"Ah, nice of you to let me out of my cell, madam jailer. Sheogorath changed his mind and decided that he wanted to take (battlemage's name) to tea after all. But when he found out, (he/she) was dead, he decided that was best. That way (battlemage's name) wouldn't eat all the posy pies. Before I forget, here's The Wabbajack. Don't point it at me."-Sheogorath of Daggerfall

Is that supposed to be serious?

"La, rejected by a squalid (player's race) with lice in its hair. How far has Sheogorath risen! I shall have to ask for a raise in my allowance. Tirrah, (Brother/Sister)."-Sheogorath of Daggerfall

How about that?

Listen to his dialogue in Daggerfall again:

"To tea, to a tea party with me! Go, go to a place called (dungeon), where the object of my gallous desires doth trip and pose and wear blackberry crowns. Wait ... do not invite this battlemage to tea with me. Now I remember. This (battlemage's name) the name is. Kill (him/her) to death, murder (him/her) fatally, that's what I wish. Then go from (dungeon) to a lunatic asylum called (new dungeon) and see my (worshiper's name). The Wabbajack for you (he/she) will have. Will wait for you for (time limit) days and then will go to marry the unknown heir of Rowanda. Now I bid you a yapow and gazeenza."

"La, rejected by a squalid (player's race) with lice in its hair. How far has Sheogorath risen! I shall have to ask for a raise in my allowance. Tirrah, (Brother/Sister)."

And then his follower:

"Ah, nice of you to let me out of my cell, madam jailer. Sheogorath changed his mind and decided that he wanted to take (battlemage's name) to tea after all. But when he found out, (he/she) was dead, he decided that was best. That way (battlemage's name) wouldn't eat all the posy pies. Before I forget, here's The Wabbajack. Don't point it at me."

Sheogorath has always been wacky crazy when he wants something. In fact, judging by the tea thing, I'd guess that he was intended to be a homage to the Mad Hatter-type character.

EDIT: Partially ninja'd :ninja:

That wasn't Sheogorath. Besides, you can't really decide the in depthness of a character based on a single quest. With such a simple quests, it's ok for Sheogorath to only show part of his personality. In SI, you spend the whole main quest with him. He needs to be fleshed out. Morrowind's Sheogorath had a bunch of worshippers kill eachother for fun. Sound "funny"?

Anyways, I must be getting some sleep, it's so late, it's early! :bonk:

That was Sheogorath.

Morrowind broke lore, if the Daggerfall account is more in line with Oblivion/SI's account.

That was Sheogorath's follower.


Lore wasn't fully fleshed out until Morrowind. Morrowind added tonnes of it.

Anyways, last post for the night. I'll flame some more tomorrow

yes,but the story matches perfectly with the comedic way his darkside is presented in-game.

^I lol'd

The follower mentioned posy pies and a sudden(and wacky) change of attitude. The follower spoke, but it was Sheogorath who gave the information, and the other quote was directly from the Madgod(along with those Saint_Jiub mentioned), himself.

Yeah, I thought that was Dagon.

It was Sheogorath. Though the official story is that he "tricked" the moon into throwing itself. That sounds more up his alley

I think that Sheogorath presented himself in this way for a few reasons.

The Greymarch has begun. Sheogorath himself mentions that he has had more orderly thoughts, which are far flung from those of a madman. This could be a reason as to why he is much calmer than expected.

Obviously, by being nice to the CoC, Sheogorath paved the way for his return to his true form. I doubt CoC would have gone along with the plan if Sheogorath constantly screamed bloody murder and was cutting himself.

In my opinion, Sheogorath may seem less dangerous, but I can see the Orderly reasons behind his actions, as well as the Mad ones.

Insanity can't be controlled, especially in the most insane being ever.

If, hypothetically, he can control his insanity, it would be more likely he would be rid of it entirely. The kind of "light violence" he displays would scare anyone off. Think of horror films where some crazy guy is casually hacking at someone, and starts laughing. The only reason the player does what he says is because it's the plot. The whole "hiding his dark insanity to not scare the player off" is a pretty invalid point, when he still displays scary insanity.

And no, this insanity doesn't make up for how he behaves. There are still far too many forms of insanity missing.

Well, I have not finished the SI questline, because frankly, it did not catch me adn I do not know Daggerfall, but I do sort know a thing or two abut mental disorders as I work with people who suffer from them.

I think that Beth made a wrong move when they tried to recreate a realm of madness. I think it would be impossible to make it right. It is very difficult to even say what is madness and what should Sheogorath represent. It is second to impossible to understand the people who suffer from some of the more severe mental disorders, so recreatig their world is impossible for someone who is sane.
As I see it ther are two possibilities how we can understand Sheogorath. Either he should represent mania and dementia. Two parts of his realm. Two sides of his personality. Two severe mental illnesses that are more or less incompatible. It would sure take a good to represent them both. But the ingame Sheogorath or in that metter the Sheogorath described in TES lore does not represent either. He is not manic and he definitely is not demented.
The second possibility is that Sheogorath represents all mental disorders ranging form substance abuse, organinc brain damage, over neurosis all the way to psychosis. Now, showing all these parts in one individual would be a helluva of work and in my opinion totally impossible.
The Sheogorath shown in SI does not really seem convincing to me. From listening to his lines, I have a feeling as if he is trying to sound mad, as if he is pretending something. His madness is not genuine. It is acted. He seems to do it on effect. Some people who suffer for psychosis or to a lesser degree from mania or even dementia can be scary. But not because they run arnound and speak abut ripping your intestines out. They are scary because you do not know what to expect form them. They act in a way that is not possible to follow, but Sheo does not act like that. He has a plan and he is very predictable. You know that when you speak to him, he will have some quasi-scary comments. You know that when gives you a quest it will be weird or at least that there will be a catch. I remember a session with a girl with a severe case of schizofrenia. In the iddle of quite a normal dialogue when I was getting some anamnestic data, she stood up, took some glass form a table and smashed it on a door. Then sat down calmly again and continued the session. When I asked about it, she just said that it needed to be done. Hell I was scared for the rest of the time I spent with her. And she did not say a single thing about eating my brain. This si the kind of fear I was expecting to sense form Sheo.
The second think that makes me not willing to believe him is that he is humorous. He has a good time, he is laughig, juggling and stuff. While this may be possible for someone suffering form manic episode, it is very untipical for any other disorder I may think of. With a vast majority of the disorders, where the emotions are affected the people are either depressed or the emotions are flattened. For the whole time I played the SI mainquest (and I admit again, I ddi not get too far), I have never seen him nervous, sad, depresed, confused or some such. I can imagine that seeing him get so depresed that he strats concidering a suicide (and a follow up destruction of the whole realm) would scare me more than some wonna-be scary line about plucking eyes.
I also do not agree with the part of him playing a role or trying to be convincing for the sake of the CoC. From all the instanced you speak to him, he seems like he is trying to scare you off. As I tried to demonstrate earlier, people who suffer from some mental disorder are not scary because they do scary things, but because they tend either to change very fast or because you are not able to follow them and are unsure of what will happen with them.
And yes, when you are mad, you cannot controle it. If you suffer form paranoia you cannot controle your illusions and delusions (with rght medication or in some mild cases you can resist them to a degree, but you can never controle them).

So to sum it up, I think that portraying a good of madness was very difficult if not impossible from the begining. Bethesda chose the most simplified path, which did not make the character justice.

Not much more I can add. Perfect. :goodjob:

I work in the Theatre and speaking from a person who has acted and directed insane characters, it's very difficult to portray them either by writing them or working with a set of lines already in place, mostly for the exact reasons you said: they're unpredictable and its difficult to follow their train of thought based on a few words on a page. So, I kinda forgave Bethesda on that and chocked it up to willing suspension of disbelief.

Otherwise, though, you're spot on.

Sheogorath is madness, he's not controlled by madness. So I fully expected him to be coherent and not threaten the PC every two seconds. Madness doesn't equal dark dementia and quirkiness, it can take any form it wishes. So I was happy that SI didn't try too hard to make Sheogorath a total lunatic. It's enough that you know he has very chaotic mind.

He doesn't have to act "mad", Sheogorath never acted mad, he says quirky things but I got the sense that there is a very intensely intelligent pattern to everything he does. I think his madness is an internal thing, a unique state of being whose essential nature is contradiction to expectation. Even Mania and Dementia are merely symbols of Sheo's nature, they're not actual definitions of his state of mind, the Mazken even explain it to a degree "The Shivering Isles are a reflection (not a definition, mind you) of our Lord Sheogorath, divided yet perfect".

Also let's review how Sheogorath interacts with the other princes of Oblivion, he doesn't seem disposed to be quirky or demented in his dealings with them, his mind simply sees things differently as we see when he outwits or defies some of them.

Take for example how he ensnared the Orc warrior who was Malacath's prized child, he used deception. If anything in those tales, "unpredictable" is the only thing we can really expect with regards to his behavior.

That's the same thing... You are [insert name], and you are controlled by [insert name]. Hircine, for example, does nothing but hunt. The only way he'll work closely with mortals is by creating them the perfect hunt (werecreature). Sheogorath could easily do a similar thing.

And, every single Daedric Prince that has been explored is perfectly defined by thier realm. Dagon: Fiery "hell". Hircine: Huge forest where there's a constant hunt. Azura: Beautiful (garden?). Vaermina: Nightmare realm. etc. Why should Sheogorath be any different? To every single Daedric Prince, they are thier realm, and thier realm is them.

While some forms of insanity would just be hard oi implement, and detract from the game, I should still have seen some less intrusive forms of insanity. I never once saw him raving to himself in a kind of creepy way. I never saw him, as mentioned earler, randomly throw a glass at a wall during a conversation, for no apparent reason. there is so much that could have been implemented, that wasn't.

But being mad is not about threatening people. There is only a handful of psychological disorders that make the people suffering form them dangerous to others. I'm not calling for Sheo to be dangerous to the player or to threaten his life more than any other daedric prince. As far as coherence goes, that is a problem. Sheo is apparently very coherent which does not sit with most disorders. Mainly dementia and to a lesser degree with mania. I would expect him to be far less coherent (that what Haskill is there for, right?), I would like to see inapropriate emotional responses, like being sad if his wish is fulfilled or not being excited about important things or being excited about details to a great degree and so on. This kind of incoherence would make him seem more disturbing and less pretending.

It is true that as a lord of madness he should be able to embrace and to show any side of it, but in the SI, he only shows one. And to me, he feels more like a teenage kid trying to look tough to attract attention.

As I see Sheo, he should behave to a great degree like someone with schizofrenia or other psychosis. In this case, he could still act in a very intelligent way and could devise very clever plots to achieve his goals. Many people who suffer form this disease are highly intelligent and you can see that their dellusions are very well thought through and quite comolex. To be mad does not only mean a raving lunatic, although I guess he would have this side to his personality as well.

And as far as the "he is madness not madman" argument goes, I always thought that each of the princes were some kind of an archetype of the element they were representing. So, Mehrunes Dagon would in his mind acts and personality encompass destruction and the power of elements. Meridia would represent nature and to degree show everything we tend to connect to nature and thus becoming an archetype of nature itslef. In this, Sheo should be an archetype of mad person. Because madness does never exist as such (unlike nature or elements), it is a state of something else (usually a human mind) so you cannot represent it per se, but only in a conjunction with something (most likely the human mind it is usually tied to). Therefore I think Sheo should be a madman. That does not contradict intelligence, cunning or danger, it only adds to it something more.

I understand what you're saying about insanity, and I respect it because you apparently work with people suffering from such mental illnesses. But Sheo, though certainly "mad", suffers from no form of insanity known on our blue ball. He sees and does things in a manner sometimes compared to mania/dementia, but he's a daedric prince in his own realm. If he came to Earth, he wouldn't be diagnosed with any sort of mental illness, though he certainly would cause them in others...because that's what Sheo does.

The...way he is is described as madness by the mere mortals on Morrowind, in Cyrodiil, and elsewhere, because they lack a better term for that which they don't and never can understand. He's a daedric prince...above Bretons, Argonians, Imperials, Redgaurds, and even Earthlings.

Well, I see what you mean, but I tend to understand the daedric princes in a different way (not necessarily a better one. I'm not all that good at TES lore). As I wrote above, I see the daedric princes as personifications of their spheres of influence. So Hiricine would be a personification of hunt, Haermaeus Mora a personification of knowledge (and since knowledge like madness cannot exist without an object, he would therefore be a personification of all those who have knowledge) and so on. This would make Sheo a guy who would represent all kinds of insanities and madnesses there are in the world. He sure would not get a diagnosis, beacuse he would have them all (and since many are contradictory he could not get all of them either). I sure do not ask Beth to give him all that, although it would be nice (but quite impossible I fear). I just do not like the way they did it, the way where they only show something that does not really ring all that true and genuine and instead seems like pretending. As I have said, the Sheo in SI does everything he can to look mad. That is not what the mad people do.

Hircine isn't controlled by the hunt, and I doubt (let's say) Sanguine is controlled by lust, nor is Molag Bal controlled by violence or sadism. Hircine is the game master of Oblivion, as the hunt is the universal sport of the Daedra, the hunt itself doesn't control him.

Sheogorath is mad, yes but that madness doesn't necessarilly possess him to outwardly behave like a madman (again look at how he outwits and defies the other princes in the Accords of Madness) . His madness is internal and compells him to create or manipulate events in a chaotic manner in his unknowable design called the "golden road", Sheogorath himself doesn't need to act mad, his madness is at a level that is not merely defined by mortal insanity.

Haskill calls the so called insanity of the Shivering Isles "another state of being", so "insane" behaviour is not a prerequisite of the Madgod.

Sheo in SI is not acting mad, let's review his actual behaviour in the game. Most of the time you find him seated and talking to you in a very straightfoward coherent fashion. What does he do to act mad? He says quirky or random things like "cheeze for everyone", but that is the only sign we get of his internal "insanity"/chaos, he doesn't behave mad, which is in keeping with his behaviour in the Accords.

Ok this will in no way change peoples opinion on Sheogoraths state of madness as its abit of a dogmatic issue.
But the most disturbing and dark thing I have heard about insanity, was someone said that they were once making their bed and having fun with it....
Smilling laughing and then all of a sudden still happy as larry wanted to beat to death the person helping them, with the pillow they were holding..
Not suffocate them beat to bloody death with, and he was happy and jovial while thinking about it.

So my point is Dark knight Joker style crazy may seem to be the disturbing side.
But the true scary face of crazy is normal and usally friendly untill it flips and caves in your skull with a dinner plate while still chatting about how nice the flowers are this time of year.

And as Najaknerac has said they did not show him realisticly, but their reasons are obvious and understandable.
Being that it was an issue that they did not want to focus too deeply on.
A small book hidden in some corner with a story of insanity they could get away with in a game such as oblivion, but a central character in a major side quest acting like hannibal lector, compared with the already pg main quest would not fit in how they wanted to sell the game.

And mostly this trickster side is shown in game when dealing with him at least in Morrowind and Oblivion ranting crazy talk and mad cheap laugh quests..
Which I presume is to show his aspects as a tester of psyche for the Dunmer, and the Khajit wild patron of abbandon.

Camoran, are you saying that because Sheogorath IS madness, his goal isn't to be insane but to make everyone around him insane?

I can't wait to see his nordic interpretations, like: the Mouthless Ferryman and the Sherpa of Guhl. Because some mountains aren't there.