Moral Positioning

[Cylos]

Where would you consider your Skyrim character to be on the moral compass:

• Black, Gray or White. Or a mixture.
• Lawful, Chaotic or Neutral.
• Or is it dependent on the position? So would you give mercy to an Imperial soldier but not a Thalmor soldier?

If you guys have noticed by now, I like to spark debates.

 

[wrighty]

I'm not really sure how to classify my character, In general he will help everyone, any minor quests like deliveries or find this item quests and he is happy to help, mainly for the Gold/Rep.
However he is ruthless, if anyone as much as looks at him the wrong way he will sneak into their home and murder them in their sleep.
When it comes to quests like Daedric quests he has no problem doing them, same with the Dark Brotherhood, he even enjoyed killing Nilsine and Stabbing Vittoria on her wedding day.
I guess that he is generally a bit of a mercenary Neutral character but when it comes to Gold or powerful items he will do anything for more power, the occasional murder really helps relieve his stress too.

 

[Rand Althor]

My character is essentially a white knight. I chose not to join the thieves guild and dark brotherhood since it wouldn't make sense considering my character's morally upright nature. The only time I like to indulge in a little bit mischief is whenever I see a Thalmar patrol. I don't think I've ever spared a single one of their soldiers.

 

[SnarkTheFirst]

Currently, white on grey, mostly chaotic.

He's a veteran of the Imperial Auxilia. He tells himself that all he wants is to be left alone, perhaps to find salvation from his ghosts (after all what's a career of soldiering without the occasional act of wanton violence?).
All the same, idealism is harder to kill than you'd think, and he keeps finding himself swept into obligations.

My RP muscles are pretty scrawny yet. I'm definitely looking forward to starting a new character in the future, and not just to explore a completely-different skillset! The headspace of a nihilist Argonian assassin-mage (for example) would be especially challenging ...

 

[Tyer032392]

I consider my character the "Robin Hood" type character who steals from the rich and gives to the poor. And, he also enjoys beating the living daylights out of hired thugs and other abominations to society.

 

[wrighty]

My character is essentially a white knight. I chose not to join the thieves guild and dark brotherhood since it wouldn't make sense considering my character's morally upright nature. The only time I like to indulge in a little bit mischief is whenever I see a Thalmar patrol. I don't think I've ever spared a single one of their soldiers.

My characters on Oblivion were always like this, then I turned to the dark side and I've never played a good character since.

 

[Nocte Aeterna]

Let's translate this into a concise way that people understand.

Murgash is neutral evil. He's only concerned with furthering his necromantic and battle prowess.

Ruaidhin is chaotic neutral. He'd readily switch sides and vice-versa if it meant working for a decent pay.

Lucius is lawful good. He strives to fight for the greater good.

 

[Chadonraz]

My current character would fall under White and Lawful. She won't be joining the Thieves' Guild or the Dark Brotherhood, and will do her best to avoid quest and misc objectives that involve breaking the law (although avoiding trespassing missions is going to be difficult).

 

[Adam Belmont]

My warrior and my mage are Neutral Evil characters. They have their own code of honor, that means that if they have to kill someone to get something important, they will do it, but they will help others if necessary.
I have a chaotic evil assassin which is retired (maybe I'll play with him again to do the vampire side in the dawnguard).
And finally I have a Neutral Good archer, wood elf.

 

[Seanu Reaves]

Lets see. Grey to Black for all of my characters, running the gauntlet of Lawful to Chaotic. All of my characters are Mercenaries and Assassins with few exceptions. Though I think for the most part each character has some redeeming qualities, but non change their morality.

My current guy (Dark Elf Nightblade) is Lawful Neutral, leaning towards true Neutral. So Grey and Lawful. As for dependent on situation. I detest killing priests, but since Dragon Priests are liches to me they are fair game, as for daedric priests then it depends on how they treat me. Betraying allies isn't that big of a deal to me so Imperials, Stormcloaks, or Thalmor try to fight me they go down.

 

[Finnsson]

I find that it's rarely fun to play a character who doesn't have some sort of internal conflict with his/her own personality. It adds a human element (or elven if that's what you do) if a character with a strong sense of integrity occasionally strays from the path of righteousness to journey down a darker road, or if a usually malicious murderer has a small capacity of mercy and honor. Truly interesting characters are the people who traverse the moral spectrum. The White Knight of Justice is definitely the pinnacle of role models, but how long until one bores of his incessant helpfulness? Give me the checkerboard hero anytime.

That being said, one of my characters is mostly black, but is capable of some decency. He rarely kills a man who doesn't deserve it, and the faces of the innocent souls he happens to slaughter haunt his dreams most nights. And when his victims drop to one knee and beg for mercy, oftentimes he will grant it, if only to avoid further bloodying his already red hands.

 

[Karen]

My first character just kind of did everything the game had to offer. Main questline, side quests, Daedric quests, TG, DB, DG - good or bad, just anything I came across. She was kind of my 'trying things out' character, so I didn't really play by any moral compass.

The one exception was Boethiah's Calling. There's just something I felt uncomfortable with about sacrificing a comrade that trusted you and had your back. It was the one 'bad' quest I could never do, no matter which character I played. I couldn't even do that to a hired mercenary.

My dominant character now is a Dark Brotherhood assassin. Being a child of the Night Mother, she kills indiscriminately and without question, and is only concerned with carrying out her duties. I have mixed feelings about the morality of DB that I don't really know how to describe, and I'll just leave it at that because I feel like I'd write a bunch of stuff then get confused if I were to articulate everything I feel about them. Let's just call it 'grey to black', and definitely lawless.

Then I have a hunter character who's just kind of.. your regular hunter. Doesn't kill people unless provoked or threatened. I'd say she's lawful/white - not much to her, just getting by with her animal pelts and meat.

And finally, lately, I've decided to try and replicate the 'default' Dragonborn, like the box-art Nord guy. Haven't done too much with him yet, but I imagine he'd be a lawful, hero-type character.

 

[Skulli]

My Nord is Lawful Neutral, but my Bosmer Assassin is Neutral Evil.

 

[Smarty]

My main character is neutral-evil. He his megalomaniac, he doesn't mind killing if it would gain him more power. He does help people though, he does believe in keeping a good reputation. For example, he wishes to be emperor, so he manipulated the db into giving him the opportunity to murder him. But when the jarl of solitude asked him to go to the shrine of talos, seeing he could later on use it as an advantage, he did it without question. When asked to kill the ancient vampire Morvath, he did with the hope of later gaining thaneship and therefore gaining support from the jarl for his quest of becoming emperor.

 

[Psiberzerker]

I've run all 10 of the classic (Gygax, Tactical Simulations Rule!) Alignments, but the most common is some variant of Lawful Evil. Only has troubles with Authority when others don't respect thier's, Organized Sociopath. Pure Nihilist C(Chaotic) is fun too, willing to work progressively toward the destruction of everything. On Alduin's Side!

Pure snow white Lawful Good is almost impossible to play in Skyrim without planning out ahead of time so you don't go, and help every Vigilant of Stendarr that asks you along while he checks out this haunted house...

 

[Iveri Sarothil]

Iveri here's chaotic neutral. Doesn't mind killing if she sees a reason to, and being part of the DB means she's getting paid to kill, which is also pretty good - the contract is a reason, so why not? She's a loner, and happy with that, and is pretty cynical. So, in a nutshell...highly functioning antisocial yet deceptively intelligent assassin nerd? She prefers to go hunting for knowledge rather than people, which meant dealing with Hermaeus Mora wasn't terribly difficult for her. According to TV tropes, I guess she'd be Type 4 - allied to pretty much no one but herself, not exactly a 'good' person, but she has her standards.

 

[Porchdrinker]

My current character, a wood elf, started off as lawful good, but started experimenting with skooma and sleeping tree sap. On clear nights when both moons were clearly visible (he worships the moon gods), he would go on an approximation of the Wild Hunt, staying up all night on skooma and killing every living creature and human he came across, not remembering any of it when he woke up. He continued this until his follower died, which triggered a legendary skooma binge that led him to kill Grelod the Kind, join the Dark Brotherhood, complete the first three DB contracts, and murder Sven. He ultimately snapped out of it, left the Brotherhood, and banished himself to Morthal to live an upright life. It was back to lawful good, until a guard (or was it a spy for Astrid?) came up to him and said "I know who you are, hail Sithis!". He stealthily murdered the guard to keep his secret, and continues to do so whenever he hears that taunt.

 

[Anwrise888]

My main is a rule nasty peice of work. He thinks himself a god.( I did the potion glitch for unlimited enchantment and armor) He is a dark elf vampire who eats blood, souls, flesh. Master of all magic and stealth. I made deadric gloves that do 300 or so unarmed damge. One of my house has a glitch were bodys do not disapear. So what I do is dead throll dead npc's or enemys and decorate my house with them. You know have dead bandits sitting in my chairs. Dead forsworn in my bed. Piles of misc corpses in my basement. I even have over 400 human skulls. I have a set of torture tools at my table of human flesh, bloody rags and black soul gems,(and lots of wine and ale) yummmy. He hates religion so I kill every religious person in Skyrim and add their corpses to my collection. Once in a while I use the ritual stone to make a undead army and I destroy towns/citys. Then I eat the npc's I kill. I kill every animal I see with fire. I torture my enemys with paryalize, fire, ice spikes, electricity, illusions spells. I use healing spells to to make them last longer. But all in all I say I am a good guy

 

[Wildroses]

Most of my characters are lawful good and white, mostly because I have a strange conscience which makes me feel absolutely terrible if I'm mean to NPCs. I'm not kidding, it took me months to work up the strength to do the Dark Brotherhood questline, then when I tried killing Narfi and Ennodius and they begged for mercy and cowered I couldn't come back to it for a week. I'd heard a lot of heartbreaking conversations from the Shatter-Shield parents in the Windhelm market while using the smithing equipment, so I never once considered killing Nilsine. I don't know why I am capable of feeling bad on behalf of pixels which don't even exist, but I do. So I stick with lawful good and white characters to make sure I have fun.

So...apart from the one character I created purely to join the Dark Brotherhood and Thieves Guild, my characters don't murder NPCs. Not even Nazeem or Heimskr. I don't steal either. I find it more satisfying to earn my gold honestly through alchemy because I'm an alchemy nerd, so I really don 't have to. Outside of the DB and Thieves Guild character, the closest I've ever gotten to a bad character are lawful selfish ones who only care about what's in it for them, so they won't do people's fetch quests.

There's plenty of roleplay scope within my inconvenient conscience though. There are ones who will refuse to do any quests which involve killing someone (even a bandit chief), period. I've had a few who will kill a criminal if someone in authority tells them to or offers them the right reward, like land. There are ones who don't lose a night's sleep over killing people who try to kill them, and ones who do.

 

[wrighty]

Most of my characters are lawful good and white, mostly because I have a strange conscience which makes me feel absolutely terrible if I'm mean to NPCs. I'm not kidding, it took me months to work up the strength to do the Dark Brotherhood questline, then when I tried killing Narfi and Ennodius and they begged for mercy and cowered I couldn't come back to it for a week. I'd heard a lot of heartbreaking conversations from the Shatter-Shield parents in the Windhelm market while using the smithing equipment, so I never once considered killing Nilsine. I don't know why I am capable of feeling bad on behalf of pixels which don't even exist, but I do. So I stick with lawful good and white characters to make sure I have fun.

So...apart from the one character I created purely to join the Dark Brotherhood and Thieves Guild, my characters don't murder NPCs. Not even Nazeem or Heimskr. I don't steal either. I find it more satisfying to earn my gold honestly through alchemy because I'm an alchemy nerd, so I really don 't have to. Outside of the DB and Thieves Guild character, the closest I've ever gotten to a bad character are lawful selfish ones who only care about what's in it for them, so they won't do people's fetch quests.

There's plenty of roleplay scope within my inconvenient conscience though. There are ones who will refuse to do any quests which involve killing someone (even a bandit chief), period. I've had a few who will kill a criminal if someone in authority tells them to or offers them the right reward, like land. There are ones who don't lose a night's sleep over killing people who try to kill them, and ones who do.

I find it really interesting how people can be so different, the way I play is the exact opposite of you haha.
I love the Dark Brotherhood and the Thieves Guild, I always join them and I enjoy the questline, when I did the wedding quest I cast fury on the bride and her husband beat her to death in front of the guests on her wedding day. As for Narfi I thought he was rather pathetic and I saw it as putting him out of his Misery.
I particularly enjoyed killing nilsine and I always take the weekend off from murdering to visit the shatter shields house and see nilsines mothers dead body and have a chuckle(she kills herself after you kill nilsine) and steal her jewellery to pay for my stay at the inn
I guess I just see them as targets and jobs rather than people, The shattershields have been living a privileged life by exploiting argonian dock workers and cast aside a dear family friend(Muiri) who was as much a victim as them, so you could argue they got what was coming to them