Well Serethil, the main thrust of the story is preserving the world so that those problems of division can be solved. That's the thrust of the storyline, even lampshaded by an answer the Dragonborn can give Paarth, "I like this world, I don't want it to end yet." I admit it's not satisfying, but it does give the writers a good deal of latitude in some areas.

i have a ranger-styled 2H warrior who if i play to that point will leave Paar alive because he has no clue or desire to get involved in that squabble. besides Paar is just sitting there right? if he wanted to help/hurt the Dragonborn, he'd do it. all he really does is give directions to further both the world's and his own goals...

makes sense to me. any one else think this way?

Even if you could give the Blades a long speech about how glorious everything could be without killing Paarthurnax will they tell you No. They will look at you as if you were stupid and then tell you to get out of Sky Haven and not come back.

The Blades want justice and they do not want to serve you as mere sheep. I bet the Blades will rather go back into hiding and disappear completely before they accept defeat.

How is it accepting defeat to throw their lot in with a person who just may prove the be the Talos of the current age? What is it that Delphine tells you? that the blades have been seeking a Dragonborn to give them purpose again. the Blades were originally Dragon hunters. And a Dragonborn to them is the ultimate Dragon hunter. But it seems to me that Talos turned them into something more and with a greater purpose. And if Talos himself, whom the blades revere, knew about Paarthurnax and could have killed him but chose not to, to seek to do what Talos refused to do is to defy Talos, which no true Blade who believes Talos is divine will do openly.

Every step of the way, we are told that our character is walking the path that Talos walked, and yet none of the choices we are given allow us to even take the "I am Talos Reborn!" standpoint. If you are going to tell me that I am walking the same path as Talos, then let me choose to take the mantle of Talos and actively seekd to become the next Dragonborn Emperor. Part of that would be unifying Skyrim, Swaying the blades to my service, crushing the real enemies, and building a new empire by sweeping aside the old one which has abandoned its former principles.

In Morrowind, I was Nerevarine and destiny revolved around me until I defeated Dagoth Ur and was no longer bound to prophesy.
In Oblivion, I was a Kingmaker. The one who made victory against Mehrunes Dagon possible. And though I was qualified by action to take up the mantle of leadership, the game decided to just give me some fancy armor and let me be on my way.
In Skyrim, the game all but hints that I may be Talos Reincarnate... But REFUSES to give me the option to pursue the possibility for myself.

I think it's stupid. If the Blades kick me out of Sky Haven, then I'll come back with Parthurnax and any other Dragobns who might support me after defeating Alduin, shout the doors off the place and tell Esbern and the others, "I'm not here to say let's make a deal. I'm here to say this is the deal!"

They do not need you. You need them, if you want them is of a different matter. You can hold them to their oath, but all you are telling them is that you are only willing to use them as tools, but you have no interest in giving them justice.

You are interested in giving Skyrim and the Empire justice, right? The Blades are a part of it so you are already denying justice to some people with this decision. The Blades will walk out on you and every time you make such a decision where you choose a dragon's side over the humans' side will another group walk away from you. They are only the first.

I don't care if Paarthurnax might give in to his urges someday. Completely irrelevant to me.

I don't kill him for two small simple facts.
1- I lead the Dark Brotherhood and I expect payment for a kill. The Blades have offered nothing.
2- Delphine and Esbern have no business under any circumstances giving me orders. "We won't help you until you kill Paarthurnax"? What a joke. They hardly helped me in the first place. Seems to me I already helped them far more. If it weren't for me, the two of them would still be in hiding, not even knowing that the other was still alive, waiting for the Thalmor to finish them off. For Esbern, they almost did. He'd have been a greasy scorch mark on the Ratway walls if I hadn't showed up. I led them to safety and opened the Temple door for them. And what thanks do I get? Demands.

Paarthurnax, on the other hand, was a great deal of help. Killing him on the order of a couple of paranoid has-beens with delusions of grandeur is not how I intend to pay him back.

The Blades get nothing else from me. The two of them can sit in their crumbling temple and rot there. I left them a copy of "A Kiss, Sweet Mother" in case they come to their senses.

Not all the Dragons followed Alduin in the ancient past. Remember? Without the help of Dragons, Mortals, not just humans, would have been destroyed had Alduin not been stopped, even if it was only a partial solution in the past, with the Dragonborn of Skyrim's story being the one to actually complete the task fully. WITH the incidental help of none other than Paarthurnax who explains what went down and what needs to go down.

And incidentally, the Blades have ALWAYS been tools of the Dragonborn Emperors all the way back to Tiber Septim, Talos himself. Willing tools, I might add. They had purpose, obeying the will of men whose souls were that of Dragons... The last heirs of Tiber Septim's legacy were Dragonborn, but they never faced Dragons. Never absorbed their souls. Never learned the way of the Voice.

And whether the blades who were deepest in Tiber Septim's counsel knew of Paarthurnax or not cannot be known. Perhaps it was a bit of deep knowledge that did not survive to present day and something that note even Uriel Septim VII knew. Maybe Tiber Septim was wise enough to know that if the blades learned of that secret, they would have to be forced to concede to his wishes and he perhaps preferred that they served of their own free will. So now the secret is out. One that either Talos himself kept form them or the knowledge was never passed on to those if this age who might have needed to know. Regardless, the arrangement worked out fine before. and it can still.

They have offered to help you, they have given you a map to all the dragon burial sites, they helped you get into the Thalmor embassy, they have trained your recruits and they offer you a blessing to protect you. You rather want coins? I doubt the Blades have coins and coins also do not kill a dragon.

They are not giving you orders. They are giving you advise. You can follow it or walk away.

They are all dead. If you want to give these dragons justice, too, then you will have one more reason to kill Paarthurnax and the rest of the living dragons.

The knowledge over the crimes of Paarthurnax came with the discovery of the Sky Haven Temple afaik.

They didn't give me a map of burial sites. I went on the search for it myself, and am more than a little miffed at the fact that Delphine's perfectly able to get to Windcaller's Horn but not able to find a way to the Dragonstone across the river from where she lives.

Sure they helped you get into the Thalmor Embassy, but overall that's a huge waste of time on your part because the Thalmor have nothing to do with the dragons returning. The only reason you try to get in there in the first place is because of Delphine's paranoia misguiding you, which overall seems to be a dominant character trait for her.

As for the recruits, those are recruits you brought to them to try and help them rebuild because they are so hideously weak at this point in time. Delphine talks about how they need to go find more people to rebuild the Blades, but she just dumps the recruiting job on you. So again, she sends you out to do something she can and should be doing herself to strengthen her own position.

The only real thing that they give you that you listed is the blessing, a temporary defense against dragons.

They didn't give me a map, the Thalmor embassy was a waste of time, I never gave them any recruits to train, and no one ever offered me any kind of blessing.

And no, coins do not kill a dragon. Coins hire the Dragonslayer.

Telling me to not come back until Paarthurnax is dead is not giving me "advice". Telling me "Alduin's dead, you don't have any excuse now" is just rude. I chose to walk away. You're free to do as you will.

It is on Delphine's table. She tells you about it in a dialogue. You just take the map.

You want everything to be given into your hands, but the Blades are not nannies. You may only be thinking like a child. If you think of their help as a waste of time then nobody can help you.

I gave her that map. I went into Bleak Falls Burrow and found the Dragonstone, which is what that map is based off of. She didn't give me anything that I didn't already get myself.

No. You had no clue what it was and you did not figure out the pattern yourself either. The Blades did. They helped you while you are being ungrateful and needy.

That doesn't change the fact that they wouldn't have obtained it without my help, and I knew what the Dragonstone was before, since Secret-Fire tells you it's a map of dragon burial sites. I may not have realized the pattern for the revivals, but that's because I didn't go on an investigation after obtaining the Dragonstone. I gave it to Secret-Fire just like he asked.

The map's useless anyway considering my playstyle. I explore everywhere and I don't need a piece of paper giving me an excuse to go off roading.

I think I will keep him alive, if it wasn't for him passing the shout to Human, we might be still slaves of the dragons.

He pose no threat to Skyrim, if he turns, I will be able to kill him.

Long live Paarthunax!

No. You found them. You wanted the Horn of Jurgen Windcaller, remember? They got it before you and you lost it.

They did however give it to you without making any demands. They could have destroyed it for all it is worth. You then stayed, but apparently not as their friend but to use them and so you can go back to svcking up to the Greybeards.

Your entire attitude towards the Blades is that of a bad loser, if you do not mind me saying this, and it is the reason why you hate them when they ask you to do one thing in return. You have not gotten over the fact that they already beaten you and you now want to pay them back.

I was cool with the Blades until they gave me that "You're either with us or against us," ultimatum. I didn't have any dislike for Delphine at first, and Esbern's one of my favorite characters in the game. I disagreed with their perception of the Greybeards, but I also saw where they were coming from. It's not because they beat me to some horn that I didn't really feel comfortable taking in the first place. Delphine gave me the horn, and then asked for help, which I was more than happy to offer.

The schism between me and the Blades came about when they asked me to kill a friend of mine, and their refusal to talk to me until I did so. I'm not going to betray a comrade to appease people I've bent over backwards for and got very little in return. I was sad to see an organization I was very much interested in helping grow and develop suddenly reject me, but I made the right choice.

I respect your choice, but where do you stand now?

You are friend with a dragon (and not an innocent one) and only the Greybeards can understand you. The rest of Skyrim's population will at best see you as a twisted dragon slayer, who has forgotten that he is a human.

Take a look at the Greybeards. The price for their friendship with Paarthurnax is to live in the cold on top of a mountain, isolated from the rest of the world, and having to make a secret of it.

Does this not remind you of the Star Wars story of Anakin Skywalker? He, too, makes his choices based solemny on his feelings, he thereby loses friends, who cannot understand him and because they feel differently. Or the story of Moby dike, where hate splits the crew from the captain...

The fact remains that:

- By not killing Parthy you don't have any Blades options.

- Many are fine with this, considering the Blades don't have many quests anyway.
It's a total failure unless DLC will someday improve it. If this is the case, then Parthy's death would actually mean something.
And it's a tad disappointing to have recruited 3 people for apparently no reason at all.

- On the flipside of that, DLC might even have more from Parthy, or the deadbeards, perhaps new shouts or quests.
Which would make the Blades pretty worthless.

I summoned Odahviing once while in Solitude just for the fun of it... He ended up landing in the training fields of the Castle and just stayed there and all the guards didn't care. They just smiled at the dragon and walk away. So.. I think the people of Skyrim, and rest of Tamriel, would prolly like that their Hero is allied with Dragons and will be all like "F Yeah! We got dragons on our side!"

Actually, the Stormcloaks, and majority of Humans, will prolly say "Yeah! Dragons on our side! Let's go slaughter the Thalmor now!"

So now you want for the Blades' story to continue and with as little consequence as possible, and all while in other threads players complain about the game not having consequences or impacts.

Actually, you can recruit 2 people before getting the quest for Paarthurax. I made two followers members of the Blades and I didn't killed my friend. And this is actually quite useful because when a Follower gets the Blade Training, his/her stats are boosted a lot thus making them better in combat.

You can summon a daedra, too, and they will not take notice of it either.

Actually, they will say "That looks dangerous!" or "Stay away from me!" or "Leave me Alone!"