Well as I know what happened to them and the role Ulfric played in screwing them over I would counsel Tullius to seek peace with them. They would make a very good allies.

I would overwhelm them by sheer mass and give them the choice between obedience and death for every single one of them. The good old Roman way .

They're not interested in peace. They're as volatile and warlike as the Nords.
Except that they worship Hagravens and are lead by undead...

It's not you I would be negotiating with. They actually did a good job running the reach before Ulfric screwed them over. Several years of relative peace and tolerance before the fascist Stormcloaks took over. Not so much peace and tolerance since ... eh'.

I would tell the Legion to go home and let me kill them all. I'd just have my level 81 and a half master of everything annihilate everything in sight. He's good at that.

That's actually a really good point that's been brought up. Seeing as your brief is to remove the Forsworn threat, I'd just ally with them against the stormcloaks and give them control of Makarth and the Rift.

Actually, I sympathize with them greatly. They remind me of the Celts fighting the Romans. The Romans considered them to be a barbaric, uncivilized, uncultured people who needed to either be subjugated or exterminated. They fought back, often using shock tactics. The Hagravens seem somewhat representational of the Druids; the Romans thought them to be possessed of strange magical powers, their gods primitive, and their rituals frightening. The Caledonians gave them so much resistance that they declared Northern England the end of the world (that was worth conquering) and built Hadrian's Wall across the island. Rome never did get to Ireland. I guess all that was to say that just because they have a very different culture from the other races, doesn't make them cultureless, mindless barbarians.

If it were me given the order to deal with the Forsworn 'issue,' I'd enter into talks with them. They want their land back, they want freedom to practice their religion, and they want their people to be treated as equals to the Nords. One might not even have to make *every* concession; that's what negotiation is about. I would start by putting the Silver-Bloods in their place, ending the near-serfdom of the Reachmen, allowing the worship of the Old Gods without persecution (barring anything that harms other citizens, of course), and offering a truce to the Forsworn and helping them take the fight to the Stormcloaks (with whom they have plenty of cause to be angry). Sending them after Ulfric's army helps me, anyway.

actually there are several in markarth that managed to not get caught (unless the pc catches them)

I would use groups of elite soldiers to try and capture someone higher up in their ranks, I would then torcher and demand the locations of their superiors, I would use the information they gave me to infiltrate their other camps and slaughter them.

I know some logical and historical people probably have corrected the first two contributors to this post, but I will say it anyway.

First off, the imperial legion is highly incapable of using guerrilla warfare.
Second, it's guerrilla warfare. Think about today in Afghanistan. You think all the soldiers can tell the difference between 'man' and 'suicidal man' ? The foresworn are mixed in with population. It's almost impossible to get rid of it completely.

Launching a war against the foresworn would be comparable to well.. the Middle East conflicts currently.

Its more that they're allowed to get away more then not be caught. Markarth is a funny place.

The problem with defeating the Forsworn is getting the Nords to have a single opinion on the matter. If some want to live side by side with them and some want to kill them off and some want to use them for personal gains nothing will ever be done. I remember reading that Nords didn’t even want to fight the very first war against the Aldemeri Dominion until Tiber Septim showered them with propaganda. When you do get a Skyrim with a unified opinion you get an unstoppable war machine but few have been able to accomplish that.

That's just because they changed the name. Search the Imperial Library for documents on the Reachmen and the Witch-Men.

And you can't wipe out the Forsworn because they are essentially just the indigenous population of the Reach, with a thousand years of resistance to foreign rule under their belts, complete self-sufficience and an unbeatable home terf advantage. Tiber Septim conquered the entire continent with a god-robot that broke timelines, and yet he cut his teeth fighting these people, and they're still around.

Also, some of the reactions of people in this thread show just how good of a job Bethesda did with the Reach. They got to miss their point, buy into the prejudices of their mouthpieces and sound like all manner of vicious politicians in the real world.

I wouldn't wipe them out, I would join them. THE REACH BELONGS TO THE FORSWORN.

A fairly good summary of my own view. There is no "Kill them all" strategy to the Forsworn. They've fought the Nords and Empire for 600 years without being wiped out, and faced off with forces with more resources at their disposal than any nation in existence in 4E201 and yet remain. I think a new solution is needed... I think peace between the Empire and the Reachmen is possible, I'm just not sure it's possible to keep the Nords in the Emprie to achieve it.

If i were the legate, I'd send out my scouts to scout them out, once I'v found where they are, I'd order my troops to bowl up in there and crush em!

Step 1: Alchemists makes poison
Step 2: Make blankets. Lots of blankets.
Step 3: Infuse blankets with poison.
Step 4: Send soldiers on welfare, general support, peace missions to the forsworn, delivering poisoned blankets
Step 5: Clean up

I agree...without wiping out every non-nord in the reach, you can never supress it. I would commit myself to protecting civilian lives, and force the leaders to the negotiation table to settle the disputes over territory. Even if it is a hopeless endeavour, I will sleep with a clean conscience that I am doing the only right thing.

Roadside checkpoints, mercenaries, offering amnesty to those who give up, the usual 21st century tactics.


If that doesn't work then just roll in the legionaries and wipe em out. If the soldiers are hiding go for the civilians.

It wouldn't be easy. There are certianly more of them in the game than Stormys and Legions put together.

Most legionnaire commanders would just mark the forsworn camps on the dragonborn's map and be done with it.

Kill them all. Kill their families and friends. Kill their livestock. Burn their camps and villages.

Worked for the Romans, worked for the Huns, will work for Stugfugley of the Legion....

Edit:

Just to wade into the 'real life' debate, many of you folk are growing up in an era when the western world has a different set of values, and in some cases of where you come from, of different concepts of what needs to be done to 'win' a war and bring an end to the fighting.

Human history has plenty of examples of successful campaigns against guerrillas and rebels...and in fact, the latest dates from the '60's and '70's in Malaya/Malaysia, although on more minor scales certain european nations did pretty well against small radical type elements even later than that. However, there is a cost to being successful, and the cost is brutality. As I said above, you want to do it, that's what you have to do....and if your own people jump up and down and complain, then as a nation you don't deserve to remain safe or to deserve your freedom...people who won't fight a good fight, for a good cause, aren't worth defending or protecting, and are the greatest risk to any nation's freedom.

Except for the part where it didn't really work for the Romans in our world and the simple fact that this guerrilla group in the TES world has thwarted the Empire's attempts to put them down for at least 6 centuries suggests that even in this "less enlightened" era brute force techniques haven't worked (or the era is enlightened). If they couldn't be eradicated by Tiber Septim (backed by the Voice and Numidum and definitely not enlightened) through brute force I doubt the depleted legion of the 4th era can do it. Hell, he takes the name Talos from his successful conquest against this very people, but still they resist when he is centuries dead and his empire a shadow of what it was. Rather like the Roman's failed attempts to purge the enemies of their own empire in our world. I don't know, seems like if you try something for 600 or more years and it fails, it might fail in the six hundred and first year too. But by all means keep "eradicating" the heathens, maybe tomorrow will be the day you finally kill them all.

Romans didn't just use slaughter everyone tactics, they co-opted local elites, gave them a place in Roman society, synthesized local religions into theirs etc

British successes in Malaya were made possible by the insurgents mainly coming from the Chinese minority population. In The Reach fighting the Forsworn means taking on the majority population in support of a Nord minority whose power is limited to a few major settlements. War in The Reach isn't about Cyrodillic or even Nord freedom, its about continued Nord control of an area where they are the minority

1) Give Markath to Ulfric in the peace negotiations

2) Let the Forsworn and the Stormcloaks decimate each other in a war of attrition.

3) Free Madanach from the mines and kill a few zealot nords in the process

4) "Liberate" the Reach from the Stormcloacks and issue a general pardon to those who accept the Imeprial rule (maybe allowing Madanach to get back its throne as a gesture of good will).

5) Call Storm + Call Dragon + Me for all the rest of the camps which don't surrender