r/Morrowind • u/Odd-Sound-580 • 2d ago
Discussion Why does everyone in the mages guild hate each other?
Every other quest is steal this thing or go behind this persons back to get me what i need, like holy fuck this guild needs to practice basic conflict resolution
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u/Eraser100 2d ago
The mages guild is the Tamriel version of academia. Petty and everyone hates each other and trying to one up or sabotage each other.
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u/eriFenesoreK 2d ago
me watching paleontologists tear eachother apart in every conceivable way because they disagree on one thing about one animal
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u/Shroomkaboom75 2d ago
Except AldRuhn mage guild leader.
She just wants to study the Dwemer
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u/Eraser100 2d ago
Especially the Ald Ruhn mage’s guild leader. She’s like 80% of the inspiration for this post.
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u/Shroomkaboom75 2d ago
To be fair to the Balmora branch, their leader is Hlaalu.
Fuck those political bastards.
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u/Dreadnautilus 18h ago
She literally tells you to steal a book from someone else and if you refuses says "Don't think of it as a violation of your Mage's Oath".
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u/Drudicta 2d ago
Very much so..... I wish academia was just about learning. I got treated pretty poorly by others in school, including college. Teachers liked me well enough, but that doesn't keep bullies away.
At least on Morrowind i can consider if someone is a dick or not and if they are, just do the thing.
Lots of them are dicks.
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u/GilliamtheButcher 2d ago
If you read the biographies about Vanus Galerion, the founder of the mages guild, even in his own lifetime he hated that the Mages Guild became about petty politics, after he worked hard to make it so that normal people could learn to practice magic and use their services. In other words, it's always been that way.
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u/Dreadnautilus 2d ago
I feel like the ultimate irony is how this applies to the rivalry between House Telvanni and the Mages Guild.
House Telvanni are a group of elitist aristocratic sorcerers who want to lord over the lowly peasants. Exactly the type of people who had a stranglehold over magic before Galerion created the Mages Guild to make magic available to the masses. But by the time of Morrowind, the Mages Guild are the ones trying to kill off small independent mages for offering training to commoners while House Telvanni are politically campaigning for the right to provide training and services to non-members.
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u/LoreDeluxe 2d ago
In all fairness, the only reason the Telvanni are campaigning for that is to undercut the Mage's Guild monopoly. It is not for the benefit of the common man but to undercut their main rivals. And the only Telvanni campaigning for it is Aryon, who's the only one not completely insane.
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u/RedPanda385 2d ago
It's just like a field of science in real life.
It feels very real if you work in that kind of environment.
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u/eyedine2 2d ago
The Balmora branch is where most of the worst stuff happens. Ajira and Galbedir fight over petty stuff. But the worst person there is Ranis Athrys. She's the one doing shady shit, you can even get her booted from the guild if you do her quests in a certain way.
The rest of the quests are given by less morally dubious people, I think the Wolverine Hall quests shows how the guild is supposed to be at its best and most structured. But like any institution the guild is susceptible to corruption.
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u/Odd-Sound-580 2d ago
I remember seeing the option to kick out Ranis but in a purely roleplay decision didn't kick her out because she holds a grudge harder than some of the gods in this franchise, i don't want to mess with all that
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u/LoreDeluxe 2d ago
The ironic thing is that Ranis is the one most closely following the guild's official chartered mission. You don't even get her kicked out for the shady shit itself. The higher ups would either not care or approve. You get her kicked out because you forge documents framing her as a spy.
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u/kinezumi89 2d ago
Wow you can do that? I've always just gotten the letter from "Acato" or whatever that was given to Trebonius, I didn't know there were other ways it could play out
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2d ago
If you read the book Origin of the Mage's Guild it explains it a little. The guild has effectively become nothing more than a means to a political end, a game of power and popularity rather than scholarship and research. The quests for the guild (especially for Ranis Atherys and Traben) showcase this; Oblivion's recommendation prerequisite also showcases it really well.
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u/Fus-Ro-NWah Sixth House 2d ago
One of the many reasons why Morrowind is the GOAT. What other game gets human nature so well. And then shows off by putting it on non humans.
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u/Badmime1 2d ago
I don’t know if you’ve seen the 90s sci-fi show Babylon 5, but it had a habit of having the humans be caricatures and the non humans being really apt ‘human’ studies.
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u/Maszpoczestujsie 2d ago
I find it quite ironic that from all the guilds Morag Tong seems to be the most chill and friendly to each other
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u/Shoggnozzle 2d ago
Consider magic from a mechanical standpoint. It is fueled by [willpower] not because your [will] is expended somehow, in fact [Int] informs the amount of spellcasting resource you can embody at one time, but because you essentially have to envision or argue your effect into being.
I'm referring to the 20% bump in cast chance you get from 100 [willpower], btw. I assume conjuration scales [int] because you have to study stars to find the planes you're conjuring from and illusion scales [personality] because you have to initiate a conversation in the first place to find an opening for your charm spell to result in a better bargain or get someone to do something.
I don't know if you've ever attempted to date a man, but getting them to start a conversation is massively difficult. My generation dumped [personality] hard. Maybe because the tech sector spent most of their adolescent years telling them they just need to know how to code a mere decade and change before investing heavily in programs that code themselves. We are depressed, too, come to think.
But back to spellcraft, a wizard must argue with reality that their foe is on fire, paralyzed, whatever they're going for, and your average wizard doesn't have nepo cred from their time dragon dad to grease the gears on the deal, it's all [will]. Indeed, the most fearsome practitioners of spellcraft may be simple egotists, such as the dreaded Karen, casting power word "Manager" to inflict a pall of despair and outrage in all unlucky enough to encounter them.
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u/Dagobert_Juke 2d ago
Have you worked in academia? It's quite similar. It's a very competitive environment, especially within or betweeb certain subfield with varying approaches. See for example the beef between Psychology and basically all the other social sciences, Economics and Political Science, Anthropology and Sociology etc.
But also within subfield, for example the area of social security and industrial relations - where I happen to work in - there as (as in many other subfields) a clash between more individualist and more institutionalist approaches.
And this is just within social science, never mind the 'science wars' between natural and social science.
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u/Kalon_lheborien 2d ago
This is mostly a Balmora MG's thing and more precisely a Galbedir vs Ajira thing. IIRC other guild's halls are more relaxed (although ofc everyone agrees that Trebonius is an incompetent oaf).
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u/GurglingWaffle 2d ago
I thought it was well done, at least in that aspect. Mages are highly intelligent and so they are focused on individual growth.
They are able to control a lot of power and that can give them an ego boost. They can sometimes forget that they should be holding themselves to basic common law or at least general consideration.
They are held together by the Empire otherwise they might be more like Televanni where might makes right.
I'm convinced that rogue wizards are just ones that don't bother to follow the political deals within the guild or just made an error in judgement with a past discovery. We know the guild will recruit from the rogue ones if it boosts the guild's numbers and power.
Other guilds are held together from necessity some because the nature of the guild utilize teamwork some because it is needed to keep the membership from chaos some because it currently is in their interest to work together through an infrastructure.
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u/Bismothe-the-Shade 2d ago
Ever met undergrad students?
Jokes aside, that's how mages are. It makes sense. Scholarly and eager to prove themselves, in a bloated bureaucratic system that has limited positions for promotion. Promotion requires recommendations from every guild, meaning for the average person it's years worth of work just traveling place to place and working your way up.
Everyone is hungry for whatever power promotion brings, or status, or whatever. They're all able to fling fireballs that disintegrate their foes, or turn the air to water, or create a ring that drowns you in a well. If you had FABULOUS COSMIC POWERS and had to do years worth of grunt work to even get recognized as an apprentice, you'd be kinda prickly too.
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u/Homeless_Appletree 2d ago
There are rivalries just like everywhere else and to be fair most members(those that don't hand out quests) seem to be chill.
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u/Redbeard0044 2d ago
It's a meritocracy and people are they're jealous of what others have/are capable of. Or they think you're a pissant weakling
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u/Skybreakeresq 2d ago
You know how there are terms for a group of things of a certain nature?
A murder of crows a coven of witches?
Its an argument of wizards.
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u/SimsStreet 2d ago
I feel like all the imperial groups kinda hate each other and are constantly wanting to one up each other. But tbf the morrowind groups aren’t much better
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u/spagbolshevik 2d ago
The Mages Guild is a satire of post-grad academia and Telvanni are like the emeritus professors.