Okay, I think I have come onto something big concerning the lore of the games here. Everyone please put on your tinfoil helmets and sharpen your wooden swords. Also, don't read any further if you don't want spoilers because I will NOT be using the spoiler tag.

The Divines are evil. The Daedra are good. Say whaaaaaat?! You heard me. Let me break down a few things to shed some light on this revelation.

All of the Daedric quests in Skyrim, even those given by clearly Evil entities like Molag Bal can be viewed as ultimately good in nature. Let's look at the first extreme example I've already mentioned: Molag Bal.

In Molag Bal's quest, it starts off ominously enough with a Vigilant of Stendar asking you if you've seen any activity in this abandoned house in Markarth as he believes it to be a site of Daedra worship. You can elect to help him investigate the home and by doing so you start the actual quest line. You enter the house, and check things out, reaching a sealed door in the back. The Vigilant freaks out stating, "This is no ordinary Daedra," and flees toward the front of the house, where upon you both find that the way out is barred. A voice, the voice of Molag Bal, speaks to your mind instructing you to kill the Vigilant. You can choose not to, of course; but the Vigilant soon succumbs to the whispers in his mind and attacks you, forcing you to kill him in self-defense.

After doing the deed, Molag Bal beckons you into, "the bowels" and you're forced to do so as the way out of the house is still barred. You make your way to his alter, and are instructed to take a closer look at the rusted mace sitting upon it. When you do so, you are trapped in a painful spike trap and Molag Bal instructs you to trick a follower of Boethiah to come to this very spot so he may corrupt and take the person's very soul.

Seems pretty evil, right? Well, look at it this way: You didn't have much of a choice in killing the Vigilant, and while you CAN refuse Molag Bal's demand to bring in the priest of Boethiah, you need to realize that Boethiah is almost as bad as Molag Bal and her followers perform ritual sacrifice and spread violence and chaos. You don't even need to lie to the Priest; you can tell him Molag Bal wants him. He still goes. When you return, Molag Bal has you beat the man, to death, resurrecting him so you can beat him some more until he pledges his soul to Molag Bal. Evil? Again, when seen from the right perspective, your actions here could be considered neutral at the very least. The Priest had already committed his soul to Boethiah, whom we've already established is not a very nice Daedra. So what is the harm in merely shifting who/what gets his soul?

Without going into too many details, I will touch upon some other Daedric quests to show how Good they actually are:

Boethiah has you bring a trusted ally to sacrifice at her alter in order to start the quest. Evil? Depends on who you bring, I say. Perhaps you are a master of disguise and deception, but want to bring peace to the world. So you infiltrated the Dark Brotherhood (whom also can be seen as Good, as all of the assassinations you perform are on people who've done some pretty evil deeds), befriended the people there, and then bring one to be sacrificed to Boethiah. After that nasty bit of business is out of the way, what Evil acts does this Daedric Prince want you to do? She wants you to kill her followers; first in a battle royale to prove your worthiness, and then another group of marauders lead by her current champion. Clearing out a lot of nasty people in the world; not really a bad thing.

Peryite is the Prince of Pestilence; he wants his disease spread around the world to help his influence grow. But what does he have you do? He has you, like Boethiah, kill his own followers. When greeted with the followers, and the evidence around the dungeon you find them in, it seems they were planning to spread an infectious, deadly disease around Skyrim by poisoning water supplies and vomiting on people. Killing them would save hundreds if not thousands of lives. A good act.

Mephala has you take a cursed blade away from a secret room in Dragonsreach and free her (or something to that effect) from this room. By doing so, you release a dark grip over the mind of an innocent child. What you do with the blade itself is up to you, and could be used for Good or Evil.

Vaermina's quest only has her show up toward the end; however, through the quest you find that your guide through the whole thing used to be her follower and has killed countless people in her name. All she asks of you to receive her token is that you kill Erandur before his ritual to destroy the Skull of Corruption is completed. Destroying the Skull, so Erandur says, is the only way to end the nightmares in Dawnstar; but by taking it and having Vaermina imbue it back to full power has the same effect. You could kill the man who's escaped his past transgressions and remove the Skull so that you can dispose of it properly elsewhere; or use it in your fight against Evil. This one is a thin line, but ultimately no matter what you choose can be viewed as good in the right perspective.

*deep breath* Alright, now that the so-called "Evil" stuff is out of the way, let's talk about the Divines and their quests. Almost all of them have Evil consequences.

In Whiterun, you can talk to one of the Priestesses of Kynareth about bringing the dead tree in the middle of the city back to it's former glory. To do this, you must first find a magic blade to obtain some sap from the tree the Whiterun tree was born from. When you arrive at the Eldergleam you find it to be peaceful and beautiful. There are a couple people inside contemplating the scenery and paying respect to Kynareth. However, should you use the Nettlebane to reach the sap, you cause Spriggans to appear and kill everyone in the Eldergleam. For what? For a stupid tree to blossom.

In Markarth you can help the Priestesses of Dibella find their new Sybil. Most of this quest is good, you rescue the girl who had been taken captive by Forsworn; but you never get a chance to tell her exactly what's going on, nor do you let her say goodbye to her family; you just basically kidnap her yourself and take her straight to the Temple of Dibella. Okay, maybe it's not Evil, per se; but you do act like a dike.

When helping spread Love for the Priest of Mara, some things could be viewed as Evil. The first set of lovers are mere teens. By letting them elope against the girl's father's wishes, you could be setting them up for misery and heartache more than a true Happily Ever After tale. There is no follow up though, so it's all based on how you perceive it.

And just look at Talos himself; while mortal he was told to unify the people by the Eight, which he did. However, he also completely wiped out a race of elves and was pretty much made a God by the other 8 Divines for doing so.

TL;DR - The "Evil" Daedra have you do more good for the land than the so-called "Good" Divines that everyone worships.

I′m not convinced of your point. If anything, the daedra quests have turned much more evidently evil than the ones in morrowind, for example.

The Molag Bal quest itself is pretty much "evil" in the ordinary sense of the word. First, you′re forced to kill the witchhunter you wanted to aid because he′s driven to madness by the daedra prince. Then, you′re supposed to get a priest of boethiah to enter the building. You might justify this the way you′ve done in your post... but beating him to death twice, just to get him to change his affiliation? This is rather crass. I get why Molag Bal is called the prince of [censored], but my character is not so keen on [censored] even his worst enemy, much less a daedra-priest who never did anything to harm him.

Second, you completely leave out the Namira quest. I couldn′t bring myself to do this one. I′m supposed to lure an innocent priest into a cave, just so my new "friends" and myself can eat him? Doesn′t really sound like fun to me.

On the other hand, the girl you take to the temple of dibella? Her parents are proud she goes there, her father even escorted her there after he rescued her from the forsworn (with my aid). The girl, when spoken to, seems really happy to be taken to the temple. I see no harm there.
The Mara quests? You don′t have to convince Farstead to run away with the adventurous guy, you know? You can as well convince the other guy to admit her feelings to her and have them both marry and stay in ivarstead; either way, the quest is considered a success.

You don't necessarily have to eat anyone. However, doing the quest gives you an opportunity to root out and kill all the other cannibals there. That is what I did. I brought the guy down there to the party just so I could get all the cannibals in one spot and kill them.

Kynareth can be done with nobody getting killed. After talking to the priestess a man approached you wanting to tag along to go see the tree more than likely you figured he'd slow you down and said no, if you had taken him along he would have prayed to the tree and the tree would have provided a sapling to take back. If you instead attack the tree is it any wonder it responds by trying to protect itself?

So killing cannibals is good? They were eating the dead; the dead don't care. Only the living do. Our "acceptable" fetishes about dead flesh are kinda weird if you think about them long enough.

I suppose if you're a werewolf already, you ought not give a [censored].

If you talk to the Sybil's family (which you have to do to find out where she is) they seem rather proud.

And the other Divines didn't make Tiber a god. He did that himself.

My point against your arguments on the goodness of daedra: Harming evil people is evil. I don't even find most of your arguments against the divines strong enough to need being discussed.

Molag Bal: makes the Vigilant of Stendarr insane then makes you kill him, wants you to find the priest of Boetiah so you can kill him-resurrect-kill him again...all of this just for his pleasure-- EVIL 100%
Boetiah: wants you to sacrifice someone who trusts you, so you lure someone to the shrine and betray him, sacrificing his soul to the Daedra of chaos. Then Boetiah orders you to fight to the death with everyone else at the shrine...then sends you to eradicate an entire group of bandits just because ONE person (his champion) disappointed her--- EVIL 100%
Namira: wants you to bring an innocent guy to a cave to EAT him alive...this alone makes her EVIL 100%

So, you could basically convince yourself that you're violently killing/betraying/eating alive someone because they're bad people, but that doesn't change the fact the Daedra Princes ARE evil

TESWiki:

Daedric Princes aren't "good" or "evil", applying those terms doesn't even really make sense. It's like saying the weather is "evil". It makes no sense, but if you lived in a world where worshipping the weather quite often led to hurricanes then you'd probably consider Weather-Worshippers evil. Furthermore, if "The Weather" could become incarnate and walk around and talk to people, that creates a huge obvious target to be the focus of anger and grief for anyone who'd had their family killed in any storm for example. It's easy to forget in that circumstance that "The Weather" also lets you grow your crops, and in any case, incarnate or not, it's still just the weather. Not good, not evil, just... the weather.

It's kinda like that.

Namira made me eat someone for her ring. That's not good.

Oh the internet, you have some twisted sense of morality, or rather lack of it, but its a video game so who cares.

Molag bal: murder is bad.
Boethiah: it is bad to lie to people that trust you and kill them!
Peryiete: mass murder of "hundreds" of victims, because theire leader isnt praying 5 times a day to peryiete is bad ok?
Mephala: opening a "pandora box" is bad, a selfish act that may bring harm to many.
Vaermina: be tricked by a god into murder yet again, and open another "pandora box", if u let erandur finish the ritual to destroy the skull vaermina "loses".
Priestess of Kynareth, isnt kynareth, she is acting acording to what she thinks is best in these case there would problably be a beter way to do things.
Priestesses of Dibella: kidnaping is bad, like the kynareth case, they are acting on theire own.
Priest of Mara: the choices are yours, you could had convinced the other guy by the bridge to talk with the girl.
Talos: your only valid point, apart from receiving his blessing ingame we dont rly have a clue if he trully became a god, in other words lore isnt clear about this.

Yes daedra are evil, only azura and meridia have som good on them, but yet theire actions fall under vengefull acts one too many times, to be considered morally good, being petty is not acting with justice.

Daedra ftw so w/e.

Talos became a god because he acted like Lorkhan until the universe couldn't tell the difference.(Talos is actually made up of three people that enacted Lorkhan's betrayal. Tiber is just the most recognized one because he was the one living after the enactment. Wulfharth and Zurin Arctus are the other bits of him)

Daedra are neither evil or good. Just self-serving.

This is the same for aedra though. They're neither good or evil.

I think the OP's argument ought to be less "the Daedra aren't evil" and more "the Daedra's evil had rippling good consequences," like that bit in Good Omens.

I really don't see it. I agree with Peryite's quest being kind of good because you basically defeat all his followers so they can't spread their disease just because he didn't like their leader. Molag Bal though, you are gathering a soul for him and he indirectly caused the Vigilant to go insane. Plus, you actually have to join the DB fully to get an evil follower to sacrifice to Boethiah (though sacrificing anyone seems pretty evil to me). Mephala's could be considered good of you take the sword and lock it somewhere safer, but who knows if it will be safer with you (PCs tend to disappear by the next game) and you had to either steal the key or murder. But yeah, there's no way to just tell Balgruuf what happened with his kid which is pretty annoying. Also, murdering someone on a Daedric Prince's behalf because they left Vaermina for the Divines is pretty wrong.

The Divines quest can have good options, but I can see how you could find them wrong if you just help two teenagers make a bad decision, kidnap a little girl to serve a Divine or destroy the Kynesgrove. But you could have also convinced the girl that her other lover was a better choice, who does not advocate eloping but was too bashful to tell her his true feelings like the other guy, save the little girl from Forsworn with her father (both tell you they willingly accept and are happy to serve Dibella if you ask about it), and you can keep the Kynesgrove alive while bringing renewal to the tree in Whiterun.

In all, I think it's a bit of a stretch to say any of the quests are pure good or evil, they are what you choose them to be. Personally though, I'd say the Daedra are much more questionable and wrong.

You don't have to kill the tree. You could travel to the tree, go back to Whiterun and pick up the follower who wants to visit the sanctuary, go back to the sanctuary, and let him beg the tree for a sappling. The tree doesn't have to die and depress you, though the priestess is annoyed at you for not killing the tree, oddly, but screw her.

Malog Bal is the daedric god of [censored]. Not only are you beating the priest of Boethiah to pulp, you're basically [censored] him. Doesn't that explain his screams and terror? He's really the only truly evil entity in the game.

No one is good. The eight are just a little more cautious and slightly less self serving.

Except for Sangine. That guy is a BAMF and I'm glad to have him on my team.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BlueAndOrangeMorality

You've lost sight of what it means to be good and evil.

"Good" in it's rawest form, is to improve the lives and well being of others (Without inflicting "evil" upon anyone). "Evil" in it's simplest form is to worsen a person's well being or life, particularly if it's for selfish reasons. All things come down to those two axioms. Firstly, you're getting him to give up his soul without him doing it voluntarily, he may be an evil man, but you are forcing an evil upon him (Making him do something he does not do through fear and pain).

Secondly, how you do it - by battering him with a rusty piece of bent meta!!! - this is so far up the evil creek it isn't even funny. You're inflicting pain and suffering and the psychological trauma that this may go on forever if he doesn't give up his soul/




Commiting an evil act to an evil person does not neutralise or make better the situation. Skyrim doesn't always offer you a "good" solution so you have to take that into account (ie. a psychopath on a axe-murderous rampage can only be stopped by killing him - the evil option. When in reality you may be able to subdue and get him proper help for his problems (The good option)). But where an option exists to step off the path of evil, following it to conclusion because it was the only path does not excuse you walking it.

As for the aedra and daedra - when I went to collect the plant material to save the tree in Whiterun, Kynerth's fuzzy little friends ate the two picnic'rs who had nothing to do with it. That cemented in my mind that Kynereth at least is a sadistic aedra... I shall offer up her furry playmates to my lord hircine with great pleasure.

I agree with the OP!

"From my point of view, the Aedra are evil!"

Meh...good and evil. Very human concepts. Very mortal concepts.

The Divines and the Daedric Princes are above those concepts. They simply are what they are. They are the personification of their realms.

Because we are mortals, we view things such as destruction, murder, [censored], madness, etc as bad things, and we associate the personifications of them as "evil."

But all of those things have their places in the mortal world. Without the destruction of old things, there can be no new things. As Sheogorath would tell you, madness is a blessing, "for it's better to be seen as mad than hopelessly despondent."

Wait, what? I don't recall Tiber Septim committing genocide anywhere in the lore.

Also, Namira makes you kidnap and kill someone to eat.

As to Sheogorath, well 'he' is probably beyond Good and Evil. Also, It would have been interesting if Sheogorath would add "Adventurers" to 'his' portfolio given that 'he' was the Champion of Cyrodill. "Blessed are the adventurers, for their mad gambles will either save or damn the world."

For the Divines.

With the tree, if you take the follower with you don't have to hurt the tree (Which tries to defend itself).

With Dibella, you can take the girl home to say goodbye (she and her father do interact).

With Mara, you can have the teen stay in town by going with the other guy meantioned.


If you take the obvious easy path, ya, might not be so great. But easily do definte good paths too.

Interesting idea, but this is not how the daedric princes are implemented. They use logic and tend to have clear motives and objectives. Often, they request actions done and also request they be done with specific intentions like "don't give him an honorable fight" or "make them trust you before you kill them." In this respect, I would understand if they were defined as conscious manifestations of evil. Certain aspects of human nature can be similar to weather on a large scale, so here I might accept that they are weather-like, but they are certainly also evil.

And earlier someone said "harming evil people is evil." I'd suggest making that statement into "motives which harm people with evil motives may also be evil."

Or "The motive to harm people who have evil motives is evil."

Or "The motive to harm is evil."