r/teslore

Hi!

A common question that comes up among Dungeons and Dragons players is ‘’Why is my elf character only level 1 if they’re 200 years old?’’. Basically, you’d expect someone who has lived for such a long time to already be very good at what they do, or at least better than the 22 years old human who just picked up a sword.

When it is not handwaved away for the purpose of gameplay, it is often explained with lore elements such as elves being less driven than humans, thus taking decades to master new skills or to grow as a person, or being socially treated as children for so long that they don’t start picking up practical skills until later in life.

I was wondering if there is something like that in TES. Is there a reason all the best mages and fighters, or artisans like alchemists, or even just cooks, tailors and bakers, aren’t elves? Or rather, why all elves aren’t the best at something, relative to humans?

I know there just aren’t many of them in Skyrim, but in cosmopolitan areas in Oblivion, for example, most elves you meet are just random citizens in the street who don’t seem outstanding at all, or bandits who are just as mediocre as every other bandit. Why aren’t they all super good at something?

Or is this a case of gameplay-lore dissonance, and elves do tend to be extremely good at what they choose to do over their lifetime?

Thank you!

I know that bretons are a mix of high elf and humans over a very long period of time. But would it be possible for a snow elf/human lineage to have survived until the time skyrim takes place? Maybe more pale with white hair or some type of obvious feature like that?

If the answer to this question simply is a matter of the plotholes and retcons typical of ESO lore, cool makes sense. However, I'd like to ask in case there's instead something I'm missing. It was my assumption that, given Dagoth awoke in 2E 882, and the events of ESO begin in 2E 582, the Tribunal still maintained an uninterrupted and continuous connection to Red Mountain, the Heart of Lorkhan, and could be considered at the height of their power.

But in an early, base game quest in Stonefalls, a character comments in the Night of the Soul quest that "We see the Three less every year. They no longer make their annual pilgrimage to Red Mountain on Vvardenfell, and no one knows why", implying their power hasn't exactly waned, but is beginning to do so.

Is this just a plot hole? Or is there a particular lore-bit that I've missed. It's nagged me quite a bit.

Thanks so much in advance!

Edited: spelling

I’m sorry if this has already been asked but during the Dragonborn DLC Miraak mentions “The First and Last Dragonborn” first being himself and Last being the player, so does that mean any children the Dragonborn has wont inherit the Dragon blood?

I was looking into the Gods of TES and quickly found out that there isn't really such thing as an objective truth, as the Aedra are all shaped by the beliefs of the people of Tamriel and so i was wandering if we do truly know how many Aedra actually survived to be changed by Mythopoeia. The 8 divine were all created by Saint Alessia and were a mixture of Norse and Elvish religion and both of these religions have 8 core Aedric gods which seems to suggest that there were 8 Aedra that survived Nirns creation which also links up to the planets, but how do we know that this isn't the result of dragon breaks.

In skyrim when you are a vampire and go out to sun it says "your vampire blood boils in the sunlight".

Is it because vampire blood has low boiling point? Or something else

Hi!

I played Oblivion and Skyrim as a young teenager, but at the time I didn’t engage with the Elder Scrolls universe much and mostly acted as a ‘’murder hobo’’ through the game. I’m playing them again now and I’m much more invested in the lore, understanding the universe and what’s going on and what playing a more consistent character.

For my Skyrim run, I decided to play as a Altmer dissident who went to Skyrim to oppose the Thalmor there (presumably after fleeing Summerset). I haven’t found much lore about what that entails, though, just that such Altmer exist and are treated by the Thalmor about the same as their other enemies, with what we would consider war crimes in our world.

Is there some established lore about this or will it be up to me to come up with the details? I’m fine either way, but I’d be happy to know more.

Thank you!

Among the wise here, would know of the wintersun mod for skyrim. Allowing you to pursue worship of any god you chose. Here's the deal, my character is a nord necromancer lich, courtesy of the undeath mod and others. But... what god would a Nordic lich follow? I am decided between Mannimarco, Molag Bal, and the old ways aka the dragon cult.

Help me out, which ones do you think I should pursue? And if you have any other deity in mind, please let me know because he also a bit ambitious for magic so that also leads him to old Herma's shack.

I should probably add some context. In my personal head cannon he was a dragon priest of old, whom is Miraaks long lost brother. On the last battle of the dragon wars when Alduin was banished forward in time he was struck by a spell that basically made him be stuck in a state of beinf half aware, being a lich by this point he spent thousands of years roaming tamriel not knowing who he was or what was happening. The spell would break once he came back to the land where it happened, to skyrim. And now he is picking up the pieces of his life.

I have dragon priest armor mods and shout mods to refine it. He also will be heavily conflicted about stopping Alduin and killing dragons, but in my head cannon he will learn thu'um such as that he can bring them all back and eventually rebuild the dragon cult. Even if it takes him centuries. But as of now he is conflicted on which patron to follow first

So yeah, just conflicted. Penny for your thoughts?

Honestly, just going through the pocket guide and Redguard they genuinely are the good guys. They're an alliance of the Altmer, Maormer, the Bosmer, the Khajiit, the Reachmen, and potentially the Redguards if not for Tiber Septim. Like I can't name a negative thing about them that isn't propaganda.

I thought they hated eachother

Okay, so Mannimarco is the most powerful necromancer in the history of tamriel, even became a god. But that's besides the point.

Mannimarco is more than just a necromancer or lich, he is a former member of the psijic order, the wizards that can stop time, appear out of nowhere and are believed to be the most powerful mages in tamriel. Mannimarco, being a former psijic, should know all those spells unless if they wiped his mind when they expelled him from Arteum

Like, Its great he's summoning undead, love that. But mayhaps it would have been better to have him combine his necromancy with psijic magic. Like teleporting around or stopping time around an area and you had to dodge at time to not get trapped. Some bosses in dungeons have more powerful spells that shown by Mannimarco. I know its different cause they are dungeon bosses and he is a main story boss but lore wise he should be more of a challenge.

Just a thought. Also, I still dont know why they dont have in-game Mannimarco look like he did in the trailers. Like 😩 he speedran twink death

If you talk to Ulfric about the way of the voice he'll explain the rules don't really apply to Dragonborn though they have always tried to teach it to dragonborn (though always failing).

>This tale was never quite set down in ink, and it has changed much in the telling, so it would be unwise to take it wholly at its word.

The Brain in the Ink, and the Fibre of Tilted Equilibrium

The tale says that long ago there lived a merchant, and that he lived in Anvil. He was a settler come from foreign parts. He had a short tongue, so it was no easy thing to place him by his speech; some said he had wandered many regions as a peddler before settling down, while others said that before he came here he had been a shipowner who sailed on his own account, but that he was utterly ruined when his vessel blew apart while carrying flammable oils.

He had no particular secrets. Though he had been a peddler, he had gone beyond Cyrodiil only in his very youth, and had taken ship but once, to import grains — pigweed. He settled in Anvil, it was said, because on a dark night the light of the lighthouse, seen from afar, had shimmered like a star. It was true enough that he took pleasure in his nightly walks out to the lighthouse, and since he was hardly the only one to settle in Anvil for such a reason, it made for a fitting enough story.

But some claimed that, seeing how he loved books, he was in truth a scholar. And indeed, his reckoning was precise, though not always to his profit.

That day, too, he had come out to take the night air. His takings had not been good of late, but his reliable partners and well-disposed customers were growing in number. Once his liquidity improved a little, his circumstances would be much the better, and so he did not trouble himself overmuch. Now, a ship that had put in around that time was selling wares unlike the usual. That ship, said to have come from the east, was selling books — a cargo one might well call exotic.

"I'm hauling off a whole library from some shining and decadent city out in a desert. Still standing, it is, though who's to say by the next time I go. Me, I was asked to do it, so I just get on with the doing."

"A city that carries off its books even it's falling — that must have been a learned one."

The merchant spoke. Books from such a place ought to be worth a look.

"Though from a quick glance, it's naught but genealogies. You know the sort."

So said the merchant as he looked the books over.

"The covers are all a single color."

"Aye. They've all manner of races there, and by some tradition or other each fixes on a color of their skin and writes its genealogies in it. And not only genealogies, so they tell me."

The merchant took one up and opened it. As he'd expected, it was in a tongue he did not know. But however he looked at it, it was not the form of any ordinary genealogy.

"Would you happen to know what this means?"

"Not I. But if it's got no title, ten to one it's a genealogy."

"I've never seen a genealogy in this form. Doesn't look to be a record of a family's line, either. These look less like letters than like signs."

"True enough. Their systems are much different from ours. It's a place where they wield mathematical and logical signs like real tools. How they went about completing their genealogies, I couldn't say."

"Then what use are these books? I can't even make them out."

"Well, then you'd do well to buy this one too. A Basic Primer of Mathematics for Children, it is — you'll want it if you mean to make sense of the others. Mind you, there's only the two, so it runs a bit dear."

The merchant was sure the fellow was working some sales trick on him. And so, as he made to move along, a few books caught his eye. One was black, and another was of many colors mixed together.

"What are these?"

"Ah, the black one's a serial — a story told in installments. The ink's just black, so you can't see the title, is all. Not finished yet, so best read it later. As for the gaudy one — the rumor goes it was made by some madman with no genealogy of his own, who set out to fashion one all his own and churned that out. He's got so many surnames his name runs on and on. Word is he's marrying into some house as a live-in son-in-law, so his name should get a bit shorter. Anyhow, it's as good as the cheapest thing here."

"The texture is quite peculiar. No paper feels quite like this."

"Believe it or not, they say they used brains. Or perhaps the brains of their own ancestors. They might have believed it held some sort of logical significance."

The merchant hesitated a moment. If he bought these books, he would have to live rather meagerly until his next payment came due. But when he let his eyes roll over them for a moment, all at once the books looked different to him, and he drew out his coin.

Back home, he regretted it for a spell, but steadied himself with the thought that new knowledge is always worth something. Perhaps, with that mathematics primer, he might translate the books and sell them, or make a dictionary of them — that would be worthwhile enough. He opened the primer and began to read.

"The world, in the end, is a thing known through equilibrium. If placing a hundred on the one side brings it into balance, then the other side, too, must be a hundred. Yet by comparing mass alone one cannot know what a thing is. To know something, one must know its nature and its relations, and this is known by setting up the equation of equilibrium. That is why the question matters. This is called Al-Zebra, named for a beast that dwells somewhere, marked with stripes of white and black…"

For an instant the merchant thought of a tiger. Was this what it meant, to bring one's mind into balance?

But what followed held little interest for him, so he skipped ahead. Then, realizing he had forgotten to look at the table of contents, he turned back to the front. And sure enough, the phrase The Interpretation of Genealogies leapt out at him.

"…A genealogy is a scale of the world. Layers. The ancestors cannot speak the answer aloud, but as an echo grows clear, as light is carved, they set forth the length of the equilibrium. The names are all held, within a joined-up context, so as to keep the order of equilibrium, and one must draw the names out until the last name and the first name become one and the same.

…

Therefore, first choose your question. Then open the book and reckon along the flow of the genealogy. If the length of the genealogy allows it, the name will be there — maybe."

The merchant closed the book. If he understood it aright, then a genealogy was a kind of long equation? But how could all the principles of creation be held within an equation already written down — one that would never change?

Half in doubt, yet thinking what harm could come of it, he wrote down a simple question, and converted it as the book had bidden him.

Will I make money?

A dry laugh escaped him. As though this were some revelation from a god of commerce.

He was a fairly sharp man, so, with the mathematics book to guide him, he carried out the reckoning by the rules without much trouble. Front to back, back to front. The pages referred to one another every which way, joined like gears turning in the void. When the reckoning stuck fast, the strange texture of the paper would sometimes lend him inspiration. And at the end of it, he arrived at an answer.

"…the ending of the name is kay."

Had it meant to say Okay? At any rate, one of the two terminal points was always of this kind.

It likely meant, more or less, yes. He thought it strange that kay — that is, okay — should signify acceptance rather than affirmation, but in any case he took it roughly for a yes.

So — was he to make money? For a mere sham of a fortune-telling book, it gave him an uncommon feeling. He pondered a while, and soon saw how much was wanting — the when, the where, the how. When he opened the mathematics book once more, it read thus:

"The heart of it is lack. Our bodies are more sensible of lack than of fullness. The motion of all things in the world is fashioned so, and that flow is carried on through names. From where, and to where, does time flow? Dusk and dawn, deduction and induction, zero and one. You who uphold the order of equilibrium, take up the scale borne up by three names. The ending is kay."

Was the mathematics book, too, perhaps a genealogy?

The merchant set to "reckoning" as to when he would come by money. The reckoning was very long, but the sharp merchant finished it around the time dawn broke. And at its end there was no kay nor anything at all. At that very moment — that moment, without the breadth of a hair's difference — he heard a knock at the door.

"My father sent me to pay back what he owed. He says to tell you he was grateful, back then."

The boy said it brightly and went off.

The end of a reckoning was always one of two things: kay, or nothing at all. There was much that was subtle in taking the nothing to mean no. Getting back money one had lent was not quite the same as making money. Would it have gone otherwise, had he charged even a little interest?

Consumed with a hunger for knowledge, he threw himself endlessly into his reckonings after turning up a few plain proofs. Did he make money by it? He did not. He came to see that though he could know whether he would make money, he could not put that knowing to use in the making of it. Suppose, for instance, he meant to foretell some trend in the market. He reckons whether the price of a good will rise, and when. And by the time he had finished the reckoning, he would find it had already come to pass — around then, or else in some moment he could not observe. In short, in most cases the reckoning of the future ran a little slower than time itself. Perhaps, had he grown more deft at mathematics, he might have done it faster — but that would have taken study.

Still, it was hard to imagine there being aught the book did not know. In its knowledge and its logic there was no lack whatsoever. The book's names felt without number. To win an answer, one had to put a question. More and more he threw himself into the search for questions. It ate away at him, and made of his body and mind a lack itself.

The plague then going round was owed to nothing other than the books. Whatever stuff they were made of, as they rotted they brought the sickness on. That great sickness blanketed the whole city, yet he paid it no mind. His books did not rot, and he had to go on making questions. People came to him and asked:

"When will the sickness stop? What must we do to cure it?"

"The surest way is to die."

People called him mad and left him.

Then, one day, he too fell to the plague. Wherever his composure had gone until then, he floundered and cried out to the gods. He asked the book to whom he must appeal in order to win his answer. That reckoning went on until the ember of his life had all but guttered out. And as he was finishing it, he saw a light. Very slowly, as though time had been drawn out long — or perhaps had halted altogether. Before him, a many-armed Mara was watching him with watery eyes.

"Child, what is it you desire?"

Her gentle voice seemed to heal every illness, but he knew. If she departed, he would die. Only death could stop the plague, and death was the one and only cure.

"Mother Mara, I desire a question. A question by which I may know the lack of this book."

In that moment, he grasped at last the question he had so longed for. But within the halted time he could not carry the reckoning on. For that name led out beyond time, and he would have had to join the beginning and the end of the names he must go on setting down. The book of genealogy was as yet too short, and he had drifted all this way in search of a question by which that book might be carried further — the Ark. And he saw that the question of whether he must go on with this had at last been given him.

The ending is kay.

— In reply to the inquiry regarding publication

This book holds too much of apocryphal reverie and ambition for it to be published. However weakened faith in the Divines may have grown, the temples of the Empire stand firm. Still, that such books once existed, and that their influence carries on to this day — that is not a thing one can flatly deny. That twenty-ninth sermon nags at me, as well. In any case, it was not so much a waste of time, so I shall not trouble to set down a report of it.

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(AI was used only to translate the text)

Hello, everyone! I have some questions regarding the Dreamsleeve and its many possible functionalities. The two main functions that I’ve seen attributed to the Dreamsleeve are as follows:

A. It’s a place where souls pass through, likely for reincarnation of some kind. The main source for this seems to come from Mankar Camoran’s commentaries when he mentioned the “Dreaming-Sleeve of birth.”

B. It’s used by mages as a sort of communication tool often accessed by mages to send transmissions and messages through it.

I know that these functions aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive and both are probably true. There may also be functions that I’ve missed when doing my own research on the UESP.

Something interesting that I read on the UESP mentions that during the Imperial Simulacrum, when Jagar Tharn executed his plan, that Dagon’s forces invaded one of Nocturnal’s pocket realms, Shade Perilous. During this invasion of Nocturnal’s realm, Jaciel Morgan, a Nocturnal Shrike somehow drove the own spirit into the Dreamsleeve due to a deep despair. Now, this might be related to how mages use it but I’m unsure.

Based on the UESP article, it seems that the ‘Dreamsleeve Transmission’, which is how the mages are said to use it, has the most information. Within that section of the article, it is stated that mages use the Dreamsleeve to send messages across vast distances. It’s also said to be used for sending special transmissions often by Imperial Clerks. Maybe the battlemages who were communicating with people back on Tamriel during Uriel V’s invasion of Akavir used the Dreamsleeve?

It’s also sometimes said that members of the Elder Council can also access the Dreamsleeve with some theorizing that it may be a requirement amongst them. Another very interesting thing in this part of the article is how it’s posited that you have to keep a part of your brain in a meditative state to access the Dreamsleeve.

With the afterlife/rebirth angle, which seems to come from Mankar Camoran, there’s much less information. Now, the fact that Jaciel Morgan sent her own spirit into the Dreamsleeve seems to lend some credibility to the idea. In my opinion, at least. It shows that souls can pass through it or be sent there, at least in some capacity.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this subject!

I just got done with my full rewrite of UESP's Lore:Dragonborn article, found here:

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

Pretty much the whole article is different now. I've felt like the page has lacked the more intricate details of dragon blood for a while as well as not going nearly in-depth enough into the cultural impact of the Dragonborn as well as their lesser-known powers.

Feel free to comment, suggest, critique, or otherwise discuss the overhaul here if you don't want to on-site. Cheers.

The notes that led to this myth specifically state Gauldur's tower had collapsed. "near where his tower once stood", and plenty of Nordic ruined towers are nearby. Including Dead Crone Rock. Which was only inhabited by Reachmen and Hagravens in the 2nd era (ESO), Gauldur was 1st era and a Hagraven moving into an old wizard tower makes more sense to me than people attributing a standing tower to one specified as collapsed.

It seems like he knows he has a genuine chance of losing but if that’s the case how does he claim to be so powerful?

I'm puzzled by the new armor and weapon style up in the ESO Crown Store. In both Skyrim and ESO, the title Justiciar typically refers to the law-enforcement agents of the Thalmor. That is, they're almost exclusively Altmer in terms of cultural and demographic makeup. And they have little to do with Stendarr, a singularly unpopular god in Summerset, due to his role as the Apologist of Men.

Feels like this is an error? Or that ZOS is getting loose with the lore. The Resolutes of Stendarr have been the main worshipping body mentioned repeatedly in the game so far. Considering the Bretonic style, they seem more appropriate as an origin for the set?

I do hope this is the start of more Stendarr-themed stuff, though! He's been kind of neglected among the various god-themed collectables.

As we all know Tiber Septim's line died out with his grandson and rest of the emperors are descended from his brother (and at some point it converges back with Uriel VII because of the totem and all).

But Tiber Septim as well known does have descendants, probably from bastards and they rule the kingdoms of the Iliac Bay like Gortwog and Gothryd (who are still alive as of Oblivion). So like why didn't his illegitimate children take the throne after Pelagius death, i mean they were acknowledged since they were given land in the Iliac Bay (with the probable exception of Gortwog's ancestor). what about the events of Oblivion, i mean we know the Septims of the Iliac Bay are still alive so why couldn't they just bring over one?

Some of my favorite bits of lore im my favorite medias is the strange unkowable things that exist at the edges. The Star Weirds in Star Wars. The Nameless Ones from Middle Earth. The Tunnel from Coraline. The weird fringe stuff thats barely there and you so badly dont want to know anything more that you need to know more. Im wondering if TES has something like that.