First Playthrough: Reflections

So far, Lothar Ironfoot has completed the main questlines of Skyrim, Dawnguard, and Dragonborn, as well as the Civil War and all of the faction questlines (he chose to Destroy the Dark Brotherhood).  He has also finished an impressive number of titled side quests, including most of the Daedric quests, and countless untitled minor quests.  Frankly, there are very few new quests left for Lothar to do, and while I’m sure I’ve overlooked some minor moral dilemmas here and there, I think I have seen most of the game’s opportunities for moral agency.

This is not to say that I am done with the game, the blog, or even Lothar for that matter, but I think that now is a good time to reflect on what my experiences with Lothar taught me and to prepare to write about my second playthough – one from a very different moral stance.  What follows, in no particular order, are what I consider to be the big takeaways from my first playthrough.

Lothar as Player Avatar

I set out, as role players often do, to play Lothar as a version of myself – what I think I would be like if I were Dovahkiin.  My own moral and ethical profile is the easiest for me to access, and given that I did not know the outcomes of each quest ahead of time, playing from such a close perspective granted an immediacy to the experience that allowed me to think more genuinely about each dilemma.  There are limits to this approach, of course; I am Catholic and an English teacher in a middle-class suburb in 2013, not a legendary warrior in a fantasy Iron Age universe ruled by multiple Divines and Daedra, so my concept of right and wrong doesn’t translate neatly.  Life or death decisions are, thankfully, not part of my everyday experience.  

I point out this difficultly of translation because I want to be clear that Lothar is simultaneously representative and aspirational for me; in some ways, he acts in way I hope I would act in a similar position, but in others, he represents moral and ethical compromises that I must admit I would probably make were I in Tamriel.  I can’t justify all of my/Lothar’s actions, but I can certainly own all of them.

Law and Order

That I sided with the Empire in the Civil War is not at all surprising; in real life, I would rather be part of a flawed organization and attempt to correct its errors than reject it entirely.  As an America, rebellion is in my national DNA, but if I’m being completely honest, I’d rather fix the system than fight it most of the time.  Of course, that’s not always possible in real life, but given the binary choice in the Civil War questline, choosing the Empire was more “like me.” 

What surprised me, though, was how quickly I found ways to justify my actions within the Thieves’ Guild.  Joining (and then leading) a criminal organization is not my style at all, but I managed to make sense of it by looking at the bigger picture. If the Empire was going to take on the Dominion again, then having the Dovahkiin at the head of all of the major factions makes the most sense, even if one of the factions is a gang of burglars, pickpockets, and cutpurses.  Still, in doing so, I became comfortable with breaking the law and stealing from (and sometimes framing) a wide assortment of people.  I tried to mitigate the problem by choosing my targets carefully when I could, but I cannot escape the reality that I was willing to do very shady things in pursuit of a stable Skyrim.

The Role of the Daedric Princes and the Lure of Power

One of the common refrains in this blog has been how much a resented the manipulation inherent in most of the Daedric quests.  Time and time again, I have been impressed by commenters who thought up creative ways to thwart the Daedra; I, on the other hand, usually went along with the quest, did what I was asked to do (even if I chose the “mouthier” dialogue options), and claimed the artifact.  While I stand by my justifications in most of those cases, I still have to confess that I found ways to rationalize actions I would never had done were it not for the promise of greater power.

This situation is particularly thorny for me when I consider that most of the Daedric Princes are a translation of Christian demonology into the universe of the Elder Scrolls.  The Divines are transcendent and aloof, apart for Talos, the man who became a god.  The Daedric Princes, however, appear to mortals on a regular basis, often to manipulate them for their own purposes.  In fact, I would go so far as to argue that most of the Daedric Princes represent a traditional Judeo-Christian type of Satan figure.  Clavicus Vile is the deal-maker, as in Faust’s Mephistopheles; Molag Bal is not only named after Moloch and Baal, but is represented as the satyr-rapist; Mephala is the dark whisperer, the serpent sowing dissention in Eden; Peryite and Namira are the Hebraic unclean ones; Boethiah is the betrayer; Mehrunes Dagon, named after a Babylonian god, is the divine usurper, like Milton's Lucifer; Hermaeus Mora is the Lovecraftian hoarder of forbidden knowledge, and his books look a lot like the Necronomicon; Sanguine is the devil by way of Bacchus.  The implications of fulfilling their quests takes on a more sinister tint when viewed through such a lens.   

The Need for Closure

One aspect of my first playthrough for which I was not prepared was my discomfort with unfinished quests.  I really appreciated the quests that allowed me to fail if I did not wish to complete them.  Having an open quest provided far too much temptation for me to violate Lothar's moral profile.  Let me offer three examples:

• Pieces of the Past: I liked this quest because my refusal to kill Silus put the Razor out of my reach forever.  I was able to congratulation myself on taking the high road.
• Boethiah's Calling: I had no way to fail this quest, so I kept thinking about followers whom I could justifiably betray and kill.  Had I not encountered Ralis, I would have left it unfinished, but being presented with a possessed sociopath proved to be too great a lure for me.
• Lights Out!: Never finished it, never will.  There's just no way for me to justify it with Lothar's profile.  I even tried to kill Jaree-Ra to no avail, as he is labeled "essential."  I feel a little twinge of irritation every time I see the title in my quest journal.

Being able to fail a quest creates a kind of moral guardrail for the character, which makes doing the right thing easier.  But there's the rub: keeping quests unfinished raises the stakes for decision-making and keeps the door open for alternate types of moral agency.

Which leads me to my second playthrough...

Update: Boethiah's Calling/Unearthed

I am interrupting my treatment of the Thieves’ Guild questline in order to provide an update on one of the Daedric quests that has been a real thorn in my side: Boethiah’s Calling.  In my first post on this quest, I declared that I would not complete the quest unless I found a follower who deserved to be sacrificed – a condition I did not expect the game to meet.  While some of the available followers inhabit a moral grey zone (e.g. Janessa), no one outside of the Dark Brotherhood really deserved to be deceived and murdered, and I could not justify joining the Brotherhood (and committing the prerequisite murders) just to sacrifice one of them.  Therefore, I resigned myself to leaving the quest incomplete (since there is no failure condition) for the remainder of the game.

The Dragonborn DLC, however, provided exactly the kind of follower I was looking for.  Most of the Dunmer NPCs  I met in Skyrim were either enemies or grim figures who, while perhaps on my side of the moral spectrum, were nevertheless prone to a kind of nihilistic cynicism.  My visits to Solstheim fleshed out my picture of the Dunmer, but still, I became accustomed to their overall lack of transcendent idealism.  Therefore, when I first met Ralis at the beginning of Unearthed, I felt comfortable funding his excavation project in spite of his obvious avarice and the distinct possibility that he was skimming off the top; after all, even if he was bilking me out of my gold, he was spending it in an economically depressed area and providing jobs for the locals with money that I would never miss: I was carrying about 120,000 gold at this point and had far more than that in loot at home. 

As the quest haltingly progressed through its stages, I became more concerned about Ralis’s seeming lack of regard for the safety of the miners, but I had little choice other than to provide more funds for the project.  By the final stage, I was in for 11,000 gold, but at least a half-dozen miners and guards had died at the hands of the draugr they awakened.  Of course, when I returned to the project site, saw the additional carnage, and read Ralis’s journals, I realized that Ralis had been slowly possessed by the Dragon Priest Ahzidal.  The truly unnerving part for me was that, unlike other similar possessions in the game, I had actually been speaking with Ralis as he slowly succumbed to Ahzidal’s influence; I had assumed he was just a sociopath.

After defeating the resurrected Ahzidal, I was able to speak with the now clear-headed Ralis about what happened.  Although his memory was clouded by the experience, he was aware that he had killed several of the miners himself as part of the resurrection ritual.  The fact that he was possessed would have exonerated him as far as I was concerned, but he completely failed to show any remorse; instead, he seemed far more interested in making sure that no one ever found out: 

If you choose the dialogue option "I can't let you go unpunished," Ralis flips out, claims that Ahzidal will "command us all" and attacks.  So, you can have a sociopath for a follower, or defend yourself from a raving lunatic.

 Tamriel is a hard place, and people sometimes commit great acts of evil.  Some characters, such as Erandur, are willing to do penance for their crimes, and should be permitted to do so in peace.  Others, such as Sinding and Ralis, lack the appropriate moral horror that should accompany their misdeeds, and therefore deserve punishment commensurate to their sins.  Therefore, the question was not whether I would kill Ralis, but whether I would execute him directly then and there, or gain his trust, then sacrifice him at the Saracellum of Boethiah.  I chose the latter:

• As much as I dislike doing the will of a Daedra, killing someone I would have killed anyway hardly seems like an act of devotion.
•  I also dislike deception, but given the fact that Ralis himself deceived the miners, and that, as a Dunmer, most likely worshiped Boethiah anyway, leading him to sacrifice feels like poetic justice.
• Furthermore, my reward was to hunt down a gang of bandits and kill their leader in order to obtain the Daedric artifact (the Ebony Mail) he was wearing – something I would gladly have done anyway.

Certainly, my decision was a calculated and brutal one, but ultimately a just one as well.  Now that I possess the Ebony Mail (along with several other Daedric artifacts), I can be sure that it will not end up in the wrong hands.

The House of Horrors

After the Boethiah's Calling debacle, I let Uthgerd go home and traveled back to Markarth to clean up a few miscellaneous quests. Shortly after I entered the city, a Vigilant of Stendarr (a kind of militant priest who hates the Daedra and their adherents -- so, my kind of guy) named Tyranus approached me and asked for some backup in his investigation of an abandoned house.  I agreed, and in we went; it became readily apparent that there was indeed something "off" about the house:

Don't go into the light, Carol Anne!

When we reached the basement, all hell broke loose: ghostly voices, flying objects, and an aggressively funereal miasma.  Tyranus suggested that we make a break for it, and I concurred, but when we reached the front door (now unpickably locked), a ghoulish voice commanded me to kill "him," which I took to mean my companion, the Vigiliant of Stendarr.  Again, I'm not in the habit of killing NPCs with whom I have no quarrell, so I continued to look for an exit.  Tyranus, however, proved to be more amenable to the voice:

Here we go again.

Once more, I found myself in the position of having to kill someone I really would rather not.  After reluctantly defeating Vigilant Tyranus, I followed the voice down to the basement in order to confront whatever eldritch abomination was at work in this house.

What I found was a sinister-looking shrine that featured a rusty mace. When I approached the shrine, spiked iron bars sprang up around me, and I found myself a captive audience for the Daedric Prince of Domination and Enslavement, Molag Bal. The entity offered to release me if I promised to find and kill a particular priest of Boethiah named Logrolf the Willful; this priest, apparently, had desecrated Molag Bal's shrine (the one I was currently trapped in), and the Daedra wanted revenge.  The wrinkle was that Logrolf was currently imprisoned by the Forsworn, and therefore out of the Daedra's reach. My job was to "rescue" Logrolf and return him to the Shrine so that I could kill him for Molag Bal's satisfaction.

But for one factor, this would have been an easy quest for me to fail, as it runs in the same vein as the Namira and Boethiah quests.  The complication for me was that the "victim" in this case was a priest of the same cult that just a.) tried to kill me and b.) asked me to deceive and murder an innocent person for their ritual.  Normally, I don't kill non-hostiles, but I was beginning to feel as though most Daedric cultists were fair game; even if they don't attack me personally, the zeal they exhibit for their abhorrent practices means that they are a legitimate threat to the general public.  Furthermore, this was an internecine feud between two despicable entities, so I really couldn't care less what they did to each other:

Logrolf is not helping his case here.

That, however, is not the whole story.  After my experiences with Sheogorath and Sanguine, I was not eager to become a Daedra's puppet again, even if I was choosing to do so consciously this time.  Moreover, the only real difference between this quest and the previous two was the identity of the victim; did the fact that I might have executed Logrolf anyway justify sacrificing him at the behest of a malicious Daedric Prince?  Another factor to consider was the reward, as yet unknown at this point in the quest; how big of a factor in my decision was the anticipated artifact?  After all, I could have either walked away from the quest after falsely promising Molag Bal to retrieve the priest, or purposely failed it by killing Logrolf at a location other than the shrine, but I would get nothing for my troubles in both cases.  Also, I could not ignore the etymology of this particular Daedra: "Molag Bal" sounds a whole lot like a combination of Moloch and Baal.  Would cooperating with Molag Bal violate my moral profile?

Ultimately, I decided to kill Logrolf at the shrine as per Molag Bal's instructions:

• I was inclined to kill Logrolf anyway because he was a priest of Boethiah, and therefore not averse to killing me (or anyone else, for that matter).  I would not have gone out of my way to do so were it not for this quest, but I would not have lost sleep over killing him in other circumstances.
• Despite my obedience in this matter, I feel no particular allegiance to Molag Bal, and I would have no problem betraying him or his followers in the future.  These are bad people doing bad things, so I am willing to play them against each other for my good and the good of Skyrim.

That second point is the stickiest for me.  One of the traits of the Daedra that make most of them seem so diabolical is their penchant for manipulating mortals for their own gain.  Wasn't I doing the same here?  Along the same lines, one reason that I despise the Thalmor is their fondness for creating strife between two groups they dislike (i.e. the Imperial Legion and the Stormcloaks).  In killing a Priest of Boethiah under the orders of Molag Bal, was I now committing the very act for which I was punishing the Thalmor?

Misgivings aside, the Mace of Molag Bal is now one of my favorite weapons.  I wish I could say that the prize didn't matter, but in this case, it really did.

Boethiah's Calling

Not long after The Taste of Death, I was randomly attacked by a Boethiah cultist while in the midst of another quest.  On his body, I found a copy of Boethiah's Proving, a Daedric fable that expounds the qualities that Boethiah (Daedric Prince of deceit, conspiracy, secret plots of murder, assassination, treason, and unlawful overthrow of authority) prizes most in a worshipper:

Camus meets Conan the Barbarian

The book instructed me to find the Shrine of Boethiah; I complied because I wanted to know more about this cult whose devotee just tried to kill me. 

Not knowing what to expect, I asked Uthgerd to come with me.  To be perfectly frank, I was concerned not only about the physical dangers but also, after my experiences with the cult of Namira, about my own actions.  Uthgerd, while certainly not squeamish about bloodshed, has a very strong moral sense.  For example, during a random encounter, we assisted a Stormcloak in his fight with a group of Thalmor.  I accidentally hit the Stormcloak during the battle, so after we defeated the Thamlor Justiciars, he turned on me.  In defending myself, I killed him.  Uthgerd said nothing at the time, but apparently reported me to the Guards, because I ended up with a bounty from that encounter.  I appreciate both her willingness to follow me into deadly battle and her refusal to let me get away with anything.  Therefore, I wanted her with me on this one.

When we arrived at the Shrine, we met the Priestess, who explained the tenets of Boethiah worship while two other cultists fought to the death in the ring.  In their own, strange way, these were friendly people -- cult members kept asking in a firm but polite manner if I wanted to challenge them.  The Priestess then brought me to the Pillar of Sacrifice and instructed me to lead a follower to the site and kill him or her; apparently, this would get Boethiah's attention:

Nope.

As it was with the cult of Namira, so it was with the cult of Boethiah.  If they were just killing each other for sport, I could have walked away, but the random attack and the Priestess's words left no doubt about the cult's proclivities concerning innocent people.  And, again, there was no way for me to have them arrested.  The only viable option left was for me to draw my weapon and purposely fail the quest by wiping out the cult as I had done before.

This time, it wasn't that simple.  After Uthgerd (who did nothing to stop me this time -- I read this as approval) and I defeated everyone at the Shrine, Boethiah him/herself spoke through one of the dead bodies and reiterated the need for me sacrifice a follower.  Apparently, my slaughter of the cultists pleased the Daedric Prince (I really should have seen this coming), and I was now poised to take the next step.

The next step for me, however, was to get out of there.  I have neither the desire nor the justification to kill a trusting follower.  While it is true that acquiring more powerful artifacts might help me save Skyrim from disaster, I cannot justify that kind of utilitarian thinking in these Daedric quests.  The legacy of Boethiah's Calling for me so far is an open quest in my journal that I will not resolve.  My only option is to find a follower whom I would likely kill anyway, but I don't know if that kind of NPC exists.  Even if it did, would I be willing to purposely lead that person to his or her death under false pretenses?

As it turned out, the next quest answered that question for me a lot more quickly than I anticipated.