Briarhearts. Replacing heart with something else is necromancy, right? There is said that Briarhearts will lose their will and humanity. If I´ll use my own opinion or any of my characters, I value free will as the most important thing. Humanity is...debatable, but losing free will...that´s just wrong.
I´m sorry if I sound too much biased here, I just really can´t emphatize with savages following half-witches half-crows using dark rituals.
Alright, my main issue is probably this. I pity them. Nords take their land, they decide to fight a guerilla war. That´s fine with me. But somewhere along the way, they decided to trow away their humanity. Of their own free will! Is there something more saddening then giving up your free will of your free will? If - big IF - they´ll drove the Nords away, how do you think would their society look in time of peace?
They decided to throw away everything that made them human to make Nords pay. If they had ever succeeded in that...well, it´s hard to say what would happen after that.
"Thus was brokered to the witch: his heart, his will, his humanity. From that day forth, his was a spirit of vengeance, pitiless and beyond remorse.The rebels grew in strength and numbers, and none could stand against them. Faolan's eyes burned coldly in those days, black opals reflecting a mind not entirely his own. Two years passed, and the foreigners were all but driven from the Reach."
No worries. There´s so much lore you can´t remember everything. I certainly don´t. It just happened that this line stayed in my mind when I was reading that book. When the came out I was huge fan of Forsworn and roleplayed as one of them, but my recent characters changed my views.
The Reachmen worship Hagravens and Daedra, so what? The Bosmers are cannibals, the Dunmers and Orsimers worship Daedric Princes and the Khajiits eat moon sugar to commune with their gods. Are these people evil because of that? As for the Forsworn labeled as terrorists, this is very funny. The Nords are pissed off because the Thalmor established an embassy in their lands and are forbidding them to worship Talos and now they are fighting against the Empire for religious freedom. This is super ironic because the Nords did EXACTLY THE SAME THING to the Reachmen centuries ago. If you ask Madanach about the Forsworn he will say "This was our land. We were here first. Then the Nords came and put chains on us. Forbid us from worshipping our gods. Some of us refused to bow. We knew the old ways would lead us back to having a kingdom of our own. That is who we are. The Forsworn. Criminals in our own lands. And we will cut a bloody hole into the Reach until we are free.". So I don't see them as terrorists because they are right to fight for their lands and religious freedom, just like the Nords are doing with the civil war.
I don't think this is a question that can be answered with a simple 'Yes' or 'No'. You cannot reduce an entire culture and all its people to a single statement, nor can you measure their actions and come to some kind of mathematical proof that they were a net positive or negative for civilization.
My personal view is that the source of most of the conflict in the Elder Scrolls either comes from a lust for power, or from a need for revenge from past injustice. The former is something more obvious that can be dealt with, the latter is messy and there's often no right answer on how to proceed. You can't exactly ask a culture to move past a legacy of murder and cruelty, but you also can't justify the crimes they commit in the name of vengeance.
So, I suppose my stance is that no one is right, all parties are at fault, and the pain and suffering that comes from the conflict between Nords and Reachmen is an avalanche that cannot be stopped until it has run its course. It's not fair, it's not just, but outside of genocide it's inevitable.
Bunch of savages who go around pretending to be poor victims but are always mumbling about painting the streets of Markarth with the blood of the nords. They also are known for attacking innocent travalers on the roads.
AND, as if it wasn't enough, they are also terribly boring to fight, on a gameplay perspective. I don't know if it's just me but from my experience Forsworn are the most coward enemies in the game. Sometimes they will "give up" and start to run away before I even lay a hit on 'em. More than once I had to chase down an entire camp of those annoying savages
Short story: I don't like them, neither do I feel sympathy for their cause.