I *SPOILER ALERT* finished the College of Winterhold questline recently, and like many other people, I'm completely confused as to what the hell the Eye of Magnus was supposed to be, and even more confused as to why I should care about it. Oh, it's super powerful, is it, Quaranir? That's great, but what exactly does it do?

So, I thought I'd open discussion of it to the Lore Forum.

Any ideas?

Perhaps it allows the user to see the mundus through the eyes of its architect, and thus facilitates the unravelling of the world?

Did you see the ward Ancano put up? I assume he got that power from the eye. I really wanted to horde the eye for myself. Bind a legion of Atronachs to my will and conquer Skyrim myself. Out of the way Ulfric. Make way for the new Emperor. What's that? Thalmor got a problem? GTFO MY CONTINENT

"What the hell was it?"

Very silly, was what is it was.

A nice big shiney blue thing, that looked nice in HD Skyrim trailers on Youtube.

The basic elements of the original story, the one that echoes and creates everything, are the feuding brothers, the lover, and the blind witness. At this level, roles filled by the time dragon, the dead space god, Nirn, and Magnus. Magnus is blind because you have his eye. His eye witnesses things. It is an artifact of this sub-level's echo of the first story, like the Heart of the World.

We will see the eye again in TES VI. We won't know until then.

What was it?

A MacGuffin, obviously.

Well Magnus played a heavy role is Lorkahn's creation of the mortal plane, mainly the architect. Magnus is the being for which Magicka itself originates from. Derived from the sun, which Magnus created himself when he left Mundus. It could be that the Eye of Magnus contains some of Magnus' power and can be used by mortals to become incredibly powerful like Ancano. It may also hold the secrets of Mundus itself :shrug:. The Psijic Order took it away for a reason.

KINMUNE? http://imperial-library.info/content/kinmune

If I was Ancano, that massive ward would have been flaming and electrified. There would have been Storm atronachs infesting the college and the bridge the offers acces to the College would have crumbled. Figures the bad guy made so many mistakes.

You kinda wonder why the Psijic Order ended up rescuing the world in the end regardless of all of their "we don't intervene" babble.

What a terrible quest line. The PO turned the The Eye into a disco ball.

The Eye of Magnus, you say? First you take http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Staff_of_Magnus_%28artifact%29, and then you take his eye! Poor old man! You should return it to him. It is not fashionable to wear an eye-patch these days.

I think you're right. Buried beneath Sarthaal, and all.

Although it says she escapes and heads towards Cyrodiil at the end... hmm. It does say she takes a part of the power of her users, so maybe she can possess mortal bodies as well?