#VillainBatTheAlliance
We shall make it like an expac instead, Sarestha. When one subsides, a new subject will arise.
I’d be very pumped up for this. A plus side would be that we finally would get a canon answer as to what the state of Skyrim is in, and if either side actually won.
Even though I know this will probably never happen, I’d really like a prequel-ish game where we’d play through the life and conquests of Tiber Septim/Talos. Perhaps some sort of RTS campaign style game? It’s such a pipe dream but I want it.
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But I’m too busy villain batting the Stormcloaks and the Thalmor
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“FIN!”
/10 characters
To be fair, four characters from my Skyrim One-Death runs still stick in my mind.
gor’Haark the Ironfist, a fairly bog-standard Orsimer Heavy Armor-Shield-Axe build with a dip into archery and restoration, who ended up siding with the Empire as much to stick it to the racist Nords who’d been vilifying and stealing territory from her people as any belief in the Empire and ended up happily married to Hadvar.
Jhim, my lulz-worthy take on an Altmer who was on the run from the Thalmor because she didn’t quite gel with their ideology and thought running to Skyrim to wait it out was a smart idea. Ended up a vampire after a brush with death in a tomb and then became an Archmage who mastered every single school of magic, married a sweet Dunmer student at the college and was the first character I’d made through the One Death Rule to actually finish the main campaign of the game.
Sings-to-Trees was my Argonian Rogue/Archer build, and the adventures of a giant drug-addled lizard-man staggering about the frozen north interspaced with random bouts of murderous sobriety still brings a smile to my face. Finished the vampire campaign with him as a werewolf, which was hilarious considering he turned from a scaly to a furry and back again, and he died because I got too ambitious for my own good and tried to jump onto Alduin’s back, so Sings-to-Trees literally died trying to mount his enemy and the mental image still gives me the giggles.
Finally there was Jhorred the Bone-Fingered, my Nord Necromancer who was so consumed with hate for the Empire that he signed on with the Stormcloaks despite being well educated enough to understand this was a bad idea … and then spent the rest of his play-through deeply regretting his choices because everyone who wasn’t a Nord was getting absolutely dogpiled by the racist trash, and he didn’t hate the people of the Empire, merely the Empire that had outlawed his faith to appease an openly evil and malevolent nation, and ended up getting killed trying to murder Ulfric to ‘atone’ for his actions.
When I logged out of the forums yesterday we were at some mid 200 posts.
I log in this morning and we’re at just shy of 800.
What in the unholy Maw has transpired since I was here?
You wake up in a cart, travelling down a road surrounded by snowy pines. A blonde man with a short beard, wearing some sort of blue uniform, looks at you, and speaks.
“Hey. Hey you, you’re finally awake. You were trying to cross the border, right? Walked right into that Imperial ambush, same as us, and that thief over there!”
This is now a Skyrim thread. Do you like Empire or Stormcloaks?
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tl;dr after like post 150 but this is most under appreciated comment of the thread
also, stormcloaks
I have never been so confused yet so happy in all my life
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To be fair, after the ride that 2020 has been, waking up in a cart in another world sounds ideal, doesn’t it.
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I like both.
I understand the reasoning for both.
I dislike the racists in the Stormcloaks… but love that I can pummel Rolff Stone-Fist for harassing that nice Dunmer.
I dislike that the Empire tried to chop my head off.
But I hate the Thalmor.
Stormcloaks. (And Blue happens to be my favorite color, so my hands are kinda tied.)
True, 2020 has been something of a nightmare of sorts. And in the means to counteract such dispair, I present to you with the Moustache song
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Everyone hates on the Thalmor, but honestly we know next to NOTHING about them that is not from severely biased sources.
Unironic here, I find after nine years of playing Skyrim…I’m kinda on the side of the Aldmeri Dominion.
Angry mob forms
Okay so, first off again - everything we “know” about the Thalmor and Dominion comes from hearsay save for admissions from various Thalmor agents that Mer are the superior species on Nirn. Racial purity is gross, but hardly a novel idea in the world of the Elder Scrolls (SKYRIM BELONGS TO THE NORDS! Ignoring the fact the Nords genocided the native Mer population to begin with.).
The war with the Empire was started after the Blades - a nominally Imperial Organization - started destabilizing the Dominion from within and was basically fighting a shadow war for years if not decades prior to open hostilities. This gets aggressively glossed over within the game, and effectively is handwaved away. But Delphine and company are kind of totally responsible for the state of Tamriel in the Fourth Era. And I’d say Delphine at least grasps this fact since she’s become obsessed with getting the Blades back to their roots as Akiviri Dragonguard. Talk about rebranding.
The Thalmor and the Dominion are enforcing peace accords agreed upon by the Empire. Religious persecution is not okay, but the Thalmor argument that Talos is not a valid Divine actually does have merit to it, seeing as how prior to Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, he fundamentally WASN’T. Daggerfall’s ending and utilizing Brass-Walks is what caused the Dragonbreak that caused a lot of things to happen in the world of Tamriel - the sudden appearance of a Ninth Divine chiefly among them (Ten technically, since Mannimarco also became a god at the end of Daggerfall).
So while they’re methods are detestable, they’re not without a point. Talos is maybe a higher quality version of the Tribunal, but just as much an imposter within the game’s overall lore.
Finally, no matter which side you choose in Skyrim, the Thalmor are always the final victors. Tullius might talk a good game about eventually taking the fight back to the Dominion, but Titus Mede II doesn’t make it past the narrative of the game alive and frankly he was a weak Emperor given how he straight up abandoned Hammerfall. The Fourth Empire is in a state of rapid decay and there’s no Chancellor Ocato this time around to ensure the decline is a graceful one.
And the Stormcloaks are a sham. Ulfric’s inspiring enough and talks a good talk, but ultimately the rebellion is to save his own hide after the Thalmor made him believe he caused the fall of the Imperial City. The man literally caused his homeland to drown in its own blood simply to save his own life. He murdered a man who looked up to him and could have been swayed simply because he was terrified the Thalmor were going to out him as a traitor.
Congratulations. You defeated Vampires, fellow Dragonborn, and the literal embodiment of the End of Linear Time (and likely sold your soul to half a dozen Daedra along the way). Skyrim’s still a blazing dumpster fire and Tamriel itself is going to quickly find itself under the blanket “protections” of the Aldmeri Dominion simply by virtue of the fact it’s a state that is still semi-functional.
It may also be ruled by syndicates of wizards that want to destroy all of reality, but that’s based on fan writings. Admittedly fan writings of the guy who pretty much build modern TES lore from the ground up in Morrowind (and then contributed both in Oblivion and Skyrim), but still not official lore no matter how much some fans want it to be.
TL;DR - The Dominion and the Thalmor aren’t any more evil than the Empire has been and promise stability to the continent over the weak willed whims of the Mede Dynasty.
The ESO Dominion doesn’t really come off as the bad guys that they’re portrayed as in Skyrim. I actually liked the Dominion.
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I forgot to mention in the rant above:
The embassy infiltration. Delphine gets you into contact with someone willing to smuggle you into the Thalmor Embassy to find out what they know about Alduin (Because a big part of the early game narrative is that the Thalmor MUST have something to do with the dragons returning because the Thalmor are EVIL). She even gives you a story about this guy, how his family was purged in Valenwood hence why he’s willing to participate in this mission.
Except…it wasn’t true. Delphine fed both you and this guy a line of bunk, because at the inevitable end of the mission - assuming you save him from the Thalmor Guards who captured him - he gives you this line:
“Now the Thalmor will be hunting me for the rest of my life. I hope it was worth it. I should have known this would end badly. I can’t believe I let Delphine talk me into this.”
You can find him again in Windhelm, trying to get out of Skyrim but being tailed by a Thalmor assassin. Take care of the problem, and you’ll get a note about how the guy’s name isn’t his real name and is suspected to be from a family of traitors that died in a fire at Falinesti.
AHA! That proves Delphine’s story was right, and the Wood Elf’s family was purged!
…in a manner of speaking.
Falinesti is mentioned in Esbern’s dossier in the Thalmor Embassy. Specifically, the Thalmor suspect Esbern of being the mastermind behind many operations against the Dominion prior to the Great War including “The Falinesti Incident”. An incident we can probably attribute to the fire. Set in Falinesti. Which was once the “Walking City” of Valenwood, ie a living city.
So basically, what I’m suggesting is that Delphine willfully and knowingly manipulated the sole survivor of a previous Blades operation into supporting the Dragonborn’s mission. All while feeding the Dragonborn a bunch of crap about how the guy ended up at the mission in the first place.
And when you connect those dots, you start reading the accounts detailed within “A Rising Threat” series of books in the game in a new light. What’s to prevent the author from attributing the malicious acts of the Thalmor to be nothing more than the Blade’s shadow war against the Dominion?
Why exactly do we the players labor under the idea that the Blades are somehow the righteous party? Because for the past three games leading up to Skyrim we’ve operated as Blades agents and thus automatically assume they’re the good guys?
Your experience must be different than mine because in most circles I tread the Blades as portrayed in Skyrim are either seen as a necessary evil that the plot demands be there at best, or the worst part of the game entirely at worst. In fact one of the most popular mods out there completely cancels the Parthurnaax part because it is regarded as the most absolutely stupid thing ever but people don’t want to miss out on radiant quests and sweet loot.
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My view on it is that even if the Thalmor aren’t quite as bad as people think, they’re still an extremist racial purist organization that goes around murdering and/or torturing people for worshiping a god whose main crime is… having been a human before he was a god. that’s it.
They were literally a fringe organization that seized power in the wake of the oblivion crisis by claiming that they were totally the ones who solved it, guys, and they got anyone who opposed them exiled. People who were exiled were probably often assassinated (see Rynandor). Then they led a violent coup of the existing government and pushed the dominion into being expansionists.
They’ve essentially stolen power through force and lies, spat on the sacrifices of the high elves that died trying to stop the daedra, and became racially and religiously-motivated expansionist dicks. They also took power in Valenwood through another coup. Also I’m pretty sure it’s canon that they exiled/murdered anyone on Summerset who wasn’t Aldmer. So, like, maybe not quite as bad as we think but still genuinely vile.
If the next game is actually set in the Valenwood like some people have speculated I would not at all be surprised if one faction choice is the existing rebel movement.
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an altmer imperial officer went to hammerfell to find out if any of his relatives escaped the coup unharmed, and while he was there the thalmor showed up and purged a settlement of altmer defectors
like sure, you can argue that the thalmor are misunderstood and maybe he’s lying, but given that it literally lines up with everything else that we know about them, it’s more likely that you’re supposed to take the evil elf fascists at face value as evil elf fascists
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The thing about the Altmer Imperial Officer - that’s a partisan account. That’s the thing about The Elder Scrolls. In addition to being an actual video game, the story is told via unreliable narration. Nothing is ever black and white.
As I already said, there’s no way to know if the Imperial Officer was reporting on actual events, or was simply being caught up in the Shadow War the Blades were waging at the time to destabilize the fledgling Dominion.
And while the Thalmor take credit for the whole Oblivion Crisis, it’s entirely possible they were responsible for stemming the tide in Summerset. After all, the Oblivion Crisis was cancelled in Blackmarsh after the Hist assumed direct control of the Argonians and counter-invaded Oblivion.