Skyrim. Imperial or Stormcloak?

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Empire or Stormcloak?

Empire
15
65%
Stormcloak
2
9%
Other
3
13%
Not really sure
2
9%
None of the above
1
4%
 
Total votes : 23

Skyrim. Imperial or Stormcloak?

Postby DanteHoratio » Tue Mar 21, 2017 5:31 pm

I have been playing Skyrim lately, and I was wondering. Which side are YOU on? Personally, both sides have pros and cons, it's not a black and white case.
Spoiler: show
As empires goes, the Empire in Skyrim is pretty mild and not really THAT bad. The only case of oppression they done is keep people from worshiping Talos, and even then, that was more the doing of the thalmor, and not so much the Empire.

The Empire is mainly guilty of not standing up to the Thalmor.

I can understand the Stormcloaks reason for rebellion. The problem with the Stormcloaks is that they can be kind of racist towards non Nords.

Plus, the Stormcloaks have pushed Skyrim into chaos, which is what the Thalmor and Aldmeri Dominion want.


Like I said, which side are YOU on?
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Re: Skyrim. Imperial or Stormcloak?

Postby Anglerphobe » Tue Mar 21, 2017 7:19 pm

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Their armour and weapons offend my eyes, but the Forsworn are easily the most sympathetic faction for me. Silverblood is a scumbag and the Reach natives are treated horribly by him and his goons. The actual Jarl (assuming Silverblood hasn't taken over himself) is at best indifferent and at worst actively involved in their oppression. They would have to ditch Madanach and quite a few other genocidal maniacs/crazy undead sorcerers who are great in a war but terrible in peacetime, but I would be angling to lead them myself if I campaigned on their side.

Others
The Falmer have a sympathetic history, but they are far beyond redemption by the time of the game's setting, so they're out. Bestial cruelty, cannibalism, torture, mindless violence and general lack of civility disbars them from any allegiance. I think I would campaign to exterminate them if I were a sufficiently powerful High King without other preoccupation.
The Silver Hand have a decent overall goal of wiping out Werewolves but they are radical and brutal to the point of being little better than ordinary bandits. Krev is a vicious psychopath and there is a lot of torture and murder in their outfit.
The Orcs are pretty unsympathetic, though not really a threat to anyone outside of their own land. They practice a culture of slavery and violence for its own sake, and hold their own laws within their territory which should not be allowed to keep them from obeying the law everyone else follows. Dissolving the strongholds would be a necessity eventually.
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Re: Skyrim. Imperial or Stormcloak?

Postby DanteHoratio » Tue Mar 21, 2017 8:00 pm

Of all factions, I think I like The Companions the best. I also like Jarl Balgruuf the best out of all the jarls and that he would make the best High King. He did help me out.
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Re: Skyrim. Imperial or Stormcloak?

Postby RedBearded » Tue Mar 21, 2017 8:40 pm

#TeamMephala4life 8-)
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Re: Skyrim. Imperial or Stormcloak?

Postby Marcuse » Tue Mar 21, 2017 9:11 pm

Increasingly I found it hard to support the Stormcloaks in any playthrough. Ulfric is obviously out for his own advancement and benefit, and he's pretty naked in that ambition with nothing to really balance that out in terms of advantage for Skyrim except for faintly nationalist rhetoric that turns volkish at the first opportunity. The Nords are assholes to every other group, especially Dunmer and Argonians, for no reason other than they're minorities and immigrants.

Now I might be able to say "well the Nords can't all be saints" and overlook it given it's a video game, except that little point where you find the Thalmor records that point out that Ulfric was a Thalmor prisoner and agent for long time, and even though he's cut ties with them he's basically doing their bidding unwittingly by fracturing the Empire further with his rebellion. As such he kind of wants to lose, because the only way for the Empire to have a hope of stopping the Thalmor is to keep the Empire together so the Nords can help defend the other regions. The lesson of abandoning Hammerfell is pretty prominent in the story, and they managed to keep fighting on their own. If the Empire hadn't given up on them, how much better would their fight be going?

So you have a choice between handing a selfish damaged despot power and giving free reign to openly racist policies, or keeping the empire (started by a Nord IIRC) together and taking the fight to the real enemy. I don't see a way to back the Stormcloaks over the Empire unless your character is RPing a thalmor agent or just an asshole who thrives on fucking things up.
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Re: Skyrim. Imperial or Stormcloak?

Postby gisambards » Tue Mar 21, 2017 10:45 pm

I always side with the Empire, mostly for the reasons Marcuse listed. I also just find Tullius and Rikke to be considerably more likable than Ulfric or Galmar.
The Imperials do also actually seem - in an interesting subversion of the Evil Empire trope - considerably nicer than the rebels. Even though they ban Talos worship, you still have very traditionalist Jarls on the Imperial side, like Balgruuf or Idgrod, and they don't discriminate on any grounds other than that one religion. Whereas the Stormcloaks express the desire to completely remove certain races from Skyrim, and don't allow any Jarls that don't fully support their ideology.
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Re: Skyrim. Imperial or Stormcloak?

Postby Marcuse » Wed Mar 22, 2017 1:03 am

The Imperials do also actually seem - in an interesting subversion of the Evil Empire trope - considerably nicer than the rebels. Even though they ban Talos worship


Even that religious restriction is laid at the door of the Thalmor. The White-Gold Concordat isn't something the Empire adopted because they think it's a great idea, it's one of those "do what we say or we destroy you" things imposed by the victorious elves. I got a strong hint that the second the threat to the Empire was gone, the worship of Talos would find its way back and the concordat denounced as the evil imposition of the Thalmor.
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Re: Skyrim. Imperial or Stormcloak?

Postby Cpt._Funkotron » Wed Mar 22, 2017 3:35 am

Ulfric Stormcloak = Donald Trump

Think about it.

He is promising to return Skyrim to a nebulous age of glory.

He has a dumb fucking hair cut.

He is very probably a puppet of the Thalmor, yet uses the allegation of puppetry against his enemies "you're the puppet!".

He claims to stand for the common man while having been born a nobleman with a castle and a hold and all.

He literally shouts people to pieces, with an extremely limited vocabulary nd rudimentary word structure that took him decades to learn up to that point.

He has no qualms massacring the families of rebel militants like the forsworn.

Not all his supporters are racist assholes, but all the racist assholes support Ulfric.

He is obsessed with hollow gestures and ostentatious symbols of power (like that old crown that literally everyone stole for themselves because it has really good head armor).

If he isn't a puppet, his understanding of geopolitics is complete dogshit, and if so, will in all likelihood either drive his people to ruin on idiotic but honorable intentions, or himself be usurped by cooler heads.

Elves = Muslims
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Re: Skyrim. Imperial or Stormcloak?

Postby A Combustible Lemon » Wed Mar 22, 2017 5:07 am

I usually picked Stormcloaks in the one or two times I played Skyrim (Oblivion is better) mostly because the empire is sort of... irrelevant to the grander scheme of things in Skyrim. Skyrim was a proper province until the Oblivion crisis but now, imperial Skyrim is a post-imperial imperial province following an emperor who isn't even a proper Septim of an empire that pretty much no longer exists outside of Skyrim (what with Morrowind exploding, there being like a 20 year interregnum, and the elves declaring independence) who then got legitimately challenged for right to rule according to Nord tradition and then lost. At what point does Skyrim get to leave?
The altmer dominion's never going back into the box, so the empire's gotta integrate with Skyrim nationalists or disband entirely, you can't just aid in suppressing the local religion, make the local customs of succession (Ulfric's duel) illegitimate, execute for treason the leader of a popular revolt with about half the Jarls on his side, and still act like the faction aiming for regional unity (no matter how true the sentiment, the actions are the problem here). The empire's not the glue holding the rest of the people together, they're sorta the gunk keeping Skyrim from being a more proper base of resistance against the elves. My response to the imperial question is pretty much "Why are you even still here, what do you bring to the table", and I don't know the answer to that.
Skyrim conquered Cyrodiil from the Ayleids once before, they can do it with the Altmer now.

Although really, I hate the choice in the first place. Skyrim's in a place in the lore you can't friggin get back from. I feel like a lot of the lore decisions are just theming choices to keep it grimdark and crapsack. Like Morrowind exploding. What's the fucking point except shock value and making the Dunmer a race of sadsack refugees?
The High Elves decided they were nazis. Good luck coming back from that without external help, it wasn't easy for Europe. They've written that entire bit into a corner. How do you come back from nazis better at magic than everyone else who've already won? invent a whole new continent? (related to this, my hoped for next game would be Elder Scrolls Akavir, since the Akaviri are why Tamriel is an empire at all, and the reason why Skyrim's not the capital Province and Cyrodiil is, heck they even have shouts (based on Ki), so you wouldn't have to lose the boring magic system that made Skyrim the first Elder Scrolls game with super-popular appeal)

edit: I think the empire at this point is basically the Enclave. They're not the NCR to Ulfric's Caesar. They're the Enclave to Ulfric's Caesar.
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Re: Skyrim. Imperial or Stormcloak?

Postby skrotkanon » Wed Mar 22, 2017 5:59 am

I haven't played Skyrim in years, I just remember I thought Ulfric was a whiny shit. The imperials ARE trying to make things work, at least the dudes in the questline while Ulfric just wants all the power and refuses to compromise on anything. Especially the summit on the Throat of the World proved that he only cares about himself.
Mjoll the Lioness should be empress of Tamriel, she's much cooler than any of those turkeys!

The Elder Scrolls elves are my favourite elves because they're such overt racists and supremacists. Elves are always racist assholes but since they're so pretty people excuse it.
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Re: Skyrim. Imperial or Stormcloak?

Postby Absentia » Wed Mar 22, 2017 8:03 am

Empire for life, even if Ulfric wasn't a giant douche. Hoping things turn around for them in the next game.
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Re: Skyrim. Imperial or Stormcloak?

Postby mancityfooty » Sun Mar 26, 2017 5:04 am

I've gone Imperial or leaned that way in any of my playing where I actually joined. Which was once.
I never got far enough in the story line for it to make a difference. I think my first time I got as far as defeating/ending the dragons and then the attack on Whiterun, but then I got the DLC and I'm pretty sure I started all over again.
I have it again on the 4, but I'm still working my way through the vampire missions.
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Re: Skyrim. Imperial or Stormcloak?

Postby Jack Road » Sun Mar 26, 2017 5:27 pm

I've always been an Empire man myself, regardless of what thinly veiled retelling of the history of Rome I'm currently playing. I just really like large powerful hierarchical structures. Always have, in and out of fantasy, I'm attracted to them. They make me feel safe and secure and give me a sense of purpose and belonging that I really crave. That being said, nobody besides me ever thinks living in the thousand year long stretches of stable empires is appealing. They always want to jump in when things are going to shit. And oh, boy, are things going to shit here.

I actually structure the entire game around the idea of my character as an Imperial who has always wanted to serve the Empire. Right out of the gate I mod the game so that instead of starting at Helgen, I start at my parent's farm, as a young man. One day I pack up all my stuff and head to Solitude to join the Legion. I heavily mod the way the ranking structure works and how the war goes down. I only discover I am the Dragonborn during the course of this adventure, and not right out of the gate the way the vanilla game presents it. Although I am not very good at modding myself, and am limited by what other people have done, I like to think that I eventually use my status as Dragonborn to grant legitimacy to the Empire once more, as the one true Empire of Akatosh.

But to me the Empire per the vanilla game lore is in significant trouble. A Concise Account of the Great War Between the Empire and the Aldmeri Dominion states that "Although victorious, the Imperial armies were in no shape to continue the war. The entire remaining Imperial force was gathered in Cyrodiil, exhausted and decimated by the Battle of the Red Ring. Not a single legion had more than half its soldiers fit for duty. Two legions had been effectively annihilated, not counting the loss of the Eighth during the retreat from the Imperial City the previous year."

In addition to that, the peace treaty signed by the Emperor was a substantial blow to the sovereignty of the Empire. The White-Gold Concordant's final terms were the outlawing of the worship of Talos in the Empire, formally disbanding the Blades, and delivering a large portion of southern Hammerfell into the control of the Aldmeri Dominion. Implicit in this agreement was also the understand that the Thalmor could move unhindered through Empire territories.

The first and last of these terms were likely intended specifically to cause strife between the Empire and its territories by the Thalmor, as postulated by Legate Justianus Quintius. And they did cause strife, everyone lost Hammerfell when the Redguards revolted and took it for themselves, and almost the same thing happened or could happen in Skyrim. But far more devastating, in my opinion, was the disbandment of the Empire's eyes and ears while allowing the Thalmor's eyes and ears to run willy nilly across the land.

Finally, it cannot be discounted that this is a land where gods are real, and have a real impact and presence. In that sense, the Empire has always prospered because it was the chosen Empire of Akatosh, a blessing lost at the end of the Oblivion crisis. Now, the Empire has lost that blessing before and regained it. But with this iteration they have lost a lot in the past era.

So I like the Empire, but I don't think it is going to make it to a Fifth era in its current state.
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Re: Skyrim. Imperial or Stormcloak?

Postby Windy » Sun Mar 26, 2017 10:17 pm

Ulfric = Donald Trump
Empire = Cucks
Thalmor = Our future Muslim overlords
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Re: Skyrim. Imperial or Stormcloak?

Postby Twistappel » Sat Apr 08, 2017 9:06 am

Empire. The Stormcloaks are a bunch of arsehole Nord supremacists.

Along with the Thalmor and Lydia, they head up the list of people in Skyrim I hate beyond all reason, and go out of my way to do evil shit to.

You'd think I'd be a bit less sympathetic towards the Empire, given that they were going to lop off my head simply because it was easier than dealing with their clerical stuff-up, but there it is.
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