Personally I found him one of the more memorable characters in Oblivion. The Orcs in Oblivion always seemed to be comic relief figures. But Agronak was a tragic figure. I think he was great in battle because of his Orc qualities, and because he was motivated to prove himself. His sense of himself as descended from a lord was the motivating factor. He was discarded for being an Orc but he knew he was something more. When he finds out his father is also "a monster" it completely shatters his sense of himself. It's a shame wasn't an option to save him.
After the first time I ever played the arena quests I always forgo the option to get the info for him during following playthroughs just because I feel bad for him and want him to have his honorable death instead of the sad one he resigns himself to if you complete his quest.
For me it was like he realized "I'm a half vampire? Oh shit thats why I'm in the blood works..." just ruining any hope of heroism. In the end you realize that your not killing some random like before. You're killing a guy with a mom, a dad, hopes and dreams. A guy who actually shares more in common with you than most the people in Nirn and you made him hate himself, teach you his secret moves and then killed him. It was at this point in the game I realized I had actually killed one of my best friends.
I always found it odd the fact he was made by a vampire. But what was really sad is how it drove him to essentially suicide by your hand in the arena, how he couldn’t take something which was not his own fault. Really tragic.
I found his reaction a bit tone-deaf to the lore context. "Oh no, my father has a disease from a dark god... Unlike my orc mother who followed our traditional dark god."
@@FairiseNoughI'm pretty sure most orks in oblivion were worshiping the nine and 200 years later as the empire is falling apart they started worshiping Malacath again
I always felt that Agronak did inherit some of the Vampirism from his Father- Thus why he excelled in the Arena, cause Vampirism gives a bonus to strength, Speed, and Athletics. But without the negatives to come with Vampirism like not wanting to drink blood, damaged by the sun, or spreading the vampiric disease- He is the perfect hybrid of Vampire and orc, making the absolute peak killing machine. As quoted by Owyn "-He says he's only half Orc. What I want to know is, what's the other half? Cause it sure ain't human..."
I would argue that he DID inherit a certain bloodthirst, since he makes his living by killing people. He may not need it to survive, but he is invigorated by the blood(shed) of others. He seems to like hanging out right next to that pool of blood seeping in from the arena above. Since he doesn't know he's half vampire, the thought of consuming blood probably never occured to him. He could essentially be getting all the perks of being a stage 4 hungry vampire (the major stat boosts), but without the need to actually feed to reduce the negative symptoms. Regular human food sustains him, his full orc face hides any gauntness, his pigmented orc skin protects from sunlight damage, and being the arena champ wins him lots of fans, helping to counteract the social consequences of vampirism. Then when he learns that it isn't just his hard work and ingrained sense of honor that's gotten him this far - that he's basically been using cheats the entire time - he can no longer take pride in his position and thus has nothing to live for. That's all just my read of the situation.
@@zecaptainpegleg8820Not exactly: Yes, Vampirism comes from a disease (Sanguinare Vampiris, Porphyric Hemophilia and Noxiphilic Sanguivoria) that can be cured by simple magic or potions, but once the disease has been allowed to fester you are no longer “diseased” you’re magically cursed that renders you undead and ties your soul Molag Bal’s realm. It’s possible to break the curse for Vampirism, but in Oblivion and Morrowind it’s a long time consuming and difficult quest that requires esoteric magics and rare ingredients, and even in Skyrim where the cure is much simpler to get, you still need to strike a bargain with Daedra and trade another mortal soul to lift your curse.
Honestly he could have been a recurring follower or character. Imagine him leaving the area cause he believes he isn't worthy of his championship so instead he makes himself a champion to the people slaying monsters and etc and he joins your character even after the oblivion events he pops back up in skyrim but as a dawnguard follower.
@@23rascel Yeah, because there are no instances in the elder scrolls lore, where someone lives longer than usual. I get your point, but this fact could be overcome by making up a story about said character, a chosen of divine / daedra who decided they should live longer, most probably for his service to the people / daedric prince (the latter less likely, given his character traits), the fact that he is half vampire, and we don't know much about their aging, it could be slower for all we know. Of course there are the means of advanced alchemy / magic, although I don't believe the Gray Prince would be capable of such magic. Sure, it may be nonsense if you really don't want him to live that long, but there is always the possibility.
Every time I get around to doing that quest, I always wish I could tell him, "Oh, come on. Being part vampire isn't THAT bad." I say as I'm a vampire already.
There is a hypothetical that someone like the arena master was aware of his nature and provided him blood without his awareness in his daily meals. There is, after all, a vampire right there in the city who could profit from the arena games.
I hate that they capped him at level ten. I would have preferred him to be set as twenty to forty levels above me. A winnable fight in this game, but tough enough to make you really consider how you want to end the quest. A straight up fight in the arena or talking him into taking a dive. Missed opportunity there.
It's tragic that there was no way to try and convince the Prince that he isn't a monster. A Vampire may have sired him, but said Vampire also seemed to have humanity left - he was at the minimal stage of Vampirism, keeping it hidden and contained. He seemed to feel real love for Agronak's mother, and if she hadn't reacted with fear and disgust - the way Agronak reacted to himself, go figure - there is every chance that his father would have become ever-more Human, as the idea of fatherhood seemed to grant him the kind of happiness and excitement you just don't see from other vampires. It was being locked in his room and being driven mad from decades of starvation that reduced Lord Lovidicus into the normal example of a feral monster that many Vampires become, not his own will, want or nature. Agronak has never felt the need to drink blood. He has never unjustly hurt someone outside of honourable area combat that we ever hear about, and from his personality it's pointless to think he has. He does not burn in the light of the sun, so Arkay's ire is not upon him like it is other vampires. Hell, Vampires are undead. There's every chance that they should be incapable of siring children naturally. The fact that Lord Lovidicus believed it to be a miracle is something I honestly always held true to. He is a Vampire not too dissimilar from the Count of Skingrad, who was blessed with fatherhood due to seemingly resisting his nature and blending in not to infiltrate, but to just live as human. We don't rightly know how he fed, but there were never untoward rumours or anything. It's possible he fed on criminals in his jurisdiction or something. At worst, he's faster and stronger than he should have been... but there's nothing inherently evil about him. I wish we could have made this clear to him. Convince him to step away from the arena for a while, get his head straight, come back refreshed and full of vigour. I always liked the idea that if he embraced the idea that what he was doesn't dictate WHO he is, he could improve his latent abilities enough to where after he is seemingly killed in the arena against you, he can make a miraculous recovery from seemingly mortal wounds with the help of healing mages and whatnot, since he had plenty of friends and fans around. Maybe even a companion! I loved the uniqueness of his story.
The whole thing with his Gray Prince moniker is noble blood. That belief that his parentage defines him was ingrained well before he knew that parentage was vampiric.
Dude even though he's not really a vampire, i mean, cmon, the crowd of a BLOOD SPORT ARENA would probably go wild for a grey prince heel-turn vampire arc, would have allowed the arena to bring in a young up-and-comer to play face
Huge plot hole. Lord Lovidicus states in his journal that he had meetings with other nobles about taxes and trade negotiations with other aristocrats. He also mentions a few times that he has to hide his identity, all of this implies that he was a fairly public figure. His lover locks his bedroom door to trap him... Not one of his servants ever tried to open the door? This landed member of the nobility suddenly stops coming out of his room, and soldiers don't break down the door to rescue him or see if he died? He was important enough to be in charge of certain aspects of the realms taxation, and the Crown never investigated what happened to him?
@@littlesongbird1 But he was a Nobleman. Even if he was shunned for that, there would still be soldiers looking to get paid, and the Count of either Anvil or Skingrad would have been responsible for him, and wondered where the tax revenue he paid them was going. They would have no doubt sent messengers and then soldiers up to see why this member of the nobility stopped paying them. In discovering what happened they would have either killed him or been murdered by him, but in either case that door would have had to be opened.
I mean its a stretch, but the implication from Agronak is that Lovidicus is presumed dead. He never says to go see him, or implies that Crowhaven is anything but a ruin. There's any number of presumable stories that could explain what happened; perhaps in his immediate absence, someone staged a coup and claimed the site, before themselves being killed, perhaps Agronak's mother told a few people on her way out, so they immediately acted to either assume command, or perhaps purge and evacuate to wherever, perhaps, word made it to Hassildor (or whatever he went by at the time), and the entire site was condemned to prevent rumors of vampires spreading. It's not entirely a hole, since there's enough material to work with to come up with logical explanations, but it is an unfortunately barren part of the story I'd be interested to know, too. I also think it's fair to say that it being an "empire fort" is a bit of a gameplay concession, much like the ayleid "cities" being mostly linear caverns with no apparent infrastructure or means to support a population of anything at any time.
Absolutely love the phrase "perfect level 10 warrior", gave me a good chuckle every time I heard it. As for a slightly more serious note, perhaps being half orc may have been the key to such a miraculous birth, that little extra special seasoning that makes a half vampire possible
I really wish you can tell Argonak Gro-Malog that he is still a great warrior despite his vampire origins and encourage him to fight in the arena like he does in the arena like a true grand champion would.
I believe his quest was made quite early in the development of Oblivion, when vampires was its own race (check UESP). It would make sense as to why he would have been “half vampire” since currently vampires are just beast, men and mer inflicted with a disease.
Vampires are separate races in all TES games but this is just a technical thing. Morrowind (possibly an earlier game but morrowind for sure) already established how vampires work, i.e. they are people of existing races.
The thing that changed that I wanted so badly as a kid when the game came out was for the interaction with the dogs And then finding out that the dog that was in the promo demo became a rug@@ABardsBallad
@@gackybassSame in Daggerfall but vampirism is cooler because you actually die from the disease and wake up in a tomb instead of just getting the funny red flash and presto changeo you're a vampire now
Do you think Molag Bal has the same claim over the souls of half vampires as he does other vampires? Since vampires were created to insult Arkay’s balance of life and death, I fear Bal would view a living soul conceived by a vampire as the cherry on top to his insult.
@@jonathanwells223 it’s always rewritten, as the afterlife is fully dependent on belief, if you follow the Nordic ways then you can go to sovngarde, if you are a werewolf then you join the eternal hunt with hirciene and so on.
@@zecaptainpegleg8820 Sometimes souls are stolen regardless of belief and actions. You have vampires and werewolves that were forcibly turned, souls sacrificed to Soul Carin. Coldharbor gained *thousands* of innocent souls during the planemeld. And if dark brotherhood dogma is correct, all their victims are taken to the void.
I always thought it was interesting that if you pursue teaching him about his lineage he won't fight you back so then when you kill him if you're not a part of the Dark brotherhood it counts as your initiation kill.
@@ABardsBallad yeah I guess because he was not defending himself it counts as murder but I usually do that way so I don't have to kill like a guard or unique NPC the one time I did run into that dark elf that is eventually a Target later on in the dark brotherhood he can be killed at any point I did that once for my initiation lol
I think his tale is perhaps one of the most saddest and tragic of all the NPCs in Oblivion. I had to wish there was a way or some way to save Agronak. All he wanted was to show the world at an orc can be noble in deed and valor. I really felt kind of guilty for having to kill him in order to complete the quest. He certainly deserved better than what befell him. Vaya con Dios y en paz descansen, Agronak. 😢
Honestly the most interesting part to me about him is the implications that at one time, Orc servants weren't totally out of place prior to them being recognized as citizens of the third empire, Given they weren't recognized as such until quite recently to Morrowind and Oblivion.
To the best of my knowledge, Agronak is a notable character in that he is the only known half orc in the setting that we know of. I find it a bit odd that people always focus on the half vampire side of him, but never the half orc side, especially when it comes to how significant that would be for the lore.
There’s a restoration skill book in Skyrim (might be present in other games idk) that explicitly states man and mer can have children. In fact, Bretons are the result of high elves and humans.
@@ShadowMage yeah, true. Orcs are elves (orsimer) but are never mentioned as having any hybrid variants. Though, this opens the question to elves that aren’t high elves, like the wood elves. What would a half-bosmer be?
@@ShadowMage In TES, race is matrilineal. Agronak being "half" Orc is only significant on a family level, because he claims the lineage of a noble Imperial. As far as whatever passes for biology in Tamriel, he's as Orc as they come. For context on the Bretons, they are believed to be the product of long-term crossbreeding during the Merethic era between the Nedic men and the Aldmer, who are the progenitors of all modern Mer, including Altmer, Bosmer, Chimer (who later became Dunmer), Orsimer, Dwemer, and weirder ones that show up in one random book like the Sea Elves and so on. When you're looking at the Bretons, you're looking at microevolution over many generations, not a hybridization like you might see in a classic D&D setting.
He has already shown that an Orc can be honourable, as does a vampire. His actions speak louder than his heritage. He has already shows his deeds as Orc, so learning he is part vampire shouldn't be discouraging. I wish we could convince him to continue proving himself. Just imagine him meeting Count Janus Hassildor, also a vampire, but someone who cares about his county and the people. Or Lord Rugdumph gro-Shurgak, showing that orcs can be noble as well. Or Mazoga, who used to be a bandit, but has turned around and is now on a journey to be a honourable knight. Now, how he leaves the arena. He could just say that after so many fights, so much time as undefeated champion, he grew tired of it. Quitting while he is at the top. And yes, I feel like Janus Hassildor would be a great mentor for the vampiric side.
Poor man, The Grey Prince, cursed to be an unknowing Vampire. Becomes so depressed after learning of his origins that he just accepts death. Too bad too, he'd likely be better off never knowing. Great video bro, gotta agree, he's bittersweet.
in terms of lore, Oblivion could have added a special lore with a new creature with Agronak, considering in Balkan mythology, there actually are instances of children of vampires and humans. They are called Dhampirs. Here's an excerpt from the Wikipedia entry: Legends state that dhampirs were, for the most part, normal members of the community. But dhampirs, especially male, of paternal vampire descent could see invisible vampires and practice sorcery, often starting careers as vampire hunters, which would be practiced for generations from father to son. Some traditions specify signs by which the children of a vampire can be recognized. Albanian legends state they have untamed dark or black hair and are very cunning or courageous in nature. They are not attracted to blood and can eat normally like other human beings, though the option to bite other living beings in order to extend one's life is always an open choice. When being compared to a vampire, dhampirs are said to be very lethal towards the blood drinkers, since a dhampir's blood and spit is like an acid for the vampires, making them impossible to be bitten. Due to having mixed blood, a dhampir will not be burned by the sun. In Bulgarian folklore, possible indications include being "very dirty", having a soft body, no nails or bones (the latter physical peculiarity is also ascribed to the vampire itself), and "a deep mark on the back, like a tail." In contrast, a pronounced nose was often a sign, as were larger than normal ears, teeth or eyes. According to J. Gordon Melton, from his book, The Vampire Book: The Encyclopedia of the Undead, in some areas, a true dhampir possessed a "slippery, jelly-like body and lived only a short life-a belief ... that vampires have no bones."
I would wager that Agronak's unique circumstances have to do with the fact that there are two Daedric princes involved with his bloodline. Orcs as a species/race owe their existence to Malacath, and we know that he keeps a pretty close eye on them since he will answer to a ritual. However vampires are different, they aren’t born in the traditional sense, instead being a mutation of sorts to life, thanks to Molag Bal just being among the worst of the Daedric Princes. So as a result, a vampire being created not through disease and the corruption of life, but rather through traditional birth to a species that are rather strongly tied to their own Daedric Prince would not necessarily bare the same disadvantages as your usual vampire. Its most likely due to Malacath's influence that Agronak was able to live a relatively normal life until he was informed of his lineage and decided to commit self destruction by demigod. And one can assume that a large chunk of his strength and prowess in combat was due to his vampiric heritage, as even within TES lore, different vampire bloodlines yield different traits and abilities to the bloodkin that are part of those bloodlines, with some being more inclined towards magic, and others being more physically gifted.
Oblivion is still one of my favorite Elder Scrolls games. Good points on "The Gray Prince." I hated having to kill him to advance on my first play through. It would have been nice to have a quest that would help him become reconciled to his situation.
Im actually trying to make a character in Skyrim based off of Sanguinious from Warhammer40k, a beloved and respected humanoid vampire that had the body and soul of an angel. But his wrath was terrifying to behold, known as the Black Rage. And even after his death at the hands of his brother, his sons still feel that pain and his Rage passed down to them. And they still mourn him, 10,000 years later.
Another excellent dive, i did always wish for more with agronak or maybe you could abandon the arena all together, run off and have kids together. Maybe not that. But definitely would have been neat to have some choice where you go or you go together to the fort
Great video. I loved your speculation as to alternate outcomes if Agronak hadn't immediately shut down and died. Would make a great quest mod or expansion for Skyblivion, or explored in ES6.
Laying next to my wife in bed right now as she's snoring beside me and I'm so comfy watching this. Thanks man! Glad you revisted the gray prince, I always felt bad for him.
I did this quest recently and it hit me for as long as I had this game I had never done it before and usually just defeated him in the arena so I think it's a funny coincidence you made this in the same year.
Would have been really great to have a little more tlc put into his quest. This is one of those instances I can’t help but think of Fallout skill check/ speech checks and how if it was a Fallout quest there would have at least been a check to keep him from getting depressed
What I find odd is that Agronak knows it's a ruin, as if his mother told him or he remembers. Then follows the questions: If you get hired to be a servant to some guy living underneath a ruin, perhaps with skeletons about, how could you not suspect that at least something is up?
It could be that the idea of a Dhampir was adapted into Agronak's story. After all, TES started as a homebrew setting for D&D, and Dhampirs do appear in D&D.
After I did his quest the first time I refused to do it anymore and let him go out in glorious Orc fashion as a Warrior with masses of his fans cheering him on in the place he adored.
I haven't gotten too far into the Arena questline so I always thought The Gray Prince knew he was half vampire mainly because I thought his title came from the fact he was really nice for a half vampire and I theorized that he had the vampiric trait of needing blood that gets satiated from the Blood Fountains after each Arena Battle
The question is always as followed for me when i do the arena: Do you tell Agronak the truth about his parentage? And risk him making the challenge easy? Or do you allow him to live in denial and fight you the best way possible and give the people the best show of their lives
Racial phylogeny makes clear interracial offspring in TES take after the mother, so possibly he avoided the bulk of vampiric heritage while a vampiric mother (if that were possible) with an orc sire would have created something more fully vampiric. Racial trait heritability is somewhat mysterious in the real world and there's no reason to imagine it different in TES. I think he inherited some of the symptomatic effects of vampirism without the disease itself, and the orc half mitigated some of the worst ones because of orcs' natural robustness. A wonderful character, should have been an optional path to make him a follower, absolutely.
I do feel bad for Lovidicus. It does seem like normally they wouldn't have had the ability to have a kid, so maybe some deity like Mara was moved by their love and granted them an exception conception. There was a path to redemption there in the making. Instead he was forced to endure the self-consuming and potentially never ending hunger of his eternal curse. They had outs to his condition but she chose to do the easy thing, to betray him and lock him up.
Something funny to me about the arena is how the loading screens make it out to be somewhere to go for a friendly match when it's full on bloodsports. A friendly match would have been preferable with the Gray Prince to what really happens.
I really wish their was a way to spare him that concludes the quest on a higher note like if we surrender since he refuses to fight which either gives him a chance to actually fight where he scales up to player level or maybe becomes a follower because their existence is literally a miracle that they might be the only case in the entire universe of a half Vampire especially considering they have none of the downsides, Albeit their is a chance that if they got infected that they could become a unique full vampire with an exceptionally strong level of Vampirism
I wonder if Lord Lovidicus was a pure blood vampire like Lord Harkon from Skyrim? Also, maybe Argronak gro-Malog was a half vampire because he's an unintentional creation of two Daedric princes, Molag Bal (the vampire half) and Malacath (the orc half). That would then lead to the question, who has claim on his soul after he dies?
The real question is whether the fact that he was half-vampire ever became common knowledge, or if it only ever stayed between him and the hero of kvatch. We give him the only written proof, we're not entirely sure how much time canonically passes between that quest and our fight, and no one around us ever comments on him refusing to fight or seems to know the reason why he's so upset. It's possible that he never told anyone else and destroyed the book, leaving the record of the world's only half-vampire completely lost to history. I'm sure some altmer wizard would've loved to study him, and probably would've advanced tamrielic genetics by a lot.
I was really hoping ESO would give us a few more Dhampyr (The offspring of a male vampire, and mortal female, i.e Alucard from castlevania, etc) but I dont think we have anything concrete yet. I do wonder if female vampires can have children, as in most stories they cannot, I also wonder if some of the offspring would slowly go mad becoming some form of bloodfiend ghoul.
There’s also the daedric aspect of them. Being technically mortal, would dhampyres have more agency over their own souls or would Molag Bal have default ownership of them? Knowing the sick bastard Bal is, he’d definitely try to.
The obvious comparison would be to a dhampir, a mythological version of what happens to the mortal offspring of a vampire. These are typically described as having some of the physical advantages of vampirism but being immune to it, and are often depicted as the ideal vampire hunters because they have some of the powers to keep up with one while not having the drawbacks. Agronak is likely intended to be a version of this idea, although his rather unsurprising response to learning of it leads to him just being ruined.
After this quest, I grow to hate Agronak's mother. I can understand her fear when discovering her former lover being vampire, but what god-damned purpose was her made-up story serving (she could just say her father was an Imperial soldier who soon after Agronak's birth left them never coming back or something similar that wouldn't inspire Agronak to search for his past), but even worse, what was the point of giving him a key and direction to Crowhaven. At best, Agronak would survive the encounter and got depressed either way, maybe even deciding to take his own life. At worst, Agronak would fell to a bunch of feral blood starved vampires. She kept her lie and at her deathbed, she gave him the key to answers, just so she wouldn't have to see consequences. But why didn't keep the truth to herself? Why setting him on path that she had to know would either kill him or break him? Perhaps lord Lovidicus was right, and she was just a monster, a monster that decided to torment her son in the end.
That's assuming a lot of foreknowledge the mother could not have had. She may not have known Lovidicus had spiraled and become blood-starved in her absence. She could not have known Agronak would take the news the way he does, at the unspecified point in the future when he would go searching for answers. She may not have known Agronak would even become a gladiator, nevermind the Champion of the Arena. She could not have known Agronak would decide to send an adventurer searching for his past in his stead. I can easily see the thought process: on her deathbed, she knows Agronak isn't ready for the truth right now, but she believes he has a right to it, so she gives him the means to seek it out when he is ready. Instead, he becomes Champion, and the mixed pressures of fame as the Gray Prince and survival as a gladiator mean he cannot afford the time to even go himself. The imagined reunion between an obviously troubled son and an estranged but possibly well-meaning father turns into a hired blade meeting a crazed vampire. There is a tragic irony to it all, in that it seems everyone means well here, yet each character's actions further the spiral of loss despite their best intentions.
If there's something called half vampires, bethesda should really make it a thing, i do hope in es6, they can add these qualities it just seems so interesting seeing the origins of the gray prince and what he turned out to be. I was sorta disappointed that we never got anything like that in skyrim. It would have been cool to see a hybrid of vamp and werewolf or werebear. That is why oblivion really adds the mystery into its game, theres so many question marks and theories coming out, and skyrim truly lacks that mystery at times. Also, i can't wait to play skyoblivion 😂
Not a lot of talk about Agronak's mother-kind of a shame, cause she's literally the other half of the equation. Elder Scrolls lore says children take the race of their mother, and the in-game book "Racial Phylogeny" says orc reproduction is not well understood, with no documented cases of inter-racial pregnancy (neither established or refuted). The lore also states Vampires, being soulless creatures, are undead, and cannot bear children. Taking this into account, a more pragmatic, lore-based revelation (or retcon, depending on how you look into it) might be: Agronak's mother had relations with Lord Lovidicus, but also another-she became pregnant by this other person (possibly non-orc, given Agronak's pale skin), but to preserve her honor (and status), she claims it was Lord Lovidicus' child. Unable to reconcile her lies, her attitude causes Lord Lovidicus to send her away as outlined in his journal. She raises Agronak in the Imperial City, and continues to lie, feeding him stories about a noble birth-but Agronak believes her, and is inspired and motivated by the tale. By his own merits, he rises to the rank of Arena Grand Champion. In-game, Agronak states his mother "died recently"...what's to say that after a life-time of lies, racked with guilt, Agronak's mother finally gives him the key to the truth before her death, still unable to tell him herself. As a result, Agronak discovers the truth, but still partially believes his mother, leading to the false belief of being half-vampire, despite such a thing being seen as impossible. Kind of makes it even more tragic, in a way...that such an impossibility (within the lore) would be believed by so many, within the world. ...I typed way too much for something no one is probably gonna read, lmao.
Played Oblivion a lot growing up and always did the Arena first, only ever did his quest maybe two times. Just didn't feel right for him to know the truth just to more or less commit suicide by letting you kill him. Preferred fighting him as the warrior he is, giving him a warriors death instead. Amazing character, but very tragic story, if only there were a way to do his quest, and then somehow save him from what became of him from knowing the truth. Granted you'd still probably have to kill him in an arena fight for Grand Champion, but at least he'd still get to have a warriors death.
If you win an arena match you can refresh and clean yourself after each fight. I once did not do that and spelt there and if I recall correctly, thats how I got my vamperism once many years ago.
In other fantasy settings, he would be known as a Dhampir, the result of a vampire and human coupling. He fits all of the hallmarks of being a Dhampir and I believe that was the intent of his chadacter.
Did i miss it or is it not covered whether the mother was ever turned or even got the poryphiric disease and cured it later (by simply praying, id guess)? It would make sense to me that it wouldnt pass from the father. The mother would be more plausible.
I mean his skin is a grey green not a pale green which having grey skin is normal for most vampires is TES at least at some levels... Although grey orkoids in atleast other media are very common but not in TES or oblvin... So yeah he is 100% half imperal vampair even if he only shows the grey skin trait... Although his skin is a much darker greay then the first 2 levels of vampires in olblian so that is odd... Although his skin could have been a lighter grey then got darker as he aged being that half vampires are uber rare in fiction/myth there is next to no data to go on... Which it could be a solution to many vampires fear of not having a legacy and continmuation of their folk. As if they can have a kid that inherts only the goood stuff would put them at ease so they could just die in peace even. Regardless of how long they would have to try for as they have time...
Its weird how it's implied he's a supernaturally talented fighter, but he's just a normal orc. He doesn't have any of the issues of being a vampire like the sun hurting him or blood thirst. I wonder if this means the children of vampires are just super humans with none of the actual curse elements
I wished for Agronak to live so whenever I play Skyrim with an orc I roleplay him as Agronak coming back from the grave 200 years later. Kind of like Trevor Belmont in Castlevania Lord of Shadows. 😅
I always felt so awful for Agronak. His mother passes away without explaining anything, just giving him a key so he can go and be attacked by and kill his own father? I always felt it was a missed opportunity to save Agronak. He WAS the son of a nobleman, and a noble man himself. Also, I think it was pretty terrible of his mother to simply lock his father away and run, when his father had done nothing to her to justify it, besides being wrong in not revealing his “disorder” to her from the beginning. He seemed to be holding it together pretty well, as she apparently had no idea of his condition until he told her. There are so many elements this story could’ve explored, especially the idea that you can overcome the mistakes of your parents and the way you’re born doesn’t have to determine who you become.
I don't know if there were any other dhampirs in Elder Scrolls lore, but I kinda wish there was an option to convince him to become a vampire hunter. Imagine if he lead the Dawnguard in the Skyrim DLC Yes I want Blade in Elder Scrolls
his half breed status a vampire works becuse Orsimer are children of the Daedric Prince of Curses. AND vampirism is a curse, thus enabling tge possibility of a half vampire because curses have a unique resonance with Orc kind.
Given the lore behind interspecies pregnancies in The Elder Scrolls, I had taken to seeing it as a fluke that he had been born, but that he had only gotten his pale complexion from his father. Since children always take the mother's race.
Personally I found him one of the more memorable characters in Oblivion. The Orcs in Oblivion always seemed to be comic relief figures. But Agronak was a tragic figure. I think he was great in battle because of his Orc qualities, and because he was motivated to prove himself. His sense of himself as descended from a lord was the motivating factor. He was discarded for being an Orc but he knew he was something more. When he finds out his father is also "a monster" it completely shatters his sense of himself. It's a shame wasn't an option to save him.
Very well put! Definitely a sad end for such a compelling character!
After the first time I ever played the arena quests I always forgo the option to get the info for him during following playthroughs just because I feel bad for him and want him to have his honorable death instead of the sad one he resigns himself to if you complete his quest.
There is a way to save him. Just never tell him the truth.
Having to kill such a defeated Agronak was really a stand-out moment in the Arena storyline of Oblivion
For me it was like he realized "I'm a half vampire? Oh shit thats why I'm in the blood works..." just ruining any hope of heroism. In the end you realize that your not killing some random like before. You're killing a guy with a mom, a dad, hopes and dreams. A guy who actually shares more in common with you than most the people in Nirn and you made him hate himself, teach you his secret moves and then killed him. It was at this point in the game I realized I had actually killed one of my best friends.
I always found it odd the fact he was made by a vampire. But what was really sad is how it drove him to essentially suicide by your hand in the arena, how he couldn’t take something which was not his own fault. Really tragic.
Yeah definitely an unfortunate ending, he was seemingly an honourable person too, so it’s a shame he let it get to him
@yes. When I play the area quests again, I decide not to compete the grey prince quest and challenge his full power and let him die with honor
I found his reaction a bit tone-deaf to the lore context. "Oh no, my father has a disease from a dark god... Unlike my orc mother who followed our traditional dark god."
@@FairiseNoughmalacath is no where near as evil as molag bal. Huh now that I realize it his name sounds like molech and baal the pagan gods.
@@FairiseNoughI'm pretty sure most orks in oblivion were worshiping the nine and 200 years later as the empire is falling apart they started worshiping Malacath again
I always felt that Agronak did inherit some of the Vampirism from his Father- Thus why he excelled in the Arena, cause Vampirism gives a bonus to strength, Speed, and Athletics. But without the negatives to come with Vampirism like not wanting to drink blood, damaged by the sun, or spreading the vampiric disease- He is the perfect hybrid of Vampire and orc, making the absolute peak killing machine.
As quoted by Owyn "-He says he's only half Orc. What I want to know is, what's the other half? Cause it sure ain't human..."
Basically the second coming of the Nerevarine.
@@PunYT but vampirism is curable. It has to be a disease that is incurable yet doesn’t affect the host.
@@zecaptainpegleg8820 Is what he has curable though? Could we have cured him of who he was?
I would argue that he DID inherit a certain bloodthirst, since he makes his living by killing people.
He may not need it to survive, but he is invigorated by the blood(shed) of others. He seems to like hanging out right next to that pool of blood seeping in from the arena above.
Since he doesn't know he's half vampire, the thought of consuming blood probably never occured to him. He could essentially be getting all the perks of being a stage 4 hungry vampire (the major stat boosts), but without the need to actually feed to reduce the negative symptoms.
Regular human food sustains him, his full orc face hides any gauntness, his pigmented orc skin protects from sunlight damage, and being the arena champ wins him lots of fans, helping to counteract the social consequences of vampirism.
Then when he learns that it isn't just his hard work and ingrained sense of honor that's gotten him this far - that he's basically been using cheats the entire time - he can no longer take pride in his position and thus has nothing to live for.
That's all just my read of the situation.
@@zecaptainpegleg8820Not exactly: Yes, Vampirism comes from a disease (Sanguinare Vampiris, Porphyric Hemophilia and Noxiphilic Sanguivoria) that can be cured by simple magic or potions, but once the disease has been allowed to fester you are no longer “diseased” you’re magically cursed that renders you undead and ties your soul Molag Bal’s realm. It’s possible to break the curse for Vampirism, but in Oblivion and Morrowind it’s a long time consuming and difficult quest that requires esoteric magics and rare ingredients, and even in Skyrim where the cure is much simpler to get, you still need to strike a bargain with Daedra and trade another mortal soul to lift your curse.
"I thought my father was a nobleman, not some blood sucking monster."
"I don't see much of a difference to be honest."
Depends if hisbfathwr was Count Hassildor, a vampire, yes. But he is an excellent count for Skingrad, just look at how wealthy skingrad is.
@@sdaly5391 well we know his father wasn't that so
@@sdaly5391his father wasn't the count of Skingrad
Imagine if LeBron James discovered his father was a vampire and thats why he's so good at basketball
This is my favourite comment now 😂
Honestly he could have been a recurring follower or character. Imagine him leaving the area cause he believes he isn't worthy of his championship so instead he makes himself a champion to the people slaying monsters and etc and he joins your character even after the oblivion events he pops back up in skyrim but as a dawnguard follower.
He would’ve been such a cool character to have as a follower! Very powerful!
That is a god-tier idea, i like it.
Time for somebody to make a mod!
That’d be cool if Skyrim didn’t take place 200 years later
@@23rascel Yeah, because there are no instances in the elder scrolls lore, where someone lives longer than usual.
I get your point, but this fact could be overcome by making up a story about said character, a chosen of divine / daedra who decided they should live longer, most probably for his service to the people / daedric prince (the latter less likely, given his character traits), the fact that he is half vampire, and we don't know much about their aging, it could be slower for all we know. Of course there are the means of advanced alchemy / magic, although I don't believe the Gray Prince would be capable of such magic.
Sure, it may be nonsense if you really don't want him to live that long, but there is always the possibility.
Every time I get around to doing that quest, I always wish I could tell him, "Oh, come on. Being part vampire isn't THAT bad." I say as I'm a vampire already.
Poor Agronak gro-malog, he was always one of my favorite characters.
Same here! He was too good of a guy to go out like that!
Certainly a memorable character that's for sure
Right! I remember the blue team archer getting so sad when you best him... "he was my friend"...
There is a hypothetical that someone like the arena master was aware of his nature and provided him blood without his awareness in his daily meals.
There is, after all, a vampire right there in the city who could profit from the arena games.
I hate that they capped him at level ten. I would have preferred him to be set as twenty to forty levels above me. A winnable fight in this game, but tough enough to make you really consider how you want to end the quest. A straight up fight in the arena or talking him into taking a dive. Missed opportunity there.
Yeah it’s honestly such a weird thing. The 🐐 of fighting is hard locked at level 10 😂
@@ABardsBallad I'm going to go out on a limb and say they probably didn't put a whole lot of thought into that decision.
@@JKM395 Levels in Elderscrolls games are always wonky. I always look for mods to make the levels make more sense.
Orsimer + Vampire. This guy was the ultimate warrior.
LOAD THE SPACESHIP WITH THE ROCKET FUEL HOKE HOGAN!
Built Ford tough 🫡
@@ABardsBallad Have you compared his stats to that of other orcs at the same level?
He's basically a super soldier, since he'd have some of the vampiric traits like the heightened strength and speed
It's tragic that there was no way to try and convince the Prince that he isn't a monster. A Vampire may have sired him, but said Vampire also seemed to have humanity left - he was at the minimal stage of Vampirism, keeping it hidden and contained. He seemed to feel real love for Agronak's mother, and if she hadn't reacted with fear and disgust - the way Agronak reacted to himself, go figure - there is every chance that his father would have become ever-more Human, as the idea of fatherhood seemed to grant him the kind of happiness and excitement you just don't see from other vampires. It was being locked in his room and being driven mad from decades of starvation that reduced Lord Lovidicus into the normal example of a feral monster that many Vampires become, not his own will, want or nature.
Agronak has never felt the need to drink blood. He has never unjustly hurt someone outside of honourable area combat that we ever hear about, and from his personality it's pointless to think he has. He does not burn in the light of the sun, so Arkay's ire is not upon him like it is other vampires.
Hell, Vampires are undead. There's every chance that they should be incapable of siring children naturally. The fact that Lord Lovidicus believed it to be a miracle is something I honestly always held true to. He is a Vampire not too dissimilar from the Count of Skingrad, who was blessed with fatherhood due to seemingly resisting his nature and blending in not to infiltrate, but to just live as human. We don't rightly know how he fed, but there were never untoward rumours or anything. It's possible he fed on criminals in his jurisdiction or something.
At worst, he's faster and stronger than he should have been... but there's nothing inherently evil about him. I wish we could have made this clear to him. Convince him to step away from the arena for a while, get his head straight, come back refreshed and full of vigour. I always liked the idea that if he embraced the idea that what he was doesn't dictate WHO he is, he could improve his latent abilities enough to where after he is seemingly killed in the arena against you, he can make a miraculous recovery from seemingly mortal wounds with the help of healing mages and whatnot, since he had plenty of friends and fans around. Maybe even a companion!
I loved the uniqueness of his story.
The whole thing with his Gray Prince moniker is noble blood. That belief that his parentage defines him was ingrained well before he knew that parentage was vampiric.
Dude even though he's not really a vampire, i mean, cmon, the crowd of a BLOOD SPORT ARENA would probably go wild for a grey prince heel-turn vampire arc, would have allowed the arena to bring in a young up-and-comer to play face
Huge plot hole. Lord Lovidicus states in his journal that he had meetings with other nobles about taxes and trade negotiations with other aristocrats. He also mentions a few times that he has to hide his identity, all of this implies that he was a fairly public figure. His lover locks his bedroom door to trap him... Not one of his servants ever tried to open the door? This landed member of the nobility suddenly stops coming out of his room, and soldiers don't break down the door to rescue him or see if he died? He was important enough to be in charge of certain aspects of the realms taxation, and the Crown never investigated what happened to him?
The only thing I could think of was that he was shunned for loving an Orc.
@@littlesongbird1 But he was a Nobleman. Even if he was shunned for that, there would still be soldiers looking to get paid, and the Count of either Anvil or Skingrad would have been responsible for him, and wondered where the tax revenue he paid them was going. They would have no doubt sent messengers and then soldiers up to see why this member of the nobility stopped paying them.
In discovering what happened they would have either killed him or been murdered by him, but in either case that door would have had to be opened.
I mean its a stretch, but the implication from Agronak is that Lovidicus is presumed dead. He never says to go see him, or implies that Crowhaven is anything but a ruin.
There's any number of presumable stories that could explain what happened; perhaps in his immediate absence, someone staged a coup and claimed the site, before themselves being killed, perhaps Agronak's mother told a few people on her way out, so they immediately acted to either assume command, or perhaps purge and evacuate to wherever, perhaps, word made it to Hassildor (or whatever he went by at the time), and the entire site was condemned to prevent rumors of vampires spreading.
It's not entirely a hole, since there's enough material to work with to come up with logical explanations, but it is an unfortunately barren part of the story I'd be interested to know, too.
I also think it's fair to say that it being an "empire fort" is a bit of a gameplay concession, much like the ayleid "cities" being mostly linear caverns with no apparent infrastructure or means to support a population of anything at any time.
i assume count hassildor sensed him and didn't send men to find him not very good an explanation but the best i cant think of
Political murder perhaps....
Absolutely love the phrase "perfect level 10 warrior", gave me a good chuckle every time I heard it. As for a slightly more serious note, perhaps being half orc may have been the key to such a miraculous birth, that little extra special seasoning that makes a half vampire possible
😂 yeah I really wanted to drive home to point that he’s a skilled fighter, but not against anyone who’s played the game for
More than 5 hours 😂
I really wish you can tell Argonak Gro-Malog that he is still a great warrior despite his vampire origins and encourage him to fight in the arena like he does in the arena like a true grand champion would.
There's a mod that let's you convince him to become a Vampire Hunter.
Me too! Would’ve been a nice option! Mercilessly striking him down in the arena seems like such an oblivion thing to do 😂
Agronak is basically Blade
Honestly very true 😂
Das racist ;)
Had the same thought when he started listing his strengths lmfao
@@chicksandwichDu bist Rassist
Was looking for this comment, he was a sunwalker just like Blade
I believe his quest was made quite early in the development of Oblivion, when vampires was its own race (check UESP). It would make sense as to why he would have been “half vampire” since currently vampires are just beast, men and mer inflicted with a disease.
That would make sense! A lot changed while making the game!
Vampires are separate races in all TES games but this is just a technical thing. Morrowind (possibly an earlier game but morrowind for sure) already established how vampires work, i.e. they are people of existing races.
The thing that changed that I wanted so badly as a kid when the game came out was for the interaction with the dogs
And then finding out that the dog that was in the promo demo became a rug@@ABardsBallad
@@gackybassSame in Daggerfall but vampirism is cooler because you actually die from the disease and wake up in a tomb instead of just getting the funny red flash and presto changeo you're a vampire now
My character had such high personality and infamy, his vampire dad and i got along just fine.
😂 the lord of Crowhaven recognizes real
Do you think Molag Bal has the same claim over the souls of half vampires as he does other vampires? Since vampires were created to insult Arkay’s balance of life and death, I fear Bal would view a living soul conceived by a vampire as the cherry on top to his insult.
I wonder how Malacath would feel about that
I think that the afterlife is something that is going to be rewritten entirely in ES6
@@jonathanwells223 it’s always rewritten, as the afterlife is fully dependent on belief, if you follow the Nordic ways then you can go to sovngarde, if you are a werewolf then you join the eternal hunt with hirciene and so on.
@@zecaptainpegleg8820 Sometimes souls are stolen regardless of belief and actions. You have vampires and werewolves that were forcibly turned, souls sacrificed to Soul Carin. Coldharbor gained *thousands* of innocent souls during the planemeld. And if dark brotherhood dogma is correct, all their victims are taken to the void.
I always thought it was interesting that if you pursue teaching him about his lineage he won't fight you back so then when you kill him if you're not a part of the Dark brotherhood it counts as your initiation kill.
Yeah that’s a very good point! I wonder what the threshold is for the dark brotherhood. Maybe killing someone in that way is enough to get a visit
@@ABardsBallad yeah I guess because he was not defending himself it counts as murder but I usually do that way so I don't have to kill like a guard or unique NPC the one time I did run into that dark elf that is eventually a Target later on in the dark brotherhood he can be killed at any point I did that once for my initiation lol
I always felt so bad for him. I never wanted to kill him like that but I understood. 👍job. Glad you covered his story.
Yeah a truly tragic story! I’m glad to finally have gotten this one off of paper and onto UA-cam!
I think his tale is perhaps one of the most saddest and tragic of all the NPCs in Oblivion. I had to wish there was a way or some way to save Agronak. All he wanted was to show the world at an orc can be noble in deed and valor. I really felt kind of guilty for having to kill him in order to complete the quest. He certainly deserved better than what befell him. Vaya con Dios y en paz descansen, Agronak. 😢
Honestly the most interesting part to me about him is the implications that at one time, Orc servants weren't totally out of place prior to them being recognized as citizens of the third empire, Given they weren't recognized as such until quite recently to Morrowind and Oblivion.
To the best of my knowledge, Agronak is a notable character in that he is the only known half orc in the setting that we know of. I find it a bit odd that people always focus on the half vampire side of him, but never the half orc side, especially when it comes to how significant that would be for the lore.
Not really , for all their unique appearances Orcs in Elder Scrolls are just ugly Elves. And the verse is full of Half Elves.
There’s a restoration skill book in Skyrim (might be present in other games idk) that explicitly states man and mer can have children. In fact, Bretons are the result of high elves and humans.
@@gerinko7874 I'm fully aware, but that still doesn't change the fact that half ORCS are never mentioned outside of the grey prince.
@@ShadowMage yeah, true. Orcs are elves (orsimer) but are never mentioned as having any hybrid variants. Though, this opens the question to elves that aren’t high elves, like the wood elves. What would a half-bosmer be?
@@ShadowMage In TES, race is matrilineal. Agronak being "half" Orc is only significant on a family level, because he claims the lineage of a noble Imperial. As far as whatever passes for biology in Tamriel, he's as Orc as they come.
For context on the Bretons, they are believed to be the product of long-term crossbreeding during the Merethic era between the Nedic men and the Aldmer, who are the progenitors of all modern Mer, including Altmer, Bosmer, Chimer (who later became Dunmer), Orsimer, Dwemer, and weirder ones that show up in one random book like the Sea Elves and so on.
When you're looking at the Bretons, you're looking at microevolution over many generations, not a hybridization like you might see in a classic D&D setting.
He has already shown that an Orc can be honourable, as does a vampire.
His actions speak louder than his heritage.
He has already shows his deeds as Orc, so learning he is part vampire shouldn't be discouraging. I wish we could convince him to continue proving himself.
Just imagine him meeting Count Janus Hassildor, also a vampire, but someone who cares about his county and the people.
Or Lord Rugdumph gro-Shurgak, showing that orcs can be noble as well.
Or Mazoga, who used to be a bandit, but has turned around and is now on a journey to be a honourable knight.
Now, how he leaves the arena. He could just say that after so many fights, so much time as undefeated champion, he grew tired of it. Quitting while he is at the top.
And yes, I feel like Janus Hassildor would be a great mentor for the vampiric side.
Poor man, The Grey Prince, cursed to be an unknowing Vampire. Becomes so depressed after learning of his origins that he just accepts death. Too bad too, he'd likely be better off never knowing.
Great video bro, gotta agree, he's bittersweet.
It’s almost better to not do the quest, so he can have an honourable death! Cheers!
Thank you for this fine addition bard. Loved todays subject.
I appreciate the support! Glad you enjoyed the video! :)
“Leave the arena now and rest, you’ve EARNED IT”
"I am nothing but-again!"
😂😂😂
I felt so bad for even completing his quest :( poor guy was better off not knowing
Yeah I agree, probably better to let him die with his honor intact!
5:37 I never noticed before, but there's a minor error here. It says "gro-Malog" but it should say gra-Malog, as it's referring to a female.
Words can express the excitement when I see you upload ❤️
in terms of lore, Oblivion could have added a special lore with a new creature with Agronak, considering in Balkan mythology, there actually are instances of children of vampires and humans. They are called Dhampirs. Here's an excerpt from the Wikipedia entry:
Legends state that dhampirs were, for the most part, normal members of the community. But dhampirs, especially male, of paternal vampire descent could see invisible vampires and practice sorcery, often starting careers as vampire hunters, which would be practiced for generations from father to son. Some traditions specify signs by which the children of a vampire can be recognized. Albanian legends state they have untamed dark or black hair and are very cunning or courageous in nature. They are not attracted to blood and can eat normally like other human beings, though the option to bite other living beings in order to extend one's life is always an open choice.
When being compared to a vampire, dhampirs are said to be very lethal towards the blood drinkers, since a dhampir's blood and spit is like an acid for the vampires, making them impossible to be bitten. Due to having mixed blood, a dhampir will not be burned by the sun.
In Bulgarian folklore, possible indications include being "very dirty", having a soft body, no nails or bones (the latter physical peculiarity is also ascribed to the vampire itself), and "a deep mark on the back, like a tail." In contrast, a pronounced nose was often a sign, as were larger than normal ears, teeth or eyes. According to J. Gordon Melton, from his book, The Vampire Book: The Encyclopedia of the Undead, in some areas, a true dhampir possessed a "slippery, jelly-like body and lived only a short life-a belief ... that vampires have no bones."
I would wager that Agronak's unique circumstances have to do with the fact that there are two Daedric princes involved with his bloodline. Orcs as a species/race owe their existence to Malacath, and we know that he keeps a pretty close eye on them since he will answer to a ritual. However vampires are different, they aren’t born in the traditional sense, instead being a mutation of sorts to life, thanks to Molag Bal just being among the worst of the Daedric Princes.
So as a result, a vampire being created not through disease and the corruption of life, but rather through traditional birth to a species that are rather strongly tied to their own Daedric Prince would not necessarily bare the same disadvantages as your usual vampire.
Its most likely due to Malacath's influence that Agronak was able to live a relatively normal life until he was informed of his lineage and decided to commit self destruction by demigod. And one can assume that a large chunk of his strength and prowess in combat was due to his vampiric heritage, as even within TES lore, different vampire bloodlines yield different traits and abilities to the bloodkin that are part of those bloodlines, with some being more inclined towards magic, and others being more physically gifted.
Oblivion is still one of my favorite Elder Scrolls games. Good points on "The Gray Prince." I hated having to kill him to advance on my first play through. It would have been nice to have a quest that would help him become reconciled to his situation.
Im actually trying to make a character in Skyrim based off of Sanguinious from Warhammer40k, a beloved and respected humanoid vampire that had the body and soul of an angel.
But his wrath was terrifying to behold, known as the Black Rage. And even after his death at the hands of his brother, his sons still feel that pain and his Rage passed down to them.
And they still mourn him, 10,000 years later.
Orcs are just too much fun as characters!
your videos saves the day from boredom yet again thank you
I’m really glad to hear you enjoyed the video!
Another excellent dive, i did always wish for more with agronak or maybe you could abandon the arena all together, run off and have kids together. Maybe not that. But definitely would have been neat to have some choice where you go or you go together to the fort
Cheers! Yeah it would have been really cool to see this explored a bit more!
I have to admit, I kind of wish Dhampirs were a thing in Elder Scrolls, that would be awesome.
That would be an awesome addition!
Maybe they are, but there's nothing inherently special about them.
There's mods so you can convince him to let go of his fears and give the crowd an epic duel.
Great video. I loved your speculation as to alternate outcomes if Agronak hadn't immediately shut down and died. Would make a great quest mod or expansion for Skyblivion, or explored in ES6.
Laying next to my wife in bed right now as she's snoring beside me and I'm so comfy watching this. Thanks man! Glad you revisted the gray prince, I always felt bad for him.
Thx for the info
actually that's living the dream life bro
He was such a good guy 😔 and a great way to get started with the dark brotherhood 😛
😂 very true! A great passage into the greatest faction 😉
I did this quest recently and it hit me for as long as I had this game I had never done it before and usually just defeated him in the arena so I think it's a funny coincidence you made this in the same year.
I always did this side quest when I played oblivion. It’s a good one to be fair
It is an intentional if you ask me. Otherwise they could've just made him an actual vampire.
A very fair assessment!
"I thought my father was a nobleman, not a bloodsucking monster!"
Those aren't the same thing?
Not always.
I made a tabletop rpg character that was him convinced to keep going in love and became a Paladin of redemption
I was able to start the Dark Brotherhood questline during my playthrough of Oblivion by doing Agronak’s quest.
You could argue he might have some blood urges, hence why he was drawn to a position that is all about killing.
A really impressive quest in oblivion
Would have been really great to have a little more tlc put into his quest. This is one of those instances I can’t help but think of Fallout skill check/ speech checks and how if it was a Fallout quest there would have at least been a check to keep him from getting depressed
What I find odd is that Agronak knows it's a ruin, as if his mother told him or he remembers. Then follows the questions: If you get hired to be a servant to some guy living underneath a ruin, perhaps with skeletons about, how could you not suspect that at least something is up?
Weird how I was thinking of the gray prince today and then this video comes up
I just realized that the plot twist is right in his name, gro molag, molag bal the creator of vampires
It's actually "gro-Malog," not "gro-Molag." But you're right, the name does seem to be a hint.
I don't have anything to say, I just want to boost engagement. I didn't even know vampires could have kids in the elder scrolls.
I appreciate the support! I don’t think anyone knew 😂
It could be that the idea of a Dhampir was adapted into Agronak's story. After all, TES started as a homebrew setting for D&D, and Dhampirs do appear in D&D.
I really wish there was a way to bring him back up after getting him the journal. I felt like he deserved to know but I hated how depressed he got.
After I did his quest the first time I refused to do it anymore and let him go out in glorious Orc fashion as a Warrior with masses of his fans cheering him on in the place he adored.
Every time i search oblivion I get skyrim. This is great
I haven't gotten too far into the Arena questline
so I always thought The Gray Prince knew he was half vampire
mainly because I thought his title came from the fact he was really nice for a half vampire
and I theorized that he had the vampiric trait of needing blood that gets satiated from the Blood Fountains after each Arena Battle
There's only been one blade, there's only ever gunna be one blade
How is nobody else curious what happened to that lord?
How is that part of the map just forgotten?
The question is always as followed for me when i do the arena:
Do you tell Agronak the truth about his parentage? And risk him making the challenge easy? Or do you allow him to live in denial and fight you the best way possible and give the people the best show of their lives
It’s so tough! I like the idea of him being ignorant to his lineage, so he dies happy!
More than one mod available to more him fight normally even if you give him the journal
Racial phylogeny makes clear interracial offspring in TES take after the mother, so possibly he avoided the bulk of vampiric heritage while a vampiric mother (if that were possible) with an orc sire would have created something more fully vampiric. Racial trait heritability is somewhat mysterious in the real world and there's no reason to imagine it different in TES. I think he inherited some of the symptomatic effects of vampirism without the disease itself, and the orc half mitigated some of the worst ones because of orcs' natural robustness. A wonderful character, should have been an optional path to make him a follower, absolutely.
glad you covered this great character.
He’s the 🐐!
I do feel bad for Lovidicus. It does seem like normally they wouldn't have had the ability to have a kid, so maybe some deity like Mara was moved by their love and granted them an exception conception. There was a path to redemption there in the making. Instead he was forced to endure the self-consuming and potentially never ending hunger of his eternal curse. They had outs to his condition but she chose to do the easy thing, to betray him and lock him up.
Something funny to me about the arena is how the loading screens make it out to be somewhere to go for a friendly match when it's full on bloodsports. A friendly match would have been preferable with the Gray Prince to what really happens.
Nice vid as always
I appreciate it! :)
I really wish their was a way to spare him that concludes the quest on a higher note like if we surrender since he refuses to fight which either gives him a chance to actually fight where he scales up to player level or maybe becomes a follower because their existence is literally a miracle that they might be the only case in the entire universe of a half Vampire especially considering they have none of the downsides,
Albeit their is a chance that if they got infected that they could become a unique full vampire with an exceptionally strong level of Vampirism
I like the idea of the grey prince being a Dhampir
I wonder if Lord Lovidicus was a pure blood vampire like Lord Harkon from Skyrim? Also, maybe Argronak gro-Malog was a half vampire because he's an unintentional creation of two Daedric princes, Molag Bal (the vampire half) and Malacath (the orc half). That would then lead to the question, who has claim on his soul after he dies?
This quest was one of the first quests to just make me feel bad as the reward
grey-prince: go find information about my family
hero-of-kavatch: you father was a vampire
Grey-prince: im sad now
The real question is whether the fact that he was half-vampire ever became common knowledge, or if it only ever stayed between him and the hero of kvatch. We give him the only written proof, we're not entirely sure how much time canonically passes between that quest and our fight, and no one around us ever comments on him refusing to fight or seems to know the reason why he's so upset. It's possible that he never told anyone else and destroyed the book, leaving the record of the world's only half-vampire completely lost to history. I'm sure some altmer wizard would've loved to study him, and probably would've advanced tamrielic genetics by a lot.
It became common knowledge. People on the street will be heard talking about it after this quest is done.
I was really hoping ESO would give us a few more Dhampyr (The offspring of a male vampire, and mortal female, i.e Alucard from castlevania, etc) but I dont think we have anything concrete yet. I do wonder if female vampires can have children, as in most stories they cannot, I also wonder if some of the offspring would slowly go mad becoming some form of bloodfiend ghoul.
Yeah it would’ve been cool to see more of them in the lore! I’ve wondered the same myself!
There’s also the daedric aspect of them. Being technically mortal, would dhampyres have more agency over their own souls or would Molag Bal have default ownership of them? Knowing the sick bastard Bal is, he’d definitely try to.
The obvious comparison would be to a dhampir, a mythological version of what happens to the mortal offspring of a vampire. These are typically described as having some of the physical advantages of vampirism but being immune to it, and are often depicted as the ideal vampire hunters because they have some of the powers to keep up with one while not having the drawbacks. Agronak is likely intended to be a version of this idea, although his rather unsurprising response to learning of it leads to him just being ruined.
After this quest, I grow to hate Agronak's mother. I can understand her fear when discovering her former lover being vampire, but what god-damned purpose was her made-up story serving (she could just say her father was an Imperial soldier who soon after Agronak's birth left them never coming back or something similar that wouldn't inspire Agronak to search for his past), but even worse, what was the point of giving him a key and direction to Crowhaven. At best, Agronak would survive the encounter and got depressed either way, maybe even deciding to take his own life. At worst, Agronak would fell to a bunch of feral blood starved vampires. She kept her lie and at her deathbed, she gave him the key to answers, just so she wouldn't have to see consequences. But why didn't keep the truth to herself? Why setting him on path that she had to know would either kill him or break him? Perhaps lord Lovidicus was right, and she was just a monster, a monster that decided to torment her son in the end.
That's assuming a lot of foreknowledge the mother could not have had. She may not have known Lovidicus had spiraled and become blood-starved in her absence. She could not have known Agronak would take the news the way he does, at the unspecified point in the future when he would go searching for answers. She may not have known Agronak would even become a gladiator, nevermind the Champion of the Arena. She could not have known Agronak would decide to send an adventurer searching for his past in his stead.
I can easily see the thought process: on her deathbed, she knows Agronak isn't ready for the truth right now, but she believes he has a right to it, so she gives him the means to seek it out when he is ready. Instead, he becomes Champion, and the mixed pressures of fame as the Gray Prince and survival as a gladiator mean he cannot afford the time to even go himself.
The imagined reunion between an obviously troubled son and an estranged but possibly well-meaning father turns into a hired blade meeting a crazed vampire.
There is a tragic irony to it all, in that it seems everyone means well here, yet each character's actions further the spiral of loss despite their best intentions.
If there's something called half vampires, bethesda should really make it a thing, i do hope in es6, they can add these qualities it just seems so interesting seeing the origins of the gray prince and what he turned out to be. I was sorta disappointed that we never got anything like that in skyrim. It would have been cool to see a hybrid of vamp and werewolf or werebear. That is why oblivion really adds the mystery into its game, theres so many question marks and theories coming out, and skyrim truly lacks that mystery at times. Also, i can't wait to play skyoblivion 😂
There’s a half nord half imperial in red guard
Very interesting! I’ll have to take a look out for him!
His name is Tobias the channel called crendel shows him in a redguard review around the 25 minute mark i couldn’t find any other videos that show him
Not a lot of talk about Agronak's mother-kind of a shame, cause she's literally the other half of the equation.
Elder Scrolls lore says children take the race of their mother, and the in-game book "Racial Phylogeny" says orc reproduction is not well understood, with no documented cases of inter-racial pregnancy (neither established or refuted). The lore also states Vampires, being soulless creatures, are undead, and cannot bear children.
Taking this into account, a more pragmatic, lore-based revelation (or retcon, depending on how you look into it) might be: Agronak's mother had relations with Lord Lovidicus, but also another-she became pregnant by this other person (possibly non-orc, given Agronak's pale skin), but to preserve her honor (and status), she claims it was Lord Lovidicus' child.
Unable to reconcile her lies, her attitude causes Lord Lovidicus to send her away as outlined in his journal. She raises Agronak in the Imperial City, and continues to lie, feeding him stories about a noble birth-but Agronak believes her, and is inspired and motivated by the tale. By his own merits, he rises to the rank of Arena Grand Champion.
In-game, Agronak states his mother "died recently"...what's to say that after a life-time of lies, racked with guilt, Agronak's mother finally gives him the key to the truth before her death, still unable to tell him herself. As a result, Agronak discovers the truth, but still partially believes his mother, leading to the false belief of being half-vampire, despite such a thing being seen as impossible.
Kind of makes it even more tragic, in a way...that such an impossibility (within the lore) would be believed by so many, within the world.
...I typed way too much for something no one is probably gonna read, lmao.
I read it! Definitely an interesting theory! I appreciate your comment! :)
Played Oblivion a lot growing up and always did the Arena first, only ever did his quest maybe two times. Just didn't feel right for him to know the truth just to more or less commit suicide by letting you kill him. Preferred fighting him as the warrior he is, giving him a warriors death instead. Amazing character, but very tragic story, if only there were a way to do his quest, and then somehow save him from what became of him from knowing the truth. Granted you'd still probably have to kill him in an arena fight for Grand Champion, but at least he'd still get to have a warriors death.
If you win an arena match you can refresh and clean yourself after each fight. I once did not do that and spelt there and if I recall correctly, thats how I got my vamperism once many years ago.
In other fantasy settings, he would be known as a Dhampir, the result of a vampire and human coupling. He fits all of the hallmarks of being a Dhampir and I believe that was the intent of his chadacter.
Did i miss it or is it not covered whether the mother was ever turned or even got the poryphiric disease and cured it later (by simply praying, id guess)? It would make sense to me that it wouldnt pass from the father. The mother would be more plausible.
I hate that killing him is always considered to be murder. Which means you have no choice but to start the Dark Brotherhood quest next time you sleep
Whenever I played a morally decent character, it was a great chance to give Agronak some mercy and kill Lucien when he speaks to me
It would have been cool to be able to recruit him for the Knights of the Nine as a Vampire Hunter.
What sword are you using in the clips? Looks sick
“Lord Lovidicus” is funny
Doing crowhaven early is nice since it's close to the end of the knights of the nine quest.
Comment tax fulfilled
I mean his skin is a grey green not a pale green which having grey skin is normal for most vampires is TES at least at some levels... Although grey orkoids in atleast other media are very common but not in TES or oblvin... So yeah he is 100% half imperal vampair even if he only shows the grey skin trait... Although his skin is a much darker greay then the first 2 levels of vampires in olblian so that is odd... Although his skin could have been a lighter grey then got darker as he aged being that half vampires are uber rare in fiction/myth there is next to no data to go on... Which it could be a solution to many vampires fear of not having a legacy and continmuation of their folk. As if they can have a kid that inherts only the goood stuff would put them at ease so they could just die in peace even. Regardless of how long they would have to try for as they have time...
I was wondering if this was the angle you be examining. Thinking about it, I didn't think Orcs could breed with other races. 😅
Its weird how it's implied he's a supernaturally talented fighter, but he's just a normal orc. He doesn't have any of the issues of being a vampire like the sun hurting him or blood thirst.
I wonder if this means the children of vampires are just super humans with none of the actual curse elements
I wished for Agronak to live so whenever I play Skyrim with an orc I roleplay him as Agronak coming back from the grave 200 years later. Kind of like Trevor Belmont in Castlevania Lord of Shadows. 😅
I always felt so awful for Agronak. His mother passes away without explaining anything, just giving him a key so he can go and be attacked by and kill his own father?
I always felt it was a missed opportunity to save Agronak. He WAS the son of a nobleman, and a noble man himself.
Also, I think it was pretty terrible of his mother to simply lock his father away and run, when his father had done nothing to her to justify it, besides being wrong in not revealing his “disorder” to her from the beginning. He seemed to be holding it together pretty well, as she apparently had no idea of his condition until he told her.
There are so many elements this story could’ve explored, especially the idea that you can overcome the mistakes of your parents and the way you’re born doesn’t have to determine who you become.
An Orc Damphire! That's what's great about The Elder Scrolls.
I don't know if there were any other dhampirs in Elder Scrolls lore, but I kinda wish there was an option to convince him to become a vampire hunter. Imagine if he lead the Dawnguard in the Skyrim DLC
Yes I want Blade in Elder Scrolls
his half breed status a vampire works becuse Orsimer are children of the Daedric Prince of Curses. AND vampirism is a curse, thus enabling tge possibility of a half vampire because curses have a unique resonance with Orc kind.
Given the lore behind interspecies pregnancies in The Elder Scrolls, I had taken to seeing it as a fluke that he had been born, but that he had only gotten his pale complexion from his father. Since children always take the mother's race.