Summary
- Skyrim has a few decisions players can make that could be classed as cardinal sins, and some might want to know why.
- Some actions, such as killing Paarthurnax, are widely regarded as a massive sin.
- Not buying flowers from Sofie in Windhelm is just heartless, considering her difficult circumstances and need for help.
There are almost an infinite number of things that an adventurer can do in Skyrim, but among some noble deeds are a few cardinal sins. These go beyond just joining the Dark Brotherhood as a sadistic person. These are the deeds that will make Skyrim fans on Reddit clutch their pearls. While almost anything is possible, and people won’t exactly stop anyone from doing the things on this list, they are things that many in The Elder Scrolls fanbase tend to avoid at all costs, and even fewer talk about, lest anyone receives an ominous note from the community titled “We know.”
Not every shocking Skyrim sin is included, so there are a couple of honorable mentions. Killing chickens is probably not wise, as not only will it incur the wrath of the entirety of Whiterun hold, but it hardly seems fair to an innocent bird. Nor should players sell or drop Daedric/unique weapons, as someone could get hurt. Collecting 30 Crimson Nirnroot, while not a sin, is generally a sign that the Dragonborn has contracted Brain Rot somewhere along the way, and anyone who actually does that might get some strange looks from other players. These are just some things players avoid, but there are far more interesting Skyrim cardinal sins.
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Killing Paarthurnax in Skyrim
'A Friend of Delphine Is No Friend of Mine'
At the end of the main quest, Delphine will want to restart the Blades with the help of the Dragonborn, and for their first act in allegiance to the reformed order, the player must kill Paarthurnax. As one of Alduin’s former lieutenants, Paarthurnax committed more than a couple of transgressions back in the First Era, but he overcame his evil nature to side with humans, and in opposition to his former kin, Paarthurnax taught Nords the Thu’um. Delphine argues that his dominating nature is still in there somewhere, buried deep down, and he could be a threat one day.
This is perhaps the largest sticking point that many players have with the game. Some new players will be fooled by this, but anyone who’s played Skyrim for a while is probably going to scoff in Delphine’s face. Paarthurnax was instrumental in the Dragonborn’s victory, and he has guarded the time wound for 4,000 years without going rogue. He even asks whether it is better to be born good, or overcome an evil nature. If, for some reason, Paarthurnax is killed, the Dragonborn can join the Blades on endless radiant quests. This is such a pitiful band of essentially abducted NPCs that most players forget that the Blades are even one of Skyrim’s joinable factions, and they should stay forgotten.
Hunting Skyrim’s Giants
An ancient proverb goes that before the age of rocket propulsion, the best way to leave the atmosphere was by riding the shockwave of a Giant’s club, or something like that. While the efficacy of this method is questionable, many players will have found themselves flying at breakneck speed toward Aetherius when trying the Skyrim space program in a way that would make Reman proud. The sheer reactive force that a Giant can produce with a club is as good a reason to not mess with these formidable opponents, but it isn’t the only one.
Giants are a bit of a dying breed, and as a peaceful one, it feels wrong to seek them out for the sake of lopping off one of their toes. Generally, Giants will mind their own business and not attack a player like any common Bandit. Instead, they live quietly with their Mammoth herds, seeming to only harm those who would threaten their existence. Allegedly, they do cause a little bit of trouble, as Skyrim’s painted cows are given to Giants by Nord farmers looking to appease a local colossus, but this relationship seems to work out, as Giants are not found terrorizing society.
Killing Essential Skyrim NPCs
Even if Maven Deserves It
A player can slaughter countless random bandits and named NPCs alike during a playthrough, whether for good or ill, and most likely players will have quite different kill lists from one another depending on which quests they took. Despite all the power invested in the Dragonborn, though, one type of enemy eludes them: the essential Skyrim NPC. For various reasons, their health can never go to zero, and it usually incurs a high bounty and even permanent hostility. No matter how many power attacks from Volendrung, they’ll keep getting back up, and any nearby allies, such as town guards, are likely to side with them against the player.
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Naturally, this makes for a very awkward situation, as these NPCs will now be very angry and still unkillable. Many players on PC will be tempted to use console commands to remove essential NPC status, but that also isn’t advisable. Killing quest-important NPCs like this can completely break whole questlines. As much as Maven can be awful, her death would cause a lot of scripting problems for more than just the Thieves Guild questline, and only an experienced player who knows when they can safely remove an essential status should do this.
Helping the Thalmor
There are many divisive issues surrounding Skyrim’s factions, but most players can agree that the Thalmor are awful. Beyond the Thalmor banning Talos worship, they also abduct and torture political prisoners constantly, seeding coups and conspiracies in their occupied territories with the ultimate goal of eliminating men from Mundus. Helping the Thalmor is not only a betrayal of the people of Skyrim, but the wider world.
The Thalmor claimed wrongful ownership of stopping the Oblivion Crisis, and then instituted a number of bloody coups to seize power.
Of course, role-playing can mean that a player can help the Thalmor for character reasons. One of the most fun things to do after playing Skyrim for a while is to come up with a character whose goals might not be aligned with the player’s, and creating a Thalmor sympathizer is one of the more interesting ones. Still, it should be obvious that even if the character likes them, they’re a pretty dislikeable bunch, and if theories are to be believed, their potential involvement in destroying creation by deactivating Nirn’s Towers might even make the strongest Thalmor allies rethink things.
Not Buying Flowers From Sofie in Windhelm
A Colder Heart Than Windhelm’s Climate
Skyrim’s orphaned children have it pretty rough. Left without parents in a vicious world caught up in a civil war, often without shelter from the cruel climate of Skyrim unless they seek refuge with the far crueler Grelod the Kind in Riften. A lot of them deserve more in the world, and a kind Dragonborn can adopt some thanks to the Hearthfire DLC, where they can at least get some shelter while their newly adopted parent disappears for weeks on end to join the Dark Brotherhood.
But one orphan has a tougher life than most. Sofie wanders Windhelm’s Gray Quarter selling flowers in the hopes she can buy some food to survive the night. Her dialogue is absolutely heartbreaking, and it's clear that other NPCs aren’t lifting a finger to make her life any better, so it falls to the player. She doesn’t even have any accommodation, sleeping out in the street overnight, braving northern Skyrim’s brutal temperatures. It would take a truly evil Dragonborn to decline her flowers, and even after saving the world from Alduin, there is no way the conquering hero can call themselves a good person if they don’t buy anything from her at least once.
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No Stone Unturned in Skyrim
The Stones Yearn for the Quest Markers
Quest markers have been a central criticism of Skyrim since its release, as many players have argued they disincentivize critical thinking and observation, because all players need to do is follow a floating arrow. In many ways, this point has a lot of merit, and it can be very easy to disengage with the game because of the simplicity, only for a player to suddenly realize that three hours have passed, and they have no idea why they’re delving into the third dungeon in a row. However, quest markers aren’t always bad, and frustratingly, Bethesda left them off a quest that could have desperately used them.
Despite being in most players’ quest logs, “No Stone Unturned” is probably one of the least completed quests. The sheer madness of finding all 24 Stones of Barenziah would make Sheogorath chuckle, and what’s more, there's no way to know where they are. Skyrim is a huge place, and players can pick them up anywhere, so if they aren’t keeping track of exactly which ones they’ve grabbed, it can become a chore of cross-referencing known locations with the gems in their inventory. Thankfully, a mod exists to give each stone a quest marker, and it is one of the most popular mods on the Nexus for good reason. It’s just a shame that the reward isn’t much to shout about either.
- Released
- November 11, 2011
- ESRB
- M for Mature: Use of Alcohol, Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Sexual Themes
- Developer(s)
- Bethesda
- Publisher(s)
- Bethesda
- Engine
- Creation
- Expansions
- Skyrim: Dragonborn, Skyrim: Hearthfire, Skyrim: Dawnguard
- Franchise
- The Elder Scrolls
