Who is the main antagonist of Gold Road story?

SkaraMinoc

For those who completed the main quest, who was the real villain?

Hapexamendios

Other (leave comment)

I am. I'm just a pain with in the (insert preferred anatomical reference here).

SkaraMinoc

Hermaeus Mora

Torvesard did nothing wrong. Hermaeus Mora is responsible for setting off the events of Necrom and Gold Road. Ithelia was doing just fine until he started messing with her. Also, I'd like to believe that Beragon is the real leader of the Recollection and King Nantharion was just a pawn. But ZOS never added that twist so I'm disappointed.

TX12001rwb17_ESO

Hermaeus Mora

For helping Hermaeus Mora am I the villian? Ithelia never came across as a bad guy, if anything she seems to be one of the most benevolent of the Daedric Princes.

The thing is it is Hermaeus Mora's paranoia that caused Ithelia to become a threat, she even said in the flashback that the apocalypse he forsaw wouldn't happen but then he imprisoned her and made her angry turning her into the very thing he feared, maybe that is why he forced us to sign something in Necrom, so we could not turn on him when we realized he was the problem not Ithelia.

RomanRex

Other (leave comment)

ambiguous, huh?

Toanis

Other (leave comment)

TX12001rwb17_ESO wrote: »

For helping Hermaeus Mora am I the villian? Ithelia never came across as a bad guy, if anything she seems to be one of the most benevolent of the Daedric Princes.

That's the old moral dilemma, though. Would a time traveller killing baby Hit ler be a villain?
What about some contemporary dude who had a "vision"?

The question is, does the story really have a villain, or need one, and if it needs one, villainy from whose point of view?
In some ways, the "benevolent" Daedric Princes are worse, with the comic book villains you at least know what to expect.

Also, when thinking of "benevolent" Daedric Princes, this comes to mind:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxvzEfI0BFU

FafiQ_xP

Other (leave comment)

no idea I skip all the dialogues

WhiteCoatSyndrome

Toanis wrote: »

In some ways, the "benevolent" Daedric Princes are worse, with the comic book villains you at least know what to expect.

Yes, this. Take for example Meridia, who for bonus points was another Magna-Ge: yes, she helped stop the Planemeld, one of her artifacts saved Summerset and her hatred for vampires and undead is arguably a good thing for the average mortal…but she also empowered Umaril the Unfeathered, screwed over Darien, and likes purifying people of their free will. Azura only helped save Vvardenfell because she considers the Dunmer to be hers, not because it was the right thing to do.

And if Ithelia is nice 99% of the time but one day she stubs her toe, spills her coffee all over the Loom and then loses her temper and destroys reality…reality is still destroyed, it doesn’t matter that she was friendly prior to that. To her credit, she realized this, and was willing to take steps to prevent it.

(I still think they should have had her become an Aedra or something, she’s basically done the ‘give up a chunk of your power and ‘die’’ bit. Being charitable, maybe that would have screwed up the whole ‘Vestige takes up her mantle and finishes her job’ bit they seem to be trying to set up:

that our violence might bring forth a Numinous Paravant, who may with unbound hands echo forth the Prime Archon's endeavor.

…but being uncharitable it was just to keep everything neatly contained and wrapped up. No cult of ‘Ithelia, Last of the Earthbones’ for us! No sidequests for her, or lorebooks about her realm, or artifacts appearing in future games either probably. 😔)

RaddlemanNumber7

Other (leave comment)

The story is not that simplistic.

This_0ne

Other (leave comment)

Shardmarshal whatever she named...

opethmaniac

Other (leave comment)

Rigurt the Brash, because he has no appearance in this chapter ;(

Túrin_Vidsmidr

Hermaeus Mora

Hermaeus Mora played us like a fiddle and had us remove randomness and free will so that only einsteinian determinism remains where he can know everything. I'm sure we *** up by banishing Ithelia.

Elsonso

King Nantharion

There is no villain between Ithelia and Mora. There are only sides. Torvesard may be compelled to do what he is doing, like any good servant of a Prince, but he is not wrong. Likewise, neither is Laramil. There is no wrong answer, there is only outcome. The winning side is the side we are aligned with, according to how the story is written.

Shardmarshal Vargas might be the the instigator behind the plot in West Weald, but she is acting in the service of her Prince. She is not evil, or good. She is Daedra. She is more action oriented than Torvesard, but they are essentially the same.

King Nantharion, however, is a self-interested opportunist with a standard issue bad-guy ego. He has psychopathic tendencies. This drives him to act in his own best interests, even if they are in conflict with, and can hurt, others. He is not doing this because of Ithelia as much as using Ithelia as a motivation to do what is in his nature to do, anyway.

barney2525

Other (leave comment)

why does there need to be one?

People that don't agree, simply don't agree. Why does someone have to be an ' antagonist ' - which implies negative intent ?

People need to stop trying to stereotype everything and just appreciate the story.

katanagirl1

Other (leave comment)

Don’t know yet. It hasn’t released on console.

TaSheen

barney2525 wrote: »

why does there need to be one?

People that don't agree, simply don't agree. Why does someone have to be an ' antagonist ' - which implies negative intent ?

People need to stop trying to stereotype everything and just appreciate the story.

Well.... in a "story driven" MMO like this one, that's disingenuous - most of us are here for the story in one way or another. Such a "story" presupposes "good guy" and "bad guy". Whether someone is the good guy or not depends entirely on how the devs program the story.

No one's actually stereotyping; most of us have been playing story driven games for years - so we do expect certain things from a game.

And that's true of any game - doesn't necessarily matter whether it's a single player game or an MMO. In general, MMOs are more flexible than single player games, because they usually have more content (yeah yeah - outside of Skyrim's VERY active modding community, and maybe TES VI is STILL not on the radar because everyone including me is STILL playing Skyrim thanks to said modding community) and I really do think that this particular MMO is EXTREMELY good at providing content.

I'm aware that others do not find that to be true. I can only speak for myself.

cyclonus11

Hermaeus Mora

Every time Ithelia threatened existence, it was because of Hermaeus Mora going after her. If he'd just left her alone, the doom he foresaw wouldn't have happened.

TaSheen

cyclonus11 wrote: »

Every time Ithelia threatened existence, it was because of Hermaeus Mora going after her. If he'd just left her alone, the doom he foresaw wouldn't have happened.

Very insightful!

Elsonso

King Nantharion

cyclonus11 wrote: »

Every time Ithelia threatened existence, it was because of Hermaeus Mora going after her. If he'd just left her alone, the doom he foresaw wouldn't have happened.

Interesting, but ...

Ithelia admits at the end that the destruction of reality is her nature and that she cannot change. No Daedric Prince can. Not for long. That suggests that she would have threatened existence whether Mora got involved or not.

TaSheen

Elsonso wrote: »

cyclonus11 wrote: »

Every time Ithelia threatened existence, it was because of Hermaeus Mora going after her. If he'd just left her alone, the doom he foresaw wouldn't have happened.

Interesting, but ...

Ithelia admits at the end that the destruction of reality is her nature and that she cannot change. No Daedric Prince can. Not for long. That suggests that she would have threatened existence whether Mora got involved or not.

Also very insightful....

Zodiarkslayer

Other (leave comment)

With the horrendous drop rates the answer is easily: RnG!

Pelanora

Hermaeus Mora

TX12001rwb17_ESO wrote: »

For helping Hermaeus Mora am I the villian? Ithelia never came across as a bad guy, if anything she seems to be one of the most benevolent of the Daedric Princes.

The thing is it is Hermaeus Mora's paranoia that caused Ithelia to become a threat, she even said in the flashback that the apocalypse he forsaw wouldn't happen but then he imprisoned her and made her angry turning her into the very thing he feared, maybe that is why he forced us to sign something in Necrom, so we could not turn on him when we realized he was the problem not Ithelia.

EXACTLY.

EX-ACTLY

damnable Mora should be SQUID RINGS

Reginald_leBlem

Other (leave comment)

SCRIBING.


Omg it is KILLING my enthusiasm for the chapter. I just want to play with the new system! But I can't.

Peppo_Lives

Hermaeus Mora

i hope it's not really the end for ithelia Mora should bite the dust for once

cyclonus11

Hermaeus Mora

Elsonso wrote: »

cyclonus11 wrote: »

Every time Ithelia threatened existence, it was because of Hermaeus Mora going after her. If he'd just left her alone, the doom he foresaw wouldn't have happened.

Interesting, but ...

Ithelia admits at the end that the destruction of reality is her nature and that she cannot change. No Daedric Prince can. Not for long. That suggests that she would have threatened existence whether Mora got involved or not.

Mora becomes involved in every path. That is the problem. She cannot see any other outcome because Mora's interference pervades all of them.

Elsonso

King Nantharion

cyclonus11 wrote: »

Elsonso wrote: »

cyclonus11 wrote: »

Every time Ithelia threatened existence, it was because of Hermaeus Mora going after her. If he'd just left her alone, the doom he foresaw wouldn't have happened.

Interesting, but ...

Ithelia admits at the end that the destruction of reality is her nature and that she cannot change. No Daedric Prince can. Not for long. That suggests that she would have threatened existence whether Mora got involved or not.

Mora becomes involved in every path. That is the problem. She cannot see any other outcome because Mora's interference pervades all of them.

Mora is does what he does because it is his nature. Ithelia does what she does because it is her nature. They are in conflict simply because those natures are mutually exclusive. Mora realizes this.

In the end, Ithelia admits the same. She will always be the Last Tomorrow, and she knows it. As long as she is a Daedric Prince, no matter what Mora does, or does not do, that is where all of her paths lead, and she cannot change that.

Were the roles reversed, Mora would lose because Ithelia would be interfering with every fate were he could win.

The Unchanging Daedric Prince must apply to both Ithelia and Mora. Neither can change. This means that all fates and all paths lead to conflict. The only variable is which side triumphs. Ithelia? Mora? The alternative factor, both banished?

Were this not an Elder Scrolls game, set in the history of the other games, having Ithelia triumph would have been an interesting turn of events. Sort of a cataclysm, but on an epic scale.

cyclonus11

Hermaeus Mora

Peppo_Lives wrote: »

i hope it's not really the end for ithelia Mora should bite the dust for once

Some things to note:

• Shardmaster Vargas wasn't annihilated like Torvasard. They could start to investigate their missing memory at some point
• Ithelia's power is still floating around looking for her
• Shardmaster Vargas has the ability to port around, and port others around against their will. And this was without Abolisher
• People who were involved likely wrote in journals
• Shrines and ruins dedicated to Ithelia still exist
• Daedric princes could again try to figure out their missing memories

I held on to the hope that Ithelia would be turned into a mortal or even an Aedra. I was genuinely saddened and upset by the outcome

tsaescishoeshiner

Ithelia

I answered Ithelia because she's the character whose actions and ambitions are working against the main character's for most of the plot. You can be an antagonist and still be in the right.

(I'm not going to use spoiler tags because this is about the whole Gold Road quest, so we can't talk about it in this thread without spoilers.)

That said, I didn't get the sense that Ithelia only became a danger because Mora intervened for two reasons.

First is that she herself describes some destructive end as being her nature. I think this is poorly explained by the writing, because in the quest, it seems like she becomes "maddened" (??) and this makes her want to accumulate as much power as possible to rewrite history. First, why does that happen to her? Is it just her nature to become maddened by the power of the paths or something? It's not necessarily the same end as in the other realities she visits. And second, when we "calm her down" (??) with the mirror, why does she care about not transforming/ending reality?

The other reason I don't blame Mora is that we don't learn what she's trying to do in their other realities or what her motivations are. So blaming Mora for that would be lacking a lot of info--was he right about what she was trying to do? We don't know, because we don't know what she was trying to do. If someone got a bad vibe from Mora as being too controlling, they could definitely portray Ithelia's fate as Mora's fault, but I'm not sure I saw enough to believe that.

So I'm not really on either character's side here, because the characters and their motivations weren't fleshed out enough. The Outcast Inn questline was good for sharing Ithelia's motivations and backstory with us--I think we needed another quest like that about Ithelia to really understand more. I enjoyed the Chapter and the quests, I just think the writing started with "what's the most epic plot event that we can write" instead of "who are the characters who will carry this story?" You can only fit so much in.

Malprave

Torvesard

The fact that it’s somewhat unclear is what makes this one of the better ESO stories. Everyone doing what they perceive to be right and terrible things happening is a lot more like real life.

I felt like I had to make a choice though and chose Torvesard. He’s the final boss right?

Aliyavana

Hermaeus Mora

mora's the whole reason for this stuff happening in the first place

huskandhunger

Other (leave comment)

The player character