If you're a Blades fan, just keep moving.

Alright, so I killed Parthy. I was excited to single-handedly establish the Blades faction for Delphine, the self-proclaimed grandmaster. Yay, I get to recruit people! How fun.

Annekke was my first Blades choice until Google told me that the reason I couldn't get her quest & friendship is because she's bugged. Excuse me for doing the Thieves Guild quests, I didn't mean to derail a quest giver in some backwater town that I needed to look up to find.

You only get 3 members, which isn't a lot of people for a dragon slaying faction. The book said if they die, you don't get any more.

So let's see... a crazy old man, a crazy blonde, and 3 people that trusted me plus myself make the Blades.

Accepted crappy potion from Esbern, got his random "go kill a dragon" quest.

And that is all they have. The end.

*punches Beth in the face*

And even then, you don't always get a "Go kill dragons quest". I logged back into my Nord character for the first time in a while just to do some group dragon slaying on Master...and he had no quests to give me. Still doesn't.

You forgot the knock off steel armor with super fail dragon slayer gear. If they were dragon slayers theyd put dragon stuff of their armors like the dragon armors you can make. The sword is crap too and pretty silly as dragon slayers carry the smalled swords in the game. I thought dragon slayers were supposed to be loaded were heavy weaponary but man was i wrong. None of thier stufd even comes close to being reconized as dragon slayers. I mean what would you say or think if you seen someone walking around with that gear... I would be like," this aint acient china bro this is skyrim and im damn sure that aint dragon armor... Oh and nice skeleton of a lizerd on your helmet.

I didnt even kill Parta because i knew there would be some weak sauce stuff from the so caled dragons slayers. She wouldnt help me oh well guess she forgot i could dragonrend alduin and backhand him to death alone.

Not sure if I can be called a "fan". Maybe a fan of TES lore in general. So by extension, a Blades fan.

Whatever.

I'd chalk this up more to technical issues. The follower system in general has a lot of limits. And even displaying armies or whatnot doesn't seem like a priority for Bethesda. Even if you join the Civil War, they have a pretty small scale look to them. And not all soldiers come out at once, but spawn after others are dead. So I'm not going to expect a whole Sky Haven temple full of Blades recruits. It'd be cool, but it's not going to happen. It's hilarious though that people would blame it on the Blades themselves, and not Bethesda.


edit: That sword is hardly crap. It's leveled, and one of the better lootable 1handers, besides Chillrend.

The small numbers I can accept. The Blades are all but gone at the beginning of the game. Our actions during the main quest are only the beginning of a possible rebirth of the Blades. It seems fitting to me that a renewal of a long-defunct faction would not happen over night. It may not even happen in our character's lifetimes.

I use to be a Blades fan until they wanted me to kill Paar. Once they told me, I went back to Oblivion and slaughtered the Blades there. I was mad.

Excuse me, but all my Housecarls are blades now via a mod I created myself.

Sorry but the Blades shouldn't ask for Paar's death.

I missed that hilarity part.
Blades...Bethesda... yeah, I'd go so far as to say they're the same thing.

That's an understatement.
Ummmm, we're Thane of everywhere, head of everything, savior of this & that, master of all. There are plenty of NPC's who are willing to be followers; I don't see where this sense of realism lies in this faction, and why it absolutely must stop at three. None of it makes sense no matter how you slice it.
And it still stinks.

that is blades armor. Did you play Oblivion? Do you know who the blades were before and after they were dragonslayers?

EVen more of a disppointment:


Esbern eventually sends you on a dragon hunt to a place where the dragon never respawns, not ever, not even once.

So I had something like 3 dragon hunts with the blades, then got sent to the non respawning bonestrewn crest. Even after oodlesof eons
of days, the dragon never comes back. The chest there has refreshed about six times, with new stuff, but never a dragon again.

This is on the xbox 360.


I wish I'd bothered to save before asking him for the quest, to see if going back to that save
possibly did give me a dragon that DID exist.

Fair enough. All I mean is that usually when I see criticism directed towards the Blades, it's people pointing to their incompetence or lack of numbers.. Something along those lines. When what I see are faults of the game itself. I don't interpret the problems of the Blades as the faults of fictional characters. I guess this goes for other things besides the Blades as well. For another example, people might think the Thalmor aren't a threat and weak - because they can kick their asses all over the place within the game. Lore-wise, they wouldn't be weak though. We sort of have to suspend our disbelief and accept Bethesda at their word that these are the big bad guys... even if it's badly implemented in game.

In any case, it seems like you're probably in agreement with me.

How are they supposed to have gear when they've been living as fugitives, one of them in Podunk and the other in a sewer?

I think it's Steel armor because Beth wanted to make a compromise/middle road sort of setting, depending on when the player did those quests. It could be done very early or late. This is sort of like Ancient Nordic works - It's Iron armor, that you can get fairly early. The difference with that is that Ancient Nordic can be furthered upgraded with a Daedric perk (I think?). So it upscales and works for high lvl characters too. They should've done this with Blades armor. Like make it Steel, but further bonuses unlocked through an Ebony perk or something.

They are now a charitable organisation, who kill dragons for nothing. They use to be an order of the Imperial government. It just doen's compare. If given time, they'd probably turn out more like Vigilants of Stendarr than any other faction in the game. They could sell dragonbones and dragonscales to the Akaviris and turn it in to lucrative business making quite a faction of itself. But this will only happen, when Esbern and Delphine pull their finger out of their backside about justice being served and actually become politicians.

As for the "this ain't ancient china" comment, their armor style is handed down from the Akaviri. The Blades style has been in TES for years. It's supposed to be Asian themed. There are other things other than "Skyrim" going on. Also, just because this is Skyrim doesn't mean everyone is playing a Nord trying to act out their viking fantasies. Some people play that for one character, then an Orc or Elf the next playthrough. Why does everything have to be Skyrim themed?

One more reason to not kill Parth. if you ask me - technical this time but still.

I was annoyed at Delphine's character,as well as Esbern's later, through the MQ that I wanted to betray them to the Thalmor(but of course you can't). But when they asked me to kill Parth. I was even more pissed that I couldn't kill them or betray them.

The funny thing is, this game turned me into a fan of the Empire but made me hate the blades. They're just too stubborn, arrogant and stuck to the past.