Just finishing off the quote.

Oh god please tell me you didn't seriously just miss that reference....

it's because 90% of old people in skyrim are douchbags, all young people are cool.

lol I know, right? That itemized response had me laughing more than the original post.

Sorry but.. you're all missing the biggest con in joining the Imperials..

You're an Imperial.

No I got the reference. I just thought it was such a wonderful example of everything that the Empire has not done for Skyrim (or any other province) that I could not resist point out the irony.

Thank you,
I thought someone would hop in with the rest too but, sadly, no.

Glad I didn't break out the http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUHk2RSMCS8.

May i suggest grammer and punctuation.

That is interesting though isn't it? Looking at the http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/Timeline, it seems that Skyrim has been part of the empire for over six hundred years by the time the fifth game begins. Depending on how far you take the Ancient Rome similarities, the empire should have had a major impact on Skyrim by now. Instead it looks like Skyrim is still frontier, perhaps even a backwater, compared to its southern neighbor. Ancient Rome had a major cultural impact on the regions it conquered and I find it odd to have soldiers running around in legionary garb but for there to be no other evidence of Skyrim being part of a continent spanning empire that lasted for centuries.

Yeah, but it's better than the alternative.

Nah, it's much more fun to rp the denial thing



Words of wisdom!

The Roman anology is only very loose. The Nords and Cyrodiils created the empire together- so you could as much say that the Nords brought civilization to the Cyrodills as the other way around, though really both of them drew on the elven civilization (as the Romans also took their civilization largely from the Greeks, Egyptians and others). And who are you calling backwater? Nord temples are pretty impressive. Don't mistake the ruggedness of the land for lack of culture.

Rome was not that technologically forward, BTW. La Tene Celtic culture was very sophisticated earlier than the Romans, and the Celts were probably on par with the Romans culturally at the time Julius Caesar conquered them. (Ironically it was probably their sophistication that made it easier for them to be conquered- roads and agriculture serve invading armies as well as the home team- similarly Skyrim's very ruggedness would give it an advantage if the Thalmor invade.) The Romans took a number of technological advances from the Celts. Vikings exceeded them in seafaring. They were good at one thing basically- organizing a war machine. That's where their famous roads came from. The rest of it was wealth. When you have lots of (stolen) money and slave labor, you can do a lot of things.

Oh peace....

Shaddup!


Seriously though, neither side matters to me. I'm a living embodiment of divine retribution, poised to strike down every single blasphemer and monster in Tamriel. And that includes the Thalmor lackeys!

FOR THE NINE!

What's worse than an army of morons who demand you answer to there laws, leave you in defence of there own lands, (Shows how important Skyrim is to them) bans the Nords from worshipping there OWN GODS. Comes back to Skyrim and expects to rule again with an iron fist? Siding with the Empire means siding with the Elves and I ain't siding with no dawm Elves! Down with the Empire buying off men with there coin! Down with the Empire forcing us to stop worshipping our gods at the tip of the Thalmor blade! Down with the Thalmor and the imperial b@stards that let them sink there claws into Skyrim!

Doing work for Tullius is the worst, i dislike him much.

I.... haven't played the Stormcloak side yet because the Empire has always been a good thing in past games... unless you're a douchbag named Cyrus.

Dawnstar 38 (including 5 Dark Brotherhood members, and 4 non-residents)
Riften: 78 ( including 20 Thieves guild members, and 5 children)
Windhelm: 50 (including one dead NPC and 2 children)
Winterhold: 30 (including 19 Mage guild members)

Stormcloak total: 140 unique NPCs plus 55 guild members and children, and none residents.



http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Falkreath_People: 30 (including 9 Dark brotherhood members)
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Morthal_People: 18 (including 2 children)
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Solitude_People: 83 (including 2 children (seems low, i might have missed one) and 3 temporary workers from the East Empire Company)
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Markarth_People: 85 (including 1 Thalmor agent and 2 children)

Imperial total (without Whiterun) 197 unique NPCs, plus 19 Children, guild members, and non-residents

Whiterun: 79 (including 5 children, 1 Housecarl, and 13 guild members

Imperial total with Whiterun: 257 plus 38 non-combatants etc.


Inevitably the question of divided loyalty will be brought up, clearly the Grey Manes and Battle Borns don't see eye to eye, and thus the entire population of Whiterun would not be given to the Empire. This would be a logically true statement, however such a thing would be too tedious even for me, to sort out and IMO, would harm the Stormcloaks even more as not only do they have an equal division amongst its population centers, but also have the Dark Elf question. I don't think many of them would stay loyal to Windhelm if an opportunity arose. We then also have the issue of towns and villages, again a tedious affair that would likely hurt the Stormcloaks again, as the Imperial Nords control more towns and points of interest (15:10)


No idea how some of them became linked, or how to make the others linked as well. Population can be double checked in the CS, wiki (http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:People) or if you're feeling brave, an ingame headcount.



He came off as a bit realistic to me, a do whatever it takes type, perhaps even Ulfric's equal in clever strategic scheming. However i felt the same displeasure when dealing with Ulfric and his bearcub general who I can never remember the name of. Particularly at the end of the Stormcloak campaign during the final scene, which to me felt downright dishonorable discounting how Ricket was treated. I didn't quite like Tulliu's attitude at the end either, but he wasn't insulting a dying man with taunts.

For one thing- NPC count is not exhaustive. Obviously there are more people in Skyrim than the few we see. Secondly, as you brought up, not everyone in a hold is pro-whatever just because one side controls it. Helgen, Riverwood, Whiterun, Falkreath, Darkwater Crossing- all contested areas. The game is set up that it's about half and half, and that's the pvssyr you hear as well.

Until Ulfric started causing trouble twenty five years ago no one really paid attention to the ban on Talos everyone had there own private shrine and worshipped in secret. The Thalmor death squads are Ulfrics fault until he came around the Empire only pretended to inforce the treaty. If Ulfric died in the Great War, Skyrim would have been better off. You wouldn't have hundreds of Nords killing eachother in a Civil War and everyone would still be free to worship Talos in secret.

cons to joining the Imperials?

well, to start, you're joining the Imperials, which is a big con all in itself.

I specifically said excluding how they treated Rikke, and made an issue that I didn't particularly care for Tullius's comments. The difference being that Tullius didn't say them to Ulfric as he lay bleeding to death, shoving everything into his face. Further, at no point did he say his head would be put on a pike, his exact words (before the battle) is that their heads will be shipped to Cyrodiil. He didn't call Ulfric evil, corrupt, or any of the other insults that Ulfric and Bearman shout at him as he lays helpless. Neither is horrible, but what Ulfic did was dishonorable.

I supose I shouldn't be surprised that you would try to discredit the fact the majority of Skyrim supports the Empire, the truth of being a minority cause is not easy to accept afterall, heck, it took death and Sovngarde for Ulfic to admit he was wrong to the Dragonborn. A majority of the Nords support the Empire, and the only clause the Stormcloaks bring are anti-immigrant rhetoric and placing the blame for their troubles on someone else. It's classic victimisation mentality and made worse due to the entire atmosphere is simply negative feelings against the Empire. What a depressing cause.

Nice. You counted the Grey-Manes in your pro-imperial camp and then call Celan victimized because you refuse to be logical about the whole thing and just want the imperials to be right so badly. There's pro-stormcloaks in Falkreath, Markarth, Morthal, and even Solitude, yet you counted their entire populations as pro-imperial. If you have to lie to make your position, it's not worth holding.

Heck on both sides there's people with no opinion on which side is right.

Because it's not a truth. lol You're misusing statistics that contradict what people say in the game. And now who's being condescending?

The majority of Nords just want to get on with their lives. The rest, those who've chosen a side and are fighting for it, are evenly divided. That's why when a hold switches allegiance, there are people in that hold who take up positions of power for the other side.

Rikke also talks about the useless war. Kodlak talks about his foul deeds. All the souls in Alduin's mist are in despair.

Nord sovereignty over Skyrim and putting the lie to the false peace of the WGC while championing humanity's true secret weapon- Talos- is hardly depressing. But OMMV. Personally I do think it's fun to stick it to the empire. Never liked them much and they've had it coming for a long time.

This is an interesting point that I had never thought of. And if fits nicely with his dossier. Ulfric, by what you've said, is the sole reason why the Thalmor felt the *need* to regulate in Skyrim. He was their door into the land, so to speak, which would lend credence to the notion that he was and possible still is an *agent*.

But the Blades have always supported the Empire and protected the Emperors. In Morrowind, you're kind of put in a position to inherently trust the Blades since they are the ones who set you free, technically. And though Caius Cosades (the Blade Spymaster over all of Vvardenfell) was always topless, which made me uncomfortable, the game seems to want you to like him and respect what his ultimate goals are. Same with Oblivion, the Blades are the good guys and, obviously, so is the Empire (considering it was Martin Septim, the last Emperor by blood, that sacrificed his life for the world). That said, by the apprehension of most and the difficulty in choosing sides in Skyrim, it utterly proves how good of a job Bethesda did telling the story in this game. Even with the previous positive history of the Blades in both Morrowind and Oblivion and the positive spin on the Empire in Oblivion, the storytelling in Skyrim and the immersion into the world of the Nords has developed such an apprehension over the trustworthiness of the Blades/Empire. And this particular topic has generated dozens of threads on this forum where people intelligently debate it (some of my favorite threads to read, BTW).