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  • There is some debate over whether Dovahkiin means "Dragonborn" (as used by everyone who doesn't use the "Dovahkiin") or "Dragonkind Hunter Born" (which uses three words, just as with dragon names, and every dragon seems to view you as another dragon). But it actually makes perfect sense for the word to mean ''both''. A "Dovah" (Dragon) is also a "Dov Ah" (Dragonkind Hunter), because dragons are constantly struggling for dominance over each other, and the only thing that can hunt a dragon is another dragon. The army of mortals cannot hurt the dragon, so they can't really hunt it either. All they can do is weaken it so it is easier for an actual threat to come and slay it. The Dragonborn is described as having the soul of a dragon, so they essentially are a dragon.
  • The Unrelenting Force shout is generally presented as the ultimate shout to represent the power of the Dragons and the Thu'um (being the iconic one used in the trailer for Skyrim, and the one where learning it is considered your rite of passage). As a result, it may look kind of underwhelmed when using it in combat - it seemed to do little more than push opponents back slightly, so it started to seem that it was a bit overrated. But then through Skuldafn, and emerging onto the roof, makes you learn how effective throwing Draugr opponents from high places could be. Few places in Skyrim are higher or more perilous than mountains, and no-one loves the mountains more than Dragons. On the ground, throwing your opponent back might not do much, but on top of a mountain, it is significantly more effective. Unrelenting Force is, therefore, a great shout to represent the Dragons and the power they can wield in combat.
  • Unrelenting Force is one of those Shouts that's great for all playstyles, so Bethesda would want you to learn to use it. Warriors can simply knock people down and bash their heads in without letting them block, mages can use it to create space and pepper them with spells while they're vulnerable, and thieves can use it as an opening to flee enemies that have detected them, shoot them full of arrows, or just pickpocket them while they're down.
  • A minor one happens right at the introduction: while riding the cart to Helgen, Lokir begs the Divines to help him. As soon as he gets off the cart, though, he tries to flee and gets shot down by Imperial archers. Not ten minutes later, Alduin shows up and destroys Helgen; had Lokir not ran, he might have had a chance to escape Helgen alongside the Dovahkiin and Hadvar or Ralof, or even General Tullius, who also survived the attack. Considering the Dovahkiin was in Helgen mostly through divine intervention - a case of being exactly where they were needed when they were needed - one could argue that the Divines didn't abandon Lokir and did try to save him, but he died because he made a stupid decision - there's only so much divine intervention can do to protect you from your own choices, and the Nine act in much more subtle ways than the Daedra, rarely, if ever, directly intervening.
  • From a North American standpoint, the civil war can draw parallels to both the Revolutionary War and the American Civil War. The Imperials are like the British/Loyalists and the Stormcloaks are like the Confederacy. Though both sides could be seen as the Union (for the Imperials) or Rebel (for the Stormcloaks) United States by their supporters.
  • A better way to see this is a war between prosperity and honor; do you sacrifice what precious dignity you have left to maintain a wealthy but empty lifestyle or fight for what you believe in?
  • Ever notice how you can breeze through any conversation in the game except those you have with the Princes of the Aedra and Daedra? That's because they have power enough to control you, being immortals.
  • The Ebony Blade you get from the Daedric Prince Mephala gains power by betraying and killing your friends. Inexplicably, it also gains power if you use it on members of the Dark Brotherhood, even if you choose to destroy them straight out without any betrayal. However, going back to Morrowind, the Dark Brotherhood had a rival assassins guild, the Morag Tong, whose patron was none other than... the Daedric Prince Mephala.
    • In a meta example, you can use the console to amend friendship values of, say, Bandits and then kill them to power up the Ebony Blade. You're still doing Mephala's bidding, but by cheating you're deceiving her.
    • In another meta example, you can also cheat-power the Ebony Blade by repeatedly resurrecting Deeja with the Dead Thrall spell, which seems rather inexplicable because Deeja never has a single positive interaction with the Dragonborn (threatening to stab the Dragonborn if they try to talk to her outside of her mission, and fighting them to the death during said mission). But, Deeja is fairly popular in the fanbase (especially a certain subset), with her fans often upset that they aren't given a choice to NOT kill her. It's as if Mephala predicted how liked Deeja would be, making one of the easiest and least evil ways to power up her artifact be killing someone that a good chunk of players WISH they could befriend, over and over again.
  • Believe it or not there is a good reason why Molag Bal is the Greater-Scope Villain for Dawnguard and why it correlates to the Dragon's (and Dragonborn by extension) desire to dominate. Molag Bal is the Daedric Prince of Domination, after all.
  • Boots can be enchanted to boost one and two handed weapon damage. At first this seems odd, but once one learns of Kinetic Linking (a technique used by almost all martial arts in real life), it makes perfect sense.
  • The mudcrabs from Morrowind look different from the ones in Skyrim because the scenery is different, so the mudcrabs have to change how they look to fit their environment for camouflage.
  • Why some guards seem to follow Sithis after you've completed the Dark Brotherhood, yet still attack you when you attack them? They do not follow Sithis at all. They're only saying "Hail Sithis" because they're likely thinking, "Okay, if we just tell them what they want to hear, they won't try to kill us."
  • Towards the end of Clavicus Vile's quest, you are given the choice to side with either Vile, who is trapped inside a statue, or his talking dog Barbas. Clavicus Vile is the daedric prince of wishes and pacts, and is known to screw people over. Barbas acts as a sort of external conscience, doing his best to stop Vile from taking and/or ruining too many lives. At Barbas' request, you can convince Vile to reunite with him, a favor which gives you the Masque of Clavicus Vile, an ebony helmet that grants you boosts to speech and magicka regeneration. Clavicus, on the other hand, asks you to kill Barbas with the Rueful Axe, a weapon you just tracked down from a man who received it from Vile himself upon asking for a "cure" for his daughter's lycanthropy. Killing Barbas with the axe allows you to keep it. However, as many unlucky adventurers would find out much later, unlike the Masque of Clavicus Vile, the Rueful Axe isn't a daedric artifact, and thus does not count towards the Oblivion Walker achievement - which essentially means that you're going to have to play through the game from the beginning to get the achievement (unless you have an earlier save or knowledge of a certain exploit, which even then might not work, depending on your choices in the other daedric quests). You killed the Morality Chain of the greatest Jackass Genie in the entire universe, exactly what were you expecting?
  • The outermost skills the Fighter, Mage, Thief categories in the skill perk constellation screen is a skill in one category, but may be highly useful in the other archetypes; Alchemy is in the Thief purview but is often also a Mage discipline, Enchanting is useful for Warrior types who want magic effects but not spells, and Archery gives warriors range power otherwise available only to Mage ranged casters, but is also useful for the Thief purview since you can strike hidden from afar. For the leftmost skills, Light Armor is an acceptable alternative to warriors who want protection but not the negative effects of Heavy Armor, Smithing also includes jewelry and crowns the that mages can enchant and traditionally, mage enemies uses daggers in case they run out of magicka as a back up plan, and Illusion includes muffling and invisibility, something handy for thieves.
  • You may notice that you can't fast travel to any of the Hold capitals, even though they're marked on your map, until you have actually been there once. This may seem strange to players of Oblivion, because in that game you not only knew their locations, but you could fast travel to the main cities. This is because the game begins shortly after you first crossed the border from Cyrodiil, where you have been for perhaps your entire life, and it's entirely possible that you've never once been to Skyrim. That, and there's the other, teeny-tiny fact that the entire province would be under martial law, and aside from the regular troubles regular overland travel of that scope likely broke down, what with the fighting and the searches the two sides would logically have to search for and stop any unwanted guests. This, by extension, forces the player to actually get in the hard way. After all, if fast travel was enabled for the Hold capitals and the like, what'd prevent a card-carrying and well-known member of the Legion from walking up to Ulfric's doorstep for whatever reason (and vice-versa with a Stormcloak in the areas under Imperial control). Even at the height of the Oblivion Crisis, it was always characterized as an external invasion with the help of a handful of quislings from the Mythic Dawn, and by and large anybody with a pulse was welcome. The civil war in Skyrim is a good old fashioned war in Mundus, and so there's far more incentive to take security precautions against infiltrators.
  • One thing that's raised a few eyebrows is the way the Smithing perk tree works. Dragon Armor requires a Smithing skill of 100 to forge, even though it's statistically inferior to Daedric armor, which only requires 90. Turns out there's probably a good reason for this: because dragons have only recently begun to appear en masse, and no smith has any experience working with dragon bones and scales. The most recently known case of such armor was the Dragonbone Cuirass forged near the beginning of the Third Era, about 600 years before the events of Skyrim. Your character needs to effectively invent the technique on their own and to do that, they need to be a master smith.
  • It may seem silly when you learn to shout that your character would yell "*insert shout here*!" to unleash the attack, but once you meet the Greybeards this all makes sense. Your character gains a dragon voice but lacks the dragon language to use it. You are exactly like a young baby discovering his voice and babbling incoherently while trying to mimic the adults. Your voice gains power and precision as you learn to speak properly.
  • It's rather confusing at first, in both Skyrim and Oblivion, to find that Skooma has no negative effects on the player when used. That is, until you meet an Argonian fisher in Riften who needs a healing potion to break the crippling habit the drug causes. No wonder PCs never get addicted to Skooma — they drink healing potions like mead. Also, the smuggler den next to Whiterun contains a note where a bandit complains their former provider of Skooma was selling them a heavily diluted version of the drug, which could justify some of the Skooma circulating in Skyrim was much less potent (and potentially less addictive) than it should have been.
  • Listen to the bards in different cities and you might notice that the pro-Stormcloak song, "The Age of Oppression", is completely identical to the pro-Imperial song, "The Age of Aggression", just with the operative words changed to support one side or the other. Somewhere in Skyrim, a bard is a master troll.
  • When you go to the Bards' College in Solitude you learn that they are essentially the historians of Skyrim, passing on that history through song. The leader of the college says he doesn't find the war very interesting, because political leadership changes all the time and in a few centuries nobody will remember Ulfric or anyone else, and that the return of the dragons is the real big deal. Basically, the bards half-assed the songs about the war because they don't care about it, while the Dragonborn got their own original song because they're more historically significant.
    • Ulfric appears keenly aware of this fact, as regardless of whether it's himself or Tullius on the chopping block at the end of the war, he'll ask for the Dragonborn to do the honors, as "it'll make a better song" for the civil war to be part of the Dragonborn's legend. Be it as a Worthy Opponent or leige-lord and friend, Ulfric intends to burn his name into history alongside yours.
  • The Bards would suspect that many places would change hands at least once during the Civil War. Keeping the two songs nearly identical makes them easier to memorize, and all a local Bard has to do is remind himself what color armor his patrons are wearing to sing the right version. Note that in-game, Bards will sing whatever song is appropriate to the faction that controls their location. Mikael in Whiterun starts off singing "Age of Aggression," because Whiterun is nominally under Imperial control, but swaps to "Age of Oppression" the instant the Stormcloaks take the city. Thus, the nearly-identical lyrics allow Bards to memorize two songs for the price of one, and keep from offending their patrons and getting beheaded (or losing tips.)
  • Mercer Frey gets through doors that need keys despite not having the keys himself - he even picks open an ancient Nord puzzle door that would normally require a special sculpted dragon claw. No it's not because he's that good, it's because he's using an artifact of Nocturnal, ensuring you don't find out by tossing off remarks about the locks just "having a trick" to them that you're too inexperienced to know.
  • When you confront Mercer in Irkngthand, he tells you the moment you met, he sensed the two of you would end up drawing blades. But think back: minutes after the two of you met, he sent you to Goldenglow Estate, a secluded island crawling with bloodthirsty mercenaries. Why? Because he was purposely trying to get you killed.
  • Karliah (a Nightingale) turns invisible when she's cornered by Mercer Frey (also a Nightingale). Brynjolf finds himself unable to resist attacking Karliah when the three of you confront Mercer Frey. Then later as a Nightingale, you are given the choice of three powers. Two of those match the ones you've seen the surviving Nightingales use: Agent of Stealth was used by Karliah, while Agent of Subterfuge was used by Mercer Frey. Presumably Gallus was the Agent of Strife.
  • Furthermore, the fact that the Skeleton Key can unlock a person's potential raises the question as to why it's little more than an unbreakable lockpick for the Dragonborn. For meta reasons, it would be a Game-Breaker of sorts. In-universe, unlocking a person's potential implies that said person had limits in terms of power. Regardless of how the player chooses to build their Dragonborn, in-universe, the Dragonborn has no such limits, and is only hindered by the number of Shouts they possess at any given time.
  • The battles in the Civil War questline are disorganized melees involving a few dozen participants that don't much resemble the massed-formation fights of real medieval warfare. This is, of course, due to engine limitations... But considering this is also a setting in which battlemages and Voice users can kill dozens of men at once with area-of-effect attacks, and god-like champions could wipe out an entire army if too many troops were committed to a single attack, it's very easy to handwave some aspects as how the Civil War works in Tamriel.
  • Dark Ages warfare was actually quite similar to that of Tamriel. If one considers that civilization probably took a setback from the Oblivion Crisis and all of the other events that took place, one can assume that this change in warfare style is due to regression to barbarism.
    • Not to mention that Stormcloaks specifically, being "True Nords", don't really deal with mages or stealth tactics. It's fully in-character for them to just rush in blindly and hope brute force wins the day. And for the Imperials, who live in a world where it's perfectly normal for one or two guys to solo half an attacking army there's no real point in trebuchets or advanced tactics. Just get in there and hold the line as best you can.
  • Most, if not all, of the Silver Hand wear fur armour. What kind of fur is never specified, but given that they hunt Werebeasts, it doesn't take much to guess.
  • According to a book in-game on the Elder Scrolls, there are four kinds of Elder Scroll readers: The first, completely uninitiated, who just see a weird chart with formations that resemble stellar constellations. The second, which knows just enough about reading the Scrolls to know what they mean but lack the training to receive it, are struck blind immediately, and might have received some fragment of past, present, or future insight from the Scroll. The third are the properly learned readers, usually Moth Priests, and have their eyesight decay over time while they take in a much more controlled form of the knowledge within the Scroll. The fourth are those who have had their Penultimate Reading, where they divine that their next reading will be their last and they'll be permanently blind. So... what category does the Dragonborn go in? At first, it seems that it'd be a combination of Category 1 and 3: the Dragonborn does not receive any special knowledge, but nonetheless temporarily loses their vision. Why this strange effect? Simple: the book only takes mortal readers into account. The Dragonborn is a mortal that has the soul of a creature that exists outside of time.
  • Many have called the Khajiit hypocrites for conforming to the exact negative stereotypes they're complaining about people having for them. But who's to say that the ambient atmosphere of racism and distrust didn't actually chase off all of the honest Khajiit in the first place?
  • Cicero being able to fight the rest of the Dark Brotherhood may come off as a basic Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass moment, but his journal reveals that he's an exceptionally skilled assassin, and lore states that being appointed Keeper is a process overseen by the Black Hand. The Keeper is also supposed to protect the Night Mother's body, so it stands to reason that the Black Hand would appoint one of their most skilled assassins for the job.
  • Why does the Dark Brotherhood never show up to answer Aventus Aretino's Black Sacrament? Simple - no Listener to learn of it from the Night Mother. Adults would know well enough to try to contact the assassins in a more personal manner, but Aventus is a child so he'd be more inclined to believe the old tales on how to summon the Brotherhood.
    • While they may not have been able to respond at first due to not having a Listener, Astrid confirms that the Brotherhood did become aware of Aventus. They simply choose not to respond since he couldn't pay.
  • Since the Dark Brotherhood is no longer in contact with the Night Mother, they no longer have a divine all-seeing being around to tell them when a ritual has been performed; instead, they have to rely upon word of mouth now to get contracts, so getting decent work is much harder. The Night Mother is the one who tells the Brotherhood when somebody murders someone too, so without her around it's much more difficult to recruit new members. Then there's all the Chronic Backstabbing Disorder going on at the same time. Thus, taken together we see exactly why the Brotherhood is in sharp decline during the time of the game as opposed to previously.
  • When creating your character, scars mostly go on the left side of the face. Most people in Skyrim are right-handed, and so any blow struck by them would inflict wounds that then leave scars on the left side of their opponent.
  • The reason the Khajiit traders aren't allowed in the city, but a Khajiit player is, is because the player isn't offering people skooma or moon sugar. (Or, if they are, no one's caught them yet.) Similar Fridge Brilliance can be presented on the Khajiiti followers and how the Dragonborn can bring them with them in cities without any protest. With J'Zargo, who is a mage, it would make sense if Skyrim's populace figured J'Zargo would have no interest in Moon Sugar outside of its alchemical properties (and even that's unlikely, as J'Zargo has shown no interest in Alchemy). With Kharjo, you're looking at a Khajiit that's dressed in steel plate armor almost all the time, which would undermine the idea of him being a thief as it would be difficult for him to sneak around in heavy armor.
  • Having a bounty equal to assault placed on you just for killing a chicken seems like Disproportionate Retribution, but it makes sense when you consider Skyrim's setting. In our own world, stealing or killing someone else's livestock used to be a pretty serious crime, to the point where as little as a century ago it could be punishable by death. It also makes sense if you consider the fact that livestock was often thought of as family in Ancient Rome.
    "Hey! That's a valuable animal!"
  • The possible reason why so many things have changed between Oblivion and Skyrim: Mehrunes Dagon is the Daedric prince of, among other things, Change. So his plans to take over Tamriel heralded a time of change. He was the cause of the Septim bloodline's destruction, causing the Thalmor to rise and revolt against the now-weakened Empire. Some even say that Vivec was taken by the Daedra during the Oblivion Crisis.
  • All the references to Dagon in Skyrim come from one rather awestruck descendant of a Mythic Dawn cultist, who is rather shocked when you mention Dagon has ordered you to kill him. If he had been around during the Oblivion Crisis itself, his tone would have been remarkably different.
  • You're charged for assault if you directly attack Thalmor, but the guards won't charge you for murder if you kill Thalmor. That's because everyone in Skyrim hates the Thalmor, but they have to charge you for something for attacking them. The guards also won't raise a finger if the Thalmor attack you first (unless you're Thane, in which case they help you) - again, the Thalmor are only tolerated to a point.
  • Notice that after you deliver Klimmek's supplies to the chest outside High Hrothgar, they never seem to be removed by the Greybeards? It's not as if it has any risk of spoiling in one of the coldest places of Skyrim.
  • Paarthurnax's name translates as "Ambition Tyranny Cruelty". Common belief is that this is either A) evidence that Paarthurnax poses a far greater threat to mortals than he seems, or B) evidence that he's fighting his inherent nature far more strongly and nobly than it first seemed, since a dragon's personality is apparently inherently tied to their names. The truth is neither: If Paarthurnax's name reflects his true nature in a language only dragons were supposed to understand, why would his nature, which to the minds of dragons is dominance over mortals, be considered tyrannical or cruel? The answer: His name reflects tyranny and cruelty as the aspiring leader of the dragons, which is further reinforced by Odahviing's comment once you defeat Alduin and return from Sovngarde - "Not all dragons will follow his tyrannical Way of the Voice". This means that despite his efforts, Paarthurnax may not even be defying his nature at all: His nature is to betray and oppress dragonkind.
  • The first part of his name is "Ambition", which seems kinda odd in that he doesn't have any sort of desire for anything other than sitting on his mountain top teaching old men. However, this is perhaps the most ambitious act of all dragons: to defy the traditions laid down by the Firstborn of Akatosh and to train the very enemies of his race in their own tongue. Quite ambitious from a Draconic perspective. Moreover, he has the Ambition to eventually become the leader of all Dovah, which would require killing Alduin. He openly works with three warriors hell-bent on killing dragons in ancient times, and later the Dovahkiin who could kill him and eat his soul, and From a Certain Point of View, manipulate all of them into defeating Alduin for him, since he cannot win by himself. Magnificent Bastard indeed...
  • Other than the Dark Brotherhood, the werewolf Sinding is the only one who doesn't attack you on sight at stage 4 vampirism. This is probably just a gameplay thing. However, considering the story behind his quest is about him not being about to control his bestial nature, it makes sense for him to accept this in the Dragonborn.
  • Why does Ulfric make a demand for Markarth during the Greybeards' peace council? It's cut off from the rest of his forces, meaning that, while it is near Solitude, it will instantly be recaptured after the truce wears off, so the tactical advantage is negated. He was the one who chose to have the Forsworn executed when he first came across them, and he wants to personally make sure they are crushed by putting Thongvor Silver-Blood, the one throwing them into Cidhna Mine, in charge, so he has the power to execute them.
  • Why do you have immediate access to the Dragonrend Shout? Why don't you need to absorb a dragon's soul for it? Because dragon souls work by allowing you to tap into their knowledge of a word! But the words for Dragonrend (Mortal Finite Temporary) are words that the immortal dragons are completely incapable of comprehending, while you as a mortal understand these words perfectly - thus, instant access!
  • The reason Skyrim has a strong bardic tradition despite otherwise being a textbook Proud Warrior Race culture? It all comes back to when the Thu'um was still being used as a weapon. Back then, talking wasn't that much different than fighting, and the warrior who could control and project their voice the most would be more valuable on the battlefield than the one with the strongest sword-arm. In ancient Skyrim, even the bards were badass!
  • No matter how you interpret the legacy of King Olaf, also known as Olaf "One-Eye", it's pretty clear that Olaf considered the bard Svaknir to be a threat to his throne. Imagine the President being scared of what Katy Perry had to say.
  • Bard's Leap Summit. Bards did really high Leaps of Faith into small pools of water... possibly for fun.
  • The Thu'um was never used widely enough for it to be incorporated into the common songs and poetry of bards; even if they had been, actually using it would have been incomprehensible (since it only works with dragon language) and dangerous (because, well, Thu'um). However, the Nords associate longevity with being remembered, and people go forgotten unless there's someone around to talk about them after they're gone. In Skyrim, the victors don't write the history, the bards do.
  • It seems odd that the Imperials, a race known for being "shrewd diplomats and traders," get a whopping 0 free points to their Speech skill, but think about it; the Aldmeri Dominion just gave the Empire a major beating and forced them to trade away the worship of their own patron god, and about half of Skyrim sees your people as little more than Thalmor patsies. The Voice of the Emperor just doesn't go as far as it did back when the Septims still reigned.
  • The reason Imperials lack any free speech points is because they, like any other non-Nord, are considered less trustworthy. The real question is, why do Bretons also get bonus speech points? The reason is because they and the Nords have a common ancestor, so their status as half-kin gives them the same privilege the Nords have.
  • The reason Ulfric is the only Stormcloak with a gag in the opening? It's not just to keep him from speaking; it's to keep him from shouting.
  • While understandable for balance reasons, I never really understood how, in-universe, the cooldown between shouts could be justified. Why can't you just keep shouting and shouting until everything's dead, like the Dragons can? Then it hit me: The "cooldowns" are just you trying to catch your breath after releasing such powerful shouts. The more powerful the shout, the more winded you are, and the more time you need to catch your breath so you can shout again. Dragons can get away with shouting over and over because they have powerful lungs so they can recover their breaths more quickly. You're just a mere mortal man/elf/beast-thingy, your lungs weren't built to withstand the power of the dragon shout.
  • Why do the Greybeards have no cooldown? They've been using the Thu'um for so long that their lungs have adapted to the Voice.
  • Throw Voice is peculiar in that adding more words to it reduces the cooldown. What makes it different from traditional shouts, however, is that it is not technically a shout, as the Thu'um itself is actually silent, which is likely why using more words will cause the cooldown to go faster.
  • Why does the Call Dragon shout have a whopping cooldown of 300 seconds? You just used a shout that reverberated throughout all of Skyrim. You're definitely gonna be winded after doing that.
  • Paarthurnax mentions that all dragons have the urge to dominate, even the Dragonborn. Now, the first thing that may come to mind is tendencies of the player to get their hands on as much power as possible. But then you remember that the previous Dragonborn anointed by the Graybeards was none other than the man that would conquer the entire continent of Tamriel, Emperor Tiber Septim. No wonder you can so quickly bring an end to the civil war. Conquest is literally part of who you are.
  • The First Dragonborn was a Starscream who betrayed the dragons, devoured their souls, and took over Solstheim. Conquest is truly in his genes - and in yours.
  • Your Dragonborn can become a Thane in all nine holds. Most Jarls will say it's a purely honorary title, but NPC Thanes are shown to be valuable members of the Jarl's court (not as important as Housecarls or Stewards, but still). Accumulation of meaningless honors, or stepping stone to something more?
  • The Greybeards make it pretty clear that in order to learn a shout you must have a deep conceptual understanding of the words involved. In that case, let's take a look at Ulfric, whose two shouts of choice are Unrelenting Force and Disarm. If anyone in Skyrim has deep knowledge of Force (Fus) and Defeat (Viik) it would certainly be Ulfric Stormcloak.
  • Something that you might not notice is that there is a design on the doors of High Hrothgar. It's a strange shape, but when you step back and really look at it, the shape suddenly looks very familiar - it's a dragon's head. The brilliance doesn't kick in until later when you meet the leader of the Greybeards. Paarthurnax is a dragon. No wonder the Greybeards have that design on their door!
  • On the main page, under Acceptable Breaks from Reality, the fact that a few one-pound ingots (among other things) being used to make a thirty-five pound suit of armor is mentioned. In reality, since there's no definite mass/weight unit specified for the weight category of the items, it's possible that the "weight" actually represents the item's relative encumbrance: a single ingot can be tucked somewhere convenient, whereas a suit of armor cannot be stored away in the same manner. This would also handily explain why weapons are between two and six times as heavy as they would be in real life. Sure, that greatsword might only weigh 6-8 pounds or so, but try carrying ten of them while keeping your hands free for combat.
  • One small detail I noticed during the "Mind of Madness" quest: when you go to fix Pelagius's paranoia, you get hit with a cold spell of unknown origin. One could attribute it to something hiding in the shadows, until you realize: it's a path of PARANOIA. It's designed to do that to make you THINK someone is attacking you.
  • Ever wondered why, when either the Imperials or Stormcloaks take over a city, the guards are replaced by their soldiers, but in the holds they have at the beginning of the game, their guards have uniforms specific to their hold? That's because the soldiers that replace the guards aren't a police force - they're soldiers occupying conquered territory.
  • Why has the theme music become progressively more clear and defined over the last three games? Because the Dragonborn is coming and it's their fanfare. That's also why it now finally has words!
  • In "Laid to Rest", if you find out that Alva is a vampire without killing her, she will show up later in Movarth's lair later on as a friendly NPC, and even help you in combat. This is because she was never evil, she was Movarth's thrall, and killing him ended it.
  • Why can't you complete the civil war questline for either side without going through "Dragon Rising"? Because that's when the player (and Skyrim in general) finds out they're Dragonborn, and the ending sequences on both sides talk about how the Dragonborn should be the one to kill Tullius/Ulfric as it would make for a better story. Not to mention that if you side Stormcloak, Ulfric mentions the player explicitly as Dragonborn in his victory speech.
  • The Dragon Priest Krosis is located on a dragon-inhabited mountain, and it's possible to wake him up while fighting the dragon. Doing so ends up raising the difficulty greatly, seeing as he's hard to hit and shoots deadly explosive fireballs, and it's even worse if you go up just expecting to deal with a relatively simple-to-fight dragon. Now, his name, Krosis, means "sorrow" in the dragon language - but it can also be used as "sorry". Is naming the Priest "Sorry" their way of apologising for such a nasty surprise? Not to mention that fighting a Dragon and a Dragon Priest at the same time is a fast track to becoming intimately familiar with grief and misery.
  • Dwemer ruins have a very two-tone colour aesthetic- flat silvery white surfaces, with burnished gold and dark trimming. You'll notice all the burnished and dark trimming is on all those pipes, surfaces, and other grates that could emit steam, be very hot, are moving parts, or otherwise be an OSHA issue. All the really big moving parts that aren't part of a trap are behind solid grates. Even the trap pressure plates are clearly marked in gold and dark trimming! Seems OSHA Compliance (at least with warning labels and colours) is alive and well in Tamriel.
  • Paarthurnax, unlike any other dragon in the game, has a beardlike set of spikes on the underside of his chin. The most obvious reason would be to distinguish him from the other dragons, but it could also be to make him look more like an Asian dragon, who, like Paarthurnax, often appeared as wise and just mentor figures in myths. Or it could be because he's a Greybeard. Maybe both.
  • A minor one for Erandur: It confused me that even though he has max conjuration, he never uses it as a follower, instead preferring destruction magic. And then I realized, that actually makes perfect sense! Conjuration is the school of magic most associated with necromancy and daedra summoning, the former of which is HEAVILY frowned on in Skyrim. As a former priest of Vaermina, he would have probably learned and then renounced it when he moved on to the worship of Mara... which is why he has the skill maxed and never uses it.
  • Why does Odahviing only land when he runs out of HP, and only leave once all threats are gone? He doesn't want to be like Alduin, who fled from the player atop the Throat of the World. Odahviing might not be able to fight to the very end, but he will certainly stay to the very end.
  • When fighting through Labyrinthian, there is a voice that occasionally speaks to you, and your magicka is drained. That voice is Morokei, and he is remotely using the Staff of Magnus to drain your magicka.
  • Thinking about it, the Dragonborn could quite easily take over the Empire after the game's events if you set it up right - complete the Dark Brotherhood questline, killing Amaund Motierre after the Emperor to create a power vacuum right at the top; side with the Empire against the Stormcloaks so they still have some infrastructure to start with preparing for inevitable war with the Thalmor; either kill Paarthurnax to gain the support of the Blades (historically protectors of the Emperor) or simply declare themself to be Dragonborn (starting a new bloodline like Tiber Septim and all) with the Greybeards' blessing and swoop in. Also: Tenth Divine.
  • The fact that the game ends without the Moot having ever been called to declare Elisif/Ulfric as the next sovereign of Skyrim leaves the fate of the throne a bit open-ended. At the very least, the door is certainly open for the possibility of the Dragonborn to be declared High King/Queen of Skyrim as thanks for all they have done, and from there it would be an easier transition to the Imperial throne - especially if you complete the Dragonborn DLC, where you learn a shout that allows you to tame and ride dragons. If someone with that kind of power said they wanted to rule the world, wouldn't you get the hell out of their way?
  • If you side with the Stormcloaks and kill the Emperor, it also creates the very real possibility of you becoming emperor. The Emperor is dead and you are now allied to the most powerful man in Skyrim, who is in your debt and has a large, battle hardened army that is flush with success in civil war. Surely the the Emperor's death without a obvious successor, at least that we know of, would lead to another bloody interregnum in Cyrodiil. Ulfric would almost certainly see this as an opportunity even if the Dragonborn did not, and with his army at your disposal, it would be a simple thing to try and press your claim on the throne as a Dragonborn. Ulfric would certainly do it, as it puts a known ally of his on the throne of the empire which is now in his debt.
  • And there's still one way the Dragonborn could land on the throne even without any of the above: marriage. No matter what the Dragonborn's social standing is, "start of a new dynasty of Dragonblood emperors" is going to be an incentive that will be very hard, if not outright impossible, for anyone else to at least match. If you don't do the Dark Brotherhood questline and leave the Emperor alive, and side with the Imperials in the Civil War, an offer of marriage to one of his children could certainly strike Titus Mede as a very fitting reward for your services.
  • It seems odd that no one else notices that vampires have glowing eyes as of Dawnguard. Then I realized why. Dragons can see that you are a dragon, while everyone else just sees a mortal. You can see Words of Power that no one else can. You can hear the Night Mother. No one else sees those glowing eyes because they're mortals, while you're Dragonborn, and possessed of an Aedric soul. You can see and hear things that no mortal can, which makes the Dragonborn not simply an effective killer of dragons, but also a deadly vampire hunter as well.
  • Why does Hermaeus Mora say that he will continue to influence you, even if you reject the position as his champion? Simple: you're the Player Character of a Role-Playing Game. You will scour the game, looking for bugs and exploits that you can use to become an invincible god, make infinite amounts of gold, etc. As the Daedric Prince of Forbidden Knowledge, Mora represents your desire to gain knowledge you should not know. His Oghma Infinium plants a seed for such forbidden knowledge... and guess what was the catalyst of one of the earliest Maximum Skill glitches?
  • The idea of the Dunmer being accused of being part of the Thalmor by some Non Player Characters seems a bit ridiculous at first, considering that not only is the Dunmer detesting the Altmer beliefs the reason they went to Morrowind thousands of years ago, but they are also the only elven nation still allied with the Empire. However, the Nords and Dunmer were never friends to begin with, even before the end of the Third Era, and so the Nords are adding one more justification as to why they hate the Dunmer by trying to spread rumors that the Dunmer are joining the Aldmeri Dominion - even though they hate the Altmer just as much as any Nord.
  • Part Fridge Brilliance, part Wild Mass Guessing: Why does Mjoll use and specialize in two-handed weapons, when her signature weapon, Grimsever, is one-handed? Perhaps she originally used one-handed weapons, but after the Mzinchaleft incident, she trained in two-handed weapons, believing that it would be harder for them to be knocked askew.
  • M'aiq the Liar's catchphrase ("M'aiq knows much and tells some.") has two meanings. It could mean that M'aiq knows many things but only tells some of what he knows or it could mean that he knows many things but only tells them to certain (some) people. Clever cat...
  • Why would one find things like Elven Swords in places they have no business being, such as Dwemer Ruins? Simple. The player may end up picking up more than they can carry, and end up placing their loot into the chest they just finished cleaning out. We know that there are other adventurers out there as well. So who's to say that they didn't pick up some Dwemer gear from those chests and switched it out with some Iron Helmets or Steel Swords so they could carry the more valuable loot home?
  • A meta one: why is Hadvar so bloody nice? Because players would most likely be turned off by the Empire after the opening, but if they go with Hadvar, he can, in a way, redeem the Empire for them.
  • Overlaps with Fridge Horror: All the holds on the east side of the map are a bad place to live in. Riften is the home of the Thieves' Guild and the Jarl's family is selfish/obnoxious; Windhelm is clearly racist against any non-Nord race (Argonians are forced to live on the docks and Dark Elves are treated as if they're Imperial spies); and Winterhold is missing half its mass while everyone just mopes around instead of taking action. Some of the cities in the west or south aren't much better, but the east side of Skyrim isn't putting out feelings of hope and prosperity.
    • This also helps explain yet another reason why Eastern Skyrim decided to rebel against the Empire: A lower standard of living, numerous economic and social issues which they blamed on the Empire's policies, compounded by the Empire's outlawing of Talos and allowing the Thalmor into Skyrim to enforce it. Eventually, they'd had enough and decided to declare independence.
  • The zombies in the game (as in, not draugr but the bodies raised by spells like Reanimate Corpse) are actually very similar to the original zombies of voodoo mysticism. Rather than being mindless monsters, they're still self-aware, but being forced to act against their will by dark magic, which is portrayed as a Fate Worse than Death. That's how people saw zombies until Night of the Living Dead (1968) came around.
  • When the Dragonborn summons Odahviing and Durnehviir, the Dragonshout is simply calling out their names, because Dragons are so prideful they cannot fail to respond to someone issuing a challenge. Now remember what Paarthurnax said about the Dragonborn being subject to the same innate urges as Dragons? When the Greybeards summoned the Dovahkiin to High Hrothgar for training, they did the exact same thing!
  • Of course Haelga doesn't have Daedric boots. They probably belong to her secret lover.
  • For a shout that supposedly lashes out at a dragon's soul, Dragonrend has a rather simple effect (forcing the dragon to land). But that simple effect is actually rather symbolic: by robbing a dragon of its ability to fly, you're literally dragging it down to the level of mortals.
  • Why are you allowed to take food out of the barrels and carts located outside most houses? Because that is exactly why they are there. Skyrim is at war, and with that comes the loss of homes, displacement, and all sorts of things that creates poverty and beggars. The more affluent people in Skyrim are trying to help those less fortunate by leaving food for them to take so they don't starve. I hope you can live with yourself after raiding every barrel in Solitude and therefore indirectly robbing Noster of his dinner.
    • The real answer is much funnier; NPCs who see you collecting from these barrels will sometimes comment on how weirded out they are that you're digging through their garbage.
  • Why is High Hrothgar built like a military fort (and classified as one)? Considering how the Greybeards cause massive earthquakes whenever they speak, they need a really sturdy building to call home - otherwise, they'd probably knock their home down with all their Thu'umage.
  • Formerly a Fridge Logic problem in Oblivion, one can now be (at least somewhat) justified in becoming Archmage of the Mages' Guild (or College of Winterhold, in this case) without knowing, let alone casting, even a single spell: you're Dragonborn, master of the Thu'um. In essence, you have total mastery over a class of magic that no one else at the College knows, or could learn more than the basics of. Sounds like a pretty fitting trait for an Archmage, no?
  • So a lot of players hate Miraak's tendency to pop up and steal the soul of a dragon you just killed. It annoys the hell out of you and makes it harder for you to learn the Bend Will Shout that is needed for you to defeat him. But that's just it. It's supposed to piss you off! Miraak is arrogant and doesn't think of the PC as worthy of the title of "Dragonborn". Basically, Miraak is being a massive troll.
  • Some more brilliance when you think about it. Why the hell would Miraak let you learn the Bend Will Shout? Would you stand idly by while your enemy was slowly gaining the knowledge needed to defeat you? Or would you do something about it and try to delay his progress for as long as possible until you were ready to fight?
  • According to the in-game book, Songs of Skyrim, the tune of the "Song of the Dragonborn" is not known. They know the lyrics, but the tune itself has been lost to time. If you take the time to read all the lyrics, you'll notice that they don't all appear in the main theme. Then it hits you that the main theme is not the true "Song of the Dragonborn." The real theme, with all the lyrics and the proper tune, is the music that plays when you're in Sovngarde. It makes perfect sense that a song that had its tune lost to time would only be properly heard outside of the mortal realm.
  • Speaking of the "Song of the Dragonborn," there's one line in the full song that is actually a very subtle reference to The Hobbit. Compare this line in the song with one of Gollum's riddles:
    "Alduin, bane of Kings / ancient shadow unbound / with a hunger to swallow the world."

    "This thing all things devours: Birds, beasts, trees, flowers;
    Gnaws iron, bites steel, Grinds hard stones to meal;
    Slays king, ruins town, And beats high mountain down."
The answer to the riddle is of course "Time." What is Alduin's aspect, inherited from his father, Akatosh? Time. Calling Alduin the "Bane of Kings" brings attention to his true aspect; fire can be survived, but time (for mortals) cannot.
  • Plenty of followers will level up with the player, but eventually they just can't keep up. The sole exception is the Khajiit mage, J'zargo. Khajiit are known for being terrible mages, which is precisely why J'zargo is the only follower with no level cap! He wants to prove just how capable a Khajiit mage can be with enough training and determination. And he's such a Determinator that he refuses to let his rival, you, be better than him!
  • Celan, Durak and Ingjard from Dawnguard and Frea from the Skaal village don't have level cap either. It shows their determination to accompany Dovahkiin in protecting both Skyrim and Solstheim. Show them the way, Dovahkiin!
  • One for the Dark Brotherhood. The Night Mother chooses her Listener by speaking the Binding Words, which the Listener must then repeat to the Speaker to confirm it. The Binding Words are, "Darkness rises when silence dies." These aren't just simple creepy words, but actually refer to the state of the Dark Brotherhood. Without a Listener, the Night Mother cannot guide the Brotherhood, and they've been reduced to, in the words of Festus Crex, "common cut-throats". When the Night Mother has chosen a Listener, she can guide them once again. So the Binding Words basically mean, "The Dark Brotherhood is stronger when the Night Mother chooses a Listener."
  • At first it might seem strange for some players to hear the Ebony Warrior claim that he wants a heroic death because he has done all there is to be done, as from a story perspective there will always be plenty of eventful happenings going on in the Elder Scrolls universe. However, everything makes sense when you realize this character is ultimately a reflection of you - the player. No matter how fun the game may be, at some point or another a particular save file you have invested countless hours on will have exhausted everything that can be done, and you will want to find the last exciting thing that can be done before you start a new save file. The Ebony Warrior is an analogy for the player who wants one last battle before he starts over in Sovngarde, only with the real life equivalent of Sovngarde being a new save file or perhaps even moving on to another game entirely.
  • The Ebony Warrior appears at level 80. To have reached this level you not only must have mastered all of your preferred skills, but also mastered all but one or two of every other skill you have. Playing to this point without cheats literally means you've done everything you can for your character. His words reflect what you have gone through, and is a sort of subtle urging at starting a new character.
  • The Ebony Warrior's scale is modified to make him seem extremely large. If you take notice, the only other humanoid as large as him is Tsun, Shieldbrother of Shor and the second-last NPC you fight before the end of the main storyline. The Ebony Warrior's armor also makes him resemble Alduin in coloration and silhouette. It's a subtle reference to how he may be the absolute "final" boss of the game, just as Tsun and Alduin are for the main storyline.
  • The Ebony Warrior expresses a desire for the Dragonborn to be the one to send him to Sovngarde, despite being revealed to be a Redguard and thus making his entry into a Nordic afterlife unusual, if at all even possible. What better way for a warrior to convince Tsun of his badass credentials and allow him entrance, than to be slain in an epic final battle with the Dragonborn? You were his Bragging Rights Reward as well.
  • Though it's considered a "bug", the ambiguity of why Hrongar (Balgruuf's brother) would send hitmen after the Dovahkiin for having Lydia join the Blades makes more sense when you realize that those hitmen are only put out by the closest living relative of the person you wronged. So Lydia is probably Hrongar's daughter and probably wasn't too happy to have her nobility stripped away. This adds more brilliance. Balgruuf is so grateful to the Dovahkiin, he made his niece their housecarl. No wonder he takes a Stormcloak Dragonborn's betrayal so hard! This adds another layer of brilliance if you marry Lydia and side with the Stormcloaks. Assuming that Balgruuf really is Lydia's uncle, by marrying her one would become Balgruuf's nephew/niece-in-law, and the Dovahkiin siding with the Stormcloaks after marrying Lydia would hit harder for Balgruuf.
  • The shield is as much a weapon in Skyrim as it is a method to defend yourself. In fact, using the shield aggressively to knock back enemies or to break their attacks or guards is so integral that half the Block tree is centered around bashing as opposed to just blocking. I thought this might be more of a play on Captain America, because I always assumed that the shield was primarily a defensive-oriented device. Then I came across this video discussing Viking fighting tactics. The basic technique as explained by the instructor is that the shield is not so much a defensive tool as it is an offensive tool intended to knock aside, pin, or trap the enemy's weapon, and the blade is the weapon that exploits the opening. I suddenly realized that in essence, that's exactly how Skyrim's shield-fighting technique works. Just like in actual Viking sword-and-shield style, the shield is used to open an enemy to attacks. It's more abstract, but at the basic level it works on the same principle. I'm not sure if it was deliberate or not on Bethesda's part, but in a game about fantasy Vikings, you can actually use historical Viking shield tactics.
  • There's a throwaway line by Arngeir if you ask him about the dragons' return, and that he should tell you more about it than the cryptic words he gives you. He tells you to not get caught up in arrogance thanks to the ease of learning Shouts that your Dragonborn heritage grants, and he adds that such arrogance has been "the downfall of many Dragonborn before you." At first, this simply seems like some solid advice against getting too smug in your own abilities, but it's also a clever bit of foreshadowing of the Dragonborn DLC, where Miraak became a bit too arrogant for his own good and thought he could betray Hermaeus Mora.
  • Every dragon shout description uses a dragon word "Thu'um", whereas Dragonrend, the only shout created by mortals, uses a mortal word "voice" instead.
  • Spears and polearms in general are not encountered in Skyrim, and there's actually some very good reasons for this:
    • The primary use for a spear, in war, is against cavalry. If you look at Skyrim's terrain, you'll likely notice that it's very mountainous, and where there's no mountains, there's either thick woods, marshes, or rocky plains. None of this is terrain where cavalry would be very useful, and is definitely terrain where you're much more likely to see infantry combat. That's why swords, axes, and hammers/maces are the favored weapons of the Nords. This terrain is also reflected in the Nords' horse breeding, as the Skyrim horses are bred not for power and speed but endurance and ability to navigate rough terrain. These are horses bred to move around in hard ground, not for cavalry charges.
    • The spear is also a weapon used by levies of poorly-trained civilians and militia. While historically there certainly were professional spear units in various armies, by and large the spear was the weapon of the quickly-assembled and quickly-trained levy of peasant militia. Units of soldiers armed with swords, axes, maces, and the like were usually professional soldiers and mercenaries who were trained in their use through long practice. But the Empire's military isn't a force of civilian militia - it's a disciplined, well-trained Legion of light and heavy infantry based on the Roman Legions, which were a heavy infantry force. And in Skyrim, everyone knows how to fight, because of how harsh and dangerous their homeland is, and how torn with internal strife it often tends to be. By a combination of environment and culture, the Nords of Skyrim formed a society with a strong martial tradition built from the ground up, and not dominated by the nobility as medieval armies were (and see the above point on cavalry; historically, heavy cavalry dominated through the medieval and Renaissance periods, which would further cement noble dominance, but that hasn't happened in Tamriel - especially in Skyrim - due to terrain and government factors). Lightly-trained peasant militia don't exist, and therefore the typical medieval infantry made of peasant spearmen wouldn't manifest, simply because everyone in Skyrim is battle-ready and usually well-armed to begin with, and Imperial doctrine doesn't use peasant levies.
  • Nord culture bears more than a passing resemblance to dragon culture. For example, they both believe that Asskicking Leads to Leadership (hence Ulfric's claim to the throne) and that "True Nords (or dragons) never back down!" Nords even have a watered-down version of a Shout as their racial ability. This makes perfect sense when you consider that the Nords' ancestors were ruled by dragons.
  • Mentioning the Nords' Shout-like racial ability makes one remember that the Imperials' racial ability is also something like a Shout, except causing calm instead of fear. "Voice of the Emperor". The Dragonborn Emperors, most notably the Septim line, had always set themselves up in Cyrodiil, so the Imperials, too, have some experience being ruled by what are essentially dragons, albeit in human form.
  • If you are a Morrowind fan, walk around Raven Rock. You'll feel yourself back in Morrowind and loving it... not just because of the architectural style, but because the music is lifted directly from Morrowind and you can leave Raven Rock just as if it was a city in Morrowind (no loading screens between the city and the overworld). Solstheim was clearly a labour of love from the developers.
  • One thing I noticed is that the Dragonborn gets a lot more leeway with equipment, what they do outside of the military, etc. during the Legion and Stormcloak questlines. Whilst you could argue that this is because Skyrim is a sandbox and removing that functionality would kind of ruin the game, it makes sense in-universe because the Dragonborn is essentially Special Forces. This also explains why the 'battles' they participate in are more like skirmishes - the real fighting is elsewhere whilst the Dragonborn's unit is taking out important command posts and supply lines. The Battle of Windhelm is a possible exception, but it's still significantly scaled-down, due to engine limitations and the limited RAM on consoles.
  • It may seem rather confusing that in the opening the Imperials decide to execute Ulfric Stormcloak alongside a common horse-thief and the PC, in a low-profile and unceremonious manner, in a normal village in Skyrim. Why not take the time to sort out who's actually a rebel and who isn't and have Ulfric executed with a lot of publicity in Imperial City? Because the Imperials want to make a statement, and they know that if they have a great big event in Cyrodiil, the Stormcloaks just gain a martyr. But if they just execute Ulfric quietly in Helgen, then it says to the Stormcloaks that their leader isn't a great threat to them or they would have had a grand public ceremony for his execution; he's just a common criminal or even just a mook.
    • In addition, it is indicated that Tullius wants to dispose of Ulfric as quickly as possible. Treason is one the few crimes in the Empire that can be punished immediately with execution, killing him is entirely legal. Tullius could have ordered Ulfric simply be killed immediately, but he is a Jarl and is entitled to some degree of respect and thus cutting his throat in the woods is out of the question. In addition, a swift public execution, even in as small a town as Helgen, would have ended any possible rumors that Ulfric was still alive and directing the rebellion in hiding.
  • Bit of a minor one, but why is the PC "The Last" Dragonborn? Because at the end of the day the thing that makes a Dragonborn a more effective dragonslayer than any other mortal is that a dragon killed by a normal mortal can be resurrected, whereas one killed by a Dragonborn cannot. However, the game implies the resurrection ability belongs to Alduin alone, who - once defeated in the main questline - is not going to return again until it is the world's due time. Thus, there is no longer a need for any more Dragonborn, since from now on, a dragon killed by any means is as good as dead for all those concerned.
  • Find it a bit easy to sneak past Falmer, even if your muffle shouldn't stop them from seeing you two feet away in the light? No, they aren't crazy, they're just blind.
  • Why do the Blades tell you to kill Paarthurnax for such flimsy reasons? And why don't they tell you to kill Odahviing as well? It has nothing to do with Paarthurnax being a dragon at all! The Blades and the Greybeards don't exactly hide the fact that they don't get along, so it's not a stretch that one of the groups would try to sever your connection with the other. And what better way for the Blades to cut off the Greybeards from the Dragonborn than to send him/her off to kill their leader?
  • The Book of Fate in Calixto's Museum of Curiosities is said to be a book that shows the fate of whoever reads it. However, if you read the book, the pages are actually blank. Well, look at it this way: if the book had something written about you inside it (say that your horse would throw you and break your neck the next time you were on the road between Winterhold and Dawnstar) then wouldn't you go out of your way to avoid that particular road or not ride a horse down it again? By specifically trying to avoid the fate written in the book, you have changed your fate. Therefore, the book is blank because there are so many possibilities in anyone's future that the book has to be blank!
  • It's possible for the Dragonborn to ask Calixto why the book is blank, and one of the theories he proposes (while contradictory to the above one) makes for even more fridgey goodness. If we take Calixto's word as true, then it is incredibly rare for anybody to not see anything at all when they read The Book of Fate. While some who experience this might just be so close to death that they have no fate left to be told to them (which is almost certainly not the case of the Dragonborn), others are thought to be special in the regard that they simply never had a fate in the first place. Now, this explanation does seem very likely to apply to the Dragonborn. Unlike every NPC in Skyrim, the Dragonborn is the only character who truly has any choice and control over their own destiny. They are the ones who decide who wins the civil war. They are the ones who decide whether the Blades return to glory or not. They are the ones who decide whether the Dark Brotherhood will return to glory or be crushed into irrelevancy. The Dragonborn is one of the few who cannot read The Book of Fate, because they are one of the only people who may decide their own fate.
  • Dragons are aspects of Akatosh, and that includes the Dragonborn. Akatosh is the god of time. It's possible that the Book of Fate is simply incapable of reading a Dragonborn's future, because their soul is part of time itself.
  • Another possibility for the Book of Fate: the book is blank to the Dragonborn because it's blank to everyone. There's a good chance Calixto just took an ordinary blank book and claimed it was a legendary artifact. After all, it would be far from the most morally bankrupt thing he's done.
  • Typically your first clue that an enemy is nearby is the music changing and an enemy marker appearing on the map. However, as the game progresses, many enemy encounters on the world map stop triggering the music. If you think about it, though, the music is supposed to portray certain feelings and emotions - and in the case of battle music, it should induce a feeling of danger or excitement. Therefore, the music eventually not playing when encountering certain enemies reflects how the player is so strong that these enemies are no longer a threat or a challenge.
  • The Dragonborn can rebuild the Thieves' Guild's power base and influence without going through the Thieves' Guild questline and recovering the Skeleton Key for Nocturnal. What makes this interesting is that the "curse" the Guild is suffering from is an extreme case of bad luck, caused by the removal of the Skeleton Key. In other words, the Dragonborn rebuilds the Guild while the Guild is suffering a cosmically-ordained run of bad luck. But coupled with many of the Dragonborn's other acts of either divine blessing or Screw Destiny across the game, it makes perfect sense that not even a Daedric-Prince inflicted stretch of severely bad luck would be enough to stop them from pulling the Guild out of the muck.
  • At first, Dawnguard seems sort of unrelated to the whole Dragonborn thing. Skyrim is about the prophecy of the Last Dragonborn, Dragonborn pits the first Dragonborn against the Last. But Dawnguard is about... vampires. Then it hit me, a large part of the story involves the bow of Auri-El, and the Chantry of Auri-El. And what's Auri-El's other name? Akatosh, the creator of Dragons and the Dragonborn. Suddenly it all makes sense why a Dragonborn would be the one to stop Harkon and Vyrthur. Who better than someone with the soul of one of Auri-El's creations? This also, in a roundabout way, explains why the Dragonborn seems to be the only one who can see the glowing eyes of vampires. If you're designated by Auri-El for the role of fighting vampires - especially as Auri-El is associated with the light of the Sun - then Auri-El/Akatosh may well have given the Dragonborn a slight boon and granted them a low-key ability to detect vampires.
  • Sheogorath's quest is not to cure Pelagius of his madness, but rather replace it with a different kind. He has you replace his nightmares with dreams, effectively making him focused on the good rather than the bad; you strengthen his confidence and destroy his self-loathing, thus giving him false assurance in himself; and you remove the source of his paranoia and make him believe there are no threats. When you finish, Pelagius is still a madman who is out of touch with the world, but now he wouldn't have people executed out of paranoia. No wonder Sheogorath said it was more appropriate you treated rather than cured him.
  • It may seem rather odd that Sheogorath is trying to make someone less crazy to begin with. But given the cryptic dialogue that potentially makes Sheogorath a Previous Player-Character Cameo, it makes sense.
  • There are two sides to madness: mania and dementia. Both are dangerous, but one is significantly less so, and that holds especially true for a soul who has already passed on. There is no reason for a dead man to feel self-loathing, or to be paranoid about threats. Replacing Pelagius' negative madness with one that makes him feel better doesn't cure him, but it puts his soul at ease. It's exactly something that Sheogorath would do for those who have passed on.
  • Many players agree that the dragons are really more of a nuisance as the game goes on, due their increasing frequency and decreasing difficulty. But the thing is, this is exactly what it means to be Dragonborn. You're a one man apocalypse whose sole purpose is to kill dragons, of course they'll get annoying. Consider it this way: the mortals are residents, the dragons are unwanted invaders, and the Dragonborn is pest control. Never before has a fictional character been this badass.
  • When you and the Stormcloaks are in line for the chopping block, you can hear Alduin roaring, announcing his presence. The strange part is that Helgen is right at the bottom of the Throat of the World, where Alduin returned, and yet it takes Alduin quite a while before he actually shows up when it should only have taken a second. But it's possible that Alduin first appeared right in front of Paarthurnax, and the roaring was them fighting before Alduin decided to just focus on the Dragonborn. No wonder it took him so long.
  • Why does Alduin even attack at all knowing the Dragonborn is about to be executed? He didn't go to Helgen to attack. He wanted to watch. Seeing this, Paarthurnax roared, and Alduin had to go down to make sure the Imperials weren't too spooked to continue. Unfortunately, someone saw him, everyone panicked, and he had to try and finish the job himself. That's why he failed to kill the Dragonborn, because he never intended to fight there in the first place!
  • When you talk to Arngeir about Dragonrend, he talks about how, in order to learn a Shout, you have to take it into your very being, and effectively "become" the Shout. This means that if you learned Unrelenting Force, you would have to become the essence of unstoppable force. Now, who do we know is unrelenting in his goals, unable to be swerved from fighting for his god and country and people even when it may well be a lost cause, and who knows Unrelenting Force? Ulfric Stormcloak really did take that Shout into his soul.
  • There are a few bowls of troll fat lying on the floor of the East Empire Warehouse. At first this might seem like a bug — they're obviously meant to be on the shelves, right? But then you realise they're placed near buckets and mops. Soap!
  • The fact that guards will let you get away with murder so long as you pay a sizable fine (for most people in the setting) seems odd, doesn't it? Except that, remember, we're in Skyrim, with all the Norse Fantasy Counterpart Culture. And in Norse and Germanic cultures up until the Middle Ages, there's the practice of weregild, or "man price." Though Skyrim's legal system doesn't practice adjusting the weregild for the victim's station, it still stands as a steep price to pay for most people.
  • The fact that Hermaeus Mora uses gifts of power to draw the Dragonborn into his service is not just a ploy to pull the player in through offers of power. It's also a way to appeal to the dragon soul in the Dragonborn by appealing to the dragon's inborn desire for power.
  • The three shouts you will always learn: Fus, Feim and Yol are the pure representations of the three trees of abilities. Fus is governed by Warrior (you can stagger your foes without retaliation); Feim is for Thieves (able to escape from harm to get a better advantage); and Yol is for Mages (pure destruction magic at the tip of your tongue).
  • Every time the player uses the secret entrance to the Thieves' Guild in Riften and walks right in, the character will bump their head and be stuck. The only way this can be avoided is sneaking. This may very well be deliberate on the part of the Guild since no one is supposed to know about this secret entrance. Getting your head bumped when you don't sneak is just a friendly reminder you're supposed to keep it that way.
  • If asked to provide a distraction, Idgrod Ravencrone starts trouble by claiming to see snakes behind Razelan's eyes (and indeed Razelan is always the one used as the decoy, and the only one who will always offer to distract everyone) then yelling that there's a serpent in the midst, and beware the serpent! She comes across as the raving lunatic people see her as, but she's actually referring to you and Malborn as the serpent. You're there to break in, she knows that, and she's telling you to 'begone from this house' and hurry up with your mission so you can leave before the Thalmor catch on. This not only provides an excellent distraction, but keeps her reputation as a prophet alive since people will, afterwards, realize that she was absolutely correct.
  • "You know, you remind me of myself at a young age." One of the quotes Sheogorath might say to you if you pick the appropriate dialogue choice. This makes perfect sense because the conversation he has with Pelagius all but confirms that the events of the Shivering Isles expansion pack from Oblivion did happen and this Sheogorath is the former Champion of Cyrodiil. As a Previous Player-Character Cameo, of course you remind him of himself at a younger age! If you played Oblivion, there's an excellent chance that most, if not all, of your decisions in Skyrim would reflect at least one or more save files you had while playing Oblivion!
  • When you decided to go take out Mercer Frey, you wonder why Karliah wanted you and Brynjolf to become Nightingales. It is so one of you can serve as a distraction for (aka blindsighting) Frey. If Karliah only brought one of you, he would simply use Agent of Subterfuge to make you put a blade in her gut; but by having two people with her, Karliah could be sure that this ability would only work on one, still giving her room to move.
  • How does Babette survive the destruction of the Dark Brotherhood in both scenarios, aside from Bethesda's policy of no child killing in any of their games? It's possibly foreshadowed by one of conversations with the Dragonborn if they join, where she recites a rehearsed story about how her parents were killed by the Dark Brotherhood and she was taken captive, before laughing at how easily people fall for her innocent little girl routine. Yet with the numerous purges that the Brotherhood have suffered in the three hundred years she's been a member, it makes sense that Babette's probably had to use that story more than once already, allowing people to think she was merely a captive and give her a chance to escape.
  • The Dragonborn's dragon soul and resultant dragon nature provides a nice in-universe justification for players' tendency to take everything that isn't nailed down, then take the nails.
  • At the end of the quest "A Night to Remember," Sanguine calls himself "old uncle Sanguine". At first it seems like he's just being a friendly laid back Daedric Prince, but if you think about it, it's a bit deeper than that. You're the Dragonborn, an Aedric/Dragon soul in the flesh of a mortal. And Sanguine is a Daedra. If you browse the more obscure lore of the Elder Scrolls series you'll find that the Aedra and Daedra were created from Anu and Padomay; the Aedra from Anu and Padomay's blood mixing together and the Daedra from just Padomay's blood. Going from that angle, one could say that the Aedra and Daedra are related to each other. So Sanguine's throw-away comment actually holds some truth - he could be considered your uncle.
  • The Thalmor robes are very well-known both for their Badass Longcoat appearance and their accompanying implications. On a very superficial level, they bear a noticeable resemblance to Gestapo uniforms, reinforcing the Thalmor's similarities to the Third Reich. However, it doesn't stop there. The Thalmor robes have a very distinctive design which actually invokes the Badass Longcoat trope, being specifically unable to be closed at the front. This design is seen in the attire of only one other organization in the game: the Psijic Order. Like the Thalmor, the Psijic Order hails from the Summerset Isles, but they have existed for far, far longer, meaning the Thalmor likely used the Psijic robe design as inspiration. On top of the obvious visual similarity, this mimicry by the Thalmor is a subtle parallel to the Nazis' attempts to legitimize their rule by drawing associations between themselves and the original Germanic way of life.
  • This and a good bit of Fridge Horror: you can, in theory, go through the game and finish the Main Quest without starting a single Daedric quest... except for Hermaeus Mora's. Hermaeus Mora, who keeps going on about choice being an illusion... and you have no choice but to start the first bit of Discerning the Transmundane if you want to complete the Main Quest. Of course, you can complete the main story without actually dealing with Hermaeus Mora if you simply never return to Septimus with the Lexicon; the Dragonborn, after all, can defy destiny. Even better, Frea tells you that being Mora's lackey isn't necessarily in the cards for the Dragonborn, and people have indeed found a way to not deal with Hermaeus Mora at all: pickpocketing the key items off Septimus instead of asking for them, thus skipping the trigger for Mora's quest.
  • A very sneaky one can be found in the Thieves' Guild questline. Consider: Skyrim is partially inspired by A Song of Ice and Fire, and in those books there is a clan called the Freys. This family is best remembered for having killed their guests, thereby betraying the principle of Sacred Hospitality. Then consider what Mercer Frey has done to the Thieves' Guild.
  • At first, I found it odd that in Hearthfire, you can give your kids real daggers, as in the Ebony/Dragonbone/Daedric ones; the ones you probably use to slit people's throats. As I stepped outside and promptly got attacked by a Legendary Dragon and 2 giants at the same time, it occurred to me: this is fucking SKYRIM; the land of super-aggressive and deadly bears, spiders bigger than said bears, territorial giants, all sorts of wild creatures, draugr-filled tombs every few square miles, bandits plaguing the countryside, vampires and skeletons hiding amidst the shadows, and that's not even listing them all. You can give your kids actual daggers, because, in the land of Skyrim, you're never too young to know how to defend yourself.
  • Some people were displeased by the fact you can't adopt Aventus Arentino, even after doing the quest he sets for you. The same child whose mother refused to sell heirlooms for medicine to save her life, and then after she died was shipped off dozens of miles away to an orphanage, with said orphanage being run by an abusive matron. Of course you can't adopt him- he thinks adults are useless!
  • From the Headscratcher Page. The reason everyone brings lockpicks, be it store keeper to Companion members, is because it's not really a lockpick. It's just anything thin and long, like a brooch pin or hair pin. That's also why it can break easily. Furthermore, in the book The Wolf Queen, Vol. 1 (which raises the lockpicking skill), it shows Potema picking a lock with her ruby brooch. As one troper put it, "Everybody sees a thing, Master thief sees a lockpick." It can also turn in Fridge Horror when you notice you occasionally find lockpicks in torture rooms; of course, an object with this approximate shape would be an useful torture tool. The item's look in the inventory is the way the game simplifies it.
  • Paarthurnax says in the end that he'll urge other dragons to follow the Way of the Voice: seclusion, non-violence, quiet meditation. It makes dragons safer (and, arguably, better) creatures, since they won't be attacking holds or travelers, but it comes at the cost of suppressing their natural hunger for domination every single day. Odahviing warns that not every dragon will follow the "tyranny of the Voice", and that's when it hits: the conflict the dragons face is peace and prosperity at the cost of denying their own nature, versus being true to themselves and causing violence and destruction. Where have we seen this conflict before?
  • The civil war leaders' respective dialogues (Ulfric and Galmar, Tullius and Rikke) triggering every time you enter their respective headquarters, even if you have heard them both in full before, may seem like a glitch... unless it's a subtle way to tell you both sides in the respective dialogue have been having this exact same dialogue many times before and neither will budge unless an external factor upsets the status quo. In other words, until you throw your weight on either scale.
  • Have the cities of Skyrim in an unmodded game felt sparse? There's an easy explanation: most of the population is off fighting in the civil war.
  • A common insult in Skyrim for Nords is "milk-drinker". Now, this obviously is an insult because Nords love their mead. However, it also has a second meaning. Who else normally drinks a lot of milk? Children. They're not just insulting you for not drinking mead, but also calling you a child.
  • Why do you only fight Corrupted Shades in the quest "The Break of Dawn"? Because they turn to ash when they die, so you aren't able to summon undead within Meridia's temple.
  • The Dragonborn is entirely untrained in the use of the Elder Scrolls, and neither gains prophetic information nor gets struck blind when reading them. That's because they have an Aedric soul and, furthermore, they're on a literal Mission from God (Akatosh in this case). Since they're tools of time and prophecy, and the dragons and Akatosh are time itself, it makes sense that the Dragonborn would gain crucial insights when using an Elder Scroll at precise moments and places. Furthermore, the Dragonborn only gains access to these insights in specific places and while on very specific missions: either to stop Alduin and force him to resume his duties, or to recover Auri-El's Bow, both of which directly involve aspects of Akatosh himself.
  • Alduin is the only dragon known who can shout SLEN TIID VO. Now, consider what a Shout is: it's taking something and embodying the very concept into your soul, allowing you to express the words of that Shout into a Thu'um and remake the world. Consider what Alduin embodies: he is the personification of the World-Eater, the end of the world. But Alduin doesn't exist to end the world; he simply returns the world to the Dawn Era, the primordial state in which the Divines reshape and rebirth the world. Since Alduin is the process to restarting the world, it makes sense that he would be able to use a Shout that remakes that which has died.
  • In the opening, we meet Lokir, a horse-thief that got picked up with the Stormcloaks. Ever wonder why a simple horse-thief is being executed alongside traitors? During the wild west days, horses were considered a necessity of life as they could pull great weights and travel long distances. Stealing a person's horse was basically taking away their only means of working a field or visiting a doctor. So it makes sense in the sparsely populated Skyrim that a horse-thief would face the executioner's block.
  • Some people are puzzled to reason why there are a couple of Septim coins in burial urn dating before Septim Empire was built. As "someone-see-thing-master-thief-sees-lockpick" theory above, the gold coins' look are also simplified of different varieties of coins in the game. As Watsonian logic states this is an RPG franchise, you spend many hours killing things, crafting, smithing, and/or enchanting and not calculating relative price one of the Tamrielic coins compared to other. Doylist logic states that there are Long-Lived Merethic races, particularly nobles or merchants, who have wealth in the form of wide varieties of coins which can be minted 200 years apart and minted by the different dynasties, and both dynasties are now history. In short because of existence of elves who have coins which were minted by different people but has the same (probably) ratio of component; one gold coin has the same value no matter when in history it was minted. Many people don't want their real wealth to decrease and the elves, which are dominant in three provinces and have influence in few others, use their power to make it that way.
  • A bit meta. The Thalmor are introduced in the same game which introduces us Alduin, The World Eater. The Thalmor want to destroy the world because their religious doctrine states that the Aedra created Nirn because Lorkhan tricked them. Alduin was created by Auriel and is tasked with remaking the world when the current world ends. But because of Sunk Cost Fallacy reasons, the very existence of Alduin proves the Altmers' religious doctrine of world creation is false.
  • It may seem oddly cruel of Akatosh to have allowed Vyrthur to contract vampirism, and Vyrthur's actions in response could be argued as being justified. But there are some subtle implications that Akatosh is quick to withdraw his favor from those he deems unworthy. Akatosh/Auri-El most likely knew the kind of person Vyrthur was and sought to punish him for it in some form, regardless of his service; while Gelebor's unwavering loyalty, diligence, and overall kindness has kept Akatosh's favor with him.
  • It's no accident that the questline to defeat Alduin demands that you either secure Whiterun for one side or negotiate a temporary truce. The prophecy of Alduin's return states that he will return when "Snow-Throat lies sundered, kingless, bleeding" - in other words, while the Stormcloak Rebellion is ongoing. By securing Whiterun, you begin the inevitable slide toward one side's victory over the other, while in calling the truce, you effectively halt the war. Either way, Snow-Throat (Monavhen, the Throat of the World) is essentially no longer "bleeding;" the war is either favoring one side decisively or put to a halt. The conditions satisfying the prophecy are no longer in effect, Alduin will not return, and the doom-driven hero is set to put an end to the World-Eater.
  • It seems rather strange that the Dragonborn, the chosen of Akatosh, would be attracted to, of all beings, Hermaeous Mora, the Daedric Prince of Knowledge and Fate. However, when you consider what the Dragonborn does and with what they are associated, it makes far too much sense that Mora would be interested in and appeal to a Dragonborn.
  • Consider the key feature of a Dragonborn: innate comprehension and understanding of the Words of Power. The Thu'um isn't magic in the traditional sense; it's a fundamental understanding of the nature of the world, manipulating the Earth Bones and the music of the universe, in a manner akin to the Dwemer's own Reality Warper technology. At their core, a Dragonborn's power is based around knowledge of the universe, and when they consume a Dragon's soul, they are using that dragon's understanding of the universe to enhance their own power. Of course Mora would be interested in beings who use pure knowledge and comprehension to manipulate the world. He finds a kindred spirit in those who seek knowledge and understanding.
  • Dragonborn, like other Heroes, are not bound by fate, or at least, not the same fate as normal mortals. Like other Heroes, they can defy calculations from even the most powerful Daedric Princes and their servants, like Jyggalag; case in point, Miraak said Screw Destiny and tried to rule the world instead of slay Alduin as was his duty. A being who can utterly defy fate would be the ultimate target for Hermaeus Mora; what better expression of Mora's power than to trap and define the fate of a being who is supposed to be completely outside of fate's embrace? Of course, the player Dragonborn would likely get the last laugh, as they are guaranteed a place in Sovngarde upon death, and thus ultimately escape Mora's reach even if they were imprisoned in Apocrypha.
  • One of the random lines of Whiterun's guard advices to visit the store owned by Belethor, also referred as a "sleazy little man". Why "little man"? Because Belethor is a Breton living among Nords, so he is slightly shorter than the average guards.
  • In the beginning of the Companions questline, Eorlund Gray-Mane gives an errand to the Dragonborn because he has to leave the Skyforge early to go back home and rejoin his wife in mourning. Who is Eorlund's wife? Fralia Gray-Mane, who gives a quest about looking for news about her son Thorald, who is widely believed to be dead. This seemingly random line from a different NPC in a completely unrelated questline was foreshadowing the "Missing in Action" sidequest.
  • One from the very beginning of the game: during the execution scene at Helgen, one of the Stormcloaks will halt last rites and demand to be executed immediately. The brilliance comes in when you take into account when he has this outburst; shortly after the priest's "blessings of the eight divines upon you" line. Since the Empire outlawed Talos worship, which is one of the chief grievances the Stormcloaks have with them, this could be seen as a subtle backhand, which this particular soldier was absolutely not having. "For the love of Talos, shut up and get it over with", indeed.
  • If he'd been just a little more patient with the situation, that soldier might have escaped execution in the chaos created by Alduin's arrival a few minutes later. The player may well draw a parallel between him and Ulfric - if Ulfric Stormcloak had been just a little more patient with High King Torygg, it's entirely possible that they could have avoided all this.
  • Stormcloak troops wear uniforms which are identical to the armors worn by Windhelm guards. Ulfric Stormcloak is both the ruler of Windhelm and the leader of the rebellion. He likely equipped his rebel army with stuff he had in abundance: guard uniforms from his garrison.
  • If you look at the stats for the armors, Stormcloak Cuirasses are slightly inferior than the armor worn by Hold Guards. Well, of course they are... Windhelm is the only city we've seen where anyone's making Stormcloak equipment, and even then, it's all the work of a single blacksmith (plus his assistant), so of course the quality's suffered some. The Empire and other Hold Guards, on the other hand, either had their equipment made beforehand at a more reasonable pace, or the workload's been distributed among multiple smiths, such as Adrianne in Whiterun and Beirand in Solitude.
  • When one considers that Ulfric is a local ruler of Eastmarch and isn't the head of a massive empire able to constantly field standing armies, it makes sense why it takes so long for the Stormcloaks to ramp up to attacking Whiterun. As a feudal ruler dependent on neighboring Jarls, Ulfric would have to negotiate with them for troops and support, build up his numbers, and train and arm the levies. Meanwhile, the Empire could just send a fully-trained Legion after him, if Pale Pass hadn't been blocked and the logistics routes to Solitude weren't so long. This also explains why, when the Battle for Whiterun is concluded, the war rapidly turns ugly for the loser, as most of the manpower they likely had was lost in that battle and they can't raise another army quickly enough to make up for the losses before they get overrun.
  • The population of Windhelm forces the Dunmer into the Grey Quarter, and forces the Argonians to live on the docks, neither of which are prime real estate. This could be due to the Stormcloaks' racism... or it could be purely pragmatic on Ulfric's part. Consider that there are at least two Altmer (aka, the same race as the Thalmor) living in the better parts of the city; if the Stormcloaks were as racist as some make them out to be, they would either boot them out or execute them. More importantly, remember that the Dunmer and the Argonians absolutely despise each other, and have VERY good reasons to do so — the Dunmer enslaved the Argonians, and after the eruption of Red Mountain, the Argonians revolted and took over half of the Dunmer homeland. Keeping their respective populations to certain areas of Windhelm may be the only way to keep them from rioting in the streets.
  • The Redguard Rayya, in Hearthfire, is the only non-Nord housecarl available to the Dragonborn. She's from Falkreath court, where her presence makes more sense than any other Skyrim place: not only does Falkreath Hold share a border with Hammerfell (the Redguard imperial province), but Falkreath starts as an Imperial-aligned hold, so the place is more open to foreigners.
  • Minor one for the Hold Guards: occasionally, in Stormcloak-aligned cities, they'll mutter the line, "The Imperials think us all lawless beasts. I'm proof of their ignorance." At first, this sounds like it's just back-patting; "I'm a guy with principles, so screw the Empire." Then again, this is coming from the Hold Guards; these guys make their living enforcing the laws, so of course they're proof that the place isn't lawless!
  • In "The Mind of Madness", Sheogorath lists off a number of people who could have sent him a message, one of them being Molag Bal. At first this seems like more random nonsense, until you remember the events of the last Greymarch. Of course the Daedric Prince of Domination and Corruption would have something to say about that!
  • In Riverwood's Sleeping Giant Inn, when asking Orgnar (the bartender) for local rumors, one of the answers is about the Love Triangle involving Sven and Faendal competing for Camilla Valerius's heart. While it may seem weird that Orgnar knows about the affair while Camilla is unaware of the men's feelings toward her, Orgnar is The Bartender, so he probably learnt it firsthand from either Sven or Faendal when one of them talked about the situation while drowning his sorrows. In particular, Sven has a tendency to hang around in the bar and act as a local minstrel.
  • Why do Giants always keep mammoths around? Besides standard animal husbandry reasons as a herder race, giants also have literal tons of mammoth cheese lying around everywhere. They need the calcium - otherwise their bones wouldn't be able to support their weight, and they must have a daily RDA only slightly lower than eating the White Cliffs of Dover.
  • When looking for Reyda's fate, the bartender Wilhelm assumes she died on the island east of Ivarstead. Her corpse is actually found in the river, roughly halfway between Ivarstead and said island. While this erroneous clue looks like an oversight at first, the dialogue actually mentions that he looked on the island here without founding anything. He searched the area without finding her: it's a clue that she is elsewhere. While she may have indeed have been killed on the shore of the islandnote , then the river carried her remains elsewhere.
    • In the same dialogue, Wilhelm also speculates that she disappeared while looking for alchemical ingredients on said island. There indeed are harvestable plants here, including the somewhat rare Nirnroot and common but useful blue mountain flowers (ingredients for healing potions).
  • Durnehviir is noted for the fact that he speaks the mortal language very fluently, doesn't speak very much Dovahzul, and is even a bit bad at speaking it because he uses the wrong plural for "Dovah". Why is this? Well, consider the fact that he's been living in the Soul Cairn for thousands of years! He's had nobody to talk to for all that time save the souls trapped there! It makes sense for him to be very fluent in Tamrielic and for his Dovahzul to have deteriorated during that time, because he's had little to no need to use it.
  • Talos worship is forbidden in the Empire, which is reflected in-game by the location of his shrines: they are either in remote places in the wilderness, where Thalmor agents are less likely to find them, or in Stormcloak-controlled cities (Riften, Windhelm) where Thalmor agents wouldn't venture anyway. The only apparent exceptions to the rule make sense, too:
    • The shrines built inside the Dragonborn's homestead are hidden in the basement.
    • Markarth is an Imperial-controlled city with a Thalmor garrison onsite. Its Talos shrine is built behind non specific door and walls, and the building which contains it bears no clue about a place of worship nearby.
    • Whiterun has a big Talos statue in the town square. While the city is theoretically aligned toward the Empire, Jarl Baalgruf has remained neutral in the conflict so far and there's no Thalmor presence in Whiterun.
  • Probably an unintentional example: when upgrading equipment, the three highest ranks are Flawless, Epic, and Legendary. However, some unique weapons cannot be upgraded past flawless without exploiting certain mechanics. While probably just an oversight, this also makes sense: most of these unique weapons are things like Daedric Artifacts, which are pretty renowned to begin with. A Legendary Spellbreaker would be redundant.
    • More logically speaking, improving an item past Flawless quality requires you to have Smithing perks that let you craft items using the material it's made from. In other words, you need specialized know-how to improve it beyond what an average blacksmith can achieve. As you might expect, that knowledge doesn't really exist for Daedric artifacts; heck, it's a wonder you can improve them in the first place.
    • Further brilliance on the above; a lot of the Daedric artifacts have clearly seen better days (standout examples include Molag Baal's rusted mace and Mehrunes Dagon's outright-broken dagger). You're not improving the Daedric items; you're restoring them. (And thus, getting one of them to Flawless quality is Exactly What It Says on the Tin; you've fixed it all the way, it's literally as good as new.)
  • Ingun Black-Briar is an apprentice alchemist fascinated by poison who gives the task of gathering 20 Deathbells, 20 Nightshades, and 20 Nirnroots to replace some of her master's ingredients she wasted with her own experiments. In-game, mixing all three ingredients at an alchemy table allows to create fairly potent Damage Health poisons.
    • She also talks longingly about watching the effects of chemistry on the body if asked why she's interested in Alchemy — specifically, about all the damage that can be done, all the way organs can fail if a foreign substance is introduced. This is someone who people should definitely be concerned about.
    "You ask why I'm so fascinated? The irony... the irony that the same world that gave us life provides us the means to die."
  • Nirn is a world where the gods are pretty active. If you pray at one of their shrines, you get healed of diseases.note  So how can the Thalmor get away with claiming Talos isn't a god? Setting aside the fact that they're omnicidal maniacs who really aren't interested in things that don't conform to their values, it's simple. Praying to, for instance, Kynareth or Julianos will provide tangible benefits which are of use to anybody in the whole of Nirn. But Talos blesses you by reducing your shout cooldown, and almost nobody can use the Thu'um. The four Greybeards can use it, but never leave their mountain; Ulfric can do it; and the Dragonborn can do it. That's it. In an entire country, Talos's blessing is apparent to six people. Of course the Thalmor can disregard the divinity of Talos, since he doesn't do much for anyone else. Oh, you got healed praying to his shrine? It could just as easily have been that cure disease potion you took.
  • The name of Morthal's Moorside Inn is actually a Stealth Pun. In-Universe, it refers the surrounding area (Morthal borders a "moor", i.e. a swamp), but it's also a reference to its owner: the inn is managed by a Redguard named Jonna, and Redguards are based on the Moors.
  • While most video games have autosaving as just a stock game mechanic, there's a possible in-universe explanation for it in Skyrim. The dragon blood is a gift from Akatosh, the Divine of Time, and he gave it to the Dragonborn because he needs them to use it. If the Dragonborn ends up dying, either by chance or by doing something catastrophically stupid, Akatosh will use his power to turn back time so they can try again, while preserving their memory of what went wrong the first time in the hopes of the event not being repeated. By the same logic, manual saving could be the Dragonborn giving a quick prayer to Akatosh, asking for his protection.
  • The Dark Brotherhood's Five Tenets may have been mostly abandoned by the time of this game, but evidently, they're still being enforced by the Dread Father. To wit, Astrid proceeds to break all five of them during the Dark Brotherhood questline, and thus invokes the wrath of Sithis in the form of Commander Maro's fiery vengeance. Now, breaking one Tenet is enough to get Sithis pissed at you, so breaking all of them pretty much earned her a gruesome, agonizing death.
    • Tenet 1: Never dishonor the Night Mother. Astrid fancies herself the real authority in the Brotherhood and dismisses the Night Mother, her Keeper (Cicero), and her Listener (you).
    • Tenet 2: Never betray the Dark Brotherhood or its secrets. She betrays both you and the Falkreath hideout to Maro.
    • Tenet 3: Never disobey or refuse to carry out an order from a superior. Astrid initially refuses to let you see Amaund Motierre as the Night Mother demands. The Night Mother is pretty much at the top of the Dark Brotherhood pecking order and being the Listener technically puts you above Astrid in rank as well.
    • Tenet 4: Never steal the possessions of a Dark Brother or Dark Sister. Astrid, at one point, orders you to steal Cicero's journal.
    • Tenet 5: Never kill a Dark Brother or Dark Sister. Astrid orders you to kill Cicero (whether or not you do is up to you), and tries to have you sent on a suicide mission as well.
  • During the course of your travels, you can stay at an inn once inhabited by Tiber Septim. In the middle of the night, you'll be woken up by the ghost of one of his comrades who mistakes you for him, even if you're a woman and/or of a non-human race. While it is easy for a living person to tell the difference, the ghost may only be able to see you on a spiritual level, where the only thing he would see is that you have a dragon soul. The only person he was familiar with who was like that was the Dragonborn Tiber Septim. From the ghost's point of view, your souls look identical, so it makes sense that he would think his old friend had returned for him.
  • Upon entering Riften, you'll be stopped at the gate by a pair of guards giving you a shakedown. However, particularly cunning players can avoid this by either sneaking in through the dock side of the meadery, pickpocketing the key from the guard's inventory, or getting arrested elsewhere in the Rift. The brilliance comes in when you consider that this means you can get into the city with the Thieves' Guild for free by being persuasive (talking to the guards), a sneak, or getting caught in a crime, all of which fit in pretty well under the Thief playstyle.
    • Additional brilliance regarding the meadery method: the guild is in tight with the Black-Briars, who own the meadery. This gives them an easy way in and out of the city without ever looking at the gate guards.
    • This goes a way in explaining why no matter what, Brynjolf will decide to approach the Dragonborn and offer them a position in the guild: no matter how you got into Riften, you demonstrated a sharp mind that could be used for thievery. Whether the Dragonborn persuaded, intimidated, or paid their way past the guards, they always point out that it was a clear shakedown. If they bypassed it by going through the meadery, they still proved themselves to have a sharp mind by thinking to do so in the first place. And if they pickpocketed the key, then they're either a good pickpocket (obvious Guild material), they're lucky (which the Guild needs badly), or they failed and were immediately arrested (demonstrating a clear understanding of how to manipulate the guards and also the brass ones to try to swipe a key from under their nose).
  • A subtle clue referring the connection between Shouts and the dragons lies in the shape of the word walls themselves: seen from the front, the structure roughly looks like a landed dragon with wings stretched forward, the dark gravure near the top on the middle of the wall being a crude dragon head. Also, since the writings on the wall are located under the "head", standing in front of the world wall while absorbing the knowledge of the world evokes standing in front of a landed dragon, which is probably what happened when Alduin and the other ancient dragons taught the thu'um to the Dragon Priests and their other followers (or, less specifically, any humanoid looking at a word wall would feel being watched by a towering, imposing dragon). The shape of the world walls themselves remind people about this ancient era when dragon ruled the place!
  • The reason people sometimes send hired thugs after you after you've stolen something from them or killed a relative of theirs, even if you didn't get caught during the act, is probably because they know you did it, even if no one was there to witness it. Maybe they saw you exiting their locked house, or heard from a shopkeeper that you'd recently sold a bunch of items that were stolen from them or taken from the murdered corpse of a relative, and so on. They can't legally have you apprehended due to the lack of concrete evidence, but nothing's stopping them from paying off a few mercenaries to exact justice on you.
  • Slightly meta: Dovahzul has no solid conventions for verb tense, which is a bit odd, even for a conlang. But then, of course it doesn't; it's spoken by dragons, who have an unconventional view of time and therefore little to no use for a language convention that denotes an action in time. The concepts of "is", "was", and "will be" just aren't sufficiently distinct to them.
  • In "In My Time of Need", the Dragonborn is hired by the Alik'r to look for their target, with minimal clues: a Redguard woman hiding in Whiterun. There's three female Redguard NPCs living in Whiterun, but there's no dialogue option available with Ahlam and Saffir; you can only confront Saadia, the right target. It actually makes sense from an In-Universe perspective. You know you look for a fugitive, so the most plausible target would be the shy, discreet woman keeping a low profile while working an unremarkable job as a waitress in the local inn, and who never leaves the building. By contrast, Saffir and Ahlam are less discreet and can be encountered outdoors. Also, before even receiving the quest, you may randomly encounter two Alik'r mercenaries looking for someone and interrogating a Redguard woman, whom they release once they notice her face doesn't bear scars: Saadia has scars, Saffir and Ahlam don't.
    • More brilliance in the "In My Time Of Need" quest: Every detail in the quest goes toward concealing which side was telling the truth. For starters, Saadia is hiding out in Whiterun, aka the only neutral city. If Saadia had spoken out against the Thalmor, Ulfric would have almost certainly offered her protection in Windhelm. Likewise, if she'd betrayed Hammerfell for the Thalmor, moving to a city like Solitude with a Thalmor presence would be a lot safer for her. Moreover, Saadia is portrayed as much more personable, but her story has more holes. Kematu's story holds up better (though also not lacking weird inconsistencies of its own), but he uses the "Male Condescending" voice type and often implies that the Dragonborn fell for Saadia's supposed ruse because she was pretty; everything about the guy is designed to piss you off! That's not even mentioning that it's probably more worth it to players to side with Saadia, given that killing the Alik'r is an easy way to get their quite rare scimitar swords (which cannot be bought from any vanilla vendors and are only carried by a very small number of NPCs, most of which are the Alik'r) along with the same amount of money you'd get for helping Kematu. It's really no wonder there's still heavy debate among fans about who should be believed.
  • Sibbi Black-Briar murdered his (now ex) fiancée Svidi's brother, and can give the task to locate her. Svidi can be found at the Vilemyr Inn in Ivarstead, where she works as a bard, under the name "Lynly Star-Sung". Sibbi describes her as having black hair, but she is blonde in-game. While this could be an oversightnote , this could also be justified by Svidi/Lynly being a fugitive with a fake identity and who had dyed her hair to be harder to recognize (in-game, the Face Sculptor of Riften provides such service). Also, one of her banters with the owner of the inn mentions her feeling she isn't a very good bard; what she actually did for a living before fleeing Sibbi and Riften isn't stated, but it's entirely possible that she was never actually trained as a bard and picked up the work as part of her disguise.
  • During the Markarth questline "No One Escapes Cidhna Mine", one of the options the Dragonborn can say when asked by Uraccen why they're in the mine is "I killed a guy who asked questions". The dialogue works as a threat toward Uraccen, which is how he takes it. But it also doubles as the Dragonborn sardonically referencing Eltrys's death. Eltrys was a man who was murdered for asking questions, and as far as the people of Markarth know, the Dragonborn killing him was the reason they were thrown into the mine.
    • It could also be taken to mean the Dragonborn did indirectly kill them, in that he wouldn't have died without their intervention.
  • There's a justifiable reason why the Dragonborn would kill Paarthurnax, even if they were otherwise positively inclined toward him. You can start the quest to kill him from the Blades immediately after learning Dragonrend, which is a Shout created using the malice and hatred that the ancient Nords felt toward all dragons. In order to learn a Shout you have to take its very essence into yourself and make it a part of you. By absorbing Dragonrend, you take that hatred into yourself, so it would make sense that it would... affect your perceptions of dragons to the point that the Blades start making sense.
  • During "Rise in the East" and the Dawnguard DLC, the Medieval Stasis of Tamriel appears to be slipping, with gunpowder cannons appearing in the former and crossbows appearing (and proliferating) in the latter. But why? Well, look at who has traditionally controlled R&D on Nirn: Mages. Mages wouldn't want firearms to be invented for obvious reasons: bolts and bullets could penetrate their wards and most battlemages don't wear armor, so it would be more practical to arm an army with guns than higher battlemages. Of course in the Third Era, the Mages' Guild (which had a presence in every province to some degree and was very influential politically) wouldn't permit this to happen. With the fall of the Mage's Guild and the rise of the Aldmeri Dominion (which is dominated by mages as its ruling class), there's every need for a mage-killing weapon to protect people from the Thalmor. The Synod and the unaligned colleges like Winterhold can't really argue against a weapon that could negate the Thalmor's one big tactical advantage if they want to stay alive.
    • This is also reflected in the changes to the mage classes' skill trees, specifically the removal of mysticism. The other skills are practical skillsets that could be used for the purposes of a career. Mysticism more aligns with religion and spirituality, so naturally the various mage organizations would disconnect from them if they're concerned about their careers, since they're more likely to work in intellectual pursuits or combat applications (such as battlemages or clerics). If the latter goes away, they need mages to be more The Smart Guy and less The Heart, especially since the Thalmor managed to get Talos worship outlawed! How long until another divine is on the chopping block? Mages are being practical: don't get a degree in religious studies or philosophy, learn a trade!
  • Gunpowder's first major appearance being in cannons rather than muskets might seem oddnote ..until you remember: the earliest handheld firearms were terrible, and far less reliable than either hand drawn bows or crossbows, but cannons were very practical; it's not a stretch to imagine that we might see rather primitive muskets in TES VI.
  • As for why crossbows haven't caught on outside of the Dawnguard? It's likely they are a recent invention that the Dawnguard keeps a closely guarded secret! While a player can join Clan Volkihar and still obtain a crossbownote , a player can only learn how to forge new crossbows as well as forge/buy bolts after they've gotten Sorine to join the faction, which they can't do until Isran asks for their help; conversely, if you side with Clan Volkihar, you can't make new crossbowsnote , and your only means of obtaining more bolts are from fallen Dawnguard members, fallen Dwarven Spheres, or picking up ones that were fired at you.
  • It might seem odd that after Oblivion not having any were-beasts, werewolves come back. However, Skyrim lacks a Fighter's Guild, and what they have instead (the Companions) only operate out of one city, not to mention the higher-ups of the Companions are werewolves. Most crimes related to werewolves would be over by the time the Companions got there, and odds are that the Companions would send any werewolf-related crimes to the Circle, who'd focus on containing a fellow werewolf rather than killing them. It's also worth noting that the only faction which goes out of their way to hunt down werewolves (the Silver Hand) are considered bandits by most of Skyrim.
  • Most NPCs claim Ulfric killed Torygg by using the Thu'um, something Ulfric denies. However, if fought, Ulfric is shown to use two shouts, Unrelenting Force and Disarm. To most people, which shout he used wouldn't matter - because they don't understand Dovah, they would only know that he shouted; the only people who would know the difference would be the Greybeards and the Dragonborn (none of whom were present). This means that both statements are correct in some form, since it's likely that Ulfric used the Disarm shout on Torygg, then killed him with his sword.
    • This also explains why Tullius, despite likely having as much understanding of the language as any other normal person in Skyrim would, views Ulfric's of the Thu'um as having profaned it: rather than use it as a celebration of Nordic Culture (something Tullius privately is fine with), Ulfric used it to give himself an unfair advantage in the fight with Torygg (since even if Torygg had training with a sword, bare fists aren't very useful against a sword in the hands of a trained warrior). He doesn't extend this view to a Nordic Dragonborn simply because Ulfric can use the same ability, thus meaning you and him are equal.
  • Despite being a shout, Dragon Aspect is treated as a special power that can only be cast once a day like a racial ability. This is because it actually is a racial ability, of sorts. It isn't the Dragonborn using the magic of the Thu'um, so much as them calling upon and channeling the power of their draconic soul itself.
  • The bonuses to armor and power attacks granted by Dragon Aspect are not very useful for stealth focused players. However, this could be somewhat intentional. Dragons are not known for their subtlety or sneaking around. They dominate everything they see and crush everyone who oppose them. Stealth bonuses would naturally not be provided.
  • As a possible interpretation for why Miraak would conspire against Hermaeus Mora despite the obvious risks, one should bear in mind that Mora's Daedric realm contains every book ever written both past, present, and future. This could imply Miraak found a book that contained evidence that someone has, or will successfully outfox Hermaeus Mora. Given Miraak's ego, he likely was banking on the hope he would be the person written to have (or will be written) done so.
  • Not counting the initially-neutral Whiterun, the eight major cities of each hold can be paired, as they all have a counterpart in the other side of the civil war.
    • Solitude-Windhelm are large, fortified cities with a glorious history. They're also both the capital cities of respectively the Imperial-ruled and the Stormcloak-ruled province.
    • Markarth-Riften are officially ruled by a powerless figurehead while the real power is detained by a clan of shady businessmen (the Silver-Bloods in Markarth, the Black-Briars in Riften), who actually replaces the initial Jarl if the hold switches allegiance. Also, the hold is the theater of other shady activities more of less connected with said business clan (the Forsworn unrest around Markarth, the Thieves Guild in Riften).
    • Morthal-Dawnstar are smaller, unwalled towns located in the middle of a harsh area (Morthal in a swamp, Dawnstar in a frozen tundra) who both must be rescued from a supernatural plot (a vampire conspiracy in Morthal, Vaermina's influence in Dawnstar).
    • Falkreath-Winterhold are both remote locations in both extremities of the map, surrounded by wilderness, and mostly famous for a single local feature (the graveyard in Falkreath, the Mage College next to Winterhold).
  • You might think it odd that one of the alchemical properties of Human Flesh is Paralysis, since people aren't naturally poisonous or anything. But consider Kuru, a neurodegenerative disease whose symptoms include the loss of muscle control, which is transmitted via... cannibalism.
  • There isn't a mention of Ulfric having a significant other, despite caring about the legacy he leaves behind - while a Stormcloak Dragonborn not being able to marry him is likely for similar reasons as a Legion Dragonborn not being able to marry Elisif the Fair, what about anyone else? Considering he mentions having sent requests for support to both High Rock and Hammerfall, it's not a stretch to imagine he might be offering to finalize an alliance by marrying a princess from either High Rock or Hammerfell.
  • Some of the jarls have adult children who seem to be single but none of them are available for marriage. Jarls probably have their own matrimonial policies, and since the Dragonborn is a nobody who raised to fame thanks to their own deeds, they wouldn't be related to a Tamriel noble family, so they wouldn't fit in such policies.
  • For most of the conversations you have in the Dark Brotherhood questline, you have the possibility of answering to other people with remaining silent. Of course, you are the Listener - by remaining silent, you listen while the other person speaks!
  • One has to wonder when getting into Riften, why Brynjolf can manage to talk you into the Thieves Guild even if you've never stolen anything in game or even commit a crime before meeting him. But consider one little thing that he gives you after you become guildmaster: The Amulet of Articulation. Its powers include making all persuasion almost always succeed and fortifying your Speech Skill anywhere between 5% to 35%. Given he knows how to size up a mark, he likely thought you'd be a good asset to the guild and with the amulet, he could persuade you to join. Of course, you can always walk away and let him deal with things. After all, it only makes almost all persuasion checks succeed.
  • If you start wandering Skyrim before completing "Dragon Rising" you may be wondering why all the talk of dragons when you've only seen the one (or none, if using Alt. Start mods). Dragons will not spawn at all until "Dragon Rising" is completed. While this is likely to keep things from getting broken, there is an in-universe reason why. Alduin's fatal flaws are hubris and cowardice, which is what leads him to try to enslave Nirn rather than eat it, as he is supposed to do. It stands to reason then that, since he's the one who brings the dragons back to life, until you kill a dragon and eat its soul, Alduin is content to mosie about without having to fight all the other dragons for power. Once he's sure that you didn't die at Helgen, then he starts bringing the dragons back hoping one of them kills you.
    • In addition, we know that Mirmulnir was still alive and roaming the mountains of Skyrim. Alduin was flying over those same mountains that Mirmulnir was nesting in, and he answered his master's call and became more aggressive, prompting more rumors of dragons.
  • One might find it odd how Gianna is so willing to go along with the Gourmet putting something the recipe for the Potage le Magnifique doesn't call for in. However, given the wording of the recipe if one reads "Uncommon Taste", many people likely suspect that the Gourmet has his own secret ingredient. As far as she knows, the Gourmet is using the ingredient that gives their version the unique flavor it has.
  • The follower Atar is Solitude's headsman, who is seen beheading a prisoner when you enter Solitude for the first time. When you recruit him, his default weapon is still his headsman's axe, but he lacks the perk which sometimes plays the beheading animation when the killing blow is inflicted with a two-handed weapon. It actually makes sense, as beheading someone who is bound and motionless doesn't require the same skill as doing the same in the heat of a fight, not to mention a headsman's axe is a rather cumberstone tool not intended for war.
  • Paralysis status negates fall damage, so paralyzing yourself before you hit the ground by eating Netch Jelly (the only alchemy ingredient with Paralysis as its primary effect) will save you if you find yourself tumbling off a cliff. While this is most likely just an amusing yet practical oversight, of course something from a Netch would negate fall damage; Netches don't have legs and float everywhere. Falling from dangerous heights isn't exactly something that a Netch would ever have to worry about.
  • The Unbound Dremora summoned in the Master Conjuration quest remains at the College of Winterhold permanently despite the summoning spell saying it only lasts for 999 seconds (16 minutes and 39 seconds). Another likely oversight, but he'd have a very good reason to stay. After getting the Sigil Stone for the Dragonborn, he mentions that Mehrunes Dagon is "less than pleased" with him for doing so. Staying at the College of Winterhold instead of returning to Oblivion means putting off facing the wrath of his Bad Boss a little while longer.
  • Paarthurnax's speech in his titular quest isn't referring only to himself, but to you, the player. The "evil nature" of Dragons refers to destruction and domination, and is largely an allegory for the players' tendency to do everything and anything regardless of morality in video games. However, he has resisted the urge to return to his nature through deep meditation and study of the Way of the Voice. The player, meanwhile, is given an urge of their own via the quest; there is no other way to complete the quest but killing Paarthurnax. The quest will stay there until he is dead, no ifs, ands or buts. This, if the player believes he is to be forgiven for his actions, results in a similar situation: Will they stay by their decision to spare him but leave the quest uncompleted, or will they give in and kill him?
  • Why are the Dragonborn's breath shouts so much weaker than a dragon's, producing a short blast rather than an extended stream of fire or ice, even with all three words? Simple: Dragons' bodies are made for shouting, likely with lungs meant specifically for breath streams that enable them to extend their attack far beyond a simple blast. Mortals, by contrast, though capable of using the thu'um, do not have bodies designed for shouting, and have weaker lungs that cannot sustain a long exhale. As a result, the power of such shouts are restricted by the ordinary limits of the body.
  • Pretty much no Ward spell can stand against dragon fire or ice breath for very long, not even the Daedric Artifact Spellbreaker. This actually makes perfect when you consider what the breath attacks are. Dragons aren't expelling magic that you can block out of their mouths, they're bending reality to produce it out of nothing and then launching it at you with their Words. Dragons operate on a different level of magic, if you can call it that, because the Thu'Um is a divine force not something dripping in from Aetherius. So defensive spells wouldn't cope very well.

    Fridge Horror 
  • Serana is a "pure-blood" vampire, meaning she was turned into one directly by Molag Bal. Serana says she and her parents (including her father) were put through a certain "ritual" that was both degrading and brutal. Most players have concluded that it must be part of the reason why Molag Bal is called the "King of Rape". Even worse when you realize that Molag Bal is a giant, demonic creature and the revelation that only a small number of those who undergo the ritual survive (squick). No wonder the survivors nearly always go insane.
  • Take a look on the eastern part of Skyrim. Even go there and explore, south of Windhelm. Lots of beautiful landscapes down there... until you notice you're standing inside the caldera of a supervolcano that puts Red Mountain to shame. At least, Red Mountain at the time of any of the games. Red Mountain is rumoured (rumoured in the games, that is) to have been four times the size before the second-to-last major eruption (which would explain why Caldera is called, well, Caldera: it'd put it in old Red Mountain's caldera).
  • One of the random effects of the Wabbajack staff includes turning people/creatures into different things, including a sweetroll. You can then eat said sweetroll.
  • One of the quickest ways to discover the effects of alchemy ingredients is to eat them. Munching things like wheat and juniper berries may seem mundane, and eating a giant's toe or troll fat might incur a little nausea, but things get a little freaky when you find (and consume) such delightful ingredients as a human heart.
  • In the College of Winterhold, one of the shadier members gives you a quest to return a staff to him. Upon entering the indicated cave, you find some vampires and a Staff of Charm. The fridge horror kicks in when you notice that this staff has the "Calm" effect, meaning victims of it stop fighting. Now think about what a vampire could use that spell for...
    • The dungeon to which you're sent is randomly selected, but that doesn't detract from the Fridge Horror-ness of it any, when you think about what bandits or warlocks could do with that spell. Bandits would probably use it to make people hand over their money. No point risking their lives when they can just get it for free, and it leaves no physical evidence of their crimes. Their money and their... "dignity". They are bandits, after all.
  • During the quest "The Taste of Death", Eola mistakes you for a fellow cannibal and tells you that she understands and that you are not alone. Normally, she'd be wrong... that is, unless you're a werewolf in which case, yes, you have quite possibly been eating other people all along in order to extend your time in wolf form.
  • If you're an alchemist, you've probably eaten all sorts of crap in your quest to find the effects of ingredients. Thing is, human flesh/human hearts are ingredients, so you may very well have snacked on people parts before.
  • Bosmer have a reputation for cannibalism, of course, so it makes sense for Eola to believe a Bosmer Dragonborn (especially if she realises you're foreign) is a Humanitarian.
  • Another bit of Fridge Brilliance! You, the Dragonborn, upon killing a dragon, consume its soul. The Dragonborn has been said to have the SOUL of a dragon. So yeah, you've been learning your Shouts via consuming your fellow dragons' souls, i.e. cannibalism.
  • The Thalmor Dossier on Ulfric Stormcloak says that he was made to believe that the information he eventually forfeited was crucial to the fall of the Imperial City - in fact, it wasn't. However, given the Thalmor's way of obtaining information, it's safe to assume that this plays a huge part in why Ulfric won't help the Dunmer, or the Khajiit, or the Argonians...
  • Draugr. Basically mummified zombies made to walk again, the originals served part of the Dragon Cult. Why are there so many in even newer dungeons? Simple. Embalming tools and linen are common items in these dungeons; in fact, it's rare to not see some. Nearby, you may also have a draugr that's wrapped in those linens. They're actually created by either those who made the place to guard it, or made by the draugr themselves from recently-dead corpses. More than likely, these are 'in-production' draugr that aren't ready to pick up the ol' axe and defend the place from treasure hunters and adventurers.
  • The fact that King Olaf's tomb in Dead Men's Respite is crawling with draugr (including himself) seems to indicate one of two things: Either that made-up story about him making a pact with Numinex isn't that far off, or the ancient dragons have ways of turning Nord corpses into draugr despite the victim having never served them in life. And then there's the revelation that Alduin has been consuming the souls of the newly dead in Sovngarde. Perhaps this allows him some degree of control over the bodies originally belonging to those souls? On the other hand, you meet Olaf himself in Sovngarde, and he seems no worse for wear, and a lot nicer than his draugr counterpart. So what exactly is inhabiting his corpse back in Nirn that would account for the personality change?
  • What happens to Wyndelius in the barrow outside of Ivarstead indicates that the ancient Nord barrows have some kind of mental effect on those who spend too much time in them, slowly driving them to protect and defend the barrow over time. It is entirely possible that many of the draugr you fight aren't just ancient Nords, but also the corpses of adventurers who fell exploring the ruins and were mummified by the Dragur inside and then animated by whatever dark necromantic magics influence the old ruins. If this is the case, it would also explain some of the treasure you can loot from said draugr when you kill them. It makes sense that fallen adventurers would be carrying things like lockpicks and gold coins, which no ancient draugr would need.
  • Additional Fridge Horror for the tombs, barrows, and catacombs: Most players pick up the convenient gold coins from the burial urns. Specifically burial urns. From an in-universe perspective, the Dragonborn has been sifting his or her hands through possibly still-greasy and rancid ashes for the chance at a couple of Septims.
  • The Forsworn armor is almost certainly made of human skin and bone, except for the helmet made from a deer skull. As you enter Lost Valley Redoubt you'll find a find a Forsworn working a grindstone with a dead Nord lying on it. If you're stealthy, you can hear him comment on the merits of Nord bone over other kinds.
  • If you look at someone wearing Forsworn armor, the skulls on the waistcloth are noticeably smaller than the head of the adult wearer - i.e., they belonged to children.
  • Narfi may be mad, but he appears to be harmless, and can even be considered a Woobie since he's lost both his parents and his sister, the latter of whom he doesn't even know has died. However, upon completing his quest where you find his sister's remains, he'll give you some alchemical ingredients... which can include human flesh and organs. Needless to say, there's probably a very good reason the Dark Brotherhood have a contract on him.
  • Reyda was an alchemist, so it's possible Narfi is just offloading old ingredients of hers (or newer ingredients that he collected as a present for her) without understanding how odd it is to give human flesh to a stranger. Why doesn't he understand this? Narfi didn't go mad when his sister disappeared; he was already mentally handicapped. When Wilhelm mentions Narfi being "in a state" ever since his sister's disappearance, he just means the poor man is upset that his caregiver and only friend has abandoned him.
  • The Stormcloaks' motto of Nord supremacy can be unsettling with their phrase "Skyrim FOR THE NORDS" being similar to other real world racial supremacy/nationalist groups. Not helped by the fact that many Nords fit the pop-cultural description of "Aryan".
  • Have you ever enchanted a weapon or stumbled into a Dwemer mine and nabbed some soul gems from the machines? When you fill a soul gem using soul trap or conjured weapons you are essentially TRAPPING someone into your fancy new armor or weapon. What's worse is that many machines (such as the ones in Dwemer mines) run on soul gems, meaning that either the dwarves actively murdered and stole the souls of others to power their machines, or that the machines actively kill and steal the souls of people who enter the mines.
  • Killing a random assassin that has been contracted to kill you is really the only way to deal with them. That said, since they are part of the Dark Brotherhood, that means that they probably shared the same close family-like bond with the other members that you have the opportunity to meet. If things had been different, you and your would-be murderer could have been good friends. What you have done is killed someone and usurped their family.
  • Something of a meta example, but: if you hang around Whiterun for long enough, you'll eventually hear the townspeople mention how the Jarl's children are acting oddly, of late. This is a segue into the Daedric quest "The Whispering Door", wherein you discover that the Ebony Blade, a token of Mephala's favor, is sitting underneath Dragonsreach. Mephala is the Prince of secrets, corruption, and murder. You can, of course, refuse to do her (his?) bidding. He (she?) will only laugh, and tell you that while you think you're strong enough to resist, nothing could be further from the truth: sooner or later, you'll dance to its tune, whether you realize it or not. However, it is possible for the player to betray the Jarl of Whiterun... so it's possible for Mephala to be accidentally accurate.
  • Many of the quests can invoke this simply by the placement of corpses. In "Blood on the Ice," you find the lair of the butcher with several butchered bodies. However, if you talk with the townsfolk, only three women are known to have been killed so far, and one of their bodies was recovered since the killer fled before collecting his quarry. So... where did the other skulls come from? In Frostflow Lighthouse, the books detail how the father came home and found his family captured and his wife and son dead. We never find the son's body, while the father's remains are found within the stomach of a chaurus broodmother. The notes also detail how he gave his daughter a knife so that she "would not have to suffer". It takes a while to realize that he probably figured out what the attackers intended to do with them after his son was taken away.
  • An unmarked altar south of Greenspring Hollow contains several skeleton enemies (one of which is a mage) and the corpse of a novice conjurer. At first glance it seems that the novice got a bit carried away and was killed by his own summons. Then you see the bloodied bones near him. The Skeleton Mage was killing people and raising them as skeletons.
  • There is a book in the game called the Red Kitchen Reader. It talks about how the writer, as a boy, once wandered into an abandoned house in Cheydinhal. Hearing a sound and thinking some bullies had followed him in, he ran outside and escaped into a well right beside the house. At the bottom of the well he found a darkened sub-basement with a "red painted kitchen", where he discovered some unknown chunks of meat roasting on the oven, and ate it all. He considered staying to ask the owners of the subbasement what the delicious meat was and what their secret was, but decided to leave because he'd practically just broken into their house. He never found that house again, but became a famous food connoisseur, traveling around Skyrim and sampling local cuisine. People who have only played Skyrim and read the book probably thought nothing of it, but Oblivion players will no doubt cringe upon realising that the boy had stumbled into a Dark Brotherhood Sanctuary, that the "red paint" was probably blood and that he might have just eaten cooked human flesh. The author has no idea how lucky he was...
  • The reason for Wyndelius' insanity. While it's possible that his own concoction of a incandescent potion was responsible for his insanity, another more terrifying possibility might be the cause. He spent a year in Shroud Hearth Barrow, slowly forgetting his motivations for being there (the Dragonclaw), but finding himself unable to leave, before eventually becoming consumed with a need to protect the Barrow against all intruders. Sound familiar? It's also the same behaviour that the draugr display! While the assumption is that the draugr are cursed for being allied with Dragon-Priests, the game states that this is only a theory and it's not fully understood how they became what they are. The possibility that they might be capable of slowly brainwashing anyone who enters suddenly makes barrows exponentially creepier to visit.
  • Suppose the draugr, or at least some of them, became that way before they died? Spending too long in a barrow, slowly brainwashed into forgetting who they were, just like Wyndelius. Eventually, even forgetting to eat or care for themselves, until their bodies decayed, kept alive by the latent magic in the barrow, and they ended up as a Not Quite Dead, but not truly alive, mindless zombie.
  • Everyone hates the chaurus (and Dawnguard only made it worse by giving them wings), but take a look at some of the Falmer huts. Some are decorated with chaurus remains. Not horrifying, right? Look at the top of the doorway into some of the huts. They get bigger... We may not have seen them yet, but it's probably only a matter of time.
  • In the Hearthfire expansion pack, you can design and build your own house, where you can decide to construct a trophy room where you can use taxidermy to display stuffed defeated enemies. This includes wolves, crabs, slaughterfish, and a dragon's skull, but more disturbingly, also Falmer and draugr. That's right, you can display the stuffed ancient corpse of a cursed human being as a decoration in the same house where you can have your spouse and kids live. A tad messed up.
  • By keeping a Rogues Gallery on display in their home, the Dragonborn is actually teaching their kids two very important lessons. One, the kids will grow up to be capable of identifying Skyrim's most dangerous creatures on sight; two, and more importantly, they'll know that even though such monsters are real, they can always be killed!
  • Nightshade, a potent ingredient for poisons, is nightmare fuel not for what it is but where it grows. It grows abundantly in cemeteries and other places associated with death. Knowing this makes some of its locations very unsettling. For instance, you can find nearly a dozen Nightshade plants throughout Solitude, which gives subtle clues to its bloody history. Labyrinthian is also made more unnerving as nightshade can be found throughout, further emphasizing that many people have been killed throughout the years.
  • On a milder, more subtle note in Skyrim classic version: the game never tells you what happened to Carlotta Valencia's husband, and she's certainly not talking. However, a patch of Nightshade is growing outside her house - the only one in Whiterun, in fact. The Special Edition adds a few more bits of Fridge Horror to the question. One of the few content modification compared to Classic Skyrim is the addition of many new patches of herbs, flowers, etc. in many places. Whiterun now gets Nightshade in the graveyard, for obvious reasons, but also next to the entrance of the local alchemy shop. Arcadia suddenly seems much more sinister...
  • On the subject of medicinal horror, think about what it would be like to drink a potion made of Giant's Toe and Troll Fat...
  • The Ebony Warrior believing that he has nothing left to do in this world wants to die in a glorious battle so that he can go to Sovngarde. What if the Dragonborn ever feels the same way? Will they one day grow tired of all the adventures and seek out some young warrior to claim their life?
  • The quest "Missing in Action" has you rescue Thorald Gray-Mane from the Thalmor, and in the aftermath Thorald and his brother (Avulstein Gray-Mane) decide to join the Stormcloaks to hide from the Thalmor. Regardless of outcome, neither of the two are ever seen again. If you decide to join the Imperial Legion, Avulstein and Thorald are likely among the Stormcloaks killed during the questline. If this is the case, it's likely that you could have killed them yourself, along with the rest of the Stormcloak Mooks you cut down by the scores (unless for whatever reason, you didn't kill a single Stormcloak during the Imperial questline).
  • If you join the Dark Brotherhood, town guards will occasionally say to you, "Psst! I know who you are. Hail Sithis!" Town guards, whose job it is to protect the citizens of their city from murderers, support the presence of a murdering guild. Think about this from a citizen's standpoint: you've put your faith in the protection of the town guard, unaware that they actually support/allow assassins to operate in their city. You are blissfully unaware of the dangers around you. Then one day, in the middle of the night, alone in your house... *splat* Even if you subscribe to the theory that the guards are just trying to placate you, that still raises the issue of guards being too afraid of you to actually stop you from killing.
  • Imagine if you were to get such a person mad at you. You've gone and gotten a sword in your chest. (Or arrow in your knee, or fireball in your face. Really depends what he feels like at the time.) But at least that's the end of the story, right? Wrong. Your fellow guards, even though they're just as afraid of this guy as you used to be (or should have been) are honor-bound to attack him to try and see justice served. So not only have you committed suicide, you've also bound your fellow guards to follow your lead. But wait! That's not all! See all those citizens around? Some of them are the type to rush in and help when it appears a law is being broken. You've gotten them killed too. Not to mention, if this incredibly powerful person is also incredibly callous, they could easily use Fireballs, or Chain Lightning, or perhaps even Master-level spells. Worse, this monster is known to have an extremely powerful Red Dragon (second only to the Blacks like Alduin himself in power) as their sidekick, who can be summoned in a single breath to make tinder out of the entire city. So anyone in the area ends up dead! Appear gutless and allow one citizen with a bounty on their head to die? Or risk angering the One-Man Army with a potential multitude of casualties.
  • The way the negotiations in "Season Unending" work, booting Elenwen from the conference counts as a concession to the Stormcloaks. For a completely fair treaty, this means that the Stormcloaks will have to give up one of their minor holds later on. Ulfric is literally willing to hand over strategic territory so that he won't have to be in the same room with her. It's a given that his time in Thalmor captivity wasn't pleasant, but the implications of that exchange really drive the point home.
  • Even worse about Elenwen - if you give Markarth over to the Stormcloaks in the negotiations, Ondomelar's possessions can be found in a casket. That's right, Elenwen didn't even object enough to ask for time to pull her men out of what would turn into a danger zone, taking the Bad Boss aspect up to eleven. However, Dummied Out content shows that Ondolemar's death is a leftover from earlier in the game's development, where all cities could be taken through sieges; specifically, he would be killed by Galmar during the Stormcloaks' siege of Markarth and Elenwen most likely couldn't warned him beforehand.
  • In Dawnguard, when you're in the Soul Cairn, some of the souls aren't wandering around, but are in little cages just sitting there, dejected. If you look up at the top of one of these towers you can see a soul gem. Unlike the other souls, which have likely already been used in enchantments, these are TRAPPED IN A GEM SOMEWHERE still not having fueled an enchantment. These people might be in my inventory right now!
  • At one point in the main questline, a document states that an interrogator has authorized "Intermediate Manual Uncoiling" on a prisoner. The most disturbing thing about that phrase is the word intermediate. Given that you walk in on a bloody torture session shortly afterwards, one wonders what Extreme Manual Uncoiling would look like...
  • One for those who complete the quest "Paarthurnax" and kill the eponymous dovah, especially since if you kill him, chances are you're doing it because you believe he can't be trusted to adhere to the pacifistic Way of the Voice. As has been noted elsewhere, he is surprisingly easy to kill, some likening it to murder rather than battle. What makes this Fridge is when you remember how he goes draco-y-draco against Alduin himself and becomes leader of the dov after Alduin's death. In other words: Paarthurnax is likely holding back against you even in the face of destruction of his very soul, i.e. adhering to the Way of the Voice even unto death. In some ways, he's not the one who loses his soul in that scenario.
  • Hermaeus Mora appears as a writhing mass of tentacles and bubbling eyes to you in Dragonborn, but if you rotate the camera while he's speaking, you'll notice that the bubbles shift unnaturally. If you take a closer look, you'll see that those bubbles are actually eyes. What's more disturbing about it is that these eyes are always centered on the camera; i.e., on you the player. Hermaeus knows there's a fourth wall, and he knows that the "Dragonborn" standing before him is just a hollow avatar. In every scene, he's speaking directly to you. Quite befitting the Daedric Prince of Forbidden Knowledge!note 
  • More like Fridge Squick, but whenever the Dragonborn gets arrested, they're able to sneak in a single lockpick. Where do you think they were hiding it? Females have another option, at least.
  • When Rolff Stone-Fist talks about throwing the Dunmer and Argonians in the pit, he wasn't speaking metaphorically. He seriously wants Ulfric to open the Windhelm Pits so they can watch as the Argonians and Dunmer are forced to kill one another for their own amusement.
  • Some of the things you'll be able to loot from Bandit camps after getting Hearthfire include children's clothes and toys. Think about that for a second...
  • Where did Miraak get his cultists? Probably, Miraak cultism is merely the advanced stage of working on one of his stone shrines for too long. So if you use a Solstheim stone too many times, you will end up as a masked cultist.
  • One for players who have no sympathy for the Dark Brotherhood. If you kill Astrid and then proceed to kill everyone else in the sanctuary, everyone hails you as a hero for finally wiping them out for good... Except you didn't. Cicero and Babette are still alive, and more importantly, the Night Mother's body is still intact. It's possible that Cicero and Babette could take refuge in the Dawnstar sanctuary, where Cicero will continue to tend to the Night Mother while Babette searches for new recruits, and eventually the Night Mother will choose one of them as her Listener. This would be the only way to Hand Wave the Dark Brotherhood still being around in the next game even if the Dragonborn didn't join them.
  • The "Prophecy of the Dragonborn" refers to both Alduin's return and the Wheel turning on the Last Dragonborn... except nowhere in the prophecy does it state anywhere that it's referring to you, or even to the person who defeated Alduin. Imagine what would have happened if Miraak had won the battle against the Dragonborn, thus leaving him as the "Last Dragonborn" in existence. By the vague wording of the prophecy, and if you had not already fought Alduin (or even if you had), he could have easily stepped in and usurped your role!
  • Defeating Alduin requires Dragonrend. Miraak with Dragonrend is a terrifying thought on its own, but then remember that Miraak can't subvert Hermaeus Mora in the end. Hermaeus Mora would probably be very interested in a power like Dragonrend...
  • The quest "The Break of Dawn" has you fighting Corrupted Shades, the souls of fallen Stormcloaks and Imperials twisted and warped by a necromancer into becoming his unholy undead minions. This is eerie enough, as Corrupted Shades resemble legless, floating black skeletons with Glowing Eyelights of Undeath wearing the tattered, rotted remnants of their uniforms and weapons. Like other undead, they attack on sight... unlike other undead, they have idle animations. Sometimes they'll just patrol back and forth, but wait long enough, and you'll see one of the shades wander over to a table and stay there for long periods of time. Look closely at the shade, and you'll notice that its armor reveals it was once an Imperial soldier. Go over to the table where it's spending all its time, and you'll find the desecrated corpse... of an Imperial soldier in the exact same armor. This suggests the shades might just remember who they once were, and are spending all that time staring down at their own desecrated remains. Notably, if you've joined a faction by then, some shades of that faction will ignore you, while their counterparts will attack on sight. They do remember something after all...
  • Notice that there are a number of dragon bones lying about the Soul Cairn. How did they get there? Were their souls involuntarily sold or something? It's doubtful that any mortal necromancer could have pulled it off, as they probably would have ended up as dragon fodder instead of Ideal Master fodder... but a dragon necromancer could have... Durnehviir.
  • Despite being bound for Sovngarde when she passes on, Katria's ghost cannot be found there (unlike some other NPCs). Given that Alduin is running amok, the implications are obvious.
  • This is an extremely minor bit of Fridge Horror, and it's sort of amusing at the same time, but it's noted that Farkas of the Companions has the highest pickpocket stat of any follower in the game. Like many NPCs, Farkas is a potential spouse for the Dragonborn; and, like nearly all spouses, he decides to open a store after the marriage in order to keep himself busy while the Dragonborn is off doing their thing. So... just where is he getting his inventory? Is he making use of that pickpocket skill?
  • Morvunskar has some pretty straightforward horror when you find Naris and his torture room, where he paralyzes or locks people in cages and burns them alive. However, a little bit of snooping reveals a side room not far away which contains bedrolls, a shrine to Dibella, leather strips, paralysis potions, and an invisibility potion. Consider that this fortress is a virtual shrine to Sanguine, Prince of excessive indulgence and debauchery, and that one of Sanguine worshippers' favorite pastimes is defiling and vandalizing Dibellan shrines. In conjunction with the captives that we know the mages in the fortress have been taking (and whom Naris is now torturing and killing), it's not hard to figure out what vile depravity and dark indulgences were being perpetuated in this room as well.
  • Frostbite spiders are normally found in dark caves and abandoned ruins... and then there are several locations - usually hagraven hideouts - where they can also be found, in side rooms that look like they were specifically made to house a Giant Spider: big, circular, with no place to hide, entrance too small for said monster to escape and a hole in the ceiling that doesn't seem to have any purpose other than make for a great nesting spot. Hagravens are using those monsters as an execution method. It's actually stated in one sidequest, where the player has to save a witch from such fate, so it's not really Fridge... until you remember just HOW spiders eat their victims.
  • Hogni Red-Arm is a food merchant from Markarth who boasts about selling "the bloodiest beef in the Reach". He's also a member of the local cannibal cult, and repeats this catchphrase during the cannibal feast at the end of the Daedric quest "The Taste of Death". In-game, human flesh and raw beef are two distinct but visually identical items. What does he exactly sell in his stall?
  • To join the Stormcloaks, the Dragonborn must kill an Ice Wraith. Ice Wraiths deal frost damage. Nords have a natural resistance to frost damage that other races don't have. In other words, the challenge comes across as tailor-made to be easier to complete by Nords, while other races have a higher chance of getting killed.
  • Another one for those who go on to kill Paarthunax. Dragons typically follow the strongest of their kin. Once the Dragonborn kills Alduin, he establishes himself as the strongest dovah, probably keeping the others in check. But the Dragonborn is stated to be a mortal, and as such may die of old age (assuming not becoming a vampire or whatever). When it comes, who will take charge? Without Paarthurnax to force them into non-violence, dragons would quickly reverts to their old ways with probably no one left to stop them.
  • It's really easy to load up on spider and chaurus eggs while going cave-delving. Just keep in mind that, unlike the bird eggs, the insect eggs are probably fertilized. Think of all those little legs squirming in your pockets after going through Frostflow Lighthouse.

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