sure rp..

It's more of just end-of-war fatigue, not a desire for No Witnesses. They want everything and everyone associated with Ulfric dead.

Yup, that's another way to see it. Sending the final message. In your face, people. No-one is safe is they mess with us. Now continue to fear us as usual.

I just thought that they won't leave two persons they don't know (the horse thief and PC) to spread the event around.

Why wouldn't they want people to know that the Rebellion was over and Peace and Order have returned?

A more pressing question for me is why did they not start with Ulfric on the block? Why insist that a nobody from nowhere who wasn't even on the list be next? I know it was obviously for story and scripting but we're role playing here.

I guess use your imagination on that one too. Maybe I kicked the Captain in the nuts (even though she doesn't have nuts). She had it in for me, I guess.

You kidding? They probably WANT witnesses. In fact, if things hadn't been interupted by the dragon, I wouldn't be surprised if they would have takne Ulfric's head and posted it on on a pike outside of Solitude or Windhelm.

I saw it this way. You were captured, apparently, in the presence of the rebel leader. How can they know that you're not associated? And why would they believe you if you denied it?

Hadvar was hestant, though, and did his best to make sure you got out of there alive when it all hit the fan. That earned him a lot of respect from me. More so than Ralof.

... I dunno about that. Some artistic interpretations of her character say otherwise... maybe I should stay off the internet.

Ashina's rule of thumb: don't follow an associate of someone who wants to kill you.


They had a list of 'Ulfric Stormcloak and his top lieutenants.' This was not a raid, it was an ambush. They knew exactly who they wanted - that was the point of them being there in the first place.

Obviously, it works either way, which is why they set it up that way, I'm sure.

If you follow Ralof, it's easy- you are trying to escape the Imperials that were mere heartbeats from taking your head.

If you follow Hadvar, even if you don't buy the "he didn't think you should have been executed in the first place" thing, there is always the "I'm so scared this dragon is going to eat me that I didn't even see an alternative to following Hadvar" thing. I'm like many other people. My first time, I spent most of my time looking up at the sky, wondering where the dragon would strike next, then rushing to catch up to Hadvar. I never even saw there was a choice.

So they know you're not one of his top lieutenants and they weren't expecting you.. That doesn't mean you're not associated, though.

So just by being asssossiated means you deserve the choping block aye?

When you're associating with the leader of the rebels? Yes.

Ahh, well with a retoric like that i'd be glad to die a rebel.

edit: Ya know my character always manages to escape with Hadvar, rather than Rolf, mostly because I just didn't quite figure out how to escape with Rolf. My character, RP wise, was just wanting to get the hell out of dodge and he didn't care who was helping him. Hadvar was better than running in the direction of a dragon by a long shot.

Maybe it's not that they didn't want people to know Ulfric was dead, but rather that they didn't want people to know he had been executed without a trial.

Maybe their plan was to (after the executions) announce throughout Skyrim that Ulfric had confessed his crime and then been executed. I don't think simply killing him would be enough to stop the rebellion. Movements like that are seldom completely dependent on one man. He could just become a Martyr, a cause for the Stormcloaks to rally around, screaming, "remember Ulfric!" as a battle cry. If on the other hand, he had confessed to murdering the high king, such an insurgency probably couldn't gain much traction, even if most people weren't convinced it was true. If there were witnesses confirming that, it would be much tougher for the Empire to sell.

Just some speculation.

Look, the Imperials had intelligence about where Ulfric would be and who he would be with, so they set an ambush. You were caught in that ambush. So you weren't on the list. That doesn't make you innocent. That just means that their intelligence was not perfect. You were there, with Ulfric, to be caught.

Which doesn't really mean to me that you deserve to be executed 'just cuse'. Kill them all 'just to be done with it' doesn't sit well with me, and just because you were there (along with the horse thief and some Stormcloaks) doesn't mean your guilty. Its the fact they didn't care weather you were a stormcloak or not, they just wanted you out their hair. From an RP kind of view, that alienates me from the Imperials, however, I still escaped with Hadvar. At that point, my character just wanted to get out. In the future though, he's going to be weary of a group who likes to kill first and ask questions later.

Yeah, I agree with this. Skyrim is not modern day America. There is no "innocent until proven guilty". It's a war. You're in the wrong place at the wrong time. We don't know you but killing an innocent man will be easier to fix than freeing a potential successor of Ulfric because we need the war to end. Sorry, no hard feelings?

So, your character understood that it was 'no hard feelings' when they were about to chop your head off?

You keep the best for the end. By killing his fellow comrade one by one, it is a way of mentally torturing Ulfric before his own execution.

I still don't understand why everyone assumes you have to be innocent? What if you deserved to be on the block? Or something that was going to come sooner or later in your character's life? This kind of person doesn't generally have "hard feelings". For them, it's more like "get it over with. whatever." They treat the law in a smug fashion. Like an amusing rivalry. Almost something they may even like to have around at times. And there are many characters like this. Like .. Jack Nicholson in Departed. Or Riddike in Pitch Black. Even if they find themselves working with the law, they know how to gain the upper hand, show their usefulness, and keep surviving.

Well, I'd say unless most people say their characters deserve to be there then they don't. Most likely don't go with the though 'yeah, my character deserves to be here' or at least I know my character didn't. Thats why its left open, so you can decide your characters past. You don't have to be innocent, but I can guarantee most people don't come with the approach that their not.

The quest does say, "escape with Hadver or Ralof", and then after following Hadver for a second, you see Ralof argue with him and an arrow pointing to where Ralof is.

During this part, I was just trying to not lose Hadver, and so it was hard to not see Ralof on the screen. I was more busy trying to follow the escort then where the dragon was, and with my Nord's hands tied, it wasn't like he could do much but run.

Personally, I hate roleplaying the innocently accused paladin.

Considering where the rest of the game leads me after Helgen, I'm going to say that hardly anyone can be a Paladin. They'd have to basically skip everything, short of getting Ysolda's mammoth tusk, completing the MQ, and wishing Paarthurnax "good luck". Do anything else and you're pretty much a bastard, who deserves an execution, sooner or later.

if you were guilty, then that's even more reason NOT to go with the Imperials. After all, not many war criminals or petty criminals go handing themselves into the authorities. i suspect it was even more unlikely during times when there was little or no judicial system. So yeah, if i was guilty, I would be more likely to escape with my fellow prisoners. I'd leave any thoughts of redemption until later, not minutes after having my head on the block.