Asenath Karnak @asenathkarnak - Tumblr Blog

Hey pookie!!! Ok so I really want to know what irl cultures are used for the dunmer cuz I see either Chinese or Japanese and it makes me so confused sometimes because I can never find a definitive answer so I’m hoping you can enlighten me bcs you’re like THE dunmer expert in my eyes and you always have great headcanons <33 feel free to ramble as much as you want I WILL be taking notes😋🫶

Hey there! I do love me some dunmer rambling. (Just a note, most of my Dunmer HC are based on what I've noticed playing Morrowind. So some influences come ESO might be different, I just haven't really managed to get into MMOs.)

Now I can never find a 100% certain source for the exact influences Bethesda uses for their inspo as far as Dunmer are concerned, but I have a few guesses based on my own knowledge and research.

I see influences from various Chinese and Japanese historical periods, particularly for the Redoran, who seem to be closely influenced by Bushidō. At least as far as their rules around honour and combat are concerned.

I've picked up on a lot of South Asian influence when it comes to the Tribunal and the religion they have built around them. A lot of Vivec's sermons remind me of the Vedas, plus his artistic depictions as well as the Tribunal in general remind me of what you find in Hindu and Buddhist art across South and South-east Asia. I find that there's a lot of similarities between the art you find on ALMSIVI shrines and in temples and Wayang puppets from Java.

There's Mesopotamian influences in both Redoran and Hlaalu architecture, as well as significant influences from Sumer in Chimeri architecture. Dunmeri strongholds in game are very clearly influenced by Ziggurats. I've even noticed some interesting ruins along Kogoruhn's outskirts that are eerily similar to some late Bronze Age dwellings that I have excavated myself.

Below is a pic of the Kogoruhn Citadel.

And the Anu/White Temple at Uruk

Platformed structures with administrative and or religious site on top and an inner structure which is usually administration and storage. You can also point towards similar inspirations for the cantons in both Vivec City and Molag Mar. I can also see inspo from Kowloon Walled City which is a whole interesting topic in and of itself. The Vivec Cantons are a series of cramped, winding hallways filled with apartments and shops and all the workings of a city. It's chaotic but what city isn't.

I've found that a lot of House Hlaalu architecture resembles Babylonian two storied houses.

(A terracotta model of an Old Assyrian Period "spirit house" and what Joshi would refer to as bumfuck Balmora.)

Telvanni are a tricky one, since I haven't truly tackled them yet, but one point of interest for me is what they call their dwellings. The term Tel in Dunmeris translates to tower, and we generally associate it with Telvanni Wizard towers. The term Tel or Tell in archaeology refers to a man made hillock that consists of multiple layers of habitation.

So whenever I see a damn mushroom I go "That's not a hill".

Ashlanders are where I've put most of my focus because they're just cool. I've noticed that there's influence taken from nomadic Turkic and Mongolian cultures and this influences parts of the language, whereas the rest of Dunmeris seems to be influenced by Semitic languages. You see terms used like Khan and Yurt which both have origins in Mongolian and Turkic languages respectively. They tend to use specifically Assyrian naming conventions, and a lot are taken from the Assyrian King List. Compare what's there to the Ashlander section of this list and I swear the amount of times Ashur is used...

When I write my Ashlanders, I draw mostly from Mongolian and Turkic cultural practices during the Mongol Empire through to the Timurid Empire. I also take inspiration from Tengrism for their religious practices, as I feel that just stating "ancestor worship" like the lore does is a bit too broad. I take death rite inspiration from Ancient Egypt, the Pazyryk burials, and the Chinchorro culture as well as aspects from Zoroastrianism and Tengrism. I also have aspects of Horse Burials when dealing with how Ashlanders in game view guar.

Indoril and Dres I haven't quite fleshed out yet so I won't comment on influences there. I am basing my Nerevar off of Timur and his conquests with Josh reflecting some of that when he conducts his. Again I'll be basing this off of the aforementioned Khanates.

But yeah, while I don't know exactly what cultures Bethesda uses specifically, I think they're pulling from multiple sources from across Asia. Mind you they do this for a lot of the races, so it can confuse me at times XD.

#the elder scrolls #Morrowind #Dunmer #Ashlander

msgrime

Boethiah, Deceiver of Nations

"Have mercy upon us!"

She blinked twice. Once, he was in agony. Twice, he was destroyed.

She cast a withering glance across those remaining and said:

"I do not grant mercy."

And so it was with the others. She putting them to proof, they offering none.

Finally she came to me, eyes aglow with anger, tongue wet with hate, and said:

"Of all my believers, but two remain. Tell me, second-to-last, with what shall you prove your existence?"

Without hesitation I drew forth my blade and buried it in the chest of the other who stood beside me, and without fear replied:

"Ask him whose blood now sprouts from my blade if I exist."

She smiled. And the gates of Oblivion opened between her teeth. Then she said:

"Tell me, now-last of my followers, wherefore do you remain where the others do not?"

I retrieved my blade, and offered it up saying:

"I am alive because that one is dead. I exist because I have the will to do so. And I shall remain as long as there are signs of my handwork, such as the blood dripping from this blade."

Accepting my gift, she nodded and said:

"Indeed."

--Boethiah's Proving, An account of a fatal summoning of Boethiah

#inspiration #boethiah #the elder scrolls

berensreverie

WORDS OF THE WIND

Done for Morrowind’s 20th Anniversary

rosenkranz-does-things

And the more I think of it, the more absurd it is that you could threaten me at all, Sergeant Loughton, when the Last Word tells me that you’ve been fused to that diner chair ever since you turned sixteen.

rosenkranz-isnt-dead

thinking about her

#asenath's inspiration #the silt verses #saint val

phantastische-illustrationen

The Annotated Dracula, 1975 (Wilfried Sätty)

#asenath's aesthetics #architecture #vampires #horror #bram stoker #dracula

deltapelagicpetrel

I'm relistening to The Silt Verses again and i cannot stop thinking of the Paraclete's Gulch as the St Kinga's underground chapel and the salt mine system surrounding it.

it's got:

underground water pools

various historical and/or religious carved statues

a chapel chamber

and so so so many tunnels

like. Is this not a perfect visualization of the Gulch

#architecture #caves #asenath's aesthetics

tabamoss

Maral, ashkhatun's daughter. she's one of the herders

#the elder scrolls #tes #morrowind #ashlander #silt strider

A Plea for Masser

Masser –

The night ached my collar bone and no matter how much I plead at the rain to wash me clean from my scorn, to clean my garden’s Kanets, it is vain The flowers’ scent is forever tainted with my blood which he drew with fangs that scald

Masser –

On nights like this, I still see when I close my eyes his yellow orbs like melted gold and his raking claws How many times have I seen you now, Masser, since the day he left my door, leaving nothing but a letter? How many nights since tears left me dazed and starved on the floor like it’s the only place to be?

The taut strings of my zither snapped after the thirty eight time I played the same song I did that night when he stayed in his room, regretting my fright He might have wound me in body but he etched to himself guilt without remedy

Oh, Masser –

Will you tell him he should have at least allow me one last chance to hold his face, one last kiss perhaps to quiet his beast? Maybe it would’ve been of no use but a parting embrace would have spared me from night like this where I crush my Kanets just for a small peace (written by Vorinthia/@mondrosen on ESO)

#asenath karnak #prose #poems #poetry #elder scrolls #the elder scrolls #elder scrolls online #eso #elder scrolls rp #eso rp #the elder scrolls rp

THE SIREN IN LOVE WITH THE FISHERMAN

Sir, you have grappled onto me with silver hooks, lured me in with worm bait and love, a bucket full of pearls and bloody chum.

In the morning I woke up startled, dreaming of thunderstorms, dreaming of boats, of a million of you swimming in schools around me, my body a shark; my heart without gills – your hands cold silver against my spine, my scales scraped off, you sleep a blade against my skin, my body, suddenly so new and empty, with everything inside of me wrapped up in paper rinsed of its blood.

By Shinji Moon

#shinjimoon #shinji moon #prose #poems #poetry

adageyer

imagine coming home and finding your boyfriend like this

antoniabishop

some moons

thesiltverses

It begins at dusk.

Upon the empty flats of the lower delta, with a promised bride looking out across the endless water.

She’s been warned all her life about coming here, to the banks of the great nameless river.

Because the river, to the lifelong and generational enmity of the people who live in the broken village, will not obey.

During the harvest season, it floods its banks, drowning their fields in rich, sluggish silt.

During the planting season, it retreats sulkily out of sight, leaving behind parched ditches of cracked mud for the farmers to pick over.

Fish, when they do come up, come up wrong. Either on the surface, or when you split them open.

Wicked children who dare to play in the shallows usually come back safe and sound to the broken village.

But there are occasional days and nights when they don’t, and their grieving families will carry out a fruitless search amongst the reeds, uncovering a complete absence of bodies or footprints but stumbling across freshly discarded debris that seems to have come from another time and a place entirely.

Old glass bottles. Wheels of twisted black rubber. The coiled, slippery bodies of ancient eels and strange, twitching crabs.

All across the face of the Peninsula, scattered and hidden, are tenuous places - and this is a tenuous place if there ever was one.

She should not be here, lingering upon the cusp of dark and impossible depths.

She’s been forbidden against coming here alone, but today she needs to be alone, and this is the only place for miles that’s lonely enough.

Because tomorrow is her wedding day, and her long white dress is waiting for her upon her bed, and her relatives have flocked to town from all across the countryside, and she has nowhere else to go.

The promised bride is hoping, quietly and gently, that something dreadful will happen to her.

Murder, or lightning-strike, or simply sinking accidentally into the silt.

Something, anything, needs to happen to her to stop what’s coming for her tomorrow.

Her tears strike the dark water. The surface breaks, and changes.

And in the spreading ripples, she sees a reflection that is not her own.

There is a garden beneath the river.

It’s been there all along, she realises. Waiting for her to become capable of seeing it.

And the things that grow and flourish there are living and bright like nothing that grows above, and the one who tends to the garden is brighter and more beautiful than any man could be.

The girl looks down.

The Trawler-man looks back up.

Future generations will argue about exactly how he is portrayed, with certain depictions tending towards the ornately angelic or even monstrously crustacean.

But I like the simplicity of how it was taught to me.

A figure that’s always still, and never certain.

The Trawler-man wears a grey mackintosh and a hood, and it ripples and changes with the currents, just as his skin ripples and changes.

He turns one face towards you when he wants to listen, and another face when he wants to speak.

“Why are you crying?” he asks, and when he’s spoken, he turns the first of his faces away from her.

“Tomorrow is the Day of Going Forth,” the promised bride tells him. “Which means that tomorrow I will be married. And I know that this is certain, because all of the arrangements have already been made, and everyone keeps telling me how happy I must be at last.”

“But I also know that it can’t be true, because this is not who I am. It is not who I will ever be.

I cannot give myself up to be shaped by this match and this commitment. I cannot be bound into this life that they have planned for me.”

“Then become something else,” the Trawler-man says, with the first of his two faces. “My currents are kind, and your flesh is pliant. I will make you something that cannot be bound.”

“But I am afraid,” the promised bride replies. “I have seen the bodies that come back from below. I have seen the obscene outcomes of the dreadful river.”

The Trawler-man laughs, and says,

“They send you to their factories and fields to harden your palms, burden your back and choke your lungs. They strip you of your dignity and they turn your hair white and your gums bloody as they rot you from within. Why should their outcomes be natural, and mine obscene?”

The young bride says,

“But either way I become a vessel - for your purposes or for theirs.”

The Trawler-man tells her,

“You are a vessel, no more than that; to be anything else would be in excess of your own nature. Come. Bear me a gift, and I shall leave you something in return.”

He extends a sodden hand. One of his smiles is kindly.

The promised bride turns and gazes out over the empty plains, back towards the road that will lead her to the broken village and her wedding day tomorrow.

She turns back again.

She plunges downwards, into the garden beneath the river.

#inspiration #tsv