How is him wanting immortality any worse than the dovahkiin wanting a recyclable soul trap widget? Azura could have just struck him down without turning him mad so he starts killing other people. But like Nelacar says, she doesn't care.

Go for which you feel is the right choice because there is no shortage of Black or Grand soul gems and they both do the same thing save for a quest or two. Personally, I think Aranea is the more 'good' choice.

Giants have Greater souls BTW - doesn't make sense though.

Just because she didn't save Morrowind doesn't mean she's evil. She didn't have to warn them if she didn't want to. Besides, she's a demi-god(dess) at best and doesn't have the full power of a proper god(dess) so she may not have been able to prevent it.


Edited for format.

Black star, all the time. Being a descendant of Akatosh sure has its perks when comes to them daedra.

I'm not saying it's worse, but it's foolish to pursue immortality by messing with the artifact of a Daedric Lord. Especially since he requires the souls of others to sustain his immortality even after he succeeds. If he was just going to kill others to prolong his own life, why didn't he simply become a vampire?

It seems that Varen's followers in the keep are all his students, and were helping him experiment on the Star. If that's the case, it's more than possible that the students he killed were also helping in his experiments, and thus were also guilty in Azura's eyes.

I didn't say she's evil, but she's not good, either. Like all the daedra, she's self-absorbed and capricious. Not seeking to warn anyone but her worshippers is a dike thing to (not) do. My Dunmer character will certainly be pleased to screw her over as thanks.

That idea didn't seem to occur to him until the student was already dead- and I think it was only one. It was part of his descent to madness, not part of his initial plan. That's how I understood the story, at any rate.

There are so many followers already... and I don't use them anyway. Black star for me.

Furthermore, from a RP perspective, my char prefers to exploit the Daedra instead of submit to them. She's not one to be a toy to the caprices of a daedric prince, so she'll give the proverbial middle finger to daedra whenever she can.


I don't think Nelecar was considering Varen the victim, but the people who suffered abuse by his hand.

And I think Nelecar and the other sane researchers were intending it more for use soul-capping people that no one would miss, or whose loss would be largely appreciated. Like bandits. Or Thalmor.

Well, maybe that last one is http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/imageshare/image.php?id=36138...

I think that's probably true, but after he's succeeded in planting his soul in the Star he requires more black souls to sustain himself, which his students are more than willing to provide. So they all look bad to me, and since Nelacar seems sympathetic to his former teacher, he's unsavory in my mind. Granted, it's all guilt by association, but I feel better giving the Star to Azura. The whole mess started because someone tried to go against the established order, and defile something they had no business messing with. Returning the star to Azura is a way of fixing things in my eyes.

Also, the Shrine to Azura is just amazing to look at, and is one of the few areas I constantly find myself running off to because whenever I'm in the area. I'm not a big fan of the North-East corner of the world. Not much to do there.

Oh, but "she" initiated the events that led to the destruction of Morrowind, and since "she" is a supernatural being, you can be quite sure that "she" knew what would be the results of the removal of the AlmSiVi.

The black star is always my choice (unless I'm playing as a good character only). It is more valuable, and since I'm the archmage i felt it was of the best interests for the college to kill bad mages in general.
And considering Azura wouldnt have [censored] on the Dragonborn in the afterlife since... well he's the Dragonborn after all and the slayer of Alduin. I'm a force to be reckoned with

Absolutely.

Shiva the Destroyer? I don't know all the lore. Was there a moral decline in Morrowind that required a 'reset'?

True that. No Daedra can claim the Dovahkiins soul so that's a bonus.

She was annoyed with the Chimer because they turned from worship of her and the other "good Daedra" to the Tribunal. Not enough that she cursed them changing them from Chimer to Dunmer she also engineered the fall of the Tribunal which led to the eruption of Red Mountain, To be fair the Tribunal would have fallen eventually because Dagoth Ur was growing in power and she also engineered his destruction.

My opinion of Azura, shes a [self-censored] but at least if she makes a bargain she keeps it. Shes just very hard on those who fail to do the same.

Ah. A vengeful demi-god(dess) - shocking.

The utility of the Black Star is nice, but not a gamemaker (or gamebreaker). Mammoths are easy to hunt for Grand Souls, and you end up with a lot of money after a while, so you can just buy filled Grand Soul Gems outright. It all comes down to the roleplaying choice.

There are no good Daedra. There are Daedra that want you dead. Then there are Daedra who want you to suffer. And finally there are Daedra who want your servitude, meaning they probably won't kill you or hurt you. Much.

Azura likes to play with mortal races. She made the Khajiit out of Bosmer and possibly Dunmer out of Chimer (or perhaps the Tribunal did it to themselves by causing a localized Dragon Break). She does it with a smile (most of the time) and makes her followers feel warm and fuzzy. Moonshadow is pretty and she'll even let you stay for a while, talk to you and won't even try to eat you or feed you to her Winged Twilights. And she'll tell you just enough about the future so that you happily do exactly what she wants you to do. She's certainly more subtle than Boethiah or Molag Bal, who simply tell you to go kill this or [censored] that. But in the end, you'll still be her puppet on a string, you'll just feel really good about it.

I think we're talking about two different things. I'm talking about Malyn before the breakdown. He was just researching the Star, though with a view to using it to soul trap himself. He got the idea to use a student's soul when one accidentally died in one of his experiments. But at that point Nelacar says he was mad and not in control of himself, and blames Azura for that. She drove him mad as punishment, and an innocent student died because of it. Malyn as he is in the game is definitely a hokerr and I have no problem killing him and his apprentices.

The daedra are constantly messing with the established order for their own capricious purposes, so I personally take delight in screwing them over whenever possible. Not that the aedra are much better, when it comes down to it. But ultimately it's more of an rp decision. Different characters will feel differently about the daedra and their artifacts.

The pity is that theres no way to mess with Azura which I'd happily do apart from turning her star into the Black Star which only my most selfish characters would do.

I picked Aranea on a few characters because she was all right, and because I really wasn't partial to the idea of trusting some shady mage.

On the others I just like screwing over the Daedra.

Especially since "She" claims to encompass premonitions and futuresight in "her" domain.

I think what I did was a pretty big middle finger to Azura, personally.

The things that we know as players aren't necessarily known to our characters. It's a valid roleplaying choice to limit a character's decisions to the information they learned from NPCs and books within Skyrim.

In that case a "good" character could complete Nelacar's side of the Azura quest because Nelacar doesn't promise a reusable black soul gem...he just doesn't trust any of the daedra and that's how the artifact turns out if he does his best with it. It wouldn't be the first mistake Nelacar ever made.

So what does a goody-two-shoes character do with the Black Star? Possibly never capture a human soul if they really walk the straight and narrow, but it's easy to find gray area. Sort of poetic justice to capture the souls of necromancers. Murderers and assassins could be said to deserve it. Depending on how self-righteous a character is, this can slide into the not so good realm of corrupting power.

Those (and vampires) are the only ones I'll Dead Thrall. I'm by no means a Conjurer, but I play around with Dead Thrall for the truly deserving. Then I 'kill' the Thralls and put them in the beds of the 2nd most deserving.

While my first character went with the Black Star (Oooh! How cool is that! ), all of the rest have taken the thing back to Azura. It's hers, after all, and I really don't need it. As another poster mentioned, grand/black soul gems are all over the place. Unless you're spamming enchanting, I see no reason for a reuseable soul gem. By the time I get around to making a new enchantment, I always have grand soul gems to spare.

Plus, it's a piece of history and a relic to all daedra worshipers. I guess I just don't want to mess around with something that's been around since before my grandfather's grandfather's grandfather's time!

If you help Azura, another one stakes a claim on your soul.

Now, that can be good or bad. Depending on how many creditors you have already.

As they said, if you own the bank a thousand dollars, you have a problem. If you own the bank a million dollars, they have a problem.

Give it to Nelacar, Black Star + Mace of Molag Bal = WIN

Is it really? I could see that if Azura's/The Black Star had an infinite carrying capacity, but since it can only hold one soul at the time it doesn't seem that great of a combination anyway.