Join Empire or Stormcloaks? My Thoughts

[fraquar]

There is no reason to keep a Military Governor in an Imperial province that isn't a hostile Imperial province. Skyrim is a self-ruling province that only stopped becoming self-ruling when the Imperial puppet High King was assassinated (essentially what Ulfric did when Torygg stood a snowballs chance in hell of ever defeating him in a challenge). Once the Civil War is decided, Tullius has no job in Skyrim - it will return to self-rule. If it doesn't then the Skyrim citizens may very well finally realize what Ulfric was fighting for the whole time.

 

The problem with self-rule is they don't necessarily have to be as willingly condoning the Thalmor moving at free will in their territory (treaty or no treaty) - that political massaging will require an Imperial presence to deal with. The reality is the EMPIRE should be enforcing the treaty - not the Thalmor. All the Thalmor should be doing is MONITORING that the treaty is being honored.

 

It seems you guys are thinking along the lines of the Romans, who were outsiders who conquered and had to keep an Imperial military presence in the occupied territories.

Edited September 27, 2015 by fraquar

[CaptainPatch]

This isn't Earth. Populations can be whatever the want them to be. Populations that small managed in North America just fine over a much larger area before European settlers arrived. Humanity hasn't always had modern (or even medieval) population levels, and the world hasn't really significantly changed size. As for epidemics, well again, what is different with reality? Epidemics usually come with larger populations. Smaller populations offer much less chance for anything nasty to breed or evolve.

One of the most significant things that happened in the Western Hemisphere was introduced by European explorers: European diseases from which the natives had ZERO immunity. By the time the first settlers arrived, the overall population had dropped by nearly 90% in many/most areas. There were entire tribes that ceased to exist, before European settlers built their first cabin. Depopulation from disease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_history_of_indigenous_peoples_of_the_Americas

 

Populations that are too small and isolated have the added problem that they lack genetic diversity. (There's a reason why most civilized societies don't allow siblings or first cousins to marry.) [but since this is "just a game", that can probably be disregarded.... along with any other realistic considerations.]

There is no reason to keep a Military Governor in an Imperial province that isn't a hostile Imperial province.

Except that Tullius is NOT a Military Governor of Skyrim. He is strictly the director of Imperial military operations in Skyrim and primary liaison with the local legitimate government.

Edited September 27, 2015 by CaptainPatch

[kimmera]

There is no reason to keep a Military Governor in an Imperial province that isn't a hostile Imperial province. Skyrim is a self-ruling province that only stopped becoming self-ruling when the Imperial puppet High King was assassinated (essentially what Ulfric did when Torygg stood a snowballs chance in hell of ever defeating him in a challenge). Once the Civil War is decided, Tullius has no job in Skyrim - it will return to self-rule. If it doesn't then the Skyrim citizens may very well finally realize what Ulfric was fighting for the whole time.

 

The problem with self-rule is they don't necessarily have to be as willingly condoning the Thalmor moving at free will in their territory (treaty or no treaty) - that political massaging will require an Imperial presence to deal with. The reality is the EMPIRE should be enforcing the treaty - not the Thalmor. All the Thalmor should be doing is MONITORING that the treaty is being honored.

 

It seems you guys are thinking along the lines of the Romans, who were outsiders who conquered and had to keep an Imperial military presence in the occupied territories.

 

After Markarth, the Thalmor are not going to just blindly trust the Empire to keep their end of the deal, at least not until the rebellion is completely wiped out. "This is an internal matter" doesn't cut it when they have given the Thalmor that kind of a door. Ulfric and his 'But the Empire agreed to let us worship.... ' He opened the door for them.

 

 

 

This isn't Earth. Populations can be whatever the want them to be. Populations that small managed in North America just fine over a much larger area before European settlers arrived. Humanity hasn't always had modern (or even medieval) population levels, and the world hasn't really significantly changed size. As for epidemics, well again, what is different with reality? Epidemics usually come with larger populations. Smaller populations offer much less chance for anything nasty to breed or evolve.

One of the most significant things that happened in the Western Hemisphere was introduced by European explorers: European diseases from which the natives had ZERO immunity. By the time the first settlers arrived, the overall population had dropped by nearly 90% in many/most areas. There were entire tribes that ceased to exist, before European settlers built their first cabin. Depopulation from disease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_history_of_indigenous_peoples_of_the_Americas

 

Populations that are too small and isolated have the added problem that they lack genetic diversity. (There's a reason why most civilized societies don't allow siblings or first cousins to marry.) [but since this is "just a game", that can probably be disregarded.... along with any other realistic considerations.]

There is no reason to keep a Military Governor in an Imperial province that isn't a hostile Imperial province.

Except that Tullius is NOT a Military Governor of Skyrim. He is strictly the director of Imperial military operations in Skyrim and primary liaison with the local legitimate government.

 

 

There were no such breakouts with respect to the Roman Empire. That was cross migration of disease from an outside larger population (Europe). If no such population exists in Tamriel, if all populations are low, then there is no source for that kind of event.

 

And even despite smallpox, etc, and despite deliberate attempts to infect various native bands, they were not completely wiped out in North America. Furthermore, there are cure disease potions and spells in Tamriel that are pretty much absolute (except of course where a writer finds them inconvenient and just arbitrarily ignores them). It isn't the same situation.

[CaptainPatch]

There were no such breakouts with respect to the Roman Empire. That was cross migration of disease from an outside larger population (Europe). If no such population exists in Tamriel, if all populations are low, then there is no source for that kind of event.

 

And even despite smallpox, etc, and despite deliberate attempts to infect various native bands, they were not completely wiped out in North America. Furthermore, there are cure disease potions and spells in Tamriel that are pretty much absolute (except of course where a writer finds them inconvenient and just arbitrarily ignores them). It isn't the same situation.

As bad as the Black Death plagues were, the die-off amounted to "only" 33%. In a LARGE population, that is eminently survivable. 90%, otoh, is catastrophic, no matter what the size of the population. Yes, some/most native tribes survived, but in a seriously weakened state that helped to make them pushovers to European incursions. And quite a few tribes and sub-tribes (clan equivalents) vanished entirely. Accounts in New England described numerous native communities where only the structures remained. Given that native History was almost entirely oral history, there simply were not enough survivors of many vanished tribes to pass on the story of their demise.

 

Spacing of communities isn't as important as the amount of interactivity between communities and community members. For example, it doesn't matter that two communities are a hundred miles apart if there is a traveling merchant that runs a caravan from an infected community and travels to the distant community. And then to another and another and another... Of course, an important factor is the nature of the deadly disease itself. If an infected subject shows symptoms almost immediately, then it's possible to quarantine that person and keep him away from everyone else until he dies or recovers. If, otoh, a person can be contagious for days/weeks before showing symptoms, that disease WILL be quite pervasive.

 

Also keep in mind that the Indian tribes in the Western Hemisphere pre-Columbus were often HUGE, with communities exceeding 100,000 population being relatively common. By the time the European settlers arrived, tribes that exceeded a couple thousand in total were quite rare. (But a hundred years later, as the survivors had built up substantial antibodies, tribal populations were on the rebound.)

[kimmera]

With due respect, you are ignoring the degree to which there was a dedicated effort to deliberately eliminate the natives. The Haida on the west coast had a population of approx 10,000 at first contact, not 100,000. That dropped to around 350 with smallpox but is up to around 4500 today, 2500 of which live in their original lands (Haida Gwaii, renamed the Queen Charlotte Islands by settlers, then back to Haida Gwaii in 2010), and the other 2000 scattered around the world.

 

This was on the west coast though in an area without heavy settlement, so their was a lot less pressure to deliberately remove them.

 

But again, that is in the real world, where there were Europeans to encounter, who had much higher populations and the diseases that bred in those larger populations. Tamriel is a fictional fantasy setting, so its population, population density and population growth are all completely up to the writers. The point is that small populations rarely spontaneously die out on their own. Smallpox came in from outside (essentially the equivalent of Dagoth Ur's Blight, but that was stopped by the Nerevarine).

 

And again, there are cures and resistances that don't exist in RL. If it was a real setting, Mer would be carriers of all sorts of things since their disease resistance would potentially make them ideal carriers (again arguably part of Dagoth Ur's plot, since he was trying to drive out the non-Mer). Realistically, humans would have already faced their smallpox equivalent on meeting Mer.

 

Expectations of real world issues are problematic in any fantasy world. Heck, maybe populations are low *because* of constant disease issues that are simply taken for granted. There are Daedra Lords of plague (Namira) and pestilence (Peryite)

[fraquar]

What treaty gives the right to anyone to indiscriminately capture, torture and kill civilians of the side the signed the treaty and they be perfectly fine with that? That's nuts. It is the Empire's OBLIGATION to abide by the terms of the treaty they signed, which means they should be the ones doing the policing - not the Thalmor. It sure as hell looks as if the Empire is choosing NOT to honor their obligation and letting the Thalmor run buck wild doing whatever they feel like. Even going so far as giving them access to a fort to torture people (and they know they are doing that, and handed them a prisoner to be tortured), absolute lunacy of epic proportions.

 

And we wonder why there is a Civil War in Skryim.

[kimmera]

What treaty gives the right to anyone to indiscriminately capture, torture and kill civilians of the side the signed the treaty and they be perfectly fine with that? That's nuts. It is the Empire's OBLIGATION to abide by the terms of the treaty they signed, which means they should be the ones doing the policing - not the Thalmor. It sure as hell looks as if the Empire is choosing NOT to honor their obligation and letting the Thalmor run buck wild doing whatever they feel like. Even going so far as giving them access to a fort to torture people (and they know they are doing that, and handed them a prisoner to be tortured), absolute lunacy of epic proportions.

 

And we wonder why there is a Civil War in Skryim.

 

That is only a very small portion of the population that is happening to, and it isn't clear that was happening before Markarth. Again, Ulfric opened the door by trying to blackmail Skyrim and the Empire into breaking the treaty.

 

And in RL people get extradited all the time for things they didn't do in their native country, or for actions that violate a treaty or otherwise broke another country's laws. An example would be Canadian drug laws, which aren't as strict as US laws but are heavily influenced by the historical US nigh zero tolerance even for drug possession. A Canadian was infamous for shipping pot seeds to the US, and was extradited to the US to face charges, convicted and did jail time despite never being charged in Canada.

 

The US similarly is charging the head of FIFA and is working on getting him extradited to the US.

 

I am not sure you understand modern international law or the degree to which the US tries to extend its legal system beyond US borders in RL, let alone any actions by the Thalmor.

[CaptainPatch]

What treaty gives the right to anyone to indiscriminately capture, torture and kill civilians of the side the signed the treaty and they be perfectly fine with that? That's nuts. It is the Empire's OBLIGATION to abide by the terms of the treaty they signed, which means they should be the ones doing the policing - not the Thalmor. It sure as hell looks as if the Empire is choosing NOT to honor their obligation and letting the Thalmor run buck wild doing whatever they feel like. Even going so far as giving them access to a fort to torture people (and they know they are doing that, and handed them a prisoner to be tortured), absolute lunacy of epic proportions.

Post-WW2, who was it that was busily tracking down Nazis throughout Germany and Austria? It wasn't the German government. "To the victors goes the spoils." By the terms of the WGC, Talos worship is forbidden. It doesn't specify who was supposed to conduct the actual policing. The Empire had been giving that part of the treaty lip service. But then the Markarth Incident occurred and the Thalmor saw that lip service for what it was. So, "If you won't uphold that part of the treaty, then we will have to do it!" To which the Empire agreed. (Better to have Talos worshipers hating the Thalmor for hunting them down then for them to be hating the Empire for having done it. Cheaper for the Empire too.)

[kimmera]

 

What treaty gives the right to anyone to indiscriminately capture, torture and kill civilians of the side the signed the treaty and they be perfectly fine with that? That's nuts. It is the Empire's OBLIGATION to abide by the terms of the treaty they signed, which means they should be the ones doing the policing - not the Thalmor. It sure as hell looks as if the Empire is choosing NOT to honor their obligation and letting the Thalmor run buck wild doing whatever they feel like. Even going so far as giving them access to a fort to torture people (and they know they are doing that, and handed them a prisoner to be tortured), absolute lunacy of epic proportions.

Post-WW2, who was it that was busily tracking down Nazis throughout Germany and Austria? It wasn't the German government. "To the victors goes the spoils." By the terms of the WGC, Talos worship is forbidden. It doesn't specify who was supposed to conduct the actual policing. The Empire had been giving that part of the treaty lip service. But then the Markarth Incident occurred and the Thalmor saw that lip service for what it was. So, "If you won't uphold that part of the treaty, then we will have to do it!" To which the Empire agreed. (Better to have Talos worshipers hating the Thalmor for hunting them down then for them to be hating the Empire for having done it. Cheaper for the Empire too.)

 

 

Moreover there are still US troops in Germany, although these days mostly to watch the Russians...

[fraquar]

We aren't talking about tracking down German war criminals here, who would be kept ALIVE and tried in a court.

We ARE talking about allowing the enemy on foreign soil to KIDNAP, TORTURE and MURDER citizens in their own homeland. Not only that, giving them the very apparatus (Northwatch Keep) to conduct those operations. Worse yet, the Imperials handing over Skyrim citizens to the Thalmor for that very torture.

 

It's nuts. It's insanity. In fact, it demonstrate an Imperial government that essentially has ZERO control over what is happening in Skyrim - a province of their Empire.

Edited October 2, 2015 by fraquar