Skyrim made the deliberate decision to have all the NPCs you encounter in settlements be unique characters you could interact with so there was no one you couldn’t talk to about their life or get interesting conversations with. This of course comes at the cost of everything feeling smaller and more lifeless than similar RPGs that actually have generic NPCs everywhere. Personally, I’ve always preferred the way Skyrim handled it and don’t mind cities feeling smaller than they’re supposed to. It makes them all feel like communities instead where you can know everyone instead of most people just being “too busy” to talk, but I understand that’s an unpopular sentiment too which is why that philosophy was dropped for FO4 and Starfield.
@@Longshanks1690its the type of thing that made me love whiterun for ex, of course the city looks not good or big and less fort like windhelm(that i also like) but the thing that looks like a community is great. Even Nazeem, i can survive it.
@@prorok3382 its supposed to be a city state, a country inside a city, problem 8s that the game has its limits. Lets see how TES will do Sentinel the biggest city of tamriel, and hammerfell capital.
They did conquer Markarth, and even requested to be a province of the empire, but were destroyed by Ulfric. The problem is that they aren't united. They're just a bunch of disjointed clans. It's why the last time someone was able to get them united, they were able to comquer Markarth, and earlier in time, the Longhouse Emperor even held the Cyridilic throne for a time.
@@AGoatDemon98 Yes and no. They want independence, but their king knew that any chance they had at retaining the Markarth area was to become apart of the empire.
Yeah, that does make a lot of sense. I kind of thought that's what was going on, which is also why the rest of the Foresworn don't suddenly become friendly once you free the king. Clearly, he's not the king of ALL foresworn, even if he might be the heir to such a throne if they all respected it.
There is a theory that the Forsworn are not actually one faction. They're a collection of separate tribes. At least 2. One ruled by Madanach and one ruled by the Matriarch (suspected to be a hagraven) and who knows how many others. That explains why only the Forsworn at one camp are friendly after helping Madanach and why they can't coordinate a large enough force to take over Markarth. Maybe they were united at one time (during the Forsworn Uprising) but later became fractured. It is much easier to defend than to attack, especially if the defending force is better equipped and prepared. The real life guideline for attacking is that you want to have at least 3 times the strength of the enemy. That of course can change depending on other factors. Therefore it's not that farfetched that the Forsworn would not be able to take Markarth. They're not coordinated enough and in order to take a well-defended city with large stone walls they would need a MUCH stronger force.
I absolutely believe that, it wouldn't make sense otherwise. Madanach has been in prison for 25 years, in that time I don't he could have maintained his hold over the Forsworn. Once he was out of the picture he became mostly irrelevant, sure we do see a few devout followers but we don't get any indication of his power outside Markarth. Strong warriors would have no doubt stepped up in his absence and the Forsworn splintered. Look at what happened to Alexander the Great's empire, and that was an organized state. In my playthrough after helping Madanach I will occasionally run across a small Forsworn patrol in the wild and they won't be hostile. I justify that as a group loyal to or allied to Madanach. On the whole the Forsworn are more of multi-tribal group rather than a homogenous organization. Some groups would be just as hostile towards each other as they would be toward the Nords.
The Fosworn are Tribal so yes, they are all Forsworn but separate tribes they may even fight each other which is mentioned in at least one book in the game. There is no leader at this time charismatic enough to pull them together. Red Eagle was this type of leader who had the ability to Band the Clans together with a common enemy.
This sounds like headcanon. The simple answer is the devs probably had a bigger idea for the faction than we got to see in game, and they never got around to finishing it. They probably planned a questline explaining the briarhearts and the hagravens and how the forsworn fell from a noble resistance movement to become hagraven worshiping barbarians instead. Madanach (or the silver bloods) gives you the quest to kill the hagraven queen and break the spell that cursed the forsworn to a savage existence, and after that the remaining camps either become friendly, or the forsworn are replaced by bandits, or madanach/thonar could give radiant quests to hunt down those that are too far gone to rejoin civilization. Its even possible that the bandits running around half naked worshipping hagravens weren't originally intended to be "forsworn" at all, but they had already made all the assets, and so they just decided to combine the two ideas and call them "forsworn" anyways, even though there's nothing in the Cidna mine questline that would explain the hagravens or the briarhearts. All the mentions of forsworn in in game text make them sound much more like a normal political movement like the stormcloaks, rather than a bunch of half naked barbarian daedra cultists.
Not a Bethesda game, but id Software with those damned Chaingunners. Of course, #infighting is a large part of DooM, so there's more than one type of threat mitigation. Infighting in any TES game? Rare, if non-existent depending on which TES game.
i think the gunners in fo4 are similar in threat level to the forsworn. problems at low levels, but somewhere in the mid levels they become just another nuisance
@@GeraltofRivia22yeah but the loading screen shows them with a skull emblem on their combat armor. This is unobtainable by you. The gunners a scammers and that’s not threatening, that’s just mildly annoying
They did take over Markarth once. Then Ulfric brought over the Stormcloaks and whooped their asses. For details read The Bear of Markarth. If they rebelled again The Imperial Legion who is currently fighting Ulfric would send whatever troops they can and crush them just as easily as Ulfric did. Even while in decline the Empire and the Legion are more than formidable enough to defeat the Forsworn.
I was going to say the same thing. They're a kind of pathetic group really. They try to cause a bit of trouble in the area but can't actually launch any big attack, because if they did the empire or stormcloaks would come and beat them. The only reason they still exist is because the empire doesn't consider them a big enough threat to do anything.
@@georgeoldsterd8994 He isn't the best strategist considering he almost got the chopping block from an ambush if not for Alduin and Ulfric was supposed to be like the native that know the lay of land, but he got ambushed by Tullius, an outsider barely know anything about Skyrim yet. Besides, logistics wins war, you can't do sh*t if your soldiers die from starvation, you're not Jesus, who can make food from nothing, Skyrim is pretty much a frozen wasteland, they can probably barely exist on their own, but they need the Empire to thrive.
@@HoangTran-wu6se He is good enough strategist to keep his rebellion going for a very long time, unite at least half of Skyrim to his side and realise that what the empire is doing with the wgc is nonsense. As for logistics the Stormcloaks have been feeding themselves just fine as they have been fighting the legion for decades and they enjoy trade with other groups thanks to the Shatter-Shields who compete with EETC in Windhelm, which also wants to trade with the Stormcloaks.
That's the thing. You spawned the Foresworn into the city. Markarth is meant to be a giant, natural fortress which is near impossible to crack and enter in the first place. Even once inside, the place is a mass of high vantage points from which arrows and spells can be rained down on any force brave enough or dumb enough to enter. The Silver Bloods, who all but run the city, have a mass of wealth with which they can use to call in help both from the forces within the city and from those outside of it. The city is built upon the lucrative silver mine at its heart after all. While no, The Silver Bloods cannot hire a large enough force to wipe them out, I have no trouble believing that they could actually hold the city if the Foresworn made a concentrated attempt to invade.
@@DR-sv8ke and how might you do that? Pray tell? There’s not many ways out, and there’s enough forsworn to catch a messenger. Oh let me guess, the messenger calls for a time out? I mean really did you even think?
@@DR-sv8ke you know what, lets go even harder on this. Lets say the forsworn have surrounded the gates. How, how on earth, does that messenger leave? Please tell. Because now im really curious. No no. Ill wait. You fool. Absolutely r*
lol if you’re going to be super realistic than there would be a constant flow of messengers to and from markarth to other holds specifically solitude so if the communications with a hold like markarth ceased the empire would know something is up and it would be clear markarth is under siege and being starved out pretty easy
Yeah, but the Dragons are actually godly creatures, spawns of Akatosh himself. It makes sense for them to wreck shit up, both in gameplay and in lore terms.
If we go by gameplay mechanics those dragons would die to the first essential NPC that has a confidence attribute of 4 (or 3 if they are high level enough)
@@georgeoldsterd8994 I've seen dragons die in record time though due to just being pelted on by dozens of arrows though. They sometimes kill an important npc but in a city they are often to exposed and cut to pieces. though then again, you said 'two' dragons, so at leas the dragons have twice the firepower and also aren't being focus fired down.
Yeah, but the issue there is that the dragons would not really need to do that. Other than the dragon born (...and giants) they have few real threats within the region. They can also fly directly to targets, which further removes the need for them to capture or disable any particular military bases. Dragons also do not farm, mine, or trade, so they do not have immediate economic incentives either. They wouldn't even want to take nice houses, since human dwellings would be cramped. That isn't to say that their end goal might not include controlling the region and enjoying its wealth. But that would be done through the use of proxies found within dragon cults. However, establishing and recruiting for a dragon cult likely has stringent requirements, since most people would just reasonably flee town if a dragon approached them and started making demands. There is a need for a sense of long term dread and resignation that dragons are everywhere and running away just means you will fall under a different dragon. At this point in time, the dragons will likely just hang out, snack out on goats and cattle for a few decades, and wait for the populous to develop the right sense of dread required for a cult. Overt military action is only required when you have to show off for your burgeoning cult as you try to claim swaths of the region for them.
I think the Forsworn in game strength is more of a game machinic rather than lore to keep the game "challenging" for players, since they will always be bad guys. It comes down to that age all debate of game machinic vs game lore. And though Skyrim has some really great lore, it is not all perfect.
I agree with this completely... But I like to think lore wise Markarth is actually a large city with thousands of inhabitants and hundreds of more guards than what we see, but due to game limitations of the time, it became the glorified village of stone that we see, with a population less than a hundred... similar to all the other "cities" of Skyrim. Or how the battles we see with stormcloaks vs imperials only get to the size of small scouting parties skirmishing and clashing with one another.
Exactly. His 'logic' is silly nitpicking, at least if we're talking about Beth games. How many pirates, eclipse mercs and spacers you kill in Starfield for example, every planet has 2-3 bases full of them? so you can argue they have 1000x more troops than UC and FC guards you see in cities
Most cities in Skyrim aren't as big as Bethesda wanted them to be, they are small, limited by the technology of their time.. Im sure this plays a part. If we had Skyrim come out today, we may have had a much tougher and larger markarth with many more soldiers that could repel any attack from forsworn
That’s the most annoying part… Skyrim has been rereleased so many times, and they’ve never added any of the things they had to cut from the first game. Never improved mechanics that they didn’t have in the first game. The anniversary edition is the first version to add anything and it’s all fan created mod content. They’ve had over a decade to release the Skyrim they wanted to make in 2012 but couldn’t. All those years, all those releases, Bethesda never added to the game. Not including the DLC’s which was a popular thing back in the day, and were all added within like the first year or two from launch.
@@SamanthaS92 Why would they? Bethesda knows their games are a mess and free labor workers err I mean modders will take care about that and try to fix the things they screwed up, at least for the PC crowd, screw console gamers. That's at least what the developers must have thought when making the game.
The argument about tech limitations falls apart when you remember that Vivec City in Morrowind and most towns in Oblivion were actually bigger and ran without any additional issues.
@@georgeoldsterd8994 Exactly this. You would believe those were actual medieval towns and not the same exact houses clustered together like they were in Skyrim.
You expect consistency from the people who decided that Delphine deserves to be essential to this world? Anyway, if I were to think about this, them not taking over Markarth might just be that the Forsworn lack the ability to put together siege engines. If the Markarth guard were to see Forsworn approaching in huge numbers, they'll probably just lock the gates and wait them out, since the Forsworn don't have the engineering skill to make tall and sturdy enough ladders, let alone huge battering rams, siege towers, or catapults.
I think with even a slight bit of subterfuge, the Forsworn could likely easily get forces inside to keep the gate from being locked while their main forces approach. The problem likely would come in holding Markath, where their lack of siege equipment would become quite the problem, as both the Empire and Stormcloak's could just bombard the city with impute from a distance/destroy the gates, before sending in their ground forces. Beyond that, there is the little detail of nobody in all likelyhood really wanting them to have a major stronghold. The Stormcloaks don't want it, the Empire doesn't want it, and most Nords regardless of their side in the civil war probably would take one good look at that mess, and offer at least a few choice words of no on it.
or they could set up outposts outside their walls, block agriculture and merchants flowing into the city, then the nords are left with two options, repel the army or starve within their homes.
@@Ed_man_talking9 True, that too would be a very easy way to subdue their occupation of the city. Especially as the Forsworn are hunter-gatherers with no real industry or farming style agriculture. I don't think they even have very deep knowledge of agriculture. So the city sieged and them locked inside of it would mean they only have Markath's stored food reserves/whatever random birds they can shoot out of the sky/animals to catch to make use of. Eventually their forces would starve, and be forced to either surrender/negotiate/try for a breakout/ or perish where they stand. The same issue could be said for Markaths current Nord occupants, though they unlike the Forsworn have the potential of asking for backup. As said, neither the Stormcloaks nor Imperials would likely enjoy a third wheel in their civil war. The Markath defenders don't even have to sneak a messenger out, as I am sure sooner or later the city being under siege would be noticed as news travels back via fleeing refugees/merchants turning around/couriers seeing the situation/other travelers turning around and going back in a hurry. Considering also how the Forsworn could kill any Thalmer they notice, if the right, influencial and high ranking elf were to get killed/they become enough of a nuisance to their operations, it could motivate them to also make some moves in that theater.
You don’t just need Siege engines. The Forsworn have already used infiltration tactics by posing as common townspeople and blending in with society like Spies. They already have people in the inside. Its just that they need more bodies inside which they don’t have because The Forsworn are a small guerilla force.
Cities and guards in those cities are more representative than literal. Game designers don't typically go out of their way to make sure that a city is realistically big enough to be an actual city or even big enough to house every npc who lives there. Just look at any city in pokemon fire red/leaf green. They look tiny if you can see the whole city at once, but you don't need to be any bigger because in game your screen is restricted to a small area. Likewise sure there are less guards at any given time in markarth than all forsworn, but you're not supposed to know how many guards there are. That's why they respawn. They're dense enough to feel their presence but not so dense the city feels crowded.
Honestly the prison mission disappointed me. I thought I was gonna get to be a forsworn but nope the first camp I go out is the same as always, really annoyed me at the time. (Edit) Yeah I agree with all the comments to a point, but the main one is skyrim feels shallow. And I feel like it's always been that way with Bethesda, continueing to dumb down games for a long time now. I'm getting fallout new Vegas this weekend so if anyone has some tips lmk
I love the quest itself, but like many aspects of Skyrim, it could've been built upon, like you say, the fact I couldn't join and roleplay as one was pretty shit.
I sided with them my first playthrough and nothing happened. The Jarl didn't change and all the guards were the exact same. Worst of all was that the Forsworne were still attacking me every 2 seconds whenever I was in the area
Druadach redoubt is the only Forsworn holding that is friendly. I guess it's because Forsworn and Reachmen never are one people per say. They're tribes, each with their own chieftain. A similar issue was encountered during the second era with the orcs. Many Orc chieftains refused to bend the knee to King Kurog because of their tribal mindset. They weren't feudal. Perhaps only the Druadach reachmen serve Ard Madanach whereas the rest of the Forsworn have their own unknown kings and chieftains. One thing we learned about the Reachmen in the second era is that their clans come first and they only unify into one people when the Reach is threatened. After all the Ard of Markarth might have been the most powerful reachman lord but the rest of the clans outside Markarth were largely independent.
tbh in skyrim forsworn live like cultist bandits BUT if anyone play elder scrolls online and know the Reachman storyline its add so much to the lore , for me that was so enlightening to understand the roots of their "culture".
While I get what you mean, I do wonder: in Skyrim the Foresworn are explicitly said to have been established relatively recently, as a response to the Nords trying to push the Reachmen around. So then, how are there Foresworn in ESO, which takes place almost a thousand years prior (if not more, even)? Wouldn't Skyrim's Foresworn then be _re_ established?
@@georgeoldsterd8994 ESo Reachmen are the origin and the base of their culture , but yeah more than a thousand year later forsworn are basically rebels or freedom fighters but in the game you not really feel that tbh. Plus, it was highlighted in ESO that they cannot read or write and bc of that they probably lost a lot of their culture in a thousand year. And still I think knowing their bases, faith etc a good thing to understand them a bit better if you ask me Forsworn conflict was a bit shallow and underdeveloped in the game.
@@brandon9172tell me you don't know Elder Scrolls lore without telling me you don't know Elder Scrolls lore. The entire series is full of everyone genociding everyone else. Being the victim of attempted genocide doesn't make you special in the Elder Scrolls universe.
While I completely agree with the point you can't use ingame npc counts as the lore amount (There would be more that 1000 people in markath in real life not 50 people)
One thing that you didn't mention which does make their religion unique is that they do seem to have some strange veneration for Dibella. If I remember right, in the location where they kidnapped the sybill they have a bloody altar before a statue of her
Ngl, the mission where we have to save the next prophet of dibella had me feel like I am Chris Hanson walking into some creep keeping a child hostage. Idk what exactly gave off this vibe, but I still can’t shake it off after all those years…
@@TheGosgosh Nah I see it as they train them at a young age. I'm pretty sure they go down the lore and art and poetry path of Dibella until the kid is older. I feel like the Sybil is more like how it is with Greek Mythology the mouthpiece, like the listeners and speakers are for the Dark Brotherhood. Dibella is an aedra. I don't think aedras would do anything to harm a child. Sanguine, Molag Bal...the daedra might be another story.
Yeah I saw it more as a desecration, however, I'm not sure why they would chose Dibella as a threat or the one aedra to descreate other than Hagravens might hate her cause I'm sure Dibella would detest them...but so would Meridia (probably).
I believe the point was to subvert the enemy god. In this case Dibella. Take the power she was gonna give the child for their own use. So not quite desecration but still rather profane as they are essentially stealing from a god, or trying to.
If you think about it, the Forsworn are actually the lords of the Reach. They have bases all around the area, including frontiers with other holds, their relegion includes human sacrifices and daedric worship, unpopular with empire/stormcloacks laws. With Markarth under "civilized" influence, they have a constant supply chain of sofisticated goods from traders on the roads, outside city walls they're free to worship whoever they want, don't have to pay imperial taxes, don't abide to imperial/nord laws, etc. while populating the whole Reach. They have a good deal there.
yeah it seems like the Forsworn can just chill in their caves and do their own thing, but over the long term the Nords will keep pushing them out of the territory and trying to kill them off, it's just the natural progression of any civilization to tend toward total control of territory. They are fundamentally incompatible cultures as well, there's the daedra/aedra religious differences first and foremost, as well as both sides having historical claims to the same region of land and a history of bloodshed. So politically coexisting is pretty much impossible. The only possible outcomes to me seem to be A. the forsworn get marginalized to such an extent that the elements that make them up essentially scatter to the wind/assimilate into skyrim's broader culture, or B. they take back Markarth entirely, possibly with outside military help from Orisinium, Summerset Isles etc.
Daedric worship is not big of a deal though. A lot of NPCs in Skyrim worship daedra and Dragonborn collaborate with them just fine. Hell, even your Dragonborn is a daedra worshipper judging by the artifacts inside your inventory bag Please stop with daedra worship equals bad narrative
Yeah. The question isn't 'why don't they just conquer Markarth'. The question is, why would they WANT to conquer Markarth? In Medieval societies most people didn't live in cities, they were just fine living rurally. For most Medieval peoples, powerful kingdoms and empires swept in and 'conquered' regions by occupying cities and castles, but for normal rural people life went on as normal. I was reading recently about the Mari tribe from a forgotten forest valley in Russia. They were conquered by: the Huns, then the Slavs, then the Bulgars, then the Mongols, then the Rus, all ruling from the large nearby city of Kazan, which in prehistory was probably Mari territory. And yet, TO THIS DAY, they still preserve their language and Pagan religion. They did so by just sitting under the radar and letting empires come and go (though they were also fierce warriors when times called for it).
@@aword3213 Not all daedric worship is evil, but there is Daedric Princes whose spheres of influence are evil in nature, like Namira, Molag Bal or Mehrunes Dagon. But that was not my point, my point is that the empire and the stormcloaks favor the worship of the divines, daedric worship is not openly practiced among the cities. And they are both legalists, in written law or tradition, wich means they have ways to enforce their beliefs directly or indirectly by the temple of divines activities, as seen in Morrowind or in that short questline for the temple of Mara in Riften. Now, you can sacrifice humans in your Windhelm basement but we also know that in not legal to do so. If you live in the hills where this is your culture and practiced by everyone, it's a far better place to live. By the way, the Dragonborn being a daedra worshiper is a choice of the player, unless we accept that he sold himself to Mora at the end of the Dragonborn DLC.
I think the strength of the Forsworn shows that they could take Markarth… but are wary of doing so since it would be a hard battle and outside forces could come to unseat them again. Better to quietly rule the other 90% of the reach and see if a chance for a more permanent victory presents itself.
I think it's more likely they weren't last minute as they have a lot of assets developed for them that would have taken time. I think this is one of those they had another plan that they cut for the 11/11/11 release date. Like there was a grand plan that got scraped and what we have is a cut down simple bad guy faction rather than a larger fight for the Reach storyline which seems to be hinted at a couple of times, but doesn't go anywhere. Notes suggestions of hidden families that would force many Forsworn into surrender and leaders giving orders. But no missions to take down that leadership or find those families. There's even a conversation with the Jarl at one point if he isn't in the throne room that suggests you're running numerous missions for him, like you're involved in some sort of war.
They might be the result of quest cut content. Their camps were spread around, their numbers were decided, bits and pieces of lore about them can be found or heard or seen in a show-not-tell way, and then at some point in development the dev-bosses said "Yeah, we don't' have time for that anymore. Clip the plans and leave what you got." "But the framework is all in place already and-" "Did I stutter?" - What I don't get is, with all the re-releases this game has had and how much people still enjoy this game, why hasn't any of the planned but cut content been developed and added to any of the later versions? That would give people MORE incentive to buy the game (or DLC for it) again when it's re-released.
They did the same thing for the Bloodworks in Windhelm. Once Bethesda is done with a project they don't do anything that isn't absolutely necessary. No matter how many times they release the game. Think about how much money they would have gotten to add another whole area to a major city as a DLC, with new activities, new quests, new NPCs. Arena fighting and arena betting in Skyrim. Something almost everyone wanted. Something the community begged them to finish. To date they can't even be bothered to fix the half dozen or so missing textures on the walls of the arena that would allow people to just do some basic modding and include the area if not the activities. @@WorldWalker128
@@WorldWalker128 Bethesda's turnover rate is historically kinda bad, and all that remains of the cut content is what's in the game files so it's highly likely that by the time they had the idea for the re-releases, anyone that knew the details had already left the company. Whatever bigger idea they had for the Forsworn got cut fairly early by the looks of it, so we got bandits with sub-par equipment.
There are bits of Skyrim where the lore is insanely deep and well thought out. Talos is the embodiment of a colonial religion, where an old god was merged with a conquering faction's new god (The nords refer to Talos, the Nord who became God... but all their depictions are of Tiber Septim who was not a nord). However, there are some incredibly poorly thought out things. Like in a world where magic exists and can easily conjure weapons and monsters, and its common enough that you can find bandits on the road doing it to steal your money, but when you are thrown in prison they don't, for example, try to see if you have magic and could do that, or put magic-draining handcuffs on you. They just take your weapons and assume you're actually disarmed...
It would have been great had there been an option to join the Foresworn, liberate their ancestral Reach, forge an alliance with the Nords to kick out the Imperials and their Elven masters. Same with the option to join the Silver Hands to liberate the forces of Hercine.
Foresworn are actually closer to the empire than to the stormcloaks. Ulfric fought the foresworn and retook markarth from them before the events of the game
I was always annoyed that you couldn't join the Forsworn. Also, it would've been cool if the tribes were at war with each other. There should have been a whole quest line.
The beginning part is more another issue with the cities bein represented way too small, not the foresworn themselves. You in your mind have to envision all cities Daggerfall/ Arena cities sizes canonically, and that goes for all TES games.
I don't get how people don't understand that Skyrim's cities are bigger in the lore. Some people can't difference gameplay from lore, and even dare to make content about the matter.
Precisely, due to limitations in skyrim's creation engine, Bethesda cannot make Skyrim as big as it is in lore. Solitude, for example, is supposed to be the capital of the entirety of Skyrim, yet in game there are about 8 buildings.
ive always wondered why there is only 1 location of werebears. Why cant you become one? why did they become werebears? why did they all come together? so many questions about that spot.
I'm pretty sure the in-game cities are just scaled down representations of they would be in lore. Therefore, direct comparison between unit numbers is practically useless. But yeah Karthspire makes no fucking sense.
I feel like they could've done Skyrim cities justice, I mean Oblivion cities actually felt like plausible cities they felt massive, where we only get really only 3 hold capitals that feel something like a city in Skyrim. I feel that Bethesda did the cities in Skyrim dirty.
@@isimperialist I agree that the cities in Skyrim leave a lot to be desired, especially since Skyrim is a newer game. But there is a potential lore explanation: Skyrim is not as developed or cosmopolitan as Cyrodiil and Morrowind are, so the cities just won't be as impressive. Also, Skyrim had been in a state of decay due to the civil war. It also explains why the guards aren't as good in Skyrim as they were in Oblivion or Morrowind: the best soldiers are out fighting while the leftovers are town guards. Morrowind's guards were cult-like policemen for the major religion, and Oblivion's guards patrolled the heart of the empire so were probably selected for being highly competent.
What gets me is how there's no battle mages in any of the city guard. You get magic wielders among bandits, falmer, foresworn, and everybody else who opposes you, but not the guards. Guards themselves are already really tough cookies to crack, giving them the ability to spew fire and ice at you would make them that much harder. If they had batle mages mixed in at Markearth, they would probably contend quite well against the foresworn
Probably due to Nordic superstition and general distrust of magic. If I recall correctly, the few court wizards you see in the game are all disliked by the general populace
I never found them super logical (leaders that can die to a competent pickpocket) but the Old Gods armor is really good for a stealth archer build as well as looking pretty damn cool on a wood elf, so that works for me.
I'm still mad that they took my Bosmer horn option away between Morrowind and ESO, the male Forsworn headgear is the only way I can go "ANTLERS" and I'm still disgruntled that they didn't allow the antlers on the female model version. The armor rocks in general rocks, it is STYLISH and I've mix and matched it with some of the other fur armors both for Bosmeri characters and for werewolf ones.
@@drivernephisson7034that wouldve been a dope finishing animation tbh. You successfully pickpocket the briarheart, and you get an death animation. You skillfully slip your hand into its chest, unnoticed. Ripping out its artificial briarheart, and sliding it into your pocket. Thus killing the witchmen warrior.
Here's a question: why do the Forsworn inhabit Nordic ruins? I mean, it makes sense as a hideout, but the game itself implies that not all of those ruins are, in fact, Nordic. Take Red Eagle for example? He's a draugr, even though the draugr are Nordic undead, and Red Eagle was a Reachman. His sword is also ancient Nordic, as is his tomb. Or what, the Nords gave him a fancy Nordic funeral, like the did the Snow Prince? Also, had the Foresworn all become friendly, the player would still have to contend with bandits and the Falmer, the latter could have been programmed to spawn in the overworld more frequently, as the game implies them to. And if not, why have the player get constantly attacked by anyone? I love the Reach, but I'd really rather not get attacked at every turn. 😒 Damn Bethesda suits rushing development. 😡
Lore x Gameplay. It's too difficult to make a real city with 100.000 inhabitants in a game, so they make a small one with 30 characters, BUT you have to use your imagination and "see" the 100.000 inhabitants; that's lore!
I've never been concerned over anything scale based in Skyrim. City populations, tree sizes, and even time itself are all wildly out of proportion. I'm sure anyone creating a realism mod list would have a field day with examples like the Forsworn. Could they even feed themselves for a week given the food supply found in their camps?
My theory i just spitballed: the real reach is all the forsworn encampments but we dont get to see it because they are all hostile and markarth is just a small bastion of the nords in a land dominated by the forsworn
Huh. Yeah, I guess so. I always just assumed they weren't terribly organized after Madanach was put in the mines, and a lot of the more nonsensical places they settled were long-established city/towns/gathering points for Reachmen rather than being freshly built war encampments.
I hope that one day in the distant future, Skyrim gets to be remade or remastered again. Lol. No but seriously, 100x bigger cities, concepts actually making sense, delphine not being a complete idiot, expanded questlines, new graphics and all
The weirdest part about the Forsworn is that, unless I am mistaken, they claim to be the first humans in the reach, before the Nords... But don't all humans come from the Atmorans meaning that the Nords would have been first to set foot on Skyrim? How could the Forsworn have been first?
Not all humans are descended from the Atmorans. The Redguards originally come from Yokuda. Also, by that logic, the Nords would be the original settlers of High Rock and Cyrodil as well, and the Reach is only partially in Skyrim (and also wasn't always part of Skyrim either), with the Skyrim hold being only a fraction of the region itself, with the rest being located in High Rock. And genetically speaking, the Reachmen are just Bretons who fall under a different culture. So the Reach tribes, whose descendants would later become known as the Forsworn, are in fact the original settlers of the Reach.
@@GreatOldOneCthulhuwrong. The Nords had already settled the Skyrim portions of the Reach long before any of the Reachmen showed up. They stole the land from the Nords, so the Nords are actually the original inhabitants, unless you wanna count the Snow Elves and Dwemer. Neither of which are around to lay claim to the Reach.
2:00 that's a gameplay mechanic thing, not lore. On that logic bandits could take on both Imperials and Stormcloaks. The reality in lore is they wouldn't make it past the walls, and even if they did reinforcements would arrive rather soon. Specially because most people would turn to Ulfric again, since the empire failed them already once. It would be interesting, the empire and the rebels would have to see who saves Markart first in order to gain or maintain their support. Also I think the forsworn are the represent the celctic tribes in the britanic islands, fighting both romans (empire) and the saxon invaders (bretons). But they are just a bunch fo ooga booga savages wearing rags and using stone weapons (when their chests are full of iron and steel enchanted weapons). (and yes the nords are danes and scandinavians, duh)
4:15 Bethesda later fixed the Mistake of not having a major Enemy Faction being neutral to you in Fallout 4. Where if you join the institute, a major Amount of Locations and Railroad Quests can be completed without any Combat. It's a Feature
Honestly being able to max out stealth and pickpocketing so you're a silk handed phantom who can sneak up on a briarheart and literally rip his "heart" out of his chest without him even noticing and watching him just drop dead will never not be funny to me.
Originally they were supposed to be one of the chooseable end game factions (like the hags, falmor, or the giants) but as with all the others they were cut due to “reasons”(t)
I too, wish there were more options and stories and quests for me being on Forsworn side. I haven't actually taken the Leap, yet. But I soon will leap on Bruca's Leap.
Elder scrolls should just go the dark souls route and have the cities surrounded by large extra "districts" that are out of bounds, leaving the actual playable parts of the city about the same size, but with a huge backdrop.
I mean in-game scale doesnt make sense in any elder scrolls game and never has. The battles of the Skyrim civil war or during Oblivion crisis involve 20 people on each side max, which is not a battle, but an intense tavern brawl. Cities like Markath are meant to house thousands of citizens and are garrisoned by probably several hundred soldiers during peace times. Now during the civil war there is thousands of armed men in the employ of the Jarls. ps: anyone looking to play a game more to scale, I recommend the "Elder Kings" mods for ck2 and ck3 (especially ck3, since it is a lot easier to get into).
I would suggest that 1. They are aware of this power imbalance, and during the events of skyrim they are likely preparing to invade. 2. They are not just preparing to take Markarth, but to defend it against the other legions of Skyrim. History has shown other holds will come to Markarth's Defence 3. They are being manipulated by the Hagraven's. Their strongest NPC is a Briarheart. Likely many Forsworn believe this is the apex of their kin and are waiting to ascend to this position. The Hagravens however have little need for taking the city and are willing to manipulate the Forsworn so as to have an endless supply of people to experiment on. Just my thoughts based on this video
there is an easy answer to this problem and any other related problem: the developers didnt care at all for immersion, believability or feel. they wanted to create "cool" levels for their action (rpg) game. the cities are just hub areas to give you somewhere to store quest npcs. they are not functional cities or anything like real villages - they are just put together to fit a purpose and look "cool".
If they made the Forsworn more of an alternate faction, rather than a bunch of weird hill people then I feel like the decision to support them would have been much more of a harder decision but cooler decision to make
It honestly feels like the Civil war would be another opportunity for an uprising, The Great War did it, if the Empire is having to fight hard to hold the other areas, this would have been an ideal time I think.
Would've been cool if upon saving Madanach you get the option of taking Markarth with a bunch of Forsworn, perhaps even beating the Matriarch in a leadership squabble to unite the forsworn first, like maybe you have to fight a tough briarheart as Madanachs champion. Could even link it in with the civil war questline where you could have the option to arrange a deal between Tullius and Madanach to get the Reach as a recognised province within the Empire with Madanach as Chieftain of Markarth in return for war support from the Reachmen.
It's funny to me to see Nords acting all mighty and looking down on Imperials, but there's no way Oblivion guards would've lost to a bunch of Forsworn like that. Even if you overlook the silly ruthlessness of those guys, they were actually a challenge, and even story-wise, they managed to close a few Oblivion gates without the protagonist.
You also forgot the matriarch and that they are separated from the tribes, both of these informations are in a letter in the forsworn camp. But their king is actually under control of the silver-bloods, so them never actually taking over Markarth is probably intentional. And as to "the old gods", in the case of the nords is usually the modern aedra(and daedra) pantheon just with older names and sometimes some aspects of different gods are merged into one. So I think their religion actually is quite sensible
The game needs Spears like Morrowind and new NPC's that would show up here and there. Say one store owner dies from a dragon from walking home from work . He was your favorite shop owner ! Store was close to your home and he had more gold to trade with ! So mybie he had a son or daughter or his wife or some other new guy from else were buys his old shop and can trade with you. That be awsome. Watching a small town grow over time. mybie the town has 6 buildings. 1 year in the game ( not real life year ) after helping the town or makeing quests aid them they grow there town and even build a small keep or castle or city walls.
Watching this video app I could think of was the title should have been "It took me 12 years to realize that video game logic doesn't equate to actual logic."
If you haven't played the Bones for a Crow quest you should. You'll discover a possible link between the Foresworn and the Falmer. I won't say what it is so I don't spoil it. But it has me intrigued.
Well, at the very first playthrough I think we just take them for granted and see them as a type of regional enemy that the developers made for us to battle, but once you play for the oh, I don’t know, millionth time, you start to look into the lore more deeply and new and new details emerge, ones that you have not noticed before.
If Madonach is the political leader of the faction then it makes sense that the various Forsworn camps aren't an organized army. I can't see Hagravens and Briarhearts being great for recruitment or appealing to the general populace of The Reach who would ultimately need to accept or reject their rule. No matter how large their forces, Madonach is the one needed to unite and organize them, it seems; something which will never happen if you're like me and turned into a werewolf just as soon as Madonach was no longer useful, wiping out him and the Silverbloods in one fell swoop. It's funny. I walked into this city and both factions thought they could use me to their own ends. Little did they know, to me, they were just a means to grind out my wolf tree.
Yeah, the Madonach seems to be the one who can unite all the Forsworn together. Otherwise the individual tribes don't have the power to take over Markarth on their own. His example of 20 Forsworn in Markarth bypasses the wall, which would be a significant obstacle to attack. I don't do the werewolf quest, but I turn on Madonach after I get the gear and wipe out the Forsworn, so I get the Silver-blood ring too. I kill all the Forsworn I come across, so I thin their numbers.
The first problem concerning numbers is a product of a greater problem in Bethesda's games where cities aren't anywhere near as large and as dense as they need to be. Solitude is a great example of how it just feels like they started off strong then gave up at execution: the nation's capital has two castles, one for the High King of Skyrim and the other for the Emperor, but then it's buffered with a residential district that has three two-bedroom "manors," a cottage, and a single 3-unit rowhouse. They gave you a fast travel marker for the Blue Palace because they knew it becomes tedious and boring to walk down this city district that's big enough to be noticeable but not big enough for anything interesting to happen in it.
The Forsworn can't win. The second they crawl out of their stinking holes in any significant force, the Legion or the Stormcloaks will stomp them back into the flith they crawled out of. Their time has come and gone.
You said you have noticed oddities on your third playtrought, but I had to study the Fornsworn on my first because I was roleplaying a character who is highly reluctant to killing humans (even the wicked wrongdoers when possible). I had to make up reasons to treat the fornsworns as human beings while observing them while hiding in the shadows (I ran a silly stealth+two handed build lol). Well, they are wild savages focused of serving to the Old Gods rather to, you know, living a normal life or achieving some goals. So it is no surprise they haven't conquered much. Also I am pretty sure the neighboring fornsworns will happily pillage a fellow fornsworn camp whose warriors left to conquer some Markath, sacrificing children to their gods or feed them to hagravens.
Honestly this applies to most of the things in Skyrim. More so that nearly everything could have been so much better than what it is. But whether through time constraints, cut content, or good ideas and concepts but poor executions, they just weren't.
"At every two-moons'-dark, the clan draws lots at random to select a child from the clan, be it kin or slave, to be sacrificed. The sacrifice is set upon the ever-oozing altar where its heart is cut out by the clan's hagraven matriarch and offered to namira. In addition to these regular child sacrifices, children the matriarch deems too weak are also sacrificed to namira. The crow-wife clan also practices live burnings, bathing in blood and engaging in raucous ritual dismembering to please namira. When the tribe calls to namira, writing masses of centipedes and other squirming creatures form a thick carpet on the floor of the clan's ritual hut. Members of the clan sometimes pluck them off the ground and eat them during worship." Now you know where the giant mortars full of baby skulls in some forsworn and hagraven camps come from. Check out orphan's rock for example. What's funny is that silver ore is typically full of lead. And it's being processed directly over the head of markarth's water supply which feeds into the rivers in the reach. Which explains a LOT about markarth and the forsworn.
A lot of the problems you bring up can be explained by Skyrim's scale theory. The world we experience in game is a compressed version of the world that "actually" exists. It's why major cities have a population of 30 and why the 7000 Steps to High Hrothgar is closer to 700 if you actually count it out. It's the same reason TES4 Oblivion's "massive clash against the daedric hordes" outside Bruma was just 12 dudes. To get a better idea of what these regions would really be like, you'd have to play Daggerfall or Witcher 3. The Illiac Bay region of TES2 is the size of Britain. With that scale in mind, the Reach is a massive sprawling land of mountains and canyons.
It comes under the general heading of suspension of disbelief required. Skyrim is implausibly populated in general, with a negligible population of famers and a tiny proportion of land under cultivation or being fished that is supposed to feed all these swarms of soldiers, rebels and bandits. The Orsimer are just about plausible, since they are able to hunt for themselves with reasonable safety, and they can bring in income as mercenaries, so their lives of mining, smithing and training in the Orc Strongholds is economically feasible. But every human settlement is crazily underpopulated, indefensible and lacking in sufficient food income, surrounded by wild monsters and bandits which could come rampaging through the one street hamlet they mostly are at any time, and the residents - typically outnumbered by the respawning guards - seem to be fed out of thin air. The only merchants on the roads are the Khajiit which emphasises how rare it is for goods to be moved around Skyrim since Khajiit are despised immigrants who aren't suited to the climate. You never see people carrying stuff from their farm to the town to sell or coming back with stuff for their homes - after all Skyrim is mostly wasteland overrun by monsters and bandits - so the food produced by the insignificant amount of farming and fishing being done also doesn't get distributed worth a damn. This is not a living country with a realistic population, economy or structure of government. So the fact that the native rebels of the Reach are badly organised is just another piece of the overall silliness.
The old ways create strong warriors, but they may not be so effective against giant stone walls and doors of dwarven metal. A gambit that gets that many Forsworn into the city might take it, but so long as they're stuck outside, they can just get pelted with arrows and spells from within.
The reasons the Forsworn haven’t taken back the Reach is that they’re largely disorganized with the person who could unite them all, Madenach, in Cidhna mine. They first need to seize the borders of the Reach and prevent supplies being imported, which they have yet to do completely. Even then, there’s only one way into Markarth, a city of stone and metal. Until and unless they are united and organized under Madenach or someone else, they will struggle to or fail rk take back the Reach.
What's really absurd, is the thinking that went into this video: successfully suspending disbelief over population numbers geographical distances and just magic represented in this video game, but not over forsworn design.
What stands out to me about the Forsworn is they claim to be "natives of the reach", yet we only see them in inhabiting Nordic ruins and caves lmao they certainly didn't predate the Snow Elves or Atmorans and surely not all of there structures were destroyed and definitely not entirely destroyed without a trace, i.e. they're intentionally lying or have forgotten their own history. It doesn't seem like a developer oversight so there's something going on there but was unfortunately never explored or even hinted at besides them being said to Bretons which is very weird since Bretons originate from High Rock which was a very developed society under the Direnni Elves.
I think its because they live modestly they don't leave behind ruins of massive structures. But you're right their history is shaky and the fact they are kinda in denial they are or closely related to Bretons is suspect. Seems like they are one of those primitive Breton tribes who live in the wilderness in the borders of High Rock and Skyrim.
the beauty of the forsworn is that they are what they appear to be and no matter how much it may appear that there is more to them they are nothing more than wildlings and savages
What I've never understood in this universe is how many people like ulfric stormcloak or maven black briar are still alive in a world where all you have to do is do the black sacrament and it'll reach out to an assassin. If they can kill the emperor, it's strange that no one is like "hey that person is causing a civil war that killed my boy, black sacrament" or "my kid worked for maven and now they're dead, black sacrament" or even "this mother fucker keeps asking me if I visit the cloud district, black sacrament"
I always figured that the reason the Forsworn did not attempt to retake the Reach after the Forsworn Uprising was because their true leader was imprisoned. Without someone to lead them into battle, the Forsworn were still together but broken, scattered, and unorganized - Savages living off the land without structure. An attack on Markarth happens when Madanach is released from prison, but the attacking numbers weren't enough to actually take the city, let alone the entire Reach. You have to figure that, in Madanach's absence, the Forsworn became somewhat fallen even moreso than they already were. It's also sort of necessary to imagine that after Madanach is freed, he goes back to organizing the Forsworn and making plans to retake the Reach, but this is an event that will never transpire in the player's time (Without mods or some kind of update, that is).
Didn’t they actually wind up taking Markarth prior to the beginning of the game until the Storm Cloaks kicked them out? I've always assumed they were building up enough forces to not only take the Reach back, but be able to defend it afterward.
My biggest problem with the Forsworn is their terrible loot. You can clear out an entire camp and get a total of like ten gold. No good armor or weapons, except for the one or maybe two chests in the area.
Great for farming XP. You can powerlevel alteration, restoration, and the armor of your choice by standing in a crowd of Forsworn, casting ironflesh on yourself, blasting them with paralysis, letting them hit you, healing yourself... and when you get bored you can kill them all.
I'm not one to give ESO much credit but I am glad they really fleshed out and added some backstory and lots of added extra lore to the forsworn. I always felt like the Forsworn in Skyrim felt a little rushed and unfinished (Like sadly many things in Skyrim do..) and I did feel like there was something interesting going on with them. lIke why do they desecrate shrines to the divine? Why do they kidnap children? Well ESO helped by explaning they have their own pantheon of gods with their "old gods" being Namira (Interesting that Markarth much later then has a Namira cult in Skyrim huh?) Hircine and Peryite which does rather help explain why they are the way they are with their own unique blend of blood magic, nature magic, necromancy and Daedra worship and that the term "Forsworn" does not mean all of them but that their are many countless different groups of the Forsworn many of who have their own "king" or leaders and have different agendas and plans than the other groups
The Foresworn are too fragmented to hold The Reach. United, they may be able to take the Reach, but Ulfric proved to them that they could not stand against the armies of Skyrim , let alone The Empire or The Aldimeri Dominion. It's probably the defeat at Marcarth that caused thier most recent faction breakdown that you see in game
My immediate assumption is that, while Markarth's defense force is small, it is typically supplemented by reinforcements from surrounding holds that have economic interests in the area. That, and Markarth might have its forces depleted due to the war, either directly- by sending troops to the front lines- or indirectly- through guards deciding to abandon their posts in order to enlist on either side of the conflict. Taken in that light, it might make sense that the forsworn issue is raising its head and becoming prevalent enough that you literally see an assassination in public mere seconds after you enter the city. I would also argue that the convoluted leadership structure is probably one of the main reasons why the forsworn have not taken definitive action yet. We can see a clear distinction between their political leaders, like Madanach, versus their military and spiritual leaders. The political leaders, who would enact more complex plans like conspiracies, have not undergone any processes that would strip them of their humanity. While you noted the leadership limitations on hagravens, I can't imagine the briar hearts are great either. I imagine that their lack of human emotions allow them to effectively lead their settlements through an iron fist, but they lack the subtleties that would allow them to influence those immediately outside of their sphere of influence. So the forsworn are likely splinted among various local warlords of various strength that lack the ability to join together into a cohesive united force. Meanwhile, the political leaders likely try to ply the various factions in order to get people and resources for their more advanced schemes, but they are ultimately held back because they have little ability to influence supernaturally emotionless warlords. The resulting lack of resources means that the political leaders have to take riskier moves on their own, which lead to Madanach's imprisonment.
About the fires in the tents, us Native Americans had fires inside our Teepees with flaps on top to keep the smoke out, incorrect that it's that much of a fire hazard.
The fact that only one Forsworn base is allied to you when you rescue such a big guy, is your answer. The Forsworn are fractured and disunified. They are their own enemy as much as they are the Nords. Any attempt to move on the heavily foritified castle-towns would lead their rivals to hit tem from the rear.
Why is Bard's Leap right in the middle of Forsworn territory? Why does it look like a sacrafial alter at the top? I think it would have been kinda awesome if they made that a Sacrificial alter where prisoners were forced to take the leap. If the prisoners survived they would be spared, turned into slaves, or accepted as low ranking members of the tribe depending on the age and sex of the individual.
From 13 years of Skyrim I've realized pretty much everything in it is absurd, and sometimes it doesn't even make sense for ease of gameplay. It's sometimes more entertaining or enjoyable to try to stay away from everything the game wants you to do.
The main thing here is that 'taking a city' would logistically not work like it does in Skyrim. It would not be a giant melee fight with all the guards and Forsworn/bandits-that wasn't how medieval siegecraft worked. Once the guards spotted an enemy army, they'd all retreat inside their walls and shut the doors. They'd have weapons and battle tactics to allow them to attack an invading enemy without putting their own at risk. They'd have arrowslits cut out of the walls to fire upon an attacker without putting their own archers at risk, boiling oil to dump on anyone trying to breach the gate. Even if the gate WAS broken in, the enemy would be herded into a chokepoint where they could be easily picked off. Not to mention the Forsworn don't really seem like they'd thrive in a city environment. The Reach is mountainous, stony, not great soil. The Forsworn have some crops, but they are not farmers. They are hunters, gatherers, pastoralists. Their way of life kind of requires them to live in smaller groups in rural areas. Put a bunch of them together in a place like Markarth and they'd starve, if they didn't start fighting each other first.
Honestly when you analyze and really look at how many different factions there are in the wilds of Skyrim, like bandits, forsworn, vampires,, hagravens etc. It starts to make sense how everyone is living in cities with guards everywhere, and how you almost never see people outside the cities, except for soldiers or adventurers. And starts to make sense how grumpy, rude and generally cold everyone is to you and each other. Imagine actually living in this world, even the goofy game logic one. You walk 10 meters outside any city or settlement, you will be attacked from every direction. Wolves, forsworn, bandits, vampires, dragons. Hell, even skeletons and draugr are just wandering the wild in several locations. Life in Skyrim must be short, hard and cruel. When i think back to Oblivion, the vibe is different, the cities and even the roads feel much safer. It feels like there are WAY less bandits or other monsters attacking you randomly on the road. You almost have to look for trouble in Oblivion, but in Skyrim, no matter where you turn there's something trying to kill you.
Almost all lore elements take a hit because of game design. So many details about groups like the thieves guild and dark brotherhood make no sense when looking at the design of them in game. Even the opening scene that everyone played a billion times still leaves much to be desired when gameplay elements come in.
the thing is, unlike Novigrad, we have to imagine skyrim cities as 10/100 times bigger than they actually are or nothing makes sense
I feel that cities in Skyrim really don't feel like cities, whereas in oblivion they actually felt big enough to be like cities.
Skyrim made the deliberate decision to have all the NPCs you encounter in settlements be unique characters you could interact with so there was no one you couldn’t talk to about their life or get interesting conversations with. This of course comes at the cost of everything feeling smaller and more lifeless than similar RPGs that actually have generic NPCs everywhere.
Personally, I’ve always preferred the way Skyrim handled it and don’t mind cities feeling smaller than they’re supposed to. It makes them all feel like communities instead where you can know everyone instead of most people just being “too busy” to talk, but I understand that’s an unpopular sentiment too which is why that philosophy was dropped for FO4 and Starfield.
@@Longshanks1690its the type of thing that made me love whiterun for ex, of course the city looks not good or big and less fort like windhelm(that i also like) but the thing that looks like a community is great.
Even Nazeem, i can survive it.
I do feel Novigrad is also much bigger canonicaly. I mean it is pretty big in the game but its still pretty small for the biggest city in the world.
@@prorok3382 its supposed to be a city state, a country inside a city, problem 8s that the game has its limits.
Lets see how TES will do Sentinel the biggest city of tamriel, and hammerfell capital.
They did conquer Markarth, and even requested to be a province of the empire, but were destroyed by Ulfric. The problem is that they aren't united. They're just a bunch of disjointed clans. It's why the last time someone was able to get them united, they were able to comquer Markarth, and earlier in time, the Longhouse Emperor even held the Cyridilic throne for a time.
I thought they wanted independence from both Skyrim and Cyrodil?
@@AGoatDemon98 Yes and no. They want independence, but their king knew that any chance they had at retaining the Markarth area was to become apart of the empire.
Yeah, that does make a lot of sense. I kind of thought that's what was going on, which is also why the rest of the Foresworn don't suddenly become friendly once you free the king.
Clearly, he's not the king of ALL foresworn, even if he might be the heir to such a throne if they all respected it.
This one knows their TES history. Not trying to sound like a Kaj either btw.
Just like the Reikling factions on Solstheim aren't all buddies even if you side with them against the Nords
There is a theory that the Forsworn are not actually one faction. They're a collection of separate tribes. At least 2. One ruled by Madanach and one ruled by the Matriarch (suspected to be a hagraven) and who knows how many others. That explains why only the Forsworn at one camp are friendly after helping Madanach and why they can't coordinate a large enough force to take over Markarth. Maybe they were united at one time (during the Forsworn Uprising) but later became fractured. It is much easier to defend than to attack, especially if the defending force is better equipped and prepared. The real life guideline for attacking is that you want to have at least 3 times the strength of the enemy. That of course can change depending on other factors. Therefore it's not that farfetched that the Forsworn would not be able to take Markarth. They're not coordinated enough and in order to take a well-defended city with large stone walls they would need a MUCH stronger force.
I absolutely believe that, it wouldn't make sense otherwise. Madanach has been in prison for 25 years, in that time I don't he could have maintained his hold over the Forsworn. Once he was out of the picture he became mostly irrelevant, sure we do see a few devout followers but we don't get any indication of his power outside Markarth. Strong warriors would have no doubt stepped up in his absence and the Forsworn splintered. Look at what happened to Alexander the Great's empire, and that was an organized state.
In my playthrough after helping Madanach I will occasionally run across a small Forsworn patrol in the wild and they won't be hostile. I justify that as a group loyal to or allied to Madanach. On the whole the Forsworn are more of multi-tribal group rather than a homogenous organization. Some groups would be just as hostile towards each other as they would be toward the Nords.
The Fosworn are Tribal so yes, they are all Forsworn but separate tribes they may even fight each other which is mentioned in at least one book in the game. There is no leader at this time charismatic enough to pull them together. Red Eagle was this type of leader who had the ability to Band the Clans together with a common enemy.
This sounds like headcanon. The simple answer is the devs probably had a bigger idea for the faction than we got to see in game, and they never got around to finishing it. They probably planned a questline explaining the briarhearts and the hagravens and how the forsworn fell from a noble resistance movement to become hagraven worshiping barbarians instead. Madanach (or the silver bloods) gives you the quest to kill the hagraven queen and break the spell that cursed the forsworn to a savage existence, and after that the remaining camps either become friendly, or the forsworn are replaced by bandits, or madanach/thonar could give radiant quests to hunt down those that are too far gone to rejoin civilization.
Its even possible that the bandits running around half naked worshipping hagravens weren't originally intended to be "forsworn" at all, but they had already made all the assets, and so they just decided to combine the two ideas and call them "forsworn" anyways, even though there's nothing in the Cidna mine questline that would explain the hagravens or the briarhearts. All the mentions of forsworn in in game text make them sound much more like a normal political movement like the stormcloaks, rather than a bunch of half naked barbarian daedra cultists.
Given the portrayal of Reachmen in Elder Scrolls Online, this would almost definitely be the case
I was going to say this. Well put.
I will give the Forsworn one thing and that is they are the only bandit faction in any Bethesda game that is even vaguely threatening.
The Gunners from Fallout 4 are pretty threatening. Both gameplay and lore wise.
Not a Bethesda game, but id Software with those damned Chaingunners. Of course, #infighting is a large part of DooM, so there's more than one type of threat mitigation. Infighting in any TES game? Rare, if non-existent depending on which TES game.
U must not have ever fought 15 Fiends 4 mongals and another beating yo azz with a tire iron on fallout new Vegas before
i think the gunners in fo4 are similar in threat level to the forsworn.
problems at low levels, but somewhere in the mid levels they become just another nuisance
@@GeraltofRivia22yeah but the loading screen shows them with a skull emblem on their combat armor. This is unobtainable by you. The gunners a scammers and that’s not threatening, that’s just mildly annoying
They did take over Markarth once. Then Ulfric brought over the Stormcloaks and whooped their asses. For details read The Bear of Markarth. If they rebelled again The Imperial Legion who is currently fighting Ulfric would send whatever troops they can and crush them just as easily as Ulfric did. Even while in decline the Empire and the Legion are more than formidable enough to defeat the Forsworn.
I mean respawning legion fodders and bandits would definetely do it XD
I was going to say the same thing. They're a kind of pathetic group really. They try to cause a bit of trouble in the area but can't actually launch any big attack, because if they did the empire or stormcloaks would come and beat them. The only reason they still exist is because the empire doesn't consider them a big enough threat to do anything.
Besides hardened warriors and strategy, Ulfric also had the advantage of The Voice.
@@georgeoldsterd8994 He isn't the best strategist considering he almost got the chopping block from an ambush if not for Alduin and Ulfric was supposed to be like the native that know the lay of land, but he got ambushed by Tullius, an outsider barely know anything about Skyrim yet. Besides, logistics wins war, you can't do sh*t if your soldiers die from starvation, you're not Jesus, who can make food from nothing, Skyrim is pretty much a frozen wasteland, they can probably barely exist on their own, but they need the Empire to thrive.
@@HoangTran-wu6se He is good enough strategist to keep his rebellion going for a very long time, unite at least half of Skyrim to his side and realise that what the empire is doing with the wgc is nonsense. As for logistics the Stormcloaks have been feeding themselves just fine as they have been fighting the legion for decades and they enjoy trade with other groups thanks to the Shatter-Shields who compete with EETC in Windhelm, which also wants to trade with the Stormcloaks.
That's the thing. You spawned the Foresworn into the city. Markarth is meant to be a giant, natural fortress which is near impossible to crack and enter in the first place. Even once inside, the place is a mass of high vantage points from which arrows and spells can be rained down on any force brave enough or dumb enough to enter. The Silver Bloods, who all but run the city, have a mass of wealth with which they can use to call in help both from the forces within the city and from those outside of it. The city is built upon the lucrative silver mine at its heart after all. While no, The Silver Bloods cannot hire a large enough force to wipe them out, I have no trouble believing that they could actually hold the city if the Foresworn made a concentrated attempt to invade.
Get help from forces outside the hold? How? With a phonecall?
@@tillburr6799gee, i wonder how messages are passed from one hold to another. It's a total mystery... but not really. They're called messangers.
@@DR-sv8ke and how might you do that? Pray tell? There’s not many ways out, and there’s enough forsworn to catch a messenger. Oh let me guess, the messenger calls for a time out?
I mean really did you even think?
@@DR-sv8ke you know what, lets go even harder on this. Lets say the forsworn have surrounded the gates. How, how on earth, does that messenger leave? Please tell. Because now im really curious. No no. Ill wait. You fool. Absolutely r*
lol if you’re going to be super realistic than there would be a constant flow of messengers to and from markarth to other holds specifically solitude so if the communications with a hold like markarth ceased the empire would know something is up and it would be clear markarth is under siege and being starved out pretty easy
You could argue the same about dragons just put two legendary dragons into any city hold and watch them demolish every person they encounter
Yeah, but the Dragons are actually godly creatures, spawns of Akatosh himself. It makes sense for them to wreck shit up, both in gameplay and in lore terms.
@@georgeoldsterd8994 High-level Dragons, at least.
If we go by gameplay mechanics those dragons would die to the first essential NPC that has a confidence attribute of 4 (or 3 if they are high level enough)
@@georgeoldsterd8994
I've seen dragons die in record time though due to just being pelted on by dozens of arrows though. They sometimes kill an important npc but in a city they are often to exposed and cut to pieces.
though then again, you said 'two' dragons, so at leas the dragons have twice the firepower and also aren't being focus fired down.
Yeah, but the issue there is that the dragons would not really need to do that. Other than the dragon born (...and giants) they have few real threats within the region. They can also fly directly to targets, which further removes the need for them to capture or disable any particular military bases. Dragons also do not farm, mine, or trade, so they do not have immediate economic incentives either. They wouldn't even want to take nice houses, since human dwellings would be cramped.
That isn't to say that their end goal might not include controlling the region and enjoying its wealth. But that would be done through the use of proxies found within dragon cults. However, establishing and recruiting for a dragon cult likely has stringent requirements, since most people would just reasonably flee town if a dragon approached them and started making demands. There is a need for a sense of long term dread and resignation that dragons are everywhere and running away just means you will fall under a different dragon.
At this point in time, the dragons will likely just hang out, snack out on goats and cattle for a few decades, and wait for the populous to develop the right sense of dread required for a cult. Overt military action is only required when you have to show off for your burgeoning cult as you try to claim swaths of the region for them.
I think the Forsworn in game strength is more of a game machinic rather than lore to keep the game "challenging" for players, since they will always be bad guys. It comes down to that age all debate of game machinic vs game lore. And though Skyrim has some really great lore, it is not all perfect.
Its called ludonarrative dissonance
I agree with this completely... But I like to think lore wise Markarth is actually a large city with thousands of inhabitants and hundreds of more guards than what we see, but due to game limitations of the time, it became the glorified village of stone that we see, with a population less than a hundred... similar to all the other "cities" of Skyrim. Or how the battles we see with stormcloaks vs imperials only get to the size of small scouting parties skirmishing and clashing with one another.
@@Mrlighthouse1000 Thank you, I knew there was a term but could not remember what it was
Yes that exatly. This same logic of enemy amounts in other cities would tell that majority of skyrims population would be bandits and vampires etc
Exactly. His 'logic' is silly nitpicking, at least if we're talking about Beth games. How many pirates, eclipse mercs and spacers you kill in Starfield for example, every planet has 2-3 bases full of them? so you can argue they have 1000x more troops than UC and FC guards you see in cities
Most cities in Skyrim aren't as big as Bethesda wanted them to be, they are small, limited by the technology of their time.. Im sure this plays a part. If we had Skyrim come out today, we may have had a much tougher and larger markarth with many more soldiers that could repel any attack from forsworn
That’s the most annoying part… Skyrim has been rereleased so many times, and they’ve never added any of the things they had to cut from the first game. Never improved mechanics that they didn’t have in the first game. The anniversary edition is the first version to add anything and it’s all fan created mod content. They’ve had over a decade to release the Skyrim they wanted to make in 2012 but couldn’t. All those years, all those releases, Bethesda never added to the game. Not including the DLC’s which was a popular thing back in the day, and were all added within like the first year or two from launch.
@@SamanthaS92 Why would they? Bethesda knows their games are a mess and free labor workers err I mean modders will take care about that and try to fix the things they screwed up, at least for the PC crowd, screw console gamers. That's at least what the developers must have thought when making the game.
The argument about tech limitations falls apart when you remember that Vivec City in Morrowind and most towns in Oblivion were actually bigger and ran without any additional issues.
Any city in Oblivion makes you feel in a real city. Never found similar vibe in any other game.
@@georgeoldsterd8994 Exactly this. You would believe those were actual medieval towns and not the same exact houses clustered together like they were in Skyrim.
You expect consistency from the people who decided that Delphine deserves to be essential to this world?
Anyway, if I were to think about this, them not taking over Markarth might just be that the Forsworn lack the ability to put together siege engines. If the Markarth guard were to see Forsworn approaching in huge numbers, they'll probably just lock the gates and wait them out, since the Forsworn don't have the engineering skill to make tall and sturdy enough ladders, let alone huge battering rams, siege towers, or catapults.
PC, PC she goes buh bye
I think with even a slight bit of subterfuge, the Forsworn could likely easily get forces inside to keep the gate from being locked while their main forces approach. The problem likely would come in holding Markath, where their lack of siege equipment would become quite the problem, as both the Empire and Stormcloak's could just bombard the city with impute from a distance/destroy the gates, before sending in their ground forces. Beyond that, there is the little detail of nobody in all likelyhood really wanting them to have a major stronghold. The Stormcloaks don't want it, the Empire doesn't want it, and most Nords regardless of their side in the civil war probably would take one good look at that mess, and offer at least a few choice words of no on it.
or they could set up outposts outside their walls, block agriculture and merchants flowing into the city, then the nords are left with two options, repel the army or starve within their homes.
@@Ed_man_talking9 True, that too would be a very easy way to subdue their occupation of the city. Especially as the Forsworn are hunter-gatherers with no real industry or farming style agriculture. I don't think they even have very deep knowledge of agriculture. So the city sieged and them locked inside of it would mean they only have Markath's stored food reserves/whatever random birds they can shoot out of the sky/animals to catch to make use of. Eventually their forces would starve, and be forced to either surrender/negotiate/try for a breakout/ or perish where they stand.
The same issue could be said for Markaths current Nord occupants, though they unlike the Forsworn have the potential of asking for backup. As said, neither the Stormcloaks nor Imperials would likely enjoy a third wheel in their civil war. The Markath defenders don't even have to sneak a messenger out, as I am sure sooner or later the city being under siege would be noticed as news travels back via fleeing refugees/merchants turning around/couriers seeing the situation/other travelers turning around and going back in a hurry. Considering also how the Forsworn could kill any Thalmer they notice, if the right, influencial and high ranking elf were to get killed/they become enough of a nuisance to their operations, it could motivate them to also make some moves in that theater.
You don’t just need Siege engines.
The Forsworn have already used infiltration tactics by posing as common townspeople and blending in with society like Spies. They already have people in the inside.
Its just that they need more bodies inside which they don’t have because The Forsworn are a small guerilla force.
The Forsworn honestly deserve their own DLC.
Agree
Definitely. Maybe we will get a mod that gives the forsworn the attention they deserve at some point
@@τλς7there is. And if there isn’t this comment will be enough to make it happen
They got one in ESO
@@tharwab does that really count tho
Cities and guards in those cities are more representative than literal. Game designers don't typically go out of their way to make sure that a city is realistically big enough to be an actual city or even big enough to house every npc who lives there. Just look at any city in pokemon fire red/leaf green. They look tiny if you can see the whole city at once, but you don't need to be any bigger because in game your screen is restricted to a small area. Likewise sure there are less guards at any given time in markarth than all forsworn, but you're not supposed to know how many guards there are. That's why they respawn. They're dense enough to feel their presence but not so dense the city feels crowded.
Yeah, fictional/notional cities in Skyrim will be bigger than their game representations.
Honestly the prison mission disappointed me. I thought I was gonna get to be a forsworn but nope the first camp I go out is the same as always, really annoyed me at the time.
(Edit) Yeah I agree with all the comments to a point, but the main one is skyrim feels shallow. And I feel like it's always been that way with Bethesda, continueing to dumb down games for a long time now. I'm getting fallout new Vegas this weekend so if anyone has some tips lmk
I love the quest itself, but like many aspects of Skyrim, it could've been built upon, like you say, the fact I couldn't join and roleplay as one was pretty shit.
I sided with them my first playthrough and nothing happened. The Jarl didn't change and all the guards were the exact same. Worst of all was that the Forsworne were still attacking me every 2 seconds whenever I was in the area
if you follow them to their camp after the escape, the forsworn in that specific camp are actually friendly
@@6Tainted1370 The quest was stupid, dude was literally sitting on the key to just walk out for decades with nothing at all stopping them.
Druadach redoubt is the only Forsworn holding that is friendly. I guess it's because Forsworn and Reachmen never are one people per say. They're tribes, each with their own chieftain. A similar issue was encountered during the second era with the orcs. Many Orc chieftains refused to bend the knee to King Kurog because of their tribal mindset. They weren't feudal. Perhaps only the Druadach reachmen serve Ard Madanach whereas the rest of the Forsworn have their own unknown kings and chieftains. One thing we learned about the Reachmen in the second era is that their clans come first and they only unify into one people when the Reach is threatened. After all the Ard of Markarth might have been the most powerful reachman lord but the rest of the clans outside Markarth were largely independent.
tbh in skyrim forsworn live like cultist bandits BUT if anyone play elder scrolls online and know the Reachman storyline its add so much to the lore , for me that was so enlightening to understand the roots of their "culture".
While I get what you mean, I do wonder: in Skyrim the Foresworn are explicitly said to have been established relatively recently, as a response to the Nords trying to push the Reachmen around. So then, how are there Foresworn in ESO, which takes place almost a thousand years prior (if not more, even)? Wouldn't Skyrim's Foresworn then be _re_ established?
@@georgeoldsterd8994 ESo Reachmen are the origin and the base of their culture , but yeah more than a thousand year later forsworn are basically rebels or freedom fighters but in the game you not really feel that tbh.
Plus, it was highlighted in ESO that they cannot read or write and bc of that they probably lost a lot of their culture in a thousand year.
And still I think knowing their bases, faith etc a good thing to understand them a bit better if you ask me Forsworn conflict was a bit shallow and underdeveloped in the game.
@@zsugynoktitkos7257don't forget the reach also extends into highrocks eastern part, Evermore
classic bethesda. Turns victims of genocide into generic raider bad guys.
@@brandon9172tell me you don't know Elder Scrolls lore without telling me you don't know Elder Scrolls lore. The entire series is full of everyone genociding everyone else. Being the victim of attempted genocide doesn't make you special in the Elder Scrolls universe.
While I completely agree with the point you can't use ingame npc counts as the lore amount (There would be more that 1000 people in markath in real life not 50 people)
One thing that you didn't mention which does make their religion unique is that they do seem to have some strange veneration for Dibella. If I remember right, in the location where they kidnapped the sybill they have a bloody altar before a statue of her
I saw that less as veneration and more desecration
Ngl, the mission where we have to save the next prophet of dibella had me feel like I am Chris Hanson walking into some creep keeping a child hostage.
Idk what exactly gave off this vibe, but I still can’t shake it off after all those years…
@@TheGosgosh Nah I see it as they train them at a young age. I'm pretty sure they go down the lore and art and poetry path of Dibella until the kid is older. I feel like the Sybil is more like how it is with Greek Mythology the mouthpiece, like the listeners and speakers are for the Dark Brotherhood. Dibella is an aedra. I don't think aedras would do anything to harm a child. Sanguine, Molag Bal...the daedra might be another story.
Yeah I saw it more as a desecration, however, I'm not sure why they would chose Dibella as a threat or the one aedra to descreate other than Hagravens might hate her cause I'm sure Dibella would detest them...but so would Meridia (probably).
I believe the point was to subvert the enemy god. In this case Dibella. Take the power she was gonna give the child for their own use. So not quite desecration but still rather profane as they are essentially stealing from a god, or trying to.
If you think about it, the Forsworn are actually the lords of the Reach. They have bases all around the area, including frontiers with other holds, their relegion includes human sacrifices and daedric worship, unpopular with empire/stormcloacks laws. With Markarth under "civilized" influence, they have a constant supply chain of sofisticated goods from traders on the roads, outside city walls they're free to worship whoever they want, don't have to pay imperial taxes, don't abide to imperial/nord laws, etc. while populating the whole Reach. They have a good deal there.
yeah it seems like the Forsworn can just chill in their caves and do their own thing, but over the long term the Nords will keep pushing them out of the territory and trying to kill them off, it's just the natural progression of any civilization to tend toward total control of territory.
They are fundamentally incompatible cultures as well, there's the daedra/aedra religious differences first and foremost, as well as both sides having historical claims to the same region of land and a history of bloodshed. So politically coexisting is pretty much impossible. The only possible outcomes to me seem to be A. the forsworn get marginalized to such an extent that the elements that make them up essentially scatter to the wind/assimilate into skyrim's broader culture, or B. they take back Markarth entirely, possibly with outside military help from Orisinium, Summerset Isles etc.
Yeah, Nords only really control Markarth and some of the villages. Also the Reach is actually even larger than the area we see in Skyrim.
Daedric worship is not big of a deal though. A lot of NPCs in Skyrim worship daedra and Dragonborn collaborate with them just fine. Hell, even your Dragonborn is a daedra worshipper judging by the artifacts inside your inventory bag
Please stop with daedra worship equals bad narrative
Yeah. The question isn't 'why don't they just conquer Markarth'. The question is, why would they WANT to conquer Markarth? In Medieval societies most people didn't live in cities, they were just fine living rurally. For most Medieval peoples, powerful kingdoms and empires swept in and 'conquered' regions by occupying cities and castles, but for normal rural people life went on as normal.
I was reading recently about the Mari tribe from a forgotten forest valley in Russia. They were conquered by: the Huns, then the Slavs, then the Bulgars, then the Mongols, then the Rus, all ruling from the large nearby city of Kazan, which in prehistory was probably Mari territory. And yet, TO THIS DAY, they still preserve their language and Pagan religion. They did so by just sitting under the radar and letting empires come and go (though they were also fierce warriors when times called for it).
@@aword3213 Not all daedric worship is evil, but there is Daedric Princes whose spheres of influence are evil in nature, like Namira, Molag Bal or Mehrunes Dagon. But that was not my point, my point is that the empire and the stormcloaks favor the worship of the divines, daedric worship is not openly practiced among the cities. And they are both legalists, in written law or tradition, wich means they have ways to enforce their beliefs directly or indirectly by the temple of divines activities, as seen in Morrowind or in that short questline for the temple of Mara in Riften. Now, you can sacrifice humans in your Windhelm basement but we also know that in not legal to do so. If you live in the hills where this is your culture and practiced by everyone, it's a far better place to live. By the way, the Dragonborn being a daedra worshiper is a choice of the player, unless we accept that he sold himself to Mora at the end of the Dragonborn DLC.
I think the strength of the Forsworn shows that they could take Markarth… but are wary of doing so since it would be a hard battle and outside forces could come to unseat them again.
Better to quietly rule the other 90% of the reach and see if a chance for a more permanent victory presents itself.
Hagravens can actually talk beyond grunts and small words, I would know I almost married one
Foresworn felt added in at the last minute to me. They aren’t really intertwined in the storyline in a meaningful way
I think it's more likely they weren't last minute as they have a lot of assets developed for them that would have taken time. I think this is one of those they had another plan that they cut for the 11/11/11 release date. Like there was a grand plan that got scraped and what we have is a cut down simple bad guy faction rather than a larger fight for the Reach storyline which seems to be hinted at a couple of times, but doesn't go anywhere. Notes suggestions of hidden families that would force many Forsworn into surrender and leaders giving orders. But no missions to take down that leadership or find those families. There's even a conversation with the Jarl at one point if he isn't in the throne room that suggests you're running numerous missions for him, like you're involved in some sort of war.
They might be the result of quest cut content. Their camps were spread around, their numbers were decided, bits and pieces of lore about them can be found or heard or seen in a show-not-tell way, and then at some point in development the dev-bosses said "Yeah, we don't' have time for that anymore. Clip the plans and leave what you got." "But the framework is all in place already and-"
"Did I stutter?"
-
What I don't get is, with all the re-releases this game has had and how much people still enjoy this game, why hasn't any of the planned but cut content been developed and added to any of the later versions? That would give people MORE incentive to buy the game (or DLC for it) again when it's re-released.
They did the same thing for the Bloodworks in Windhelm. Once Bethesda is done with a project they don't do anything that isn't absolutely necessary. No matter how many times they release the game.
Think about how much money they would have gotten to add another whole area to a major city as a DLC, with new activities, new quests, new NPCs. Arena fighting and arena betting in Skyrim. Something almost everyone wanted. Something the community begged them to finish.
To date they can't even be bothered to fix the half dozen or so missing textures on the walls of the arena that would allow people to just do some basic modding and include the area if not the activities. @@WorldWalker128
@@WorldWalker128 Bethesda's turnover rate is historically kinda bad, and all that remains of the cut content is what's in the game files so it's highly likely that by the time they had the idea for the re-releases, anyone that knew the details had already left the company. Whatever bigger idea they had for the Forsworn got cut fairly early by the looks of it, so we got bandits with sub-par equipment.
They were probably planned to be involved in the civil war plot. Would make the most sense given their history.
There are bits of Skyrim where the lore is insanely deep and well thought out. Talos is the embodiment of a colonial religion, where an old god was merged with a conquering faction's new god (The nords refer to Talos, the Nord who became God... but all their depictions are of Tiber Septim who was not a nord).
However, there are some incredibly poorly thought out things. Like in a world where magic exists and can easily conjure weapons and monsters, and its common enough that you can find bandits on the road doing it to steal your money, but when you are thrown in prison they don't, for example, try to see if you have magic and could do that, or put magic-draining handcuffs on you. They just take your weapons and assume you're actually disarmed...
You know that in Arena cities were way larger? The size of Markarth is just a game limitation, it's canon that they arent actually that small.
It would have been great had there been an option to join the Foresworn, liberate their ancestral Reach, forge an alliance with the Nords to kick out the Imperials and their Elven masters.
Same with the option to join the Silver Hands to liberate the forces of Hercine.
Foresworn are actually closer to the empire than to the stormcloaks. Ulfric fought the foresworn and retook markarth from them before the events of the game
I’m eating my last pickled onion while watching this
I was always annoyed that you couldn't join the Forsworn. Also, it would've been cool if the tribes were at war with each other. There should have been a whole quest line.
The beginning part is more another issue with the cities bein represented way too small, not the foresworn themselves. You in your mind have to envision all cities Daggerfall/ Arena cities sizes canonically, and that goes for all TES games.
I don't get how people don't understand that Skyrim's cities are bigger in the lore.
Some people can't difference gameplay from lore, and even dare to make content about the matter.
Precisely, due to limitations in skyrim's creation engine, Bethesda cannot make Skyrim as big as it is in lore. Solitude, for example, is supposed to be the capital of the entirety of Skyrim, yet in game there are about 8 buildings.
ive always wondered why there is only 1 location of werebears. Why cant you become one? why did they become werebears? why did they all come together? so many questions about that spot.
"Werebears? Where? Bears? Men that are bears?" - M'aiq
The hell is a werebear? Half wolf half bear? How does that even work?
@@KDB349 half man, half bear. Or manbearpig, half man, half bear, half pig!!!
what's even weirder is their feud with the werewolves on solstheim, shit doesnt get elaborated upon
The most absurd thing about them is how much damage they deal with stone age weapons. Bones tied to a stick? Really?
I'm pretty sure the in-game cities are just scaled down representations of they would be in lore. Therefore, direct comparison between unit numbers is practically useless.
But yeah Karthspire makes no fucking sense.
I feel like they could've done Skyrim cities justice, I mean Oblivion cities actually felt like plausible cities they felt massive, where we only get really only 3 hold capitals that feel something like a city in Skyrim.
I feel that Bethesda did the cities in Skyrim dirty.
@@isimperialist Oblivion AND Morrowind. You can get lost in those, and that's a good thing.
Yet again one more thing Bethseda decided to dumb down.
@@isimperialist I agree that the cities in Skyrim leave a lot to be desired, especially since Skyrim is a newer game. But there is a potential lore explanation: Skyrim is not as developed or cosmopolitan as Cyrodiil and Morrowind are, so the cities just won't be as impressive. Also, Skyrim had been in a state of decay due to the civil war. It also explains why the guards aren't as good in Skyrim as they were in Oblivion or Morrowind: the best soldiers are out fighting while the leftovers are town guards. Morrowind's guards were cult-like policemen for the major religion, and Oblivion's guards patrolled the heart of the empire so were probably selected for being highly competent.
What gets me is how there's no battle mages in any of the city guard. You get magic wielders among bandits, falmer, foresworn, and everybody else who opposes you, but not the guards. Guards themselves are already really tough cookies to crack, giving them the ability to spew fire and ice at you would make them that much harder. If they had batle mages mixed in at Markearth, they would probably contend quite well against the foresworn
Probably due to Nordic superstition and general distrust of magic. If I recall correctly, the few court wizards you see in the game are all disliked by the general populace
I thought from the very beginning that removing one's heart for a briar was absurd, but I guess that's only me.
I never found them super logical (leaders that can die to a competent pickpocket) but the Old Gods armor is really good for a stealth archer build as well as looking pretty damn cool on a wood elf, so that works for me.
I'm still mad that they took my Bosmer horn option away between Morrowind and ESO, the male Forsworn headgear is the only way I can go "ANTLERS" and I'm still disgruntled that they didn't allow the antlers on the female model version.
The armor rocks in general rocks, it is STYLISH and I've mix and matched it with some of the other fur armors both for Bosmeri characters and for werewolf ones.
@@neoqwerty Lore wise you're literally ripping their hearts out from behind. I can't imagine anyone but a PC could pull that off.
@@drivernephisson7034that wouldve been a dope finishing animation tbh. You successfully pickpocket the briarheart, and you get an death animation. You skillfully slip your hand into its chest, unnoticed. Ripping out its artificial briarheart, and sliding it into your pocket. Thus killing the witchmen warrior.
The Forsworn are probably the most powerful "bandit" faction in the game. Encountering them early can end you.
Here's a question: why do the Forsworn inhabit Nordic ruins? I mean, it makes sense as a hideout, but the game itself implies that not all of those ruins are, in fact, Nordic. Take Red Eagle for example? He's a draugr, even though the draugr are Nordic undead, and Red Eagle was a Reachman. His sword is also ancient Nordic, as is his tomb. Or what, the Nords gave him a fancy Nordic funeral, like the did the Snow Prince?
Also, had the Foresworn all become friendly, the player would still have to contend with bandits and the Falmer, the latter could have been programmed to spawn in the overworld more frequently, as the game implies them to. And if not, why have the player get constantly attacked by anyone? I love the Reach, but I'd really rather not get attacked at every turn. 😒
Damn Bethesda suits rushing development. 😡
Lore x Gameplay.
It's too difficult to make a real city with 100.000 inhabitants in a game, so they make a small one with 30 characters, BUT you have to use your imagination and "see" the 100.000 inhabitants; that's lore!
I've never been concerned over anything scale based in Skyrim. City populations, tree sizes, and even time itself are all wildly out of proportion. I'm sure anyone creating a realism mod list would have a field day with examples like the Forsworn. Could they even feed themselves for a week given the food supply found in their camps?
Not only that, but pre-game Reach was much more unique and interesting place as well.
My theory i just spitballed: the real reach is all the forsworn encampments but we dont get to see it because they are all hostile and markarth is just a small bastion of the nords in a land dominated by the forsworn
Huh. Yeah, I guess so. I always just assumed they weren't terribly organized after Madanach was put in the mines, and a lot of the more nonsensical places they settled were long-established city/towns/gathering points for Reachmen rather than being freshly built war encampments.
I always found there to be something very romantic about the Forsworn
The thing that confuses me is that you can find forges in their camps making iron and steel, but they still use bone and furs.
Forsworn swords can be improved with steel. They are steel swords that utilize wood and leather.
I hope that one day in the distant future, Skyrim gets to be remade or remastered again. Lol.
No but seriously, 100x bigger cities, concepts actually making sense, delphine not being a complete idiot, expanded questlines, new graphics and all
I'm sure it might get remastered on the TES6 engine when that comes out.
The weirdest part about the Forsworn is that, unless I am mistaken, they claim to be the first humans in the reach, before the Nords...
But don't all humans come from the Atmorans meaning that the Nords would have been first to set foot on Skyrim? How could the Forsworn have been first?
Not all humans are descended from the Atmorans. The Redguards originally come from Yokuda. Also, by that logic, the Nords would be the original settlers of High Rock and Cyrodil as well, and the Reach is only partially in Skyrim (and also wasn't always part of Skyrim either), with the Skyrim hold being only a fraction of the region itself, with the rest being located in High Rock. And genetically speaking, the Reachmen are just Bretons who fall under a different culture. So the Reach tribes, whose descendants would later become known as the Forsworn, are in fact the original settlers of the Reach.
@@GreatOldOneCthulhuwrong. The Nords had already settled the Skyrim portions of the Reach long before any of the Reachmen showed up. They stole the land from the Nords, so the Nords are actually the original inhabitants, unless you wanna count the Snow Elves and Dwemer. Neither of which are around to lay claim to the Reach.
2:00 that's a gameplay mechanic thing, not lore. On that logic bandits could take on both Imperials and Stormcloaks. The reality in lore is they wouldn't make it past the walls, and even if they did reinforcements would arrive rather soon. Specially because most people would turn to Ulfric again, since the empire failed them already once. It would be interesting, the empire and the rebels would have to see who saves Markart first in order to gain or maintain their support.
Also I think the forsworn are the represent the celctic tribes in the britanic islands, fighting both romans (empire) and the saxon invaders (bretons). But they are just a bunch fo ooga booga savages wearing rags and using stone weapons (when their chests are full of iron and steel enchanted weapons). (and yes the nords are danes and scandinavians, duh)
4:15 Bethesda later fixed the Mistake of not having a major Enemy Faction being neutral to you in Fallout 4. Where if you join the institute, a major Amount of Locations and Railroad Quests can be completed without any Combat.
It's a Feature
Honestly being able to max out stealth and pickpocketing so you're a silk handed phantom who can sneak up on a briarheart and literally rip his "heart" out of his chest without him even noticing and watching him just drop dead will never not be funny to me.
Teepee's often had fires inside them and it makes sense for a fire to be near fur and hide tents
Originally they were supposed to be one of the chooseable end game factions (like the hags, falmor, or the giants) but as with all the others they were cut due to “reasons”(t)
I too, wish there were more options and stories and quests for me being on Forsworn side. I haven't actually taken the Leap, yet. But I soon will leap on Bruca's Leap.
"A fire hazard if ever I've seen one."
PC: *builds three smelters in their basements*
Elder scrolls should just go the dark souls route and have the cities surrounded by large extra "districts" that are out of bounds, leaving the actual playable parts of the city about the same size, but with a huge backdrop.
I mean in-game scale doesnt make sense in any elder scrolls game and never has. The battles of the Skyrim civil war or during Oblivion crisis involve 20 people on each side max, which is not a battle, but an intense tavern brawl. Cities like Markath are meant to house thousands of citizens and are garrisoned by probably several hundred soldiers during peace times. Now during the civil war there is thousands of armed men in the employ of the Jarls.
ps: anyone looking to play a game more to scale, I recommend the "Elder Kings" mods for ck2 and ck3 (especially ck3, since it is a lot easier to get into).
I would suggest that
1. They are aware of this power imbalance, and during the events of skyrim they are likely preparing to invade.
2. They are not just preparing to take Markarth, but to defend it against the other legions of Skyrim. History has shown other holds will come to Markarth's Defence
3. They are being manipulated by the Hagraven's. Their strongest NPC is a Briarheart. Likely many Forsworn believe this is the apex of their kin and are waiting to ascend to this position. The Hagravens however have little need for taking the city and are willing to manipulate the Forsworn so as to have an endless supply of people to experiment on.
Just my thoughts based on this video
there is an easy answer to this problem and any other related problem: the developers didnt care at all for immersion, believability or feel. they wanted to create "cool" levels for their action (rpg) game. the cities are just hub areas to give you somewhere to store quest npcs. they are not functional cities or anything like real villages - they are just put together to fit a purpose and look "cool".
If they made the Forsworn more of an alternate faction, rather than a bunch of weird hill people then I feel like the decision to support them would have been much more of a harder decision but cooler decision to make
It honestly feels like the Civil war would be another opportunity for an uprising, The Great War did it, if the Empire is having to fight hard to hold the other areas, this would have been an ideal time I think.
Would've been cool if upon saving Madanach you get the option of taking Markarth with a bunch of Forsworn, perhaps even beating the Matriarch in a leadership squabble to unite the forsworn first, like maybe you have to fight a tough briarheart as Madanachs champion. Could even link it in with the civil war questline where you could have the option to arrange a deal between Tullius and Madanach to get the Reach as a recognised province within the Empire with Madanach as Chieftain of Markarth in return for war support from the Reachmen.
It's funny to me to see Nords acting all mighty and looking down on Imperials, but there's no way Oblivion guards would've lost to a bunch of Forsworn like that. Even if you overlook the silly ruthlessness of those guys, they were actually a challenge, and even story-wise, they managed to close a few Oblivion gates without the protagonist.
You also forgot the matriarch and that they are separated from the tribes, both of these informations are in a letter in the forsworn camp. But their king is actually under control of the silver-bloods, so them never actually taking over Markarth is probably intentional. And as to "the old gods", in the case of the nords is usually the modern aedra(and daedra) pantheon just with older names and sometimes some aspects of different gods are merged into one. So I think their religion actually is quite sensible
The game needs Spears like Morrowind and new NPC's that would show up here and there. Say one store owner dies from a dragon from walking home from work . He was your favorite shop owner ! Store was close to your home and he had more gold to trade with ! So mybie he had a son or daughter or his wife or some other new guy from else were buys his old shop and can trade with you. That be awsome. Watching a small town grow over time. mybie the town has 6 buildings. 1 year in the game ( not real life year ) after helping the town or makeing quests aid them they grow there town and even build a small keep or castle or city walls.
Just another example of the shallowness of the puddle. Which I love and feels like home, but, yeah...
Watching this video app I could think of was the title should have been "It took me 12 years to realize that video game logic doesn't equate to actual logic."
Please tell me the mod for that bow in the thumbnail! Pure antler bow looks sick!
If you haven't played the Bones for a Crow quest you should. You'll discover a possible link between the Foresworn and the Falmer. I won't say what it is so I don't spoil it. But it has me intrigued.
Well, at the very first playthrough I think we just take them for granted and see them as a type of regional enemy that the developers made for us to battle, but once you play for the oh, I don’t know, millionth time, you start to look into the lore more deeply and new and new details emerge, ones that you have not noticed before.
If Madonach is the political leader of the faction then it makes sense that the various Forsworn camps aren't an organized army. I can't see Hagravens and Briarhearts being great for recruitment or appealing to the general populace of The Reach who would ultimately need to accept or reject their rule. No matter how large their forces, Madonach is the one needed to unite and organize them, it seems; something which will never happen if you're like me and turned into a werewolf just as soon as Madonach was no longer useful, wiping out him and the Silverbloods in one fell swoop.
It's funny. I walked into this city and both factions thought they could use me to their own ends. Little did they know, to me, they were just a means to grind out my wolf tree.
Yeah, the Madonach seems to be the one who can unite all the Forsworn together. Otherwise the individual tribes don't have the power to take over Markarth on their own. His example of 20 Forsworn in Markarth bypasses the wall, which would be a significant obstacle to attack.
I don't do the werewolf quest, but I turn on Madonach after I get the gear and wipe out the Forsworn, so I get the Silver-blood ring too. I kill all the Forsworn I come across, so I thin their numbers.
The first problem concerning numbers is a product of a greater problem in Bethesda's games where cities aren't anywhere near as large and as dense as they need to be.
Solitude is a great example of how it just feels like they started off strong then gave up at execution: the nation's capital has two castles, one for the High King of Skyrim and the other for the Emperor, but then it's buffered with a residential district that has three two-bedroom "manors," a cottage, and a single 3-unit rowhouse. They gave you a fast travel marker for the Blue Palace because they knew it becomes tedious and boring to walk down this city district that's big enough to be noticeable but not big enough for anything interesting to happen in it.
The Forsworn can't win. The second they crawl out of their stinking holes in any significant force, the Legion or the Stormcloaks will stomp them back into the flith they crawled out of. Their time has come and gone.
You said you have noticed oddities on your third playtrought, but I had to study the Fornsworn on my first because I was roleplaying a character who is highly reluctant to killing humans (even the wicked wrongdoers when possible). I had to make up reasons to treat the fornsworns as human beings while observing them while hiding in the shadows (I ran a silly stealth+two handed build lol).
Well, they are wild savages focused of serving to the Old Gods rather to, you know, living a normal life or achieving some goals. So it is no surprise they haven't conquered much. Also I am pretty sure the neighboring fornsworns will happily pillage a fellow fornsworn camp whose warriors left to conquer some Markath, sacrificing children to their gods or feed them to hagravens.
Honestly this applies to most of the things in Skyrim. More so that nearly everything could have been so much better than what it is. But whether through time constraints, cut content, or good ideas and concepts but poor executions, they just weren't.
"At every two-moons'-dark, the clan draws lots at random to select a child from the clan, be it kin or slave, to be sacrificed. The sacrifice is set upon the ever-oozing altar where its heart is cut out by the clan's hagraven matriarch and offered to namira. In addition to these regular child sacrifices, children the matriarch deems too weak are also sacrificed to namira. The crow-wife clan also practices live burnings, bathing in blood and engaging in raucous ritual dismembering to please namira. When the tribe calls to namira, writing masses of centipedes and other squirming creatures form a thick carpet on the floor of the clan's ritual hut. Members of the clan sometimes pluck them off the ground and eat them during worship."
Now you know where the giant mortars full of baby skulls in some forsworn and hagraven camps come from.
Check out orphan's rock for example.
What's funny is that silver ore is typically full of lead. And it's being processed directly over the head of markarth's water supply which feeds into the rivers in the reach. Which explains a LOT about markarth and the forsworn.
A lot of the problems you bring up can be explained by Skyrim's scale theory.
The world we experience in game is a compressed version of the world that "actually" exists. It's why major cities have a population of 30 and why the 7000 Steps to High Hrothgar is closer to 700 if you actually count it out. It's the same reason TES4 Oblivion's "massive clash against the daedric hordes" outside Bruma was just 12 dudes.
To get a better idea of what these regions would really be like, you'd have to play Daggerfall or Witcher 3. The Illiac Bay region of TES2 is the size of Britain. With that scale in mind, the Reach is a massive sprawling land of mountains and canyons.
It comes under the general heading of suspension of disbelief required. Skyrim is implausibly populated in general, with a negligible population of famers and a tiny proportion of land under cultivation or being fished that is supposed to feed all these swarms of soldiers, rebels and bandits. The Orsimer are just about plausible, since they are able to hunt for themselves with reasonable safety, and they can bring in income as mercenaries, so their lives of mining, smithing and training in the Orc Strongholds is economically feasible. But every human settlement is crazily underpopulated, indefensible and lacking in sufficient food income, surrounded by wild monsters and bandits which could come rampaging through the one street hamlet they mostly are at any time, and the residents - typically outnumbered by the respawning guards - seem to be fed out of thin air. The only merchants on the roads are the Khajiit which emphasises how rare it is for goods to be moved around Skyrim since Khajiit are despised immigrants who aren't suited to the climate. You never see people carrying stuff from their farm to the town to sell or coming back with stuff for their homes - after all Skyrim is mostly wasteland overrun by monsters and bandits - so the food produced by the insignificant amount of farming and fishing being done also doesn't get distributed worth a damn.
This is not a living country with a realistic population, economy or structure of government. So the fact that the native rebels of the Reach are badly organised is just another piece of the overall silliness.
The old ways create strong warriors, but they may not be so effective against giant stone walls and doors of dwarven metal.
A gambit that gets that many Forsworn into the city might take it, but so long as they're stuck outside, they can just get pelted with arrows and spells from within.
The reasons the Forsworn haven’t taken back the Reach is that they’re largely disorganized with the person who could unite them all, Madenach, in Cidhna mine.
They first need to seize the borders of the Reach and prevent supplies being imported, which they have yet to do completely. Even then, there’s only one way into Markarth, a city of stone and metal.
Until and unless they are united and organized under Madenach or someone else, they will struggle to or fail rk take back the Reach.
What's really absurd, is the thinking that went into this video: successfully suspending disbelief over population numbers geographical distances and just magic represented in this video game, but not over forsworn design.
Eso does a decent job scaling the size of the cities up some but still you gotta assume the cities in reality are alot bigger.
What stands out to me about the Forsworn is they claim to be "natives of the reach", yet we only see them in inhabiting Nordic ruins and caves lmao they certainly didn't predate the Snow Elves or Atmorans and surely not all of there structures were destroyed and definitely not entirely destroyed without a trace, i.e. they're intentionally lying or have forgotten their own history. It doesn't seem like a developer oversight so there's something going on there but was unfortunately never explored or even hinted at besides them being said to Bretons which is very weird since Bretons originate from High Rock which was a very developed society under the Direnni Elves.
I think its because they live modestly they don't leave behind ruins of massive structures. But you're right their history is shaky and the fact they are kinda in denial they are or closely related to Bretons is suspect. Seems like they are one of those primitive Breton tribes who live in the wilderness in the borders of High Rock and Skyrim.
Well...I didn't think the Forsworn were all that smart to begin with lol.
the beauty of the forsworn is that they are what they appear to be and no matter how much it may appear that there is more to them they are nothing more than wildlings and savages
What I've never understood in this universe is how many people like ulfric stormcloak or maven black briar are still alive in a world where all you have to do is do the black sacrament and it'll reach out to an assassin. If they can kill the emperor, it's strange that no one is like "hey that person is causing a civil war that killed my boy, black sacrament" or "my kid worked for maven and now they're dead, black sacrament" or even "this mother fucker keeps asking me if I visit the cloud district, black sacrament"
I always figured that the reason the Forsworn did not attempt to retake the Reach after the Forsworn Uprising was because their true leader was imprisoned. Without someone to lead them into battle, the Forsworn were still together but broken, scattered, and unorganized - Savages living off the land without structure. An attack on Markarth happens when Madanach is released from prison, but the attacking numbers weren't enough to actually take the city, let alone the entire Reach. You have to figure that, in Madanach's absence, the Forsworn became somewhat fallen even moreso than they already were. It's also sort of necessary to imagine that after Madanach is freed, he goes back to organizing the Forsworn and making plans to retake the Reach, but this is an event that will never transpire in the player's time (Without mods or some kind of update, that is).
Didn’t they actually wind up taking Markarth prior to the beginning of the game until the Storm Cloaks kicked them out? I've always assumed they were building up enough forces to not only take the Reach back, but be able to defend it afterward.
My biggest problem with the Forsworn is their terrible loot. You can clear out an entire camp and get a total of like ten gold. No good armor or weapons, except for the one or maybe two chests in the area.
Great for farming XP. You can powerlevel alteration, restoration, and the armor of your choice by standing in a crowd of Forsworn, casting ironflesh on yourself, blasting them with paralysis, letting them hit you, healing yourself... and when you get bored you can kill them all.
I'm not one to give ESO much credit but I am glad they really fleshed out and added some backstory and lots of added extra lore to the forsworn. I always felt like the Forsworn in Skyrim felt a little rushed and unfinished (Like sadly many things in Skyrim do..) and I did feel like there was something interesting going on with them. lIke why do they desecrate shrines to the divine? Why do they kidnap children? Well ESO helped by explaning they have their own pantheon of gods with their "old gods" being Namira (Interesting that Markarth much later then has a Namira cult in Skyrim huh?) Hircine and Peryite which does rather help explain why they are the way they are with their own unique blend of blood magic, nature magic, necromancy and Daedra worship and that the term "Forsworn" does not mean all of them but that their are many countless different groups of the Forsworn many of who have their own "king" or leaders and have different agendas and plans than the other groups
The Foresworn are too fragmented to hold The Reach. United, they may be able to take the Reach, but Ulfric proved to them that they could not stand against the armies of Skyrim , let alone The Empire or The Aldimeri Dominion. It's probably the defeat at Marcarth that caused thier most recent faction breakdown that you see in game
My immediate assumption is that, while Markarth's defense force is small, it is typically supplemented by reinforcements from surrounding holds that have economic interests in the area. That, and Markarth might have its forces depleted due to the war, either directly- by sending troops to the front lines- or indirectly- through guards deciding to abandon their posts in order to enlist on either side of the conflict. Taken in that light, it might make sense that the forsworn issue is raising its head and becoming prevalent enough that you literally see an assassination in public mere seconds after you enter the city.
I would also argue that the convoluted leadership structure is probably one of the main reasons why the forsworn have not taken definitive action yet. We can see a clear distinction between their political leaders, like Madanach, versus their military and spiritual leaders. The political leaders, who would enact more complex plans like conspiracies, have not undergone any processes that would strip them of their humanity.
While you noted the leadership limitations on hagravens, I can't imagine the briar hearts are great either. I imagine that their lack of human emotions allow them to effectively lead their settlements through an iron fist, but they lack the subtleties that would allow them to influence those immediately outside of their sphere of influence. So the forsworn are likely splinted among various local warlords of various strength that lack the ability to join together into a cohesive united force. Meanwhile, the political leaders likely try to ply the various factions in order to get people and resources for their more advanced schemes, but they are ultimately held back because they have little ability to influence supernaturally emotionless warlords. The resulting lack of resources means that the political leaders have to take riskier moves on their own, which lead to Madanach's imprisonment.
the skyrim civil war is basicaly a 100 vs 100 war/ battle scale lmao
About the fires in the tents, us Native Americans had fires inside our Teepees with flaps on top to keep the smoke out, incorrect that it's that much of a fire hazard.
If this took you twelve years to find out, just wait until you find out that hagravens can speak the common tongue
The fact that only one Forsworn base is allied to you when you rescue such a big guy, is your answer. The Forsworn are fractured and disunified. They are their own enemy as much as they are the Nords. Any attempt to move on the heavily foritified castle-towns would lead their rivals to hit tem from the rear.
im so happy I got an ENB, I dont think I could stand those washed out colors much longer. The Reach in particular was always gray and foggy and ugly
Why is Bard's Leap right in the middle of Forsworn territory?
Why does it look like a sacrafial alter at the top?
I think it would have been kinda awesome if they made that a Sacrificial alter where prisoners were forced to take the leap. If the prisoners survived they would be spared, turned into slaves, or accepted as low ranking members of the tribe depending on the age and sex of the individual.
Some of the combat footage in this good lord LOL
From 13 years of Skyrim I've realized pretty much everything in it is absurd, and sometimes it doesn't even make sense for ease of gameplay. It's sometimes more entertaining or enjoyable to try to stay away from everything the game wants you to do.
The main thing here is that 'taking a city' would logistically not work like it does in Skyrim. It would not be a giant melee fight with all the guards and Forsworn/bandits-that wasn't how medieval siegecraft worked. Once the guards spotted an enemy army, they'd all retreat inside their walls and shut the doors. They'd have weapons and battle tactics to allow them to attack an invading enemy without putting their own at risk. They'd have arrowslits cut out of the walls to fire upon an attacker without putting their own archers at risk, boiling oil to dump on anyone trying to breach the gate. Even if the gate WAS broken in, the enemy would be herded into a chokepoint where they could be easily picked off.
Not to mention the Forsworn don't really seem like they'd thrive in a city environment. The Reach is mountainous, stony, not great soil. The Forsworn have some crops, but they are not farmers. They are hunters, gatherers, pastoralists. Their way of life kind of requires them to live in smaller groups in rural areas. Put a bunch of them together in a place like Markarth and they'd starve, if they didn't start fighting each other first.
I create a great sword wielding nord and I just go and kill on a rampage
Honestly when you analyze and really look at how many different factions there are in the wilds of Skyrim, like bandits, forsworn, vampires,, hagravens etc. It starts to make sense how everyone is living in cities with guards everywhere, and how you almost never see people outside the cities, except for soldiers or adventurers. And starts to make sense how grumpy, rude and generally cold everyone is to you and each other. Imagine actually living in this world, even the goofy game logic one. You walk 10 meters outside any city or settlement, you will be attacked from every direction. Wolves, forsworn, bandits, vampires, dragons. Hell, even skeletons and draugr are just wandering the wild in several locations. Life in Skyrim must be short, hard and cruel.
When i think back to Oblivion, the vibe is different, the cities and even the roads feel much safer. It feels like there are WAY less bandits or other monsters attacking you randomly on the road. You almost have to look for trouble in Oblivion, but in Skyrim, no matter where you turn there's something trying to kill you.
Almost all lore elements take a hit because of game design. So many details about groups like the thieves guild and dark brotherhood make no sense when looking at the design of them in game. Even the opening scene that everyone played a billion times still leaves much to be desired when gameplay elements come in.