Well the thing is he's obviously wrong because there is no chance that Divayth Fyr rides a horse, whatever he looks like.

I don't see any deformations, it's the outfit that makes them weird.

Why not? Horses used to not be able to survive in Vvardenfell because of the ash storms, but those had stopped for obvious reasons by the time this little ditty was written:

http://www.imperial-library.info/content/return-fellow-scholar

And it appears Gary Noonan wrote this, not Ken Rolsten. I was mistaken about its authorship but not its contents.

If Divayth has ever left Morrowind he could have had a horsie ride before. And a meal when he was done.

Read the text I posted. He didn't eat the horse. He befriended it and gave stern glares to other Dunmer with a hungry look in their eyes. I think this suits his character better. He's not your typical Dunmer in any way shape or form.

You don't need to, he's suggesting another perspective, as if approaching the concept art without the experience of in-game Morrowind.

I was making a joke and it obviously fails wildly. Then I saw the text you posted and it was interesting. Already I was a fan of Fyr but this insight into his character and his feelings towards other races and creatures is intriuging.

I think that even without ever seeing dunmer before the concept art I would still ascribe their weird shapes to the outfit rather than to their anatomy. Because what you can notice on the concept arts is how they all wear shells of Arthropods and the Telvanni wizards are obviously wearing (or imitating) the shell of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daphnia (which can be pretty clearly seen on the picture http://www.imperial-library.info/sites/default/files/gallery_files/mw_TAoM_p30.jpg)

Anyone who can look at the arms of those mages and tell me they aren't deformed has a wilder imagination than anyone I've ever met.

First of all they wear some weird things on their hands and second it's art not a photo.

What would the point of that be?

Well, what's wrong with the interpretation these are deformations? You come to the conclusion - and many others, including myself - these are beetle carapace. You've played the games; you have an image in your head, of what a Dark Elf is "supposed" to look like, and you know, from in-game experience, they are not deformed, but they look like the other dunmer.

Monkeytruth, aesthetics, argument, new points of view. He knows better than I.

For Mr. Quimper, the world of Tamriel is captured in the art, not the screen shots and game play, so he'll ignore the games and sources which don't agree with his Tamriel. He's only interpreting the art, no Daphnia included, which we can't assume a Dunmer has seen, in the first place. Trying to convince him, these are not deformations, caused by necromancy, but instead ceremonial shells, using only MK's artwork and MK's writings, is an exercise in futility.

Its pretty disconcerting having your views explained for you.

I look at that art and I cannot see how someone could conclude from it that those characters are anything but deformed, except by willfully attempting to reach that conclusion despite all adversity. An application of my knowledge of the artist's other works further supports my conclusion. Thus, I believe the concept art depicts at least some among the Telvanni as deformed.

What else is there to say? They are not depicted that way in the game, that is true. What is the cause of this relentless drive to reconcile all aspects of a fictional universe into a single version, despite the universe's numerous and explicit attempts to make that impossible? Why can't you accept that there are a varied depictions of this universe, and they are all interesting to think about in one way or another?

By the way, the idea that the Telvanni use some form of necromancy to keep themselves alive so long is fan conjecture as far as I can tell, because it is not attested in any in-game dialog or any text at TIL that I can find. It says that there are necromancers among the Telvanni and it says that the Telvanni wizard-lords are ageless and evil, but no connection is drawn between the two. How many things we "know" were invented by people in this forum? And yet that does not shake the sturdy foundations of this imaginary "canon"!

It's great that there are numerous sources and interpretations of lore, character designs and all that, but isn't it best to examine all of them and attempt to draw a coherent picture based on common elements? If you have five versions of the same story, and three of them agree but two contradict the majority, isn't it somewhat logical to assume that maybe the ones that don't fit are a rejected concept that doesn't fit neatly?

If we take the characters of the Telvanni Mage Lords alone we have these sources

Concept art - MK's style is sometimes difficult to put into a real world perspective because it's so exotic and angular, but it could be interpreted as depicting deformities in this case.

Sound design - These characters were given standard male and female Dunmer voices in the games. Nothing about the voice work indicates deformity.

Character dialogue - neither the text spoken by these characters or about these characters when they're brought up in conversations mentions deformities of any kind.

In-game visual representation - standard Dunmer males and females of varying ages, with high class robes usually and enchanted items.

In-game books and other literature - seems to conform to the normal Dunmer body type school of thought.

Out-of-game dev forum posts and obscure texts - ditto.


^ As you can see we have multiple elements and interpretations of what a Telvanni Mage Lord on Vvardenfell should be, but only one of them dubiously depicts a hunch backed or deformed character design and that may be a misinterpretation of some other element MK was trying to convey, such as age or exotic clothing. Why should we make the exception the rule in this case? Doesn't it make more sense to examine all the given data from various sources for the complete picture?

Thats not what this discussion is about, I am capable of accepting that, I just don't see deformed Telvanni wizards in the concept arts. Well I can imagine them being deformed, just don't see reason why. The concept of them being normal man in weird outfit from crustacean shells is more logical and appealing to me. I also don't think that artist's other works (is it MK right?) would support the conclusion of them being deformed, a lot of the characters seems to be deformed on the first sight (like the dunmer warrior on p. 31) but it's because of what they are wearing, it's their culture what is weird not their anatomy.

As for Telvanni being necromancers, there is a rumor in Morrowind about Dratha: "Mistress Dratha is the oldest living Telvanni Councilor and is sustained by the necromantic arts. She dislikes men of all races, though I do not know why. You may find her in her tower in Tel Mora."

Mr. Jam, it's really easy to pretend that there is overwhelming evidence when you divide a single source into all its aspects. I could count 5 or 6 different citations by regarding each image separately, but that would be fallacious of me. I'm not sure you know much about how the game is actually designed, but I can assure you from my own experience that the Telvanni were made normal NPCs out of an issue of resource allocation. This, like many other ideas from the concept art, was just not feasible to implement. As to the Divayth Fyr texts, I dismissed them not based on some inane nonsense about horses and Morrowind but out of a famous principle that arose from an offhand remark made many years ago by a fool.

DarkRalen, this is the kind of thing that's really obnoxious for me to pull, but your feelings caused me enough concern that I asked the man himself. The lords of Telvanni were intended to be deformed. That art is meant to depict them as deformed. However there's an extent to which you are right as well: "the dunmer would willingly break their bones and re-mend them to fit inside these insectoid sarcophagi."

I thought this would be uncontroversial. Their depiction in the concept art is very clear, but the idea was dropped during production for reasons unrelated to creative direction. Instead, the thread collapses into consternation.

My curiosity is maximized. Any chance you can enlighten me?

"Boring and therefore wrong"

Altmer live a bit longer I think,

They should, with the high amount of eugenics they do.

Is there any reference to this except in the (openly racist) 1st pocket guide, which was quoting someone from the 1st Era?
How do we know that they've maintained this practice over thousands of years? Or even that they actually did it at all, and it wasn't just racist propaganda?

You can't really answer that question without knowing who the Altmer are. You're already impressing fairly human ideas on them.

They might not view life in a a fashion in which the life of each individual sacred. Given their origin myths they might well hold that the collective Altmer spirit, the living and the dead to be born again, is best served by bodies that are up to specifications. Bodies that don't match these specs are simply failed builds. Unfortunately the current production process still has it's flaws. There has been some speculation related to this in the http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1162941-sixual-preference/ discussion.



:rolleyes:

I don't want to sound too much distrustful, but any chance of him posting it here?


Yeah, that sounds cool.

I just read a great book on this. Shame I don't remember what it was. Perhaps it was the Real Barenziah, not sure. But Dunmer can live around 1000 years-but they don't often make it that far because of death from violence/disease etc. so the average lifespan is around 200 but they can become 1000 (or older if magicks are used-e.g. Divath Fyr)

If MK himself comes and posts they were supposed to be deformed then I'll defer him that point. But the fact they obviously didn't make it into the game in that fashion means it was a concept only - kickass concept but only a concept. A different version of Morrowind from the fully canonized one.