Wow the Blades suck

[Ambugaton]

I always let Parthanax live in my previous playthroughs. This time I went with the blades just to see what it was like. Every time I went out with them, Mauricio aggroed my follower. I'd have to reload.

This time I brought my main's wife as the follower, and I'd had enough when Mauricio's stupid chain lightening spell kept hitting her and they got into it. I killed him. The other two blades? Just stood and watched. Pathetic. SHould have followed my instinct and used him as the sacrifice to Boethius.

[alexander_dougherty]

Who's Mauricio?

As far as I'm aware the default blades are Delphine and Esbern, who routinely give orders to you despite you being a Partner not a servant.... Stuff them both.

[Perplex]

Next time only recruit melee warriors to the blades. Dont recruit mages.

[Ambugaton]

Originally posted by alexander_dougherty:

Who's Mauricio?

As far as I'm aware the default blades are Delphine and Esbern, who routinely give orders to you despite you being a Partner not a servant.... Stuff them both.

Later you can recruit potential followers to the blades. Mauricio is a potential follower in riften. And I agree, screw the blades in general. Sadly Esbern and Delphine both remain essential, or I'd have killed them myself.

[Ambugaton]

Originally posted by Perplex:

Next time only recruit melee warriors to the blades. Dont recruit mages.

Heh, next time I'll keep Parthanax alive again. The blades were sell outs anyway, screw 'em

[RequiemsRose]

I wanted to try out the blades as well, largely because of how involved and helpful they were back in Oblivion. Joining them then was actually a nice experience, and I had figured that they may have fallen on hard times since considering the events of Oblivion resulted in them technically failing their duties on multiple levels, though ultimately for "greater good" reasons. It genuinely annoyed me how they are portrayed in Skyrim though.

At first I tried a "desperate times call for desperate measures" approach to them but it's just not enough to excuse how they act now. They may have lost their jobs as guardians of the emperor, but they spout about how they were dragon hunters prior and followed Tiber Septim because he was dragonborn, combining the jobs of dragon hunter and king's guards. Yet they seem to have absolutely no respect for you as a dragonborn. A dragonborn who seemingly is almost on par with Tiber (I say almost considering we don't ascend to godhood like good ol' Talos but we do a lot of things he was also famous for including murdering a bunch of dragons and shaping the outcome of wars as we see fit, sans creating our own empire). I mean we end up destroying THE main dragon, the world eater who is supposedly the child of a god (Akatosh), you'd think that would at least earn some respect with them but nope. I don't really bother with modding much (I know, "mod it til it breaks" but I'm weird like that) but they actually made me want to get a mod, namely The Paarthurnax Dilemma mod to fix them. Without the mod, I have no real reason to actually want to be associated with them beyond what is required for the main quest.

[Ihateeverybody]

Originally posted by RequiemsRose:

I wanted to try out the blades as well, largely because of how involved and helpful they were back in Oblivion.

I actually have a Theory that (Jauffrey?) whoever the head blades guy was a member of the Order of the Dawn. I mean they kept finding you and ....look, if I had a mystic artifact which prevented deamons from invading my plane of existance.....I wouldn't leave it in a chest UNGUARDED while I went off and did farm chores...I mean for ♥♥♥♥♥ sake.

oh and Tiber Spetim never killed a dragon. According to Lore. Dragons have not been seen for THOUSANDS of year (expcept of course that one in the Battlespire and those ones in ESO: Elsewhyre.....But aside from those dragons)....

sigh......I can't do it. I cannot care about the lore, when the keepers of the lore just change things when they need money for Taco Bell.

[RequiemsRose]

Originally posted by Ihateeverybody:

sigh......I can't do it. I cannot care about the lore, when the keepers of the lore just change things when they need money for Taco Bell.

I do enjoy the lore but admittedly it gets frustrating to follow when it seems to contradict itself whenever it makes a more convenient story. I could handle the occasional contradiction under the guise of "history is written by the victors" and all the magic that happens but it never does seem to be a simple case of different perspectives of the same event.
The blades do respect Tiber as a dragonborn and make comments about his victories in a way that implies he fought dragons but lore-wise, not really, as you mentioned. As far as I recall the only dragon around at that time was (forgive if I butcher this spelling, hard to remember proper dragon name spellings) Nafalilargus, who supposedly worked for Septim, not opposed him. It's actually a bit ironic, the blades do technically have a history of working alongside beneficial dragons despite their pride in dragon hunting, but they aren't willing to let Paarthurnax live because "he did bad in the past" despite him being the main force helping humans fight dragons over a few centuries now.

[Clovis Sangrail]

Mauricio? He is not listed anywhere in Unofficial Elder Scrolls pages. Is he from a mod?

Or do you mean Marcurio?

[Ihateeverybody]

Originally posted by Clovis Sangrail:

Mauricio? He is not listed anywhere in Unofficial Elder Scrolls pages. Is he from a mod?

Or do you mean Marcurio?

Could be a translation thing, not everyone spells things the same way. Pretty sure Ivan and John are the same name but one is Russian (or Slavic?) and the other is English. Humans are a funny bunch.

[ZarahNeander]

Originally posted by RequiemsRose:

......Yet they seem to have absolutely no respect for you as a dragonborn.

What's even worse, they treat you as a hired thug. An unpaid hired thug, that is. I never joined the blades, never took an oath and yet they *demand* that I do their dirty work, or else...

I really miss the option: 'Yeah, sure, I show you the way, even blow away the mist and then good luck, you two. I'll be watching from the top of the world'

[jreese46]

Marcurio (hireling in the Bee & Barb in Riften) is a terrible follower, all-around, because of that chain lightning. I hired him once, and never again. He got me into so many fights with bystanders, so many bounties. Just wasn't worth it.

There's a mod called the Paarthurnax Dilemma, by Arthmoor, which allows you to (finally) pull rank on Delphine, tell her you're not killing Paarthurnax and neither is she, and that's that. There's no voice for that part of the conversation, but she still gets the message. Paarthurnax lives and you are back to normal with the Blades.

[ralphtobybob]

Originally posted by ZarahNeander:

Originally posted by RequiemsRose:

......Yet they seem to have absolutely no respect for you as a dragonborn.

What's even worse, they treat you as a hired thug. An unpaid hired thug, that is. I never joined the blades, never took an oath and yet they *demand* that I do their dirty work, or else...

I really miss the option: 'Yeah, sure, I show you the way, even blow away the mist and then good luck, you two. I'll be watching from the top of the world'

They wouldn't even be in Sky Haven Temple if the Dragonborn hadn't showed up to open up the place. Too bad you can't reset the traps. I'm putting the Temple up for sale, so they'll have to move out if someone buys it.

[abcd]

Have you considered that Delphine is taking advantage of the dragonborn to kill the only living being that might contradict her narrative in the future? The Blades wound up acting as the Emperor's personal intelligence network you know. She's practically a rogue agent at this point.

[Ambugaton]

Originally posted by tausoldier:

Have you considered that Delphine is taking advantage of the dragonborn to kill the only living being that might contradict her narrative in the future? The Blades wound up acting as the Emperor's personal intelligence network you know. She's practically a rogue agent at this point.

I had very similar thoughts. One reason I never side with the blades.

And even looking at it from a realpolitik perspective, for the time being keeping Parthanax alive makes sense. His speech about other dragons bowing to his thu'um (despite his talk of overcoming his dragon nature towards domination) indicates there's going to be a power struggle... why not have the dragons thin out their own numbers if that's what the blades want, unless there's some other motivation.

[Ihateeverybody]

"unless there's some other motivation." Pride and domination. First meeting I had with Delephine she told me to go #($* myself and it was her way or the High way (you have to pick the right conversation points). I haven't liked her since.