Board Thread:Off Topic/@comment-24099618-20140114190300/@comment-7663945-20180216010340

Holy Galactic Emperor wrote: Pupdude wrote: Ugh, the fucking quote function isn't working. The point is not that they don't help. It's that they don't do anything beyond give some sort of blessing or make some would-be hero appear at the right place at the right time. That's it. That's all they do. They gift the mortals with a blessing or a mortal hero (or Lorkhan in the form of a Shezarrine), and then they sit back and have the mortals (and/or Lorkhan) do the work for them. If they were really concerned, they'd do more than that. They'd exercise their power, any power they had at all, to at least give the mortals (and Lorkhan) an easier time. Akatosh could raise some dragon that would listen to him, Kynareth could summon the animals of the forest, Mara could protect the Hero of Kvatch and/or Martin Septim, Stendarr could do literally anything of use for once in their pathetic infinite life, anything to help these poor motherfuckers trying to relight the Dragonfires while being attacked by Mehrunes Dagon and his cult of crazies. And what do they do after they plop the Hero of Kvatch in jail to meet Uriel Septim the Seventh? Absolutely nothing up until literally all hope is lost for the mortals to solve the problem on their own. Same thing in Skyrim, they plop the Dragonborn off at the border, let them get captured and sentenced to death because "fuck the list", and watch as the Dragonborn escapes from the chopping block and does all the work themselves. Neither of them even get so much as a "thank you for saving Tamriel and all the cute little mortals that live there" from the Aedra.

About the only time I can think of in which an Aedra directly helps in some way beyond a blessing is the Live Another Life mod for Skyrim, in which Mara (no surprises there, she is the Goddess of Love) straight up asks you "How you wanna do this?", and then makes it happen. She's given the Dragonborn resources, and even time to prepare before Alduin arrives. How thoughtful. Akatosh would just dump them in a jail cell or schedule them for an execution that would be interrupted by the motherfucking World Eater that they're eventually supposed to kill.

TL;DR, the only two Aedra I trust to be of any help at all are Mara and Lorkhan.

EDIT: Know how many Daedra I can trust to be of any help without dooming me to an afterlife of slavery to them or betraying my morals? Three. Azura (why wouldn't you trust Azura?), Meridia (she just wants the undead to die again, nothing wrong with that), and Sanguine (if nothing else, he can help me with the excessive stress of being the guy that has to save the world). Know how many Daedra I can trust to be of any help if I agree to be their afterlife slave? Four. Hircine, Nocturnal, Molag Bal, and Hermaeus Mora. Know how many Daedra I can trust to to be of any help if I abandon my morals? Four. Namira, Vaermina, Mephala, and Boethiah. In total, that's 11 Daedra that I can trust to be of any help at all. And I can only trust 2 Aedra to do the same.

You do realize that the Aedra perform everyday services for the people from their shrines, right? And that their priests have healing powers that serve the populace? Without the Aedra, the humans would still be slaves of the dragons. Without the Aedra, the heartland humans would still be the Ayleids' bitches. Without the Aedra, there would be no stopping Mehrunes Dagon from invading Nirn, and there would be no Last Dragonborn to help against Alduin. The Aedra aren't passive; they're outright participants in the world.

As for the Dragonborn, Akatosh, having foreseen things as the god of TIME, probably didn't lift a finger because he knew his son would appear. So why waste time and energy (that mortals always siphon from their shrines) when the Dragonborn can take care of their own?

Also, most Daedric Princes work with mortals to benefit their own ends. A few are above the exception, such as Azura and Meridia who usually help mortals, or Sanguine and Sheogorath who are just either decadent or crazy. But the greater lot of them only want to use mortals before dumping them like moist towelettes. Mora wants to entrap people in Apocrypha so he can use them as tools, Molag just wants to dominate people and spread things like vampirism to spite the likes of Arkay, and Mehrunes Dagon outright deceives his followers and lets them fall into a "paradise" where they're tortured again and again. Compare that to the realms of Aetherius like Sovngarde, where people just feast, fight, and relax all day, and it's no contest. Most of the Aedra serve the mortals, while most of the Daedra only seek to manipulate them, with the odd exception of the likes of Meridia or Azura.

Also, all the dragons that did the will of Akatosh and worked against Alduin are all dead at the hands of the Blades or other mortals. The humans and other mortals don't like dragons and just want to kill them; even the dragons that rebelled against Alduin were massacred. Mortals don't like dragons, period. That's why the Greybeards kept Paarthurnax their secret: they know that if his cover is blown, mortals like the Blades would want their skulls.

If the gods did everything for the mortals, they'd be lazy as fuck. Also, it's established that the Aedric gods are limited in power, so it's quite obvious that they're doing the best they can, aside from providing everyday blessings and powers for the mortals. They're not like capital G God from the Bible where His Son can just drive out legions of demons with mere words and the evil that He's forced to tolerate are evils of men with free will. Remember: the Aedra weakened themselves to create Nirn. The Daedra didn't. So, from keeping the Daedra out most of the time, and providing the everyday blessings and the odd chosen one, the Aedric gods have their hands full. Asking more out of them is like asking your butler to do the work of twenty men and getting mad when it takes him an hour to clean the whole mansion.

Also, aside from Azura, Meridia, and Sanguine, most of those Daedric Princes can and will screw you in the ass figuratively, or in Molag Bal's case, literally, if they so choose. If the whim hits them, they can and will leave you in an afterlife of pain. So you better be ready to serve them and not fail, because the moment you do, well, you'll wish you were in Alduin's belly instead of suffering eternally. Okay, here's how you view the Aedra:

"I can't help you move your furniture into your new apartment.  I can lend you my moving van, but I can't help you move the actual furniture, because I have a really bad back."

And here's what I'm seeing:

"What do you mean 'hold the door open for me, please'?  I lent you my moving van, isn't that enough for your greedy ass?"

I can understand them not just doing everything themselves, they're weakened as all hell (even though it would make sense that that power would've grown back by now, at least a decent amount), but they're not even giving the heroes any sort of courtesy assistance whatsoever. No "Hey, here's how you close an Oblivion gate" or "Hey, the Greybeards are led by my dragon son, Paarthurnax; he would know about something that would lead you to the shout you need to kill my other dragon son" or even just "Hey, you missed a shitload of loot back there". They just let the heroes blunder their way through their adventure.

I recently bought Jet Set Radio HD on Steam. I was playing the first mission in Benton-cho, and I was trying to figure out how to get to the last graffiti spot for an hour or so. And then I found a freaking opening on the ground level. You know how pissed I was that it was so hard to find such a simple doorway? Now imagine that there's a person watching you play the game who knows about that doorway, and they don't tell you when you're clearly frustrated. That's a pretty good representation of the situation with the Aedra.