I have a question concerning time in Nirn; is it Linear?

Nu-Mantia Intercept and Loveletter seem to point to no, as the Intercept states that the Empire is under threat from past realities and the Loveletter says there is hope to avoid Landfall.

However, the Ayleids and some Altmer want to restore non linear time, so this seems to imply that time is linear. But if time is Linear, these Ayleids pose no threat, as the love letter has already been sent from the fifth era so the Ayleids never succeeded, thus making the Nu-Mantia Intercept obsolete.

So if time is Linear and the Loveletter is correct/real, it kills any cool plot line that could have come of the Nu-Mantia Intercept.

Sorry if this makes no sense whatsoever, I'm very tired.

Time is an illusion, which is useful, but nothing more. Why does it have to go only one direction? Why not more than one? ;P

Time can be both closed, and linear at the same time. Imagine, a ring shaped track, on which your hotwheels car can only go forward. Eventually, it will end up exactly where it started from, but will have only traveled in a linear direction.

The Ayleids want to return to a time where the track is not circular, but has branches and twists along the way, where one can divert and hide from the inevitable closure of the universe. (Something the Aedra had learned to do, which is why Lorkhan had to trick/force them to make Mundus, where their trickeries could not defeat the ultimate goal.)

It is linear, most the time. Every once in a while, a massive event causes a Dragon Break, which causes time to stop being linear and much of the time creates seperate time lines until the Jills (Akatosh's female servant-type dragons) fix it. In the Dawn, time was also unlinear, and that is what the Ayleids and Altmer want to return to.

The times of Dragon Breaks are when the Selective danced, when the Tribunal stole the Godhood, the Rimmen incedent, and the Warp in the West (Daggerfall's Ending). I know I'm missing one.

Edit: It seems my post is in contradiction with Weird's, which means I really have to read up to make sure I'm right, as he knows quite a bit more than me.

:blink:

Being Evil is a good thing.

What? And TES doesn't have Good and Evil.

Are you saying that time can move in any direction, yet all paths must come to the same end?

Pretty much. It is a hard concept to grasp in any other way than:

"If you walk forward, you will arrive at the place you started eventually. If you turn right, and walk that direction, the same thing will happen. You can turn left, and the same thing will happen. If you turn around and come back the way you came, you will still eventually arrive at the place you started. The only way to NOT do so, is to walk a circular path around, and sidestep the point of origin. "


Imagine walking the circumference of the earth. No matter what cardinal direction you travel, North, South, East, or West, you will eventually come back to where you started.

Except with time, the same is true for going Up and Down as well.

Yeah! It's got its malevolant but ultimately misguided sociapathic villains, and its pristine crusaders and benevolent emperor, but, er, for the most part, no good and evil.

Not really.


A dragon Break creates alternate paths away from the main path, or even shatters the main path of "Inevitable Time", creating alternate time lines. The Jills work to merge these timestreams back into one that leads to the inevitable closure. (Imagine a highway with about 50 exit ramps, that then merge back onto the highway.)


What the Aedra did was create an exit ramp that went to a round about. One could go onto the highway exit, and onto the round about, and avoid the closure alltogether.

well I have seen those kind of people only in tes 4: oblivion.
In other tes games there is only gray zone...

No, Daggerfall is the worst for black and white.

Thank you for the help, Wierd.

What would time be like if it was non-linear?

There would be no set out come to the future, to be simple.

A Dragon Break does nothing.

It's merely the name of the event, it's the presence of multiple new gods that cause it, its their unpracticed control over time that creates a timeline for each one of them.

/nitpick

well i admit that i haven't played daggerfall much... but what i have read lore from it its different.
Like underking... people says hes evil and that kind of stuff but in reality he had he's reasons. then Mannimarco, the King of Worms is not typical evil... I rather call him gray as well, after I saw how daggerfall ends if I choose hes side.
Oh and I dont beleave such thing as time

Simultaneous short, confusing in and. Mind where mortal limited find for purchase?

http://www.imperial-library.info/obscure_text/complete_dragonbroke.shtml
Several texts survive this timeless period, all (unsurprisingly) conflicting with each other regarding events, people, and regions: wars are mentioned in some that never happen in another, the sun changes color depending on the witness, and the gods either walk among the mortals or they don't.
...
According to Hestra, Cyrodiil became an Empire across the stars. According to Shor-El, Cyrodiil became an egg. Most say something in a language they can only speak sideways. The Council has collected texts and accounts from all of its provinces, and they only offer stories that never coincide, save on one point: all the folk of Tamriel during the Middle Dawn, in whatever 'when' they were caught in, tracked the fall of the eight stars. And that is how they counted their days.

...While you were fighting wars with phantoms and giving birth to your own fathers....

Heaven apparently experiences this, as described in the http://www.imperial-library.info/obscure_text/lament_pelinal.shtml:

“Pelinal-ada, you lay in longest quiet,
Making it less easy to stay here between
The wave-fields of time,
Where forms adorn ideas rather
Than the insane else of heaven
Whose draqery now always, always
Patterns those aims to the regular mold

It is fairly obvious that Nirn is linear in a sense that there is a universal "now", or the Elder Scrolls games would be much more complicated.

Another thing I'm am wondering along the same lines is if there is "choice"? Choice is to say, no set destiny in Nirn, there are predictions, but what about destiny? Destiny may be considered a form of linear time.

Just before Sheogorath turned into Jyggalag, he said that linear progression of events is a mortal concept. Or something like that. I'd give you more, but I'm not on a computer with the Construction Set.

When traveling along a circle at any given instant, you have a slope tangent to the circle. You are traveling in a straight line in that instant. In the very next and the very previous you will no longer be on the present line, but this is time, so only your present course and position matter. You are travelling a straight line that is also a circle.

Relevant?

But what would be the centripetal force keeping it in a circle?

In an absence of unbalanced forces, objects are naturally circular. :meh:

But without unbalanced forces, paths of movement are straight.

Time is isn't a movement, its a figment of the universe, like Madness and Destruction. It's the *sphere* of Akatosh, and thus circular.

Omg, off-topic sophistry is fun.

I don't believe in vague concepts having geometric shapes; I figure that "sphere" wasn't literal.

Look at the moons.

A plane is a flat surface, a plane(t) is the visualization of a plane and is round.