mdnthrvst

@HistoryInRust: The Oblivion Crisis was very bad for the entirety of Tamriel - the Daedric invasion was one of the factors in the Red Year, that led to Vvardenfell getting trashed.

Described below is the Fall of Ald'ruhn:

"The armies of Oblivion destroy Ald’ruhn, ancestral home of House Redoran, even though ancient rituals were used to awaken the dread emperor crab and the whole city literally rose up to fight the invaders. With their warrior House decimated, the dunmer of Vvardenfell fall back as daedra move towards a siege of Ghost Gate. Prayers to Vivec and the Nerevarine go unanswered."

I was going to post a picture, but Giant Bomb's shitty uploading system isn't working. It's here:

http://fc08.deviantart.net/fs21/f/2007/284/1/c/The_Fall_of_Ald__ruhn_by_Red_Aardvark.jpg

@HistoryInRust: Having never played a Halo game, I got the impression from Drew and Alex's marathon that the Covenant leaders were either misinformed or suicidal. If that's true, perhaps, unless the Covenant had some secret plan to better themselves by dropping a metaphorical nuke.

The unmaking of the Mundus might be exactly the same sort of thing - unless the Dominion knows something we don't, of course.

The biggest problem, though, is that all of this is just conjecture and suggestion. I'd bet that it forms the basis of the next main-line Elder Scrolls game, but until then, the hints they dropped in Skyrim aren't enough to form a clear picture.

Based on the theories surrounding the metaphysical Tower, destroying all of them would seem to have SOME sort of effect.

@Davin said:

@Damolition said:

@PulledaBrad said:

Please stop passing off opinion pieces as news. Thank you.

Patrick, your opinion pieces are not news in any way. Really tired of seeing these high-horse opinionated articles as news more frequently. Can't you post stuff like that in a blog or something? You know, somewhere where it's easier to ignore. All you're doing here is flogging a dead horse.

>easier to ignore

But the whole point of Giant Bomb is opinion, and though its readership may be a bunch of angry, entitled young men, it doesn't mean it has to pander to them.

These issues matter precisely BECAUSE you grumble and act like petulant whiners when they get any exposure whatsoever.

@Synthballs said:

@BlastProcessing said:

inb4 Patrick makes a follow-up article and singles out another member of the community.

Really? What happened?

Some dumbass acted like a dumbass and Patrick singled out his comment and called him a dumbass.

The hilarious part is, the entire community was aghast in shock - along the lines of "you really violated AmericanNinja's privacy!!! (not sure what the fuck his username was)

Fuck no he didn't. He participated in a discussion where every single person was using a pseudonym - if Giant Bomb had a mandatory Facebook plugin for comments it would've been a different matter, but the commenter had such a lazy, mindless, disgusting initial post it was absolutely deserved.

He didn't have his privacy violated because he wasn't using his name, and yet Giant Bomb proved yet again how terribly out of touch its commenters are.

Having been on /v/ and /vg/ for the last five years, I'm no stranger to out of touch misogynists, but they at least have some fucking spine.

@Bane: I criticized it rather loudly either in this thread or another. Those essays are pretty bad.

The Metaphysics of Morrowind was a good introduction for most people, but on it's own the conclusions it draws are terrible.

The author seems insistent on an interpretation of CHIM that has no basis in the Elder Scrolls fiction - that it's a metaphor for mods, console commands, saving and loading, and all other facets of Elder Scrolls games as "games".

CHIM has nothing to do with any of this. Player characters have never achieved CHIM, because nowhere in the lore are they treated as having reality-bending powers. It is a quality possessed only by Tiber Septim and Vivec. The Metaphysics essays were good in that they drummed up interest, but with what they've done to distort the meaning of CHIM in people's eyes, I almost wish they didn't exist.

@HistoryInRust: Eh, most people took the Akavir thing at face value. For one the Nerevarine is immortal, regardless of his race, and Akavir is the only sensible solution - a Daedric clad demigod wielding a flaming sword would've made an impact on the Oblivion Crisis if he had been around, but he clearly didn't. Yeah, seems like Akavir is as much of an answer as we're going to get.

@HistoryInRust: The Tower theory is its own giant metaphysical clusterfuck of symbolism and possible meanings.

To get the story from its canonical or semi-canonical source, read the Nu-Mantia Intercept, but be prepared for excerpts like this:

"Scholarship on the subject of the metaphysical Tower is at an all-time high. Not since the Selective have we seen so much dangerous interest in the shezzarite power-symbols. Do any here think this an accident? That such work is not influenced by doppeldream and unlawful messaging? Do any here think this is not the work of the Tharnatos and his sleepers?

The fall of Red Tower should not be seen as the suave conquest of Cyrodiil's agencies, for we have been tricked again by the Dagonites. Though through long eras the chimerical landgods have subverted Divine rule, their protection of the First Stone should have remained as it was: the ironic protection of our enemies to our Enemy.

The Towers of the terrestrial plane have had their histories cloaked in lies and misinterpretations. That the lands they hold dominion over reverberate with troubles now in east and west should give common consent that they are reacting to an Empire-wide attention, sublunar and on dread purpose."

...

"Auriel-that-is-Akatosh returned to Mundex Arena from his dominion planet, signaling all Aedra to convene at a static meeting that would last outside of aurbic time. His sleek and silver vessel became a spike into the changing earth and the glimmerwinds of its impact warned any spirit that entered aura with it would become recorded-- that by consent of presence their actions here would last of a period unassailable, and would be so whatever might come later to these spirits, even if they rejoined the aether or succumbed willingly or by treachery to a sithite erasure. Thus could the Aedra and their cohorts truly covene in realness.

Our forebears saw the erection of Ada-mantia, Ur-Tower, and the Zero Stone. Let the Elders acknowledge this truth: every Tower bears its Stone. The impossipoint of the Convention was the first, though another bears the true title of First Stone."

I may sound like the smartest person ever, but trust me, I've forgotten more than I know - KINMUNE,Magne-Ge Pantheon,Loveletter from the Fifth Era - grappling with the mysteries of Michael Kirkbride's mind is like attempting the same with Joyce.

The simplest of all his so-called Obscure Texts is Vehk's Teaching, which restates the peerless Lessons of Vivec a bit more concisely and clearly. The Psijic Endeavor (separate from the Psijic Order, but both are derived from PSJJJ), the Tower, the Dragon Break, he goes into all of it there.

EDIT: I sort of didn't answer your question at all.

The way I understand the theory, destroying the Towers would unmoor the foundations of the Mundus, effectively undoing Lorkhan's great accomplishment and supposedly reuniting the Mer with their divine ancestry, in an act of Anuic triumph.

@Legion_: I have heard the same, though the Thalmor didn't seem particularly interested in the Throat of the World from what we saw. A main-line TES game is probably half a decade off still, so who can say.

@Legion_: Not a false god, but an ex-god. A crucial distinction. And actually, Vivec's fate is something they purposefully leave open-ended - during the Red Year (which coincided with the Oblivion Crisis), people in Cyrodiil remarked that he had disappeared. He might've been taken by the Daedra, he might be dead, or he might have bounced before shit went down.

We don't know.

It's also important to realize that in Vivec's case, CHIM doesn't play into his in-game portrayal - Michael Kirkbride wrote about 95% of all this metaphysical crap, but he wasn't in charge of Morrowind's overall plot. Vivec needs the Nerevarine to kill Dagoth Ur, as he was both weakened by the loss of Kagrenac's tools and needed to power the Ghostfence constantly. If we are to believe CHIM is completely true, the player's intervention would never have been necessary; I would explain it as Vivec holding back his powers perhaps to hide the true nature of his omnipotence, but the truth of the matter is, Morrowind's plot and metaphysics simply didn't coincide. And that's fine - it makes for a more interesting quandary, no? If Vivec had used CHIM to solve every problem to ever arise in Tamriel himself, that would've destabilized the very foundations of the world. Imagine if in the Matrix, everyone who saw Neo defying reality instantly and permanently vanished, and you'd get a pretty good idea of why. Keep in mind that 99.9% of all mortal (and immortal) beings in the Elder Scrolls probably don't have an ego large enough to resist Zero-Summing.

@Bane: The Thirty-Six Lessons of Vivec, son. Get it from the source, because everyone's knowledge of CHIM is gleaned from it in one way or another.

And, on its own, it is a fantastically weird read. Even people who've studied it for years can't conclusively say they understand it completely.

Just posting something I screencapped from a /vg/ thread by the great Alpharius, probably the smartest lorefag outside of the Official Forums (and perhaps the Temple Zero Society). The smartest on 4chan, in any case.

A cosmological explanation of Dagoth Ur: