Black soul lore is a f*cking mess.
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/lfih39/written_in_uncertainty_asks_who_is_mannimarco/gmr3c28/
