I know this topic includes Elder Scrolls Online information, but it also encompasses info from the main Elder Scrolls series (there was also no lore section in the ESO forums that I could find). In Oblivion and Skyrim, the book 'Mannimarco, King of Worms' by Horicles states that Mannimarco was the "world's first of the undying liches."


However, in Elder Scrolls Online, which takes place while Mannimarco is still a mortal and had not yet become a lich, there are already liches running around in the game. There is even an in-game book in ESO called 'Ascendancy: Pathway to Lichdom' written by Gullveig the Ascendant that details how to become a lich.

So is Mannimarco not the first lich in Elder Scrolls lore anymore? (Maybe Gullveig is actually the first?) Has this discrepancy ever been explained in Elder Scrolls canon?, i.e. Horicles made an error in his book, or some other retcon? Just curious, thanks.

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:King_of_Miscarcand Dragon Priests and Draugr also predate him.

Considering the book's format, Mannimarco being the first ever Lich probably shouldn't be taken as a solid fact. (Or at the very least not taken literally)

This is all assuming he isn't a lich by the time of ESO of course.

The liches present in cyrodil in oblivion are old aylieds who were around long before mannimarco and the aylied kingdom fell long before mannimarco became a lich, so I'm gonna say that no he was definitely not the first lich.


Also the dragon priests in skyrim look and act just like liches from oblivion, and are liches, and the dragon priest kingdom fell long, long before mannimarco was even around.

I think that by the first Lich, it means he's the first truly successful one. By that, I mean not actually looking like a walking corpse, which we have yet to see elsewhere.

Well Dratha uses Necromancy to sustain her life and is the oldest living Telvanni councilor.She is not a Lich but a normal looking Dunmer using Necromacy to live far longer than the average Dunmer or even Mage.

Oh ok. Wow, I had no idea that Mannimarco being the first lich was debunked long ago. Thanks for all of the info!

Ayleid sorcerers also often liched themselves.

Just a shot in the dark, but maybe he's the first to manage the transformation on his own, without assistance? For instance, perhaps the prior liches had to be reanimated by someone else.

Maybe, maybe not. We do know a couple of instances where a third party is required, and what happens when its bungled up.

The term "uses necromancy" is nebulous at best, and she still isn't actually undead. It could be anywhere from just plain ol' life extension, to magically replacing dying organs and using necromatic ones as replacements, to just using what she learned from the art to benefit herself. The closest form of undead we have to a Mannimarco lich are Vampires, and they still need sustenance.

Oldest Telvanni goes to Fyr of course, though his daughter/wives speculate that are possibly older mages on Summerset. Still doesn't qualify for lichdom though.

Perhaps "undying" is a key here. Like he can't even be killed. We tried to kill Mannimarco a lot of times and everytime we thought we did it he eventually came back. The other liches remained dead after we were done with them.

Mannimarco being the "first lich" may be akin to Alessia being the "first Dragonborn". Something held to be true by many people in-world, but is still false. After all, the Dragon Priests and King of Miscarcand still being sort-of alive are legends, only known to be true by a few people. Indeed, no one supposedly survived an encounter with the King of Miscarcand prior to the Champion of Cyrodiil, and much of the knowledge of the Dragon Cult appears to have been lost between the Alliance War and the rise of Tiber Septim.

The only Ayleid lich we know of is the King of Miscarcand. Just because a lich hangs out in an Ayleid ruin doesn't make it an Ayleid. And for all we know the King of Miscarcand only adopted lichdom recently, and after Mannimarco.

As for the case of the Dragon Priests and Draugr; I've always wondered whether they are actually liches and not just a similar creation. An undead sorcerer with some soul binding doesn't necessarily mean he's a lich does it? Or maybe it does.

I've always liked to think that Mannimarco's claim (does he even claim it himself?) of being the first lich is that he is the first to invent this form of lichdom... the modern lich. The type of lichdom that necromancers seek to become in the 2nd, 3rd and 4th eras. In the 1st Era a Dragon Priest might have been what you thought of when you heard the word lich. But with their passing and the rise of Mannimarco and his new form of lichdom, what it is to be a lich changed. At this point, a Dragon Priest is not a lich, just lich-like.

Where this distinction between various liches might come from I'm not sure, but surely there are different paths or rituals to attaining lichdom and these different paths could have a different end result. Beings that might seem the same to a journeyman magician but to the arcane master is markedly different. Different powers and abilities, weaknesses, how their souls function with their bodies, what happens upon the destruction of the liches body or soul etc.

Just musings and my own monkey-lore of course.

Serveral in sealed of parts of old Ayleid ruins.

You know that's [censored].He wasn't sitting in that chamber for a thousand or more years as a mer and then suddenly decided to become a lich.

He was still looking relativly normal in Daggerfall so I doubt that it would mean he is not a Lich.Well and Eso is garbage.

Maybe, he never claims it is from a book about him,but it could be that he created the formula used by modern wizards like Celedaen .

Why not? Maybe after a few thousand years the magic he had been using to prolong his life began to fail (i.e. he wasn't able to completely prevent aging, only slow it down) and he was forced to turn to more drastic measures to survive. It seems very plausible to me.

There's also the possibility that this is the other meaning of first, as in First Councillor, meaning "highest" "number one in rank", rather than "chronologically prior".

Not quite sure http://www.uesp.net/w/images/5/59/DF-King_of_Worms.png (or you could argue http://bethesda-games.com/uploads/posts/2015-04/1429711069_the_elder_scrolls_daggerfall.jpg is Mannimarco as well) is considered relatively normal.

I like the suggestion about ranking "First of the Liches" might indeed mean the most powerful of their ranks. Or as I mentioned the undying bit might be the important part. He is certainly a "god" now and unlikely to be killed (by any normal means)

But http://en.uesp.net/wiki/File:OB-npc-Mannimarco.jpg certainly does seem to fit that description. The cover seems unlikely to be Mannimarco based on this later revalation of his appearance.

this is assuming the mannimarco in Oblivion is The Mannimarco.. he seemed rather weak to truly be an aspect of the god of worms..



given the pseudo political state in Cyrodiil at the time, where the Mages Guild banned Necromancy within their ranks (even though the practice was still legal by Imperial law), I can easily see a Necromancer claiming to be Mannimarco in order to rally people behind him in order to oppose the somewhat discriminatory stance the Mages Guild had taken..

I assumed the cover was a picture of the king of daggerfall who the story centres around and is an undead ghost haunting daggerfall because of his treacherous death.


Also I don't think the king of miscarcand was sitting in the burnt ruin of his city for thousands of years after the ayleid kingdom fell to humans and then became a lich later.


Many aylied ruins have liches in them, and though maybe not all of them are aylieds, I say most of them are, as they are dressed in the same garb as the king of miscarcand.


I'm sure there were liches long before mannimarco, but like said above mannimarco is either the first as in the most powerful (and basically a diety to other liches or lich wannabes) ,or the first to keep a live mortal form.


We don't know how lichdom works in TES but in dnd where they come from, liches come in different types and forms, some better than others.

It seems the liches we've seen and battled in the elder scrolls are liches who are killed when they are, their phylactery (an object or vessel that their soul lives in) is either on their person or their body itself, so when killed, they are killed outright.


Mannimarcos phylactery is probably some hidden mystical object that isn't on mundus any more, so when he's killed he comes back.


There's also the theory that he can jump into willing vessels, and that the high elf form we see in oblivion was a servant of mannimarco who let his God take his body so he can act in mundus. When that person dies, he still lives on as the necromancer diety until he finds another willing vessel.

For what its worth, his phylactery is on the moon, or the Revenant Moon itself.

Liches in TES only need a phylactery during the lichification process. Once the transformation is complete the phylactery is unnecessary and can be discarded. Source: http://en.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:The_Path_of_Transcendence.