1. Dunk it in some alchemist's concoction. That'd make it shine.

2. There is a silk staff in Jade Empire called Flawless, which is completely silk except for the blade affixed to an end. It was tempered by the sweat of a monk, I believe. Surely the Ancestor moths can concentrate really hard to get the right tensile strength in a strand.

Mithril isn't silk in TES because it is blue plate mail, and the Lord of the Rings knockoff is unacceptable.

Silk being involved in another type of armor wouldn't be so bad though. Think of it in fantasy terms as chemically inferior kevlar. You weave this strong stuff up tight and glue it to the underside of a set of steel armor. Silk or Kevlar wouldn't stop slashing weapons any better than sturdy clothing, but they do help quite a bit with piercing damage. With the steel to protect from the slashing, you'd have a nice set of armor. Maybe redundant, because steel armor is shaped and angled so arrows are more likely to bounce off than stick.

If we start knocking around old material types, it screws with the fantasy table of elements. I would rather add to it with new stuff than scramble the eggs of what we have already.

Keeping mithril, we don't need a silk/kevlar, since they're anologous. It'd be like keeping fire daedra and fire atronauchs.

I'm all for forgeting this mithril thing ever happened.

We can't forget it, Mithril was in three TES games. Fire Daedra and Fire atronachs serve different purposes. If they were combined, it would be like saying we should get rid of High Elves because there are a crapton of other elves, and they're just generic fantasy boring elves anyway.

1: What dude? There is no alchemy in all of Nirn that retains this ability, and if there was I'm sure it would have been long lost to the sands of time.

2: This is not Jade Empire...in any way, shape, or form...this is the Arena Tamriel, and rules are a scotch different for our fair Nirni and all that live within.
Example: pretty sure you'd get laughed straight out of the Arena if you came wielding a silk blade of any type.

It was absent in three. If the armor has no known origin, who's to say it was ever there? Must we really mind presedence established by people who gave us: elven armor is made of elven? And altmer aren't generic, fantasy and boring they may be.


YES IT IS!!!

there are two types of people in this world:

1) those that see mithril and thing blue shinny metal, LotR, dwarves and the like and want to keep it as such because thats what they think.

2) those that see mithril and look into its origins and see its historical applications in the TES universe.

I am obviously the later. the earlier, in my mind, need to keep an open mind.

One87xe: neither of your theories have any backing in anything. neither orcs nor lorkhan have any associations with mithril, and the elves would be one hell of a stretch. on the other hand, if mithril were silk, the nedes are already known to worship and wear months and their products. furthermore, were in a fantasy universe. sun-is-a-hole-in-the-sky fantasy universe. the-universe-is-shaped-like-a-schizophrenic-dragon fantasy universe. the shininess of silk is hardly an argument. in fact, silk is actually naturally shinny. its also one of the strongest natural fibers. its strong enough to make tires and bullet proof vests. hell, its proven that silk actually deflects arrows. all of this makes it good armor. add some fantasy manufacturing practices, the distortion between a game and the "real" thing, as well as some prayers and magic for good measure.

Shades: mithril is metal in tolkein, and in all tolkein ripoffs. hence, making it silk (albeit tightly woven, infused with ancestral spirits and the power of myth, shiny silk) would make it the opposite of a "Lord of the Rings knockoff"

Oh, you're counting adventures games too? A little less luck in that for you, Mithril was in Battlespire and there was no character armor in Redguard.

Orcish armor is made of Orcs, right? Really now? If we aren't minding precedents, lets scrap that Ebony being god's blood idea. It isn't clever.

That isn't my actual opinion of the elves, it was hyperbole to point out the inane nature of the "eliminate because it superficially seems redundant to me" idea.

It is only absent in TESIII: Morrowind if you are of the very very very small percentile that believes Orcish armor is not in someway related to Mithril...you can say it doesn't exist as much as you want to, but Ghorak Manor would call you a liar.

how is orcish related to mithril? Ghorak manor has nothing related to mithril, and there is no orcish armor lying around. morrowind dialog also has no references to mirthril, and references to orcish armor refers mostly to how its a good medium armor style. TIL searches of "mithril" reveal no useful information besides what Proweler listed, and a uesp search only brings up the oblivion values. The fact that orcs were not accepted as part of civilized society until the warp in the west pretty much rules out them making mithril (which was around long before that)

I am in neither of those camps.

You're shifting the point, not making a new one. Me calling it blue plate mail states that I enjoy the TES derivative of the style, not the copy paste job of http://images.uesp.net//d/d3/OB-item-Mithril_Armor.jpg from the movie version of http://img-nex.theonering.net/images/scrapbook/orig/8581_orig.JPG. Making it silk keeps the visual style and creates a conundrum.

You're making a new armor type to the fantasy game and perhaps fantasy genre, and you directly want to undercut that by borrowing the name of something totally different? That isn't prudent, and only serves to annoy people over nothing. Create a new name for this new armor material, be original. I realize the silliness of this by my willingness to change it from the Tolkien to blue plate, but not wanting to call silken shirts Mithril material. Forgive me.

Your tally is at four now.

You're completely missing the point: there is no idea to scrap. What am I really ignoring, anyway? What makes it a part of Tamriel?

Which is what had to be done. It hasn't been adapted yet.

Ill say the same thing I already said....you are clearly insane. I never said anything about Magus, and if I have no backing in anything, neither does "Mithril comes from the behinds of butterflies" BS, get real.

I gave examples, all of which are valid unless you have a magic tome that tells you about the next three Elder Scrolls games that come out and the lore contained within...otherwise your far-out ideas (I wont drag anyone else through this) theories are no more invalid then mine.

And, oh my gods, from what I've seen it is blueish/silvery armor type stuff. Not pumped out the rump of any percieved "god" in the ES world

just because orcs make good armor doens't mean mithril is automatically theirs (russians making vodka doesn't equal russians making champagne). all races make armor, so any race could make mithril according to your logic. all we know about mithril is that its apparently found in tombs. there is no lore connection to mithril being made by orcs (who, as i said, werent even recognized as sentient until the mid 3rd era), and neither is there any reference to the altmer making it.

the reference to magnus was to prove how crazy (insane) the TES universe is.

am i insane for demanding you provide actual proof? no, i don't think so. all proweler and I did is have an idea and try to promote it. you went psycho and started flaming me (us) over two forums.

......wow.

Okay so mithril is just the Nirn-equivalent to titanium then? Got it!

...

Did I say that Orcs making good armor meant Mithril was automatically theirs? (Finlanders making Vodka doesn't equal Finlanders making champagne either). Sure any race could make Mithril, if they had the material components, the ability/knowledge to smith it, the forges to refine/shape it into actual armor., but I would wager that 5/10 races don"t.


I'm very well in the know as to how friggin insane the Arena is, my baffling was caused by Magus being brought up in the first place

Nobody flamed nothing, and nobody went psycho, if you'll scroll up and actually read my post rather then skim through and pick out the iffy parts, you'll find I gave several examples (my kingdom for my notes back) of any numbers of possibilities for Mithrils possible origins. Also, can you provide indepth proof for your butterflies/moth = silk = mithril argument? Probably not since I thought we were theorizing, which means I can theorize that your butterflies eat Septims, and that is why children starve in Anticlere :rolleyes:

Why/how/when did Proweler get brought up?



That works to

Anyway OP, If I were you I would just delete every damn reference to this stupid armor. But, I'll be helpful and suggest that you categorize it underneath Native armors, since it shares some design with other Imperial armors.

Yeah, silk is cool.

Well that definitely had it's intended effect.

With in the lore there are concepts that are equally strange. Glass for armour and weapons, gigantic artificially constructed gods, a white gold tower of equal size, Nordic warriors that can shout walls down, the form of the Khajiit tied to the moon, Wood elves that are religious carnivores, just to name some. Then there are books like the Sermons and Commentaries filled with phrases like "Follow and I shall adore you from inside" and "Grabbers from the Adjacent Place came into the world sideways, the slave talking having disrupted the normal non-cardinal points. So of course [naturally! - me] a giant bug appeared, with the greatest eastern wizard inside it".
Now the same guy who wrote those also wrote some texts that haven't appeared in a game yet. You might want to read the http://www.imperial-library.info/obscure_text/aldudagga.shtml it's more accessible then the Sermons and the Commentaries but is filled equally with wonder.

Now since all these things are so much more interesting to discuss then the standard fantasy tropes taken from Tolkeen people in the Lore forum have taken to the idea that this is a good thing. There has been a little attempt to emulate this all at http://monkeytruth.net/. The idea is to take the existing lore and turn it into something that evokes wonder.

You should see the idea that Mithril is made of silk in the same vein. Since it's obviously just a Tolkeen rip off without no real origins in lore, it isn't something that should belong in the Elderscrolls. By using Tolkeens own inspiration and using this to give it a place in lore that is more fantastical it's possible to recreate that sense of wonder. Or in this case a sense of "WTF".

Now you're free to do with lore what you want in your mod. There is no real information about the origins of Mithril, in the absence of any Dwarves only a slight hint that it's made by Elves. Now you can assume it's a metal and used to be mined by elves. But I think that is the boring route. If you want to tell an interesting story, go with the silk. The best part is that when people complain it's not like Tolkeens Mithril, you can point them to the inspiration for Mithril, the Hervarar saga and say it's not all that strange.

One87xe: i've responded indepth elsewhere, so here i will stick to covering points that i have not yet mentioned. you flamed when you said that i was high, a racist (both on TIL), and insane (here). I've read all your posts, several times, but i don't see anything resembling proof. proweler was brought up because he is the one that started the theory, and he is the one that provided the proof for how its possible.

Proweler: great post. to add to it:

good lore is the subversion of 1)cliche and 2) the http://www.english.emory.edu/Bahri/Orientalism.html. It is a departure from the expected, and an exercise in imagination.

We've always been adding in our own interpretations of things with the lore. Just what is the problem about calling Mithril silk armor? Why can't silk in TES be vastly different to it's real-life counterpart, ala Glass?

Ummm... did anyone read that argonian silver, elven mithril thingy in begining of the thread???? I think it kindah states that mithril is elven... or at least that the mithril was originaly elven... however i could be wrong.
p.s. sorry if my english svck

If you're referring to the OblivioWiki links, then that shouldn't be trusted 100%. Because according to them, the Dunmer are apparently related to the Hist trees.

How about we reverse that? An equally valid theory is that the armor styles that Imperials use are based on a duke's mixture of old school Elven and Akaviri designs.

He's referring to this: