#wrothgar

[elderscrollsconceptart]

Orsinium

Concept art for The Elder Scrolls: Online

Art by Mathew Weathers

[zerotigg]

[quaenam]

TESOctober 2024, day 4-6 "Frost"

Fharun Stronghold in Wrothgar, Orsinium Let's see if I can keep that up to make one scenery painting for each prompt/zone. Three days aren't much for someone as slow as me 😆

[morniae]

Commission work, a map of Wrothgar and an orsimer clan for a The Elder Scrolls Online rp campaign.

[tophattable]

Found in the Wrothgar Library

[madameriascreenshots]

Old Orsinium, P2

[tamrieldrifter]

A hunter's first lesson

A band of novice hunters from a local Orc clan who wanted to prove their worth by gathering meats, and furs for their tribe before the onset of winter, have been ambushed in hills by a tribe of small Ice Goblins known as Riekr. The little goblins whom inhabit the near-by Bonerock Cavern, are thought to be particularly gifted spellcasters, and share their caverns with a group of frightfully large Orges. The young hunt leader Orgotha requests that I rescue her captured comrades and kill the Riekr chief, claiming his tribes totem so that they might save face with their clan elders.

Unlike scholarly students who are taught lessons and then given a test; hunters like Orgotha are given tests that teach them the lessons. The youthful hunters feel that the cards just turned against them today. But much like the novice player at a Tribute table, we oft learn more from being wrong then being right, and nothing from being lucky.

S.K

[thieves-oasis]

nothing but Valdea gro-Eashi on the brain. gotta love trans orc women ❤️💕💕💕❤️❤️❤️✨✨

[ladyluscinia]

I have finally gotten around to playing through the Orsinium questline in ESO for the first time, and I think the whole thing actually makes much more sense if you headcanon that the real "villain" of the chapter is Boethiah.

Like... Ok, so the fundamental problem with revealing that Kurog plans to kill all the chiefs who won't bend the knee and seize power by force to implement his orc kingdom vision is that if he simply said that part openly then it would just be orc politics? Probably the kind that would get some orcs judging him for being too bloodthirsty / ambitious, but he openly murdered a chief in his throne room and everyone just shrugged at how emotional orc men are. The culture that does ritual challenges and death duels for leadership positions absolutely would accept a guy taking over rival clans and killing off their leaders as a valid method of (temporary) kingmaking, even if a bit gauche.

Mixing it up by adding the whole Trinimac vs Malacath religious angle doesn't really do anything, either, since his attempts to impose a new state religion help explain why diplomacy isn't working but not why force wouldn't work. Trinimac is if anything more of a warrior god than Malacath, and you would think worshippers of a champion of honor would be even less inclined to use a secret cult to frame their political enemies and scapegoat for assassinations. They'd become corrupt crusaders or something. Also they kinda suck at the subterfuge part - like a Boethiah plot being enacted by small children.

...So what if it was a Boethiah plot??? 👀

Follow my train of thought here - Boethiah is down to fuck with Malacath / the orcs for reasons ranging from "it's Tirdas" to "my inter-cult gladiatorial fights are boring recently", going all the way back to the original incident of eating Trinimac to stop his cult from interfering with the Chimer, pretending to be him for some light heresy, and then leaving him twisted into Malacath (and turning his elven followers into orcs).

Boethiah is also a Daedric Prince associated with plots, conspiracy, deceiving nations, and overthrowing governments to seize power.

I think it sounds fantastically plausible that Boethiah would notice an orc trying to restore Orsinium and all the ingredients for a truly fantastic implosion of a civil war among Malacath's children (including of all things a resurgence of Trinimac worship, which is bait if I've ever seen it) and decide to start backing a faction. For chaos. Especially since Boethiah's other main canonical thing going on in this timeframe is inspiring a Dunmer woman named Vox to start a cult to overthrow the Tribunal, while also appearing to a hero as an avatar named "Aspera" to help them kill Vox for the fuck of it.

(Boethiah is so fun 😆)

So here's the rough skeleton of how I headcanon all this connecting:

🗡️ Kurog doesn't seem to be a particularly devout Trinimac worshipper, and High Priestess Solgra mentions him being skeptical at first - implying she was invited to Orsinium by his mother before he truly converted. Solgra is definitely a true believer who converted in Summerset, while Forge-Mother Alga is definitely the driving force behind the very un-Trinimac-like Vosh Rakh.

🗡️ It seems like the Forge-Mother is the first one who got on the Trinimac train, possibly around when Kurog was first joining the Covenant and starting his Orsinium project. I'm guessing there was a small Trinimac following in Wrothgar without much clout, but they managed to catch Alga's interest. And, I'm speculating, Boethiah's.

🗡️ Alga apparently goes in hard on Trinimac. She's inviting a High Priestess to set up a giant temple, angling to convert her son, and soon declaring Trinimac worship the law of the land. She's also fully embracing a political schemer role that is not remotely in line with Trinimac's vibe and soon to establish a secret police cult that she can publicly disavow. Despite this, I think Alga's far more devout than Kurog ever is - she genuinely seems to think she's getting divine blessing.

🗡️ Theory - A little while after Alga converts, her new god bestows his favor on her and starts directly communicating / inspiring her to set up all the Vosh Rakh stuff... only it's actually Boethiah, speaking to her while impersonating Trinimac in a classic move. Explains the backstabbing, subterfuge, planned coup, all of it. She brings in Solgra to be the palatable face (and convince her son) while not noticing at all that there's some cognitive dissonance in her actions vs teachings. Ah, the hubris of a "chosen one."

🗡️ Boethiah is having a grand time making orcs unknowingly turn away from Malacath for her while thinking they serve Trinimac, and getting to whisper "kill all the chiefs loyal to Malacath and frame the (actual) Trinimac High Priestess for it" is just the icing on the cake. Would Alga and Kurog's plan have just started a civil war? Probably. And Boethiah would have been thrilled. Shame Bazrag managed to reduce casualties at the end, but it was still very worth the destabilizing. 😌

[elderscrollsconceptart]

"Initial concept of Orsinium"

Concept art for The Elder Scrolls: Online

Art by Mathew Weathers

[elder-dochfroya]

Graystone Quarry, Wrothgar

[bam-monsterhospital]

Wrothgar's Main Quest

When you look for people's overall opinions on the main quest in Wrothgar, you'll inevitably get the response that it was one of eso's stronger questlines; better written, not about a world-ending threat and so more down-to-earth and relatable, better characters, on and on. Then you go to play the main quest...

Wrothgar has the same problems as the rest of elder scrolls online. While it doesn't suffer the skeletal, bare-minimum, idiotic, did-you-just-use-chatgpt-to-produce-this? lack of writing skill more recent dlcs suffer from, Wrothgar still carries the root attitudes present all throughout eso that drag everything else down:

Spoilers for orsinium down below

The new king who is promoting change -in this case, progress- in a civilization is evil. His progressivism, enabling women of an entire species to step out of the unchallenged traditional role of marriage-slave and actually be people, is actually evil and needs to be stopped. It's toooooootally not about allowing women to be people because he too has an entire harem of wives in his palace. No really guys, he's bad news and you shouldn't go along with him or like him because he killed a guy!

His mom is eeeeevilll. Never trust an old lady. Never trust a mom, OR a momma's boy. The new religion she's pushing is pushing out the old religion, and no we're never ever going to talk about how (even in orc cultural knowledge) the otherworldly foci of these two religious movements are the SAME BEING. NEVER ADDRESSED. NEVER TALKED ABOUT. What, you want a solution to this problem? you want integration or mixing or acceptance? fuck you, this is eso. Religions that the writers don't see as xtianity stand-ins are evil cults; that's how things work right?

Lesbians? hahaha, no lesbians don't exist. Why would orc women be into other women, they're state-mandated to not be. Those two ladies running the bathhouse in orsinium? no shhh don't pay attention to them.

you have to kill the change. obviously the best resolution for this entire questline isn't to allow space for more than one way of orcish life, no. we gotta go back to the butchering mormon-izing of malacath, and every woman needs to be a wife. that's the only way.

orcs are barbarians. look at this landscape littered with ruins; those ruins are from previous attempts at building up orsimer civilization. all destroyed by humans: bretons, nords, redguard. But shhh, don't think about that. Just traipse right on in, don't feel bad for the orsimer, that's not what this is about, pshhhhh ignore it. orcs are barbarians.

Of course there are good bits to it. Eveli's character is refreshing in that she actually goes through an arc: what starts as a naive eager-to-adventure person realizes adventuring involves a lot of politics, it's all very complicated, and people will always get hurt no matter what you do. Does she swear off adventuring? No, but she needs a breather to re-think things. It's good. They butchered her in blackwood, but in orsinium she's got the foundation for an interesting character.

And honestly I think that's what people remember most about the main questline in orsinium. That it had characters who acted like characters: consistently, in ways that make sense to what was established before, y'know, the basics of writing competently.

It's been a while since I've done orsinium and I enjoyed that aspect of it back then (also i love the architecture of the city of orsinium, its tall towers and how it actually looks like a city... not to mention wrothgar is beautiful)... but woof... yeah wrothgar is not devoid of its faults. I only really touched on one aspect, and didn't even go into detail on it; just tip-of-the-iceberg stuff i could remember off the top of my head.

[noveltwin]

[ichooseviolence]

The Elder Scrolls Online: Wrothgar

Sister Zella and her pet companion, Baa-Baa.

[decently-fat-bear]

BRO COME OOOON im going through more dungeons in Wrothgar, your already know but... WTF WHY ARE ALL THE STATUES ALL THE SAME LIKE ITS EITHER TRINIMAC OR A ORC MAGE AND NO OTHER

[madameriascreenshots]

Honor's Rest, P4