Hello!

I am neither a lore buff, nor a philosopher so I'll probably ridicule myself, but I wanted to share a bunch of thoughts about the City of Sutch.


My point is that Sutch existed during the Oblivion Crisis, was a city and was located within the Province of Cyrodiil. It is in blatant contradiction with the game itself, so I'll try to show that this stance could be sustainable, but I don't know whether or not I'll be compelling.


The crux of my argument is to establish a distinction between Cyrodiil facing the Oblivion Crisis and Cyrodiil facing the Oblivion Crisis as it appeared in the game.

Video game is both an art and a medium, and as every medium, it suffers from intrinsic limitations.
I'll say that Cyrodiil during the Oblivion Crisis has existed in some fictional reality. Saying this raises many questions that I am neither eager nor even able to answer properly. The main problem is to explain what kind of existence this Cyrodiil is endowed with, and I am not sure I want to endorse wholeheartedly the consequences of claiming that fictional beings do exist, which could be very close to madness (may Sheogorath spare or bless me!).

Another question (which is of epistemological nature rather than ontological) is of high importance, and even of high relevance with respect to the matter which is discussed here : this fictional reality is located outside our realms, so how do we get to know whether a statement about a fictional being is true or false? For example, how to know whether Sutch existed during the Oblivion Crisis, whether it was located within the boundaries of the Imperial Province, or whether it was a city or merely a fort?

I said it, video game is both an art and a medium, thus I consider Oblivion (i.e. the game) as an account of events that took place in the fictionnal reality of which Cyrodiil is part. Here comes the line drawn between the Cyrodiil of the fictional reality and the Cyrodiil of the game.

The Cyrodiil of the game is a depiction of the "true" one, and the game itself provides an epistemological access to the latter. But this epistemological access is neither absolutely complete nor absolutely infallible, precisely because every medium suffers from limitations. Fortunately, we have other access to the knowledge of the fictionnal reality. Among those I think we may count the trailers in which Sutch appears.

The reason for which Sutch wasn't depicted in the game seems to have been a technical one. Either the devs hadn't enough time to implement it, or realized that their map was too small to house more cities. I therefore claim that the absence of Sutch from the Cyrodiil of the game is rather due to a lack of epistemological access to the Sutch of the firctionnal reality, rather to a lack of truth of the previous statements about its existence, nature and location within the fictional reality.


I agree that this is no proof of the aforementioned statements. Rather, I think this (perhaps far-fetched) reasoning substantiates the claim that my stance is sustainable. I'll probably never be able to provide any compelling argument in favour of the existence of Sutch in Cyrodiil, as a city, during the Oblivion Crisis, since the trailers provide an access to knowledge about the fictional reality that is even more questionable than the game itself. In fact, I just choose the stance that felt the more tempting to me.

And since I don't think su(t)ch a reasoning had been done on the Forums, I wanted to share it.


So, what do you think about this?

Maybe Such, along with the Cyrodiil's culture disappeared along with the Cyrodiil's jungles when Tiber CHIMED it into its current state. :down:

So your saying the events of the game happened lore wise, yet the Oblivion (the game) as an art form shouldn't be held accountable for the lack there of lore?

I find your views interesting. It seems a nice explaination.

Though I think I saw something/one mention that it was annexed by Hammerfell.

I'm pretty sure this has been confirmed as true.

OB the game was just one interpretation of one Elder Scroll. So I think it's possible that Sutch is still out there, along with Mir Corrup, and a non-ruined Sancre Tor.

Sutch would have been a Colovian city, meaning that it's culture would be more or less what we got in Oblivion. Or it would be of Hammerfell/High Rock culture (like they did to poor Nibenese culture. They deleted it and replaced it with Dunmer, Orcs, Khajiit, Argonians and Nords).

There are ruins of Sutch in the Colovian Highlands, suggesting it was destroyed at some point.

It's actually in the Gold Coast. And it's only a fort ruin. Not a city ruin.

Ah, here we go.

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Thief_of_Virtue, like you said.

Can't find that book on the Imperial Library, though.

It's unclear when the book was written. That the borders between Hammerfell and Cyrodiil shift quite a bit, and that Sutch was at one time in Hammerfell. Sometime later, it was destroyed, and we now see its ruins in the Gold Coast. If it was still a city in Hammerfell, it'd have been shown on a map.

Makes sense.

Then people took the stones to make it to build stuff elsewhere, as opposed to making their own building materials. It's one of the reasons ancient cities fell apart (aside from time in general) in real life, and it would help explain why all you see is a fort.

Also, gameplay constraints. The only civilian ruins Oblivion has is the Kvatch set, and it is clearly inappropriate for a ruin that's been ruined a while.

The ruins are pretty big as far as the game is concerned, taking up 4 exterior cells in the CS. One of the cells is named "FortSuchAbbey," indicating that the "fort" was more than just a military installation. There is also "FortSutchCastle," though the cell named such doesn't contain any castle.

It's possible that only the military fortifications of the city survived through the years because they were built to last, as opposed to mostly-wooden private houses and pubs.

That reasoning is actually a pretty consistent backdrop to a lot of thought on this forum, but I've never seen it explained explicitly. Nice.