This is a post about the guards in Daggerfall, and how they just blatantly exist to make life miserable for poor people and not actually to stop or deter crimes of any kind.
Even though the guards in Daggerfall stood by and did literally nothing when I was being mugged by thieves and bitten by werewolves while loitering outside the bank waiting for it to open in the morning, they sure show up right quick to haul me off to jail for vagrancy as soon as I try to sleep on the ground!
Then I eventually turned into a werewolf (due to the guards’ negligence, I might add) and had to pay the Glenmoril Witches 200,000 gold to summon Hircine so I could plea my case to him (and hopefully renegotiate this “gift” he’s given me). Only problem was, I didn’t have 200,000 gold. That was more gold than I’d seen in my life. So I went to a bank and took out a loan to pay the witches. For some reason, the bankers agreed to give some random murder hobo with no discernible income an unsecured loan. I’m not a banker, but I feel like this would be a pretty bad investment.
I tried to pay back my loan, but I didn’t even come close. So I defaulted. The Daggerfall guards stayed on-brand with their whole punish-poor-people deal, immediately descending upon me for defaulting on my loan and trying to drag me off to debtor’s prison. Hundreds of guards. And they just kept coming. So I transformed into a werewolf, cast levitation, and flew away. Skipped town. But at least I didn’t need to hunt innocents to sate my werewolf urges once a month anymore.
I also imagine, when the guards saw me transform and fly away, one of them was like “Whoa! Did you see that???” and another took off his helmet and threw it on the ground shouting “Dangit they don’t pay me enough for this!!!!”
Also, the Dark Brotherhood got on my case for being a freelancer because I was chowing down on guards once a month (in my werewolf form) when I got my werewolf urges, and… I don’t know. Call me pedantic, but I don’t think that a werewolf eating guards once a month is really competing with them in any way or actually relevant. Certainly nobody was paying me to do it. Like, what, are they also going to give that bear a hard time for killing that hunter? But Mephala works in mysterious ways, I suppose.
