Apr 14
TES writers really do just be writing whatever the fuck they want huh
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TES writers really do just be writing whatever the fuck they want huh
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When you ask a Sload why they made a plague that killed over half the population of Tamriel
I’ve really gotta respect Morrowind and its writers for giving the Battle of Red Mountain a core of truth surrounded by varying half-truths and interpretations. It fits really well from a storytelling standpoint, and even in context with lore and how people generally are
There are multiple recordings of what happened to Nerevar and the battle, and they in a way all make sense, and it makes sense that there can’t be one true retelling.
This is a battle that was fought thousands of years ago by tons of people, so the basic facts can line up will certain details can vary through the retelling, especially as it passes by word of mouth for so long. On top of that, the important parts of the event that are so debated are told by unreliable narrators, people who have been told the events over hundreds of years and may have/did change them to match the teachings of the tribunal, and the god kings themselves
They have a vested interest in keeping themselves as the heroes, but in the end I think they could have forgotten parts of the truth themselves, or told themselves their own lies so many times that they are starting to believe it too. The may be man-made gods, but they first were mortal, with mortal minds and memories which are easily distorted and easy to trick, even if done by just themselves.
On top of all THAT there’s even the fact that certain aspect of the story, mainly the fate of the Dwemer, are still a mystery because everyone there just admits, “yeah, we have no idea what all that was, they just disappeared and we can only guess what happened and why”
It’s just some great writing that I’m sure has been talked about to death but I wanted to throw my ow thoughts out there too.
The Complete Idiot's Guide to Making Shit Up About Elder Scrolls Lore and Also Sound Like You Know What You're Talking About:
1. Say in-universe sources are uninformed
2. Say in-universe sources are subconciously biased
3. Say in-universe sources are consciously biased, i.e., propaganda
4. Dig through the 36 Lessons until you find something that sounds deep and impressive. Be sure to move on quickly before the reader has a chance to think, "Wait, what?"
5. Use the word "enantiomorph" without bothering to define it.
6. Be totally self-referential about the concept of godhood, the Prisoner, and metafiction. People will surely feel more immersed in a fictional universe if they also have to think about metaphysics and pseudo-scientific applications of Heidegger's Uncertainty Principle, and if NPCs have feelings when the power is turned off.
6.1 Act like you understand whatever the hell Sotha Sil was on about
7. Imply the definitive truth of what happened on Red Mountain in 1E 700 is so obvious you don't have to say it. Again, be sure to move on quickly before they can say, "Wait, what?"
7.1 Avoid talking about the Dwemer. If you have to ask why, you're already too far gone.
8. Say you've read the novels. (Do not, under any circumstances, read the novels.)
9. Sometimes, spell the names of gods and godlike thingamajiggers with all caps and no vowels, à la Hebrew. Especially the ones who don't have a spelling like that somewhere in canon already.
9.1 Don't ask why CHIM has a vowel in it.
10. Impress everybody with stating that you know Michael Kirkbride's stuff after Morrowind is technically non-canonical, but then use it anyway.
11. If you're a Rush fan, be sure not to confuse 2112 and 2920.
And don't forget Rule 0: When in doubt, a Dragon Break did it. As in, a Dragon Break both fuckered it up and fixed it at the same time.
I know Foul Murder is mostly taken for granted in fandom discourse, and I feel like this must have been theorized before by other people, but my headcanon (as an elaboration on the popular theory that messing with the Heart caused a dragon break or some similarly reality-distorting business) is that the Tribunal simultaneously experienced every possible reality surrounding the Battle of Red Mountain when they struck the Heart -- including realities where they did kill Nerevar, realities where they didn’t, and all possible variations on those circumstances.
The consequence is that whether or not they can definitively say that they killed Nerevar is both unclear and irrelevant, because they all experienced it both ways, they all know that they killed him more often than not (imo), and they all benefited from his death either way. Effectively, they are culpable for killing him, but the awareness that they both did and didn’t do it – whether they accept that guilt or choose to claim a reality where they didn’t kill him as their own – is something they all react to in their own ways.
It fits perfectly into Vivec’s obsession with duality. He both did and did not kill Nerevar. He would say this anyway. What fun it is to both deny guilt and freely admit to it. Sotha Sil recognizes that he killed Nerevar in most timelines and maintains that killing his friend was the right thing to do from a utilitarian standpoint, so the knowledge that in some timelines he didn’t do it provides him with no comfort or absolution. Almalexia’s perspective is way more complicated and dependent on how you interpret her relationship with Nerevar and her personality in general, which is (and probably will be) a whole other post.
You see this trope in other pieces of media where a character gets a glimpse of the multiverse and has to consider that their reality is exceptional and decide how other, worse realities reflect on them (Invincible realizing that he’s committed horrible atrocities in most other timelines; Dr Strange saying he’s seen billions of realities and the Avengers only beat Thanos in maybe one). But usually those characters are able to resolve their multiverse-related angst by choosing to take personal accountability for their own actions only, deciding that those alternate selves are not them.
In this headcanon, by contrast, the Tribunal post-apotheosis are an amalgam of every possible Tribunal that existed in the moment(s) when time broke due to interference with the Heart. It’s not that one thing is true in this timeline, and they must contend with how they acted differently in others – it’s more like one pre-Red Mountain timeline briefly split into several simultaneous realities before merging back together. And the Tribunal, having achieved apotheosis, retained their memories of every reality, unlike those who emerged each remembering one reality only.
This has probably all been said/theorized before, but that’s my thought process about why the Tribunal has internal confusion/conflict on the whole Foul Murder thing and not just an obvious external impetus to conceal their guilt.
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Maormer Cheat Sheet
I've been obsessively combing through every bit of information I can find on the Maormer, also known as Sea Elves, since being introduced to them in ESO. Here are all my notes about them!
Here are the murals from observatory in TESA: Redguard, because I want more people to know about them, as they can provide an interesting insight into Dwemer culture!
Not to poke the wasp's nest but I need to let something out that I've been thinking of for a while. I'm forever mad over how badly Bethesda fumbled the Nords in Skyrim...
They could have made them cool, they could have given them some interesting culture and depth, instead they just put a vague and bland viking vibe there. They could have done something cool with runestones, but the best equivalent we get to that is like... word walls. Vikings also loved art and song/music and sports and textile arts and hygiene and they had quite an extensive law system and societal structure, but of course all we really get is like, skaldic bards, smiths, and the jarls in their longhouses, because their society is Brutish and Harsh and they value Strength over Sophistication. Because the Imperial race is actually the Sophisticated race and that's what sets the two apart. But Oh No! the Imperials have fallen victim to the Evil Elves and now the Savage Nords are actually the ones fighting for what's right! ...Right?
Dare I say, the way supremacists have idealized vikings and appropriated them for their own use has probably done irreversible damage to the whole concept at this point. The Nords just come off as the angry racist fantasy white guys faction (But remember! The racism is Justified™) instead of something... Real? Because the Nords literally didn't give a fuck about the imperial pantheon before TESV came along, but that's another thing.
There's the whole phenomenon where vikings either get the romaticized noble savage treatment or the wild violent heretic treatment, and it's almost hilariously prevalent in Skyrim to me, hell, they even put the goat horns on the helmets! Genuinely I don't understand why the norse inspired race has to be diminished to the dirty, violent and stupid trope when most ancient Scandinavians were ordinary people tending to their homestead trying to get by. But this is literally true for every single human society that's existed! You only hear the stories about the glorious wars and think that's all there is to it.
And it's not really that the American Christian undertones are painfully obvious in Skyrim, I think Bethesda could easily have taken some inspiration from the Christianization of Scandinavia and referenced the conflicts that came with it with the civil war, but it all kind of falls flat and becomes nonsensical because of the franchise's inability to understand polytheism and their strange "both sides are bad" message. And I'm not even gonna get into Skyrim's political climate now, my point is that it's frustratingly bad writing in assumption that the player is too stupid to think about it too hard, and at this point I'm in too deep to hate the game.