The Blades came to be in Oblivion as the Protectors of the Emperor, who it seems eventually becomes ANNIHILATED anyway.

WHO the present Emperor is in SKYRIM is not at all clear, and there is no way to carry out any attacks against the Empire that come even close to getting at the core of the situation.

First off: IF THERE IS an Emperor, and he/she is far away from SKYRIM - WTF are BLADES doing in SKYRIM?

Isn't it their job to be somewhere near the Emperor so as to protect whoever it is?

WHY do the "BLADES" in SKYRIM seem to have no knowlege or connection to the Imperial seat, and no means of communication with the Empire at all? This seems to me to be a gross inconsistency if not discontinuity in the story line.

ARE THEY COMPLETELY LOST OR WHAT? What are they doing there, totally out of touch.

IF THE EMPIRE still exists, WHO THE (F) is the current Emperor? (the game never tells us)

* I think Delphine is a closet SKOOMA head.... She's completely full of herself

DELPHINE acts as if she was the last blade on Tamriel. Next we meet the old guy from the sewers of Riftin. One of them runs a BAR, and the other is totally DEMENTED. Oh yeah - you got some serious credibility issues RIGHT THERE.

Meanwhile - somewhere far away the Imperial City still exists. NOW:

IF THEY DO HAVE AGENTS in places far away - how come they don't seem to know JACK SQUAT?

Delphine has been in hiding - regardless that she seems to have remarkable intell gathering abilities

ESBERN has been holed up in a sewer incommunicado all this time...

Delphine is a POSER, and whats his nuts (Esbern) is a senile old moron. That's about all I can see in it

The actual EMPIRE seems to no longer be interested in contacting either one of them

"I'm your best hope at killing a Dragon and I know where there is one going to come up out of the ground!"

"Okay - so what you are telling me is that you are a suicidal maniac..."

*The reason I wrote that is because she seems so surprised that you killed it

~My inclination if I wrote that part of the script would be to have the player char ask: "WHO'S YOUR DADDY NOW?"

SKYRIM is on its own, it just is - or seems to be

SKYRIM is not the whole of Tamriel (although some would state it that it is the frozen BUTTHOLE of Tamriel) so there must be other connections to nationalities outside of it. SKYRIM focusses however on strictly internal affairs to the exclusion of anything outside of it

*you with me so far?*

But an entire nation at civil war within the Empire must create external politics and tension to a degree that outside communication MUST HAPPEN.

~And DELPHINE still professes to know JACK...

Ya know what? If I was in charge of the development of this award winning game I would take all of the above and run with it - creating whole new storylines from broadclothe

BY YSMIR! I'm going to send Delphine HOME one way or the other! Preferably laying on her damned SHIELD!!!

Yeah, I think I laid out my position, in the other thread. I just can't get past Delphine; that whole Blade thing is so off-putting that I lose interest in finishing the MQ.

It depends which game you're talking about. The Blades were spies in Morrowind, they were guards in Oblivion, they are Dragon hunters in Skyrim. There's never been any consistency in the way Bethesda has chosen to portray them.

They'll probably be ballet instructors in TES VI.

I would say the blades have been pointless in all of TES. mostly because of this.

The Blades were destroyed in the Great War by the Thalmor and the current Empire lets them hunt down Blades. The game does tell us who the Emperor is, Titus Mede II, you can meet, and kill him in

and he was the guy who let this all happen...

A few of the surviving Blades escaped to Skyrim, they won't send out Couriers to send a message to any Blades alive, because they have to find them first.

As always, Delphine sux.

So in HOLLYWOOD terms they are JFE's

(JUST (F)ing Extras)

COOL WITH ME! I'm gonna kill that kunt...

have not completed morrowind, but for their biggest role, it was in Oblivion. Even then, it is mostly taking a back seat to the hero and Martin (too much of a spoiler already for my tastes).

I mean, who ARE the blades? They have had more changes in their identities than 1/2 of the real world Roman empire, or anything in the real world for that matter.

She's essential, so good luck with that.

I liked the Blades in Oblivion but I wouldn't even call them Blades in Skyrim. They're just two crack pot conspiracy theorists that think the Thalmor are controlling dragons to open up an amusemant park or whatever they are squawking about. Honestly I feel like they would of been better off if they weren't added into Skyrim at all because how they were executed was horrible. They felt like the Caesar's Legion of Skyrim.

The White-Gold Concordat disbanded the Blades as an official organization(those that weren't already dead). That's why Delphine makes it a point to say "acting" Grandmaster.

See above.

As has been said, the game does indeed tell you. It also tells you that the Emperor is now protected by the Penitus Oculatus(like elite Imperial soldiers).

Delphine had every reason to believe she was the last Blade. They were hunted down. She was forced into hiding. This is the first time I've encountered someone that didn't like Esbern, though. He's the reasonable half of the Blades(and definitely not demented).

Yeah, just like everyone else when you kill a beast straight out of legend that are immortal and once enslaved humans. None of them can know what to expect, and by every account they have, meeting one should be a death sentence(and usually is, unless you're around).

You already made a lot of assumptions about the situation without any evidence.

I totally understand disliking Delphine (it's a pretty popular stance to have), but I attribute much of the problem with the Blades to really bad writing. They wanted an excuse to have anti-Thalmor quests and Dragon hunting quests, and used the Blades to force it in there unnecessarily.

Closed for review.