Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-13436964-20130726221035/@comment-2.96.210.210-20140527151831

I always figured Miraak as more of an investment piece than a Champion for Mora. Mora is all about knowledge, fate and can look through time, so maybe he kept Miraak alive as a kind of learning excersise for the Last Dragonborn. Maybe to prove a point, or to see if all mortals fall the same way when given power. He gives Miraak everything he needs to start a rebelion against the dragons, and when that falls through he saves the champion for later experiments. Maybe to lure a new champion to himself. The Princes aren't known for killing off their own champions, instead having mortals do that for them. By asking a mortal to kill someone for them it makes the person think they have a daedric prince in their debt, and it makes them want more. All of the little things the daedra asks for pile up, and then before you know it the Last Dragonborn has the same powers Miraak does, and Mora is sat there with a new champion and a new test subject to poke with a stick. It's like having a maid in your mansion that steals your stuff and you both know she does it. So then you go to the police and they get rid of her for you. And you offer the police a place working at your mansion for double the pay at their old job. And they become your new maid. And then you have to call the police again, because this new one has started stealing your stuff.

The Last Dragonborn gets to see another Dragonborn, one who was a Priest during the peak of Dragon dominion over the world. Practically a legend, and Mora is still able to maneuver this guy into a trap; the same way the Black Books lure people in, Mora used Miraak's own arrogance to drag him into Apogrypha. He give's Miraak all these ideas and this knowledge and Miraak runs with it. He effectively plants the idea of rebelion into an already narcissistic man and knows how it will end up. It sets up the idea that you can have the biggest set of balls in Tamriel, but Mora will be the one who gave them to you. And he can take them away just as easilly. Killing Miraak to give his knowledge to the LDB kind of proves that. You can only have what he gives you. He manipulates you into wrangling the Skaal knowledge out of Storn, and all for power. The same power that got Miraak locked up and Septimus Signus dead and dusted. After all the other daedric quests, you know that Miraak is going to die, and probably horribly. But the LDB still ends up giving Mora the new knowledge he lacks in exchange for old knowledge he has given to numerous other champions.

But somehow, Mora still manages to turn you into his pet. You do everything he says, and kill everyone he tells you to. You get him his knowledge, and sell your soul to him. And yet Miraak and Alduin are considered to be the main antagonists just because they want to destroy/control the world.

M aybe Miraak's fate his Mora's punishment for abandoning the Dragonborn's apparent destiny of killing Alduin. Or maybe none of the mortal realm matters to him, and he just gets his kicks out of seducing Dargonborns and giving other deities, gods, aedra and princes the middle finger when he steals their chosen ones. Maybe he just wants to win the divine betting pool and have the most chips when the world ends.

Either way, or any way really, I still kind of wish you could recruit Miraak and start a Dragonborn tag team.