r/teslore

In FilmDeg Miniatures' 10-hour interviews (link has timestamp), Kurt Kuhlmann, the quest designer for the final iteration of the main quest, claims that in Ken Rolston's original main quest, the player would have given the Amulet of Kings to Ocato instead of Jauffre, but Ocato would have been Mankar Camoran in disguise and that was how the player would lose the Amulet of Kings.

I think this makes Jauffre losing the Amulet of Kings more understandable from a writing perspective. Kuhlmann explains that it would be too cheap and out-of-the-blue for Ocato to betray the player, but if it was foreshadowed, the "decision" to give him the Amulet would be forced on the player. So, he changed it to the player handing the Amulet to Jauffre in good faith, since Jauffre is not evil and intends to keep the Amulet of Kings safe. It's just that the plot requires the bad guys to get the Amulet of Kings, so Jauffre ends up being horribly incompetent.

I know that it's been 20 years since the release of Oblivion, and Kuhlmann may just be remembering things wrong, but I opened up the Construction Set and there is some evidence that supports Ocato actually being Mankar Camoran, or being evil at the very least. Ocato has his own "Combat Style", which is unusual, considering most NPCs just use a shared default combat style, and unique combat styles are for boss NPCs like Mehrunes Dagon, Jyggalag, or Mankar Camoran. This implies that you were supposed to fight Ocato at some point.

So maybe Kuhlmann is right about the original main plot. On one hand, the High Elf chancellor who holds the same position as Jagar Tharn secretly being evil would have been incredibly predictable. Kuhlmann says he gave Mankar Camoran the motive of creating Paradise in order to make him a better villain. But if the main quest had really leaned into "evil High Elf doing evil because he's evil", maybe it would have been so over-the-top it would have been funny?

I finally got this thing working.

I don't know how long its been, days, at least...years, at most. Time doesn't work the same up here as it does down there. I'll start off this log by introducing myself, in case someone else somehow finds it...even though those prospects are...bleak.

I am Siona Do-Rikkisforge, contracted void engineer captain of the three headed world serpent, under the employ of the [ERROR] dynasty of the 891st year of the 8th era...at least...I was. I don't know if they exist anymore, I can't be sure they ever existed now. Something...happened, during my last contract. I didn't cause it, in fact, I still have no idea exactly what's going on, but I'm the only person who remembers it. Everyone I knew is gone. I'm the only one left.

Starting from the top, it was a pretty routine job as far as void colonies go, being little more than a collection trip to the Tower colony. Nothing at all out of the ordinary on the way there or during the collection...it was as soon as I left the colonies atmosphere that things got...strange.

Breaching almost tore my ship apart, the layer between void and plain ripping at each other and fighting for me as I left. I felt the ship shake and buckle under the stress until eventually it broke free into the void. I swear I saw the plain shift colors as I left too. I called out to Rikkisforge a few hours later, relative time...there wasn't a response. Then I called out to Vivec-station...nothing. Then again, and again, and again, each time met with deafening silence. It was as if, in one sweeping moment, they'd all ceased to exist.

...I had no choice. I'd have to re-enter Mundus.

Like many void engineers, I'd spent most of my life detached from the home plain, but I'd seen it enough to know what things were supposed to look like under normal circumstances. And...circumstances were far from normal on my re-entry. The aedric sub-plains and their orbits were war and a way out of line, broken from what they should be, spun around in different directions altogether, and one of them was on fire...I think...maybe it was just discolored?

And Nirn...it had changed too.

It had spun in a way, and no longer was Tamriel front facing as it had been for all of history to remember. Instead, it was that land far to the east of the plain which now faced out to for all those new to the plain to see. The world had turned.

I...panicked, when I saw that. I panicked. Against all my programming in life I did, the most dangerous thing one of my kind could do. An act of emotional surrender, that if I were in the void at that time, would have spelled my certain doom, but, I wasn't. I rushed to the lucidity console, pulling from it the historical records of this plain. Reman. Septim. Talos. All altered. All different from what I remembered. Not gone but...different.

Had I slipped into some incomprehensibly massive dragon break leaving the tower colony?...no, I would have detected that. I think...

I...

Am I alone...? Was my entire life up to this point just some vivid hallucination? A dream that I woke up from?...no, that can't be.

What am I even saying? Alright. The historical records I have are all altered but the academic ones seem to be mostly the same with the exception of a few...authorship changes. I'm sure there's probably something on what's happened here, maybe related to a dragonbreak? A more extreme form? I'll log my findings soon.

. . .

First Era, Year Five, Journal of Savirisci

We started our march out of Beith today. The dragon riders went out ahead, ahead the massive stretch of desert awaiting us on our way to Mal-lith. Lucky bastards. I can't say I'm looking forward to it but it'll be worth it.

This has been a long time coming. Some of the weaker hearts in our legion refused to go, refused to part take in the storm we've brewed for a generation. Have they forgotten what they did? Have they forgotten how many of us fell to their blades? The blood spilled at their hands which washed us into the walls of our city to hide like rats for a century? Of course they do.

Maybe they just don't care.

It's all the same I suppose, let their traitorous heads decorate the perimeter of our camp. Maybe the others will grow back the spines that slithered out of their asses.

They are right about one thing though, Tsakara is full of delusion if they think we can survive like this out here AND meet their ridiculous expectations. We're supposed to be at Mel-lith by the end of the month? They have no idea the SHIT we've seen out here, the lack of food and water in this wasteland we're crossing now, the diseases that tear us apart from the inside, the THINGS that LIVE in the fucking sand. I watched a couple of wyrmlings drag a woman under the sand the other day, we found them playing with her corpse like a chew toy just a few hours later.

"Be expeditious", we'll see how expeditious you are when I send back someone with jade fever as a courier and words and face warp with every second you talk to them...

That's not even mentioning our biggest problem really. The men are far better at surviving in this place than we are. Especially with their raiding parties. Giant legions with heavy armor and dragons and horses to feed weren't made for this place. Every night we lose a few dozen more as they tear into our camps like vultures...then again, I guess that's what any dying animal would do too.

Oh well. Empress's orders I suppose.

We'll cut them down, just like we cut down their dragons, and then we'll see how they laugh.

. . .

A Historical Analysis of the Men of Akavir, Written by Sorienen-Kai, Published Second Era Year Five Hundred

Few things are so shrouded in a veil of mystery as the men of our land who came upon its shores a century beyond the dawn of the first era as it is labelled in our history. Even now historians of every race, empire, and tradition are stumped as to their exact origin, and even what meager whimper of an echo is left of their population seems unsure themselves.

All that is known for certain is that they arrived on the shores of Akavir by boat, some say from a land far to the east of our own where the sky never darkens and even the clouds are hostile lords of the sky, fighting for their own existence. Others say far to the south or even the southeast, though those are even less clear than that of the eastern legend.

What is known regardless is that they arrived by boat along the southeastern peninsula of Tsaesci territory in the dawn age, appearing and spreading across the land westward with frightening speed, killing millions of Tsaesci in what we now know as the night of the red moon and forcing most of our population behind the walled city of Tsakara. It is unknown why the men of Akavir never ventured even a bit eastward from their landing point, perhaps the red dragon mountains were simply too intimidating, though Tsaesci and Po nomads alike had made the journey in those days all the same.

Almost equally enigmatic as their origins is the exact culture of the men. It is known from their scarce few descendants that they possessed some form of reverence for the now extinct dragons, though whether this was religious in nature or simply a product of fear is unknown to us. We know that they wielded single edged blades from horseback, as well as bladed spears and glaives and lighter armor primarily suited to long journeys through the eastern great waste.

The existence of the great waste itself poses the uncomfortable raising of a different question entirely. Why did the men set out from their city of Mel-lith in presumably such short time from their arrival to bring terror down upon a people far west of the waste? Why not cross the red dragon mountains and bring the same fate upon the po? They possessed the ships to do so.

And with that in mind, we must ask ourselves, how did they know we existed?

[END OF PAGE]

Regarding Jauffre losing the Amulet of Kings: in the original main plot, Ocato would have been Mankar Camoran in disguise, the player would have given him the Amulet, and he would have run off with it

Did the Nords really have an empire as powerful as they are said to have had?

Your Past, Our Future