CaptainPatch

However, the Way of the Voice is NOT the Shouts themselves. It is the philosophy of when and where Shouts should be used. "It is okay to use a Shout for this, but not for that." According to Angier, probably THE human authority of just what the Way of the Voice is or isn't. "....[T]he only true use of the Voice is for the worship and glory of the gods." The words of Shouts may not be modified or altered, but the philosophy of how and when to use Shouts IS subject to change, generation after generation.

??? I think it highly unlikely that the current Greybeards (Angeir & Co) and Jurgen Windcaller were alive at the same time, which is what would be required for Jurgen to "shove it into their minds with the power of his Thu'um". And knowledge literally handed down by word (Shout) of mouth can easily be distorted over numerous generations. [A copy of a copy of a copy..... of a copy kind of distortion.] Just look at Islam as a Real World example: Was it originally meant to be a religion of peace as the majority of Muslims contend? Or was it always a religion that promoted violence as the fundamentalist Islamic terrorists seem to believe? Time + LOTS of people = distortion.

Quite so. The way they are presented, it sort of suggests that they are optional. (Just don't start the Minuteman quest line.) However, to succeed, it really, really needs you to be frequently modding upgrades onto your weapons and armor. Heck, just to be able to scrap items to get the necessary materials requires at least one controlled settlement site.

yes but both the Bro Hood and the KKK Enclave moved East and setup shop. the Enclave though had access to a lot better transportation though. it should also be mentioned that after the rig went to the moon that is when the individual groups set off on their own many being unaware of the others remaining existence. this is why the East coast branch believed the west coast was annihilated when in truth there are survivors all over. even after FO3 there are survivors on the east coast, albeit not very many. like i said the Bro Hood did it on foot and the Enclave has Vertibirds and possibly other means of transportation. on top of that the oil rig sent their people out all over the wasteland not just to west coast locations. Unlike the unified Enclave the BoS operates on a chapter system. The BoS operates on a policy system, but as we have seen in FO3, individual chapters can and do go rogue. The Enclave EVERYWHERE, otoh, seems to operate under a single purpose, with no interior divisions contending for control of the entire organization. As for the BoS "moving East", never happened. That is, no BoS chapter from the West Coast migrated to the East Coast. If I recall correctly, Lyons' chapter originated in Chicago, went to Pittsburgh, then settled in the DC Wasteland. I haven't gotten far enough into FO4 yet, but I believe that BoS presence in the Commonwealth are from yet another entirely different chapter. (DC Wasteland certainly didn't have the numbers to remain there AND project as much force into the CW that we see.) It is a MUCH simpler conclusion that the Enclave already had East Coast facilities in place all along, and that its continental network had efficient communication between facilities to remain unified, even after the oil rig went orbital.

Meh. That's like saying that EVERYONE has the ability to pull the trigger on a gun; therefore EVERYONE is capable of murder. Arngeir says that he was tempted to use the Voice in anger, but EVERYBODY gets tempted to do violence sooner or later. Yet, the overwhelming majority seldom yield to the temptation. It's their strict adherence to their personal beliefs that prevent them from yielding, thus making it that they "can't" do violence -- because they choose not to.

Meh. That we know of.... The oil rig was off the West Coast. That goes kablooey and many years later a well-entrenched Enclave network of installations appear on the East Coast. There is a lot of irradiated continent in between West and East. Undoubtedly, the Enclave had its own sprawling network of Vaults scattered across the blasted landscape. Plus obviously some kind of networked communications between their installations throughout the intervening centuries. (Otherwise there wouldn't be a unified single Enclave, but rather a half-dozen different cells claiming that they were the "legitimate" Enclave.)

You have to have the Local Leader perk to initate the Supply network command. To get that perk, your Charisma needs to meet some minimum that I believe is 5 or 6.

20-30? Would that be 20-30 Dawnguards or Dragonborns? Obviously not; holding release until they had 20+ would mean release sometime after 2020. Maybe 20-30 of "Could you deliver this package to ______ for me?" quests perhaps. 20-30 is asking for A LOT. Even "simple" quests require Someone or a situation that creates the quest. A destination for the quest. Events that occur during the execution of the quest. Thorough integration with the vanilla game. ALL of the additional voice acting for all of the inevitable dialogs. Integration of the aftermath of the completion or failure of the quest. ("Aren't you the person that ______?") An extensive continuity examination to make sure that nothing in the vanilla game contradicts the quest, nor that anything in the quest contradicts anything in the vanilla game, and that there are no time paradoxes of quest events occurring before or after vanilla events. Etc. Getting just a half-dozen sidequests on one DLC would be quite an accomplishment.

I think it is also noteworthy that the Enclave was also being subjected to an inadvertent multi-generational experiment. While they were holed up wherever it was that they hid for two hundred years, collecting data from the Vaults, their entire group was forced to live in a cramped space, suffering from prolonged social and psychological claustrophobia + agoraphobia (given that outside their shelter it was a radioactive hellhole). That is, the Enclave that surfaced after the Apocalypse was not the same Enclave that went into their sheltered environment. Very likely, priorities have shifted, including a driving need to make the Enclave the ONLY survivors on the planet. Consider that the Enclave scheme in FO3 was to sabotage Project Purity so that it selectively eliminated any and all mutants from the gene pool. But given that anyone born on the surface after the Apocalypse was in all likelihood, genetically mutated to at least some minor degree. Which means that the sabotaged Project Purity would have most likely poisoned 99+% of the people and creatures that inhabited the Capitol Wasteland.

I seem to recall that Vault-Tec was NOT an instigator, but rather a tool created by another Janus-faced group, the Enclave. The world was dying, rapidly. As the saying goes, "The handwriting was on the wall." The Enclave, the shadow government behind the US Government's public face, had determined what was necessary was to conduct a large interplanetary mass migration. (Consisting of the Powers That Be in the Enclave, plus an adequate number of Enclave-approved support personnel.) But the Enclave realized that such a space voyage would be multi-generational, and it would impose significant sociological and psychological stresses of which the consequences were unknown. So the Vault-Tec con was developed, to create a LARGE sample of Humanity placed in a variety of stressful situations, each circumstance conveniently separated and isolated to prevent sample contamination. The goal of these many, many experiments was to ascertain in advance the kinds of complications that might arise during a multi-generational space voyage. Instigating the Last Great War was a means to assure that the sample groups stayed put, for the duration of the experiment. The Enclave openly manifesting itself indicates that it had collected enough data from its many experiments to formulate a practical sociological model for the impending voyage. Or not. It could very well be that despite their many Vault-Tec experiments, nothing suggested a sure-fire model to conduct the impending multi-generational space voyage. Which means that if the Enclave can't rest assured that the trip would end as they intended, then it would have to make the best of it in the shattered world that the Enclave created. Which, of course, require that it would be the Enclave being in control of everything, and everyone being obedient and compliant to the Enclave.

I don't think you can say that the LDB was NOT destined to confront Miraak. Miraak was, after all, sending cultists to attempt to assassinate LDB. (Which sort of suggests Miraak wasn't really all that bright. To think that three cultists could take down someone that has demonstrated repeatedly that he can take down dragons.) That is, Miraak was forcing the confrontation. At some point, after the first assassination attempt of the 27th, the ONLY way to not be jumping at shadows for the rest of his life would be to find Miraak and put an end to him. Harkon, otoh was indeed entirely optional. That question was something could conceivably been done by Isran and his followers. There was nothing in the quest that smacked of "The LDB is the ONLY person that can carry out this quest." It's just that out of everyone in a position to do the quest, the LDB would most likely have the easiest time of it.

Well, I seem to recall that bare corncobs had a different use than a cob that still had all its kernels. :rolleyes: As for corncobs, I can offer a first-hand confirmation: Growing up, my relatives on a dairy farm were still using outhouses. Next to the outhouse they used to keep a chicken-coop-wire crib filled with shucked corncobs. It seems that cobs work just as well as pages from the Sears catalog. And when the outhouses depository was dredged out, the used cobs made for excellent compost heap content. [Re-use. Recycle. Renew.]

Hmm. Riften and Windhelm for sure. But I don't recall court magicians in Dawnstar and Winterhold. On the Imperial/non-Stormcloak side, there is one in Solitude, Morthal, and Whiterun, but not in Markarth and Falkreath. If the emphasis is on "large", I would think Markarth qualifies as such, while Morthal would not.

I don't believe you can really say that FO4 has significantly fewer Vaults. FO3, with all its DLCs added, had 6 Vaults -- 87, 92, 101, 106, 108, and 112. FONV likewise had 6 -- 3, 11, 19, 21, 22, and 34. In comparison, as of this time, FO4 has 5 Vaults -- 75, 81, 95, 111, and 114. HOWEVER, with the prospect of ALL of FO4's DLCs yet to come, additional Vaults may be added. In the end, FO4 could easily have more Vaults than any of its predecessors.

This is a VERY important element to the "Can Skyrim stand alone?" discussion: Skyrim can become an independent nation ONLY if the DB sides with the Stormcloaks. If the DB sides with the Empire, the Stormcloaks are over, done, kaput. Even if the Nords are mighty warriors. Which shows that they most likely could NOT resist an AD invasion without the DB's assistance. Absent the DB's assistance to either side, the Stormcloaks never take control of all of Skyrim, but neither does the Empire suppress the rebellion. In which case, when the AD and Empire resume the Great War, Part II, both sides of the civil war lose to the AD. UNLESS the DB (if he's still around) decides to aid the Empire against the AD.

There are two ways to look at the Fall of the Roman Empire: Either as two distinct entities, East and West, with the West falling relatively soon after the split. (Split 395 A.D., and West falls in 476 A.D.) The East remains and becomes Byzantium, which in its turn, doesn't fall until 1453 A.D. Viewed as being still a single entity, then it is one where half the body gets diseased and then eventually amputated to save what remains. The two entity version is MUCH more practical because while termed "co-emperors", they did NOT jointly rule over the same real estate. The Western emperor rule his area his way and the Eastern emperor ruled over his area his way. "Help" provided by the Eastern empire actually boiled down to grabbing Western real estate and transferring control to the Eastern empire. The primary reason that the West fell is because unlike the East, it experienced numerous migrations of barbarians and couldn't assimilate them fast enough. In effect, the Roman sociological and cultural influence was rapidly and drastically "diluted". At the fall of the West, the greater majority of its citizens did NOT see themselves as being "Roman". Rather, most still saw themselves as being primarily members of whatever Germanic tribe they were born into. The Western Romans could not rally a defense of the Roman "Motherland" or "Fatherland" or anything of the kind of "we-ness versus them" patriotic fervor that earlier Roman leaders could invoke. And note that at the sequence of events that led to the West's final collapse, there wasn't any move from the East to help forestall that outcome. Rather, the East's response was to grab some Western real estate that bordered on Eastern real estate. That pretty much illustrates that at that time (and for quite awhile before) the East and West rulers saw themselves as being two distinctly different political entities. ***** Distinctly different from the situation in Tamriel, the Western Roman Empire did NOT fall to the concerted efforts of just ONE opponent. Rather, it was eroded by one adversary after another after another after .... Further, none of those adversaries threatened the East in any meaningful way. Rather, the East eventually fell to an opponent that didn't even exist until after the West was long dead and gone. This is sooooo different because the same opponent to the Empire also has designs on Skyrim. And if that foe is mighty enough to bring down the Empire, how difficult would it be to then finish off ityy-bitty Skyrim?

The two situations are not at all analogous. Prior to the Fall of Rome, the Roman Empire had already split into two distinctly different empires, East and West, quite a while earlier. The incursions of the barbarian tribes into the Western empire only had to contend with the forces -- and poor leadership -- of the Western empire. Had the Empire still been unified under the much more dynamic leadership of the Eastern empire, there is a strong likelihood that they would have been repulsed and trounced. But that surmise is a Might-Have-Been to which we will never know the answer. To have the Eastern leadership in control would have required yet another Roman civil war. And such a civil war would have undoubtedly left the re-unified Empire weaker. Perhaps so weak that it would have made even the recombined empire vulnerable to the barbarian incursions.

Sounds like a literally "self-fulfilling prophecy". "That may be the way the word is usually defined, but in our case we are defining the word this way." What if they were even more restrictive in the way they prefer to define the term? "The Hero MUST be male." (A female would be a "heroine" after all.) "The Hero MUST be Human." (So much for Argonians, Khajit, or any flavor of Mer.) Maybe narrow the field by limiting just what age the prospective Hero MUST be. "Truth is whatever the Prophet says it is. If you don't like his version of the Truth, go find yourself a different Prophet."

If I recall correctly, when your settlements produce caps, you find them in the Misc section of the workbench Inventory. HOWEVER, I don't recall caps being a line item in the player's Inventory. The current total is just shown as a running total at the bottom of the Inventory screen. That is, if I am recalling correctly, you can't put caps down, outside of spending them. [i could be utterly wrong on that account.]

That's something of an overstatement. In Tamriel's history, there have been plenty of "heroes". (The quotes is because "hero" is defined by the victors for which the hero was battling. The losers would probably be using a different label.) Ysgramor. Tiber Septim. Others I can't think of off the top of my head. It would be more accurate to say that player characters won't be around to do jack squat. Mainly because it would be impossible for the devs to predict and plan for the myriad of different outcomes that millions of players would create. Safer to just advance the calendar to a time beyond the expected lifespan of the heroic player characters and create a generic history to fill the intervening chronology. A timeline that writes the player character into the background.

A point of order: Three cities in Hammerfell and most of the cities in Cyrodiil were occupied NO cities in Highrock or Skyrim were occupied by the AD. That means that "most of the cities of the Empire were occupied" is an overstatement. Which illuminates that it is men fighting men that gives the Mer any hope of success. Movements that create divisions within the Empire is what is weakening Man in its confrontation with Mer. How you contend that it would be more advantageous for PART of the forces of Man will prevail against the Mer in the long run while at the same time saying ALL the forces unified in the Empire is doomed to failure defies logic. Or are you suggesting that Man is entirely doomed to failure anyway, so it is morally better for the Nords to lose united under their own independent banner? "Better to die as Nords than to die as Imperial lackeys!" Dead is dead. The net effect would be the Mer ascendant and what remains of Mankind subjugated.

LOL. If there is no longer a war, there are no longer two sides to remain neutral in between. ALL of Skyrim would be Imperial. To be independent of the Empire would be outside of the Empire, and therefore independent of Imperial Law. That would be the start of a rebellion in and of itself. What you are looking at would be the difference between Federal Law and State enforcement of that Law. The State may choose to NOT enforce a Federal Law, in which case it is left to the Feds to send in their own agents to enforce the Law. (Which the State probably would not interfere with that enforcement.) The NOT-enforcement is more a political statement rather than an act of rebellion. And who knows? The Feds may decide to not bother to send agents to enforce the Law. The difference is that while both sides are building up, the Empire would most likely be able to start the next go-around with a surprise attack. That's what gave the AD the big advantage in the Great War: a surprise invasion that the Empire had not been prepared to withstand. If the Empire chose to NOT be that provocative, at least in Round Two, the Imperial forces would be prepared to stand against an AD invasion. The military rule-of-thumb is that invaders require at least a 3-to-1 numerical advantage against a prepared defense. If both sides are relatively equal and equally prepared, then it is the attacker that would be likely to lose. So then the race in the long run would be to see which side can breed warriors faster. (Which what evidence exists suggests that humans breed MUCH faster than elves.) "A man's life of 50 years under the sky is nothing compared to the age of this world. Life is but a fleeting dream, an illusion -- Is there anything that lasts forever?" I fail to see how this relates to this discussion. "Why strive to accomplish anything? In the long run, it will mean absolutely nothing." Ever hear of the Treaty of Versailles? I doubt that any of the central Powers felt that the Allies were giving up anything in that deal. It's called a "peace treaty", and quite often the terms are unilateral: the loser gives concessions and the winner agrees to stop beating the bejeezus out of the loser. Most often, in cases where BOTH sides wish to end conflict when no clear winner can be ascertained, the peace treaty would be labeled "Compromise". I fail to see the word "compromise" in "White-Gold Concordat".

This is pretty much the same rationale the Germans used in two world wars for invading Belgium, just to get at France. "There are no Neutrals in war; just highways to be traversed to get at one's opponents." The righteousness of the attacker -- or lack thereof - is that the opponent did NOT use the same rationale to trample on the Neutral. That is, NOT attacking a Neutral was an option and restriction that applied to BOTH combatants. The one that decides that "My need supersedes their right to be Neutral" is the one that is more morally bankrupt.

There is a difference between goals, ideals, and strategic objectives. The Stormcloaks' goal is to have a unified Skyrim under the Stormcloak banner with the Empire entirely gone (along with ALL Thalmor). The Stormcloak strategic objective is to control the vital Whiterun crossroads. But the Stormcloak ideals.... Those are the "What are we fighting for?" answers. For the religious freedom to worship Talos unhindered. (Which is NOT the same as Freedom of Religion.) For the predominance of Nord culture within Skyrim. ("Skyrim belongs to the Nords!") For restoration of respect for the Old Ways. How does attacking Whiterun improve any of those things beyond what is already the case in Whiterun?

I have to completely agree with this analysis. Ulfric's ultimatum to Whiterun is nothing more than a terrorist threat: "You are either with us or against us -- and if against us, we WILL destroy you." There were four other provinces that WERE entirely Imperial adherents that the Stormcloaks could have chosen to assail. Instead they attack the only true Neutral in the equation. And as you eloquently point out, that Neutral had been demonstrating a clear affinity for the Stormcloaks -- open Talos worship -- so the attack on Whiterun had literally NOTHING to do with furthering Stormcloak ideals. Balgruuf even demonstrated his adherence to the Old Ways that Ulfric claims to champion by sending Ulfric his axe. By attacking Whiterun, Ulfric loses all credibility.