#eboriginal

Mannimoon is in Skyirm!

Posit:

*Arena: expose a charlatan emperor and rescue the real one.

*Daggerfall: decide the fate of a superweapon that everyone wants for their own purposes, both nefarious and not.

*Battlespire: save an Atherial space station from being overrun by daedra.

*Redgaurd: help a dude find his sister and fend off a Sload attack.

*Morrowind: indirectly bring about the downfall of three "gods" by saving Morrowind from a guy trying to get revenge on said gods by turning everyone into ascended, and possibly enlightened, hive mind zombies.

Oblivion: stop a bastard royal from using Mehrunes Dagon to eat Tamriel. I only played it once and still don't really know what Camoran's thing was, besides the obvious. Martin was the best part. By design, I imagine.

Skyrim: depending on who you ask, Alduin either wants to eat everything, or he doesn't want to eat everything, and instead wants to reinstate his god-kingship over Skyrim, which daddy Aka takes offense to, thus the creation of dragonborn us. Fav, of course, because reasons.

ESO base game: Molag Bal wants to eat Nirn, and so does Mannimarco. Ok for Bal, not for Mani. Because Reasons.

ESO Morrowind/Clockwork/Summerset: Nocturnal wants to eat Nirn, and so do Clavicus vile and Mephala, to a slightly lesser degree. And also the Sload. Or something. Idk.

ESO Craglorn: Snek wants to kill everything because that's what he does. Also annoying wood elf and her domme are very gullible. I really wanted to like this one.

ESO Orsinium: new king of Orsinium needs help cementing his rule and stabilizing his country/province. Haven't finished this but looks cool.

ESO Dark brotherhood: corrupt priest of Akatosh is fucking his city over and blaming the db, I think. Haven't finished it yet. Looks cool so far. Timed challenges suck though.

*ESO thieves guild:

ESO Blackwood: Mehrunes Dagon wants to eat Nirn. Does have precedent. Obviously ripped from Oblivion, but not in an annoying way i don't think. I mostly like this one. Started out very slow but gets cool later.

ESO Deadlands: actually varies from Blackwood a bit. Dagon cultist wants to take over a neutral plane of oblivion and offer it to Dagon, presumably out of revenge for the city slighting her in some way. Petty and plausible. First impressions though, still haven't finished yet. Love the daedric lands. Really cool. House of whims lol.

ESO Elseweir/Dragongaurd: Tharn's bitchy sister wants to turn Rimmen into her very own mini empire. Also some really pissed off dragons want to become the moon. Political motive a bit heavy handed, but plausible. Dragon stuff was fun if you don't take it too seriously. Necromancy sadly underutilized.

ESO Skyrim/Reach: a cabal of vamps want to free their own from eternal servitude with Molag Bal and have their own plain of oblivion to themselves. Skyrim part started out cool but ended dumb. Reach part was better. Rada al-Saran is the shit. Could be a great story if it was told better.

Learning that Tharn was originally intended to be ESO's big bad makes the whole MQ make much more sense, I think.

Tharn is a loyal Empire man to the core, and he's sick of all these itinerant Emperors gutting his beloved State. For better or worse, the Emperor must be imbued with Divine right, or the throne is inherently unstable (in his opinion). The chaos of the interregnum as a whole reflects this. Tharn believes in the Dragon, but sometimes needs must, and so he looks for a way to push the god's hand in divinely selecting a new favorite for the throne.

Mannimarco at this point is just a lobbyist in a cold war with Vanus over the public opinion of his favorite subject. Tharn meets him through a shared interest in magical studies. Mostly Daedric conjuration, but a bit of the old necromancy as well. His ideas for its use as troop support are especially interesting. He also seems to have an unusually keen insight into the nature of the Dragon. Mannimarco posits that Akatosh might be forced to pick a new fav if Nirn is somehow existentially threatened. Tharn doesn’t like this, but he's desperate, so they make a deal to engineer a threat so big that the Dragon can't possibly ignore it.

In return, Mannimarco will be hailed as a savior of the realm for his role in "discovering and aiding" the Dragonborn Emperor, and will receive a permanent appointment to the Elder Council: Something that would assure necromancers get a say in the laws of the land, thus solidifying his cult of personality and allowing him his longed-for ascension via hero-worship. Tharn doesn’t necessarily have to believe in this either. It only matters that Mannimarco does. Being a diplomat, Tharn would be familiar with elven beliefs.

The player would start the game the same, with Lyris helping us escape, and with Caldwell finding us a hole in the barrier to crawl out of, and with Varen using his knowledge of prophecy to be in the right place at the right time. In this version, an out of control cult of Molag Bal are the ones who sacrifice us, Mannimarco having pretended to ally with them in order to enact his plan.**

We would then continue fighting for one of the Alliances. All the faction quests would go as normal, but with only the other Alliances and Cyrodiil as enemies, not the Worm Cult. Or maybe the Worm Cult in some key places, since Mannimarco is now in charge of keeping Bal busy while they figure out how to undo this mess they caused. Meanwhile, we would slowly be uncovering the conspiracy, culminating in us re-sealing the liminal barrier in much the same way we do now, with Tharn’s and maybe even Mannimarco's help. As part of the reveal, moth priest Varen tells us that an Emperor is already preordained, so they'll just have to suck it up until the dude is born. Nice try, y'all.

Even the Coldharbour invasion can go as-is, given that we need to be inside Bal's plane to reseal the barrier. Vanus gets dragged into helping due to his greater influence outside of Cyrodiil, which doesn’t have the resources to mount an invasion of Coldharbour while still fending off attack from the three big babies/Alliance leaders. Vanus was supposed to get them to agree to a temporary truce, but our quest with him reveals how well that works out. His snafu with the teleport can go as is, and all/most of the Coldharbour quests can be pretty much the same.

Naturally, the public knows nothing of this, and just assumes that Bal randomly decided to invade all by himself. It wouldn’t be the first time, after all.

PS: It occurs to me that Tharn's actions in Elseweyr might be how his original MQ mission was supposed to go. The Elseweyr MQ was awesome btw. A few holes and clichés here and there, but overall very cool, and politically plausible too.

https://www.reddit.com/r/teslore/comments/lfih39/written_in_uncertainty_asks_who_is_mannimarco/

One thing I never see get mentioned is that the Mannimarco in ESO cannot be the same person as the Mannimarco in Oblivion or the King of Worms in Daggerfall.This is simply because ESO's guild memo on soul trapping mentions that Mannimarco's minions had knowledge of a soul trap spell that could trap black souls in white gems, and details Vanus Galerion's dumb plan to make the world forget that spell by creating a new soul trap spell that could only trap white souls in white gems.And the whole plot of the Mage's Guild in Oblivion is about how Mannimarco and the Worm Moon are working together to bypass Arkay's divine intervention in order to create Black Soul Gems, which can catch black souls even using Galerion's version of the soul trap spell.But, like, if either Daggerfall Manni or Oblivion Manni were the same person as ESO Manni, why would they bother to invent black soul gems at all?? Why wouldn't they just teach their followers the Soul Trap spell that works on black souls, a spell that the ESO Mannimarco canonically knows? Then your followers could just use white soul gems to trap and manipulate black souls. Isn't that easier than ascending to godhood to eclipse Arkay so your followers can do a spoopy ritual to convert regular soul gems into black ones?Ergo the only rational explanation: ESO Manni is not the same as the other two. Further complicating the "Who is Mannimarco?" question. (I mean I guess there's one other rational explanation: that this is a colossal plot hole and fuck-up on behalf of the lore-writers, but that explanation isn't really as fun as tinfoil theories about multiple Mannimarcos)I guess the answer to the "Who is Mannimarco?" question is that he isn't a person, he's an identity, periodically adopted by different necromancers all throughout history. And I suppose the concept of Mantling plugs into this idea somehow, since it's TES lore and all.

The assertion that all souls and gems are the same and that it is solely the power of the soul itself, the size of the gem, and the type of spell that matters, really does completely overwrite the purpose of black gems even existing, even with Vastarie's note on the matter.

If a human can be trapped in a grand gem with the right spell, then black gems serve exactly no purpose. And the soul gems in ESO that we trap everyone with are technically grand gems, despite them not being the big spiky types you see in Skyrim (but are interestingly enough, similar to Oblivion's grand gems.)

https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/Grand_Soul_Gem_(Oblivion)

https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/Grand_Soul_Gem_(Skyrim)

And yet in both skyrim and oblivion you must use a black soul gem to capture npcs. This might make sense for oblivion, where the mages guild's strictures reign supreme, but not in skyirm, where it's stated by Phinis Gestor that those policies were never a thing to begin with, and so no neutered soul trap spell would have been taught period. And even in oblivion, you use the same damn spell to do both. How hard would it have been to put a "forbidden soul trap" tome in Mannimarco's lair to complement his shiny new black gems?

And what's worse is gameplay-wise, black gems are not even recognizably better than grand ones. Black gems are actually heavier in Skyrim even, so technically they are worse. It would have been nothing for the devs to give black gems a few extra points of oomph just to demonstrate their raw soul superiority without breaking game balance, but they don’t. Literally the only thing they have going for them is their ability to capture npcs that can talk, which even if you have zero moral qualms about it, isn't even a real benefit without cheats, given how rare the black gems are.

I repeat: the designation of NPC vs Creature is the only demonstratable difference between souls that work with grand gems and black gem-only ones.

Yeah yeah game mechanics, but even without the in-game experience, why the fuck would our supposedly devious and calculating worm guy go through all that trouble for nothing, given that in (new) lore he could just use his own ungimped soul trap and a regular old grand gem to torture the normies all he wants, as stated above?

Some Ideas:

1. Black gems are only special because they are god-keyed. The use of one is meant as an offering to your daedra/deity of choice, and are not generally seen outside of cults for this very reason. Oblivion Mannimarco's altar is meant to make offering-stones for his own faithful, not to replace grand gems as a wholesale thing. The fact that you can enchant with them also is either because the mechanics of offering are similar and we are just stealing it, or because he allows it, similar to how real life religions who use animal sacrifice still eat the animal they dedicate. This doesn’t actually explain anything, but it sounds cool.

2. Vanus in his guild note has no idea what the fuck he is talking about regarding who fits into what gem, and his getting laughed out of his own guild for positing such nonsense is one of the low points of his career. Which is especially sad because in another life he was a pioneer in the field of enchantment and thus presumably soul-study.**

3. The gems we use in eso are not normal grand gems like everyone thinks, but are actually a new black-like gem that is both popular and common due to Mannimarco's doings, but because of later Mages guild shenanigans, is eventually lost to everyone but the worm cult, which is why they can trap anything, up to and including Arkay's favorite races, as what seemed to be implied as their true purpose in Oblivion (via reddit anyway). This doesn’t explain why they look different in oblivion and skyrim, but whatever.***

4. Vanus's insistence on classifying souls into who is and is not acceptable to kill/soul trap is the catalyst for future powerful guild mages to literally god-bend the world to it's own take on morality, which by the time of Daggerfall, makes even certain clearly people-races/beings like orcs not actually count as people anymore. Ie, it's not Arkay's fault orcs in Daggerfall are considered white souls and thus can be trapped with a non-special gem/neutered soul trap spell, it's the mages guild's.

5. There *is* something about the "black-souled" races/peoples that doesn’t make black gems completely stupid and redundant, its just soul research is so damn stigmatized that no one knows what that something really is. So every inconsistency we see is actually part of some greater whole that we just can't see through to yet because of all the bullshit. aka idfk.

**Something even sillier about Vanus's note: the old soul system in ESO apparently was based on player level, with petty gems only being able to revive low level players and the like, which makes good sense with the idea of soul size being the only real thing, like they corrected earlier game inconsistency or something. But then Vanus goes and says that smaller souls are not sapient/sentient and larger ones are, which is just not true even in ESO's world. Does this mean he wouldn’t consider low-level us as a real person? O.O

I however have never played eso pre-tamriel unlimited and hardly play even now, so if there are any nuances of soul collection in that game that I missed here, please let me know, yeah?

***I forgot, dremora in both Skyrim and Oblivion are black soul gem only too, so if it is Arkay's fault, why does he care about dremora?

My head...

https://www.reddit.com/r/teslore/comments/2cowhz/eso_guild_memo_on_soul_trapping_describes_the/

https://www.reddit.com/r/teslore/comments/lfih39/written_in_uncertainty_asks_who_is_mannimarco/

https://www.reddit.com/r/teslore/comments/2cowhz/eso_guild_memo_on_soul_trapping_describes_the/cjhqi0p/?context=8&depth=9

https://www.reddit.com/r/teslore/comments/1viqa9/why_are_briar_hearts_souls_black_while_hagravens/cesttbz/

https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Order_of_Arkay

My first ever (pre-eso) take on both Arkay and Mannimarco was that Arkay was some kind of Empire shill who determined, by Imperial consensus and general sentiment of his worshippers, who was and was not a real person, and thus gave them the soul-trap advantage over anyone who was not Imperial-aligned, and/or possibly Aedra-aligned in general. All the races of TES where the being in question is a white soul despite having observable sapient-like intelligence are only trappable because Arkay just doesn’t care about them. And he has the power too, if you believe the ancient Nordic tales of how he is responsible for shortening the lives of Nords and possibly all men.

Arkay's race is never stated I don’t think, but if he was originally elven, it would also explain why the present-day Thalmor don’t hate him but do hate Talos, despite them both being ascended mortals. Talos was a man, Arkay may have been elven. They aren't butthurt over elves ascending, just human-humans. Also, several sources link or equate Xarses and Arkay, Xarses being definetly an elven god. When Allessia integrated Xarses/Arkay into the 8 divines, he became an empire-man, but his influence over life and death didn’t change, it just became empire-attuned. So Arkay is ruling-party biased by definition, whether he's with the men or the elves.

Mannimarco in contrast, was/is a heretic who seeks to level the playing field in typical TES overkill by usurping Arkay and thus offering those oppressed races, and anyone else who wants in, the opportunity for true moral-neutrality in matters of death. Instead of a privileged few getting away with not getting soul trapped because Arkay (and the empire of the day) says so, he's making it so everyone can be trapped, npc race or not. He can't usurp him entirely as we see in Oblivion, but he can do a little, through the infamous black gems.

He gets his cut of course, but in this world, where selling your soul to some eldrich horror divine or another is a normal everyday thing, who doesn’t? That’s why he sounds so angry in his oblivion books. Arkay really gets his goat for some reason, and this is a not-stupid reason. Heck, maybe in Daggerfall he had an orc girlfriend. Or maybe he's just really really pissed off by double standards. I know I am...

Another interesting thought: Vanus might hate the idea of soul trap because his kind, or former kind, were denied Arkay's blessing because of their status. This Morrrowind book talks about slaves being used in necro experiments, and even though serfs aren't technically slaves, I can see some asshole noble using his charges as fodder in some of those experiments in "extending Altmer lifespans".

Vanus wasn't allowed to learn to read as a kid, which is insane because Xarxe's charge to every Altmer is to keep a record of their achievements for posterity, and if you can't read, then how are you gonna write? But maybe that commandment only applies to those born closer to the top, yeah?

Though for some reason, Mannimarco's "well lets make it so EVERYONE can be soultrapped then, including your asshole kinlord!" doesn’t go over so well with him *shrug*.