Miraak is a Bitch

I accidentally started the damn Dragonborn quest again. I’m not a fan of that quest. It doesn’t seem very long and it pads out its run time by making you run around the island shouting at rocks and flinging you through a very green, very ugly landscape in which you dodge tentacles and fight two types of enemy. It all accumulates so you can fight Miraak, the First Dragonborn. But Miraak is a bitch.

The main reason he’s a bitch is simple. After the Temple of Miraak quest, any dragon you kill, Miraak has a chance to come along and nab that dragon’s soul, stealing it from you. He’ll offer some stupid, vaguely philosophical remark, steal the soul then disappear. You don’t even get a chance to do anything about it. Miraak like this is invulnerable and ethereal. You can’t attack him, you can’t force him to fight you, all you can do is watch.

I’d say that it makes the player character look weak, but it really doesn’t, especially if you’ve already defeated Alduin or Harkon. It makes Miraak look like a bitch, too scared to actually face you and too lazy to kill his own dragons.

Speaking of killing dragons, why the fuck doesn’t Miraak have a dragon army? This guy is literally powerful enough to control any dragon he wants, getting them to sacrifice his life for them. Miraak even gloats that he could have dealt with Alduin himself, but he basically couldn’t be bothered, although he later admits he probably would have had some problems with the Worldeater. Considering he had trouble with both a single other Dragonborn and a single other dragon priest, I think Alduin would have pretty much murdered him.

But even Miraak’s plan is bitchy. He’s tired of working for Hermaeus Mora. But he was the one who made a deal with the Daedric Prince of Knowledge, and he’s the one who’s breaking the deal they made. Miraak’s plan is to break out of Apocrypha, break his deal with Hermaeus Mora then take over Solstheim by using mind-controlling rocks. But not dragons, it seems. For someone who claims to be so powerful, just taking over Solstheim seems like a very small plan. Even Harkon and his retarded plan to blot out the sun has more immediate impact on the rest of Nirn than Miraak’s plan does.

Taking over Solstheim isn’t even that big. Solstheim’s not a big place. It’s about the same size as Blackreach or the Forgotten Vale, but has very little of interest on it – a single Skaal village of old Nords, a city of Dunmer who are utterly reliant on ebony ore and a mushroom house with a crotchety but otherwise badass wizard on it. But at the same time, who is actually going to be taken over? Master Neloth will eventually act if he feels he is being threatened, so Miraak will almost certainly have to fight one of the oldest and most powerful wizards around. The Skaal will try to fight back, and they have access to magic that can at least deflect Miraak and any Apocrypha-like powers aside from the mind control, but they will most likely fall. The Dunmer though? They worship other Daedric Princes, and those Daedric Princes will NOT be happy that someone’s fucking with their worshipers.

So, assuming Miraak actually managed to defeat the Last Dragonborn, he’d have Hermaeus Mora’s wrath AND the wrath of several other Daedric Princes, most notably Azura, that he’d have to deal with.

There’s no real scenario where Miraak wins.

But even then, Miraak’s plan is pretty bitchy anyway. He’s too much of a coward to actually take over Solstheim like a warrior, he’s a coward who hides behind puzzles, cultists and shitty minions. While trying to break a deal he made with a demon to give him essentially eternal life.

Even in the distant past, Miraak was a bitch. Sure, he managed to convince three dragon priests to follow him, but he got his ass kicked by one single dragon priest, a badass called Vahlok. The battle between the two of them was huge, but Vahlok cleanly defeated Miraak. Rather than die, he had Hermaeus Mora save his dumb ass, then proceeded to bitch about it for the next several thousand years until he could work out how to escape. Let’s keep in mind that Vahlok’s a pretty normal dragon priest and Miraak had the power of Hermaeus Mora behind him. And Miraak still lost.

Not that Miraak could ever win. He had an opportunity to kill you the moment you read that Black Book. But no, he was too lazy to even send you back to Solstheim, getting his dumb Seeker minions to do it for him. Only for Miraak to realise later on that he NEEDS to kill the Last Dragonborn to escape Apocrypha. If he hadn’t been such a bitch, then he would have been able to complete his plan.

Last but not least, even Miraak’s last words are full of bitchiness. He hopes that Hermaeus Mora rewards the Last Dragonborn as well as he rewarded Miraak. Considering how well Miraak had been rewarded, with eternal life, nigh infinite knowledge and all the books he could eat, that wouldn’t have been too bad. Could have been boring, but if Miraak hadn’t fallen to Vahlok, he wouldn’t have been stuck in Apocrypha in the first place.

After all, Hermaeus Mora only killed Miraak because he was a bitch who tried to betray him.