Because I don't like the Romans. That's what's so fun about Skyrim- you get to tell them to go stuff their own olives.

That's not the case either. These are Nords fighting Nords, in many cases. The only real big outside presence is general Tullius - and he's only there because he's supposed to be some great strategist. Ever seen Pulp Fiction? There's a character named Winston Wolf, who helps the two guys clean up a dead body. He's just an outside consultant type who's brought in to solve problems for people. That's what Tullius is, basically. He isn't sent because of his "ethnicity", here to keep to poor Nords down.

This goes without mentioning Rikke. She isn't an outside presence, nor is she is a sellout Nord, shilling for "the man". She's just a Nord. Who's in the empire. As most Nord warriors are. Even Ulfric was her comrade... then he went bat[censored].

your wrong about the empire being too busy defending the capital, as the capital had already been sacked, the thalmor spoonfed info to ulfric during his imprisonment to fool him into thinking the imperial city hadnt been taken down yet thus causing him to deal with the markarth incident JUST AS THEY HAD PLANNED imagine ALL the forsworn of skyrim not bandits but rather citizens of markarth ready and willing to go and fight the thalmor with the empire, the empire saw the peace treaty with the thalmor as a ploy to have time to recover the thalmor saw through that, so even after the treaty is signed they find creative ways to keep the empire too busy to recover


thalmor dossier: ulfric stormcloak, they covertly fund the stormcloaks, not by much but by enough to keep them fighting, they see stormcloaks as the smallfry, the smallfry that can be manipulated into keeping their real enemy THE EMPIRE weak

For a while. Eventually, they managed to recover. Later they were capable of slaughtering the Alessians under High King Wulfharth (man, Skyrim has a history of wiping out evil cults) and launcing invasions. They were at Red Mountain under Shor and his general and incarnation, KIng Wulfharth. Aka Talos.

Love that movie. "You're sending the Wolf? That's all you had to say, Negro."

OK, y'all - I'm not gonna' post anymore to this thread about all of this because I'm only speaking of empires in general - this is my first TES game so I don't know all the lore - my only point that was TES specific is that an outside force (The Emperor) is telling Skyrim what to do (yes, based upon to what the Thalmore made them agree).

Edited for spelling.

And the flip side is that if your central authority is weak and corrupt, they drag the whole shebang down with them.

The problem here is that ethnic imperials have become the ruling elite, and they look only to their own interests and to protecting Cyrodiil. What's past is past.
Jarl Igmund contradicts that. He says that they promised Ulfric and his men freedom of worship in exchange for their help in retaking the city. He then decided to imprison Ulfric and his men, since the Thalmor found out about the deal.

All of that would only be band-aid measures against the real problem. The Thalmor are in Skyrim because of the empire's capitulation. The empire is acting as a shackle that allows the Thalmor to attack Nords who defy the Talos ban. Loose the shackle and you're free to fight.

I don't see how Wulfarth is Talos necessarily. Bethesda has done a good job at confusing the history of those two, with the Arcturian Heresy.

Heh, yeah that's a good line.

I don't think you should stop posting though.

IMO, as soon as Hammerfell proved succesful the Empire should have broken the treaty, purged all Thalmor agents from the land, and generally attempt to stay as dark to the Dominion and the Dominion is to them. Recover, but don't let the Thalmor know your every move by spying on you legally.



They're both Talos. So is Zurin Arctus.

If that's the case, then the dovahkiin might as well be Ulfric Stormcloak and General Tullius.

What I mean is is that all of their agendas are completely different. Not to mention in the Arcturian tale, Talos screws over both of them. These are the actions of an individual. You can't be three different people and then screw yourself over. Edit: To hell with the..umm.. multiple avatar idea. It almost makes my head explode. It makes no sense to me.

Beyond a strained military, there's really no evidence for that. Well, perhaps the Emperor being weak in his old age. Where's your evidence of corruption though?


They don't seem any more the ruling elite than they were in the past. Where's the evidence that they only look after their own interests and protecting Cyrodil? The whole Empire would have suffered if the Emperor had been killed, so if that's what you are talking about, it seems like a pretty weak argument.


That's not at all a contradiction. Someone can ask you to promise them something. Nor is the Jarl clear on the timeline. Basically he doesn't say who came up with the idea or when.


It's stated by more than one person that the Thalmor are in Skyrim because of the rebellion, because Ulfric made a huge deal out of Talos worship so now the Thalmor have the excuse they need to move in and crack down. Ulfric has done exactly what the Thalmor want him to do -- this is uncontestable and in the Ulfric dossier. The man is helping secure the shackles. Even if he wins Skyrim, he's greatly weakened Skyrim's military, divided the people, and weakened the Empire.

And a band-aid measure? Slowly bleeding your enemy dry via guerrilla warfare can be extremely effective. It's worked throughout history to get rid of unwanted influences. Further, you don't have to kill your own armies or people. Ulfric can't say he couldn't think of the idea, as Skyrim has people in it that do this (the forsworn). But Ulfric clearly wants to be High King as many, many people comment on in the game. So he picks a strategy for whether it nets him High King of Skyrim over whether it avoids killing a bunch of potential allies and a bunch of his own people he CLAIMS to care so much about.

The Thalmor have already demonstrated that having a bunch of agents in an enemy country is quite a huge risk. You can think you know everything going on and the next die find out that all of your agents are dead.

There's no reason to think the Thalmor have super powers to move about undetected in the Empire and find out all of its secrets. That's pure fantasy.

Each of them mantled different aspects of Lorkhan so all three became Talos.

Lorkhan's story involves the creation of the world. He tricked the other aedra into helping him with it(Tiber tricks Wulfharth into creating the powersource for Numidium). He is betrayed by the aedra.(Wulfharth is betrayed by Tiber and Zurin) His heart is ripped out(Zurin's heart is ripped out) Creation is successful(Tiber successfully finishes the Numidium).

Maybe. Maybe (yes, really. Maybe).

That's how it works. Their actions all involved mantling Lorkhan and Akatosh. Betrayal, ripping out hearts, ect. They also pretended to be Tiber Septim, making everyone think they're the same person. All of that ended up making them the same person.

If this is how the logic of TES works, then I'll repeat that that the dovahkiin might as well be both Ulfric and Tullius.

Hell, maybe they're all aspects of Talos. "Stormcloak" - Stormcrown. "Tullius" - Talos. You - Dragonborn.

It's quite possible that this is what Beth is going to end up doing to write the Dragonborn out of history. Perhaps the three of them become the new Talos. There's a lot of similarities already set up, but they're still missing a creation event.(Possibly DLC content)

Edit: Also important was what Silent said. There was so much trouble distinguishing the three from each other that all became the same being. Zurin even thinks he's the underking in Daggerfall despite that title belonging to Wulfharth.

Why be the new Talos? They're the old Talos. He just has three avatars/aspects/incarnations mucking around and they eventually join back up with him. That's certainly enough to make the Civil War pretty irrelevent in terms of who wins (good point there).

lol, that'd be hilarious. like the history becomes so clouded that there was a great general named Tullius Stormcloak, who was dragonborn, and united Skyrim, then defeated the Thalmor.

Ugh. Kind of cheesy actually.

New, Old, what's the difference? They're all Lorkhan. And so are you. And lorkhan is also we who are everything.

I are all we. And if -zero sum-

And what about TES lore or games makes you think that the creators don't like cheese?


Skyrim is just Talos having a debate with himself about how to handle this whole Thalmor problem. Oh, and there's some dude trying to destroy the world...how annoying -- makes it hard to concentrate.

CHEESE FOR EVERYONE!

Good question.

Well, I was hoping that with the new story engine, they probably implemented flags to reflect your choices. Like Mass Effect and Dragon Age. This way they can code in a more "Choose your own outcome" type of style to sequels or expansions, and actually have consequences to your decisions. Right now, it is there, but it's bugged and seems to be merely used for reflecting some NPC interactions. Like if I join the Companions or fought the dragon in Kynesgrove, it's flagged and the NPCs comment on it later. If they tried hard enough, they could implement even better results. I'd prefer that instead of reading some cheesy lore book in TES 6. "A Brief History of Tullius Stormcloak: Dragonborn Extraordinare".

In both cases all you have to look to is how they've handled their other provinces. They don't care about anything but protecting Cyrodiil and are just using their provinces as bargaining chips. The empire no longer exists. Trying to prop up what's left is like fighting to give a dying man one last gasp.

Did they need an excuse? If they had simply demanded access to Skyrim, would the empire have said no?

Guerilla warfare is not what we're dealing with here. The Thalmor aren't operating as guerillas, but as a strike team that is enforcing imperial law. Ulfric is just exposing the conceit that the WCG is a real peace. He's not doing what the Thalmor want, because he intends to win, and the dossier shows that they do not want an independent Skyrim.

That would have been nice, but Bethesda seems to innovate very slowly. Maybe we'll see something like that in TES 8.

Oh well, I guess. Best that I have fun with it now, instead of lament any future cheesiness.

On a sidenote, I think Ulfric represents the Wulfarth personality. Or close to it. Not sure about Tullius. I could see one of my characters as much like Hjalti Early-Beard, who climbed in the ranks and fought for the empire of his time.