There's always been this little wee thing that's put me off Elder Scrolls lore. It irritates me just to think about it, so i thought I'd make a thread just to discuss it.

Whenever i see people talking about Lore for TES, they talk about it almost scientifically. I recently saw someone apply E=mc2 to the creation of Mundus. So i have to wonder, is everything lore-buffs know about the deities and about the creation of the "universe" actual fact in the Elder Scrolls games, or is it just myth? And why is it discussed factually and not mythological?

It's almost as if there's no mythology to the franchise anymore. Everyone who knows lore seems to be able to explain the Elder Scrolls universe the same way anyone who has studied our own has; Facts! Minus all the deities -we don't quite live in a universe run by social gods- who seem to be celebrities in the ES lore (are they often talked about in "Nirn Weekly"?)

Why is there no longer any Mystery? I've noticed that just about everyone loves the Dwemer simply because of how little we know about them and due to their incredibly spontaneous (near enough) and unexplainable (although i'm sure some of you could explain it with some strange TES words and odd-placed capitals. ) disappearance. We dig that stuff up! Lord of the Rings is full of mystery, and we love that just as much.

So what happened to TES-Lore to make it so much more factual? Where did all the unknown in relation to the TES gods go? Why is there ridiculously wordy answers for everything that could be left answer-less? (for example: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/oqh0i/iama_elder_scrolls_lore_scholar/c3j8dvb whu? How do we know that?)

I'm not putting a downer on it, I'm just curious about where all the facts come from? The gods directly, through word and mouth of the TES inhabitants? Or just form game devs? And is everything we apparently know about the gods and creation of Aubris (it's Aubris, right?) 100% true, or just strange scientific theories? And does everyone enjoy this approach to TES lore?

The facts and the knowledge comes from a 17 year gaming franchise with 7 game iterations plus their expansions and the countless in-game and out-of-game sources and books surrounding them.

Are you really complaining that we know too much? Because that doesn't sound right in my head.

Also the disappearance of the Dwemer has been solved since Morrowind. You just haven't looked hard enough.

P.S that IamA was ripped to shreds because the guy didn't know as much as he claimed to know.

What else do you do with mysteries except try to solve them? And guess what, for every mystery you solve, two more appear.



What we do here is just basic research based on some primary sources (ingame books, etc.). It's just the same as how knowledge is formed about real things.

There's still mystery, but you have to look harder to find it. What is Hist? What's the deal with the Tsaesci? Where did the Sload come from? How did the Dreugh survive into this Kalpa?

Sometimes I feel everybody is too busy fawning over Vehk or tracing the lineage of Alduin to notice these delicious enigmas that have remained unexplored since the franchise began.

Though can you blame us for getting attached to the most charming, silver-tongued, immortal murderer/sixual deviant since James Bond?

This is why I love my outlandish, half-baked theories so much I know most of them are garbage, but the joy of Elder Scrolls lore for me is in trying to look beyond the "facts" of the gameworld, the various myths and histories that we have at our disposal, and trying to make new connections or expansions of that lore in order to make, for me, a more interesting, meaningful, or entertaining product.

That's the type of lore i enjoy reading (specially the Dreugh), as much as i want answer to them there's a part of me that hopes i never know.



Heh, this is what I'm getting at. Do we know for a fact that the ingame books are to be taken as fact, not as the cultural mythology of Tamriel? (And I'm hoping for the later)


I've played a few.

yes.

I'd rather not, i enjoy speculating whilst playing Morrowind.

Your theories arn't half baked nor garbage, gah.

I'm of a mind with you. Hist is intriguing because we know so little about it. If its position in the cosmos were defined, it would lose half its allure.

At least it seems like you want to know the answers whilst the OP wants them to be kept a secret forever.

I don't understand why somebody wouldn't want to know the answer to something (unless of course does more harm than good in which this case it isn't)