Trying to think of justifications for why Forsworn/Reachfolk equipment is like that. Being made of weak leather, bone, & wood while everyone else around them uses steel.
Just saying they don't or that they're primitive doesn't work when no explanation is given & there is nothing stopping them from learning it from more advanced neighbours.
ESO's Iron Orcs are actually one of the greatest flaws to it in how they do have a metallurgy narrative. The Iron Orcs are their southern neighbour who believe its blasphemy to break rock & mine, but did so anyway in order to compete with more advanced enemies. So why hasn't the Reachfolk done so?
My first justification is that for them, leather & bone isn't inherently weaker than steel. Reachfolk uphold Hircine as one of their most important gods. So by dedicating their hunts to him, they can receive blessings on items made through hunted materials. Reachfolk equipment can therefore match steel through divine blessings.
This is combined with straight advanced leatherworking skills since they do it so much.
My next justification is that they do indeed have a cultural stigma against mining, but for obvious practical reasons. If you tunnel deep in the Reach (at least the eastern part), what you're going to find is dangerous Dwemer ruins, and Blackreach full of Falmer. They even have old stories of vampires coming from below to plague them.
This actually brought about one of the only exceptions to their disuse of forging. The Wayward Guardians started using silver & scavenged dwemer metal in response to the extreme threat of the Grey Hosts vampires & werewolves. This practice did not last however.
Mining is just inherently dangerous and not worth it while Hircine enables leather.
Finally is that the easterns reach's mineral wealth just isn't in martially useful metals anyway. Sure there is iron & such, but the majority of mines available are for silver. Cool if you want to get jewelry for your beloved, but currency is mainly a foreign tool to them. The clans have more use for directly trading & bartering goods. Not like any unifying state of reachfolk can standardise the currency (not counting foreign occupiers).
Some of the Reachfolks few experiences with mining is when colonisers push them into working the dangerous mines for them. A deeply negative connection.
In conclusion, the Reachfolk could mine if they wanted to, but they don't want to take part in the dangerous, miserable work so long as they have a more culturally appropriate alternative.
Would they benefit more from using metalwork to fight invaders? Probably, but how much would it cost them as a people. Bleeding into the ground, turning from Hircines sacred hunts, and using the ways of the Enemy.
Ready for a Redguard redesign? Children of the Wave might be for you!
I've covered every Redguard NPC in Vanilla Skyrim, adding a lot of new, unique, and lore-friendly detail. This includes aging textures, custom warpaints and piercings, and a TON of new hairstyles (thanks to HammerHair!)
Thinking a lot recently about the constant comparison of Oblivion to Skyrim, particularly claims that Oblivion is superior in every way strictly by virtue of quest length and the greater grandiosity of the organizations in Oblivion, and I think there's been a fundamental misunderstanding of what's actually going on with Tamriel during the time period of Skyrim. Even though it's like...one of the core concepts of the main storyline.
Putting most of this under a cut for length, but I just...I think people misunderstand what's going on here. This is not a "One Game Good Other Game Bad" post, it's an analysis of a major, key difference in story basis between the two that I think gets lost in the (frankly asinine) argument about which is superior.
See, everything in Skyrim sucks. Every organization you can align yourself with is falling apart. Literally every single one.
That's the point.
To summarize:
The Companions (equivalent to the Fighters' Guild) are about a dozen strong, literally cursed, and their most beloved leader gets murdered very early in the storyline.
The College of Winterhold (equivalent to the Mages' Guild, not to the Arcane University) has seemingly only been saved from collapsing into the sea because a master of Restoration fused himself with the structure itself when the Sea of Ghosts tried to tear it down a little under a century ago and his presence is constantly physically "healing" the foundation.
The Thieves' Guild has lost the favor of every possible patron deity, having been outright cursed by Nocturnal after one of her Nightingales murdered another and stole the gift she offers her champion, while the boon that the organization's founder claimed from her in ages past (the cowl) is missing.
The Dark Brotherhood has been all but completely dismantled, the Night Mother's tomb in Bravil having been raided and struggling to persist without a Listener for over a decade; the bodies of the Night Mother's children have been lost and she's essentially being smuggled from region to region in an attempt to find a safe place to continue operations.
The Empire itself has been kneecapped, forced into a traumatic treaty by a fascist regime determined to strike the beliefs and culture of anyone not Altmer off the face of the planet; the Thalmor have gone so far as to torture and radicalize the figurehead leader of the Nords in order to use their own nationalism and superiority against the Empire, sparking a civil war that will further weaken the Empire and allow the Aldmerri Dominion to destroy it wholecloth.
This extends out into the rest of the world, too! We have confirmed existence of Hist-deaf Argonians. The Dunmer are floundering to recover after the quadruple-whammy that is the fall of the Triumverate, the destruction of Vivec City when Baar Dau finally made impact, the Red Year, and the Argonian uprising. The Bosmer are literally endangered due to habitat loss following a super-isolationist cultural shift due to wars with the Khajiit and Altmer. The Void Nights were devastating to Khajiit culture and population in ways that have yet to be fully explained.
The world is falling apart. Everything is dying.
And then Alduin shows up.
We all kind of talk about Alduin carrying on as World-Eater through the course of the Skyrim storyline like it's him being a piece of shit, since he'd started it ages ago and was just displaced in time to land on the Last Dragonborn's head in the Fourth Era, but I don't think that's the case.
Based on the state of things, I think Alduin arrived right on time. I think it's the end of the world. The only reason he "should" be stopped is because the Last Dragonborn has the capacity to stop the world from ending in a more down-to-earth sense than just defeating Alduin: they can't save everyone, but they can "fix" every single organization that's holding "the world" together.
They can align with the Imperials and keep the civil war from further crippling them, keeping the Empire from being too weak to push back against the Aldmerri Dominion.
They can save the College of Winterhold, the only group in the right place at the right time to stop the Eye of Magnus from opening, and in doing so make sure that the Psijics are able to put it somewhere nobody else can find it.
They can lead the Companions, cure the curse for those members who don't want to run with Hircine after death, which bolsters their spirits enough to keep doing what they can even when everyone else is trying to kill each other. A single neutral martial force in the middle of a civil war.
They can regain Nocturnal's trust for the Thieves' Guild, restore the Nightingales, and in doing so they can return the luck that was stolen from them as punishment for Mercer Frey's transgression. They can even reclaim the Crown of Barenziah and award the guild with a paragon to increase their newly-regained luck.
They can hear the Night Mother, becoming Listener for the Dark Brotherhood to restore the balancing force of Sithis in the world, purify the most broken Sanctuary the Brotherhood has ever had, and finish a story set into motion way back in the Third Era—Emperor Titus Mede II is murdered under the order of a Motierre, a descendant of a mark the Brotherhood specifically kept from dying during the Oblivion Crisis.
The Last Dragonborn can't do anything outside Skyrim—there's nothing they can do for the Argonians or the Bosmer or the Khajiit, and they can only do very little for the Dunmer via work in Solstheim—but they can work with every single guild or guild-adjacent group, strengthening the Empire to stand against the biggest threat to Tamrielic culture since the First Era, and in doing so they can make it so the world isn't ready for Alduin to eat it.
The Hero of Kvatch exists when Tamriel, and presumably Nirn as a whole is in the prime of its life, that's what makes the Oblivion Crisis such a big deal. This is a world that isn't ready to give up, it still has the strength to fight, it just needs someone standing at the head to direct it. The Last Dragonborn comes into the story when everything is falling apart and nothing really feels worthwhile, when it's hard to see why the world is worth saving. They have the chance to prove that there's still some life left here, that the world isn't too far gone to save—Alduin arrived right on time, it's the Last Dragonborn's job to change that.
I can see how coming from Oblivion to Skyrim would feel disappointing and hollow, but I'm pretty sure that's literally the point of the story.
Oblivion tells you the world is worth saving because it's got so much left to live for, even with the odds stacked so high against it. Skyrim asks you whether a world that's dying is still a world worth saving, and it's up to you to prove that it is.
You know, I think we were all too normal about Karliah back when Skyrim came out.
She's the 'brooding troubled guy on a quest to avenge his lost love' archetype, but a woman. She's a professional thief. She's related to two of the most important figures in the lore (Nerevar and Queen Barenziah). This is completely irrelevant to anything she does in the game and you only find it out if you read her dead boyfriend's book. She's been in exile for a quarter century. She's a talented and deadly archer. She makes unique poisons. The first thing she ever does in-game is shoot you. She's involved in a predictable but fun plot twist. Her dead boyfriend was a charming thief/scholar fluent in a dead language. He's still in love with her after twenty-five years alone in a temple and promises to wait for her in the afterlife. She blames herself for his death and you don't even get a chance to tell her she's wrong. Sometimes it's unclear whether she's using you, or whether you're a team working toward the same goal, and I'm not sure she knows either. She's the only Dunmer with purple eyes. She's traumatised. She's grieving. She's self-loathing. She's furious. She's the most character in the entire game. How were we not more unhinged about this woman.
Skyrim be like: as a Dragonborn, it is in your nature to want to dominate, to want to control. You control the world around you with mere words. Your final battle will be against those who share your blood, and have as much of a drive to dominate as you, but they have given in to their evil nature. In order to free the land you must learn words specifically designed to control and dominate others. But within this, is this what you really want to do? Who are you? Are you a “true son of Skyrim” or a loyal imperial? And with that, what fate will you force upon the people of this land? What stars guide your fate? What god or demon do you follow? Is it better to be born good, or to overcome your evil nature through great effort? No we will not be expanding on these themes beyond the surface level and you’ll have to heavily infer all of this. Go kill some draugr.
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