My guess is Mora wanted to wait till you came as a replacement for Miraak - he didn't want to kill him and be left without a powerful mortal servant. With him alive and doing what he did, it attracted the Last Dragonborn to fall into Mora's plot.

If he's so powerful he could have just killed Miraak and appeared to us in another fashion.. plus chances are we already were his champion.. and it's not like what happened at the end seemed to have any ramifications.. we can never go to Apocrypha again if we want. We're not his slave like Miraak was.

But the thing is, Miraak forced us to need his help and serve him further so that we would be able to defeat Miraak. With Miraak dead, there's a chance for us to reject whatever gifts he offers. Leaving Miraak as a threat to Tamriel left us no choice.

I guess, but again if he was so powerful why do we have the choice to simply walk away? I mean.. we still kind of do at the end even.

True, but it's arguable that that's just our plot armour at work; Bethesda can't possibly force us to stay in Apocrypha after playing the Main Quest of DB. We could think of it as Mora having plans for us that involved Tamriel if we want to roleplay serving him, or we could think of it as Mora being unable to influence our character due to his/her strong will. (Neloth says that we are free of any permanent influence by Mora) This would allow us to roleplay normally after the end of the DB Main Quest, be it whether we want to be Mora's Champion or not.

Indeed.. makes you wonder why Miraak couldn't just leave though.

Yeah, for some reason he needed your soul to leave. Maybe all those years in Apocrypha got him somewhat attached to the place, like Durnheviir or how you got part of your soul in the Soul Cairn. Good thing we don't have to stay there so long then.

I still have my doubts that the Daedric princes are even as strong as they'd wish you to believe. Particularly HM. I think the lore has a bad habit of hyping a lot of legends up to be far less intimidating than what they really are. And honestly almost all the times in TES history where a Daedric prince actually got a one up on the player, it was simply to balance gameplay or to prevent a plot-line from falling apart. Take the end of Oblivion for example, by that point, most people's characters could probably kill Dagon were he to actually have a health bar, but it makes more sense to the plot if we ignore that and have the Dragon get him. There's a lot of things like that in TES universe, where Gameplay supersedes plot, or plot supersedes gameplay. You never really know which one is going to get the upper hand.

All I know is, in-game, if they gave HM a health bar, and made him able to take damage by some means, I'd take him down. And most other players would too. It's only through the vagueness and immunity of lore that he's even somewhat regarded as a figure of power.

I suspect that Mora led him to believe that he needed your soul to leave, to cause the assassination attempt that brings you to Solstheim and Apocrypha in the first place, causing the whole chain of events by which Miraak dies, Mora learns the Skaal secrets and replaces Miraak with the Last Dragonborn

Also, Zelrion - "I'm a god, how can you kill a god? What a grand and intoxicating innocence! How could you be so naive?!" Admittedly, we could kill Dagoth Ur, but only because we stripped him of his godhood. The Daedric princes we couldn't even harm in their own planes. We could only defeat the aspects of Hircine in Bloodmoon because he allowed us to (It was a fair fight), Mehrunes Dagon was defeated by other gods in all other instances (Almalexia/Sotha Sil and Martin Mantling as Akatosh), and we could only defeat Jyggalag because we were Mantling Sheogorath.

God's don't have health bars because Dovahkiin can't hurt them. They are so much more powerful than you could imagine.

They sure get their [censored] rocked often enough for being so powerful then.

Maybe they are just THAT powerful, but if that's the case, they must be dumb as rocks.

So either the princes continue to be out performed by men and mer or they continue to be outwitted. Take your pick, doesn't really matter either way, at the end of the day they all still seem like a bunch of posers and chumps.

The "bad guys" always have to lose in games. If the Mythic Dawn and Mehrunes Dagon was smart and not plot-forced to be dumb then there wouldn't be a Skyrim for us to play in. Not to mention earlier Daedric Incursions...a lot of bad guys had the ability to win but they had to slip up so the hero could save the day because the plot said so. Either that or a Grimdark ending, but the "bad guys" will never have total victory in a huge majority, if not all, of media plots/storylines.

I can't think if one time that a normal mortal has defeated a Daedric Prince without divine intervention. They win far more often than they lose and the Prince usually gets what he/she wants in the end. (Sheohorath, Azura, Hermaeous Mora etc)

The Dardric Princes are literally the living incarnation of whatever they represent. You can't kill Mora because he is knowledge. You can't just kill knowledge. Same goes for Dahon with destruction.

Actually, you can make Dagon melt if you do enough damage to him with magic. He obviously comes back, though. And that could be a bug since he still attacks as if he was alive. But still.

Exactly. Dragonborn was actually a good attempt at showcasing the Daedra's power. They did so without the player physically confronting Hermaeus Mora. This allowed the player to still complete the quest and preserved Hermaeus' power established through the lore.

Maybe he is Japanese and he likes the tentacle stuff.

Indeed. It'd be hilarious if beth makes a DLC about this, and the PC can manipulate the outcome! It'd be a great ending to skyrim imo.

What?

We may avoid being named "a new Dragonborn to serve him"? What does he say instead?

Just that our free will is an illusion and yadya. He basically ignores the fact that I call him demon and say I dont need him, and calls me his champion. Overly attached. So not much. Just enough to provide you some wiggle room for rp purposes if you don't want to be his loyal servant.

He is the LORD OF FATE. He knows all.

That's his sphere, doesn't know everything though i.e. the secrets of the Skaal.

I loved how Neloth reacted to the deal, "HM learns new interesting ways to cook a Horker and you become the second most powerful Dragonborn ever"

Haha exactly.. definitely put a better spin on the whole situation.. I still wanna be the greatest dragonborn ever though

Lol, tell that to the Skaal. And that dwemer lock holding the Oghma Infinium.

Mora kinda seems like an obsessive librarian and collector of knowledge and is always seeking to add to his collection... to me anyhow. Though that Orc guy in the College is still stricter about his library I think. But then Mora does tend to whack you when in Apocrypha, maybe you're making too much noise? Hmmm. Guess Mora just finds the Dragonborn an interesting addition.

If the sarcasm puntuation mark would have been accepted some years ago when it was purposed, it would have been on this sentence.
Our buddy MirMir was hoping you get impaled (hence rewarded) as he did.