Three questions that I should know the answers to, but apparently don't.

1) Towers. People here talk about them like they have a very special significance besides being really tall buildings (or in one case, a mountain?). I never ran into this in the games I've played so far. What exactly is a tower?

2) Do characters know about the dreamsleeve? If not, because I think the answer is no, what do they think happens when they die? What about if they die in Oblivion instead of Nirn, does that change anything? And if we know an answer for some of the unplayable races, like what the dwemer believed, that's good too.

3) I forget if the book gave us an exact time for the whole crashing Ministry of Truth thing. Did the (mortal) effort to keep it up start before or after the Oblivion Invasion? Did the Invasion have any effect on that? How long after Morrowind did it take for people to go "oh crap a giant rock is about to wipe us all out!"?

Helpful things would be: straight answers, telling me which game/expansion I should know the answers from (especially if it's in Morrowind or Oblivion), threads where straight answers have already been given (searching the forums seems so simple in principle...), wiki pages, and lore books which contain straight answers. Unhelpful things would be: the more obfuscated lore books such as the sermons, which I have so much trouble understanding that I usually can't even guess what the topic is supposed to be. If it all comes from one of those, I'm gonna need you to spell it out for me.

Things posted to the forums by MK/devs do count for me, if that comes up.

Thanks.

1.) IIRC, each province has a tower. Adamantium in High Rock, White Gold in Cyrodiil, Falinesti in Valenwood. These towers are connected to the earthbones (natural laws of Tamriel) and help support the structure of Mundus. Adamanitum tower was also a convention place for the Aedra during the creation of Mundus. If the towers were destroyed, Mundus would fall apart.

2.) Not many people in Tamriel know of the dreamsleeve's soul-recycling functions, although it is used as a form of extraphysical communication by the Elder Council and Psijics (src. http://www.imperial-library.info/obscure_text/nu-hatta_nu-mantia.shtml. Many different cultures have an idea for what posthumous life is. For example, the nordic halls of Sovngarde, their afterlife. I believe what an individual believes the afterlife to be like is what the dreamsleeve manifests itself as, so a Nord would see Sovngarde, and later their soul would go to a body without any memory of its past life. For Daedra in Oblivion, however, their soul retains all memory. When a Daedra is killed, their soul is transported to the void, waiting for undetermined amounts of time to be recreated. The void is a horrific and torturous experience for a Daedra.

I'm not sure about the answers to your other questions.

PS If you want a straight talk, basic guide to CHIM too, you can look http://s1.zetaboards.com/TESFU/topic/2694183/1/. But I really don't recommend it, as figuring it out is way more fun (trust me).


EDIT:


Not true. There is no Tower in Argonia (I don't count the Hist, as they break the Wheel), and no Tower in Hammerfell (though Orichalc is in Yokuda, which is related to Hammerfell (I suppose)). Also, do you think Anumidium still counts as a Tower?



True, true; thank you for the details. Also as a note, if a mortal pledges allegiance to a Daedra, when they die they go to that Prince's realm. Ie, Umaril.

1. http://imperial-library.info/obscure_text/nu-hatta_nu-mantia.shtml#5

2. One person mentions it in http://imperial-library.info/obscure_text/nu-hatta.shtml, though this character hasn't been seen in a game yet. And no it wouldn't change anything if they were in Oblivion. What matters is what AE they were aligned to, that is, which Aedra or Daedra they worshipped (in my interpretation). http://imperial-library.info/obscure_text/5th_era_loveletter.shtml mentions this:



3. When did that even happen?

Oh the book. Nevermind then.

What does one get when one turns a wheel on it's side?

The Tower and the Towers are much different things, though they do have a slight interconnection, though not one strong enough to bring up here. Not to mention this isn't a CHIM discussion. The wheel of the Towers is also different than the Wheel of Aurbis, in that the Towers' wheel is an echo of the Tower Wheel.

PS Caps are very important in Tes lore


Also, for more reading on the Towers, I have a brief lore summary in my latest RP (which is heavily centered around Tower lore). You can find it http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1067522&hl=, or http://s1.zetaboards.com/TESFU/topic/2757504/, I suppose.

Thanks for the replies, and I'm going to go read the stuff linked now.

So the Dwemer may not have believed in an afterlife because they were more into science than religion? But those aren't actually opposites in any way, and we're talking about a race of people that live in a world where you can actually summon religious figures and talk to them personally. And some people go to Oblivion when they die, which we know the Dwemer were capable of visiting while still alive. (I thought that's where Yagrum was when the rest vanished.) I don't get that.

I also have further questions about the Ministry of Truth, though they threaten to start another big, messy conversation about the Loveletter (and The Infernal City). The Loveletter itself falls into the category of "lore I can't understand a word of myself," which doesn't exactly help my confusion any....

Does anything other than the Loveletter say that it was literal love for Vivec keeping the moon in place for so long? I can't remember if that part was in the book. For one thing, I gather from lurking that there's some debate as to if the book and the Loveletter are about the same landfall. For another, I thought the love was more in the sense of believing in Vivec's religion than love itself literally working magic. What I mean is, when the people start supporting the Nerevarine instead (who then ends the Tribunal so that Vivec can't protect anyone), that is the loss of love that I would have guessed did the damage.

One of the sermons, can't remember which, specificly states that it's love for vivec holding the place up.

Oooh, okay. Well that's both more confusing and more interesting than I thought. Cool.

...Though, I don't suppose Vivec himself could have been talking about his power until the Nerevarine shows up?

Vivec is a lying magnificent bastard. Who knows what he means methaphoricly, literally, who knows when he's just plain lying.

Where is this said? I know they "...spurned the Daedra." and "...believed only in their gods Reason and Logic." However, Reason and Logic are always both said, and always capitalized. Perhaps Dwemer thought that there were physical manifestations of intelligence and common sense? Perhaps Julianos (Logic, he invented trigonometry) and Zenithar (reason, Trading takes common sense) were the inspiration.

I forget where it's spelled out, but the Dwemer were practically atheists (despite working toward becoming a god themselves). Even their thought processes were alien to the other races, which we get a hint of when we read fragments of their children's literature and other books. The fact that they're history now may be a further indication that they were too different from the other cultures of Tamriel. Those peoples who believe in the gods are the rule now.

As for the timeline, after reading "The Infernal City" a while back, I don't think it's really spelled out what date the Red Year occurred. To me it sounded as if it was only a couple of years after the Oblivion Crisis. The novel takes place 40 years after the Crisis but it seems to say that the sea around the former Vivec City has been boiling for decades after the Red Year. Maybe it will be spelled out in the second novel (really the second half of a novel, not a separate book).

Don't give a god too much credit and stretch his sphere too far; lots of stuff takes "common sense," such as breathing (Kynareth, goddess or Air). I can also say Reason is Logical, so that can exclude Zenithar even more.

Reducing the Dwemeri belief system to technofetish or atheism is missing the point by a kalpa.

Hell, even calling them nihilists would be wrong.

That said, reducing them to endless wrongs is perfectly right, but they would have no doubt called that assertion wrong, too.

Thanks, MK. I think I understand what you're saying here. I shouldn't reduce them to quasi-atheists when really they knew about the gods, but were following their own path.

Then again, only a Dwemer could miss a spatial metaphor by a measure of time.

If that's true, then the Loveletter must have been written by one.

1: They're funny that way. The original tower is a space dreadnought flown by Akatosh before he had a body. It was the first structure. The second tower (confusingly enough referred to as Zero Tower if I remember) is Red Mountain, it's stone is Shezzar's heart. The rest were poor, yet necessary, imitations by the various Aldmer races. As Red Tower is now gone, the subsequent towers are now even more important. Because it is central, the White-Gold tower of the Ayleids is apparently vitally important because it's like the central spike keeping a wheel together.

2: I think some characters do believe the dreamsleeve is the final destination (it would seem both Vuhon and, to an extent, the Argonians believe so) but not many do, or even know/believe in its existence at all. Each afterlife probably varies with the god a person worshipped, or as 946000's quote put it, their aligned god-planet.

3: By my estimation, it happened two to seven years after Oblivion. Based on the fact they had time to use the machine I would say they figured it out not long after Oblivion ended.


Well, maybe they understand relativity? Did Kagrenac ever put two and two together that without magic any movement through space takes some amount of time? Or, to put it in TES-terms, did he realize that Akatosh and shezzar were two facets of a double-entity? Because that would be pretty interesting if after figuring out so much, he could never puzzle that one out.

Actually, I believe the Adamantine tower is the Zero Tower, Red Mountain is the first. And before Landfall it wasn't gone, its Stone was simply destroyed, deactivating it.

That would be interesting, and it makes sense considering how often Lorkhan and Akatosh are paired together. Not to mention it de-fuzzles MK's post for me, I think...

So would that mean the Dwemer disappeared into a warphole :ahhh: Or does spacetime change when space and time are both gods?

As for the tower destinctions, I tend to use the proper names anyway.

I don't think it changes. The gods may be sentient, but their functions are seamless parts of the world. Therefore it is not a consious effort for them to be space and time any more than I need to try to be a human. Space and Time work the same way as breathing, but the details of the function are different.