I made a thread about Rorikstead before, but that town still bugs the hell out of me, so I figured I would open this line of thought again. What's up with Rorikstead? It's been said that the land there was horrible for farming, but "because of the blessings of the gods", it became the breadbasket of Skyrim. Nearly everybody you talk to lords this over you, talking about how great things are and how jealous you must be. The other day, I was in Rorikstead and I heard Rorik's mage friend talking to a little girl. She asked him to teach her fire magic and he got angry, telling her that the town would turn against him if they found out his secret, and suggested teaching her a lesser spell instead.

So what's really going on in Rorikstead? It feels like the whole town is... incomplete, for lack of a better word. Like there was supposed to be something more to it.

Who knows ?
Might be addition to the DLC.

Some secrets are best left unanswered. Seriously though not everything has to be explained, a bit of mystery isn't such a bad thing.

Hi again The Huntsman!

My take? That town - let's call it that for convenience sake - suffers from the same lilliputian syndrome that affects all of Skyrim's pueblos, pardon, towns.

I was thinking the same thing. Maybe it's a cut quest or something. I hope they expand on it in some future dlc.

My own theory is that the townsfolk made some kind of deal with higher powers. Most Bethesda games have a quest inspired by Cthulhu mythos, but skyrim doesn't seem to have one. Maybe this was supposed to be one.

I personally like how there are some open-ended areas. Winterhold, Rorikstead, etc. Perhaps in a DLC we'll learn more?
As others have said, it could also be a cut quest. Bethesda do this in many of their games - cut quests but leave traces of them behind

Damn, really - no quests there?!

I was so sure there was something related to the farming. I even had planned to send my druid character over there to see what the big deal was. Now it turns out there's no point.

Sure, some mystery gives us a sense of a larger world. But in the case of Skyrim, these mysteries or unfinished quests or whatever actually seem to make the world feel more artificial.

Take Ivarstead. There's a family in town (ok, the only family in town) with a daughter who wants to go on adventures. Her parents don't want her to go. Cool - there's a little slice of life.

Problem is, when you go and talk to any of those family members, you can, what, sell them vegetables? If that? There's no dialogue that expands on the situation, and nothing you as the PC can do. As soon as you investigate the 'mystery', it reveals itself as window dressing.

Yes, window dressing is important, and the devs can't really design a living, breathing world in which we can do whatever we want and interact in a billion different ways. But the inclusion of these little 'teases' serves more to accentuate the incompleteness and artificiality of the gameworld than to suspend the player's disbelief.

Are you talking about Fastred? There's a quest involving her that you can get in

There is a quest related to that family - you might know that though.

EDIT: Ninja'd by Virtuoso...

ninjad. twice!

I love rorikstead. mostly for wheat. also the goat.

Horse-thieves come from Rorikstead.


And we don't want none of that 'round here.

The fact that Rorikstead is still intact with so many Forsworn close by is a bit wierd.

During the Great War, the Altmer experimented with large scale poison spells distributed via Sun Bird waves. In early tests, to see if the Sun Bird poison distribution Magicks were effective, harmless Restoration spells were spread over the Altmer lands. While the later poisons proved ineffective, these magic fertilizers drastically improved the fertility of Summerset Isles farmland. Rorik was a friend of one of the early fertilizer Sun Bird pilots, and paid the pilot to fertilize an area of land that was known for its especially poor soil. Rorik bought the land up cheaply, and Rorickstead as we know it today was born.

/speculation

Every time I go near those forsworn camps, they're getting hammered by a dragon. That might be Roriksteads secret, they're secretly the new dragon cult!

Well, Erik the Slayer does grumble (constantly) about the town getting raided a lot: "I hate bandits and thieves. Men like these raid our town every year." Wouldn't surprise me to learn that the Forsworn raided the place now and again, too.

On the other hand...maybe someone in Rorikstead's been making deals with the Forsworn? That might explain how the town's survived with Forsworn camping literally just up the hill, and why the land's prospered so well--maybe the Forsworn's ties to the land and their magic use had something to do with it? (There's nothing at all to prove that in the game, mind--I just like speculating.)


Well, there is a dragon cairn http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/577825802857047673/748CC2968D5466A195C32358457D6C69860FEDFB/ the town. (Now with 100% more hilariously unconcerned Erik the Slayer Photobomber in that screenshot.) Maybe that has something to do with it?

Last time I visited Rorikstead Erik was completely gone. Now I'm reading this thread, it gives me some new ideas about what he was doing.

lol i JUST left Rorikstead.

I expected to see the horse-thief's house, and perhaps his grave. I was dissapointed. Still, it's my favourite villige in Skyrim. The people all have distinct personalities, and the story behind the town is great.

[DOUBLE POST]

Nothing odd in Rorikstead just simple people like he who was on your execution.

Seriously, I was disappointed the first time I went there... I was expecting more or less something like Riverwood.