Gabryal

Aye Oh and on the whole racist thing with Ulfric, look up the phrase " Martial Race " and consider the fact that Churchill used the phrase all the time. Then combine it with US reaction to Japanese Citizens in the USA both only 70 years ago. Then ask yourself " Am I comparing the culture I live in today to one that separated from me by time, space ( or in this case reality? ) " Imagine how boring games would be if all their characters were PC. Doesn't take a Stormcloak to be racist in Skyrim, the Battle-Born's and their attitude towards the Khajiit for example. At least Ulfric has a mild defense in that the Dunmer are at least " mer " same as the Thalmor. Not saying I approve, just saying you gotta let some things go. Ulfric isn't lining up Dunmer to be executed ( which if you recall is exactly what happens to a Nord when you walk into Solitude, for reasons that are purely political. There seems to be a lot of guards in Solitude, how come this one guy got singled out? As far as I can tell he just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time with, possibly, the wrong political affiliation.. I can see McArthur saying " And you sir.. have you ever been a Stormcloak? " ) Also if the Dunmer are doing so badly pretty much everywhere ( and I do mean Everywhere ) where is the Empire to help them out? Isn't that part of the job of Emperor?

I had no idea this thread existed so thank you bigmagy for letting me know about it. I do find it amazing that it's as even as it is. However in it's own way I understand. As big so nicely quoted me, I was an imperial all the way once upon a time. In Oblivion I remembered Martin, how strong he was as a person yet humble and fair minded. He was selfless in the end, and died an Emperor's death, no matter how short his reign. I felt that to abandon the Empire was to abandon his memory. Then I began to wonder what had happened that the Empire had ended up in such a sorry state of affairs. What I found blew my hair back. I was genuinely angry. I felt that Martin, Uriel, Tiber hell all the Septims, heroic Emperors of the past had been betrayed by a dubious house of a dynasty that had done nothing but invite disaster upon itself. I felt like I was looking at the Emperor's towards the end of Rome versus the Emperor's at it's beginning. However since I had " lived " in a sense through all those years from Arena - Skyrim, I felt betrayed on top of it all. Just because a couple of centuries has passed in Tamriel, it's only been 13 years for me. The mistakes that the Mede Dynasty has made has been unforgivable, and while the money still bears the name of Hero's the Throne is sat upon gold unworthy to bear their name. That's when I played Skyrim through for the first time as a Stormcloak. For the first time Ulfric made sense, his past is colorful to say the least, and he's not perfect by any means, but he has the heart of a Septim. He's a man who wants what's best for his people, no matter what his detractor's may say. Play the game once through as a Stormcloak and you find out how many lies are told about him ( and some truths, there is no doubt about the events in Markath for example ), but I do challenge anyone to explain to me the difference between invading and capturing a Skyrim city and invading and Capturing a Cyrodil one. The punishment dole'd out on the Thalmor when the Imperial City was captured was intense. Their General spent 33 days hanging in a cage, and every single soldier in the city was put to the sword. If the same thing happened when Ulfric recaptured Markath, how is Ulfric Stormcloak somehow Inferior to Titus Mede morally for doing it? Both cities were captured by enemy forces, both cities had atrocities perpetuated against the common people when it happened, both cities had collaborators, and the armies and collaborators paid dearly for their crimes when the cities were retook. Are the people of the Imperial City somehow more important than in Markath? Is it because there are more people there? Is it because the Imperial City is the Capitol and Markath is not? Ulfric Stormcloak was captured by the Thalmor, this is undeniable as well, and yet somehow despite his capture and the Thalmor insinuation that he was a willing collaborator, it seems the Thalmor did no better in Skyrim after his capture than before, and of course the Thalmor -never- lie, hell they don't even launch Pearl Harbor or 9/11 type attacks do they? Of course not, they're honorable people who would never dream to do such base things as to tell lies about their enemy, I mean it's just not in their nature. They even tolerate Talos worship after all. The longer I played, the more I understood the man, and the more I realized that if anything Skyrim was caught in the middle. The Empire on one side and the Thalmor on the other. In order to attack the latter, the former must be gotten rid of. Since the Empire no longer would fight the Thalmor in the name of her citizens, since it would no longer even hold it's head up and say " Tiber Septim is -ours- and you cannot take him from us! " the Thalmor won. They didn't win by arms or armies, they didn't win by entreatments or treaties, they didn't win by strength, they didn't win by wits. They won by will. It was as simple as that, The Emperor lost his nerve. I thought back to Martin on that day when I saw him for the last time, fighting hell itself, and asked myself " What would he have said? " I realized then that if Martin was in the Player's position he would have said " Do you have an Axe I can borrow? ". It's as simple as that, there comes a day when you may have to kill or die for what you believe in, and Martin would never have allowed the Dominion to take away the legacy of the Empire, he'd have died by Elven blades vs. Daedra ones but he would have died for the same reason. As far as Whitestrake goes, I'm afraid that's 100% correct, though really I was thinking Zhukov when I wrote it ( Russian General, Western Front, World War 2 ). Essentially what had happened after the Nazi invasion was a war of absolute attrition, destruction of anything and anyone in the path of the Nazi War Machine ( remind us of anyone? I'll give you a hint, it rhymes with Khalmor ). After the battles of Moscow and Stalingrad stalled and finally stopped the Nazi advance, Zhukov ( who had designed the defense at Moscow ) developed a policy to overwhelm the Nazis with absolute attrition, essentially revisiting upon them what they had brought to the table, and more so if possible. He persued a campaign of absolute destruction and fear to demoralize Nazi troops and break formations with surgical force before wiping ( literally ) them out. When he crossed into Germany ( at Seelow Heights ) he proceeded to destroy everything in Germany within reach of his now massive forces ( 11 million strong in all theatre's ) and wiped out most of east Germany. These fear tactics were more than that though, they were also tactics of revenge. He was one of the few men who could argue with Stalin and live to tell the tale. He was ferocious, and at one meeting of the Politburo when the Minister of Defense ( his name has escaped me ) and political rival scoffed at his idea of " Neutralizing any German Threat for a century " as the end goal of his campaign and asked him " How do you intend to do that " Zhukov turned on the man and apparently came over the table to be right in his face saying " By burning a terror in their racial memory that will last till the end of time! " Stalin is rumored to have joked later that " It is well that we do not allow even our Field Marshals to report to the Politburo with a pistol, the table was new " So yes, a war of utter Annhilation is what I called for against the Aldmeri Dominion, and I stand by it, and I stand by that the Empire is a hindrance not an asset to that goal. The Emperor Titus Mede (gag) II is Chamberlain and Ulfric Stormcloak is Churchill. All emotion aside it comes down to that, on one side we have appeasers who want peace at any cost, and on the other we have soldiers who will pay any cost for peace. Peace of course being, peace to live as you choose. That's what it boils down to, it's not peace if someone else dictates it to you. There is no peace to be had in the Empire when that peace is dictated to you, and there would be no war in Skyrim if the Emperor had understood that. So that's why I voted Stormcloak, it's how I went from an Imperial to a Stormcloak. Thank you bigmagy for letting me know about this, for your kindness in re-posting what I wrote, and for finding enough merit in my words as to find them worth reposting. Long Live the High King, may Talos bless Skyrim.

I've been trying to teach myself scripts, and found papyrus slow going, mostly because the tutorials haven't really helped me much. Some of the things I'm -trying- to get done are the following. ~Get my new NPC's ( redo's off Housecarls in appearance, classes, and gear ) to equip their armor upon load. I'm seeming to have trouble with getting the defaultEquipUponLoad to target all the gear in the NPC's inventory. I'm avoiding creating default outfits because I want the NPC's to not default back to their outfits if better gear ( or no gear ) is currently in their inventory. ~Having trouble with scripts to add perks/spells based on NPC level vs just starting with them. ~Any tidbit that people might give me. I have a WIP involving player activated spawns within a cell outside of the skyrim default cell, using an item in the player's inventory granted by a quest. This isn't absolutely essential, but my WIP is slow going as I slog my way through the scripts I'm trying to write without much knowledge on the subject. Essentially this is a plea for help from veteran modders so that this player can add to the list of excellent mods out there, and to follow in the footsteps of other modders out there who have added so much wonderful content to a game I would long ago have abandoned without them. Cheers and Thanks in Advance.

Wish you would, I had it downloaded, and then had to reformat before I could ever use it. I saw the accusations and it was complete crap. I now have to use my basic camping set from another mod, and I walk everywhere, since most companion horse mods are buggy as hell. Oh well, thanks for your work even if I never get to see it.

I'm really getting sick of Bethesda, I'm sorry but as player's we've really come to expect too little from this company. 1) I've seen people saying things like " Bethesda has been really on top of all the bugs, good job " without sarcasm attached to it. Shouldn't you fix the bugs before you release the game? Especially the amazingly bad ones ( anyone else remember release date version for PC? ) 2) A good portion of people who play TES/Fallout games are -counting- on the fact that people out there with talent ( I'm not one of them, I'll admit that ) will create excellent and beautiful mods for them and therefor make the game that much more appealing to their target audience, yet they don't release a creation kit with the initial release. 3) When they do release it it's buggy as crap 4) Every single time they add a DLC to it, the creation kit/GECK/whatever goes all to hell again. How the people at Silverlock and Gecko are still sane is beyond my ability to understand. I'm honestly disgusted with myself for ever buying Dawnguard, I got suckered in by the crossbows, and now even a little peon modder like myself can't get the stupid CK to work, where before I could, albeit with a lot of learning involved to get it functioning. To all you modders out there who do such a fantastic job, thank you very much. To Bethesda, stop crapping on your customers /rant off

This is all wonderful information and I'm sure I'll be using it in the future, I'm a budding modder looking for help all over the net, I was wondering though if there was a program that would let me save as a .npc so I could precontruct NPC's before adding them into the creation kit to be used as NPC's for my mods. Currently I've been altering the looks of default skyrim NPC's and while I'm doing it, it's also tedious. My current strategy involves altering the characters basic abilities, stats, saving it as a new .esp, pulling up the Skyrim NPC editor, opening the .esp, changing the appearance ( NPC editor imho does a million times better job of doing this than CK, especially if you don't want to end up using duel .esm's in your mods. Pulling the texture files out of Apachii hair, or UNP, etc and packaging them with your mod is much better than requiring those mods be installed to make the NPC usable ). My method is working but it would be so much simpler if NPC editor was able to save a created face as a .npc to be imported into the CK and therefore forego the additional steps. Is there any such program? I have got quite a few programs I'm using for modding including CK, amongst which are the necessary .BSA extractors so that the mods can be standalone without the need for additional textures and meshes from other mods. I just want to be able to make a face and save it for some point at a later time when I'll end up using it for an NPC. I know I'm rambling, I apologize for that, I've a serious injury that leaves me in constant pain and I'm high as a kite on vicodin right now. I hope people will overlook that, and let me know if there is any tool out there that can help me out. Thanks in advance

I have always loved dezi, I love her still. Nothing will ever change that, she's my very dear friend, and much much more. Read this if you want to know my true feelings.

I'm more or less on the same page as Dezi http://www.lolaness.com/Timcrap/dodge-chargersmall.jpg

i sigh as the questions come rapid-fire, as they always do why do i feel this way, they ask - why do i feel this need to be what i am? to swallow the fears even i have? i may be something that they cannot understand, but still i am a girl, a mother, a woman with a heart, a soul that years needing to be fed and fulfilled with savage and gentle touch calmed and tamed and set free in one whispered word, one command empowering and enslaving my words fall on deaf ears, they cannot hear me, they do not understand, and don't want to. what do they fear? blindfolded, gagged and bound held tight by the strictures of stereotype, of hype and fiction, i cannot say what it is that they see, when they see me, if they can at all without the eyes that You employ, looking more deeply, molding and shaping refinement of what You see as almost perfection, flawed but wonderful, something to hold to own, to cherish. so i breathe deeply and shrug off their ignorance, small pity at the things they will never know, in their small world. A response from eshva, slave to Gabryal, to Dezdimona's beautiful work Love: Chronicles of Sticks "I love you Dezi" from eshva, relayed by Gabryal.

Steeling resolve and finding the strength he bears his soul to the suns full light having searched the breadth and length of the universe, to find this plight Sacred submission, given free his strong heart humbled at her trust he looks down to her upon her knees and prays he's worthy of her love and lust He scans the room with piercing eyes daring any to mock her beautiful toll He wonders "Why can't they realize?" The strength she has to surrender control He sees in her eyes the hope and fear the pain of those who were unworthy he brushes her cheek, standing near and vows to protect her, for all eternity His hands clasp the collar around her neck he feels the shiver, the pulse in her veins as he clasps the ends around the back he vows to protect her from all future pain The black leather leash, he clasps to it's ring rising her up he pulls her into his arms his eyes dare the crowd to do anything to mar this moment, to raise any alarm They pass between those who are consumed by bigotry who cannot understand how a slave can be free How he chooses to devote his life to her security and this purest love they refuse to see. They walk away from the whispered words to a place he prepared for them to be away from the anger and the swords of words of prejudice, of words of hypocrisy Love so pure, so selfless, so filled with harmony the world can't accept or understand so for their lack, they lose the company of those who refuse to bow before the will of the land. ~A Response by Gabryal to Dezdimona's beautiful poem, Love, Chronicles of Sticks ~Dedicated to Dezdimona, one of the few pure hearts I've met in my three decades of life

Nope, cleaned it up this morning. A sig 226 ( 9mm not the .357 short ) and yes Dez, it's in response to your glock talk, I guess we disagree on pistols :P