Khorak

Fact: That's bulls***. It's a poor attempt to legitimise the Empire for having forcibly subjugated Tamriel. Impressive as the act may have been, impressive enough that Tiber Septims audacity and capability caused the Nords to bend knee to him quite happily, it is still the case that the Empire is the Cyrodiilic Empire, not the Nordic Empire. It is still a fact that Skyrim is a foreign province of that Empire, a seperate country that is required to pay tribute, follow the laws and give fealty. As it happens for much of the Third Era the Empire rather pleased the Nords and their cultural desire to beat the hell out of everything for the twin reasons of personal glory and having a good laugh. Now it doesn't. With the Empire beocming something the Nords no longer respect, their fealty to it is no longer guaranteed. New York as an example is....extraordinarily poor. New York is, in fact, the worst possible of thirteen examples you could ever have chosen because the damn place is one of the original Thirteen Colonies that created the United States federal government! You just claimed that Cyrodiil is occupied....by Cyrodiil. In response to the issue that Skyrim is occupied by Cyrodiil. It doesn't make sense. Skyrim is a distinct nation that is occupied by a Cyrodiilic Empire, it's that simple. The endless conflict between Man and Mer has been a staple of the Elder Scrolls, yes. Skyrim is underlining a new era of that. The Empire was a force for unification for all (emphasis on force...), but with the new changes it seems the Empire, all of Tamriel really, is disintegrating in favour of battlelines being drawn up on racial lines as opposed to political ones once again. By removing the Empire we're looking more at a grand conflict between Men and Elves, not Big Political Blob #1 versus Big Political Blob #2. There's going to be collateral all over the place. Messy collateral. Legate Rikke convinced him that Ulfric getting the crown would allow him to draw more support. Tullius is not following Nordic tradition, he is stopping his enemy following Nordic tradition to gain more support. And if the Jagged Crown has come back to him, he might as well toss it at the Empires puppet. He is standing right there. Processing the completely unknown person in the group who is potentially not even a Nord is holding up his execution. And, the guy just watched someone screaming "I'M NOT ONE OF THEM!" run away and get shot down. At that point, anyone who isn't a rampaging arsehole takes a few steps over and asks, "What just happened Captain? What's the problem here?". Then he finds from me blurting the damn information out, or Hadvar. Then the Captain gets sent to the coldest, nastiest posting in the Empire for trying to murder people. Though you bring up another point; THANKS HADVAR. How much of a stink does our supposed 'good guy' kick up? Uh....none. No argument at all. "We don't even know who this person is! We can't execute an innocent bystander!"....nah, none of that. But hey, they'll send my two pieces back home with a 'To Whom It May Concern' letter. Thanks guys. You only know my first name, I'm sure my body can be left safely in your hands to be buried in some random place that may or may not be within five hundred miles of my home. He is a far cry from Ulfric only so far as Ulfric displays vastly more outspoken conviction. One thing is for sure; both of them have no time for the culture or tradition of others, only what THEY want. Tullius is more weary; he isn't fighting for the highest rank going to reinvigorate his land and people as he sees it, he's just making sure the nail stays hammered down so Cyrodiil can continue doing whatever it wants, but he's still not a better person and neither is the Empire. What with it being an Empire.

It's probably a hilarious case of the various daedric lords having to engage in a brawl to get their due if they all still equally want a piece of that pie. It's could also be possible that people with such multiple paths to the afterlife would be drawn to the one which they served most. Four daedra might have claims on you, but you spent your life diligently and penitently serving Nocturne in your duty as a Nightingale for example, so when you die your soul naturally charges off to do her bidding. Yes, the others are going to be pissed, but none of them are powerful enough to start a war with each other over it. I would expect being a werewolf to be something that takes precedence; it's a 'gift' that changes your body and mind on a daily basis. You could serve Nocturne all you want, but you're still a werewolf. Note: In Skyrim you're a werewolf because you've basically signed a contract with Hircine for power, not because you're an unlucky bite victim, this is why I think it would take precedence alongside the warping effects of it. It might be different for someone who unwillingly became a werewolf but dedicated their life to the worship of someone else. Especially if that worship was how they were coping with the werewolf problem. When the player enters Sovngarde in the game, they do so as one of the living via a portal directly there. Whatever pacts you've made regarding your afterlife are irrelevant, since you're not dead. You're a tourist, there to see the magnificent mists. And kill a massive wuss of a lizard.

Especially since playing through the Legion missions is not the experience people have been claiming it is on these forums. I bit the bullet and did them; Tullius' tone about it clearly being a mistake for me to be on the block for execution at the start of the game is sarcastic. That worthless piece of s*** doesn't give a damn about the mind bogglingly massive injustice he was about the watch be committed (and remember that, he's the highest authority in the whole land and he was happy to watch abystander be executed for nothing, that bowl-cut tool could have said, "Set her free", three words, and job done), he only cares about you when, oh, as it turns out you're an unstoppable death machine who is so idiotically loyal and obedient you forgot about the whole 'cut your head off' thing. And on the racism front, I could only laugh when I walked into his room to sign up, and....he goes off on a racist rant about 'you Nords' and how their traditions are getting in his way to Legate Rikke. Whilst in Skyrim. Which he has to govern. Welcome to the all-inclusive Empire, the multicultural melting pot of Tamr-HAHAHAHA! Oh God I couldn't even get through that. The Empire is racist, it wants to impose its own cultural expectations, political desires and laws upon everyone in Tamriel. It has no intrinsic respect for the local culture, just tolerance when what it wants is done obediently. Presumably people forget why it's called 'The Empire', what an Empire actually is, and how Tamriel reached this point in the first place....uh....because the Empire spent the entire Third Era kicking the crap out of anyone and anything to swipe their stuff and force their compliant fealty. Hmmm. The Stormcloaks are fighting for their independence, their racism is very in-your-face because of that. Their campaign is built entirely upon the idea of 'kicking them out' and obviously, Windhelmers take it too far (admittedly it's hilarious to hear Niranye blame it on the Dark Elves themselves). The Empire, it has to be remembered, is fighting to retain its foreign hegemony over a subject province...their racism is kind of already part of the institutional status quo. "Do what the Imperials say or the Legion kills your face" is....well, if you bother analysing it, we might as well be talking about the British Empire in India. And if you think that was an a-ok situation, I have a rainbow bridge to Asgard to sell you.

I haven't been paying attention, have the patches fixed the problem of all houses coming equipped with a poltergeist who hurls your stuff everywhere when you place it down and then have the wretched audacity to leave and come back? I love personalising houses with my endless spoils, but that little feature made it impossible.

Made up lies and conjecture. Flat out. That's all that is. I'm bored of fielding this completely and totally unsupported garbage. Here is the actual reality as given by the Thalmor dossier itself: "Thalmor Dossier: Ulfric Stormcloak As long as the civil war proceeds in its current indecisive fashion, we should remain hands-off. The incident at Helgen is an example where an exception had to be made - obviously Ulfrics death would have dramatically increased the chance of an Imperial victory and thus harmed out overall position in Skyrim....A stormcloak victory is also to be avoided, however, so even indirect aid must be carefully managed." THE THALMOR THEMSELVES STATE THAT THE STORMCLOAKS WINNING SHOULD BE AVOIDED. THIS DOESN'T MATCH UP WITH IDIOT IDEAS THAT SKYRIM WILL SUDDENLY BE WEAK AND VULNERABLE. IF THAT WERE THE CASE THE THALMOR WOULD HELP HIM TO WIN AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE. The Dovahkiin arriving and immediately resolving the situation is disasterous to the Thalmor. EITHER WAY. This isn't a difficult concept. It doesn't just make sense in-universe, it makes sense when constructing the narrative; your players are going to be damned annoyed if it turns out that one of their two choices is a "Ha ha, you wasted hours to ruin everything".

Ulfric is a bit of a phallus, but he's one man. And Windhelm is just one city. As High King he can set the Thalmor killing policies, but he can't exactly change the very culture of Skyrim. Nowhere else in Skyrim is there really any level of Ulfric-ness going on. Jarls still rule their cities, and owing allegiance to Ulfric as the High King doesn't mean you have to be a jerk to everyone who isn't a Nord....which they aren't. After he's taken over, nothing really changes on that front. The High King can feel free to spend the treasury on raising armies for the future Altmer Murder Parade, but that's about it. It's a feudal system, after all, and being the guy in charge in such a system actually makes it HARDER to do some things than it would have been before. As Jarl of Windhelm he can do whatever the hell he wants in Windhelm. As High King he's going to get lobbied by every single person in Skyrim. Every. Single. One. Have fun with that!

If you'd read those Thalmor documents properly, you'd have worked out that Ulfric isn't explicitly working for the Thalmor. He was considered unco-operative and some sort of Thalmor contact during the Markarth Incident caused him to become even more antagonistic to them. His entire game plan is "f*** the Thalmor in the face", and after winning the Civil War when you ask his plans he'll be loading for bear. Big, yellow bears from Summerset Isle. When the Thalmor say he is an asset, they mean this insofar as the current status of the civil war is perfect for them. Ultimately, the Thalmor documents make one thing clear; you are going to utterly, utterly sodomise their plans. They don't want anyone to win the civil war, they need it to be ongoing. This plan would have worked, the civil war would have dragged on for years (NPC's here and there will attest to this in their ambient and scripted dialogue). They were not expecting the almighty Dovahkiin to appear out of nowhere, take one side to almost instant, crushing victory, turn Alduin himself into chunky salsa, generally murder absolutely every single bandit, ancient evil, rogue necromancer and any other aspiring bad guy across the length and breadth of the land, then, presumably, roll around in a colossal mountain of money somewhere slightly west of Whiterun (the only bit flat enough to build a new mountain). Whichever side you picked, the Thalmor are stuffed. That's what the documents should make clear. Either side winning sucks for them. If the Empire win, it'll be able to consolidate Skyrim. If the Stormcloaks win, Skyrim turns into The Land Of Angry Elf Murderers, Led By The Guy We Tortured And Didn't Think This Could Possibly Come Back At Us Until A Screaming, Dragon F****** Death Machine Made Him High King And Thus Untouchable.

I voted no. Why? Because it's not needed. Any argument for it revolves around roleplay, in which case you need to seriously re-evaluate your roleplay goals, cut out the middle man, and just get some porn instead of living in denial and crapping up the internet.....or just wanting "Hur hur naked peeple" because it's titillating. Bravo in the second case for being honest, slimy as it is, but shove off and find some porn because Bethesda is making a game here. Yeah, we need nakedness to roleplay properly. Funny how that argument is only used for nudity and not fully animated dumping. Or being in battle and thus your armour so long you have no choice to soil yourself. Or everyone being a dirty, stinking, and most certainly very hairy medieval mess no modern first worlder would ever want to see naked.

Take your top off. Congratulations, Kratos armour.

Stormcloaks. The Empire is done for, and the arguments that none of the provinces would be able to defend themselves against the Thalmor ring exceedingly hollow with me. They're merely assumptions based on preference; no-one knows at all how powerful Skyrim would be if unleashed. The problems with Ulfric can be fixed; the problem with the Empire is systemic, and at this point the only course of action for the Dragonborn would be tearing it down and rebuilding something new and vigorous, but that isn't an option...and you'd be turfing the Empire out anyway. When it gets down to it, the Thalmors own thoughts on the subject are that the worst thing that could happen for them is the Stormcloaks winning. That trumps the musings of anyone else to the contrary.

I'd go with the_mango55 in terms of lore, though I'd put Orcs at 1.0 just like Nords. The problem is that if you allow significant height changes, God forbid a slider, some minmaxing goons will stir up whiny controversy because the smallest possible player character will have a far smaller hitbox without any loss in stats. By keeping the available options relatively the same in this regard, the designers can be sure no midgets or giants get places they shouldn't.

Unfortunately I'm stuffed. I was cheerfully playing the game, forgot everything, and then it downloaded when I quit at the end of the night. Ooops. Probably for the best really, I need to be doing university work...pretty much non-stop for the next week, so Skyrim being out of commission is an evil little blessing. It's quite annoying though. I bought the game (for PC) in a state that was acceptably complete. It ran perfectly and the bugs I experienced were no real issue for me; sandbox games are my favourite kind, and I'm well used to their sheer size allowing some minor irritations (or unintentional hilarity) to slip in. The patches have done absolutely nothing but break the game. The first introduced the memory access whatever, so until I found out about the 4GBexe mod I was having constant CTD problems and even more frequent texture failures (womens skin would turn matt black below their neck). Now the full sized patch has broken essential game features, making the whole thing, as far as I'm concerned, currently unplayable. How can patching be fail of such epic proportions? They have literally been a process of degradation. I have had exactly no improvements, none, occur as a result of these patches, only new and massive bugs.

Then your research has been extraordinarily poor, or literal to the point of worthlessness. The cultural stem, especially in the terms being spoken about, military, is practically the same. Normandy existed as a region seperate from the rest of France, norminally a Duchy of the French crown but in reality paying absolutely no attention to it at all. This situation came about because Normandy was invaded, conquered and colonised by 'viking' invaders in 911, who didn't subsequently burn Paris to the ground because the French king decided it was a fantastic idea to let them have the whole territory and pretend they paid fealty to him, instead of hacking his face off and wearing it as a hat. No-one contemporary referred to the Normans as anything but their own people, because they knew far better than that. They were politically and culturally independent from the rest of France, they were called upon specifically by the Pope, and they did their various deeds through their judicious and incredibly eager use of their 'viking' background. Vikings were, by definition, an expedition. It is a catchall term in current modern usage to represent the particular cultural subset they came from. In military terms the Normans and Saxons were operating on the same 'viking' cultural basis until the Normans had morphed into the more cavalry heavy force they eventually took England with, but were regardless still maintaining the same basis of heavily armoured bastards as the core of the army. Again, 'viking' is an often used catchall term, one which you yourself haven't actually properly defined regardless. Anyone shoving their boat out and sailing somewhere from 'that sticky bit north of Europe' is basically a viking expedition, with endless variety in intent and funding. In terms of the culture however, the actual armies were constructed around a solid core of chainmail clad heavy infantry; this is what is relevant to the situation in Skyrim. Wildhelm is launching a direct war against her immediate neighbours, with nothing in evidence of their real life inspiration. I also complained about the Imperial Legion itself, which has also strangely morphed into an entirely light infantry force whose ranks are comprised of practically nothing but archers....the auxiliaries have become the army for some reason, when we should have been fighting a majority of legionnaires with the heavy Imperial armour and shields. The end result should have been Legionaries and the classic image of 'vikings' (an image which is actually of the professional soldiers of the viking era) beating the hell out of each other, not what looks like endless ranks of skirmishers having scuffles. You can feel free to complain about the linguistic evolution of the word 'viking' all you want, but beyond that, you're just plain wrong in relation to what I'm talking about. Viking era armies from this cultural group were defined by their core of heavy infantry, eventually changing in the case of the Normans to...heavy cavalry. And by changing we mean 'exactly the same form of heavily chainmail armoured man, but now with a horse to ride in battle instead of strategically, and spears to hurl'. The basic nature of the Nords in Skyrim is at serious odds with their real life inspiration, and frankly, is pretty well at odds even with their background in Elder Scrolls; they have never been characterised as light armour users until now. They have not, in fact, even been characterised as particular two handed weapon users, since their bonuses have consistently been for forms of axe and blunt weapon (or just practically everything) and heavier armours. Both Morrowind and Oblivion set the Orcs and Nords up as the premier users of heavier armour; now the Nords have inexplicably changed into light armoured two handed weapon users. Rather like the Legion really.

Poor circular reasoning that completely ignores entirely what Paarthurnax and others tell you about the sheer nature of dragons. They are outright born to dominate. It's in their blood. Paarthurnax defeated this nature through a long period of philosophical introspection and meditation. He doesn't just know a better way for his people, who were all completely obliterated for their trouble the first time round, he's actually living it. Paathurnax saying he will force his path on the other dragons is like a revolutionary promising to overthrow the reign of a bloodthirsty dictator who will get literally everyone killed by their angry neighbours, and replace it with a peaceful way that will allow them to all, you know, not be massacred by vast hordes of angry, pitchfork wielding locals. Dragons are intrinsically violent, dominating and outright evil. Paarthurnax intends to force them to change that (because why else would they follow him?). This is good. Only some lunatic modern conception of 'freedom above all else' would claim that what he hopes to do is a bad thing. Freedom is rubbish when it exists only to allow house-sized, fire-breathing monsters to destroy, murder and dominate at will.

So because he has a nasty name, he should be killed. Paarthurnax freely admits his crimes when asked about them, and even says it's perfectly reasonable for the Blades to not trust him. He also says he's been sitting on top of a damn mountain meditating for a few thousand years specifically to defeat the intrinsic nature of dragons to dominate. He also rebelled against Alduin in the first place. I'd heard people using his final monologue as a justification he'll be another Alduin, and once I heard it myself, I wondered what they were smoking. He leaves to try and get other dragons to do the same as him; defeat their basic natures with meditation and will. How this equals evil I don't know. And to ram the point home, Odahviing says it's unlikely many will follow Paarthurnax in his path. Odahviing himself decides to follow you because, basically, you're an all conquering harbinger of doom and he's really down with that. Unlike Paarthurnax. In sum total, Paarthurnax was born as a creature driven to conquer and dominate, which he did. For a while, anyway, then he rebelled against Alduin, helped humans defeat the dragons, sequestered himself on a mountaintop to overcome his instinctive draconic nature, continued helping humans the whole time, never once lied to the Dragonborn even when it would benefit him or keep him safer, and left to try and get other dragons to also meditate the evil out of them. But he has a nasty name so sod it.

In terms of heavy armour, yeah the Steel Plate and Ebony are great. I like the rough utilitarianism of iron banded armour. I like the steel armour too, distinctive without being silly. The Imperial armour is good, but who doesn't like the various fantasy copies of the lorica segmentata? Dwarven makes you look like a robot, don't like that much. Orcish is....fantasy but not to a completely offensive extent. Skirts the line nicely between aesthetics and not laughing hysterically at how it could never work. The light armours definitely look way better in general for me, though some of them are "lolwut" in terms of appearance to effectiveness. Light armour is really weird though, because some of them are....well, they're clearly some form of full plate armour. Like Elven Gilded Armour. And Dragonscale. Both of which are awesome. Glass edges into silly territory, but heck, it's not anywhere near as bad as daedric. In terms of sheer aesthetic appeal, to hell with anything else, I just sling the Saviors Hide on a female character. ;)

This isn't even implied, so I have no idea why everyone just decides this is so. Skyrim was not with the Empire in the Great War, what the Empire did was recall their Skyrim legions. This is vastly different to the potential efforts of Skyrim as an independent nation. With the massively warlike culture of the Nords, combined with new resolve to commit to war with the Thalmor if you choose to side with the Stormcloaks, there is no particular reason to believe that Skyrim cannot easily field an army equal or even superior to the broken Empire (an Empire which has suffered endless catastrophes, topped off with being demolished by the Thalmor the last time round). As a comparison, the Roman Empire never outnumbered its 'barbaric' northern foes on the field of battle. We are seeing something similar; the Empire is in massive decline, exactly like it's real life inspiration was, and is not capable of standing up to even their own former provinces. Perhaps everyone is forgetting that Skyrim is the place from which men conquered Tamriel; the Nords created the First Empire of the Nords, which established men as foremost on Tamriel. They didn't conquer Cyrodill because the north of it wasn't worth the effort. The random, Draugr raising Redguard lunatic I murdered for the Forgemasters Fingers was right in describing it as a sleeping bear. Under the Empire Skyrim has sat, sleeping, letting the Legions march about. If you side with the Stormcloaks, Skyrim will marshal itself again. It does not weaken Skyrim to leave the Empire, since the Empire has already shown it not only cannot adequately defend itself anymore, but that it will outright abandon territory, the now ancient homes of its own people, because the Imperial City didn't want to sack up and keep going. Hammerfell was abandoned, stripped of Legionaries in order to retake Cyrodill, which is fair enough, but the Redguard who fought to deceive the Thalmor army there so that the Emperor could surprise the enemy in the Imperial City were utterly betrayed when the Empire didn't come back afterwards, choosing instead of abandon their loyal subjects to subjugation once their precious Imperial City was safe. Again, the Jarls weren't even consulted about the peace deal. Clearly the Empire didn't even try asking Skyrim to step up, they just shafted them. And now, Skyrim is rising up, and it's rising up powerfully enough to (if you side with the Stormcloaks) hurl the Empire straight out....and they're not finished, Ulfric is planning a continuing rearmament in order to go pick a fight with the Thalmor.

Not in real life it jolly well isn't. And certainly not when you're doing it right. And in any case, it's so iconically viking I can't for the life of me work out why we got Scaled Armour, which is some sort of fur monstrosity, instead of some good, sturdy chainmail! BAH HUMBUG! What on Earth are you going on about. They were the best heavy infantry of their era and utterly reknowned to the extent the Byzantine Empire set up the Emperors guards as a completely unchanged viking/Norman/Saxon heavy infantry force recruited only from those cultures. These professional soldiers, like the Huscarls, were heavily armoured death machines. Levied forces were likely to be wearing various forms of quilted armour; we're not talking about those.

And while we're here, why the hell do Nords use Light Armour? They're sodding viking expies....and not a little, it's just blatant. They should be going around in heavy armour! There should be enough chainmail in Skyrim to choke Alduin and every dragon he brought back to death with it! Then again, they've ruined the Imperial Legion as well. The majority of them should be wearing the Imperial heavy armour, with shields. All of a sudden they've become the Bows And Leather Brigade.

There's no peace talk if you've already unified Skyrim one way or another. I had no idea what people were talking about for a long time, because I always unify long before I reach the point where I need to capture Odahviing in Dragonreach.

Yeah I get irritable with the ridiculous doodads added needlessly to armour to make it some childish, laughable conception of 'badass' or 'cool'. It's incredibly easy to have different looking armour without it being ridiculous, especially with the wildly varying fantasy materials present in Elder Scrolls. They should have made an effort in making armours look more ornate and realistically bulky. By the time I get to Daedric I should look like a Warhammer Fantasy Chaos Warrior, a hulking brute of thick, overlapping plates, chainmail and furs, covered in runic script as a testament to the glorious workmanship of my awesome harness, powered by hearts torn still beating from the chests of daedra! ....instead I look like someone threw a bucket of tar and stalagmites at me.

It hugely amuses me that racism is being considered a greater flaw than torture chambers, unjust executions and being, y'know, a foreign oppressor who is in turn the puppet of a foreign oppressor intending to explicitly crush your very culture. A whole bunch of Nords fighting for...uh...the land of the Nords...in the face of two foreign invaders, and being a bit hotheadedly zealous in their resurgence, well that's just ridiculous! They are clearly monsters! That's not something that happens in every single war ever fought in human hist-oh. Oh. Right. It actually is. I'll remember that. The next time I go to Windhelm I'll take the racist guy and drag him into a torture chamber before an entertaining afternoon execution, because they and Ulfric can be a bit of an overbearing goon. That'll learn them! Viva la Thalmor puppets! We'll ignore Ralof....not caring where you're from. We'll ignore the murderously zealous Galmar Stone-Fist....ultimately not caring where you're from as long as you're willing to fight for Skyrim. We'll ignore Thorleif...uh...still not caring where you're from. And Wuunferth. And...everyone else. Um....yeah. Ulfric and two drunken idiots can shove it! Wooooo, Empire! Yeah! We will of course, entirely ignore Orcs telling me to shove off and stay out of their Orc-only clubhouse until I do stuff for them, just like the Stormcloaks seem to expect. Because they're orcs I guess. Maybe it's because they're green. Is green allowed to get away with that? Probably. Or possibly a pointy ear thing. Maybe they're just not important enough. Like Bretons, who are hilariously racist to Orcs. And the Dunmer, who just finished up getting mashed by the Argonians for millenia of cartoonish racism. And the constant Bosmer/Khajiit thing. Hm. As it turns out, everyone is racist. Not just a little bit, but a lot. Slavery and war racist. Maybe it's because Nords don't have fur and tails when they're being racist like everyone else....

The Thalmor are so tactlessly evil and pervasive that every copy of Skyrim might as well have come with a free house visit from a Thalmor soldier, who would carve "DESIGNATED VILLAIN" into your face and then take a dump on it. So no, I don't like the Thalmor. Liking the Thalmor is sociopathic. They openly have a policy of eventual genocide and enslavement of everyone else on top of the already known High Elf predilection for genetic cleansing of their own people.

The Empire has collapsed. Skyrim and High Rock are already the only provinces left of the hollowed out carcass of the thing we fought for in Morrowind; everyone else bar the Redguard already left it without a fight happening! And the Redguard left entirely because the Empire didn't want to fight for them. They then proved that you don't need the Empire to defeat the Thalmor, since the Redguard pushed them out not just on their own, but from the starting disadvantage of already being occupied. So far the Empire has turned crushing tactical victory into strategic defeat on a mind bogglingly epic scale. Rubbish to the idea that the Empire could have truly been 'exhausted' if a single Nord hold can orchestrate an entire civil war for the succession of Skyrim. The Empire was flat out cowardly, and Jarl Balgruuf openly states that the Jarls were never consulted regarding the humiliating peace the laughable Empire imposed upon them for its own failure. Ulfrics plans, if anyone bothers talking to him after the civil war instead of vaguely complaining about him, involve Skyrim arming itself for war. Doesn't sound like any shortage of fight in them to me. As a hilariously powerful and influential Dragonborn with direct access to Ulfric, a bit of racism is something I can viably beat out of him in the aftermath of the game. What I can't do is turn the joke of an Empire back into something that isn't a Thalmor puppet indulging in torture, religious persecution and instant execution of undesirables as a standard mode of operation.

Get the body paint, this man needs a revelation!