Who Holds the Paper to the Light

Elder Scrolls Deep Lore Blog

[blackpyrefly]

no met gala look will ever top cee lo greens powerful sorcerers garb from the grammys that one time

[civvic]

sincerely the best part of all of this is that he later claimed that he was never physically present at the grammys, and the figure seen here was an entirely different entity called "Gnarly Davidson"

[foulserpent]

do you have thoughts or feelings on the tes fanon about tigers being weird semi-immortal spirit like dragons? i love the aesthetics of it all and i feel like it could be another neat ancient cyrodiil thing but i have no idea how they would've interacted with like, the early alessians or even the ayleids (other than that "tiger sport" thing)

yeah i really like it and i feel like it might be one of those things that at least a Couple of writers regard as canon and slip in here and there bc theres Just enough in there in canon for it to seem like theres smth to it

like "tosh" apparently translates to both tiger and dragon. and i believe this was from one of thos eso Q&As, which i take with a grain of salt, but like that tracks considering "tosh raka" (which obv is "akatosh" switched around a little) who is of the tiger people and became a dragon and is kind of maybe implied to have mantled akatosh?

and then getting to extra-canon dev sources, i know MK's shit has it come up a few times, like particularly irt tiber septim. since according to MK he was obsessed with tigers (and called guars tigers bc they had stripes and the dumbass couldnt pronounce "guar") and his "favorite bedtime story" heavily features tigers. which is SUPER interesting if you choose to accept it it pretty much directly states that tigers used to exist and are gone now

and this wouldnt have even been a result of the stupid "tiber septim making cyrodiil temperate" thing (probably) bc it was apparently his childhood bedtime story. like it implies that tigers used to exist, were generally feared, maybe were supernatural (they talk in the story but its written as a folktale for children so take that with a grain of salt).

and its (probably) not like tiger is just the cyrodiilic word for dragon since they are described as cats but i think theres a heavily implied connection

yeah idk exactly what to make of it... personally i tend to favor mundane worldbuilding lol and interpret it as being considered a sort of "royal" quasi-mythical animal in cyrodiil considered to have ties to akatosh (and whether they actually do or not is unknown) but i absolutely do buy into the potential for it being deeper.

edit: the alessia tapestry i textured for a mod has tiger motifs on it for a similar reason. kinda loosely defined headcanons about them being seen as symbols for royalty, secondary to the Dragon of course but

[baiobey]

sorry for killing your gods but like here have some lorkhan juice

[weaverofthepanoply]

I (unfortunately) have a lot of thoughts about the elder scrolls, but the one hill that I will DIE on is that azura cannot actually predict the future. she's not the prince of prophecy. she just tells people that she is and then tries really hard to make sure her "prophecies" come to pass. understand that this is part of here sphere as the prince of egotism and is therefore definitionally girl boss behavior.

[boethiah]

i can however say with certainty that meridia would ship destiel

[weaverofthepanoply]

The Ultimate Heist would be so much better if the moth priests made offhand references to esoteric pieces of deeplore when you’re interacting with them, since talking to them fails the quest and causes all of them to become hostile

[moghedien]

Why did the dwemer disappear? gimme wrong answers only

[10-screaming-horse-figurines]

just on vacation :)

[alandrosul]

they got cancelled

[saint-veloth]

tax evasion

[snowberry-pie]

on hiatus only they’ll be back soon

[avatarofakatosh]

atlantis 2

[gronglegrowth]

Arrested for being too profane on Fredas Makhel (Profane Friday)

[scorpionesss]

They’re not gone they’re all just going for tamriels record for the biggest game of hide and seek. theyve been there ages dude and they really need to pee we gotta find em soon

[boethiah]

there was never any such thing as the dwemer. it was a social experiment by the telvanni to prove how misinformation spreads across tamriel

[weaverofthepanoply]

fell down hole

[weaverofthepanoply]

[spectrumcore]

i have this dumb headcanon that the heart of lorkhan is actually the size of a small building and what we saw in game was a misrepresentation. that or continued years of (mis)use cause it to shrink and shrink and shrink.

[weaverofthepanoply]

I always liked to think about it as a massive soul gem that houses lorkhan’s divine essence rather than a physical heart (or even a metaphysical heart projected onto the physical world).

[weaverofthepanoply]

After completing Oblivion’s Main Quest, many NPCs will comment on how bards across Cyrodiil are busy composing ballads chronicling the Oblivion Crisis. Strangely, no such epics are present in Skyrim.

[uesp]

“It cannot be fixed now.”

–2920, Attributed to Sotha Sil on the last day of the First Era.

[uesp]

Did You Know: Argonians will reflexibly open their mouths if you tickle under their chin?

[uesp]

Hey, I have a lore question if you answer these! I remember a while back, on the 25th anniversary, this blog made a series of memorial posts about each elder scrolls game, and the one for Daggerfall mentioned a “new star in the sky” that came about as a result of the warp in the West. Could you clarify what you meant by that?

A new moon appeared in the sky, the Necromancer’s Moon. The Worm Cult saw this as proof of the King of Worms apotheosis into the God of Worms. Every eight days the Necromancer’s Moon passes in front of Arkay, allowing the Anchorites to easily perform Necromantic rituals that even the greatest necromancers before the Warp in the West would marvel at, particularly the creation of black soul gems.

[weaverofthepanoply]

I’ve always felt that a much more interesting (and ironic) reframing of the Dawnguard as an organization would be to have it staffed primarily with vampires.

Some time after the events of Dawnguard, the organization itself would be wiped out completely (much as it is in the Volkihar faction quest “Destroy the Dawnguard”), only to be rediscovered and reestablished by a group of vampires who seek reconciliation with the mortal world. These undead would protect the living from their kin of a more maleficent bent, using their natural strength, affinity for magic, and resistance to most diseases (including vampirism itself!) for good rather than evil.

I believe that such a storyline centering a group of marginalized undead trying futilely to prove themselves to the living would be ripe with narrative potential, juicy tensions and a multitude of character choices that would explore and re-examine the evil depictions of vampires that are common in earlier elder scrolls media, as well as giving those infected with vampirism the choice to play as a “good” character, in much the same way the “Destroy the Dark Brotherhood” quest functioned as a fool to the stereotypically “evil” Darkbrotherhood Questline in Skyrim.

And ultimately, I think that I adore the idea that the drive and desire to protect the innocent can transcend time, space, and even life, and that a group of people would feel enough camaraderie for their fellow human beings to stake their lives on their safety.

[weaverofthepanoply]

Did you know?

Black soul gems first appeared in Oblivion. Prior to this, the souls of the mortal races (Man, Mer, and Beast) were unable to be captured in game. Interestingly enough, the events of Oblivion canonically take place in 4E 433, 16 years after the famous (or infamous) Warp in the West, which occurred in 4E 417, and during which Mannimarco, King of Worms is said to have ascended to godhood.

Edit: 3E 433, and 417, respectively! My mistake!

[weaverofthepanoply]

Ah yes, the great houses of Morrowind - slavery, Catholics, traitors, racist wizards, Catholics 2, and volcano cancer

[weaverofthepanoply]

Did you know?

Levitation spells are unaivaulavle in all mainline Elder Scrolls games after Morrowind. The reason behind this disappointing dearth of flight capabilities is that the Levitation Act of 3E 421 makes levitation spells illegal in all imperial provinces aside from Morrowind (who are exempt from the Act due to stipulations in the armistice). This accounts for the absence of levitation magic in Oblivion and vanilla Skyrim, and explains why Dragonborn’s Neloth possesses levitation capabilities in his Tel, as by that time in the Elder Scrolls History, Solstheim has become a territory of Morrowind, a gift from the Nords of Skyrim.