well, i know they are alteast somewhat canon, since they made the whole eruption of vvardenfell, dunmer being driven out of morrowind, and titus mede being the emperor, the penitus oculatus, etc... all real and acknowledged in skyrim.

but im wondering if EVERYTHING from the novels is going to be included in the actual lore... because i have yet to find any mention of the infernal city, umbriel... or the heroes who ended its terror.

i mean, come on... that was one hell of a victory for the empire, if it werent for prince attrebus, annaig, mere-glim, and the others, tamriel would be one big zombie apocalypse.

i would've expected ATLEAST an in-game book mentioning the empire's victory against it, as well as prince attrebus and annaig's involvement in it.

though, i say prince attrebus should be mentioned, thats only because he was the son of the emperor... of course the empire would like to make it sound like attrebus was a hero... even though in reality, he was just a pathetically horny loser with no skills or real strength... he was perhaps my most hated character, i much preferred sul, the dunmer sorceror... definitely the best character in the novels.

i doubt anyone knows for sure if the characters from the novels, other than titus mede and his new force, are acknowledged in any subtle way, or if they will be in the future, but i figured i'd atleast ask about it, incase i missed something...

...i have to admit, i honestly kept hoping for prince attrebus to suffer a horrible death every time i flipped a page... i cant be the only one who absolutely hated that guy, right?

"How the tree came to grow there is a bit of a mystery... Some say that when Vvardenfell erupted, a piece was blown to the middle of Skyrim and from the crater grew the tree. I've also heard that it was a spore that fell from an island floating in the sky, but that just sounds like nonsense. All I know is that the sap makes you feel as healthy as a cave troll, but slow as a drunk horker. And that and it fetches good coin." -Ysolda in Skyrim, speaking of the Sleeping Tree.

I'm pretty sure that's the only reference to Umbriel in the entirety of Skyrim. Skyrim was relatively removed from the affair, and it all occurred >100 years ago, so those are some potential excuses for the lack of real mention.

Ysolda mentions Umbriel in a very non direct way.

She talks about how th sleeping tree supposedly was created from a spore from a floating island, but she calls it nonsense.

*edit*
damn, ninjad.

Slightly off-topic, but how does one initiate that conversation with Ysolda? I never came across it.

They are fully canon, they haven't been conflicted and the devs tack on that hasn't changed, although they haven't really said anything about it since release. For the record, dibs on the next ones.

I, too, am disappointed by the lack of really any of it being mentioned, but I figure the fight with Umbriel is like the Spanish Civil war to an American when you ask your average Nord: most of them barely even know it happened and if they do, do they care?

I think it's a little random. She just makes the job offer, iirc. I've even had issues with getting the mammoth tusk miscellaneous quest out of her at times, so she's inconsistent at best.

yep, they relate to the canon from Oblivion and Morrowind too. I'd repurchase all the previous games just to read the stories, they're so cool

I wish they actually mentioned it directly. But at least they are canon...

Is anything 100% canon?

Thats the one and only reference to those two books in the entirety of Skyrim and as far as Im concerned a hand-wave.

Not good enough, not good enough by far.
Two hundred years have passed, so many highly important events occured.
What do we get as reference?
One Synod scholar in a Dwemer ruin and a mention of a rumour of a tree-spore.

Skyrim is designed too much to stand-alone and it shows.

It shows in the sudden twist to make Aetherius seem heaven and Oblivion seem hell, and boy do we know how much trouble it is to explain to new-lore-fans that it makes zero sense for the realm of the god-that-is-Lorkhan to reside in Aetherius.
Yeah, its a 'transcript error' due to an 'in-universe confusion'. Above all else, the Dragonborn shows himself to be an idiot through dialogue time and again.

Skyrim is designed with very little respect for established lore and it just pokes through in some ugly circumstances where good-intentioned polish just doesnt cover it.

Skyrim is designed to be picked up and played without any regard or knowledge of what came before and in some places it is really glaring, and for people like me annoying.

oh, so that strange sleeping tree is possibly from a spore from umbriel?

that is interesting... i dont think i heard that dialogue, before, even though i DID receive that quest from ysolda before... guess it was such a subtle mention that i didnt catch it.

another thing i find very strange about the people in the elder scrolls universe... how can they POSSIBLY consider things like a spore from a floating island creating some magickal, otherworldly tree, "nonsense"... when even stranger things happen on a daily basis in their world?

it seems like there are always people in the world who think some legends are unbelievable, like general tullius not believing the jagged crown even exists, or some people not believing that things like "the white phial" existed, etc...

...and lets not forget the whole dragon legend no one believed until they attacked.

i dunno, seems so odd to me that there could be any skeptics in TES universe when their daily lives involve strange things...

...and right, i forgot theres about 160 years between the novels and skyrim... i guess some things tend to get lost in the passage of time... even things that should never be forgotten... again, looking at the legend of alduin, and how it was forgotten... but 160 years seems so small compared to the SEVERAL centuries it took people to forget dragons existed.

Well, imagine somebody without modern technologies looking at you, wondering how you can use things such as computers and still remain skeptical of time-travelling cyborgs.

It just rearranges what skepticism is. For example, the Tribunal Dunmer in Morrowind don't deny the existence of the Aedra, just that they are worthy of worship.

Dragons weren't believed to be fake, but believed to be extinct, which is a lot more reasonable. But I do agree that not having an open mind in Tamriel is weird. Hell, even the talking dog agrees with me!

was this directed at me specifically, or are you using "you" as a general term?

because if its directed at me, when did i say i was skeptical of anything?

you cant just use an example involving me when you dont even know what my beliefs are, it doesnt work like that... and its kind of insulting for you to assume things about me, if that is the case.

if you were using it as a general term, then disregard my reaction toward it.

Bloody seriously. Anything can be retconed, nothing is truly sacred or immutable.

For example, I hold the Trial of Vivec and Loranna's Blue Dawn as part of my canon TES. Why? Because they're A. Awesome and therefore true, B. Continue the story of Morrowind perfectly, and C. Will never be retconed, as Red Year happened right afterward, so no one really gives a [Seht]. The moment something in-game contradicted them, if I was a normal forum-goer, I would redefine my view of these events, come on here and throw a fit about how the lore was contradicted, or (most likely) both.

This is what we do with the books. They're canon till an author or gamesas says they're not. Hence the concept, "Nothing is 100% canon." We just gripe even more about it when it was something in a previous game, rather than, say, an awesome lore event on the Forum.