Flash Fiction February 2025 Day Twenty-Three: Tolerance And Intolerance (Anna)

 A/N: If given the possibility to write a building assessment report on any of the structures in Windhelm I could come up with so many issues to list and so many recommendations to address the highly weathered masonry for actual effective preservation efforts. Bethsoft please hire archeologists or historic preservation specialists to help with city and ruin design for future games I have many thoughts.

Flash Fiction February 2025 Day 23 Prompt: Tolerance

It is surprising, and yet not surprising at all, how much of this frozen country lacks tolerance towards outsiders…and in far too many cases also lack basic manners. It is a grievance that Teldryn Sero and I share, though our specific experiences differ with his often being the worse of the two sets of encounters. However, I would count being detained and nearly decapitated as a prime example of lack of tolerance in an extreme sense. That was more so the fault of the Imperials and their Thalmor overlords than any Nord so it is a bit of a unique case. Morrowind is known for its hostility for outsiders, or outlanders, as they are called there, but it is in many ways a different sort of hostility. You may not be liked by the nobility or ignored by the commoners, and your movement restricted to certain ports or cities, but it is expected and primarily the result of the clauses included in the treaty that incorporated the territory into the empire in the first place. In Skyrim it is instead random individual instances of prejudice with an age old distrust of strangers and dislike of old enemies layered over it. Being insulted and called a lowly provincial is not something I appreciate being called by some general store owner who has never gone farther than twenty miles in any direction in the isolated poor excuse for a town that is Falkreath at nine o'clock in the morning. All I want is firewood and if they happen to have it bits of glass to be able to fix something and not freeze. People in the larger cities seem to have a larger capacity for tolerance, Farkas has no trouble with outsiders, obviously, nor does Aela, Vilkas simply doesn’t enjoy the company of anybody really so he is a statistical anomaly in this case. Many of the people I have met in Solitude have no problem with me, probably due to its proximity to the western border and position as the seat of Imperial power in the county. Teldryn, Farkas, and I all loathe having to go to Windhelm for any reason, where we currently happen to be after a surprisingly long journey from Raven Rock. The stone city and its people lack all matter of decorum and even an ounce of tolerance regardless if it’s a weary traveler from far away lands or one of their own people stuck sleeping out in the cold with nothing but the clothes on their back. Architecturally interesting, indeed, but otherwise a place I’d rather not spend much time. It’s cold, it’s full of racists, there’s snow everywhere, the walls are in need of major repairs before they crumble, it’s dark to the point I don’t remember when I last saw the sun…did I mention it’s cold?