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So, just got my new tattoo today, been wanting this for a while, and a coue of comments that people have made got me thinking about a lot of things in the elderscrolls world. I am a player of TES iii-v, not eso and not arena or daggerfall so my understandings and a lot of my knowledge of the lore comes from those sources.
I want this post to be a collection of thoughts and discussions, with anyone who wants to join in, on the Elder Scrolls universe.
WARNING: POTENTIAL SPOILERS AFTER THIS POINT AND IN COMMENTS
The first thought for this ‘collection’ is that Skyrim doesn’t really have a recognisable guild system as the previous instalments do. Part of this could be explained away by the ‘passage of time’ between Oblivion and Skyrim, or even it may be that they exist but are outside the interests of the player character. Whatever the reasoning for the absence I think that the Companions and the College of Winterhold are pretty poor excuses as replacements. The CoW, for example, allows a player to progress from ‘student’ to headmaster/mistress of the college with the only demonstrable magical requirement being the limited “Do task X” which doubles as the entrance exam. An exam that can be bypassed if the player has progressed along the storyline a bit and gets the chance to proclaim “lol i’m the dragon born” on arrival. The tasks within the college amount to little less than a standard Mercenary’s fare of busywork and tasks of dubious difficulty, none of which *require* any demonstration, or even use, of magic. The CoW has guild-like aspects, but at the same time doesn’t commit to them in any real magnitude. It’s like a bunch of kids “Uh. You just completed a lot of tasks and helped us, you can be the leader now.
The companions have a somewhat different governing method but it still boils down to tasks=promotion. In operation they work like little more than a band of mercenaries rather than a coherent, far-reaching organisation with both the knowledge and workforce to be useful across many fields.
I want this post to be a collection of thoughts and discussions, with anyone who wants to join in, on the Elder Scrolls universe.
WARNING: POTENTIAL SPOILERS AFTER THIS POINT AND IN COMMENTS
The first thought for this ‘collection’ is that Skyrim doesn’t really have a recognisable guild system as the previous instalments do. Part of this could be explained away by the ‘passage of time’ between Oblivion and Skyrim, or even it may be that they exist but are outside the interests of the player character. Whatever the reasoning for the absence I think that the Companions and the College of Winterhold are pretty poor excuses as replacements. The CoW, for example, allows a player to progress from ‘student’ to headmaster/mistress of the college with the only demonstrable magical requirement being the limited “Do task X” which doubles as the entrance exam. An exam that can be bypassed if the player has progressed along the storyline a bit and gets the chance to proclaim “lol i’m the dragon born” on arrival. The tasks within the college amount to little less than a standard Mercenary’s fare of busywork and tasks of dubious difficulty, none of which *require* any demonstration, or even use, of magic. The CoW has guild-like aspects, but at the same time doesn’t commit to them in any real magnitude. It’s like a bunch of kids “Uh. You just completed a lot of tasks and helped us, you can be the leader now.
The companions have a somewhat different governing method but it still boils down to tasks=promotion. In operation they work like little more than a band of mercenaries rather than a coherent, far-reaching organisation with both the knowledge and workforce to be useful across many fields.
