I've pulled that entry; Laser Gided Karma is when the karma strikes very directly; this example seems like it's fairly indirectly related to the misbehaviour.
- Laser-Guided Karma: The Dunmer - a race which displayed a level of snobbishness second only to the Altmer in Oblivion and preceding games and were well known for building their economy on slavery - have their Karma Houdini status from previous games torn away HARD by the time Skyrim begins. Red Mountain has erupted, the Argonians have risen up against them in revenge for their enslavement and taken over Morrowind, and the Dunmer have been kicked out of their own homeland (to which the Argonians won't let them return) and face a level of hatred second only to the High Elves in most other lands. To top it all off, almost everyone else agrees that they deserve it. Screw You, Elves! indeed.
It's not been 250 years. It's not even been 100 years. The banning of slavery happened After Morrowind (3E427) (Helseth is planning to do it by the time of Tribunal, and by Oblivion (3E433 - last year of the third era) (5 years later, 200 years before Skyrim 4E200) it's done). The raids into Black Marsh were still ongoing until the very time Helseth banned Slavery altogheter. And that's assuming they stopped the moment he passed the law (And Dunmers are stubborn people). Lastly the invasion from Black Marsh happened 10 years after that. In 4E5 to 4E10.
So the time between the banning of slavery and the Argonians retaliating isn't 250 years. Not 100 years. It's 15 years.
I do agree it's not laser guided (More like Disproportionate Retribution)
Edited by 198.84.254.118
Ugh, I really don't understand the Elder Scrolls' timeline. (Especially since there are non-player characters in game who talk as if the events of the Argonian invasion and Red Mountain blowing up only just happened.)
:(
Remember that 90% of the people who mention those events are Dunmer. Dunmers live to be 500 years old without the use of magic to extend their lives. So for them, this is recent history (Within the life time of anyone who has reached middle age or older), the same way that for the Dunmer of Morrowind, Tiber Septim wasn't something that happened all that long ago. And then we don't even know how long Argonians live to be...
Edited by 38.108.87.99
Hmm. Nirn is a dangerous world. I'd be very surprised if more than a few Dunmer lived to be a full 500 years old.
I really don't think what happened to the Dunmer was a case of Laser-Guided Karma.
Laser-Guided implies that it is very precise, very exact. Karma that causes tons of collateral damage and mostly doesn't strike the guilty people at all but instead hits innocent people who happen to be of the same species doesn't seem anything like "laser-guided" to me.
Slavery was banned in Morrowind almost two hundred and fifty years ago and the Dunmer had stopped raiding Black Marsh and taking slaves long before that. The Argonians are punishing the Dunmer for something that one set of ancestors did to another set of ancestors, basically the opposite of laser-guided. It would be like if the people of the USA today invaded Britain and killed and exiled the English for things that the English did before and during the American War of Independance. (Although, because the Dunmer are very long-lived, it is likely that some former slave-owners were killed by the eruption of Red Mountain and the Argonian invasion, but still it is probable that most of the Dunmer who died or were exiled were innocent of everything except the crime of "being a Dunmer". Should every member of an entire species be punished for the actions of a few? I'd say that's more like "keep-hitting-it-with-nukes-and-never-mind-the-collateral-damage karma" than "laser-guided karma".
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