When you're fighting aggressive empire of depraved slavers, yes, it it justified.


Again, he probably had Nedic soldiers behind him when attacking cities. And he was insane.

So if the Argonians and Khajiit decide to slaughter the entire population of Morrowind that would actually be a good thing?

That's reassuring. We all know the insane can't commit murder. And it makes it doubly not-murder if there's soldiers doing it too.

Erm. Oh, wait...

The key phrase regarding the scale of this slaughter is "...and Perrif was forced to make sacrifice to the Gods to keep them from leaving the earth in their disgust..." We are talking here about the girl who said: "You] made the first rain at his sundering [and that] is what I ask now for our alien masters... [that] we might sunder them fully and repay their cruelty [by] dispersing them to drown in the Topal."

Also, there's a difference between committing murder and committing murder and not being held accountable for it. Law is no moral judge. Its chief concern is an orderly and harmonious state.

While you might decide to overlook his flawed nature, I prefer to see it as a statement on the true character of our heroes. Particular when, far later, you're forced to make atonement in order to follow in his footsteps, where he's looked on as the glorious crusader and his flaws whitewashed.

Justification doesn't make something evil into something good.

Another thing I think bears being pointed out:




it says ayleid captives not captors. Chew on that one awhile.

I suppose Adolf Hitler was the portrait of sanity.

And, no, Pelinal did not kill all the Ayleids. Hitler didn't kill all the Jews either, but they both would've if they could.

Now, I'm just playind devil's advocate. I don't personally believe in good or evil in the real world, much less a world like the TES one, in which good and evil are openly up for discussion. Good vs. evil is subjective. Now that I have said that, however...

Good and evil, if they do exist, are more a matter of intention. If you accidentally kill someone, does that make you evil? Also, it could be a matter of outcome, as well. If you intentionally kill someone in cold blood, but then later find out they were a serial killer who had children locked in the basemant, awaiting molestation and death, then you're a hero, right? Even though you intended to commit an evil act. The line begins to blur...

The reason I draw a parallel between the hero Pelinal and the villain Hitler is to prove a point. Even though evil is subjctive and history is written by the victor, these two have more in common than people realize. They both would've eradicated a race if they hadn't been stopped. Hitler's atrocities were stopped by war, and Pelinal was killed. Now, the deeds which they did were horrible, but the outcome of both (and I'm sorry if I offend any Jewish people, remember this is for the sake of argument, and I am NOT an anti-semite) had some good come from it. Pelinal's attempted genocide helped free the Nedic people from slavery. Hitler's attempted genocide brought great discoveries in the field of medicine, due to the horribly unethical experiments done on his captives. In a Machiavellian sort of way, much of modern medicine owes a great deal to the sins of the Nazi party. So, you see, how there is a silver lining to every cloud, no matter how horrible the could may be.

Now, assume for a moment, that Hitler had won. Would we be singing a different tune about him right now about what he did? You bet your @$$ we would. That's kinda' what happened with Pelinal. The victors wrote the history and Pelinal became a saintly martyr for the Nedic people. Of course they can overlook his brutallity. He's a hero. It was necessary. Or so they say...

Pelinal murdered every elf he came across. It made no difference to him if they were unarmed or old or even children. He wanted to exterminate Elves as a whole.
And since he was probably an aspect of a god and he had a laser-gun I'm guessing he didn't need any soldiers.

If I would go out and find a man who is involved in human trafficking would it be "good" If I were to murder him and anyone else like him and anyoen connected to them?

Last time I checked, some Ayleid city-states were spared by the Nedes and existed until much later. The Nedes (Pelinal included) were not trying to destroy a race, they were simply trying to destroy their enemies. And although Pelinal did seek to destroy Ayleid captives, that was due to his madness. Again, I believe those were not acts of evil, but of madness, like with Sheogorath. Not to mention that the prisoners were from the enemy Ayleid groups. And at the same time, I suspect that he attacked all Ayleids (or those that looked like Ayleids) simply because he wasn't sane enough to tell an enemy Ayleid from an allied one; he probably saw them all as the enemy. Don't downplay his madness.

As for his individual fighting ability, after killing Umaril, he was captured and cut apart by the Ayleids. There's no way that he could have single-handedly destroyed cities if he ended up getting captured, even if he was spent from his fight with Umaril. I suspect that it may have been an exaggeration.

As for the entire robot theory, I believe that it may have been more of the case of Chimarvamidium, where his strange body-encompassing armor made others think he was a robot. As for the laser-arm, that probably was a spell (Being a crusader and all).

:mellow: Has anyone read the law of absolute right? I think a lot of people would be pissed if they knew what it was talking about.

I try not to, but don't over-emphasize it in return. Keep in mind the nature of his madness though. It's not Sheogorath-style madness... no, it's something else.

Please go read the definition of genocide, then resume your parodies of D&D Paladins.

From the United Nations Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide: any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group

Technically, Pelinal was a crusader, not a paladin. And please try to be more civil in the future.

Second, if it were genocide, none of the Ayleid cities would have been spared. The Nedes only attacked enemy cities. That was an act of war.

I'll be more civil when you know what you're talking about.


Raphael Lemkin, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe (Wash., D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1944), p. 79.

They never sought to destroy the Ayleids in part, they only sought to destroy those that were their enemies. It was the Ayleids' fault for choosing to become the Nedes' enemies. What were the Nedes supposed to do?

1. Destroying enemy Ayleids is destroying them in part.
2. Apparently Pelinal's definition of enemy Ayleids comes out to something like all elves and other vaguely elf races that have mer in their name...
3. Like Betmer.
4. "Chose to become enemies?" Go read 'Politics and the English Language' by George Orwell and you'll blush before typing something like that again.
5. We all know what the Nedes were supposed to do, but Pelinal wasn't really a Nede.
6. And it's difficult to suggest that eradicating the Ayeids wasn't a goal when the soon-to-come Alessian theocracy was hell-bent on eradicating everything that meet with their approval or fall under their doctrine.

I don't know why you bother. Everyone and their mother committed mindboggling crimes against humanity in those days. Pelinal was just leading the pack. So why not argue that he was no worse than anyone else, instead of denying that he did anything wrong at all? *political comment removed by moderator :nono:*

I don't think 'fault' manages to change anything, it just causes on to sympathize with one side more than the other...

On the topic of evil Divines:

Anyone remember Shezarr? He was the Cyrodiilic equivilent of Lorkhan, and one of the Nine Divines. He is essentially the lost Divine. Do you know what Shezarr was the god of?

I'll give you all a hint. Shezarr was (essentially) the god of racism. Yes, really. The reason he isn't worshipped any more is because the age of the Ayleids is over, and racial tolerence has spread to Tamriel. Yet, during the war with the Aylieds, Shezarr was very much a god, and revered as a good god. Yet he was attuned to a very evil domain.

1. The same could be said about destroying in part for almost any military conflict.

2. Its been established that the Nedes did take prisoners, as shown below.



I will still say that the part about destroying entire cities single-handedly was most likely exaggeration; if he did that, he wouldn't have gotten captured after killing Umaril. And by extension,

3. Pelinal wasn't exactly able to distinguish Ayleids from other mer.

4. The Ayleids chose to become enemies with the Nedes when they decided to enslave them. They could have avoided this all simply by not enslaving them.

5. That's true, but not really important.

6. The Ayleids weren't united; they were divided into city-states. Some were destroyed by the Nedes, others stuck around for much longer.

And on a final note, there were plenty of biblical figures that were undeniably flawed. You can't judge a god by the character of their followers. And for that matter, there were biblical incidents where people were divinely inspired to completely eradicate their enemies. But the incident discussed here is nothing compared to that. And we probably aren't going to agree on this, no matter how much we argue.


The Ayleids started it by enslaving the Nedes. It all started as a slave uprising.
And if they were trying to destroy a race, Nenalata and Lindai wouldn't have lasted as long as they did.



He was the god of man. He helped the humans fight an aggressive race of slavers. He was a god of a race, not actual racism

Ur and some of his minions,would be very close to what you are talking about.

It would be a good idea to cease discussion of alleged or proven acts of real-world genocide, as well as real-world acts of war. They are not essential to this discussion and infringe on the forum rule against politics. Some posts will be deleted; arguments in deleted posts are not to be quoted or raised again.

If Pelinal couldn't distinguish combatant from noncombatant, than it is physically impossible that his actions could have been the operations of conventional and necessary warfare. It's like calling a starving flesh-eating dog a soldier and justifying his ravening because the last people who fed him have a just cause.

Pelinal's motivation comes from mythic, divine sources. Mortal notions of logical motives and justifications don't really apply to him. He's not a soldier because he's not fighting for a state, and only by coincidence for a specific cause. Crusaders are by definition moved by no logic but the impetus of faith. You can't rationalize the irrational, and you can't justify crimes that don't have names or definitions under laws that don't exist.

Or it just proves that Umaril and his followers were strong enough to stop him. He doesn't necessarily mean that Pelinal was weaker than portrayed, just that Umaril was stronger than you seem to think he was...

Stronger than the level-scaling thought he was, as well.
pfft