I'm still tryin' to find the grey in 'floating city of dead that kills indiscriminately, then raises all its victims as zombies'.

... Maybe it had a neglected childhood.

I'm still trying to find the grey in 'self-mutilating devil-worshippers who want to kill anyone they can't convert' (Morrowind) or 'big gates open so that big red devil thing can kill everyone just because it's funny' (Oblivion).

I only read the first Kingdoms of Thorn & Bone novel to find out who this author was. Having immediately read the rest of the saga, I'm pretty much of the opinion that worrying that Keyes won't do a competent job of novelising the Elder Scrolls is a lot like panicking that James Cameron might screw up directing an episode of Battlestar Galactica.

Well, I really still am trying to find the grey in the latter.

But I could pity the Sixth House, whether it be Dreamers, Sleepers, those unable to control Corprus, those who could (Ash Ghouls, Ascended sleepers, etc), and even Dagoth Ur. The sleepers and dreamers were simply caught in the dream-infections spreading from Sixth House bases. Those infected by corprus are perhaps the saddest beings portrayed in Morrowind, blade-fodder aside. The servants of Dagoth were upholding house loyalty and honor in their actions, committing fully to House Dagoth, which isn't too different in principle from the commitment of a Redoran warrior to his house, or a Hlaalu businessman to his house. And Dagoth Ur... How you perceive him fully depends on which account of the Battle of Red Mountain you agree with and internalize (which you are provided 3 of). I'd say that's pretty darn morally ambiguous, even if the overall focus of the Sixth House is destined to be pretty negative for Tamriel at large.

Thank you, Gstaff.

Touch?.

In those guys defense, they were at least tacitly real people and real organisations channeling real baddies. This thing's just a massive 'diabolos ex mechanica'.

I'm surprised no-one's mentioned that the Blades have been disbanded and replaced by the Penitus Oculatus.

I mean, it's pretty much business as usual (what's changed beyond the name?) but it'll be interesting to see how it affects things.

Don't confuse Vvardenfell with Morrowind. I doubt the Tribunal had as much influence in the more far-flung reaches of Morrowind as it did on Vvardenfell, especially as the Tribunal's power waned after they lost Kagrenac's tools.

Just because rumors say Morrowind was hard-hit by the Daedra doesn't mean it is true. I would have thought Cyrodiil would be the hardest hit out of the bunch, given that Martin was located there, and alluring prospect of destroying White Gold to destabilize Nirn's creatia.


I'm not saying it should be MK-style. I just think there could have been a better plot that wasn't so over-the-top.

It could be that Keyes was worried that people would accuse him of "ruining" the Elder Scrolls the way some hardcoe Fallout fans accuse Bethesda of doing so with Fallout 3. So, he just played it safe. You might like the second book's plot more, once the guy is more confident and experienced with the setting.

When you're the new kid, it's a bad idea to wreck people's toys.

Creating a floating city would be stretching things, but wouldn't be too outside the realm of possibility for TES. A floating city that makes zombies is ridiculous. If he was afraid of "breaking" TES, then he wouldn't have proposed such a silly idea. However, I'm rather vexed that the developers agreed to such a preposterous plot.

The Temple may have been slightly waning with the advent of House Hlaalu and the Empire getting close, but the Temple as a Morrowind-wide institution has massive power. Redoran and Indoril both are devout Temple supporters in the political scheme, and Dres still at least goes through the motions to save face. Telvanni as a whole is politically removed by choice, leaving Hlaalu as the odd-man-out. And that's not focusing on the Temple's long-standing influence by itself. True, its actual power may have been waning after Kagrenac's tools were lost, but so long as face was saved (and it largely was), that illusion still provides a massive amount of very real authority and clout.

It's not until the player comes around and rips clean the facade via Nerevarine all-around-awesomeness that things get really destabilized and muddled.


Not if you want to ensure that the weaknesses in the Liminal Barriers won't be restrengthened by Red Tower getting restabilized...

:lol: Okay, good points. Still, if an escaped prisoner can brave the Deadlands and bring down the Sigil Towers, why can't highly trained and experienced Morag Tong assassins, Redoran champions, Buoyant Armigers, and powerful Telvanni mages save their homeland? Wiping out a bunch of lesser daedra shouldn't be that hard - it certainly wasn't in TESIV.

I don't think Keyes is too worried about any of those things. He's an established and acclaimed writer, and certainly anyone who's read his previous stuff will have an idea of what to look forward to.

You just can't tell from the description what it will be like, but what I noticed about the Kingdoms books was that he took a lot of very basic genre ideas and then layered them and made them more interesting. He makes cliches work, in exactly the same way that the Elder Scrolls games themselves take extremely well-worn fantasy tropes and make them fun and engaging.

Meh, that's because Cyrodiil happened to have a HERO! just in time to save the day, whereas Morrowind's HEROES! kinda all bit the dust... Seht's mechanical relationships became a bit unhealthy, Ayem got a jealousy complex and had to be brought back to reality in a rather abrupt manner, Vehk had to smack Azura across the face with his Muatra and then attain CHIM and vanish, and the Nerevarine heard rumors of something so cool it was unmentionable over in Akavir.

Oh, and the Daedra of Morrowind didn't suffer from "blade-fodder-for-the-main-character-in-a-video-game syndrome."


I wish I had picked up the Thorn and Bone books. I'll have to eventually sometime this winter.
That's a good point regarding how TES itself takes cliche tropes and twists them into something unique. The archetypes of the Mage, Warrior, and Thief are echoed all over the place in TES and are by themselves pretty cliche, but how they are utilized in the constellations is hardly cliche.

Mournhold and Sotha Sil's seats of power are both on the Mainland. They very much had influence, although I do think west Morrowind, on the border of Skyrim, was much different than the rest of the land.


Daggerfall was about a personal friend of the emperor fighting for a totem that could activate a stompy robot which could, by itself, unite the entire continent. It's very activation caused a break in time.

Morrowind was about a reincarnated hero-king destroying an ancient foe that threatened to corrupt all of Tamriel with a magical plague and a stompy robot.

Over the top? Hardly.

Checkmate

The entire series would have been far far better without robots. So much better.

But no, Daggerfall was about a friend of the emperor looking into another friend of the emperor's death.

... And then went off on a steadily-growing tangent which focused on said stompyrobot and time-shattering.

I thought that the robots made Morrowind unique compared to other fantasy games.

The interview is okay. A bit interesting, I guess.


Lets not forget the one in Oblivion that can level an entire city!

Said stompy robot was part of the game's storyline in the game. It isn't as if it was retconned in after the fact (like the Dragon break).

Also, I think the robots are sweet. I for one welcome our new robot overlords.

I think they're only awesome in conjunction with dwemer race, because their power was so mysterious, and they borrowed orchestral jargen, eerything they've had their hands on is that much cooler.

I hae doubts about the next game's plot, if the prequal is essentially a ufo invasion. The plot reminds me of Plan Nine, from Outerspace, but it could work. As long as, in the end, it feels like a contribution to the series.

If you're really that woried, read up on the http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Sload

They're practically non existant. The sload have nothing to do with the topic at hand, anyway. Thanks for the link, though.

I'm not really worried, but perfectly wise to the possability these video game books won't be so good.

I am actually excited to see what twists and turns these books might take us on. And I am open to reading it all prior to making judgments. Thing is that changes in lore always occurs from game to game, book to book and as long as those changes have just one iota of reason or rhyme I am fine with it. After all, the lore of our own real world in which we live has proven to be incorrect or unreliable. Some others are doubted such as Atlantis. Old text history has been proven not to be accurate or reliable.

And thus is how lore moves forward. Creating new lore, changing and remolding old lore into today's lore.

I have faith in Keyes to take our little alternative world and take us on an adventure and I do so hope my expectations are fulfilled. I am very excited for this book and look forward to reading it without preconceived notions.

Sure, but at what point in the game did you find out it was a robot?