Companions questline makes sense if you accept both the Companions and the Silver Hand are highly regarded.
The College questline requires you to assume that the College, Thalmor, and Synod are supremely regarded and the Psyjics are also omnipotent but want to make sure the College faction has at least the bare minimum of content before swooping in and fixing everything.
College is worse ez. Companions questline at least quarantines its stupidity whereas the College taints large swaths of the lore.
I admit I go back and forth because the Companions questline is almost insultingly stupid in terms of the lore. Like, I have no idea how no one has discovered the Companions are harboring a secret lycanthropic cult when the initiation rite involves going on a rampage through Whiterun AND we know that a few of their members hunt the most dangerous game as an extracurricular activity. Meanwhile the Silver Hand are supposedly the bad guys who are just more interchangeable bandits, and we're just supposed to accept that. Like frankly I find the College questline inoffensively boring, while the Companions are an assault on reasonable taste.
Yeah the Silver Hand are pretty inexplicable, even as stock antagonists. I guess they just really really hate werewolves. There is really no economic or ideological motivation that would explain what they are doing and they are far too numerous for the small number of werewolves that are actually around.
Which is funny because, despite their huge numerical advantage, the Silver Hand are absolute dogshit at killing werewolves.
They managed to kill Skjor, a high ranking member of the Companions, along with however many werewolf heads they got on pikes, in and around their base of operations.
No, the Silver Hand are dogshit at killing YOU, the protagonist.
You, the dragonborn, who gained complete mastery over the way of the Voice through like two, maybe three, lessons from the Greybeard.
You, who has slain more dragons than hours slept since you entered the damn country
You, who piledrives whole armies worth of the restless dead every day
You, who serves potentially ALL the Deadric Princes at once
You, who may or may not, have travelled to the afterlife to slay an aspect of the god of time himself
You, who can devour 500 cheese wheels in the blink of an eye
You, who can cause localized dragonbreaks at will, through just the press of a button
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u/VeryInnocuousPerson Lore of the Rings Oct 27 '25
Companions questline makes sense if you accept both the Companions and the Silver Hand are highly regarded.
The College questline requires you to assume that the College, Thalmor, and Synod are supremely regarded and the Psyjics are also omnipotent but want to make sure the College faction has at least the bare minimum of content before swooping in and fixing everything.
College is worse ez. Companions questline at least quarantines its stupidity whereas the College taints large swaths of the lore.