I've played a lot of Morrowind and Oblivion, but not the others and I haven't really been on a lot of Elder Scrolls boards except for short periods to discuss those games, so please excuse my ignorance when I ask...


What is a "Dragon Break" and how many have there been?

You'll get a better answer in the Lore Forum (maybe), but it is when the Jills of Akatosh mend Time back together. It lasts varyingly long, and the longest was in the first era, for 1008 years. Some even believe it to be the Dawn Era.

Read, http://www.imperial-library.info/mwbooks/dragonbroke.shtml, http://www.imperial-library.info/fsg/barticle1.shtml and http://www.imperial-library.info/fsg/prowelerarticle2.shtml for starters

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:The_Dragon_Break (Oblivion Book)

That might help.

Sink your teeth into these:
http://www.imperial-library.info/obscure_text/complete_dragonbroke.shtml
http://www.imperial-library.info/mwbooks/dragonbroke_ex.shtml
http://www.imperial-library.info/fsg/barticle1.shtml

I don't know a lot of the finer nuances as applicable to the scheme of lore, but outside of Lore, a Dragon-Break seems to be Beth's easy-button solution for having multiple endings in a game (i.e. Daggerfall) while still having some consistency in referencing the past game in later titles. In Daggerfall, I believe there are seven different endings. To solve the non-continuity problem of having sooo many different possible outcomes, Beth slapped on the Dragon Break™ label. This means a giant rift or warp in time, so that even though the Daggerfall character could only choose one outcome, all of the possible outcomes were executed and their results became part of the history of the world.

I think.

Not quite.

What happened in Daggerfall is called the Warp in the West. The Warp is magical event involving the Numidium and ends up fusing all of Daggerfalls endings. This is only one example of what happens when the Dragon Breaks.

The Dragon Break is not a tool for fixing consistency issue. While the problematic endings of Daggerfall and the 1000 year gap in the first Era time line might have inspired it, it is much deeper intertwined with Lore.

http://www.imperial-library.info/obscure_text/vehk_teaching.shtml#1 and http://www.imperial-library.info/obscure_text/nu-hatta_nu-mantia.shtml both mention details, but the non-linearity of time and the uncertainty in the stories about that time happened on a much bigger scale in the Dawn Era. The Dawn Era was one big Dragon Break.

The Dragon Break is the result of full the presence of gods. This is most obvious when you observe that conditions that cause a Dragon Break. The Aedra the Selective, the Tribunal and finally the Numidium.

That the Tribunal didn't cause a century long disruption like the Selective is explained in sermons 12 and 14. Vivec had and presumably the other Triunes had their feet replace with those made with Blood from Oblivion so that they could walk the world in giant form without damaging it.

A Dragon Break is when the linearity of time breaks down. In such a state, you dont have an orderly sequence of events, as time normally is (leaving relativity aside, thats IRL ) - inmstead, you have a state where really everything is possible and dozens of different things happen at the same time. As "Where were you etc." said, Cyrodiil at the same time became an egg, reached out to the stars and whatnot.

The first of the four ages we know about in TES, the Dawn Age, was such a time as well, which is why Dragon Breaks, or at least the Great Dragon Break, are also called Middle Dawns. In that mythical beginning of Mundus and Nirn, there was no linear time, no historical causality, and hundreds of differnet things happened at the same time, which is why there cant be any true historic study of the time. Then the gods made their convent at Adamantium Tower and left Nirn, and time became linear. (of course, weve recently learned that in fact the Dawn Age is the last age of the last kalpa, instead of the first age, but the principle remains the same - time was non-linear until the Gods Convention).

THE Great Dragon Break was in the First Era, caused by a sect called the Maruhki Selectives. They wanted to divide Auriel (as the time god is called among the Elves) from Akatosh (as its called among Men), that is, they wanted to remove the "elven parts" of Akatosh. Common intepretation of what they actually did is mantling the Eight Divines, that is, becoming those gods. (Which reminds me I wanted to write something about that...)

More minor Dragon Breaks we know of are the ascendancy of the Tribunal (upon reaching godhood, there have always been the Tribunal Gods) and the Warp in the West (where people meddled with divine Numidium). So, yes, the presence of the divine harming time linearity, that seems to fit.

I love Dragon Breaks, both what they are in Lore and what they can be used for out here in realityworldlandplace. I mean, everything and nothing all happening at once, spereately and not at all in both 0 seconds exactly and however much time people figure it for being.

This is one of the "freaky whakjob concepts" of the finer TES lore points that I really like.

oh, btw:
If using the Numidium, a divine thing, causes damage on Mundus, like in the Warp of the West - why was there no Dragon Break when Sumurset was conquered?

"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

Not sure where the quote comes from. But it seems it didn't last long enough to be noticeable on a larger scale.

Okay, then teh question becomes how the Imperials could direct/focus it. At the Illiac Bay it was after all quite unfocused, with 7 contrary events happening at the same time. How did the Imperials get the one event they had wanted?

I'm not sure the Imperials had a choice in the outcome. It's as if the universe settled on a single logical timeline that by dumb luck was favorable to the Empire; consolidating the many principalities of the Illiac Bay into a handful of nations. But that's just my quick take on the situation.

Considering how muuch trouble old Tiber went trough to get that thing running (favourable armistice with Morrowind, radiating part of the own Empire during the nuclear test, err, first run of the Numidium...) it seems rather unbelievable to me he simply bet on good luck. If luck is everything he could have relied on, conquest by conventional means would probably have been a more preferable choice.

Or it could be because they were mythically significant because they controlled White-Gold tower.

Who knows?

Edit: Susano and Mehrunes Dagon: I guess you're right; I wasn't looking at the whole picture.

Searching old threads on Numidium, theres that indeed. Mythical significance, not because of White-Gold Tower, but because Talos and Zurin mantled the Enantiomorph. The famous http://imperial-library.info/interviews/skelm.shtml:

"The second to see the Brass God was the Enantiomorph. You may know them individually as Zurin Arctus and Talos. The Oversoul was known to the world as Tiber Septim They gave birth to their Mantella, this time an embodiment of the healing of the Man/Mer schism, and, with it, Anumidum Walked. But, by then, and for a long time coming, One betrayed the Other, and the world shuddered as they split, and the Anumidum went berserk and created an Empire of Evil to house the malignant half of its soul."

(thanks to the Word Merchant )

Why (like fallout) didn't they just choose ONE ending as the canon? Why bother with all this Dragon Break nonsense?

Because Dragon Breaks are not just retcon justifications.
And I fail to see how having additional mythical stuf is supposed to be bad thing anyways.

You don't understand..the Dragon Breaks/Warp in the West ARE canon. They're part of the mythology.

All the actors balanced each other out through enlightened self-interest.

But I doubt the Imperials wanted the desertification of certain areas of the province.