#i recently... aquired... some dlc

[saccharine-suffering]

I arise from my slumber bearing original characters.

(Picrew)

I've been on a bit of a vampire kick lately and accidentally made these silly little guys.

Left is Naomi Castillo (she/they), a recently turned vampire who fully embraced the aesthetic, but is having a hard time getting used to the whole drinking blood thing.

Right is Issac Rivera (he/him), a human captured to be used as a bloodbag. He's jumpy and distrustful and just a little bit brainwashed.

Naomi's heart gets the best of them and they buy the poor boy from his captors. Cue classic "whumpee thinks caretaker is their new master" but with the added spice that said caretaker needs human blood to survive.

[baebeyza]

Morrowind Tribunal: Bad writing?

I recently re-did the Tribunal main quest and refreshed my memories about the events and since my friends, who I spammed about this, don’t actually play any TES games, I thought I might share my thoughts here in hope someone would be willing to share there thoughts on this with me in return. Let me start this with confessing that I have a huge crush on Morrowind’s new King Hlaalu Helseth, but not everyone feels the same way about him. I can see why a person who tries to kill you at least 3 times, a ruthless manipulator and deadly alchemist who could teach Molag Bal how to scheme, wouldn’t be so popular. But in the Tribunal main quest you still have to side with him.

Even if you don’t do the quests from his right-hand man, the story forces you to take his side at one point. quick summary: You need the weapon of his champion and said champion will not hand it over to you unless you agree to be Helseth’s spy. Now what I want to discuss is, why? Actually being a spy for Helseth doesn’t change anything, since it only pays off after you defeat Almalexia (thus ending the main quest), which, depending on when you did the “Helseth’s champion” quest, can involve multiple quests between.

You being a spy doesn’t alter any of them. The funny thing is also that if you did the “Make sure Helseth doesn’t have any enemies” quests at the start, you get told by Barenziah to do the quests for the temple and working for them, just so that you can end up at Helseth’s side again later. And it’s that switching of sides for apparently no reason that makes the overall story feel really weird, especially because you aren’t really given a reason as to why you have to side with Helseth in the end. I mean sure, Helseth is way better choice than Almalexia, but you don’t actually find that out until right at the end when she tells you that. So when you side with Helseth, it’s not because you don’t trust Almaleixa, it’s because he doesnt trust her and thinks she’s evil. And...I hate to admit it, but I feel like Skyrim’s DLC Dawnguard made a better storyline about two opposing sides. (Skyrim having a better written plot than Morrowind, what a paradox!) You either side with the vampires or you side with the vampire hunters, altering the main quest in places and adding unique quests to each faction. But even if some parts of the main quests are altered depending on your choice, the overall story is the same - Harkon is the evil guy that needs to be defeated, whethre you sided with him or not. I feel like Tribunal could have been better, if it had a similiar structure - you actively choosing to side with either the temple or Helseth, without switching sides from one quest to the other. Imagine, you decide to side with the temple and do the quests that are anti-Helseth, + adding a way to aquire the piece of the Blade from Helseth’s champion that doesn’t involve becoming Helseth’s lackey. Not actively involving Helseth at all afterwards perhabs, just like how the Dawnguard doesn’t get involved heavily the moment you choose to be a vampire in the Skyrim DLC. Or you side with Helseth, adding something that would actually make a player want to do that, because you know, he tried to kill you. I mean something like him actually making up for that or simply offering you more than the temple does, actually convincing you that Almalexia shouldn’t be trusted anymore. You know, just make the guy a bit more likable, or at least give good reason early on why he has a point. You don’t really get sympathy points when the first interaction you have with someone involves an assassination attempt, okay? (unless this someone is me, but whatever) And than you can be his spy and do the temple quests that lead up to the final confrontation with Almalexia. That all being said, I still feel the need to actually defend the Tribunal questline we got at the end, if one can look at it from a different perspective. As I said, there isn’t much about Helseth or anything he does and says that would make someone actively side with him and if the game didn’t force us too, I doubt many people would. This doesn’t have to a be writing fail though, as it could exactly what the writers wanted - the player not having a choice. Actively being manipulated by a King so you do his bidding and help him get rid of his foes, so he can actually rule as the King of Morrowind. Afterall, if you ask the people from the temple what they think of him, they say that they dislike him, because he tries to actually do something as the King, while before it was a nothing-title. The previous King was a fool who never did anything, Helseth is not and he does strive for power and to have say in Morrowind’s future. When you as the player defeat Almalexia, the Tribunal is almost destroyed and with them the ruling force of Morrowind, giving Helseth more power (He really does significant stuff as the King afterall, like making the grand council a thing again and abolishing slavery. I doubt he could have done that, if the Tribunal was still in charge). Plot- and lore wise it’s basically a story about Helseth manipulating the hero in order to gain more power and for that you actually need to work for him at one point. And you got no choice than to be used by him for his own personal gain. You might be the Nerevarine, savoir of Morrowind, but he still got you in his strings. Now this is close to the Dragonborn DLC of Skyrim - the one person who benefits from the entire plot is Hermaeus Mora. You can totally despise him and actively tell him that too, but it doesn’t change the fact that you work for him at the end, doomed to take Miraak’s place while Hermaeus Mora not only got a new dragonborn servant, but also the Skaal knowledge he was after. You can’t oppose him and the story makes that clear - you have to sacrifise yourself for Solstheim because you need the help of a daedra prince who is also a fucking dick. And this is what I think they were going for in Tribunal: Helseth is a fucking dick who wants to kill you and only when that fails thinks “Well they might actually be useful for me, gotta manipulate them somehow.”, but in order to fulfill the main quest, you need his help regardless of what you think of him. He might be the villain in any other szenario, but in this context he’s the lesser evil compared to the other person, who really needs to be stopped, since they would cause way more harm. He have to side with the evil King to defeat the evil Goddess, who will wreck way more than the King ever could. And also quite nice is the notion that you, while being the most powerful person out there, are just a tool for another one, a person who has the might to say: “What are you compared to me?”