That's not the spell. That's the original sense of the word.

The fact that the spell belongs to the school of Illusion in the sub-school of Glamers, is perhaps an indication that the target, foe or simply nuisance that it'd be, merely perceives this silence rather than the spell bending any rules of physics. In any case it's open to speculation; I've never understood why the spell falls into the school of Illusion myself, in any fantasy realm, and in this particular game it would be much more suited to the school of Alteration. It is a spell derived from the TSR system, one which has no school of Alteration but uses Transmutation instead, and those put it under the same school.

So I assume the target is still physically able to emit sounds though he/she believes otherwise.

I'd also add that by speaking to the subject your concentration is broken and so is the illusion.

What Velorien said; you could potentially cast a spell that would make you silent that would not hinder you from casting spells(maybe some of the Khajiit sneaked up on some Bosmeri while "silenced" during the war and cast fireballs?),

Also, regarding the sunlight, photosynthesis bit: we perceive the Aedra as planets, and they seem to act as celestial bodies do, but that is simply the limited mortal perception of them. Going by that logic, I wouldn't be surprised if the light of Magnus was nourishing the plants in some way impossible to percieve as anything but photosynthesis, because we couldn't grasp the greater methods and implications at work.

Also, I'm glad this topic was made. I was just having this conversation the other day!

A wizard did it.

Glamer? Never heard that before. TSR? Never heard that either but it sounds like you mean http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TSR,_Inc.. You're saying they put Silence under Illusion as well? I found http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:Silence and silence seems more useful in stopping sounds and spells that you have to speak.
I believe that any mage, well trained enough, can say their incantations in their mind, without even speaking them. Thus, to me, Silence is either 1) a mysticism spell that is forming a magical barrier around the target that is preventing the magicka radiating from Mundus and the stars from contacting/penetrating the target's body. So while the target could say incantations and whatnot, it wouldn't work since no magic would be available for him to "harness". Or 2), it is an illusion spell that is tricking the target's subconscious mind into believing that he is unable to cast spells both vocally & mentally.

TESII had it under Mysticism and TESIII & IV have it under Illusion. I favor the mysticism one since I believe the intended it to function as a magical barrier around the caster that blocked magic from touching you. The illusion version of it also makes sense too. So I'm not sure which argument to go with.

I believe he meant "Glamors".

Nope, "glamer" is an archaic term: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/glamer

Oh, fascinating. Thank you.

This is an interesting issue. I'm not sure I agree. The mages guild, with their experimentation and scholarship, or for that matter the Dwemer and their interest in the 'Earth Bones', seem to imply that Tamriel does indeed have its own natural laws which can be studied (or at least, its inhabitants believe it does)- though these laws may of course be in flux. I have always detected in TES a stong streak of 'secondary world' fantasy, as opposed to the more whimsical mythopoeic kind. There may be room for both, of course.

@ the OP- well, this has always puzzled me, too. I wonder how many ways there are of performing magic in TES? _Written_ language is apparently important, given all those grimoires and spellbooks, but I don't recall ever encountering any verbal incantations, unless you count the thu'um (which you probably should, but is it the rule?). The Dwemer used sound for arcane purposes, and that cave in Solstheim (I forget its name) also possesses a kind of 'sound-magic'. Neither of these examples is really verbal, though- perhaps because these magicks are more primal?. If this is the case, 'silence' could have been more metaphorical- a word that stood in opposition to 'sound' (magick), and has remained in use even though its meaning is obscure.

My guess is the reason why we don't hear the Player speak incantations is because Bethesda didn't want to higher voice actors just for the spells. And they figured since this is a roleplaying game, you can simply roleplay the idea that your character is saying/whispering/thinking the magic words to cast spells. We don't hear out characters breathe either, although it seems like we can hear Dovakhiin breathe in the trailer, but that's TESV. And there are the spell scrolls which one has to read in order to cast the spell. In the games you can't just read it on your screen because that won't do anything. That's supposed to represent you just looking at it. To read it and use it's magical words, you have to click on it in your list of spells with the mouse. But I'm sure it's the Player saying the incantation that is inscribed in Daedric to harness the magic from the paper.

That seems like a reasonable assumption. Due to the lack of evidence, though, it is still possible that those scrolls teach something non-verbal. Perhaps you just have to _think_ the right way for it to work.

and speech is a way to order thoughts. Even if one could think of an example of a mage speaking an incantation to cast a spell, we could still reasonably argue for thought based spell-casting. Speech requries thought. Speech provides structure to thought.

But they wouldn't need to hire any more voice actors than they already did for Morrowind or Oblivion, and it's not just the player, its NPCs too. They pay the voice actors to do grunts and groans and battle cries, why not incantations for spells too? Especially if it's supposed to be essential to use ones voice to cast a spell.

My guess, is because it would get old really fast, hearing the same phrase everytime you cast a spell. Especially if your main means of dealing damage is magic.

I'd also assume that in TES universe, that one can simply think the words, but theres not really any info on it.

Yes, it's clearly not a totally mythopoeic world. This is evident in the attitudes and practices of the NPCs and their societies, if nothing else... But I do think it's present to a degree, and is an important theme.

There are a lot of spells in the games, so it would require quite a bit of voice work, especially if applied to each gender of all races. Morrowind was only on a CD, and Oblivion was already restricted by the amount of voice work (as seen in the races sharing voices). Then when you factor in spell making...

50-60 something different spell effects I think
That's a relatively large number, but considering already the amount of voice acting I don't think it's that large.

That said, I'm not fretting over the lack of verbal casting, in fact I'd prefer it non verbal.
Verbalizing ruins my image of magick in the game.
It becomes more about memorizing the magic words than understanding and manipulating the craziness of magicka.

Like others have said, I believe silence actually renders you unable to speak. The fact you can initiate dialogue while silenced is just a gameplay mechanic to alleviate frustration. If its not, then my fan-fic doesnt work, so Ill say that it actually silences.

Slightly OT: I think the 'simulation' aspect of TES goes even further than content- it is formal. I find myself thinking a lot about the use of narrative in games, and one of the things that has occured to me is that TES, because of its mechanics (open and increasingly 'radiant' world), has a strong streak of something like realism or naturalism, in a literary sense- meaning that there are chains of causality which the player can discover, which are not arbitrary, and which help to define the world. So for example, so-and-so is a skooma smuggler because he can be seen to smuggle skooma, if one cares to follow him around, and not because he occupies some formal or metaphysical category- and he exists and smuggles skooma regardless of whether anyone decides he is relevant. Or even: Dagoth Ur is the result of a complex series of historical events, whose meaning and veracity are up to you to decide, and his cultists are out there if you care to look. In other words, at a very basic level, the game tends (increasingly, if 'radiant story' is half of what it could be) to encourage the view that its world is a system that operates according to laws which can be understood.

[edit: I should have added: I agree there is also some poesy stuff, though it seems to operate on a different level. Though they may not always be contradictory tendencies: Nirn is indeed a 'thou', in its dream-like mythical moments, but I think it is useful imagine it as some kind of quasi-gnostic dialectic, ala Hegel or the theologian Boehme: if reality is the dream of the enantiomorph or what-have-you, the contradictions inherhent in that primal unity have multiplied and become ever more realised, to the point that they have become a complex, objective reality whose inhabitants/aspects can only dimly grasp its previous nature by way of metaphor.]

Compare this to the fomalism that seems to inform, say, a Bioware game, where the player is basically told 'so-and-so is a villain and he killed your dog, go get him', and literally every character and event is a plot device, in the formal sense that they exist to steer the story. Bethesda's worlds seem to contain their own stories (though not entirely, obviously), while Bioware's worlds are often quite arbitrary.


Back on-topic: I think the suggestion that the lack of verbalised spells was probably due to constraints on voice-acting or not wanting to annoy the player (or perhaps even because no-one thought of it) is probably correct. However, from a lore perspecitve, I think an explanation that conforms to our experience of non-verbal spellcasing and non-silencing 'silence' is preferable.

I have no idea what you said in the first three paragraphs but yes, they most likely didn't want to spend more money for something so trivial. I still agree with others that magicka can be thought or spoken. And with that, it probably doesn't just render you unable to talk. I mean if it did that, you could just think your spells instead of speaking them. I think Silence works like an umbrella blocking the rain. Rain is falling all around you during a rainstorm, just like how magicka is "raining" all around you, coming from Aetherius. Silence perhaps forms some kind of aura or bubble around you so that all the magic around you and radiating on you is not actually touching you or entering your body. You still have your potential magicka pool in your body, i.e. your spell points. But this aura around you maybe acts like a force that makes it so that all the words you speak or think or feel, have no baring or effect on the radiating magicka like what they would normally do.

@Xarnac The Conqueror, I haven't wrote my fanfic yet, one of the reasons is because I want to understand how Silence works. It would be annoying and frustration to find out down the line that all the parts in your story you've written where silence was being used, you had described it incorrectly.

That is a good explanation.

Excellent explanation; I think you've hit the nail on the head. The dream grows increasingly complex and fractal with each subgradient, until an almost objective reality emerges out of the multiplied divisions.

Excellent explanation? I couldn't even understand what he was saying.

You are not alone.