Board Thread:Off Topic/@comment-24.44.231.128-20131201005446/@comment-260563-20180118014807

I'd say that Alduin, then Mehrunes Dagon, then Miraak-these are my top three adversaries. Conquest of all Tamriel is passe-Talos already did that. Something that goes beyond conquest would have been better.

Alduin: mostly due to the cosmic scale of his threat-to the point where Sovngarde is under siege and even heroes from the afterlife fear him. Nobody in Aetherius will fear Dagoth Ur. Also, the idea that he's out to destroy the world is foolish. He never wanted to destroy Nirn as it was. He just wanted to rule. And he even picked the right time to attack: the constant civil war in Skyrim will ensure that Alduin has no shortage of snacks. His attack in Helgen can even be seen as an attempt to save Ulfric. After all, Ulfric's death would have meant the end of the war, which would not serve the soul-devouring Alduin at all. He's a dragon charged with ending the world, except he's skimping on that charge so that he can rule the world instead, and he's making use of the infighting between the Stormcloaks and the Imperials to make himself stronger. He was so bad during the Dragon War that the Nordic Tongues who fought him had no choice but to send him hurtling through the currents of time with an Elder Scroll.

Alduin was arrogant, bloodthirsty, and proud, but at the same time, he was the first truly divine enemy that Elder Scrolls had served up. Being the first-born of Akatosh, he possessed powers even the Daedra didn't have. Mehrunes Dagon became what he was due to one of Alduin's curses, which solidifies that even the Daedric Princes feared him worse than they did Jyggalag. Jyggalag was a problem they could deal with. Alduin was not. That task fell to the Last Dragonborn, destined by the Divines to face Alduin and end his tyranny in Skyrim and Sovngarde, once and for all.

Mehrunes Dagon: Mostly due to the after-effects of the Oblivion Crisis. Dagon, as far as Daedric Princes go, seem to fall more into the standard demon tropes. He doesn't have Sheogorath's unpredictability, Hermaeus Mora's creeping subtlety, or Molag Bal's repulsiveness. But what he lacks in those things he has in power, and his cult of the Mythic Dawn helped usher in the Oblivion Crisis. Said Crisis devastated Tamriel's nations and changed the landscape afterwards. The Dawn assassinated the heirs to the Septim bloodline, forcing the Champion of Cyrodiil to rely on a royal bastard named Martin Septim to rally the forces of the Empire. Afterwards, Mehrunes Dagon engages in his personal invasion of Tamriel, attacking the capital city of the Empire and engaging in a personal brawl with Akatosh, the chief deity of the nine divines. Even though he loses,

Dagon's effect on the world is sharply felt in the next game, Skyrim. The villainous faction known as the Thalmor made use of Alinor's need of wizards during the Oblivion Crisis to catapult themselves into a position of power, and they made use of the weakness in the Empire during the Stormcrown Interregnum to seize power in the Summerset Isles and form the Third Aldmeri Dominion, which then wages war on the Empire and successfully gets them to abandon the worship of Talos, which sets off the Stormcloak rebellion in the main plot of the game. Before Dagon and his Oblivion Crisis, Tamriel was one united continent under the leadership of a powerful Empire, headed by a semi-divine dynasty. Afterwards, the Empire was in tatters, led by an elf who isn't even an Emperor, and eventually, that Empire would weaken to the point where they would lose half of Tamriel to a renewed Aldmeri Dominion that wants to repay Talos' Empire for the horrors that they faced in the past, with horrors of their own. None of this would have been possible if it wasn't for Mehrunes Dagon and his Mythic Dawn cultists bringin the Oblivion Crisis on everyone........

Miraak: I place this guy above Dagoth Ur for one reason: he made an entire race of deities shit their pants. Yes, there's Dagoth ur becoming a god, but the dragons were gods above the men of their era. They ruled as gods so powerful and esteemed, that they didn't even bother with the pathetic mortals who walked on the ground and instead relegated rule to sorcerers who worshipped them known as dragon priests. Miraak was one such dragon priest, but he also had another card up his sleeve: he was Dragonborn-the first of his kind. Gifted with a dragon-spirit like the dragons that were children of Akatosh, Miraak was able to use the Thu'um, the magic voice powers of the dragons.

And as if this inheritance from Akatosh wasn't enough, the man also made an alliance with the Daedric prince of Knowledge, the Gardener of Men, Hermaeus Mora, gaining the power to bend the will of the earth, the men, and dragons to his iron will. While Dagoth Ur threatened men and mer with his plague, Miraak threatened dragons, turning them against each other and starting his own cult to rival the Dragon Cult. It was said that Hakon and the other Nordic Tongues tried to recruit Miraak to join their greater rebellion against Alduin, the greatest of the dragons, who terrorized Tamriel with his iron rule.

And it seemed ideal: both the Aedra and the Daedra seemed to have groomed Miraak for the task: from the Aedra he received the gift of being a Dragonborn and the power of the Thu'um. From the Daedra, he received knowledge on how to turn lesser dragons to his side. The sight of this mighty dragonborn priest, eating the souls of the dragons he vanquished, while bending the wills of the ones that he didn't, riding with his own army of cultists and dragons against Alduin's forces would have been a terrific way to end the war against the dragons. Miraak could have been the extra help that Hakon, Gormlaith, and Felldir all needed. Perhaps they would not have needed the Elder Scroll against Alduin had Miraak shown up with dragons to support them. However, despite all his powers and his dragons, Miraak could only see one use for them: the extension of his own power. Man had now triumphed over dragons, but in the test of moral strength, as the saying goes, this is where the strength of men fell. Miraak ignored the cries for help coming from Hakon and the others, and sought to rule his own patch of Skyrim just as the dragons did, putting aside any thought of fighting for the greater good in favor of his own greed.

And that greed became his downfall. Without the support of the greater rebellion, Miraak and his little cult now faced a new challenge: the dragons and their servants gathered their forces to stomp out Miraak's heretical revolution. Vahlok, a dragon priest, led an army of dragons and their followers to Miraak's temple. And despite all his power, despite all the dragons that died whose skeletons laid at the feet of Miraak's temple, Miraak himself was no match. With no allies to call on and his dragons losing out to the others, Miraak was kidnapped by Hermaeus Mora and transported to his realm of Oblivion, Apocrypha, where the Dragon Priest would live an immortal life, a life in service to the Daedric prince whose gifts he misused.

Mora still saw the value of Miraak as a servant, despite the fact that the man's greed outweighed his sense of loyalty. He had no loyalty to the dragons, for he turned on them as soon as he had the power. Despite being human, he had no loyalty to the human race, because he ignored his own people's needs when they asked for his help. In Apocrypha, however, Miraak had to be loyal to Hermaeus Mora, since this was Mora's realm. That was until later on in the Fourth Era, during the return of the dragons. Miraak used subtle influence from Apocrypha to project his Bend Will shout onto the All-Maker Stones in Solstheim. Defiling these sacred symbols of faith that the Skaal people have revered, Miraak turned the native Nords and the Dunmer colonists to his side, forcing them to work on his temple so that he can return to Solstheim once more.

Miraak was obviously seeking to get out of Apocrypha so that he can shake off Hermaeus Mora, but Mora decided not to intervene. Instead, Mora made contact with the Last Dragonborn, the slayer of Alduin, and he "helped" the Last Dragonborn by teaching them the powers that Miraak had, in exchange for the Dragonborn giving over the secrets of the Skaal to him. This eventually led to the confrontation between the first dragonborn, and the last dragonborn, at the Summit of Apocrypha, just as Hermaeus Mora planned. Miraak and the Last Dragonborn did battle, and Mora had a winning bet on both: if Miraak wins and gets out into the world, Mora's influence will spread as more will turn to him to find out how to gain the powers Miraak learned. If the Last Dragonborn wins, Mora gets rid of a rebellious servant. The Last Dragonborn triumphed, and Miraak was finally destroyed as the Last Dragonborn consumed his soul.

My liking for Miraak stems from what he was as well as his backstory. As much of an overpowered character the Last Dragonborn already was, Miraak was the first Dragonborn, possessing knowledge and powers that his later counterpart didn't have. Like the Last Dragonborn, he was a man who terrified the dragons, who was set to have a great destiny. But instead of playing the hero's journey straight and use his god-given gifts to save the world, he used them to expand his own interests instead, until it doomed him. He tried to play his own jest against the gods, but failed, and he cursed his successor as they ate his soul and left him a moldering skeleton at the summit of Apocrypha. I suppose this was a stealth insult against Elder Scrolls players who throw away the main quest in favor of beefing up their stats and increasing their power, mixed in with a tragic tale of greed causing one's downfall.