basically since getting the 5th anniversary edition,have been questioning whether to do the si quest.as i play a female breton crusader (who always tries to do good).from what i gather about the si quest,you have to kill innocent/good people for sheogorath (?).basically if that is the case,there is no way my character will do that.i just wondered how many people left the quest as soon as the found out about what it would entail?if you still went ahead though,how did you justify continuing?am definitely interested in how you resolved the issue one way or the other.

well, I played a knight once, who wanted to do good. I did the shivering isle, but he just slowly went mad sohe had no idea anymore about what is good and what is evil. I believe that it's what happens anyway in the shivering isles. any character that enters becomes mad.

I wouldn't do shivering isles with a good character if you want them to stay good. I'm trying it out with a completely mad khajiit character and it suits her, but I'd be horrified if I had to do it with my good character.
Without giving too much away, there's a quest fairly early on where you have to either kill someone or send them insane. There is no third option to walk away. Your exit is blocked, forcing you to choose between these two options. I guess that would sit uncomfortably with good characters. I've not done anything much further than that yet but I imagine it gets worse.

I think it's more enjoyable if you're playing it with a character who is slightly mad.

When my character was very na?ve and impressionable, she somewhat unwittingly helped Sheogorath destroy the dreams of an entire village of Khajiit – all in the name of making their lives ‘more interesting’ by helping to fulfill a prophecy. That was all she needed to see to understand the nature of that particular Daedra Lord.

Although she is not 'lawful good' and happily explores the Shivering Isles, Buffy will never lift a finger to help the little dweeb Sheo ever again.

Edit: Parts of the Isles are beautiful and remind Buffy of Valenwood. That is one reason she enjoys exploring them: http://i668.photobucket.com/albums/vv43/Acadian6/ScreenShot833.jpg

When Riften first encountered the Isles he was just a young Elf trying to earn a bit of Septims to buy a house, he couldn't stand the people in the Isles, Crucible and Bliss almost drove in Insane, then he encountered Split, he couldn't take it anymore, he ran back to Cyrodill as fast as his legs could run and never went back and he doesn't intend to either/

The glitch with haskill (or whatever his name was) was almost enough to make me go stomping back to cyrodil.

He kept asking me to sit down. and when i did, I COULDNT TALK TO HIM

No, I wouldn't do the SI Main Questline with a "lawful good" character.

Too many nasty thing in it. However, perhaps with someone I could see doing the questline with someone slightly less strict than lawful good. Particularly if you plead temporary insanity (or permanent).

Yeah, an insane person is definitely "chaotic," not "lawful."

In the classic D&D, a significant departure from a character's "true" alignment results in bad things happening.

Unfortunately (in the context of traditional RPGs, anyway), TES games don't really take alignment into account, except as it relates to faction disposition. Some people would argue that that's not a bad thing, but the fact is that fame/infamy don't really have much impact on the game.

Bethesda games, in my view, tend to be designed with a kind of Neutral Alignment built in. They're full of morally ambiguous choices, and they generally reward murder and lawlessness, and "punish" the law-abider. In Oblivion, for instance, the DB and Thieves Guild quest lines give some of the best rewards. And the Mages Guild and Fighters Guild both require the player to endure degrading and/or morally questionable experiences ("Information at a Price" and "Infiltration.")

And people say the world of The Elder Scrolls is not dark enough.

Depends if the ends justify the means i suppose, you are stopping the end of an era slaughter (pretty sure thats not a spoiler as its in the dlc description) Also it is a revolution of a sort, a break in a cycle, so what if a few people are drivin mad...or murdered..or tortured...its all for a good cause right?

I'm sure it's justified. I mean, killing one to save a thousand.

noone can venture into the isles and remain untouched in some way or the other.I found the longer my mage stayed the harder it was to leave and the faster the unsense made sense.but springtime while being serenaded by a screaming butterfly sings sweet sickly lullabys make dreaming between the weave a breeze.How long has it been? we dont know... and so he remained.but if you ever wish to leaVE merely beat your head against a table untill its sore, then use it to cut a hole in the table and climb through.

This is not the way Lawful Good characters think. Lawful good characters refuse to kill innocent people for any reason. So the choice of killing is not an option for a Lawful Good character.

A lawful good character also refuses to condone torture. I can't speak for anyone else but I consider driving people mad to be a pretty clear case of torture.

So I think it's pretty clear that a true Lawful Good character could not proceed past the "A Better Mousetrap" quest and continue to remain Lawful Good. However I think a Lawful Good character could travel through the isles and do some side quests.

Problem is, Lawful Good paladins do not think in shades of gray. If someone dies by their hand without reasonable cause, they are permanently disgraced. No matter what.

Why not include some character development and falling into madness? Let SI be the start of your character's moral downfall due to certain events (like losing a loved one or a close friend... like Martin!). Let him/her fall into darkness and either give him/her a tragic end or end it with breaking back into the light and start the path of redemption.


And thankfully so. This L/C&G/E Alignment system is ridiculous to start with... lack of alignment system is why it is only TES games where I can create ANY character I want (I love your stories Bioware/Obsidian, but why do I hate my own characters in your games?).

That's the path taken by my only character who did the MQ, the SI MQ, and KOTN. Fortja was a Nord barbarian-type (her closest D&D alignment would be Neutral Good) who started out as an Arena contender. She got caught up in the Oblivion Crisis, and found a friend (perhaps more than a friend) in Martin. She was broken by what happened at the end of the MQ, and got caught up in a reckless and self-destructive spree of foolishness, drunkenness, and madness that brought her to Sheogorath's realm. She was truly mad by the end of that quest line, dangerously so. She became little more than a dungeon-diving animal for a while, raging her way across Cyrodiil. She was eventually saved from herself by the Prophet in Anvil, and set on a path of redemption...

Well Jericho is Neutral Good at best, he entered the Isle and loved it, he felt like a little kid again. Of course he ignored Sheo. Due to the fact that he is Naive, the isle were not able to corrupt him, however after getting the DawnFang, he simply ran out of the Isle and never came back, Jericho unknowingly Corrupted the minds of a couple of adventures, driving them mad.
Never again, he said, he simply took his time in the Isles as a lesson. Although he is somewhat traumatized on what he did to the adventures. And he learned, that anyone can cause great harm to others, either directly or in his case indirectly.

He has Dawnfang stored in his house back in Chorrol.

My decrepit avatar refuses to be pigeonholed by such straitjacketing concepts as 'lawful good', 'chaotic neutral', et al and in truth fluctuates between a number of them on a situational basis. He does not see himself as a particularly 'good' person, though he does adhere to his own concept of honor and integrity. He's certainly no paladin, despite leanings in that direction while assisting Martin Septim in the guise of Divine Crusader. Yet there is something of the paladin in him, and I supposed many of his actions could be outwardly deemed 'lawful good'.

Yet he has added the title Madgod to his many honorifics.

We saw his escapades in the Realm of Madness much as Thomas Covenant saw "the land" during his first several visits there... a figment of either his or Sheogorath's imagination with little if any bearing on reality. As such he was able to overlook certain actions, distasteful though they were, that he would never be party to in the solidly 'real' world of Nirn.

-Decrepit-

Actually, a pretty good description of a Neutral Good character.

I was gonna say more like Chaotic Neutral, as this would describe someone who's occasionally refusing to follow the laws of the land, someone who puts himself first, and tries to stay away from siding with either Good or Evil. Whenever I read about the Decrepit character in the Where is your Character now? thread, he doesn't seem particularly good or evil. He just kinda does what he can for the benefit of his caravan, without any sort of higher calling. That's what I'm getting from him, anyways. I haven't read his full story in detail or anything.

Plus, if he willingly took part in the SI MQ, wouldn't that exclude Decrepit as a Good person altogether? I'm actually asking this because I've never done Si yet.

None of my characters had a problem with SI. That's because they are ALL rotten, to the core... Even the good ones. They will PLAY good, only to get what they want.

Post for a friend :

ISOL started as UNLAWFULL NEUTRAL.
he followed the following rules
-Take all loot you can use and get, no matter how, if you can use candy for an potion, you take candy from a baby.
-Townguards are a menance, as long as they ignore you, you ignore them, but as soon as they start to treathen you with arrest, you refuse and enjoy the killing spree. (you will sell their gear to pay off the fine for that to the thieves master)
-KEYS KEYS KEYS isol LOVES KEYS.. it may be an obsession, but every door, chest, that has a key.. Isol GOT to have the key.
-Never kill any non respawning/named NPC (basicly only townguards are ok)
-When doing a quest.. pick the solution that gives the best reward.

However after a while ISOL had more and more loot, and unlike bankers who never have enough.. Isol's concience started to rise as soon as His need were met.
He now has enough money to BUY any incredients pots or arrows he wants.. and know where they respawn every 3 days, however when exploring he still takes all he can, but he is less methodic.
-He now uses more gray fox aproved rules.. he never steals from the poor, unless they REALLY have something ISOL wants (gems, a book he does not yet has, a weapon or armorpiece he does not have etc)
-Whenever he DOES steal something from the poor, or does anything that blackens his chacra, he has to make aments.. so when he steals that book he wants, he places a more expensive one back that he has 2 off.
When he steals food of the poor, he gives better food back, etc.
-He tries to do the moral thing in quests.. that does not mean he always walks the way of the law.. but it does mean he does what a honest person would do. for example, when he had to hand back the painting.. hes moral highground made up his mind.
The law would made it easy.. the painting was the countes give it to her.
But to isol the law is His moral guideline not others!
so for him, he saw two woman, both really loving a man, both wanting something to remind them of him. Isols heart broke, could they not share it? but that was no way out.. so Isol had to make a hard chooice.
His final judgement was not on the loot, He really wanted that painting.. rather than 1 fame, and alowing 1 more NPC in the game would be his preverance too.
However.. the man chooice to be the countess man.. and while ISOL is not above robbing virtue... that is only towards lonely and mistreated woman.. this woman LOVED her man! and for that she should get credit.
Also her punishment was just like isol would have done.. she was not put in jail.. but only send away, as a mercy.. for the love they shared.
This countess of Chorrel is good and just so she deserved the painting even when it would give ISOL not the reward he wanted.
-ISOL so far has not joined the Dark Brotherhood, stealing your rich uncles possesions may be something he can live with.. but killing a man for some house and goods? and God knows what comes after that..
No if possible ISOL would join a group that would ELIMINATE the dark brotherhood:)
-ISOL however does not like to get arrested, so instead of his former blunt aproach he now sneaks around taking what he wants without getting a bounty... so the law to him now has some value, if only to save himself some trouble.

I Guess ISOL has evolved and now is NEUTRAL GOOD

And to answer your question : no The DB is evil, pure evil. no Good char can live with joining it.
The DB is like : killing an old grandmother that takes care of a little orphan that has no one else.. because you just felt like drawing blood today.. and butchering that orphan into a stew afterwards.
you really do not want to join it.

hmm not very pragmatic, honor before reason, death before dishonor...i like it. Although after realizing the stakes how can teh lawful good knight simply walk away? Would they simply pull a Rorschach and whisper "no" when the filthy unaligned masses beg for help...well i guess they don't beg do they? They're way too frickin crazy to realize whats going on i suppose lol

But it is a good question, how does this holy champion of virtuous light abandon people to death at the hands of order? Can they at least try to help the mad peasants who suffer from their dementia? Maybe a lawful good would do some of the side quests that don't involve slaying wierdos

Precisely why such people do not belong in the Shivering Isles. Extreme flexibility of morality is more or less a requirement for permanent residence. One who was a paladin all his life would be incapable of understanding the reasoning behind the madness. His vow is simple: help the helpless, kill the evil. A paladin can easily walk the road of the Main Quest, and Knights of the Nine was pretty much made for such character achetypes, but Shivering Isles does not.

It is impossible for one whose life is bound by morality to coexist with those have none whatsoever.

Ah i think i get it, the question isn't how a holy dude would do the shiverin isles, its would your holy dude even enter the isles. I guess the talking portal is really is just appealing to treasure hunting/glory hounds. lawful good types don't really want to get involved with deadra so they would probably cut down the violent lune outside, agreed with the guard about going in...and walking away without ever going in