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Summary
Magnus placed the Zero Stone in Ada-mantia of High Rock.
Lorkhan’s Heart of the World was cast into Red Mountain of Vvardenfell. Resolved by the Nerevarine.
Altmer Crystal-like-Law around the first stone of mortals on Summerset Isle.
Ayleid placed the Amulet of Kings in White-Gold of Cyrod. Resolved by the Martin Septim, transformed into Statue of Akatosh.
Dwemer placed Mantella in Walk-Brass, Numidium, of Morrowind, which the Chimer/Dunmer inherited.
Left-Handed Elves placed sharpening whetstone for spirit-blades in Orichalc of Yokuda.
Bosmer placed root-hub in Green-Sap (Falinestri?) of Valenwood.
Falmer placed coherent bundle of winds in Snow-Throat of Skyrim.
Azura placed moon-sugar among the Khajiit of Elswyr.
Hist of Black Marsh.
History
Much from Luagar2, quoting lore.
Ada-mantia (Adamantine, Direnni) Tower on the Isle of Balfiera in High Rock is dated to around ME 2500, making it the oldest known structure in Tamriel. The earliest known date in Aldmeri history: earliest historical date in unpublished Elvish chronicles. The erection of Ada-mantia [created the first tower of Mundus], a sleek and silver vessel, a spike into the changing earth, the impossipoint of the Convention; every Tower bears its Stone, [Ada-mantia’s was] called the Zero Stone. The powers at [the Convention] were able to determine through [the Zero] Stone the spread of creation and their parts in it; the physical, temporal, spiritual, and magical elements of Nirn were set.
Lorkhan was condemned by the Gods to exile in the mortal realms, and his heart was torn out and cast from the Tower. Where it landed, a volcano formed Red Mountain, and Mundus was given its second Tower, the Red, whose First Stone was the Heart of the World, “as in the image.” 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).
The Heart was powerful enough (that’s what the Dwemer used). The power of the Heart basically allowed them to manipulate the basic stories (myths) which comprise the foundations of the world, by this they could do pretty much whatever they wanted (not to mention with the help of a dreamsleeve which allowed them to already be connected directly with the rest of their race). Being able to screw with the myths (through the mythopoeic enchantments on the Heart) is sorta like being able to be in a story, take the pen and rewrite what you want; with that kind of influence moving some bodies around is probably a piece of cake… Luagar2
In the Middle Merethic Era, as they were the most powerful of lesser spirits in the ages after the Convention and eager to emulate what they saw, the [descendants of the] Aldmer began construction of their own towers. That they built more than one shows that they were not of one mind. The Crystal Tower (Crystal-like-Law) was built on Summerset Isle.
[With various explorations done and the Direnni finding the Adamantine Tower, the Aylied’s settled in Cyrodiil]. [Here the] White Gold Tower [was built by] the Ayleids, [who went to Cyrodiil and] harvested castaway creatia from Oblivion by entering a pact with the Daedra. [The Tower], a conduit of creatia, [was] 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. Stone of White-Gold Tower is the Amulet of Kings.
Over many years, the [Mer] of Tamriel (Aldmer) began to split along cultural lines according to their new environments [and] on how best to spread creation and their parts in it. Each Tower that was built exemplified a separate accordance. The Elves were dividing [and] this sundering of purpose is the myth of the “destruction of Aldmeris.” At first [the dividing was only] temperamentally [but] then [they became] physically very distinct “races” separate from one another; [the Aldmer would thus] become the [various merish races]: the Dwemer, Chimer, and Altmer [(including Aylied)].
[Other Towers were also built]: Orichalc [(in Yokuda)-stone as a sharpening whetstone for spirit-blades], Green-Sap [(most likely in Valenwood)-tower as the moving tree-city Falinesti, stone as its root-hub], Snow Throat [(Throat of the World, in Skyrim)-stone as a coherent bundle of winds], and on and on. [The Towers] are magical and physical echoes of the Ur-Tower, Ada-mantia, [just as] 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. It was and is difficult to bypass Oblivion to go directly to creation’s source, the Aetherius; it [was] done [though], but not without great expenditure, mundane and otherwise. However, access to Oblivion, the Void that surrounds Mundex Arena, which we might touch every night, was child’s play in comparison. Cultivating creatia that washed into the Void from Aetherius became the rule among Stones.
The Daedric Realms [had been] formed on much the same principle [however] the Towers built on the Mundus, since the lands around them congealed in the absence of the gods, were unable to match the capriciousness of the [Daedra].
Numidium
Walk-Brass, or Anumidium, stone Mantella, was created by the Dwemer. They had found a way to go “upstream” in the universe by reuniting with “the first brush of Anu and Padomay”. They, as an entire race, attempted to unite themselves into the giant golem as one, single entity, then give it divinity via the Heart of Lorkhan. Its golden skin is/was made of Dwemer souls. The thing is meeeaaan. Vivec gave it to Tiber Septim, but without its “battery”, the Heart of Lorkhan. Instead, Tiber powered it with either the heart of Zurin Arctus or King Wulfharth, depending on which version you believe. It absolutely decimates whatever it goes against, except for something that is a part of it, which is why either Zurin or Wulfharth (again, depending upon which version you read) fought it and blasted its “lifeforce” into Aetherius. Don’t mess with the Numidium. It is a god with a remote control capable of creating entire parallel universes and Dragon Breaks. In fact, it created the entire Imperial race after Tiber/Arctus and/or Wulfharth entity reunited and became Talos. Talos then spawned the Imperials, which did not exist until TES III. A very, very good article is Luagar’s Final Report To Trebonius, which details the thing and its uses/creation a bit. Hope this helps. The Word Merchant
It’s not the Brass God that wrecks everything so much as it is all the plane(t)s and timelines that orbit it, singing world-refusals.
The Surrender of Alinor happened in one hour, but Numidium’s siege lasted from the Mythic Era until long into the Fifth. Some Mirror Logicians of the Altmer fight it still in chrysalis shells that phase in and out of Tamrielic Prime, and their brethren know nothing of their purpose unless they stare too long and break their own possipoints.”--MK
“To kill Man is to reach Heaven, from where we came before the Doom Drum’s iniquity. When we accomplish this, we can escape the mockery and long shame of the Material Prison. To achieve this goal, we must: (1) Erase the Upstart Talos from the mythic. His presence fortifies the Wheel of the Convention, and binds our souls to this plane. (2) Remove Man not just from the world, but from the Pattern of Possibility, so that the very idea of them can be forgotten and thereby never again repeated. (3) With Talos and the Sons of Talos removed, the Dragon will become ours to unbind. The world of mortals will be over. The Dragon will uncoil his hold on the stagnancy of linear time and move as Free Serpent again, moving through the Aether without measure or burden, spilling time along the innumerable roads we once travelled. And with that we will regain the mantle of the imperishable spirit.” Merry Christmas, MK
Summary from The Word Merchant.
[Backstory notes for the Falmer/Nord conflict. Discuss.]
In Aldmora
Nords, as their name implies, come from the north. As a people, they originated in the northern-most place in the known world, a continent known as Atmora. Little is known of the geography and history of Atmora, as at the time of the migration from there, humanity did not possess a written language. What little is known comes from old Elvish records which are not open to Imperial scholars, but which are known to refer to the continent as ‘Aldmora’, meaning “Elder Wood”. It is likely Atmora is a human corruption of this word. In a historical sense, the humans who live there are called Nedes, as are those humans living in Tamriel before King Harald, thirteenth of the Ysgramor line, seceded from Atmoran rulership, after which they are historically annotated as Cyro-Nordics, to illustrate that the Cyrodiil people had not yet gone separate from the original trunk of human population.
Even in ancient times, Atmora must have been extremely cold, at least as much so as modern day Skyrim, because the men who lived there are very well suited to live in cold climates. UESPWiki on Nords
From Aldmora to Falmora
Pre-literate humans, the so-called “Nedic Peoples”, from the continent of Atmora (also ‘Altmora’ or ‘the Elder Wood’ in Aldmeris) migrate and settle in northern Tamriel. “The Nedic peoples were a minority in a land of Elves, and had no choice but to live peacefully with the Elder Race. In High Rock, Hammerfell, Cyrodiil, and possibly Morrowind, they did just that, and the Nedic peoples flourished and expanded over the last centuries of the Merethic Era.” (from FRONTIER, CONQUEST, AND ACCOMODATION: A SOCIAL HISTORY OF CYRODIIL) Nordic hero Ysgramor, leader of a great colonizing fleet to Tamriel, develops a runic transcription of Nordic speech based on Elvish principles, and is the first human historian. Ysgramor’s fleet lands at Hsaarik Head at the extreme northern tip of Skyrim’s Broken Cape. The Nords build there the legendary city of Saarthal. Merethic Era timeline and notes from the Imperial Library
It is said that during the time of the migration, a protracted and bloody civil war had gripped Atmora, and, as the story goes, a man named Ysgramor rallied those people from all sides who desired to live in peace, and set sail to the south, eventually arriving in Skyrim; the extreme northern tip of the continent of Tamriel, at a place known as Hsaarik Head. They named the new land “Mereth” in tribute to the many Elves which lived in the forests there (Elves having arrived in Tamriel several millennia prior). UESPWiki on Nords
As it goes, Elves and men lived in relative peace and prosperity for a great deal of time, however, the Elves, upon observing the staggering birthrate of the human populace, quickly realized that men would overtake the wild places and become the first major threat to Elvish civilization in the known world. Of course, this would not have happened for many centuries, and it would have occurred unnoticeably slowly from the human point of view; however, in the Elvish mind, this would be the equivalent of the statement “The day after tomorrow, we will be overtaken.” UESPWiki on Nords
Ysgramor’s provocations and blasphemies have, of course, been long forgotten. PGE: Skyrim
Falmer taught Ysgramor, sons, and Saarthal of Lorkhan in terms of overcoming His works to regain divine nature and rebirth through baptism in the waters of Oblivion (normal water transformed with a philosopher’s stone, which actually did work, turning aedric souls into daedric through Lorkhan’s favor). Ysgramor, sons, and Saarthal, less biased against their true creator, interpreted this power as a gift from Lorkhan as the One True God, creating a great religious awakening (Ysgramor’s “provocations and blasphemies”). Falmer saw that they had created a city and a people of heretics which would only grow, and so put them to the stake.
For genocide to happen, there must be certain preconditions. Foremost among them is a national culture that does not place a high value on human life. A totalitarian society, with its assumed superior ideology, is also a precondition for genocidal acts. In addition, members of the dominant society must perceive their potential victims as less than fully human: as “pagans,” “savages,” “uncouth barbarians,” “unbelievers,” “effete degenerates,” “ritual outlaws,” “racial inferiors,” “class antagonists,” “counterrevolutionaries,” and so on. In themselves, these conditions are not enough for the perpetrators to commit genocide. To do that—that is, to commit genocide—the perpetrators need a strong, centralized authority and bureaucratic organization as well as pathological individuals and criminals. Also required is a campaign of vilification and dehumanization of the victims by the perpetrators, who are usually new states or new regimes attempting to impose conformity to a new ideology and its model of society. Wikipedia on genocide in history
Soon thereafter, the Aldmer launched a series of pogroms against the settlements of humanity, and in what was to become known as the Night of Tears, an Elven militia razed the capital city of Saarthal to the ground, killing the defenders and everyone unable to flee, well over a thousand people. The Nedic men were scattered to the coast and systematically hunted down in an act of unmitigated cleansing, and only Ysgramor and his two sons survived, fleeing in the last available longship while the port they launched from was burned. UESPWiki on Nords
According to the ancient writings and oral traditions of the Nords, the Nordic god Shor creates Sovngarde, the place that is built to honor those Nords who have proven their mettle in war. (For more information: Sovngarde, a Reexamination.) Merethic Era timeline and notes from the Imperial Library
The Philosophers’ Stones Shattered
Ysgramor and sons returned to Aldmora for support, but only got it by appealing to Aldmorans in terms of the gods all the Aldmorans worshipped. Privately, Ysgramor and his sons continued to believe in the One, creating the ancient Nordic cult that Tiber Septim glorified with the Temple of the One. (Akatosh summoned in the temple to preserve the plan of dead Lorkhan, whom She killed to enact the plan.)
After the Night of Tears, some Aldmorans were holy warriors on a crusade of vengeance rooted deep in their culture, and some weren’t (ironically, those more sympathetic to the idea of the One, who worshipped Mara).
Arriving in Atmora, and observing the tumultuous peace which had developed, they quickly propagated their tale of a vicious and deceitful alien race, the Elves, bent on scouring men from the face of the world. Rallying the various factions to their cause, they conscripted an army composed of the heroes of the war, which history would know as the “Five Hundred Companions”. Upon their return to Tamriel, they expediently slaughtered the Elves living there and laid the foundations for the ascendancy of Men to the power they now hold, and thusly sparked a long fuming hatred and prejudice between the two races which exists, by degree, even today. UESPWiki on Nords
[Atmoran tactics: see Wikipedia on Viking arms and armor, weapons and warfare.]
In Falmora the Age of Men began dramatically in the late Merethic Era when the Five Hundred Companions destroyed the temple complex in Dawnstar, a center of learning famous across the continent. Monks were killed in the abbey, thrown into the sea to drown or carried away as slaves along with the church treasures. The devastation of Altumbria’s calm city shocked and alerted the royal Courts of Mereth. Never before has such an atrocity been seen, declared the Altumbrian Scholar, Alcuin of Lainalten. [Polarizing opinion and redirecting internal criticism away from the Falmer pogroms and the Night of Tears.] More than any other single event, the attack on Dawnstar cast a shadow on merish perception of Aldmorans for the next milennia. Adapted Viking Age historical consideration of Lindisfarne
Alcuin of Lainalten declares: In this year fierce, foreboding omens came over the land of Altumbria. There were excessive whirlwinds, lightning storms, and fiery dragons were seen flying in the sky. These signs were followed by great famine, and on the Day of Blood Eagle the ravaging of heathen men destroyed the Gnostic Study of Lorkhan at Dawnstar. The heathens poured out the blood of the students on the stones of the Garden of Celestial Pattern, and trampled in the meditation rooms on the drained and mutilated bodies of the enlightened. Adapted Lindisfarne history
Land of Rape and Honey
Strategically, the ideal was to swiftly effect an adversary’s collapse through a short campaign fought by a small, professional army. Operationally, its goal was to use indirect means, such as mobility and shock, to render an adversary’s plans irrelevant or impractical. Wikipedia on blitzkrieg
The battlefront was lost, and with it the illusion that there had ever been a battlefront. For this was no war of occupation, but a shocking, awful war of quick penetration and obliteration. Swift columns of tongues and cavalry plunged through Falmora while gale-force winds bearing lightning and driving, immobilizing rain from an allied sky heralded their coming. They sawed off communications, destroyed animals, scattered civilians, spread terror. Working sometimes 30 miles (50 km) ahead of infantry and battle mages, they broke down Falmoran defenses before they had time to organize. Then, while the infantry mopped up, they moved on, to strike again far behind what had been called the front. Adapted TIME magazine account of the fall of Poland in WWII
Collective and arbitrary murder, systematic abduction of children to raise them away from their parent’s culture, active and degrading religious propaganda, forced work, expulsion from the homeland or compulsory abandonment of cultural habits and social structure, all these practices, described by Robert Jaulin, have in common a deep despise for the other man and woman as representatives of a different cultural world. Wikipedia on ethnocide
[Falmer reaction: see Wikipedia on the strategy of Fabian, thirty-six strategems, and the hashshashin.]
The Courts of Mereth did not react with unity to the lightning war and following purge, partly because they did not realize that these men had such power—they figured that the gods were on their side—and partly because they weren’t too fond of a merish culture that delved so deeply into the study of Lorkhan. The common mer called them worshippers, and derided them for communing with mannish ancestors, both not true. The Falmer felt that the path of transcendence lay through self-effacing study (gnosis, experiential knowledge) of their divine spark from Lorkhan, since they believed they were in the deadric plane of Dawn’s Beauty. The Courts decided that the Ayleids had the right idea, enslaving men to suppress their will to power, but the Falmer could not effectively break the Aldmorans.
It may be that the exploits of the near-mythical Ysgramor conflate the reigns of several early Nord Kings, as the Elves were not finally driven from the present boundaries of Skyrim until the reign of King Harald, the thirteenth of Ysgramor’s line, at the dawn of recorded history. King Harald is also remembered for being the first King to relinquish all holdings in Atmora; the Nords of Skyrim were now a separate people, whose faces were turned firmly toward their destiny, the conquest of the vast new land of Tamriel. Indeed, the history of the Nords is the history of humans in Tamriel; all the human races, with the exception of the Redguards, are descended from Nordic stock, although in some the ancient blood admittedly runs thin.
King Vrage the Gifted began the expansion that led to the First Empire of the Nords. Within a span of fifty years, Skyrim ruled all of northern Tamriel, including most of present-day High Rock, a deep stretch of the Nibenay Valley, and the whole of Morrowind. The Conquest of Morrowind was one of the epic clashes of the First Era, when ensued many a desperate contest between Nord and Dark Elf in the hills and glades of that dire kingdom, still recalled by the songs of the minstrels in the alehouses of Skyrim. The system of succession in the First Empire is worthy of note, as it proved in the end to be the Empire’s undoing. By the early years of the First Empire, Skyrim was already divided into Holds, then ruled by a patchwork of clan-heads, kings, and councils (or moots), all of which paid fealty to the King of Skyrim. During the exceptionally long reign of King Harald, who died at 108 years of age and outlived all but three of his sons, a Moot was created, made up of representatives from each Hold, to choose the next King from qualified members of the royal family. Over the years, the Moot became permanent and acquired an increasing amount of power; by the reign of King Borgas, the last of the Ysgramor dynasty, the Moot had become partisan and ineffective. Upon the murder of King Borgas by the Wild Hunt (see Aldmeri Dominion – Valenwood), the Moot’s failure to appoint the obvious and capable Jarl Hanse of Winterhold sparked the disastrous Skyrim War of Succession, during which Skyrim lost control of its territories in High Rock, Morrowind, and Cyrodiil, never to regain them. The war was finally concluded in 1E420 with the Pact of Chieftans; henceforth, the Moot was convened only when a King died without direct heirs, and it has fulfilled this more limited role admirably. It has only been called upon three times in the intervening millenia, and the Skyrim succession has never again been disputed on the field of battle. PGE: Skyrim
For at that time the Elves were as damned and near death as ever they had been during the great skirmishes of Solstheim. The Battle of the Moesring was to be the final stand between Nord and Elf on our fair island. Led by Ysgramor, we had driven the Elven scourge from Skyrim, and were intent on cleansing Solstheim of their kind as well. Our warriors, armed with the finest axes and swords Nord craftsmen could forge, cut great swaths through the enemy ranks. The slopes of the Moesring ran red with Elf blood. … It is common practice to burn the corpses of our fallen foes. This is as much a necessity as it is custom, for death brings with it disease and dread. Our chieftains wished to cleanse Solstheim of the Elven horde, in death as well as life. Fall of the Snow Prince
Children of Saarthal
Some victors and veterans of the campaign against the Falmer, after crushing their spine in Solstheim, banded together to continue to hunt them down individually, and in their small refugee groups. Continuing to search and destroy, they became a tacitly endorsed military order (mentioned in the holy canticle), making the lands safe for the ancient Nordic cult of the One.
The purpose of ethnic cleansing is to remove the conditions for potential and actual opposition, whether political, terrorist, guerrilla or military, by physically removing any potentially or actually hostile ethnic communities. Wikipedia
The Children of Saarthal is now a group of pure-blooded Nords descended from Aldmoran stock whose mission (greatly reduced since ancient times) is to hunt down all Falmer and destroy their works, and sustain belief in the One. They’ve had long enough, been granted enough resources (especially under the First Empire of Man based in Windhelm), and were thorough enough that no pureblood Falmer lives above ground, no Falmer ruin stands above ground, no obviously Falmer ruin entrance is visible in any reasonably accessible location, and the Temple of the One (partly) stands in the Imperial City. The Falmer Boundary Runes mentioned in the PGE annotation records a confession of the Night of Tears from the Falmer, dictated by the Children of Saarthal, so it’s actually a monument to their success.
Fallout Across Three Ages
Spreading out from the north, Ysgramor’s clan stretched its arms, proving that no ancient force was more fearsome than the Nords. In the 113th year of the First Era, the entirety of modern Skyrim was under the reign of King Harald, and still, it continued to expand. Leaving their snowy valleys and mountains, the Nords attacked the Dwemer of neighbouring Resdayn, the Altmer and Bretons of High Rock and lent aid to the rising slave rebellion in Cyrodiil which was to end the Ayleid rule of the south.
Ayleid to Alessian rule in Cyrodiil: The Last King of the Ayleids.
In the centuries that followed, Skyrim expanded and contracted as battles were won and lost. Though Cyrodiil was considered a separate domain, the Nords and the early Imperials formed a loose alliance against their elven opponents, their cultures mixing together, creating the foundations of modern day Aedric worship. Yet Skyrim remained the dominant human nation in Tamriel until it was torn apart by rivalries within the Ysgramor clan. As individual chieftains fought each other, Skyrim gradually lost her holdings in present day Morrowind and High Rock, and certain localities in Skyrim became independent kingdoms. For brief periods, one ruler has managed to unite all of Skyrim, but the Nord character is one essentially of conflict, and the confederacies never last. The Cyrodilic Empire and later the Septim Empire was able to take advantage of this tendency and recruit the warlike Nords to their side before they became a force of the opposition.
Not until the Third Era did merish scholars outside Skyrim begin seriously to reassess the achievements of the Aldmorans, recognizing the artistry, the technological skills and the seamanship. Until Tiber Septim’s reign in White-Gold Tower, Aldmorans were portrayed as the most violent and bloodthirsty of men: the chronicles of the Aldmeri Dominion had always portrayed them as rapacious ‘wolves among sheep’, compared to the compromised races of men who interbred with mer. Adapted Viking Age historical consideration of Lindisfarne
In the third era, if Cyrodiil has been the heart of the Empire, Skyrim has been its strong arm. The greatest threat to the Empire’s unity occured in the 120th year, when the so-called Wolf Queen of Solitude, Potema, aunt of the Empress Kintyra, launched a rebellion that became a blood civil war. Though it was eventually quelled, the repercussions are evident to this day. There is a strong underground movement called the Horme that believes Potema and her deposed son of Uriel III to be the last of Tiber Septim’s true blood and under that principle lead raids against Imperial interests in the province.
Under the Imperial Simulacrum of Jagar Tharn, cold animosities between the kingdoms of Skyrim and their neighbors in High Rock and Hammerfell were fanned into the fire of war. Upon the true Emperor’s return to his throne, this war ended, but not before Skyrim had reasserted itself on territory it had not held since the 1st Era.
The War of Bend’r-Mahk increased the territory that is considered Skyrim considerably, allowing the Nordic counts to swallow up many miles of eastern High Rock and Hammerfell. Resistance by the Bretons and the Redguards is feeble in the cities of Jehenna and Elinhir, and more active in the border zones of the countryside. The city-state of Dragonstar continues to be divided into western and eastern sections, walled off from one another, each with its own government, and each with an atmosphere of mistrust and fear. There are few days without an act of terror from one resistance group or another, though, so far little territory has changed hands since the days of the Imperial Simulacrum. PGE3: Skyrim
I am basing the road map, terrain, and coldness of rooms on this map by Vality, who critiqued the map. Some places in lore are not on the map, which this article discusses.
Ice and Chitin mentions: Danstrar, a base for Nordic warchiefs in 2E855 during Tiber’s conquest; and a bay between an ancient keep on the isthmus of Nerone, built by Reman Cyrodiil against the Akaviri, and Gorvigh Ridge en route to a legion garrison at Porhnak.
The Beggar series mentions the western town of Jallenheim, and The Aalto. While there are many clues that this story is not to be taken seriously, Jallenheim is a Nordic village as of 2E358 in Fire and Darkness, and Jazbay wine is enjoyed “fairly recently” before 3E388 in the Red Kitchen Reader.
In north-central Skyrim, there is an area called The Aalto, which is of unique geographical interest. It is a dormant volcanic valley surrounded on all sides by glaciers, so the earth is hot from the volcano, but the constant water drizzle and air is frigid. A grape called Jazbay grows there comfortably, and everywhere else in Tamriel it withers and dies. The strange vineyard is a privately owned, and the wine produced from it is thus rare and extremely expensive. It is said that the Emperor needs the permission of the Imperial Council to have a glass of it once a year. Warrior
I sure hope there will be many easter eggs to seek out in the wilderness. I enjoy exploring the wilderness also. It’s one of the things I love about non-linear video games. I see that mountain off in the distance, and I can go climb it. Leviticus
Include the example code that lets you see other rooms, esp. while in the overland.
For Skyrim if they have it there, I would like the npc’s to have a greater sense of hospitality. If the winters can kill or harm, they could take greater concern for their fellow man on the road. The Eskimos were supposed to let a traveler snuggle with their wives in the night for warmth, kindness of that sort. Also just knocking on the door and asking for a place to rest should be an option, you need to heal sometime and you might have a chance to return the favor. At times when you have a home you could let people in to have a nap or offer them care. It can increase your disposition with the people you help, and give you a good reputation. Shades
Check for consistency with Viking rules for hospitality. Greeks were very big on this. The rules would be strictly followed in isolated halls, well-regarded in villages, usual practice (especially for your factions) in towns, and apply only to your factions in cities. “The player has a number called faction reputation.”
The names of the Five Hundred Companions are still recited, every Thirteenth of Sun’s Dawn at the Feast of the Dead in Windhelm, as the Nords link their current people to their ancestors.
This rite is a pale shadow of the Falmer “Naming the Passed”, which channels their ancestor’s wight-magic (no soul-gems) into objects of their finest craftsmanship: you have to know the name of the dead, what magicka imbued the body of the dead, and match the magic to an appropriate item. Falmer started regularly recycling their spirits for the Night of Tears, when they needed strength to commit genocide. The Falmer fell because these ancestor spirits were no longer available to guide them as a race. The Falmer queen who made this decision became a banshee, who protects the secrets and story.
Mounting the throat of the world above high Hrothgar, you pass a development line as clear as the timber line far below you. Nothing anyone made is here, in the mist which always wreathes the summit like the your breath on the cold clear air. Ice-mist settles in your bones, a grip like Death freezing that painful, long breath, small crystals shattering against each other—the sound of an Ayleid well. Solid ground always beneath your feet as you climb, but there are shapes in the mist which never approach, and are never there when you arrive. More of them move faster nearer the summit, whirl half-recognizable around you, some hideous from the Wild Hunt of legend, some so beautiful you stop very briefly to stare in wonder. Ever swirling, faster as you near the top, with no wind at all they erase your footsteps behind you. A sound, an exhalation, all words and none, so soft there are no syllables or inflection, but clearly intention and meaning, if you could but hear it clearly. Standing, finally, at the apex, the eye of the ephemeral translucent storm, all sounds cease, including your own. There is no sound here but blood, rushing to keep your ears from freezing, rings in high oscillating tones crowding out any others. So utterly still, and your life’s blood sings so loud in the unnatural quiet, nothing else you do is audible. Ringing constant and loud now, only what you brought yourself, your body’s need to stay alive. Your life, here: you are life, here, where life became here, now, and present. The ringing recedes slowly, stillness settles to an icy death so very cold through your scant protection. It looks like the shadows are looking at you, waiting to hear your breath form words in this place, but you can’t be sure.
[From a thread I posted to Skyrim for Oblivion.]
Bludgeon Jhunal, an irreverent tavern for Nords, is unfortunately across the street from Binneh’s Imperium, an inn catering to Imperials. During this time of tension with High Rock, however, the joke at the expense of Julianos doesn’t sit well with a few Bretons. For their part, some drunk Nords think the “manmer” betrayed men by mingling with mer, and aren’t afraid to tell them so. The guard has had to lay sawdust in the street to absorb the blood.
The Bretons’ origin can be traced to the First Era of Elder Scrolls history, when the Aldmer attacked and destroyed the Nedic holdings in Skyrim. Many of the female Nords captured in the raids were subsequently enslaved as concubines, and gave birth to mixed Aldmer-Nord offspring, termed Manmer by the pure-blooded Nords. While the Aldmer maintained control of Tamriel, the Manmer lived as lower-class citizens, supporting their meric brethren. After the Aldmer lost their foothold, the remaining Manmer interbred with the controlling human races. The Bretons of modern-day Tamriel have a much-diluted meric ancestry, seen in their higher magical affinity. UESPWiki
