So, I just finished Lord of Souls. I read the thing pretty much non-stop all day, and I gotta say, it's a good read. Anyway, this thread, like I said in the title, is going to be pretty spoilerific, so don't say I didn't warn you!

At the end of the book, Glim takes the not-quite-Hist trees (and by extension, Umbriel) back to their world. The folks in the kitchen all pretty much want to kill each other, and Glim sees some kind of tower on the horizon. Here's what I make of this.

* The tower? My gut says it's Adamantine Tower.
* The kitchen people killing each other? Might be nothing, might also be the Ehlnofey War mentioned in the Annotated Anuad.
* The not-quite-Hist trees? Ancestors of the actual Hist, meaning that Umbriel is, some day, going to be Black Marsh.

So, what I'm thinking, is that the whole thing's a wacky time travel adventure, and Glim is inadvertently responsible for the creation of the Argonian race, and quite possibly, the other races, too. Argonians already don't believe in linear time, so going from the Fourth Era to the Dawn, or perhaps an even earlier Kalpa, isn't that much of a stretch for them (and KINMUNE shows there's a precedent for this kind of thing, if the word "precedent" even makes sense when talking about nonlinear time).

I'm also wondering if there's a connection between the Ingenium and Lorkhan's Heart, which would play into the whole "the books are retelling the creation of the universe" thing, meaning that the key players of the books might actually fit into the roles of say, Anu/Padomay, or Magnus, Lorkhan, Akatosh and the rest.

I can only say that Bethesda does think very big in their games so you cant rule anything out...

Some folks are thinking of a re-enactment of the Dawn, but I do not know how that would be implemented. Time has to move forward

Well it certainly is an interesting take on it. I like it but don't buy it. I would love of that was the case but I just don't see Bethesda doing that for some reason...

Time is cyclical in TES, so I can accept an inner stable time loop in which Umbriel adheres to the 12 Worlds in the dawn era. What I don't get is how the proto-Hist got in a bubble of Clavicus Vile. Also the role of Umbra the sword and the soul inside is somewhat hazy. I'm suspecting there's a Shezzarite angle (isn't there always) as the ingenium recycles souls (lunar currency) and Keening was "RKHT AI AE ALTADOON AI, the short blade of proper commerce."

I bet Time wouldn't like being told what he has to do.

It's an interesting take but doesn't hold up. From what the book says, Umbriel is literally a chunk of Vile's realm. How would the trees have gotten from Black Marsh back to Vile's realm without evolving like the rest of the trees? I think the trees come from Oblivion, but where exactly? I have no idea.