So,Mankar says alot of things about Tamriel and Lorkhan which are apparently wrong as he is viewed as biased.I'm alright with this - he is the leader of a crazy cult afterall.However,when he speaks to you in Paradise he talks of Tamriel like it is a planet.I was cool with this until I realized Nirn is the planet Tamriel is on.It could just be a simple mistake by Mankar/Bethesda but is there more than meets the eye going on here?Are the continents/islands other than Tamriel there unintentionally?Or doesn't Mehrunes want to "liberate" Akavir for some reason?

No the continents are intentionally there, as far as I or anyone else can know. Tamriel - and this is where it gets complicated - is a tier of heaven, which precedes its opposite continents. The others are stairs, or braches, which tether and end, leading from Tamriel. You might say they're the underworld of Tamriel. Point being, to transplant a tree, it may lose some roots.

I'm pretty sure this is just a mistake on the part of the writers. Considering that Tamriel is often used to refer to the Elder Scrolls setting as a whole, it could be easy for someone to get Nirn and Tamriel mixed up, so it's not really a surprise that someone could make such a mistake if their not careful, and it's not the only mistake in Oblivion's dialog, there's also the instances of characters using the wrong gender pronouns among others. Tanmriel, Akavir, and the other continents are that, continents, they are all places on Nirn, and were probably meant to be that way from the start. It's just that since so far all Elder Scrolls games have focused on Tamriel, and probably will continue to do so, Tamriel is a convenient name for the setting, and probably a better known one among casual players than Nirn.

In short, I think you're reading too much into this.

The only thing Mankark really got wrong was that destroying Mundus is a good thing (then again, altmer are idiotic like that anyway), and the names of the princes' realms (fault of being cheap)

And of what we know. Tamriel is in the middle, Akavir is to the east, Yokuda (or what's left of it) to the west, Atmora to the north, and I forgot the place to the south...Plus, since Tamiel is in the middle of it, it just may as well be all of Nirn. PeacemakerLofely got it right. I'd say.

I am confused, what exactly do you mean by underworld?

A world that is under. Tiers of Heaven?

What do you mean a tier of heaven preceding it's opposite continents? I can't understand anything you're saying.

a tier of heaven preceding it's opposite continents
Tamriel's preeminence is a result of being more like Nirn, than Akavir or Thras. I likened Nirn to Heaven, with multiple planes, but if eggs yo thang.

How come you can't just say it straightforward and literal instead of being metaphorical and metaphysical and philosophical and all that jazz? Here watch, it's not difficult; this is how I'm reading what you're saying: Tamriel is the best continent on the planet and Thras and Akavir are second & third best.

I can make you sad, can't I?

tamriel is the starry heart of Nirn. It is the most important continent.

yep

Tamriel is not the "best" continent though, its more like the most mythically important. Its the literal and metaphysical center of the world.

whoa whoa whoa, be nice, he did say it straight forward enough. It's both the center of the world, literally, and the center of the world, metaphysically.

I was saying best for lack of a better word.

And I don't lack better words, so why huff and puff?

Because you should use goo goo gaga words for goo goo gaga people like me. Das ist warum.

He talks like a sort of slightly weird philosoph. Nobody understands him, but it sure sounds reasonable!

It isn't that hard to understand...

Where's the fun in simply explaining things to people? Or having them explained to you? By joining the lore forum, you agreed to be strung along a bit by those who have been here longer It takes a little while longer to understand, but it's far more worth it than just having him say it.

Anyway, to clear things up a bit, I believe this is the gist of it: In lore metaphysics, centers have meaning. Nirn is the heart (center) of Mundus, which is the center of Aurbis, which, as he said, is layered like an egg (Aetherius is the shell, Oblivion is the white, and Nirn is the yolk), therefore it is more "important" than the other two. That is not to say that Daedra are weaker than mortals, but in the grand scheme of things they are less important (mostly due to the fact that the games are in Nirn, thus the Godhead dreams primarily in Nirn).

Anyway, as I was saying, centers have meaning. Tamriel is the center of Nirn, which since it is the center of the Aurbis, it is the most important part of Nirn. And of course, Tamriel has its own center- White Gold Tower. Which is why the elves built their most important tower there. Or I suppose it is better to say it is the center because the elves built it there

All of this is part of the "wheel and hub" system of lore. The hub is the most important part of the wheel, for without it the wheel would fall apart. You can be missing a spoke or two and still have a wheel, but without a hub nothing will work. There are several tiers of wheels, which is what Peacemaker was getting at as well. But that topic has been covered extensively elsewhere, with neat little drawings to boot

You sure like to tie every iota of the TES series to lore, though. Just because the games are centered around Tamriel doesn't mean that that's what the Godhead dreams of the most. For all we know there is far more activity and drama in Oblivion than in the Mundus. It's just that these games are based on a medieval type fantasy setting and making them based in outer space isn't really the theme nor the audience they're trying to sell it to. Not everything in the game is tied to lore. A lot of things are just because the employees thought more consumers would buy the product if they did it this way or that way. They made the levitation act in OB because if they had you levitate over city walls, cells wouldn't load. If every outside was external like it was in MW, that levitation act would never have been made. Many people forgot about the Destroy spell in TESI: Arena. That was left out of Daggerfall and has been since. But you don't see any "act" or some other kinda of bogus lore thing to explain its absence.
But that's only your opinion about the Godhead and you're entitled to it.

Do you have any links to the other threads? I'd like to see those pictures.
I have one already that's a pretty good drawing of the wheel, though it's not quite like an onion; layered and all. Thinking that Oblivion is on the outside of Mundus is kinda inside-the-box thinking. Oblivion is another dimension and dimensions exist all around us. So Oblivion could very well be in the exact same spot as Mundus and Nirn; it's just in a different realm/dimension. That same concept applies to ghosts and poltergiests. It's kinda like being on the X axis but just on a differet coordinate of the Y axis, or vice versa.

Are you familiar with the concept of the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axis_mundi (world navel, tree of life, etc.)? In short, its the "center of the world," and typically the place where the earth was created. In Nirn, this place is, historically and symbolically, the Adamantine tower. Its the first tower, the place where the gods last walked the earth, the location of the pact that cemented the creation of Mundus. Tamriel is important because it has (and therefore is) the center of the world.

True enough, though when you get that deep into lore you must not think of it only as what it is, but why it is what it is. In other words, what were the all mighty devs thinking when they set up the whole thing. Obviously they were trying to make a universe that is marketable and interesting, hence why it is in Tamriel and not Oblivion (as you said). Therefore they would create much more lore in Tamriel than in Oblivion, as they need to flesh that area out more because that's where the players are. And thus the Godhead dreams there more, since there is more to dream.

I might be off on a limb here, but I am under the impression that the original Godhead was, in fact, the devs. Dreaming up the world and everyone in it, everything is a part of their dream. As world-creators, they were all "I", since they lived both in the world and outside of it. Perhaps it's just wishful thinking, but when it comes to worldbuilding the world is fleshed out more where the story is going to be, and thus the Godhead would have to dream there more.

I wasn't claiming that the games made Tamriel more important, it just happens to be that way. The games didn't make Tamriel the center, the games were set in Tamriel because it was already the center. Game mechanics and retconning have nothing to do with the Godhead (well, that's not entirely true, but they have nothing to do with him in the current topic).



Hmm... I'd have to search around; I think there was a thread a few months ago that had a link to it.

Yes, there are multiple wheels, all inside one another. Technically there is the wheel on Tamriel, then there is the Wheel made up of the whole Aurbis. The Tamriel wheel is the hub of the Aurbis Wheel.

Quite possibly, though not necessarily. Nonetheless, it changes little of our representation; it would be too difficult to make a layered three dimensional model like that. Much easier to just put one outside the other Besides, Tamriel is meant to be flat, no?



Mhm, Adamantine was the original center, but it was moved to the outside when the other towers were built. I believe it was said before that when the elves finished the towers, their own mockery of the Wheel, the entire world shifted to make them into a wheel. Since they made them in the form of the Wheel, they became a mini-wheel.

The "center" in axis mundi is primarily symbolic. However, source?

I don't know what thread he was talking about, but http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1090991-structure-of-the-aurbis has cool pictures