While replying to the insightful topic about cultural foods and drinks of Tamriel ( https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/435193/list-of-confirmed-food-and-drinks-for-different-races-of-tamriel ), I remembered something that bothered me for years since I roleplay a woodelf spinner girl (first as a sorc then as a warden) with a self-behavior of fundamentalism into the Green Pact. You know, thou shalt not eat plant matter, and so on!

Many quests in Valenwood fits to this lore and they suggest that most of (not-acculturated) bosmer do follow the Green Pact rules in daily life. Sometimes it even becomes serious business when the forest is angry and call for a head to roll... (remember this insane case between the khajiit supplier, the alchemist husband and the dying damsel). Apostates were sentenced to the Ooze, some of them were living as outsiders (in caves with their gardens).

So of course we are shown Bosmer NPCs who do eat plants in game lore, but they are depicted as "no true bosmer", merely ...exceptions, like those apostates in Valenwood, the "sinners by constraint", the acculturated wood elves (usually living in altmer/breton/imperial towns).

I'm not even speaking of the bosmer Player-Characters x) The rate of those who try and follow the lore rules may be low, and those who actually follow the hardcore way, even lower.

One can easily find moot points and forbearance in the Green Pact rules.

All those who follow the Pact just in Valenwood but eat/harm vegetables once elsewhere (no pun intended) in Tamriel. After all, the Green Pact only matters inside Valenwood.

And harvesting dead plant matter in Valenwood may or may not be a "sin" according to the Green Pact. So lore-wise, a bosmer woodworker is not breaking the law since all the wood in game mechanics is dead wood (logs on the soil). One could also argue that the wood that is used by your bosmer woodworking crafter is kept alive (there are shield item names that imply this, living wood) just like bosmer houses.

Now, let's keep all those exceptions aside, and look at the core / mainstream cases.

Even then, the Green Pacts is not actually followed.

Just go in any Wood Elf house or campsite in Grahtwood, Greenshade or Malabal Tor, even hostile ones.
Look at the content of the supply jars and sacks. (You can rob it also, remember the Rite of Theft.) Then check by yourself:



Okay then, maybe these wood elves are sinners, or hypocrites who bought this to apostates or strangers, or maybe the supplies are imported and these plants were harmed "abroad".

_

Then go and visit the most hardcore followers of the Bosmer culture, who rejected the Aldmeri Dominion laws: City of Ash (that was the Whisper Grove before its collapse).
I screenshot this on my altmer:



CARROTS! GREENDAM CARROTS!!

And there was quite some radish and other plants too.

I could admit the gamedesign limitation, it may be hard to design the provisioning nodes - like jars ands sacks - in these zones to pop up as only-meat or only-insect parts...
Well ...City of Ash is instanced. It should be doable.

But above all - why putting "out-of-sack" vegetables on the floor? They are clearly put here on purpose. What was the developer who put them here thinking about?

Now roleplay-wise, Angelith is feeling like a disillusioned preacher among a people who doesn't follow their own culture.
Even the Whisper Grove was all fake, a daedric plot and its fools.
Y'ffre and The Green are not even able to enforce their rules.

Definitely there is no more true bosmer...

Person A: "No Bosmer puts plants on his rotmeth."
Person B: "But my uncle Anguth is a Bosmer and he puts plants on his rotmeth."
Person A: "But no true Bosmer puts plants on his rotmeth."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

What I'm wondering here is ---

Is this a case of gamedesign mistake? that could be fixed?
or is this intended design to show the hypocrisy of Wood Elf culture? or the vanity of purism?
(Maybe both? X) )

@ZOS_Lawrence_Schick ?