Since playing Daggerfall I have loved the TES series, but after playing Morrowind and Oblivion I can't help feeling that we're building up too something. Skyrim has further evolved this feeling, but my question is WHAT is coming? Could the end of Nirn be around the corner, could a situation be building that no Dovahkiin, Shezzarine, or Nerevarine fix? Or am I completely wrong and no one else sees this.

End of the world? We still have 5 Eras to go. Though I'm pretty sure that Landfall is just around the corner. Whatever Landfall is, it is really huge.

Supposedly, the end of each kalpa is the beginning of the new one. So the world will end in Dawn.

Not with a bang but a whimper.

If anything, I think Skyrim puts an end to the sense of doom or leading up to something dreaded. The Prophecy of the Last Dragonborn outlines the plots of the previous games as being steps in the prophecy leading up to Alduin's World-Eating. Plus, there's been a theme of Elder Scrolls games including one of the Towers going down. In Skyrim, as far as we know (and without any DLC expansions,) Snow-Throat remains up.

How many times has that happened?

Since the beginning of time . The current kalpa is neither the first nor last.

The Monomyth and Words of Clan Mother Ahnassi explain the usual.

Gottdang Ninjas

People say that we have five Eras left. Why? Is it because of the KINMUNE document? I always thought that was a relic from the previous Kalpa.

It is the Loveletter from the Fifth Era

The Fifth Era is only one Era away.

What constitutes an era's end? The ending of the imcumbent Imperial lineage?

Whenever the Emperor feels like saying so. The 1st era encompassed a number of dynasties.

The Elder Scrolls foretell the return of the dragons as the beginning of the end times. Alduin's Wall lists the events of Daggerfall, Morrowind, Oblivion, and the civil war in Skyrim as signs of Alduin's return. And the next panel showed Alduin and the last Dragonborn battling at the end of time. It's not too hard to guess that the player is that Dragonborn.

But it's common knowledge that the future can be changed. Even Esbern says that with a dragoborn, they can avert the end. Which is arguably what the Dragonborn does in Skyrim.

When you use the Time-Warp, you bend it just enough so that the tower deactivates. This, in fact, is why Alduin attacks you: He sensed that time had been terribly screwed up, and chased it to its source.

Red Mountain is a good example, as it deactivated when the enchantments on the Heart of Lorkhan were broken.

Skyrim implies that Alduin will eventually win. Dialog with Paarthurnax even suggests the reason Ald is doomed to failure is because he is attempted to hasten the end.

And that in attempting to stave off the end, the Dragonborn has only hastened it... so it all works out in the end.

I'm left with the opposite feeling actually. I think the battle with Alduin will be portrayed as a much larger event in future games and in future games books, than it felt like(at least for me) playing through the game, a time of great bloodshed, where dragons ran rampant, murdering thousands ect. What I'm saying is that retrospectively this crises will feel much larger than what was able to be portrayed in game, thus feeling like the event Morrowind and Oblivion were leading up to, not that Skyrim was merely another event leading to something else.

So after Skyrim, knowing that Alduin was here to eat this Kalpa, I'm left wondering where do we go from here, what next inevitable crises can possibly be greater than this one ? And it leaves me a little deflated. I hope the DLC tickles my imagination.

Well, Ryan, I think that the Thalmor wants to unmake all reality, so if in a future game their evil plot cones to fruiition, we could have something that can beat Alduin in terms of urgent dangerness.

The problem with that is, I don't ever see that happening or even coming close to happening (barring an artefact like the eye of Magnus falling into Thalmor hands, in which case I wouldn't be very pleased). I could go more in depth as to why I think that, but I'll spare you.

The Thalmor may devastate the Mannish Empires, but I would be amazed if they succeed in reversing Convention.

They made the moons dissapear using some ungodsly power and knew how to reverse it to control the Khajiit, so they have all sorts of [censored] up their sleeves.

Among their numerous problems (not even being able to conquer Hammerfell 1v1, never mind Hammerfell, Cyrodiil and Skyrim combined or one after another for one), they will never succeed in erasing Talos. In the unlikely event that They conquer Tamriel, who's to say that the people left on yokuda, or the sload on thras, or the maormer, or the races of Akavir aren't worshipping Talos, or an aspect of him in sufficient numbers to make sure he's not going anywhere. I don't think they have the Merpower for a global campaign, what with the ethnic cleansing and such.

I am skeptical. This is my skeptical face.

I have heard it suggested that the Altmer discovered the phenomenon that made the moons disappear, a phenomenon over which they had no power, and merely used its coincidence with their war to political advantage, deceiving the Bosmer and Khajiit into believing that the Thalmor wielded greater power than previously believed.

All you doubters see not the Dawn of a New Mythic Age, but a gaggle of liars as if an orgy of Mankar and his children (which surely the eyes of the Spectral Paradisecrab did surely feast upon). This is not the true face of Thalmor.

Only if the Kalpa cycle continues. Even if the Thalmor have nothing to do with it, I still think this is likely to be the last Kalpa. This one was just too different. It had Vivec.