/ga/ - Games

To add, another difference is there's no 'ban on Talos worship' scenario although they have conspiracy theorists that genuinely believe that.

Nationalism wasn't born in 2016.

>>5452
Stormcloaks are a religious, isolationist kingdom that wants to shirk their obligations to the empire mostly just because it is going through a rough patch
The Empire is a pluralistic and multicultural empire which is basically what the Roman Empire would be if it lived up to its best values, but because of their weak response to the Oblivion Crisis + the rise of the Thalmor, they have been heavily reduced in territory to Cyrodil, Skyrim (for now), and High Rock, with an informal alliance with Hammerfell.

The Thalmor are an outright genocidal supremacist religious extremist group. The Aldmeria religion quite literally says that the high elves are basically descendants of the gods trapped to live in the material realm because of the trickery of Lorkhan, and that humans are by extension basically demons who came out of Lorkhans trickery. As such they basically see humans as less than people and totally disposable, and the only reason they aren't doing mass-genocide of humans is because the Empire has still somewhat stopped them. In the meantime though they've taken to genociding their "fellow" elven brothers in the Wood Elves because they think they have deviated from the divine form by… mutating over the several thousand years they have lived on their continent. Oh, did we mention that Ulfric was in the pockets of the Thalmor, and thus is probably literally a plant and the whole civil war organized to weaken the empire for the upcoming round 2?

tl;dr, the Thalmor are evil, the Stormcloaks are retarded, the Empire is imperfect but the best choice in the situation.

>>5458
All of this is correct, but there is another dimension to it than that.
The truly cursed element is that the Thalmor are kind of right.
Not necessarily that the 'correct' thing to do is to genocide to return to oneness, but rather that their plan at the very least would actually work.
Because the mythology and religion of people in the Elder Scrolls world isn't a bunch of fake bullshit, it's very real in the context of their world, and magic and CHIM are constantly happening.

Meaning that mer were elements of a timeless, spaceless everything-'god'-being (Godhead?) before Lorkhan tricked the Aedra to make the world (among other things);
also I forget where men come from in the lore, I think they're also originally from the same place and were mer but got corrupted somehow, not sure though.
Thalmor are still going with the most insane and evil possible solution to something that isn't necessarily a problem though, as existing materially rather than ethereally is something they've chosen to perceive as a problem that needs solved.

And Stormcloaks is definitely the Thalmor ISIS: funded solely to sow discontent and weakness in the region regardless of who wins in the end.

>>5458
>Ulfric was in the pockets of the Thalmor

Unless you man captured and fed false info to manipulate him, no? The same documents also says that the Thalmor want NEITHER to win. Mind you I otherwise agree.

>>5481
>that the Thalmor want NEITHER to win
&ltwhole civil war organized to weaken the empire for the upcoming round 2

>>5481
The Thalmor would like "No one to win" as to bleed the empires resources dry so that when the next war starts in 20 years they can storm into the imperial city blow up the tower and GG no re everything is Void!

That dosen't mean that the stormcloaks winning would not basically be game over for the empire anyway.
Unless Hammerfall was able to resist the impending Thalmor invasion of allthe lands of man and High Rock somehow remained loyal to the empire even eithout any land connection to cyrodil.