Okay all the cities in Cyrodiil have mages guilds right? (other than the imperial city but it has the arcane univerity which is like a 100+ mages guild). So why not have mages make the cities svck less? By this I mean improve the cities, purify the water, summon creatures to fix up walls and buildings, enchant wooden houses to not rot and stone homes not to crumble. Why hasn't the mages guild done this? What the heck do they even do, other than act as a supplementary military force which could just be absorbed by the Imperial legion to save time and money? Where is the science and invention which could be brought upon by magic?

Don't get me started on alchemy...what has stopped an achemist from mixing Sulfer, Charcoal, and Potassium Nitrate (also known as saltpeter)? Do you know what this would make? Gunpowder! What about mixing a glass bulb with a melted tungsten filament? Lightbulb! Can someone just explain to me the lack of scientific advancement in Tamriel.

They have invented gunpowder in Tamriel. They only use it on cannons on their ships though.

Its the same question you have to pose to ALL fantasy lores (except maybe steampunk). If Magic exists in such quantities, why hasn't it been put to extremely efficient and practical use?

Why aren't the wealthy riding around in feather gliders? Why aren't they driving in steam powered cars powered by flame atronochs? But it ain't Bethesda that's guilty of overlooking these things... its practically every fantasy system ever proposed.

Because the Arcane University is in Cyrodiil. Nothing works well in Cyrodiil.

Probably for the very same reason there are still fairly rotten area in almost every first world large cities : those who need the fixes can't afford them, and those who could pay don't care. They might have the technical ability to do it, but won't do such extensive effort out of the goodness of their hearths.

Look at real world Detroit : it's in the wealthiest, most technologically advanced country on the planet, yet large parts of it still looks little better than a 1945 german city. The technology and the ressources to fix it up exists, but nobody's willing to fork the bill.

The Numidium, could be seen an a monolith to "science" and magic combined. If it wasn't a purely magickal creation. It laid the foundations of an empire has which ruled Tamriel for 3000 years and lead a entire race to some sort of transcendence.

Perhaps it set a precedent.

Obviously the Mages in the Arcane University are devoting all their mystical power to keeping people from using toilets. Oh, and popping fully advlt NPCs into existence. And gender-morphing clothing and armor. :rolleyes:

DaVinci had a powerful, wealthy patron in the Catholic Church. Why didn't they finance the construction of some of his brilliant inventions?

Galerion made them stupid and lazy.

I'm guessing most mages would snub their noses at doing most of that kind of menial work.

Plus, I'm betting the builders are in a union, which support the local politicians enough campaign money to make sure that buildings are done by licensed contractors.

Besides, magicians study magic, not architecture. They may be able to levitate a house, or make a flying city, but the moment the enchantment discharges...

I think most mages in Tamriel have learned from the Dwemer's example of undoing themselves from existence enough to stay the hell away from science.

You have said it, in pretty much every setting, it's just like in the Elder Scrolls, magic is never used to bring about all the conveniences for everyday life it could. In some settings, they will give some kind of explanation, such as having those who can use magic be few in number and mostly removed from society (or they just don't want to bother using their magic to make people's lives easier.) in others, they just assume people won't think too much about it, given how common magic is in Tanmriel, I think it's more of the latter. I believe the reason is a matter of feel, for most authors "fantasy" means a watered down version of Medieval Europe except with magic and dragons, so they do that, maybe you'll get a magic civilization that uses magic for every day life, but for most, magic is pretty much separated from mundane things, because if people started using magic powered aircraft or vehicles that use fire spells as a substitute for internal combustion engines, it would go against that cliche, and for fantasy, anything creative seems to be something that will be avoided at all costs.



The Dwemer tried to use profane tools to steal the power of a god from his heart, that's a very different matter from using steam power or finding more uses for gunpowder.



But if you go to the places where the people who CAN afford that technology are, in any developed part of the world, you're likely to see all the things that we associate with modern technology, it isn't so in the Elder Scrolls world, though, even the Imperial Palace seems pretty mundane, just bigger than every other building in the Imperial City, you would think that the Empire could afford to hire some mages to do some nice things with it, it would certainly command more respect to the Empire if the seat of its government was made a little more impressive.

Really? All I ever saw them doing was chatting all day, outside. And fighting the battlemages.

Like science, I suppose magic has their limits too. And with so many evil threats everywhere the mages are probably too busy to do much, maybe they are just lazy.
Especially when giant glowing portals appearing out of no where with monsters spilling out.

Besides, who needs gunpowder when you can blast fireballs and lighting from your palms or summon light and have glowing crystals.

And I suppose with the limited number of mages few are willing to spend their time just to try to make the lives of others better, it's not like their lives are so bad or anything...

In the Wheel of Time, the premise is that there used to be a "Age of Wonders" where everything you described above was in place, and it led to the end of civilization and almost the end of the world. Humanity tends to overuse and eventually overreach their powers with destructive consequences (just like humanity is doing in real life with technology).

The mages guild tries to control the use of magic by keeping a monopoly on training & selling spells, practically forcing anyone wishing to become more than a hedge wizard to become a member --- all to prevent excesses like for instance with Mannimarco or witches summoning Daedra Lords into Mundus. But of course, in Oblivion this face of the guild is not shown and merely concentrates on petty political quibbles.

Just my two cents.

Mage's Guild doesn't outlaw other selling spells or teaching magicka.

Priests at some churches sell spells, even if they're not in the Mages Guild, and the high level Conjuration trainer is a Daedra worshipper.

If anything, Galerion formed the Mages Guild to destroy the old idea that magic was something exclusive for the Nobility. With the idea of the Guild, anyone from any background could practice magicka.

A guild isn't created for equal opportunity, actually quite the opposite. They're created to secure the quality of a product and to ensure the well-being of the guild-members, which includes removing competition from those outside the guild and stomping out innovative ideas that may create an unfair market for those already in the guild.

We saw that with the fighters guild. "Hey, those Blackwood jerks are undercutting us and doing the job better! Kill 'em!"

And Mages Guild
"Hey, those necromancers are raising the dead, learning, and doing stuff! Kick them out of the guild and kill 'em!"

The prosperity of science and logical thought in the real world is based on the belief of many that our reality is governed in most aspects by unchanging and impersonal laws of nature. Now imagine a world where there are no laws of nature but deities of uncertain motivations instead, where a judgment based on logic has no merit over one based on esthetic. There.

And Dark Brotherhood
"Hey! That guy is a psyhcopath that babbles and stuff....uh...."

Crap, you guys beat me to all the good ones.

Well, DB does actively go after competition, so it's not like that's unexpected for them to play dirty. They seem to drive that note in Daggerfall too.

FG and MG, on the other hand in OB, made it seem they farted sunshine and rainbows, and the competition was nothing but a bunch of brutish, horrible, evil losers undercutting them or didn't agree with their ideas, and they kick puppies. At least in MW, the MG and FG at times were giant asses (depending which quest giver you talk too), so it felt they acted more like a guild than goodie-goodie club.

EDIT: I really need to get my thoughts completed more often! I just seem to edit too much!

I just think they made the monopolizing aspect more obvious in Morrowind. It was still present in Oblivion, but the black and white think tended to overshadow it.

Well then what the bloody hell is the entire magical system based on, if not "if you say certain words and move your hands in certain ways, then these predictable outcomes will occur"? Plus there's all those research notes you get tasked with protecting from necromancers in Daggerfall, from what I can remember, they showed, or at least extremely strongly implied, that the scientific process is at work in a lot of what the mages guild does.

Plus, in Morrowind the mages guild actually had competition, in the form of the Telvanni. In Cyrodiil you can either join the mages guild, or become an illegal necromancer. In Oblivion they already have a monopoly on legal magic, so there's no need to emphasize your monopolistic tendencies.

As for why the mages and scientists haven't done all things imaginable -combine glass tubes with filaments (it doesn't have to be tungsten by the way, tungsten just works the best. cotton will do the same thing but will eventually burn up from the heat) or such like. We have to take into account that it took us thousands of years to figure out that if we combine these common chemicals and things all around us they do something neat. Just because you have the raw material does not mean you will automatically have the end product -especially considering so much invention happens purely by accident.

Quite honestly I am impressed with what they do have, considering how many times they have been ripped apart by wars and such.

After all they have some impressive metallurgical knowledge -they have figured out how to make silver hold a better edge ten steel! Wow! how's that work? Also they have figured out how to put tension and compression properties along with tremendous memory into metal to make a functional bow! That's crazy stuff! Here we have to settle for wood and fiberglass!

Now lets consider this, if the mages tried to do all this wonderful stuff would it really be all that great? It would take a lot to maintain it, the common man would become passive and spoiled -the mages will give me anything I want. Sudddenly there would be no reason to do anything. I imagine using magic to do things like make grand structures or make them fantastic would be REALLY hard, I mean look at the ayleids. They had great magic but didnt do all that. I propose 1: It's not worth it and 2: It's super hard -maybe harder than actually doing it yourself.