I've never had the chance to play ESO, was it really retconned completely? No ambiguity?

I've read that Talos was so powerful that he changed Cyrodiil forever in past, present and future, but I've no idea of what goes on in ESO.

DrunkenNord has very...strong opinions on ESO and stuff it talks about. Suffice to say, yes, the game contradicts itself (in both camps) as to whether or not Ald!Cyrod was jungled or not. Multiple times. Including claiming the Alyeids reconstructed Cyrodiil into a jungle by using White-Gold Tower.

Nope, TheDrunkenNord just really dislikes ESO. If anything they added more ambigouity with theory that one of the powers of White-Gold tower is terraforming ( nirnforming) cyrodill to better fit the current masters of the tower, along that we have theory of transcription error ( which they make fun of in other book) .

LOL! You make an excellent point.

I suppose a rain shadow from heights in Valenwood could create a dry patch in northwest elsweyr. But considering how reasonably vegetated things are just over the border in Cyrodiil, for their to be a dune desert to the south of that could be reasonably explained by some sort of magical 'curse' on the land.

It will be up to Bethesda to clear this up.

Without question. That terrain must be spectacular.

Question:

One of the theories bouncing around is that the Thalmor intend to deactivate every tower in Mundus to bring about the dissolution of the world. Let's suppose that's true for a moment. That would leave very few towers remaining to be deactivated.

But why can't a tower be RE-activated? Why can't we have world-saving quests of that sort - where, perhaps, in an attempt to deactivate something like the Adamantium tower (which might be the last active one), the hero not only defeats the effort, but uses the tower to reactivate all the dormant ones?

I kind of like the idea of doing that. It would be a happy quest.

That sounds interesting. The Elder Scrolls: The Two (and few more) Towers. hahaha

Sorry, I'm not really being a git. I do actually think its a good idea for a main quest.

Each tower could be guarded by a Daedra or mythical creature.

Maybe in some cases an Aedra (disembodied voice). Where you don't get to fight but instead have to convince the god to permit the tower's reactivation. Or at least permit you to even go near it. An intelligence test or a worthiness test. Perhaps you must achieve a particular level of fame or number of deeds (any, of your choosing) before you are allowed access to it. Giving side-quests importance.

Aren't the Khajiit themselves a tower?

That reminds me. I like to envision what a game map/world would look like. I've been thinking about Highrock. Just how spectacular would the Direnni Tower be? More of a spire than White-Gold, rising up from a small island in the Iliac Bay, visible from Daggerfall to Wayrest, to the peaks of the Wrothgarian Mountains and the ruins of Ald Orsinium. They could surely do some very interesting things with Ada-Mantia.

Since I'm not exaclty sure on the status of all the Towers (Crystal-Like-Law: gone (kind of), Khajiit Dream-Tower: gone (maybe) White-Gold: gone, Red Tower: gone, Green-Sap: broken (maybe) and Snow-Throat gone (unsure), Ada-Mantia could be considered the Last Tower (the last one to fall either way). Towers are complex, I'm not sure one could be reactivated, perhaps replaced though, wasn't White-Gold's stone something else in the time of the Ayleids? And rebuilding a Tower could be possible in the case of Crystal, if that "a person" is still around, near by somewhere.

What?

The Khajiit themselves are indeed (potentially) a tower. There's a theory that the Void Nights were an attempt by the Thalmor to deactivate that particular one. Probably need a bigger lore buff than me to explain exactly why they're a tower though, I don't recall the details.

After some thought, I came to a realisation. The Bretons for the most part, dislike/dispise Sheor, unlike the Nords. Their neighbours the Redguards dislike Sep, the Yokudan reflection of Sheor/Sithis. Now, they hate the Badman and the Second Snake for their own monomythic reasons, but both of these cultures currently exist on opposite sides of the Iliac Bay, in the sphere of influence of Ada-Mantia, place of Sheor's sundering at the hands of Trinimac, who was digested and turned into Malcath, god and creator of the Orcs, who, funnily enough, also built the majority of Orsinium's incarnations in Ada-Mantia's sphere of influence. Now, while it seems that BGS is setting up events in the provinces of Elsweyr and Valenwood, undeniably, something is going to go down at Direnni Tower, in High Rock probably.

Also, I think it's more the Khajiit's connection to the Lunar Lattice that functions as a Tower. This connection was broken due to the Void Nights, when Sheor's body suddenly disappeared, only to supposedly be brought back by the Thalmor using "Dawn magic". This connection was restored, allowing Khajiit to reproduce, but their spiritual connection to Jone and Jode may have been broken. MK also stated that it might have been an eugenics experiment by the Thalmor, to try and turn them back into Boiche.

As an addition, I remember a while back there was an idea for High Rock to have heavy Arthurian elements, even a Mordred archetype as the main villain. While directly transplanting story elements could be considered a bit lazy, having Arthurian elements in High Rock would be quite fitting, as Arthur's legend is of Celtic origin, changed from Welsh guerilla to gallant king.

Welsh guerilla is more interesting than gallant king imo.

I so hope Beth' don't turn High Rock into just another of the generic style medieval England inspired fantasy that we see so often in rpg. A Celtic influence would be much more interesting. Painted bodied warriors and druid warlocks rather than gallant knights and Germanic style feudal systems. If we were to have medieval Europe inspirations again, then i'd prefer a return to Cyrodiil than to make High Rock just the same.

I agree, it is a worry of mine as well. If we do see some Arthurian elements, I'd personally like them to be handled like http://www.reddit.com/r/teslore/comments/25bheh/reymon_ebonarm_the_once_and_future_king/. The player could perhaps mantle Ebonarm, essentially Trinimac, in order to become the Last Defender of Ada-Mantia, as masterminded by Clan Direnni in their conflict with the Thalmor.

Basically, the player would be your average Hero, getting involved with the political machinations and region/court politics, with an undertone of magic like solving the Provincial Governor's murder by summoning his ghost to track down the killer. They become involved with Clan Direnni, and through a series of events, they identify the Thalmor's master plan to unmake the Covention/unmake the sundering of Auri-El by the Selectives and mantle Ebonarm through things like attaining the armor of Trinimac and traveling the Pilgrim's Path. Basically, Ebonarm could be High Rock's Arthur, a folk hero that rose to prominence, but not just as a legendary warrior and king, but a god of purposeful war, someone that mantled the elven god Trinimac, and now, the Hero must take up the Ebon-Knight mantle.

It would definitely be nice to see a clever and interesting mix of influences from the French, Anglo-Saxon and the 3 Celtic Nations as the make-up of High Rock. Some Gaelic and Welsh words and names. It would be a waste of an opportunity to not utilise the beauty of these languages. Gaidhlig is breagh.

The cultural artwork too. The Celtic Knot and such.

The beliefs and creatures. Hey, maybe we could come across a bean-sidhe or two. (banshee) They'd take the place of hagravens I'd imagine.

Actually, according to MK, what Oblivion was is exactly what High Rock should be.

The Thalmor are not after the Towers, not even MK has suggested they are after the towers.

Whats more, is that theres no towers left, besides the Ur-tower in High Rock, for them to be after. The rest, sans Snow-throat, were destoryed or deactived before the Thalmor even came into power.

The Khajiit are not a tower, though they do (supposedly) serve a tower-like purpose by holding up the moons.

That "eugenics experiment" bit is interesting. The moons are essential to their being, after all.

There have to be a few cats who realize how fishy that business with the Thalmor is. That they were duped into joining the Dominion.

I still want Black Marsh, I'd love to see the Argonian homeland. It'd be different than anything else, also I could see it being the spot of Dominion resistance if the fleshier races lost ground to them, seeking asylum in a nearly impenetrable place. Plus we would get some of old Morrowind in it.

Wait - if all the towers are out of commission, then this cannot be the route by which the Thalmor undo Mundus (assuming that is their plan, and not simply world domination.)

However, if any of the towers still function (either we've overlooked something in Tamriel or there's one or more towers outside of Tamriel), and the Thalmor do indeed want to turn them all off to undo Mundus, then I'd VERY much like a "Turn the towers back on" game.

BTW: did the Thalmor actually instigate the Void Nights, or did they simply take credit for the reappearance of the moons? My gut tells me it's the latter.

It's a potentially mind-blowing province that would finally give us access to the rest of Morrowind - either in the vanilla game or thru DLC.

Don't the Argonians have a tower of their own? Bet the Hist do, and anyone who tried to mess with it would get spanked but good.

All the towers except one are out of commission, and it's impossible to turn several of them back on, as they were utterly destroyed. As for the others, the secrets of making the stone that powered them were lost with the races who made them.

-Orichalc presumably sunk beneath the waves when the Redguards drove the Left-Handed Elves into the ocean, and then later sunk Yokuda somehow, if it actually was them who sunk it.
-Walk-Brass, aka the Numidium, was destroyed by Zurin Arctus reclaiming his soul from the mantella that powered it.
-Red Mountain went offline when the Nerevarine freed the Heart of Lorkhan, and it vanished somewhere.
-Green-Sap stopped moving before the Oblivion crisis began.
-Crystal-Like-Law was leveled by the Daedric hordes during the Oblivion crisis.
-White-Gold was rendered dormant when Martin Septim destroyed its stone, the Amulet of Kings.
-Snow Throat went offline due to something related to the Skyrim civil war, and its "fall" was the last sign that would hearld the return of Alduin.

The only one remaining is the Ur-Tower, sitting on an isle between High Rock and Hammerfell.

No, the towers were built by the elven races in an attempt to destory/escape/controll Mundus, since they hated it so much. The Hist have no tower, and have not expressed any particular hatred of Mundus that we know of, thus there is little reason to suspect they have one.

The Hist, being Sithis worshipers, are more likely pro-Mundus like men are, and have no reason to make a tower to try to bugger off from Mundus.

It's inferred [or confirmed if you're ok with MK] that they instigated the Void Nights in secret as an eugenics experiment, AND took credit for their reappearance, when they were done with said experiment.
Since Khajiiti birth is heavily dependant on the moons, I assume that making them vanish would have rendered the Khajiit incapable of reproduction, or something to that effect. It's a pretty damn big deal for them.

They pretty much tricked the Khajiit into regarding them as their saviors from extinction, when they were the ones who put them in peril in the first place.

They'd have an astoundingly significant reason to resent the Thalmor if the truth were ever to come to light.

I've heard it mentioned somewhere that the eugenic experiment was to turn the Khajiit into elves as they originated from the same Ehlnofey.

It's very likely that such was their intent.

One would assume it didn't work as intended. Given the kittens' complete and utter panic,and no mention of elven babies with exclusively feline parentage for the incident's duration, stillbirths come to mind.

Which gives us an insight on the Thalmor's opinion of the Khajiit as mistakes that need to be fixed. It has potential to add fuel to the fire in a story line centered in Elsweyr.