I did not mean that they were beyond reproach, what I meant is that if Ulfric treats them too harshly then he will lose the respect of some of his followers. The Stormcloaks came to be thanks to the Empire "turning" on the Nords when they had risked their lives in the Great War. They fought and died for them and ended up with the Empire saying "Thanks for fighting for us, in return we reward you by restricting the worship of your most important deity.", or, at least that's how most seem to have taken it. If Ulfric doesn't take care to treat the veterans well, he too will seem like someone who just throws away your life in war then turns on you when you can't fight for him anymore. Humans are emotional beings first and foremost, for better or worse.

I'm talking about what the empire is actually doing, not what they say. Sure they all say that they want to fight the Thalmor- so do the Stormcloaks. But the Thalmor Embassy is near Solitude and the Thalmor are in the imperial holds. The Thalmor are kidnapping people, with knowledge and no interference from the imperials- though in one quest the Thalmor say they will release a prisoner if the empire asks for him- Tullius won't do it. When you do the cease fire conference, the Thalmor are at the table with the imperials and Tullius objects to kicking Elenwen out, saying she's "part of the imperial delegation."

Whatever they say about the Dominion, they're cooperating with the Thalmor over their own citizens. Just like they sold out Hammerfell, they're going to sell out Skyrim if it becomes convenient to them, because Cyrodiil only cares about its interests.

Whenever Cyrodiil decides to fight the Thalmor instead of surrendering to them, then they can do so together with Skyrim- as allies, not as lord and master over them.

That's fair enough, but perhaps the conduct of his men should be more stringently enforced. It doesn't matter how many wars you've been in, in fact it's more reason for respect for discipline.

If they didn't become temporary "allies" with them the Thalmor would've token over Skyrim. There is no quests in the game where you can actually "fight" the Thalmor from any side, but I'm guessing that a future game will have the Empire vs. Thalmor. If it wasn't for the Stormcloak rebellion, they WOULD be fighting the Thalmor, but they cannot fight both at once and since the Thalmor are not actually trying to take holds and cities, the Stormcloaks come first.

That is true. And I agree that if he has the means to stop that kind of behaviour, he should, at least from my own perspective. But which rules you can and cannot enforce depends a lot on the morals of your men. If you enforce rules that your soldiers do not agree with at all, you'll just end up with bitter troops resenting your leadership. Humane treatment of the enemy is relatively easily enforced in most modern armies because the soldiers come from a culture agreeing with the sentiment. If you outlaw looting and slave-taking in a modern army, the soldiers will comply without hesitation. Had you tried the same as a leader of a bunch of vikings back in the days they'd most likely leave you, since they'd see it as their right (not to mention their payment for their services).

So, all in all the Stormcloaks are like vikings with no morals whatsoever. Sounds about right.

That's not what I said. At all. And both Stormcloaks and viking age Scandinavians have/had morals, just that they might not have the same ones as yours.

To be fair, you know you're doing something wrong when a moral relativist and realist such as myself is saying "wtf.".

Well I think everyone on earth can agree our ways of thinking now, more closely resembling the Empire is better then the old ways of vikings, more closely resembling the Stormcloaks.

Brelyna Maryon, during the Saarthal mission: "My ancestors killed Onmund's ancestors here. Strange, if you think about it."


The NPCs in Skyrim seem to hold grudges for generations, and they all seem much more focussed on the activities of their ancestors from eras past than we ourselves usually are - as a central european, I don't usually go all "argh, your ancestor killed my ancestor, back when the Roman Empire expanded up north" whenever I see someone from Italy, just as an example. But an NPC in Tamriel would probably do that.

So, to understand the Windhelm situation, maybe you need to go further back than just to the eruption of the Red Mountain? Have you ever played Morrowind? Did you take the chance in Morrowind to observe the (ahem) total lack of xenophobia and total embracement of multiculturalism on Vvardenfell?

Sure, the Dunmer didn't generally drive foreigners into slums on Vvardenfell. They just sold them into slavery instead.

I've also often wondered about Dagon Fel, the one village populated largely by Nords. Sure, it's a quaint little town, but why exactly did the Nords feel the need to have this settlement of their own? Perhaps because they weren't really wanted anywhere else? Also, counting the miserable shacks and comparing their number to the more decent houses in town - doesn't Dagon Fel almost feel like a ghetto, just about as bad as the Grey Quarter of Windhelm? Hmmm....



I'm not saying that I condone the behaviour of the two drunkards at all. I'm just saying that there are many reasons for disliking all of the races of Tamriel. And with the long-time memory of the NPCs about the activities of their ancestors, they have even more reasons to do so.

Sensible knowledge, I like that. In any case yeah I have Morrowind but I haven't played it in sooo long now only thing I remember about it is the dude inside the mountain tore me up pretty bad. Still, this is the here and now and should be corrected. The Empire would never treat people in that manner.

May be so. I'm not saying that I disagree, just that having different morals shouldn't be confused with having no morals. And for the record, I'm mainly on the side of the Empire in this conflict, but I try to look at things objectively.

You realised Thalmor has more parallels with America than the Taliban?

- Use http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_rendition, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_interrogationand assasination to gather intel and set up regional instability in enemy states
- Uses said instability to justify invasion or intervention (ie replacement with sympathiser government)
- Have the best equipped and advanced military force
- On the domestic front, citizens enjoy excellent living conditions and the appearance of a fair democratic process
- Citizens tend to be blithely unaware of what their country gets up to overseas due to good home living conditions and indoctrination
- Internal propaganda rife.


As for "chosen people Vs infidels" - both the real life examples are as bad as each other for this/

Same here because I know there is always two sides to anything, but when I seen that earlier I lost all respect for the Stormcloaks, period. Threatening to basically have their way with her against her will, I will NEVER tolerate anything of that kind at all. Plain and simple.

Uh, if your saying America is like the Thalmor, we aren't exactly trying to kill existance as we know it are we?

No, but your government has released Syphillis on your own population (see the tuskegee experiment, the US Govt has had to apologise for it) covered up and whitewashed massacres (My Lai massacre in Vietnam, where 300-550 men, women and children were brutually murdered for sport, all unarmed) and called operation rolling thunder (killing 70,000 civilians and 10,000 NVA) a "success".


EDIT: the Miltary casualties for rolling thunder, according to wiki are around 50,000, but civilian casualties are estimated to be as high as 150,000.

From the Tuskegee article: "It was reported that from 1946 to 1948, American doctors deliberately infected prisoners, soldiers, and patients in a mental hospital with syphilis and, in some cases, gonorrhea, with the cooperation of some Guatemalan health ministries and officials. A total of 696 men and women were exposed to syphilis without the informed consent of the subjects."

From The My Lai article: The My Lai Massacre was the Vietnam War mass murder of between 347 and 504 unarmed civilians in South Vietnam on March 16, 1968, by the United States Army soldiers of "Charlie" Company of 1st http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battalion, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/20th_Infantry_Regiment_%28United_States%29, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/11th_Infantry_Brigade_%28United_States%29 of the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americal_Division. Most of the victims were women, children (including babies), and elderly people. Many were http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%5Bcensored%5D, beaten, and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torture, and some of the bodies were later found to be http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutilate

For your convenience:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Rolling_Thunder
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Lai_Massacre
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_syphilis_experiment

That is exactly my sentiment about the stormcloaks, fighting for independence, where some ones from the titular nation will be coming to houses of the other ones at night to teach lessons. No, thank you. How could anyone even consider joining them. Empire is evil, but clearly lesser in this case.

Would it change your feelings towards the Empire if the random encounter with 3 soldiers + 1 bound nord prisoner would be changed into 3 soldiers + 1 bound female prisoner?

They aren't verbally threatening their prisoner, but they're just dragging them away so that a torturer can have his way with them in one of the many torture chambers of the Empire.

Well, actually, they're dragging them away until the next bandit or dragon ambush kills them all, but that's unintentional.

As others have said: be careful with drawing all too easy and too sweeping conclusions.

The woman that you saw being verbally abused is called Suvaris Atheron. She works at the docks. This is what you can hear her saying there:

http://momaw.kikaimegami.com/skyrim/no-sympathy.jpg

Are all the Dunmer racist, and prejudiced? Could this possibly be?

Don't judge too soon .

Lol at the last part, but if they were actually talking about doing anything of the sort then yeah. The Empire is more strict then that though and although they may torture they do not "have their way with them". If she is a Stormcloak she's a soldier so torture isn't anything new.

LOL, calling someone lazy is ENTIRELY different then THREATENING TO HAVE THEIR WAY WITH THEM. Are you a psycho?

No, it's about prejudices and racism. And threatening isn't the same as doing. Even a psycho like me knows that.

Are you saying she was being racist calling that argonian lazy? "These lazy Argonians better get their tails moving." That would be the equivilant of saying "These lazy white dudes at work need to get their butts moving." Not racist, simply remarking on what they are and that they need to work harder. Threatening to have your way with someone because of their race, that is racist.

/e Because a word was not censored like it should have been.

I wish there was a third choice. My character becoming King!

Would you be so mild if someone in a US port said to some African-American workers: 'Those lazy blacks better get their asses moving' ?