The Vestige
Foreword
My goal with this writing is to be as comprehensive as possible, as such I will be covering the well-known to the theoretical. To me, the Vestige has always been one of the more horror-aligned protagonists of The Elder Scrolls, and had some interesting topics and themes to look into.
The Unmaking
You died.
Not a clean death. Not a heroic or noble death. You were taken, bound, and ritualistically murdered by Mannimarco and his cult. Heaved on to an altar caked with the blood of countless others. You were not special, not unique. Just another unlucky mortal—maybe one amongst hundreds, or thousands.
A knife plunged into your heart, and Molag Bal stole your soul. Your Anuic Animus. He crafted a replica of that Animus, a Daedric Vestige. A facsimile of your corpse on Nirn, used as the blueprint for its Morphotype. Slick, azure Chaotic Creatia stuck to that Morphotype. Something that looked just like you awoke in Oblivion.
But you? Your corpse is on Nirn. It belongs to your murderer now. Was it fed to his undead? Is it lying in a mass grave? Are you his undead slave? You will never know.
"I've no idea how long we've been here, but already it feels like years.
The black-clad soldiers burned our farm and took my entire family. On a black, moonless night, they laid us upon stone altars encrusted with black tallow and caked with the blood of countless victims, and one by one, they put us to the knife. This is what being damned is. We're chattel for the Daedra.
I can't find it in me to cry for what I've lost, not anymore. Day after day this state of being, this soullessness, drains my will. It becomes harder to remember. Harder to think. I've lost so many memories. My father's face? My mother's voice? It doesn't seem possible, but they're gone. Just gone.
Even the basest of emotions are fading. I'm past the point of being indignant toward my captors. I'm past the point of feeling sorry for myself. All that's left is a gaping emptiness, and the distant echoes of a life that seems like a stranger's.
How long will it be before even the echoes fade?"
How Long Before the Echoes Fade?
On Soul-Shriven
When Molag Bal lays claim to a soul, the process goes roughly as follows:
The mortal dies, and their soul (henceforth referred to as the Anuic Animus) departs for its ordained afterlife.
The Anuic Animus gets diverted, by various means, to Coldharbour.
The Anuic Animus enters Molag Bal's possession, where a Daedric Vestige (also called a Daedric soul or animus) is crafted as a replica of the Anuic Animus.
The Daedric Vestige's Morphotype[1] takes the form of the now-dead mortal. This copy is almost always flawed.
Chaotic Creatia, Azure Plasm in Coldharbour, coalesce to form the body of the Soul-Shriven.
The body degrades, as it lacks an inherent Anuic connection that its echo of an Anuic Animus needs, and due to it being not entirely native to Oblivion.
The Soul-Shriven eventually dies, then painfully reforms. The cycle continues. 🛞
[1] The Morphotype is the aspect of a Daedric Vestige that decides the form of the Daedra. Usually an unchanging thing—but there are a few instances of a Morphotype being altered.
"Upon arrival in Molag Bal's realm, the soul attracts to itself some of the loose creatia of Oblivion, forming a corporeal body with the semblance of the shape it wore in life." - Phrastus of Elinhir
"Each is a mortal kidnapped from Mundus at the moment of death, his or her soul stolen by Molag Bal for some unthinkable purpose, and given in exchange the vestige that enables him or her to form a counterfeit body here in Coldharbour. But they are not native to Oblivion, so a Soul Shriven's body is a sad imitation of the body worn in life, suffering rapid wear and decay until it dies—a death that is no liberation, for its vestige only forms a body once again, over and over, ad infinitum." - Doctor Rhythandius
The Perfect Copy
"It is as the Scrolls foretold. The soulless one will become the brightest of five stars, and they shall guide us to the coming dawn." - Varen Aquilarios
A Soul-Shriven hero of prophecy. A Prisoner. Much alike their fellow Shriven, yet fundamentally different thanks to their abnormal Anuic Valency.
"[the Sojourner's] theory is that the Soul Shriven's bodies are flawed because they have lost the focusing principle of their Anuic souls, so their vestiges are imperfect patterns. I concurred that this was likely, and then proposed the theoretical possibility of a Soul Shriven who, despite having lost his or her soul, possessed some other intrinsic Anuic aspect. This shall-we-say 'paragon' Soul Shriven would form an unflawed body in Coldharbour that was a perfect duplicate of the body worn in Mundus. In fact, if this paragon bore a sufficiently high Anuic valence, upon contact with Padomaic creatia its body would form almost instantaneously.
The Sojourner […] went on to speculate that if such a thing were possible, it would probably occur in a situation where the Mundus was in existential jeopardy. In that case the Heart of Nirn would spontaneously generate such 'paragon' individuals as a way of defending itself from destruction, in a manner analogous to the way the mortal body fights off infection." - Doctor Rhythandius
The Vestige's escape from Coldharbour in 2E 582, with the aid of former Emperor Varen Aquilarios, proved these theories correct. They reformed the Five Companions as foretold by the Elder Scrolls, becoming the brightest of five stars to guide Tamriel toward the coming dawn.
The Unknown and Theoretical
Who Was the Vestige?
Much like many other Prisoners, the Vestige may come from any (playable) race, background, class, and so forth. If you look closely, however, there are a few notable points to mention. 1. They know ancient Nordic1 2. They may have been around Cyrodiil before their death. Why do I think this? It seems the most likely that that's where they were sacrificed, and the logistics of bringing large swathes of prisoners to sacrifice across the continent is... possible, but not very likely…
Memories
"When a mortal dies, where do you think their memories go? Don't bother guessing. I'll tell you—they go into the water. They become water. All the memories of Tamriel's history are stored in its waters." - Herald Kixathi
Does the Vestige have any memories pre-sacrifice? A lot of their dialogue options in the base game seem to point to either a deceitful level of ignorance, or an actual ignorance of many Tamrielic norms.
Of course, the Doylist excuse would be "the player wouldn't know, so they need to have an explanation!" Which is true! However, The Elder Scrolls loves giving a Watsonian answer to complement any Doylist ones.
In the metaphysics of the Aurbis, water is memory. When mortals die, their memories transform into the oceans and seas of Nirn. This is why Nirn, at its creation, was described as a barren wasteland with only interspersed seas—before the Ehlnofey began their wars and their deaths added vast oceans to the world.
"Nirn originally was all land, with interspersed seas, but no oceans. Eventually, the wandering Ehlnofey found the hidden land of Old Ehlnofey, and were amazed and joyful to find their kin living amid the splendor of ages past. […] This war reshaped the face of Nirn, sinking much of the land beneath new oceans, and leaving the lands as we know them." - The Annotated Anuad
So what happens when someone dies and their memories become water—but then they're reconstructed as a Soul-Shriven? Their Daedric Vestige is crafted as a replica of their Anuic Animus, an echo of what was. Do the memories return? Or do they remain scattered in Nirn's waters, leaving only fragments, fault lines in the soul?
"Even a fractured mind can retain subconscious memories. The echoes of past trauma are written in the fault lines of the soul, and when read correctly, the truth is revealed." - Mirror, Myth, and Memory: A Guide
We see many instances of ghosts and the like still having memories. Are these entities echoes of memories rather than beings with memories? Or perhaps ghosts exist in a liminal state—part of the water, part of the world, neither fully one nor the other.
The Elder Scrolls themselves provide another clue. They are sheet music composed by the Prisoner's actions, gathered by Mnemoli (the Keepers of Memory, the Blue Star) for Magnus to read. The Scrolls are both water and light, memory, and magic intertwined.
"The Mnemoli? They're the keepers of the Elder Scrolls. They cannot be fixed until seen. And they cannot be seen until a moment. And you, your Hero, makes that moment. […] The Hero is literally the scribe of the next Elder Scroll, the one in which the prophecy has been fulfilled into a fixed point, negating its precursor." - Michael Kirkbride
If the Vestige is a Prisoner—and they are—then their actions write new Elder Scrolls, composing new memories for the world. Perhaps in doing so, they create new memories for themselves as well. Not a restoration of what was lost, but a generation of what can be.
Furthermore, once the soul of the Vestige is retrieved at Molag Bal's defeat, it seems possible that fragments of their original memories may return, if they were lost. The reunification of Anuic Animus with Daedric Vestige might allow those memories—scattered in water—to flow back into the vessel prepared to receive them.
When it comes to the question originally posed, "Does the Vestige have any memories pre-sacrifice?" the answer, seemingly, is up to your discretion. But metaphysically, the answer leans toward: they have fragments. Echoes. Subconscious imprints written in fault lines. And through Skyshards, through their adventures, through the act of writing new Elder Scrolls, they may forge new memories that matter more than those lost.
The Self
"I killed you, you simpleton. I saw your life gutter and fade like a candle flame in a tempest. My undead servants drank your blood and I reanimated your corpse." - Mannimarco
Back on Nirn, someone died. They looked like you, but was it you?
They died. Their Anuic soul—the "original"—was stolen. A Daedric Vestige was crafted as a replica of that soul. Then this replica drew Azure Plasm around itself, forming a body.
So what constitutes the "you" in this metaphysical nightmare?
Think of Baudrillard's theory of the simulacrum—a copy without an original, or a copy that has become more "real" than the original it represents. Baudrillard describes four stages:
The image reflects reality
The image masks and perverts reality
The image marks the absence of reality
The image bears no relation to any reality—it is its own pure simulacrum
The Vestige exists somewhere between stages three and four. They are an image that marks the absence of the "real" you (who died), yet through their exceptional Anuic valence, they've become more real than ordinary mortals or Soul-Shriven. Their body doesn't degrade. Their form remains perfect. They can reform infinitely.
In a sense, they've become the new original through the destruction of the prototype.
Skyshards
"The soul, I told him, has much in common with the moth—they are a symbolic pair. Though it is typical to think of it as the Aedric essence at the core of every mortal[…]" - Abbot Crassius Viria
"Feeling oddly detached, Colin closed his eyes against the thing and reached into the middle of himself, where his little star was, the tiny piece of him that had come from beyond the world and even Oblivion, from Aetherius, the realm of pure light and magic." - Lord of Souls
The mortal soul contains within it a small piece of Aetherius, an Aedric connection. One of their numerous, but primary, distinctions from the Daedric Animus. Soul-Shriven, lacking their soul, lack the Aetherial connection described previously.
Skyshards, a type of meteoric glass, contain Aetherial magic. When "used" by the Soul-Shriven, it permanently rebinds them to Nirn, to that Aetherial connection, and to the Aedra.
Is this connection as strong as the one lying within a Mortal's soul? Possibly not, but repeated "consuming" of these Skyshards, and possibly regaining the stolen soul, would either equal out this connection, or make it much stronger than before.
Daedric, Mortal, or…
"The other type of corruption, internal, is much harder to deal with. That stems from the long-term invitation of a Daedric presence into your mind and soul. This is the kind of corruption Daedric Princes love to create, opening a door into the heart of the desperate through bargains, bids, and blackmail. While some guildmates told me it's theoretically possible to cleanse that kind of foothold, it almost never works. To be cleansed, one must want to be free of the touch of the Daedra. And these poor damned dogs want to be the way they are. As for lesser Daedra being afflicted mortals, that's not quite how that works. Ruptga forgive me, it's a bit confusing, but this is how I understand it. All Daedra are by definition, not mortals. Nor have they ever been. Daedra are Daedra, large or small. A Dremora (for example) has always been that way, and always will be. In fact, you could say that their immutability is one of the Daedra's defining traits." - Dhulef
Arguably, under the framework of Hylomorphism Form and Matter, Form is the principle, and Matter is the potency. With Aristotle’s On the Soul, one could then argue, simplistically, that the Soul is the Form and is thus what gives Personality; the Body is the Matter and is thus what gives ability. All of these together make up the Being (or ousia)
Even more simplistically, the Soul is what gives us senses, the desire for nourishment, the desire for reproduction, and so forth. The body is what gives us the physical actuality of enacting and enforcing this unto the material world.
The Daedric Being
Their Form is an immutable thing, locked by their Nymic, and their Matter of Chaotic Creatia reformable and infinite. A Dremora is always a Dremora, never to change their name, Matter, or fate.
The Mortal Being
The opposite, in nearly every facet. Mutable and finite. Their Form is the Mortal Soul, an animus that has links to Aetherius itself, and the gift of magic with it. Their Matter is utterly simplistically, when compared—flesh and bones, never to reform.
The Soul-Shriven Being
Their Form is a Daedric Vestige, a cheap copy of their Mortal Soul. Missing its connection to Anu, the Matter falters. The Matter of Chaotic Creatia collapses readily, unable to sustain the copy of an Anuic thing without the necessary intrinsic value needed. The Matter, still capable of reforming, creates an endless cycle of degradation, collapse, and a painful rebirth.
The Vestige's Being
An inexplicable combination of the Mortal and Daedric ousia. Their Form is a Daedric Vestige, yet it contains an Anuic aspect, keeping it from perpetual collapse. Their Matter is Chaotic Creatia, reformable and infinite. The Anuic aspect negates different downsides: The immutability, the permanent death. It also adds the “positive” effect of making their reformation near-instantaneous.
An uncanny nature, without a doubt noticed by both gods and men alike, with all the privileges and danger that entails.
However, at the end of the Main Quest line, with Molag Bal defeated, the Vestige regains their soul. But they already have a Form—does the Anuic Animus replace the Daedric Animus? Is the Anuic one consumed, similar to the mountain of Soul Gems consumed by the Vestige? Or do they move into a new, dualistic state—before simply containing a Daedric Animus with a high connection to Anuic elements, now containing the Daedric Animus, the high collective effect of Aetherial Skyshards, and an Anuic Soul?
The Prisoner
"Each event is preceded by Prophecy. But without the hero, there is no Event." - Zurin Arctus, the Underking
But what gives the mythic archetype of "the Prisoner" so much power? Where does it stand in relation to the King/Rebel/Observer? The answer lies in the Vestige's unique metaphysical state—they exist as MAYBE incarnate.
Those who achieve CHIM say I AM AND ALL ARE WE they recognize the Dream, see that all of reality is the Godhead's sleeping thought, and maintain their own identity within it. They are the lucid dreamers.
Those who Zero-Sum say I AM AND I AM NOT they recognize the Dream but cannot hold their identity against the revelation. They dissolve into the Godhead's unconscious. They wake up, and in waking, cease to exist.
The Prisoner says I AM AND I CAN BE.
Not transcendence through revelation. Not dissolution through truth. But potential through absence. The Prisoner is unmoored, stripped of context, stripped of certainty, sometimes stripped of self, and in that stripping, made free. They are MAYBE incarnate. Unlimited possibility made manifest, standing outside the chains of causality precisely because nothing binds them to a fixed point.
The Vestige died. Their soul was stolen. Their body was destroyed. Their memories dissolved into water. Everything that anchored them to a fixed identity was severed—and yet they persist. They persist with a Daedric body that shouldn't be perfect but is. They persist with an Anuic aspect that shouldn't exist without a soul but does. They persist because the Heart of Nirn itself decided they needed to exist, generating them as an immune response to existential threat.
The Vestige is not a hero despite being unmade. They are a hero because they were unmade. The unmaking is what created the Prisoner. The total loss of what they were is what opened the door to what they can be.
Every Soul-Shriven lost their soul. Only one became the brightest of five stars.
Conclusion
You died.
A knife on an altar. Blood of countless others. Your soul stolen, your body discarded, your memories dissolved into water. Everything you were…gone. Replaced by a Daedric echo wearing your face, built from azure slime, animated by a copied soul that shouldn't have worked.
Yet, against every metaphysical expectation, the copy held. The echo didn't fade. The Daedric Matter didn't collapse, because something Anuic inside refused to let it. Some stubborn, inexplicable spark that the Heart of Nirn itself placed there, or that was always there, waiting for the worst possible moment to matter.
What crawled out of Coldharbour was not what went in. It was not the mortal who died on that altar. It was not a Daedra. It was not undead, not a ghost, not a memory. It was something the Aurbis had no name for. A being of Oblivion flesh and Aetherial principle, a Baudrillardian simulacrum that surpassed its original, a Hylomorphic impossibility with two Forms in one body. A Prisoner. A maybe.
vestige; A faint mark or visible sign left by something which is lost
A barely-visible outline of something that no longer exists. A mark so faint it might as well not be there.
The Vestige made the mark deeper than the thing it replaced. The faint mark became a gouge in the Aurbis—the brightest of five stars, the soulless saviour, the being who was unmade and chose, in defiance of gods and metaphysics alike, to remake themselves.
