Dreamsleeve. (Prays I has it right this time.)

And sir, your avatar is...familiar...although I cannot seem understand the reason...hmmm.

What a wonderful and inspiring read.

I'm hyped.

Artful Mantis must be destroyed.

So if I'm getting this right, the Artful Mantis is a divination or scrying Dwemer device which was used to view the history of Tiber Septim, correct?

If i'm misunderstanding this properly, yes. It may be used to evaluate history of individuals through some sort of trans-dreamsleeve memory scrying and/or scanning for occurances of births and deaths through bloodlines.
-
So, Hjalti's part mer? Dunmer (Telvanni no less!), and Aldmer via his Breton ancestry. Hrmm.

Sounds like they're trying to figure out who they need to erase to me.

Something tells me the people of Hackdirt in Oblivion weren't so crazy after all.

I don't understand most of this, so forgive my ignorance, but this thing with Nocturnal - Hjatti possibly a nightingale?

Saadia?

EDIT: Just noticed Riddle pointed this out in a post on the first page, nestled between transmissions. Oops

My hypothesis is that Angoriath was also a Dragonborn, and when Hjalti killed him he absorbed his soul, explaining why Hjalti became Septim and why he was both a hero serving Cuchullain and a villain who assassinated him, as their soul was one.

I think his Mer blood is through his Breton ancestry, his father. His mother's mother was a Nedic six slave, (my guess, a Cyrodiil, as the text seems to differentiate between "Nedic" and "Altmoran"; "Nede" being a malleable and vague term in TES) descended from the Ayleid's slave stock, somehow acquired by a member of House Telvanni, and then traded to the Gull-Supper clan for welkynd stones when his "demesne" crashed into their cave. Her previous name seems pretty tribal, reminiscent of the idea of indigenous Cyrodiils.

Deicidal abortion!

Reading this through a second time in the waning minutes of consciousness is a good thing. By far my favorite forum thread in a long time.

Myths and specifics don't go together. Talos is Talos because of mythic vagueries.

Therefore, I repeat my warning - Artful Mantis must be destroyed.

Mankar was definitely not Thalmor. He wasn't in league with them, nor a part of their plan.

Does every villain need to be tied up with Thalmor, these days?

They may not be tied in with each other, but that doesn't mean they didn't agree with his actions during the OC.

How about replacing its current set of users? What about having non-Thalmor users trying to "clear the vagueness" of the any of the Thalmor's mythic powers?

Ok, here's my real response.

It's interesting. I'll give you that, Varlavavarda. And I do love your name, by the by. And I like the technical tone to the beginning. Also this: "Elk-daughter-who-feigns-nightshade-slumber-at-the-first-echo-of-wolfsspeech," I think that line is probably the best in the whole slew. But I think that the piece as a whole is rather overly ambitious. Consider the number of elements you employ: both Dwemeri and Altmeri technology, Telvanni pocket realms, Skyrim, Hammerfell, Saadia, Blades, Volkihar, Welkynd Stones, Pirates, Draugr, etc. etc. ad nauseam. There is absolutely no reason for this. It does not make for an effective tale. Concentrate your efforts on a more tight region and turn your skills on the expansion of that particular area. Wandering all over the map is distracting and diffuses your story.

I'm not going to talk about the actual Talos whatever that you've outlined. I don't really care about Talos, I'm not particularly informed in that area, and as far as I'm concerned what you have outlined is as likely as anything else. And certainly could make a good tale, with some work.

Now. Your main problem is this : the [censored] made-up words. Look. There's simply, unequivocally, too much of it. Yes, it's an honorable practice instituted by the Eyesore himself - but you are not holding to his example in any way. For one thing, he doesn't just go around mashing words together without regard for how it sounds or whether or not it's necessary, and for another, he certainly doesn't invent a thousand 'words' per piece. I feel like you have more mush words here than stuff I could find in the dictionary. It seriously detracts from your writing, which could be good if we didn't have to slog through the nonsense and read in mere bytes of meaning. Here's a few guidelines to what I think constitutes a good, and well-utilized, invented word.

1. It makes sense. Good made-up words are constituted from existing words or from greek/latin/etc. roots in a logical manner. However much it may not seem like it sometimes, this is what MK does. An example: chronocule. Chronos, meaning time and stemming from the greek Titan of time Kronos, and cule, a latin suffix denoting smallness. So, logically, we can take 'chronocule' to mean 'a small unit or particle of time'. Or at least something close to that. Now, for the most part your words make sense, so I'm not censuring you on this particular point.

2. It sounds good. Good made-up words are not just any old roots thrown together to make a concept; they're specific roots or words thrown together in a way that rolls off the psychic tongue in a pleasing way. You have to think about how it would sound. Let the aesthetics guide you. Again, 'chronocule,' just sounds good, as do most of Eyesore's words: 'varliance,' 'protonymic,' 'impopssipoint,' 'mananaut,' 'dracochrysalis,' 'creatia.' Some of your words sound good, but many do not; 'dibelmorphic,' 'lepidopteraffected.'

3. It is special. Which means: only one or two per piece. If you check Eyesore's stuff, you'll find that he doesn't go about making up 50 new words in everything he posts. As a matter of fact, if you check KINMUNE, I think you'll find that he didn't make up anything new, only utilized pre-existing invented TES words. You see, words are invented for a purpose, to fill a concpetual gap no existing word covers satisfactorily. So when you include an invented word in something, the piece should become at least to some extent focused upon the explanation of that word and the concept it denotes. Throwing out something you just made up without explanation is boring, annoying, and ultimately fruitless. Invented words should be few, and should be central to the creative purpose of whatever it is you're writing.


That's my two cents. Could be cool, but it needs serious work. Keep at it.

Maybe you're being a little too harsh, dinmenel. There are a few made up words here that were tough to wade through, but they weren't all bad. Those that were, all I had to do was do I quick highlight, right-click, Google, and I got the picture. The jumping around from place to place and squeezing in a bunch of details wasn't a bad thing for me, I actually kind of liked it. That's really more preferential, though, so I won't really contest that. We even got an Argonian mention in there, which is never a bad thing. And not to sound too hostile, but you yourself have written a fairly obtuse monkey-truth post, and I think the inconveniences in Varlavavarda's wonderful addition to the Lore Forum are minor transgressions.

I rather suspect that obtuseness was ultimately the point, since the million-dollar coinage only really seems to get trotted out when they're going over the technical bits of what I'm pretty sure is the Animus from Sass Creed, which would also explain why we're getting Dwemertech, Altmer telecom, Nords, Raga, Pirates, Ninjas, Zombies (fast and slow), Dinosaurs, Robots, Cowboys, and Tudor bodice-rippin' all in one go.

Can't pull punches with this, MindMaligner, and, 'sides, I gave some praise in the beginning. Varlavavarda (is your avatar Story, by the by?) can take my thoughts or leave them as they like. That's the point. I didn't have any problems understanding the made up words in this one, I just thought they were pointless and ill-begotten.

EDIT: Could also be that Varlavavarda is just writing outside of my vocabulary, and I'm just thinking there's more inventive verbiage here than there actually is. Kudos, if you did that without a thesaurus, Vvv. But I think there was thesaurus involved. To a significant degree.

I'm not objecting to the obtuseness, here. I'm objecting to its delivery. You can be obtuse without inventing verbage every other word; see my thing, actually. Maybe I'm remembering wrong, but I'm pretty sure there are only one or two terms in there that I actually mashed together myself. Even if that's false, though, you've gotta realize: this whole writing thing is a learning process, and critique a vital part of that. Sometimes you don't realize you're doing something that doesn't work until you point it out in someone else's stuff. Happens to me all the time.


There are better ways to be obtuse, like I said above. I don't know what the Animus is, so maybe I'm missing some references.

It's a literal plot device in the Assassin's Creed games.

Also, what are these better ways, exactly?

I would be willing to pay a full game price for a Skyrim-DLC that included this monkey-truth, or alluded to it strongly, with Artful Mantis involved in it's main plot.

I would pay double-price if that DLC included actual dialogue akin to Vvv's and The Great Thalmor's.

Just sayin.

Agreed.

Just bare in mind that properly speaking, this ain't no Monkey-Truth.

Do I have the wrong definition/interpretation for monkey truth, or are my wildest dreams coming true and this is some sort of DLC teaser?

A minute mnemotextract, CYMKglyphs intaglioed on prism vellum folded into an origami Sunbird, roosts pretty as an apostrophe on the ledge of a Heavy Dwemer Desk in the spacious Tonecrafter cloister that Varlavavarda has claimed as her own.

It reads:

“ Psryha Vvv.,

Pardons, pardons, for not presenting this to you with the proper rituals, but I could not for my ancestors locate you, Mantis facility’s layout is S-pattern aperture in mundex, and this, right here is the smoking palm of NuMan’s involvement with Misruler Darkly. You’ll want to consume before the qualia fade to plaintext.

Also, excuse the perspective. Third-person omni. scryview was giving me such man-ugly zoetropics, I almost lost the whole plotfibril to critical disbelief de-suspension. Switching over to first fixed the problem, but trounced me with a nasty dose of T-type phlogiston. I shall be in the Mind’s-Eye-Wash station flushing my subtle body for the next week or so if you have any questions.

-Mzd. Of Shmr.

* STAND AND DELIVER;
{MY NAME IS === HJALTI MARTINSSUN [EARLY-BEARD]}

It’s dark like ‘Rim stout out here on the plain. Masser and Secunda are tucked in tight behind thick cloud cover, as if to say politely with a wink and ceding nod ‘Yes, Hjalti, do as thou wilt, throttle the breath right in that smug, tin-plated sheep-[censored]er’s throat!”. Heh hi hi! Really just excellent weather for a bit of wetwork, though I must be sure to mind the dew. That’s how Byron Wellfellow royally johnny[censored]ed himself on the Daggerfall job, remember. Bugger got all hiccup-suickup on the way out and rolled his ankle on dewy bailey grass. And after he gave Good-Queen-Madge a second mouth on her neck like a goddamned artist, not even tipping so much as a mouseturd to skelter. And the ol’Jack Ketchs didn’t just kill him; they pulled his skinny [censored] apart with horses. Bloody shame that was, ho hum.

‘Blivyuns-Bells and Buckets o’Blood, a sortie! Quickwhaddowegot? Ashrubbery? It’lljushavetodo.

Whew. T’was close. But damn these brambles smart, like that Marquess from…er…oh ‘blivyun if I remember, but Mara’s [censored], was she into some rough sockdology. Fantastic taste in wine, though.
Yes, yes, swing yer torches round and state the obvious, go ahead, I’ll wait.

[censored] Ori’yell, get a move on lads…oh my, and lass. Glory! Look at the lung cozies on her.

There we go. Have fun patrolling wolf[censored], dullards, heh hi hi!

Alley-Oop! and we’re golden. Quickly now, only a few hours before cockerel-crow now. Reminds me, must pick up my formal codpiece from the cleaners when we get back to the ‘Rest. Hopefully those claret stains came out alright.

…

Farther out than I imagined.

…

Then again, those be storm clouds, ain’t they? ‘Blivyun, I hope she doesn’t rain. A good rain is anything but in this business.

…

Hmmh. Pork Pie. Lovely little tavern right on the edge of Northmoor, made the best [censored] pork pies in all Bretony. What did they call it? Arno’s? Poe’s? I dun recall but, Sheorblimey, they were [censored] incredible, moist like a Niner maid’s ruby netherlips, yummy.

…

Ooooh,
Ah woe | ye gods | in ada | man tin
how fool | drunk of | pro mise
made o’ | Le or | can --

Well Padomady me and call me Sithis, a sentry literally caught with his pants down. Had a little too much to drink, eh Kastav, or Irlav, or whatever your sheep-[censored] name is, you, poor, poor bugger.

Use the knife, much quicker.

Easy now, and slow. Toe-to-heal, and again. S’all in the calves.

Aaaaaaaaaaand….NOW! Glove-over-gob and yank back the head, get the skin nice and taut for the last shave, full-stop. Easy-peasy, now stand leftways and drag ‘er right like peeling a potato, but just watch and keep the waterworks aimed away and down.

Hmmh. This one had a little something-something in his guts still if the smell is any indication. Better just stash between these tents here, doubt anyone awares will notice.
Take his helm and cloak though, just good policy.

Wait, no nevermind, drenched in blood. Just have to slink in ankle-to-hip.

…Hrm, let’s see, well Dibella’s wholesome ass, this is a mighty impressive slum of canvas. Hrmmm…Well, I gather that the Septic is corralled in the big goddamned circus tent at the mara-dibell-kyn-[censored] center of this fiasco. If I was a pompous virgin sheep-[censored] C’lover-cretin, and thank the shadowy cave-[censored] of Lady Knock that I’m not, that’s we’re I’d be.

Speaking of which, Y’gloominess, if you happen to be tuning in – and I know damn well you are – your beloved mortal consort Hjalti of the Netherside Oak is in need of some of that old intimate luck. Don’t be stingy now, this is major mundipolitics we’re talking here, not some petty treasurehouse heist.

[ERROR nzg33409: The Synoptic Fibril cannot be read. It may need to be cleaned]

(See what I mean? – Mzd. Of Shmr.)

* STAND AND DELIVER;
{MY NAME IS === HJALTI MARTINSSUN [EARLY-BEARD]}

“…Like I’ve already told you, General Septim, I’m just a poor shepherd who lost his way. Now if your guard would kindly point his saber elsewhere, I’ll be leaving you nice gentlemen to get back to your lovely war. “ I talk a [censored] fluent storm of blag at them.

Septic is clearly furious, but tries dearly to hide it all under a sixtonblake air of regency and grace. But the old man, Renald, actually cracks a little hairline smile across his old leathery face.

“Skulldugg! You are a spy and a damned rascal and I will see sharp justice delivered on your neck,” Septic turns his nose so far up I can see the hair in his nostrils “but I shall grant you the small mercy of an audience for your last words and regrets. If you wish to profess your maldeeds, I can have Chaplain Rehd roused to hear them.”

No time like the present.

“Spare me, and I’ll deliver the Brazolline to you on a platter.”

“Kill him now, Renald, unless you think hanging would be more appropriate.”

“Methinks, lud, we should do well, even just, to contemplate the offer.”

Scowly, Septic is. He didn’t want to here that, not from his right hand. “Thy [split] tongue!” he hisses “Think of the infamy done on King Cain’s renown if we should victor through the employ of traitors! Better that we bind him and extradite under parley!”

The old man lowers that snakeman blade away from my gorgepomme and I can finally swallow without fear of putting my tonsils on display. “I do not serve Cuhlecain, lud, I serve You; Yet you’re a hatchling still and much to learn. Dux Ehrdensuil and his companions can hold for a decade, if they need. It would be against all monkeysense to not pursue lefthand tactics.”

“Indeed, listen to good council, General Septim. How much suffering do you intend to inflict on your own loyal lads? Eh? How much good, Colovian blood is yer petty sense of honor worth? Tell now: How many will you send to Arkay for so small and chinztzy a thoht-bauble , eh?” I add with a [censored] beautiful painterly touch, like a swirl of umber tempura ‘cross some fresh gesso, and the whole bleeding scale tips. Septic makes motions like to slap me one for talking out of turn, but he can’t, and the bugger breaks like an egg in a wheelmill.

“Fine!” he directs back at Renald, ignoring m’rhetoric and trying, desperately, to avoid even peepin’ at me with his peripheral “But how can we insure his loyalty, or that this isn’t just a ruse to ambush?”

“I know an old technique, long practiced amongst my former nation.”

“Which is?”

Uh-oh.

“Kiai Wuku-Shin: I shall take his name as hostage in my belly.”

* STAND AND DELIVER;
{MY NAME IS === [NULL] AND [MUDD]}