and disciplined warriors.
Do you have any proof that the empire actually washes themselves any more than the Stormcloaks do? They're likely just as clean, it's just that there's more poor Stormcloaks than there are Imperial Forces because only the rich and higher militants came to Skyrim. Their peasants are likely as dirty as the other peasants, and just because their armor is prettier doesn't make them more professional. Yes, they probably are more trained, but training in medieval warfare pretty much only comes in handy when you're fighting other people with swords or forming a wall of shields. Once you've seen that 200 lb ex-football player in your local pub take out a karate blackbelt, you'll see how little training really means. It has its uses, but Bruce Lee himself says that when your enemy is bigger than you, (E.G. when your enemy happens to be an angry viking with a 2-handed axe of smiting) you should probably keep your distance.
It is inevitable that the Empire wins the war, even if Ulfric's rebellion wins, simply because the rest of the empire is far richer in money and resources than the Stormcloaks, but you should never underestimate the guys whose culture and civilization started out by raiding other people's towns and cities, and lasted this long by standing out in the cold and hacking apart anyone who wants to take away your things.
I do have proof that they are cleaner, and more trained. Have you ever talked to the girl that runs the vegetable stand in Whiterun if the Stromcloaks win? She said that Imperials would flirt with her, but at least they bathed. And if you have been to solitude you see the soldiers learning to fight both with arrows shooting targets, and them hitting practice dummies.
You see the same dummies in most barracks, it's just that Solitude is using them all the time because they're paranoid, and again, the nords are big dudes with more starting weapon bonusses than the Imperials. And of course the Imperial soldiers bathe, because soldiers always get special treatment to keep up morale and show off their power. If the Stormcloaks were invading Cyrodiil in the last game, you might have heard the same thing of the Nord warriors. Every army is much cleaner in foreign lands, because they only send their best there, and, since this is medieval, are free to sack everyone's resources and clean themselves as much as they please. Ulfric doesn't exactly want to have to occupy his own towns and take their resources, but the Empire has little emotional attachment to them, hence the fact that they now own more bathwater than anyone else in this otherwise dank and filthy dark ages death pit.
Skyrim doesn't really make that seem true. Other than dragons returning, just about everywhere is a clean place. It doesn't show that the world is dark, and dirty, as most cities are kept clean, and there is no trash, and s**t covering the place.
It's the medieval times, the common man is lucky to afford an entire swords' worth of steel, let alone heat up a cauldron of soups' worth of drinkable water to clean themselves. It's never explicitly portrayed as dark, but people are freely murdered in between towns, and bandits and undead are fairly common for a reason. And it doesn't have to be covered in shit to be dirty. When you own two pairs of clothes and work outside most of the day, every day, in the presence of livestock freely roaming the streets, dirt and shit builds up like a motherfucker. Skyrim is a pretty place, but the cities probably smell like ass 24/7, ESPECIALLY Whiterun, where the girl was complaining about their hygeine, because they have a steamy, probably bloody, puke-filled hospital right in the middle of town. Whiterun is probably at the peak of congealed bodily fluids out in the open air.
They also have ancient clockwork machines and a mythical land to the east full of samurai swords (which I doubt came before or during the Roman age.) They are at the technological, societal, and architectural level of the medieval ages, and all throughout the places we've seen in the games, you'd be hard pressed to find a bath anywhere. They likely dump buckets over their heads outside and that's the best it gets. Almost everyone you fight has a sword/some other weapon, but in the villages, there aren't very many armed people. The vast majority of what you can steal from a commoner's house isn't money, and what money they do have is rarely enough to buy a sword. Assuming they pay to repair their things, buy supplies, occassionally have medical costs, and eat/drink regularly, with the money they have on hand, even "under 100 gold" can be very expensive to buy a weapon they may or may not ever use. There are a litany of unarmed civilians everywhere, and they outnumber the armed citizens, and even then, I've seen a lot more iron/sometimes basic steel weapons in non-random NPCS than I've seen with anything better, and the majority of them were doing fairly well to begin with.
And you can smith a sword at a low smithing level, but remember, this is the same game in which the Dragonborn can just pick up a longbow and instantly be able to use it. S/He's majorly skilled at all kinds of shit to begin with. There's a reason not everyone in town is going to Ralof's house to repair their own shit, and it's not just because they don't have the free time.
He was still incredibly skilled and able to do things off the bat that normal beginners aren't, such as making health potions with all manner of alchemy knicknacks and apparatus, sharpening katanas and/or repairing ancient, destroyed artifacts. The gods, Hist, or whoever is in charge of your protagonist probably made them a chosen one for a reason, or else they've probably had a long, long history of training and apprenticeship leading up to their lives as the hero.
And if everyone were as skilled at level one as the protagonist, they would pobably have built a second smithy at Ralof's house for even more production once they heard of all the Dragons and shit.
If they were as skilled as the DB right off the bat, they would need one to increase production in order to really beef up their defenses and against dragons and their ilk.
They have only armies of guards and untrained peasants, protecting small, scattered towns. Of course they want to create everything ultra fast!
The economy is suffering, people are having a hard time with everything, practically every guild is aging, either in shambles or headed that way, and the legal system is much foggier, more inefficient, and less enforced than it was in Cyrodiil in Oblivion. The last thing they need is a civil war, especially with all the repercussions of the extremists under Ulfric's command when they come home. Maybe after the Hero fixes more things and the Empire has had some time to nurture the state, they could come to terms on such a topic if they really feel the need, but certainly not under the circumstances of the civil war, and certainly not under Ulfric. Wrong time, wrong place, and imo, wrong people. The Thalmor are bad news, but we'll just have to deal with them to avoid decades of misery and death.
To be fair, this is probably because of all the interpersonal feuds between powerful people and the dissolving of the guilds due to interpersonal conflict and a lack of interest in joining from the general populace. If the Dragonborn repaired all the guilds, undid the Black-Briars' monopoly on crime, and supplied massive amounts of treasure to the shopkeepers, (as he does) things would get flowing again without the help of either faction, just like it went to hell without the help of either faction, since the only reason a guild would fail is because nobody competent is doing anything and nobody who's a go-getter is joining any of them. And that's exactly what's going on, the Companions aren't doing anything of import other than slaying the occassional giant and pillaging the occassional bandit camp up until the Silverblades attack, the Mage's guild is discovering things of very little import up until the Dragonborn walks in and starts pillaging the ruins for everything valuable, The Blades were disbanded, etc.. The ruling factions aren't affecting them. You don't hear their members complaining about the Imperial laws and such unless you're in an illegal guild like the Thieves' guild. Even so, the Empire has been probably ignoring basically letting Skyrim run itself, but now that the king is dead, they've come directly from Cyrodiil to get involved, because if your king gets hacked apart by opera singing, it usually isn't a good thing.
Which brings us to another point: Ulfric has been building up his forces and recruiting for a long time, otherwise he wouldn't have been able to compete with all the other holds. Thousands of potentially productive and constructive jobs have been left open and then taken by immigrants because so many native men and women have decided to take up arms and fight for the stormcloaks instead. This has caused a terrible imbalance in the economy and the jobs market, and it's pretty much Ulfric's fault. And that's why the guilds needed the Dragonborn. If they weren't busy working for the Stormcloaks, someone else would have taken their place and done great things for Skyrim. Now the Dragonborn has to do everything, because Ulfric created an economic vacuum that the ex-soldiers will probably try to solve violently when they come home. Ulfric is willing to destroy lives and the inner workings of Skyrim's infrastructure for the sake of being king, and the racists and extremists that fight for him are more than willing to pillage economic strongholds simply because they want jobs when the war is over, and those jobs have been taken by someone of another color. Ulfric has buggered up enough shit already, and the Empire can only hope to stop him from making a bigger mess.
It actually says ingame that Ulfric almost shouted Torygg apart, there was no stabbing involved there... at least not what I know from.
That's not what the rumors say, which is what the Empire would have heard when they came in, which made their arrival much more urgent.
"Once the Jarl's start killing each other, then it's back to the bad old days."
None really. I agree with the ideology of the Stormcloaks, that Skyrim should be independent from the Empire. But the way Ulfric executes this, with racism and all... Screw him!
If you had to choose you would be Empire then? I would agree that it is the best of two evils. The Empire shouldn't ban the worship of Talos, and Stormcloaks are shouldn't be highly racist against anyone that isn't a Nord. If only there was a middle ground...
I am going to start my own group! Yeah, yeah we will allow Talos worship, and stop racism, next Messiah over here!
*Cough*Fallout 3*Cough*
I don't think I get, oh wait a minute! Level 30 with good karma.
