Board Thread:Lore Discussion/@comment-76.97.80.106-20130811163656/@comment-10207438-20131211203108

31.214.119.219 wrote: a. the dominion does not have many troops stationed within skyrim, and the huge distance between skyrim and the aldmeri dominion puts the aldmeri dominion in a position where they would have to start a war with the empire to fight skyrim(unless the empire is cowardly enough to let an entire AD army march through cyrodiil)

b. stormcloaks winning the war would seperate Highrock from Cyrodiil, this would put highrock in a position where they would have to agree to continue trade relations with skyrim, whether or not they would stay with the empire.

c. Ulfric was too busy trying to keep skyrim together while removing the empire's hold on them, without the need to focus on that he will most likely address these internal matters.(also the book you linked is more racist TO the dunmer from the grey quarter than it is showing the nord racism)

d. people who disagree with the ruling power is going to happen no matter who wins the war, and most of the nords who side with the empire do so because they think the empire has a better chance at defending skyrim than the stormcloaks do, and seeing as the stormcloaks would have pushed the empire out by force it kind of shows that the stormcloaks might just be better at that than the empire was.

e. there is no e.

f. and if you went to markarth or read the ingame books about the markarth incident you would know that it was the imperial assigned jarl that offered Ulfric talos worship for agreeing to take markarth, and the reason they asked Ulfric was bcause the empire was talking to the leaders of the reachmen and were planning to make the reach into a new province instead of helping the existing government that they were sworn to protect.

g-1. the stormcloaks were being harassed by the empire since the markarth incident, which happened about twenty five years before the game starts, the war didn't 'start' until Ulfric killed Torryg, ONE year before the game started. It was the empire letting thalmor murder anyone in skyrim that smelled like a talos worshipper that caused the war at the worst possible time, not the fact that Ulfric is trying to keep his people from being killed for no good reason.

g-2. there are murderers all over the place, hell in whiterun there's a crazy man under the meadery who wants to kill everyone by making an army of skeevers, and Balgruuf isn't doing anything about him; as you said there is one murderer, they have people on the case(not as many as they'd like) but he's been able to avoid discovery, a slippery murderer is not reason for why they can't defend a city, it's reason for why they can't catch this one particular individual.

The Thalmor has many great spies, they found and assassinated (almost)all the Blades, keeping an entire army secret would be extremely difficult, and the war really started when Ulfric did the Empire's job for them(markarth incident as said above) then accepting the reward proposed to him, the war was given a cause because the empire gave the thalmor permission to kill anyone they wanted to and use the excuse of "well we thought he was a talos worshipper, so we killed him just incase." and the empire would be okay with that, just because they don't want Cyrodiil to be invaded again.