Board Thread:Skyrim/@comment-12599067-20130928060857/@comment-24589685-20140225225002

I get what you're saying Dovahsebrom, but the fact that they migrated to The Reach doesn't mean they aren't indigenous to it. Like, the Saxons migrated to Britain from mainland Scandinavia, but now that 1300 years have passed, it is perfectly reasonable to consider Anglo-Saxon a "native" ethnicity of Britain, and not *particularly* less so than the Cornish, Picts, Welsh and Scots. And, as an off-the-top estimate, I think in TES timeline, the Reachmen have been in the Reach for a longer period of time than the Saxons have been in Britain!

(and even the Cornish etc originally migrated from Brittany!).

The native peoples of North America originally migrated from Northeastern Asia, various indigenous Pacific Islander tribes migrated from Australia, Indonesia, East Asia, the Americas and other islands (depending), the Romany migrated from India, the Mongolians spread out all the way to Hungary, as did the Ottomans, and we ALL originally come from somewhere in or around Uganda.

When looking at timescales of over a thousand years, the question of "first" stops being especially important to the question of a culture's status as native to a particular place. And TES timelines are definitely operating on those scales. Like... even the absolute oldest white families in the USA have only been there for, what, 350-ish years? And with TES we're generally talking on scales of millenia.

But what really matters is that The Reach is The Reachmen's HOME. They don't have any other home, or anywhere else to go, really. So it makes sense for them to fight for it. They're displaced in the sense of displacement from permanent, comfortable settlement. They've had to retreat into a semi-nomadic diaspora. And as for their barbaric tactics... given the military and technological supremacy of the Nords, the Forsworn, again, dont' really have a choice. They HAVE to use guerilla tactics and attrition and ambushes and disrupting supply-lines.

I'm not saying it's RIGHT for them to kidnap kids or attack non-combatants, and my Insightful Orsimer Wiswewoman (whom I love) and Cunning Dunmer Vampire and Noble Redguar Warrior alike all resent their constant unprovoked attacks (especially the Wisewoman, since she's actually somewhat sympathetic to them, being herself) a practitioner of traditional, shamanistic daedra-worship)... but what I AM saying is that the Forsworn's actions are *understandable*, even if not necessarily justified, they aren't really all that much *worse* than their enemies (particularly the Silver-Bloods, who are absolute scum), and that they're not in any way "evil"... just another selfish, violent faction in a nation full of warring, selfish, violent factions. You know what I mean?