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Lore Questions - East Empire Company


Jinzor

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So, perhaps I could make the story line up with the EEC being officially neutral, but the Empire like to think that they unofficially own them through their subsidies/headquarters location/racial connection. However, the reality would be that the EEC are playing both sides for profits (i.e. sucking up to the Empire for money and power, but are making promises to Ulfric behind closed doors in an effort to keep racial tensions to a minimum while conducting business in their lands (Nords follow their hearts. They want them gone ("Damn Imperials"), but they can't get rid of them due to their trade power; if they toss them out, their economy/food supply will suffer). I'm not sure what these kind of promises would be, though).

Edited by Jinzor
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If you play up the RL source material, the Empire would threaten to pull their charter (and thus their monopoly), or possibly just play the patriotism card (the Empire might realize they are in too dire a situation to threaten).

 

Meanwhile Ulfric could threaten directly (since he controls Windhelm's ports) and/or make promises based on his winning.

 

Lots of potential there.

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There is an inevitable tug-o'-war between adversaries in a conflict with a company being the rope both ends are trying to control. "If you do anything for them, then you are working against us!." Just another version of, "Either you are with us or you are against us!" However, if the company provides an indispensable service, it CAN declare itself neutral. If the opponents refuse to honor that neutrality, then they lose access to that indispensable service. In the case of the EEC, the indispensable service is logistical support: Moving war material (weapons, armor, foodstuffs, etc.) from the source of production to the point of utilization.

 

Naturally neither opponent would be happy about "their" neutral service provider aiding and abetting their opponent. So throughout History, the Crown would quietly, unofficially endorse the actions of supposedly independent "pirates" to prey on the neutral service provider whenever it was carrying cargo for the opponent. But that is playing with fire, because if the carrier every figures out the connection.... [A prime example is Elizabeth I and her "Sea Dogs" that seemed to specialize in attacking only Spanish and Portuguese shipping.] (After a certain point, the fiction becomes too thin, so the "pirates" get reclassified as "privateers".)

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Well, see how many British businesses operate in the US, despite the American Revolution?

 

Heh, the US is one of the last holdouts of the British Imperial System of Measurement. Even the Brits gave that up ages ago. But then the metric system wasn't a US idea, so it was obviously a foreign plot, lol.

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Naturally neither opponent would be happy about "their" neutral service provider aiding and abetting their opponent. So throughout History, the Crown would quietly, unofficially endorse the actions of supposedly independent "pirates" to prey on the neutral service provider whenever it was carrying cargo for the opponent. But that is playing with fire, because if the carrier every figures out the connection.... [A prime example is Elizabeth I and her "Sea Dogs" that seemed to specialize in attacking only Spanish and Portuguese shipping.] (After a certain point, the fiction becomes too thin, so the "pirates" get reclassified as "privateers".)

 

Yes, absolutely correct. This is where I got the idea that the pirates in Rise of the East could actually be privateers funded by an existing faction.

 

At first I thought it could be the Imperials being resentful of the EEC continuing their business with Windhelm as usual, considering that it is the Stormcloak capital, but I didn't think that'd feel right; the Imperials could actually value maintaining a trade monopoly in their enemy's lands so that they could attempt to control the flow of coin/have options from which to conduct espionage. It would also be a source of scaremongering/encouragement for Nords to stay aligned with the Empire - "Because of the Empire, you have the EEC. If you exclude us, your trade and food supply will be f***ed. You also won't get access to any of your previous luxuries (i.e. aged Breton cheese that these people keep mentioning)".

 

So, I then thought it might be a good idea to blame the Stormcloaks for this pirate activity because of their paranoid hatred towards the Imperials, who they are fighting a bitter civil war against. Yes, they'd hurt their own economy, but Nords do not always think logically nor do they value money the same way that Imperials do; they have no stiff-upper-lip, they are brash and they follow their hearts/concepts of honour rather than think with their heads (most of the time). Also, the idea that a foreign trading monopoly would have power over them would make them resentful, and want them to be banished - "Skyrim belongs to the Nords". In some parts of history, this kind of thing is not unheard of as well.

Edited by Jinzor
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Windhelm is the ECC Headquarters, it wouldn't make sense for either side to pirate them. Only thing the Stormcloaks might do is stop the flow of war materials out of their harbor, for obvious reasons - and they control the docks so they wouldn't even need pirates for that. That would be a reasonable request in a time of war to a neutral shipping company.

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Windhelm is the ECC Headquarters

 

Sorry, I didn't mention this before - for my mod, I'm going to be creating a new EEC headquarters in Skyrim and make the existing EEC presence in Windhelm just a trading post with an office (the Rise in the East quest will still be there, but if I manage to finish the new features I plan to add, then I may alter the vanilla quest slightly for immersion at a later time - I just want to add some extra depth relating to this quest in my new quest's character dialogue (backroom meetings with the EEC leader and whoever he blames for this sudden surge of pirate activity)). I plan to make the EEC headquarters be near Solitude, hopefully in close proximity to the EEC warehouse.

Edited by Jinzor
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