Neht!Mod. Your lore knowledge is required! Why/how is the White Gold Tower so powerful? Thurvayn!Mod said you are highly knowledgeable about this. Please? I tried to find out and I confused myself xD
Alright, White-Gold Tower! It is important as all hell. The Nu-Mantia Intercepts deal extensively with the towers. Basically, towers are more than just physical towers (they don’t even have to be physical towers, since at least one is a mountain) but Towers are a metaphysical concept that’s really important in achieving CHIM, keeping everything together, and so on. Everything quoted here is from a dev text not in the game, but that doesn’t mean that it’s less important or anything. Disclaimer: TES canon is kind of vague at best. This is my interpretation of things. If I’ve got anything wrong, feel free to correct.
The text I’m using is the Nu-Mantia Intercept. There are others that deal with the concept of Towers, but I feel like this is the most straight-forward guide for understanding them.
Letter 4 has some important information regarding towers in general. I recommend reading all of it, but I think these are some important quotes.
“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.”
[The first tower is the time god’s spaceship, erected during the wibbly-wobbly mess that was the Dawn Era when things were still being figured out. As well, every tower has some sort of locus point. This second point is important to note considering you dismantle a locus point during the events of Morrowind and Daggerfall.]
“The outcome of the Convention was to leave the terrestrial sphere in their excess, for its own good, but that it should last after their departure as in the semblance of the Ada-mantia. Mundus was given its second Tower, the Red, whose First Stone was the Heart of the World, “as in the image.”
Time began to last in stepped-fashion. Those spirits that remained, lesser and greater, involuntary or eventual earthbone, surrendered all definite hold on divinity. Aldmeris bore witness and built the remaining towers during the Merethic: White-Gold, Crystal-like-Law, Orichalc, Green-Sap, Walk-Brass, Snow Throat, and on and on, ‘aad semblio impera.’”
[Here’s a list of the other towers. White-Gold is the tower in the Imperial City, Crystal-like-Law fell during the Oblivion Crisis, Red Tower is Red Mountain and was dismantled during Morrowind, Orichalc is unknown, Green-Sap is believed to be the walking city of Falinesti in Valenwood (which has recently stopped walking), Walk-Brass is Numidium which was destroyed during Daggerfall, and Snow Throat is believed to be the Throat of the World. It’s interesting to note that the listed towers seem to correspond with the different merrish races on Tamriel. Adamantine/Direnni=Aldmer, Crystal-Like-Law=Altmer, WGT=Ayleid, Red=Chimer/Dunmer, Green-Sap=Bosmer, Walk-Brass=Dwemer, Snow Throat=Falmer. No one’s quite sure about Orichalc, since we have only a name. It could belong to the Left-Handed Elves of Yokuda, the Maormer, or the orcs if you count them as elves, though I don’t think they count themselves as elves.]
Letter #5
“
What are the Towers?
They are magical and physical echoes of the Ur-Tower, Ada-mantia. Ada-mantia was the first spike of unassailable reality in the Dawn, otherwise called the Zero Stone. The powers at Ada-mantia were able to determine through this Stone the spread of creation and their parts in it.
The powers also created Red Tower and the First Stone. This allowed the Mundus to exist without the full presence of the divine. In this way, the powers of Ada-mantia granted the Mundus a special kind of divinity, which is called NIRN, the consequence of variable fate.
After these two acts, which is commonly called the Convention, the gods left the earth.
As they were the most powerful of lesser spirits in the ages after the Convention and eager to emulate what they saw, the Aldmer began construction of their own towers. That they built more than one shows you that they were not of one mind.”
[The towers are helping keep everything together in absence of the aedra. This is kind of an important thing.]
#7
“The Stones are magical and physical echoes of the Zero Stone, by which a Tower might focus its energy to mold creation. Oftentimes, the Stones borrowed surplus creation from Oblivion, grafting it to the terrestrial domain of its anointed Tower.”
“”The Tower of White-Gold, whose Stone is Chim-el Adabal, Amulet of Kings, whose masters are returning. I speak of course of the Ayleids, for which “sometimes” was not good enough.”“
#8 deals with WGT directly, so here’s the full text.
“What is White-Gold Tower?
Like all of the polydox constructs of the earliest Aldmer— whatever their abnegaurbic creed— White-Gold Tower is a conduit of creatia, aad sembia sembio, built to bring about a reversal of the congealing spiritual bleed caused by the Convention. In other words, it was a focus point for (re-)reaching the divine.
White-Gold Tower was made by the Ayleids, the Heartland High Elves that would have none to do with their isle-kind. Where the Altmer sought to focus on dracochrysalis, or keeping elder magic bound before it could change into something lesser (and act which ironically required aetherial surplus), the Ayleids harvested castaway creatia from Oblivion by entering a pact with the masters of the Void, the Princes of Misrule.
***
Gypsy Moth dustmemore insert - it should be noted here that it is always foolish to think of whole races sharing like minds. “Ayleid” is as much a metaphysical designation as it is a cultural one. Just like the earliest Chimer who orphaned themselves from the Velothi Exodites, but remain Chimer today, large numbers of Ayleids showed more interest in the immediate earthly needs of agriculture rather than the magical needs of concept-farming. This distinction becomes important later, when “Ayleid” begins to designate other, and ofttimes foreign, agencies.
***
Every dawnmaker Tower takes a myth-form. Red Tower is a volcano and its surrounds. Snow Throat a mountain whose apex is only half here. Walk-Brass is appropriately ambulatory, and (most of the time) anthropomorphic. The Aldmeri polydoxes were cosminachs, and the White-Gold project was and is no different.
Though the Ayleids gave theirs a central Spire as the imago of Ada-mantia, the whole of the polydox resembled the Wheel, with eight lesser towers forming a ring around their primus. To dismiss this mythitecture as being a mockery of the Aurbis is to ignore an important point: this same “jest” gave White-Gold Tower a power over creatia unalike any on this plane(t). It was a triumph of sympathetic megafetish, and the Start of the [Threat! To! Empire!] that brings me to this Council.”
If the Ayleids made their own Wheel within the Wheel, were-web aad semblio, what would happen if they plucked its strings?”
[So basically, WGT is an attempt to achieve lost divinity, similar in some respects to what the Dwemer tried to do by becoming Numidium and similar to what the Thalmor are trying to do now. It’s interesting to note that some people theorize that the current Thalmor is the fruition of a long-plotted Ayleid conspiracy (they might not be entirely dead) but that’s not necessarily relevant to this.]
You can find the rest of the Nu-Mantia Intercepts here under Michael Kirkbride. I really recommend reading the rest of his stuff and the other dev texts. If a lot of it doesn’t make sense at first read, that’s because a lot of it doesn’t make sense even after twenty reads, hah, but once it clicks, it’s awesome.
WGT is probably not as powerful as Red Tower and Adamantine, since those are the original towers that everything else is an echo of, but it’s the one that’s at the heart of the Empire, so that’s kind of a big deal. It’s the center tower. It’s built in the shape of the Wheel, which is the shape of reality (aedra are the spokes of the Wheel, daedra are the spaces in between) so that’s why it’s also kind of a big deal. Wheels are important! Anything that mimics the creation of the universe or Mundus is probably Really, Really Important. If you mimic creation in just the right way, you can even become a god.
Every tower is important. The first two are the most important, but every subsequent tower is also important.
WGT may or may not have been dismantled during Oblivion. The Amulet of Kings (its Stone) was shattered and so some people think that it’s fallen, but others believe the the statue of AkaMartin created at the end might be its new Stone. It’s unclear.
The Towers in general are important because of their ties to understanding the concept of CHIM, but that’s for another post.