» Thu Jun 06, 2013 12:42 pm Daggerfall's cosmology revolves around the People of Sentinel, the faction with a power of 1000. This fixes the power of the People of Sentinel's needs and dreams as a totality, a monad of inherent significance, the only such element in place, and a reference frame against which the central argument of each and every other faction can be measured.
Case in point: an oath sworn on the People of Sentinel is the most serious and binding of all, for to break it is not to oppose some faction in some mechanical sense, but actually to deny one's own existence. The oathbreaker alienates himself from the universal frame of reference granted by this faction's absolute authority on all standards of value and purpose. As there is no other reference frame in which value can be measured, and no other chain of cause and effect in which purpose can be surmised, such a one is reduced to an anomalous gap of strictly less than 1 pixel.
Perhaps you have seen these gaps in dungeons and cities, and even fallen through one into the so-called "void." Well, you better not break your oaths, huh? Learn from the mistakes of others, recant, reload, repent, and don't mess with the People of Sentinel.
This move by the game designers appears to represent solidarity with the Protagorean notion that "man is the measure of all things." The People of Sentinel, their wants, and the overall idea of The People and the cosmic maxim which it embodies, is the prime mover of Daggerfall. They are no mere applicants for validation; the People of Sentinel are the validators.
By their hands are wrought everything from guilds to Daedra, royal courts to prosttutes, manure to treasure— not strictly, though, in a physical sense so much as a cosmological sense. All of these things derive their relative importance with respect to the only absolute source of importance: the People of Sentinel.
