The Akatosh statue IS White Gold Tower now..at least as far as maintaining the lattice threads between realities is concerned. There's still a big phallic symbol in the middle of Imperial City referred to as White Gold Tower but it no longer holds more than a symbolic power.

I have the feeling that the Akatosh statue is only a husk, and has no mythic power. Maybe we should think of it like the doctrine of the Host and transubstantiation -- the statue is "accident" with the "essence" departed. The citizens of the IC could probably destroy it and not affect the Mundus.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accident_(philosophy)

Maybe, but would you risk it?

You have a point there.

I've read through this thread (and the book ) and I just wanted to give my two cents on:

The book itself: I think it was a nice read, great dialogue. What I didn't like about his writing, though, was his way to describe places. I, for one, was often confused about where the characters were and how the environment looked. Like when Mere-Glim and Wert were swimming; how could they talk under water? Why did he describe the worms as "squirting water" if they were under water? Perhaps I just misunderstood completely and they weren't under water?

Anna?g: Some in here say that her character is contradicting, but I don't think so. She is sort of an amateur daredevil at first, but she is still in her hometown, in safety. Suddenly, she is taken away from safety, and safety is even destroyed in the process. She has to start anew, and her goal of destroying Umbriel is clear in the beginning, in accordance to her "daredevil" character. But after a while she starts to like the place, she has a job which lets her do what she really likes (alchemy), and she lives and eats better than she has ever done before. Part of her begins to forget her initial motive, and thus, the action-girl personality begins to fade. At the end, though, she starts remembering why she hates Umbriel and her initial character begins to come back.

Attrebus: I really like this character. As for the Emperors motive of making him into "a fake", I think it was nailed earlier in this thread. The Emperor is just a dictator. No bloodline has given him the throne, and the only way he can make sure his son will get the throne after him, is by making the people love Attrebus. He has obviously managed this by conjuring up legends and tales about Attrebus' "grand" adventures.

Umbriel: Some say it doesn't fit in to lore, to Tamriel, but I think it's great. After all, how can we judge what fits in to Clavicus Vile's realm? All we've seen of it is basically http://www.imperial-library.info/tsorg/part10image11.jpg. It feels fresh and daring, something that the Elder Scrolls series are in great need of, since Oblivion was basically a coaster ride through "fantasy-clich?-land".



I was a bit disappointed at the end, though, I was hoping for the battle to finish to at least give some measure of conclusion before the end. Everything just kind of cut off.

Yeah I agree with you about the end, I was hoping the next book would offer a completely new setting set later in the 4th age with new characters.

Luckily, there's room for even more stories and possibly more authors, if the next game takes place 200 years after Oblivion. Infernal City is about 40 years after...this whole Umbriel business will be taken care of, and then that leaves a massive time period for a lot of things to go down.

Maybe the Thalmor sub plot will play out in the second book, or maybe they'll keep that story for another novel?

Well, got the book today and finished the book today after about 3-4 hours of reading. Overall I found the book to be alright I suppose. Some things like Morrowind's destruction had already been spoiled to me through title threads ( <_< ). But some things caught my eye:

1. The book seemed to be very simply written to me. It may have simply been because I'm used to 800 page epics like the Wheel of Time, but the novel seemed very short to me, with a somewhat irritating ending. Keyes writing style at the beginning also seemed a bit awkward for me. For some reason when reading the dialogue about Martin, it felt a bit uneasy as though Keyes was on uncertain ground.

2. Some of the big Lore changes surprised me somewhat, such as the Argonians becoming a serious power, the Empire becoming a much smaller dictatorship, end of the Mages Guild and (seemingly) the Blades etc. Although I found it disappointing that due to the short length of the novel, these were not truly explored in enough detail as I would have liked. No mention of the Champion of Cyrodiil either was a bit disappointing. (Although admittedly I was curious to see the Lore community's response to these changes not made by MK himself despite them following the rough "foretelling" given before)

3. I did like the exploration into the Khajiit that was made. Keyes did do a very good job describing them and exploring a relatively untouched area of the Elder Scrolls. As did he do an excellent job with the Argonians and Hist, describing both the situation after the Empire's decline and the role of the Hist to the Argonians.

Overall though, the book was alright. Not what I would consider an amazing book, but still a solid read. It was good to see some development in the Elder Scrolls world, and if these changes are kept with in the next game, it looks like we'll have a TESV in a very different world to the others.

Lol, that was hilarious!

Now, I've just finished the book myself, and wow... I am shocked and saddened by the destroying of Morrowind. The Mages Guild gone, the Empire shattered... I will never think of TES the same way agian, when I play the games, knowing what I know now. And playing Morrowind again will be very sad. Having that said, I am also very excited by all of this. TES lore is dynamic and still living. It seems some fans take this as some personal insult by Bethesda, but I shouldn't be surprised. Like someone mentioned - welcome to Nerd Fandom. I personally liked the book quite a bit, and I hope this is all a prelude to TES V. It was also awesome to learn more about Black Marsh.

I think that you love Morrowind. And I have to say that this was only one normal reaction to destruction of Morrowind !!!!
I'm glad that there is still people here who understands that this is not real life,but imaginary world which we visit and enjoy by playing it(games)!

Alright, just finished the book last night, totally enjoyed it.

My initial gripe was that $15.00 was a bit much for less than 300 pages, but the story turned out to be decent enough for me not to regret the decision to purchase it. That said, my only real complaint about the story was the seeming repetition of expendable characters which followed the Prince around.

He starts off with a band of body guards. . . killed off enmass.
Kidnapped by batch of theives. . . killed off enmass.
Hooks up with a tribe of Khajiit. . . killed off enmass.

It got to a point where I didn't even really want to like the characters because their deaths seemed inevitable.
I understand that sometimes certain characters exist only a vehicles to get other characters from A to B, but -all- of them? Seemed a little lazy to me.

Other than that it was great to get a little insight into some of the hanging quesitons I had following the end of Morrowind; what happened to Vivec (the god, not the city)? What happened with the Ministry of truth when Vivec no longer had the power to support it? Etc.

I agree, a lot of the characters got killed off very quickly. It wouldn't have been as bad if the book was longer...

That seems to be one of Keyes' techniques, maybe as a way of being unpredictable. Read his four-book series "The Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone" sometime (I'm only halfway through it); he surprised me sometimes with whom he chose to kill.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Keyes

The problem, of course, being that it's not unpredictable.
I can understand where a character might not have any mroe place in a story and need to be written out, but there are other ways to do it than simply killing them. Is there even a single character in that book that simply went their own way as opposed to being horribly killed? None that I can think of.

I actually remember thinking, about the Khajiit tribe when Treb told them what they were up against and they strated packing up, "Oh, good, they're gonna just leave and go home with their kittens and live a good life; no shame in that." Then they showed up again later and saved him in the inn and I was like, "Aw crap, they're doomed."

If he'd suddenly killed Glim, that would have been unpredictable. . . but just wasting the supporting cast is no more surprising than the red-shirt never making it back to the Enterprise.

It seemed more like a Volume 1 than a full book.

My thoughts exactly. Methinks the book was split in 2 for profit's sake as well. Wouldn't surprise me if the next book is a bit longer but with a higher price tag.

yeah with a price like 15$ i wouldnt be surprised when the novel could have been done in one book

I figured it was publicity. I fully agree that the book feels more like part one of a larger book than book one of a series, it may even have been written as one book then split in two by executive meddling so that TES stays in the public eye for longer. Remember, as good as I find the book I have no problem with the idea that this book exist primarily to keep TES at the forefront while they're busy developing the next game installment. Fallout: New Vegas is exactly the same thing for Fallout, as well.

That said, any word on when the second one comes out?

No word yet

I'd like this!


I loved the Imperial Cult. I loved the Legion the most, and really hated it not being playable in Oblivion. I hope there are more factions in future ES games. I'm also really curious about which factions are totally lost, and which have replaced them.




House Telvanni will rise agaaaaiiiiin!

I can't wait to play out the Imperial assassins/detectives guild. Forgot what it was called, but the guy Colin was an inspector for them. He was probably the coolest character in the book. The way he spoke how he wanted to and disagreed with superiors infront of the emperor himself and didn't even get why that was wrong spoke levels of how much he didn't care about protocol, which is a different kind of badass all together.

Not to mention when he was talking to the emperor, when he said "I'd look south, as that's the one place there were no tracks," just seemed cool.

As for guilds, the mages guild is gone but there's the College of Whisperors and the Synod, both of which are recognized as magic institutions. The blades were mentioned as disbanded, and they made it seem like the personal guards were the group I was talking about earlier, the group that Colin was a part of. The legion is, of course, still fine. No mention of the Fighter's Guild, if I remember correctly.

The Penitus Oculatus

I hope the Mages Guild concept doesn't get screwed, or I will be one mad cookie. :stare:

From the locked thread:
"Considering that we had to get the wraithguard from him and he knew what we were going to do with it, he fully intended that Morrowind be destroyed. Maybe he thought a god would stop it. You can hardly feel bad for removing his power when he had nearly lost it already and decided to allow all his followers to die. "

I honestly think he figured you'd fail.

Well, at the very least in that case, the dark elves deserved to die for loving him. They earned their destruction through gullibility.