#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

[tamrieldrifter]

The simple things

What is a man’s worth, his past achievements? his present labours? or his ambitions? For most people as soon as they attain one ambition they see another one glittering higher still, but what if your past achievements were so extraordinary that they cannot be outshone? Is then every future ambition dulled by the shadow of your past achievement?

Near the entrance to a small cave I encounter the Dark Elf, Raynor Vanos. He explains proudly that as experts on Dwarven artifacts, he and his sister Kireth were invited by the King himself to survey the Dwarven ruins of Wrothgar. They had arrived at what he believes to be the ruins of Zthenganaz when his adventuresome sister Kireth had either slipped, fell, or jumped into the cave; he seems uncertain as to which. At the sight of the ice wraiths and dwarven automatons roaming the buried ruins, the more bookish Raynor was understandably reluctant to follow.

I was to find Kireth exploring much deeper inside the ruins, she asks that I might steal a Dwemer power core currently being guarded by a particularly large Dwarven centurion she calls ‘the Ztheng Guardian’. Apparently her brother can make use of the power core to create one of his ‘devices’ with which he hopes to impress his scholarly colleagues at either the Mages Guild or Shad Astula, or perhaps both.

I remember Raynor and Kireth were both members of the Coldharbour invasion force. The Mages guild had apparently sought them out for their aid, specifically for their dungeon-delving expertise. They were also members of the Army of Meridia, helping to guard our rear during our final assault upon the Planar Vortex, ensuring we were not flanked by the daedra. Kireth explains that after all the excitement of Coldharbour, they thought coming back to the mundane ruins of Nirn would be boring. But not only did they find their deeds opened up new opportunities for them, “it also gave us an appreciation for the simple things." She said.

By contrast, after returning from Coldharbour to my modest home in Daggerfall, I was to find no comfort, and no appreciation in ‘the simple things’. Indeed, as the restlessness of my returned soul grew day by day, I felt an abrading need to go somewhere, see something, find something. It turned out all that would fill the empty hole left by an extraordinary ambition fulfilled, was a voracious appetite for more, no matter how dulled and tawdry they seemed. As to my worth? Well we shall see, but an Orc king’s ransom doesn't sound too unreasonable for either my achievements, labours, or ambitions.

S.K

[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. 😌

[madameriascreenshots]

Old Orsinium, P2

[thieves-oasis]

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

[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.

[elderscrollsconceptart]

"Initial concept of Orsinium"

Concept art for The Elder Scrolls: Online

Art by Mathew Weathers

[elder-dochfroya]

Graystone Quarry, Wrothgar

[noveltwin]

[ryunoshita]

Nethlyn and Bastian - Wrothgar

ロスガーの旅を終えました。ネタバレになるのでストーリーについては書きませんが、二人にとって忘れがたい経験になったと思います。『友人であり旅の道連れ』だった二人の関係が『命を預け合う大切なパートナー』に変わりつつあります。

[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