The other answers you make up are 100% incorrect because they are unwarranted speculation.



Yes, it is fact. Lore is literature and not science. The sole window into the world of fact and falsehood is the one provided by the author. You believe the author or you believe nothing. Every one of your arguments has been devoid of any logical foundation and your opinions don't have a valid reason for being as they are. Which is fine, except when you try to argue the point. Fabricating an alternative answer to an 'incomplete' question and presenting it as an equally valid option is stunningly pretentious. To illustrate, I hereby claim that Dumac was a Khajiit and you have only unreliable, ancient texts painting an incomplete, non-factual image to disprove me.


Bring on Jar Jar Binks, ambassador from an Atmoran race previously unknown to mortals. He has the same potential to exist as real world astrophysics.


Except when lore specifically departs from it. And from our exchange here I have learned that you don't believe in the concept of lore and disregard source material more than the posters in the ES-Bioshock crossover RP.

And my last post rebuts all these counter points just as well, so I should have responded like 946000.

CP, I know you don't believe those things, you just like antagonizing people.


nevermind

No less unwarranted than MK's speculation.


One obscure text is hardly the only window into fact and falsehood. And it certainly isn't to be taken at face value, even if it was the only source. It's not logical to cling to any lore chunk you get and tell yourself that it's the absolute truth just because you haven't got anything more; that's more of a defensive measure to cope with ignorance. We have many different sources that place Kagrenac as being a Dwemer, not just one out-of-game text from an ex-dev, many windows all pointing to the same thing. And not all of them are actually texts either.


TES is still limited by real-world copyright laws.


Correction; I do not believe in YOUR concept of lore. Especially considering the lore contradicts itself at times.

Edit: And jackfrost, I am not saying that it definitely follows real-world physics, I'm saying we can't be sure it follows either model.

Now that's just pitiful. I reccomend re-reading Jackfrost's post and my comment about 'stunningly pretentious.'



The one obscure text backs up in-game texts. No once called it absolute truth. But it is the only lore on the subject. Thus, the only valid debate about the subject revolves around the lore and not your delusions that what fans fabricate is equal to what an author writes.


So you're admitting that this has nothing to do with lore. Good. That's progress.


Copyright law is not lore. A refusal to understand the workings and meanings of fiction in order to deliberately distort it based on apriori preferences is not lore. You can call it that if you want, but no one will listen to you.


Not being sure is not the same as ignoring all available evidence, choosing to be ignorant on the subject and falsely claiming that there is no difference between the possibilities. Cue Jar Jar Binks, because you ignore the important parts of my arguments the same way you ignore source material.

Actually, "theories" and "facts" are not the same thing under any circumstances. Theories are supported by reasoning based upon facts (or, at least, good ones are), but theories themselves are not facts.

For example, the statement that the Dwarves disappeared around a particular date is a factual statement. Even if I said they disappeared just last year, that would be a factual statement... albeit an untrue one. Saying that Nerevar used the tools to make them disappear (Five Songs, IIRC) is a factual statement. So is the statement that it was Kragenac that used them and made them disappear. Which of these statements is TRUE comes down to anolysis of corroborating evidence, making a decision as to which is true a matter of opinion, not fact. Hence the controversy.

Saying that the Tribunal used the Tools to gain their power is also a factual statement. Whether or not this was a good thing is a matter of opinion.

As to matters astrophysical, it seems to me there is very little reliable evidence



The problem with this statement is that the literature present in the Elder Scrolls universe is not present as absolutely factual in nature, unlike other games. The in-game literature is mutually contradictory, and at times contradicts even with in-game observations, sometimes deliberately (the Amulet of Kings, for one), sometimes not. If, for example, the devs, for TESV, decided to create an even more realistic sky model, with celestial bodies behaving in a manor contrary to the Temple Zero model... what would we do? One response would be the "scientific" response, of assuming the Temple Zero model was wrong and whatever model the new in-game was the actual truth. The other would be the "Scholastic" response, by which the developers are declared to be morons.

Of course, the problem with Crimson Paladin's assertion is that, so far as I can tell, there is no evidence for alternative models. He speculates that the Dwarves may have had the ability to gather such evidence, but so far as we know, Dwemer observations, while lost for the most part (with the exception of what can be gleaned from Dwemer Orreries), may have formed part of the foundation of what is passed down via scholars. We have no way of knowing, one way or the other.

However, I think the heat of this discussion stems from a perception that there are individuals here who will go into flame mode to defend certain single-source "facts," and that there is a particular body of sources that is erroneously regarded as significantly more credible than others.

You're the one who decided to rebuke anything that isn't your idea of "lore".


The only delusion here is that the in-game cosmology belief is an absolute truth. They certainly don't have the means to back up or prove such claims. The in-game text does not support it, but rather acknowledges it, and the thing that it does support, I am not actually disputing; Mannimarco showed that gods manifest in heavenly bodies.


No, it was more of a smart-alec retort.



I don't choose to be ignorant, I simply choose to acknowledge the ignorance that we all have, instead of clinging to some texts while telling myself that it must be the truth.

Edit: I believe that Haskill said http://www.imperial-library.info/interviews/si_interview.shtml. And this was done so by Bethesda.

There's nothing to refute it. There's nothing to refute the Cosmology. I can even see through the moons like it says. I can cast spells. You are going about this scientifically, but, maybe I'm ignorant, what does science tell you about magical gifts from constellations of stars?

I understand the distinction between theories and hypotheses and facts.
This being lore, we don't have any facts. The theories that the lore presents are what we work with, and you don't get to doubt parts you don't like because it isn't a certitude. No lore is.
In matters astrophysical, there is no evidence that is compelling enough to draw conclusions without the aid of lore. And the lore we do have is in complete agreement with any in-game model of the sky, no matter how realistic. The lore at hand was clearly written so as not to contradict what we can observe. The only reason, then, to doubt it, is because of a distrust of the out-of-world nature of the source or a distaste for the lore itself.



I was referring to your notion that what you make up is just as valid as what MK makes up. (Who is, in fact, protected by copyright law as well).
I would also like to hear you alternative definition of lore.



*splutters*
Do you not READ or do you not COMPREHEND? The very sentence you quoted contained my statement that I do not believe the Cosmology document is necessarily absolute truth.



So evidence in lore is not valid as the base of opinions and educated guesses. Got it.

This is all posturing. You are masquerading as logical and objective, withholding judgment until there is conclusive evidence. But I think you are actually misusing doubt and conflict within (and without) the lore so you can plausibly entertain the possibility of irrational opinions. Because you would prefer that the Aurbis was formed by the Big Bang.

THIS is the right question. Indeed, the right answer is nearly always a question.

@CP: Don't use lore to disprove the validity of lore. To me, that's a fundamentally dumb idea

I'd tell you to stop, but this is unbelievably hilarious, Thus I want it to continue.

But isn't that how the Dissident Priests disproved the "official" origin of the Tribunal?


It is the information collected, in this case on TES, in the majority of these cases not as fact, but as literature, beliefs, and propaganda that may or may not be factual or contain factual information. I would see Cosmology as lore not as the system of how it works, but as a piece of literature from a group.

My thoughts exactly.

No. They looked at lore and saw that it suggested something different.

You have made something up and decided that the lore is meaningless and it may as well be the fabrication.

That is a useless anecdote for the record books.


Funny, that's how I see it too. The difference is that I believe the authors of that dubious material actually intended us to understand and make judgments based on it, not dismiss it as flawed and useless, as you are doing in favor of fan fiction.

I am not claiming that the real-world model is how it is, nor have I said that the Cosmology model must be wrong. I AM saying that the lore may in fact suggest something different, even if not directly.

As I understand it, you are claiming that they are equally likely, which is incorrect.

My mistake, Cosmology has too many holes in it to be considered equal. Not completely impossible, but not equal. Especially considering they don't seem to have a non-mortal perspective to compare their theory to.

In this sense the Earth's surface is also infinite.

I know you're trolling now, but name a hole.


And Stephen Hawking does? I just have to lol

we need a god to write our lore so it is totally objective! brilliant, why didnt we think of it sooner! oh wait, we did with Vivec, but you don't like that either do ya?

I'm serious. First of all, it makes claims of planets having infinite mass. Given gravity, which does exist, is not infinite, this seems unlikely. Second, is the whole "mortal mental stress" claim that I have explained below.


By that I was referring to how they say that the shape of the moons, the lunar orbits, planets, and even the sky itself are due to "mortal mental stress". When Azura clearly has some connections with the moons, as one of her symbols is a crescent moon, and her sphere is tied in with a star as well. Likewise, Hircine not only can turn Secunda red, he acknowledges the sky and Secunda's movement across it. Mortal mental stress? Yeah right.


Speaking of which, Baan Dar's shape certainly wasn't due to mortal mental stress either.

I don't even see why you're in the lore forum if you're just gonna choose not to believe the lore like this. I wonder how you view the magic in the series, seeing as magic doesn't exist in the real world.

I'm simply not taking the lore at face value as fact. I take it for what it is, in this case an out-of-game text of an in-game group's beliefs on the cosmos.

Edit: And likewise, I don't understand how people get so upset over TES lore. It's fiction.

You realize none of that makes any sense? You're using terms from the source like you understand it. You sound like you're pretending to be a Tamriellic physicist. "Given gravity, this seems unlikely." "Mortal mental stress yeah right?" What the heck do you think you're saying?

This is raising the issue to a new level of absurdity. I give up.

Magic or not, its physics mirror real-world physics. This is more likely than not present at the macroscopic level as well. It certainly seems to ring at the microscopic level. I can't say Cosmology makes any sense either, so what's the point?

the fact that apples fall down doesnt mean Nirn has gravity. Nirn is built from the remains of gods. Wind is part of Kynareth, we get love because Mara died, and beauty thanks to Diabella. Gravity is more likely a part of some long dead et'ada than it is the mathematical force that it is irl.

Azura's moon/star thing is a mortal invention, or one she took to be more identifiable to mortals. sure the sky and the planets exist as we see them in game, no ones saying they dont. however we (and the cosmology text) are saying that there is a level beyond the visible that is NOT like real life. real life would be boring and would not go with other lore.

anyways, this discussion is ridiculous. if you dont believe in lore stop hanging out in the lore forum and go find yourself a physics board somewhere. then again, arguing against the prevailing theory (which is dangerously close to fact) will likely not take you very far.