#(and i have a ridiculous amount of imposter syndrome if that wasnt already obvious)

[taffingspy]

bet

Caveat: I’m very aware that the moment at Red mountain is super nebulous. I’m going to go with probably the most accepted interpretation (that the tribunal killed Nerevar and Voryn didn’t betray him) mostly to preserve my sanity, and because Vivec admitted to it in the 36th lesson. You can argue against that, completely fair, honestly the contradictions make that whole story even more interesting since it’s more like a murder mystery than a typical one-and-done story. Encourages the player to engage more closely, which is Neat.

Aight so the crux of this is that they’re both embodiments of the “corrupted by knowledge beyond our understanding” trope, and how that ties to their stories as villains.

Voryn’s corruption happened when he became connected with the heart, probably when he died; Lorkhan “reached out” to him, tried to gift the knowledge of the nature of the universe, and that was enough to corrupt and shatter Voryn. Combined with the heart’s power, we now have Dagoth Ur, a demonic entity built on the shreds of Voryn that are left. Dagoth Ur is aware of the world being a dream (which can be likened to the game being, well, a game world), but he’s described as “the false dreamer”: he knows the world is a dream, but he thinks he’s the dreamer, and everyone is extensions of himself and his dream, NPCs of his own making.

Sliske’s happened… who knows when, but we do know he has some understanding of the nature of the world. It would seem like he came into the knowledge when he obtained the stone of Jas, but the 4th article of “A critic’s review” strongly implies he knew more way back during the empire (Note: I’m aware this was just intended to act as advertisement for the Glacor front, but it still stands out as kinda weird timeline-wise). Either way, it happened “at some point”, and Sliske for sure knows more about the nature of the universe than he lets on. Your mileage may vary on how far he knows, but it’s certainly a disconcerting amount, likely enough to colour his perspective on the world around him.

It’s played for laughs, mostly. In kindred spirits quest, he references the player respawning twice (”Oh, are you going to kill yourself and respawn to get help?” and “So when you wake up in Lumbridge you'll have that to look forward to.”) as well as a few tidbits in Sliske’s Endgame that aren’t quite on the same level but certainly feel like pointed comments about the nature of the game (”You could take them all out! Just imagine the loot they'd drop!” and “that would be terrible pacing. You're what, halfway through? We can't have the big boss fight just yet.”) That being said it only goes so far; on a non-canon run, you can make a fourth wall breaking joke back to him, and he’s very confused by it, but that’s non-canon so not relevant here.

Note: Jokes that reference Runescape’s nature as a game do happen somewhat often, especially in older content where the game was much more loose with its lore, or in events/conversations that are considered non-canon (such as Gower’s quest). Outside of that, it’s usually the adventurer who makes these kinds of jokes, and rarely NPCs within the story. Tangentially, the OSRS wiki has a page on fourth wall breaks, but the RS3 wiki does not, probably reflecting how RS3 is a bit more strict in its approach to lore.

Different characters, similar approaches to the villain role, being that they’re villains of extensive knowledge about the fundamental nature of their universes. For Sliske, that’s as much as his depth is defined. Dagoth Ur, on the other hand, goes a little further.

Dagoth Ur firmly sees what he's doing is right. It's not even just a conviction, it's the way he views reality. Nibani mentions this if you ask about the dreams. “He hears laughter and love, but he makes monsters and ghouls. He woos as a lover, but he reeks with fear and disgust.” Nibani describes the dreams consistently as lies, and she’s both right and wrong. Dagoth Ur lies about the reality all the characters are living in, but he isn’t lying about his reality, the perspective he’s seeing the world from. The false dream is extremely real to him, his blight is a gift, his offers of friendship are heartfelt. It’s only because we’re outside of his view that we can see these things for what they really are. But still, there’s honesty in that, and that honesty is really, really important to what makes him both a sympathetic villain and an utterly terrifying one.

How much of that honesty, those offers of friendship, is from the scrap of Voryn still left in Dagoth Ur? Not sure, but it is still there. Which is the key difference between how Sliske and Dagoth Ur handle this type of role.

Sliske doesn’t really have anything. At least, we’re not shown that he has anything more. We know he has fears, he has doubts, he has wildly swinging emotions and, allegedly, a motive. But that’s it, really. None of these facets go into much depth other than being shown to exist. For all we know, there’s really nothing much going on under the hood.

And heck, most frustratingly, Sliske outright says that himself! During Sliske’s Endgame, there’s this exchange between Zaros and Sliske: Zaros: Oh Sliske, my poor child. Had I known the depth of your madness, perhaps I could have saved you. Sliske: Don't you get it Zaros? There is nothing to save! “Nothing to save” because yeah, his character lacks depth, especially at this point in the story. Kudos to the writing for being rather blunt about that, but opening a puzzle box and finding it empty is rather boring. Even more so if it doesn’t even have a note saying “lol get fucked”. At least that’d be in character for Sliske!

On a minor tangent, Sliske’s writings in Kindred Spirits is one of the more key times we heard the phrase “Do you think you can save them?”, during the Death At Sea book. What makes this instance stand out is it isn’t just the player acknowledging the phrase. Sliske does also. Generally, when the phrase is spoken, an NPC says it either completely unconsciously, or without awareness of what their phrasing means specifically to the player. It’s considered pretty meaningless within the story, but during Death at Sea, Sliske gets attached to it, the player’s name, and the mention of Xau-tak. The phrase means something to him as much as it does to us.

Perhaps that “nothing to save” could have been “nothing left to save”. But that’d have required some more leg work.

For Dagoth Ur, that legwork comes in the form of Voryn’s friendship to Nerevar, and his honesty about his friendship (or at least, honesty about his perspective on the friendship anyway). Given we play as the Nerevarine, and have some connection to Nerevar whether we like it or not, that makes Dagoth’s appeals very personal. He’s talking past us, sure, but it’s still very pointed. What that part is that’s reaching out is left up to interpretation, but at times it feels like a shred of Voryn still leftover under the influence of the heart.

(What it feels like and what it is are two very different things, but in a story, what the reader feels often overrides the reader’s logic in any given story event. Knowing how to toy with that makes for a great villain, as I’ll talk about more in a bit.)

Sliske talks to us, but there’s not really much connection there. We learnt in Azzanadra’s quest that Guthix sent him on a wild goose chase towards the player (”Whatever name I give him, whoever I point him at, he will be drawn to them like a moth to a flame.”), but we’re not really given any reason to chase him in return. The closest we get is that he’s a mystery (established early on but certainly in Kindred spirits) in the same way that the player character is a mystery to him, but as mentioned earlier, he’s a mystery with no resolution.

So there’s no mystery, no connection, not really… much of anything? Despite the fact that he’s very clearly as important to the World Guardian enchantment as we are. He’s the shadow to our light, he’s bound to us as we are to him! And it means absolutely nothing. Canon doesn’t give us much to really empathise with. It tells us we’re connected to him, Sliske states this in the following quote from Fate of the Gods, but that’s not the same as showing us (“Oh, aren't you? We both took some of Guthix's power. We both watched him die. That makes us connected in stronger ways than mere siblings. I'd count us as equals… if you didn't have so much catching up to do.”)

Yet it… does? Kind of? Nearly did. The shadow and light voices, that first appear in Azzanadra’s quest, are the closest we get to a sympathetic image of Sliske. Beings bound to the player, forced to cooperate with us because otherwise our failure would be failure for them. And they’re honestly pretty great! They work really well to make us fall into the trap of sympathising with him, but again, it goes nowhere. It’s later mentioned they’re not Sliske, so therefore, not even relevant to this conversation.

To be clear, I’m not saying a villain should be woobified. Dagoth Ur is a frightening villain because he’s so sympathetic. We want to reach out and help him! Doing so would condemn Tamriel to his destruction. There’s no ifs or buts about this. While he has a friendship worth saving, an honesty worth saving, you’re left to weigh that tug of the heart strings against the fact that he’s the scraps of someone already dead, being puppeted around by an ancient power that will destroy the world if you don’t do something about it. It’s terrifying! It’s perfectly manipulative! It’s exactly what a villain of his type should be.

Vivec warns us against “the crime of benevolence” in sermon 15 of the 36 lessons. This is what he meant. What more benevolence is there than seeing the shred of pain under a villain and reaching out to it? That's not how it works though. Sometimes the villain can't be saved and it's just sad. Dagoth Ur isn’t even a sappy, pathetic villain, either. He’s pretty darn chipper! It’s the history, and all that we learn around him, that hurts, which lends him to be much more bittersweet than anything.

Sliske’s character danced on the tantalising edge of something more existential, but in the end the story chose not to dive off the ledge. Why? Don’t know. The game has always been a bit tongue in cheek about its approach to the fourth wall, but it’s still a thing that exists so it’s not far fetched to explore it with more depth. Since its always been a thing in the game, it wouldn’t change the nature of it. That hesitance means the level of depth Sliske needs to be something more sympathetic is missing. Without that depth, there’s no connection. No connection, no sympathy. Which means (asides from his boss fight which is neat) his death occurs without much fanfare, and its easy to shrug off without much emotional impact.

if sliske had been more like dagoth ur, in this essay i will