Well it is Maiq's question, but to anyone who can find sense in my reply Luagar2 looking at the Maiq's statement:

QUOTE(IamMaiq @ Jul 9 2008, 06:52 AM)
Well, that speach by Vivic coud be interpreted as him saying he needs the Dunmer to pay taxes to fuel the Ghostgate (assuming actual matter, that costs money, goes into fueling the Ghostgate. I mean, i know its supposedly fueled by ancestor spirits or w/e, there would still be some kind of object that goes into it, such as filled Soul Gems for when the ancestors can't keep up. anyway, thats not the important part). Just by saying he needs his followers isn't necissarily saying his divine powers are influenced by his followers, keep in mind that vivic is a politician as well as a god. Of course, i have been known to be a moron

Actually I think Vivec was talking about the GhostFence.

Ah - I see. I am referring to Maiq's statement in that last post - I feel he missed several points in the substance of this thread and in Vivecs words and went out on a tangent to stuff that Vivec wrote and said in his Sanctum which he then misinterpreted.

Ah, gotcha... though I think he was actually talking about the Ghostfence and just inadvertently called it Ghostgate, at least that's what I get from him saying "i know its supposedly fueled by ancestor spirits or w/e"...

My friends,

Besides all that, I have wondered what legislative or pseudo-legislative body had the authority and power to hand down and enforce a mandate such as "The Levitation Act"?

Was it the Mages Guild? Emperial fiat? The Elder Council itself?

And how far does this "Levitation Act" expand? I have stated supra that Morrowind would be unlikely to be affected by the Act, so long as it was handed down by a Cyrodiilic governmental institution kept at bay by the terms of the Armistice. However, it has not be specifically stated whether the Guild Act established by Potentate Versidue-Shai allowed the government to control the Guilds themselves. As for why that would matter, a mandate from the Mages Guild would be a mandate from a branch of government; the Guild would be a governmental branch established by governmental Act.

If so, then would a Mages Guild mandate be kept off limits by the Armistice?

Questions....


___TWM

We already know that it doesn't affect Morrowind. The act was in 421, six years before Morrowind and we levitated there...

I think you're trying to make mountains out of molehills, Word Merchant. The Levitation Act, as has already been stated by myself and others, is just a bad attempt at weaseling out of a technical limitation in the game engine. Going into the specifics of who passed the law or how it can be enforced throughout an entire province is pointless, as it's not intended to be anymore more or less than an in-game excuse for the absense of Levitation to the player. If there was any real intention to make it anymore of a footnote, then we'd have more than two lines in the entire game devoted to it.

That being said, i'm sure you know this and I know you're just trying to stimulate meaningful thoughts and ideas here. I'm more stating this fact for others who might be unaware that it's not intended to be a big deal lore-wise.

I don't think anyone has contested the fact that The Levitation Act of 3E 421 is lore. All that's really been said is that it is a lore-based weaseling out of not having levitation in Oblivion.


EDIT: It seems that I have spoken a tad prematurely as Paw-prints so illustrates below me... Stuffed with blackbirds, my mouth is. While I still view it technically as lore... admittedly it is pretty weak and just really a cop out.

Agreed.

The Sload do NOT speak Esperanto, for Pete's sake! It's an Easter Egg! EASTER EGG!! :swear:

An argument concerning the canonicity of certain NPC statements in game has gotten out of control and will be removed from this thread.

:goodjob: You got it, Khajiit_Thief01. I will admit to having a tendency to bloviate on issues that rarely need such, and said bloviation is really just me mucking up things much, much worse than it was when the discussion started. Nonetheless, I will additionally admit to being facinated by my fellow lore-fans' ability to extrapolate and free-form wonderfully creative minutiae out of the most obscure details. I am always happy to add fuel to that fire.

Good eyes though, my friend; you caught me on that one.

___TWM

awww - shucks - sounds like I missed some interesting bits there. So next question might be if the lev act it is only a bad rumour, what might prevent Levitation throughout an entire Province? And why are we not hunting it down in a mod and spifflicating it?

Just about any plot device you can come up with. Hell, it could be a meteor that crashed so hard into the earth that anything on it would never be able to get from it. How do think chickens forgot to fly?

Chickens? They forgot to fly because they are too stupid to do 2 things at once. So when they became overexcited they just forgot - and they are also too stupid to remember. Mind you, you know what you call a chicken with a remote detonator for 5,000 nuclear warheads? A superpower!

Meteors are science fiction - wrong universe there mate - it would have to be another of Lorkhan's body-parts that was accidentally snipped off and fell when they used those other bits to create Jone and Jode ...

A spell ... linked to an artifact / building / God ...

Whatever - someone would have modded it if they really believed it. So no one really believes in The Lev Act or the reality as Lore. Everyone capable of modding believes in their hearts that the Dev's just copped out on this one. That is why people have created lev mods - and wyvern mods etc ...

A good reason to choose and revise the game engine more carefully and a lesson to the Owners/Board Members/Ex Officers/Devs never to take claims of next generation hardware too seriously. Any improvement in processing speeds/capability will be already taken up by the next gen OS, drivers etc = a game engine/graphics engine/etc have to have efficient and low processing requirements and a lot of flexibility + compatibility with last and other previous generation software/OS etc. The way forward is skilled people, not flash presentation and auto-shine for morons. Skilled devs can create the pretty effects themselves - far better and more appropriately than a remotely programmed effect package - that's part of being an expert - it is what devs are for. Remote programmers are just guessing that they can impress Companies and clean up - they have no idea what the requirements of those dev programmes will be for the most part.

I'm sorry for taking this off topic, but you are wrong.

'pologies -apparently meteors are not science fiction

Not really, but TES has such an amount of sci-fi content that a meteor or two wouldn't make any difference. Between all the space-ships, astronauts, space voyages and laser-shooting future-men, it would be like a pile of dust in a desert.
Oh, and I've said this before. I'm so repetetive and predictable... :shakehead:

:lmao: - purlease point me to the "space-ships, astronauts, space voyages and laser-shooting future-men"

Fantasy does not rule out the concepts of space, creation etc - but it does insist on presenting them in its own special way. are you confusing fan-fic/mods with gamesas ES releases perhaps? Or maybe condfusin Forums and games? Or are you just 'avvin a larf?

Like I said giant meteors from space is science fiction. Hand sized/human sized meteors hurled by Gods is fantasy. Subtle but slightly important difference mate.

Eh. Genre terms are more descriptive than prescriptive. The Dying Earth is usually classified as a fantasy subgenere, for example, despite being set far into the future where most, not necessarily all technology, has ceased to function. I fail to see how including a big meteor in a setting with elves and swords suddenly shifts the genre to science fiction by definition, nor do I think including elves and dwarves in space shifts the genre towards fantasy. They're possible to be blurred and elements incorporated one from the other. The setting is labelled after the dominant influence, if it needs to be labelled at all. There's really no rule about how writers writing in a genre should present their ideas, even if derivative fiction sometimes makes it seem like that.

As far as sci-fi elements, Villy mentioned http://www.imperial-library.info/obscure_text/nu-hatta_nu-mantia.shtml:

Auriel-that-is-Akatosh returned to Mundex Arena from his dominion planet, signaling all Aedra to convene at a static meeting that would last outside of aurbic time. His sleek and silver vessel became a spike into the changing earth and the glimmerwinds of its impact warned any spirit that entered aura with it would become recorded-

http://www.imperial-library.info/pge3/arena_supermundus.shtml:

Visit to Aetherius occur even less frequently than to Oblivion, for the void is a long expanse and only the stars offer portal for aetherial travel, or the judicious use of magic. The expeditions of the Reman Dynasty and the Sun Birds of Alinor are the most famous attempts in our histories, and it is a cosmic irony that both of them were eventually dissolved for the same reason: the untenable expenditures required to reach magic by magicka. Their only legacy is the Royal Imperial Mananauts of the Elder Council and the great Orrery at Firsthold, whose spheres are made up of genuine celestial mineral gathered by travelers during the Merethic Era.

http://www.imperial-library.info/obbooks/songofpelinal.shtml

...he was Pelinal the Whitestrake because of his left hand, made of a killing light...[And then] Kyne granted Perrif another symbol, a diamond soaked red with the blood of elves, [whose] facets could [un-sector and form] into a man whose every angle could cut her jailers and a name: PELIN-EL [which is] "The Star-Made Knight" [and he] was arrayed in armor [from the future time].

And if you still doubt about the vague associations, see http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=762514&st=0&start=0 characterises Pelinal on the forums. "Pelinal, seeing this, would utter: !0100101010011010101010DIDREALGOODSORRYBOUTTHESUNBITLOLKTHX101010101001010101
."

Indeed - it lies in how you exploit the meteors, star ships, astronauts, and laser-shooting future-men.

Oh, and apart from the examples given, there are also http://www.imperial-library.info/dfbooks/b105_alt_redguard.shtml

Of course, this is very common in fantasy 'verses.

Oh, and I should probably mention that that passage is more or less considered obsolete, but it's still a nice supplement to the more "endorsed" theories and myths.

edit: finished links and added smiley. Yays!

let's see ... spaceships ...

Albides, you say:

Nu-mantia Intercepts = Obscure Texts
Sinder Velvin's note: Unofficial lore documents gathered from forums.

did you miss the unofficial part of that?

Astronauts ...
you say:
pgtte
Arena Supermundus:
The Tapestry of Heaven
Dang I knew there was a reason that so many people have been so upset with Oblivion Lore ...

Laser shooting future-men
oblivion texts
The Song of Pelinal - you don't suppose that was an enchantment do you? Nah - on the other arm he had an intercontinental ballistic missile launcher made in Tehran! ... and what would you call it if it was red fire? A flame thrower. How about an oxyacetylene torch?

It's very easy to break the spell. I'm surprised you would take steps towards doing so.

I have nothing against the development of an awareness of the nature of the Cosmos surrounding Nirn - what I dislike is dressing it up in techno-language - do that and you will get innundated by die-hard trekkies (wonderful people in another world ) - techno-language is appropriate to all the stuff I can do and see here on the 3rd rock from the insignificant star the natives call Sol. When I get into a fantasy game I want something different.

Also I suspect that if you are not very careful you might inspire someone to turn ES into Zelda meets Buck Rodgers - and then consolitis would have truly triumphed.

Adding it up you might get 1/3 and that's it. someone made a mistake. Maybe the same person who got rid of most of the stealth effects and ensued that there would be no lev etc ...

Do I hate the while idea of SF/F mixes? fyi - I worked on a scenario connecting a fantasy world with a sci-fi galaxy about 16 or so years ago - but then that was appropriate.

oops: I did read the goblin thing - a long time ago and recently and i think that 'someone' fell outta character and could not find the right word. That's a bit different from making sci-fi of it. but then you dismiss it as Ob-solete ... I don'y - I thinki it has possibilities.

Seriously? If you want to reject the Obscure Texts that's your call, it still remains that they are dev-made and are an accepted part of lore...

That has absolutely nothing to do with why people were upset with Oblivion Lore. They were upset at the lack of Oblivion lore and various areas it seemingly contradicted itself. The astronauts were one area where Oblivion (and it wasn't even techinically Oblivion) did something cool...

Regardless, you not liking it doesn't change it...

And what of "was arrayed in armor [from the future time]."???

"Techno-language" is only bad if it takes away from the universe, in this case it doesn't...

Nitpicking. It's unofficial because it's yet to be put into a game. Most of us think that's a trivial issue. The text is by a former developer who still writes for the games and was influential (read: mostly responsible) for creating the elaborate cosmological and metaphysical schemes we know and love. The text is also essential in that it actually makes some sense of Oblivion's plot and extrapolating it into the greater cosmology. It's the most official unofficial text ever. A corporate entity's endorsemant means nothing to artistic truth.


No. That would be incredibly lame. It was also ignore the writer's commentary to which I directed you anticipating the lameness. These tidibits, like armour from a future time and hand of killing light, are there for the joy of discovery. And sure, they're hidden and obscure, but dismissing them when revealed to you by claiming they're "on-strike enchantments" is like not seeing the forest for the trees.

Wood for the trees guys?

Heyyyy - the big 'us'. Scaaaarrryyy. or does that stand for United states???? Massive!!! I must not contradict 'us'. Ummmm ... hooooolld on a minute, Who is this US. How many of US are there? 50, 500, 5,000? And because this undefined US thinks one thing that makes it so? Definiteley a winning argument with frightened 3 yr olds and school kids who you are educating into the belief of US and therefore your own superiority. I know that game. Getting back to this question later

People ... you ran a poll? Seveeral polls? And half a million people responded? sorry, I don't put too much store in polls for various reasons - including the fact that with mass media vast numbers of people can be influenced to support things they do not actually understand. Beside another poll will tell you the opposite. I will accept that this is honest comment on your part (polite of me eh? ) but then I have talked with lots of people too, and watched them make choices about how they wanted to mod Oblivion and Morrowind before it. Guess what? I have seen very few SF mods using ES (those that did had some good people in and they folded) and whenever anyone tried to introduce SF/modern artifacts into traditional ES mods they got laughed at.

What it boils down to is you appear to be part of a small but talented clique that is busy convincing itself that black is white and relying on the reputation of a few former devs to intimidate others into accepting anything you post as Lore. Well, please back off from that a bit and let others breathe too.

Either the guy is on the team or he is not. If he is rehired then he becomes a dev, and if his Nu-Mantia intercept is accepted as is then it is Lore - if not? Well, he might still write, but if Beth aint buying then he is writing fan fic and gets massive kudos for past contributions as a dev and present contributions as a fan based on the quality of his work. Did it ever occur that if the actual devs of a future release decide to incoroporate this document they will just buy him out, then cut it to pieces to suit requirements and excise any tiny detail that goes in an undesireable direction. And are you saying devs only become cool once they are no longer employed by Beth? rofl

Look - we had a new member joined our site the other week - guy called Terry Pratchett - who is truly a wonder of modern fantasy writing on this side of the pond. I checked to make sure that this was not a case of a kid stealing his identity when I was informed we had a new member, I welcomed him to our Forums, bunged in a notice in the new Library Forum I just created stating there were "no jokes to be made about apes unless Terry says Ook! Because we suspect the The Librarian may have interdimensional capabilities." - for a larf. And got on with my own stuff. He's a cool guy - very friendly, totally fascinated by modding, and downloading oblivion and our stuff for him and his friends. I did not feel overawed to the point where I lost touch with my own commonsense and my personal values, though I rate him right at the top and I'm pleased as punch he found something that interested him on our Site! (sob - he did not say anything about my books - oh well, such is life ) See, I just name-dropped too! Telling me that a former dev wrote something is not a winning argument for something else. It tells me that you rate that former dev = cool as far as that goes. I do not rate devs as Gods or Daedric Princes, wonderful though their contributions may be - except for a larf. I grew up, got ripped off, published, praised, cheered and disappeared - that's life. And like your Dev I have hopes of being published again.

Heyy, maybe I am Todd Oooooh maybe you are Todd - so what? That stuff is a game too.

Let's assume we accept the term Void. But what is the Void in our 'scientific terms? Maybe what makes the Void differrent from the sky and the Mundus is a lack of magica? Maybe the Void is actually co-eval with the Mundus and you get to it by slipping through the 'cracks' in the fabric of the Mundus? Now where did you experience that?

A future and even an ancient past Nirnian society might create a Void-ship - it might be silvery - but purlease do NOT try to sell me on a Chromed Studebaker, mega-camper with 4 wheel drive or Columbus cxxx Now THAT's lame. Though I did enjoy Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy aan dDoctor Who flies about the timely looniverse in an obsolete police telephone box - right?

A future and even an ancient past Nirnian society might create a Void-suit. Now what might it be made of? Alchemically created or treated cloth? With a permanent enchantment weaving a sheathe of magica-generated spells to conserve or build magica, protect suit and wearer against the whatever long-term effects of the Void - which may have significant differences from 'outer space' ... and be more to do with movement/lack of magica in that realm rather than a lack of air?

I think I just answered that re the Void or it might be that new kinds of enchantments have been created.

Things do not HAVE to go the SF way even if a few former devs (note the plural) say so. ... be honest and face facts, with Lore the wordies dictates the genre. As one of 'US' wrote earlier it is the number of key words that define the balance, bung in too many key SF wordies and it no longer is fantasy


Pelinal - So enchantments are now lame? No matter how simple of infinitely complex they may be? Get on with you! Sounds more like you have become a bit jaded and need a break? So take a break and see if you still enjoy ES when you return to it.

Just DO NOT try to tell me that your argument re 'a' is correct because you kissed 'b' last night - big turn-off and that's exactly what you have been doing in your sly adolescent way.

- 'course if 'a' is a great kisser and you tell me you learned something from 'a' and you highly recommend other people to kiss 'a' that's fine if 'a' likes the idea - but be prepared for the fact that I probably kissed 'a's' grandmother and she was the hottest thing you never tasted! If you are not prepared to accept that and in good fun, then I am just going to assume that you are on an ego-trip ... again. Which is boring.

1999,

Here's some advice; make a new post that cuts out the douchebaggery. This will make it about 90% shorter and ensure I'll bother replying.

... or maybe you just don't like to be contradicted in your own terms, in detail.

Hell man - you guys are throwing so many curves to cover them all would take a multilaunch countermissile tracker. Just be thankful i didn't use mine

1999

You got the brevity bit right but the douchebaggery part remains.

Try again, since, as I said, I'd be happy to reply.

...

Okay, look.

I say "us" because canonicity is a reader-response issue that's only an appropriate question when there's some argument over its status. If everyone believes something is canon, then it's canon. Highlander 2 was never canon. What you consider canon and what I consider canon is different. I don't really care about what you consider canon. But I can highlight what the rest of us consider canon and so explain why the Nu-Mantia Intercept is a valid example of a canon text. And if you disagree, we can still go about our merry ways. But the fact is, the Obscure Texts will still be used as official texts on these forums, because that's just the way the community rolls. Hence "us".

Now, I personally did not fall in love with a brand. I fell in love with an imaginary world, a system of thought, an arrangement of ideas and a distinct feeling and ambiance that I associate with the pleasure of participation in certain texts. So logically, some people are going to feel that branded texts that deviate from this aren't canon. As many people feel, for example, of Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel, Brian Herbert's Dune and Highlander 2.

This leads me to the cogent point that if I'm not buying into a brand name, then naturally texts that are speaking from the same ideological perspective of the same familiar thematic landscape are a more accurate reflection of authority then the faceless corporate entity's logo on the box.

By the by, it's not actually namedropping if you don't drop a name. I am not ashamed to state I have a favourite writer, and that I associate his work with the Elder Scrolls. Many people also have favourite writers. Mainly for the same reasons I gave above; that they associate those artistic landscapes to that writer's mind and seek to return to it. Much as you associate Terry Pratchett with writing wonderful modern fantasy and the Discworld series, which wouldn't be the same if his daughter ever took over if he ever succumbs to his disease.

In short, texts are a means of engaging a writer's mindscape. They are not a means of engaging a company.

As to the question of whether a writer offering commentary on his own work is valid; er, no freaking duh.

The rest of your post was aforementioned douchebaggery and bizarre statements about genre theory that you can keep to yourself.