I like that image too ... and in a way it might fit into the Aldugga - that 3 people have quoted now and been ignored.

The Aldugga seems to be going Skyrimwards = where rumour and dev-hints suggest activity is focussing right now

What kind of adding to Nirn would be random and destructive and hidden that also has links with the new Lore in Oblivion?

Try Meteorites. They fall to Nirn, they are not of the material or substance of Nirn, they cause destruction on impact and they dig a deep hole that gets smoothed over by time.

They were used by the Ayelieds for magical purposes

Also it may be that they helped power the Oblivion gates. The bit the Hero has to remove might be the key - but it could be that the thing that each Gate structure requires something to anchor it at both ends and so each appears on top of a meteor fragment in Nirn. That would explain why they appear random = unconnected with human/mer strategic considerations. The bigger the more powerful and so there may be a really massive one under Kvatch - and another biggun under Ald'ruhn.

Such a theory would suggest more about the nature of the 'Gods' too. Very SF

I think that Dagon would have attacked IC with a gate if he could - but of course the amulet of kings prevented this, while the emperor was alive - that is why those mythic dudes were all running around - he couldn't directly send daedra. SO the emperor dies, and the dragonfires go out, and suddenly dagon has to become aware that he can't just stride into the talos plaza like he originally planned - see, even while the fires arn't lit, the amulet and the heir insure that dagon himself cannot enter tamriel - if this were not true he would have just shown up instantly after the emperor died, and also everytime an emperor died dagon would show up and wreck [censored] till they lit the Dragonfires.
So something is keeping him out, and I am sure he gets an idea of what it is - the amulet, I am sure, he can sense at some level, and also the heir. The emperor dies - dagon sees the new emperor as what is keeping him out, and he understands at that moment that his plan is ruined. The dragonfires could be re0lit, just like all those times in the past, and he can't himself press into the realm.
But, the fires ARE out, so he has more power than he normally does. He can open the oblivion gates, but since he isn't able to be in Nirn yet, he can't really make them open where he wants them. Also he isn't going to be able to open them in anyplace where there is power to oppose him - the power of the nine divines protect sacred places, like pretty much the whole of the Imperial City.
He gets a desperate plan - the Mythic Demon cultist in Kvatch is instructed to help open a gate so that daedra can generally wreck [censored], and hopefully kill the heir. At the same time, Dagon begins a new strategy that will eventually allow him to manifest himself - and hence the MQ.

I'd say:

Oblivion gates strewn about the wilderness - randomly placed, intended for increased destruction.

Oblivion gates open near cities - intentionally placed for strategic reasons.

Not too mysterious. :shrug:

Because of their associations with Akatosh and Talos, it would make sense to attack Kvatch and Bruma before attacking the Imperial City.

It's funny but if you accept the Aldugga then Dagon was already prevented from entering Nirn except under specific conditions looong before the Tribunal raised their ugly heads ... and the Amulet was irelevant.

So what was the point or purpose of the agreement that Soth-sil made with the Daeric Princes? He is not trying to walk like the eater in the Aldugga - unless the Aldugga is innaccurate and what actually happened originally was a negociation.

It's almost as if Sotha-sil went for another purpose. Either for assistance vs Dagoth Ur if the timing is correct or to create a way to allow Dagon in.

Back with the Aldudagga - one might assume that it was created at the start of the present kalpa/game-time - but it could equally be part of a distant past of a future even more distant - so that the wheel has turned back to its actual beginning and started up again - which may or may not be what a kalpa is. There is no date on the document that I have found. Though it appears to be from the past - but question is how far past? Certainly after any mortal Shor's death.

Perhaps there is a significance there we have not looked at - given that none of us have come up with any strategic reasons that the others can accept?

But I do like this bit though it appears it happened in Skyrim:

I may be totally off, but... I don't think the question is worded correctly.

As far as lore is concerned* the Oblivion gates are opened in Tamriel, from Mythic Dawn agents (see "Liminal Bridges", quest "Spies in Bruma" + documents and dialogs, quest "Great Gate", while doing the quest "Paradise" dialog with former Mythic Dawn agents). The question now is, did Dagon order Mankar Camoran and his followers to attack Kvatch ("hey chap, there's a city I'd like to redecorate..."), or was it Mankars's decision?

If it was Mankar's decision, sorry to say, then the question "Why did Dagon attack Kvatch?" is not fully relevant .

Of course Mankar's reasons can be similar, but... he's not Dagon. He may had other reasons, too. Some that do not fit Dagon.

Just my two coppers.



* = even if not shown, this is mentioned a lot in game. Quite surprising for Tes4 if you ask me.

That makes more sense. I think Camoran waned to do what his father did.

What the hell, is the f word uncensored now?

[censored]

Woah...Let me try...

Edit - Nope, still censored. IDK How he got it uncensored. I edited the f word out of this post, it was just for testing purposes.

I think it was Mehrunes time of the month

I might be wrong, but i think that it's not an actual "u" in that word

It's one of the characters in the Greek alphabet.

Anyway, we were talking about Dagon destroying Kvatch/Oblivion gates being eeeeevil/Mythic Dawn/whatever...

Sssshhh...I used an upsilon, aka the Greek letter for u. It's a different character but it looks just like a u, and I use special characters like that in my writing since I'm anti-censorship. Just don't tell the mods.

Whether it was Mankar or Dagon that attacked or decided to attack Kvatch, I doubt either of them knew about Martin based on the fact that they wreck the city and then leave.
If either of them knew a heir of Talos was in the city, would they quit before they had him?

It's likely that the lone Oblivion gate left is the kyn equivalent of sticking the REMF's with tidying up and do the paperwork while Dagon or Mankar go on to do the important stuff. (Besides allowing a gentler start for the player, and considering hardware limitation. Throwing a player into a fullblown siege might be a bit much for both player and computer. Even the Bruma siege isn't that large as sieges go, due to hardware limitations probably.)

There is a small possibility that the lone Oblivion gate left after the siege is more like specialists tasked with getting the heir and everyone else left, down to the cats and rats, but the previous explanation seems more likely. Again, if they knew about Martin, why leave?

Is it mentioned anywhere whether Dagon (or any other daedric prince) can sense if a blood heir to the dragon is alive or not? And how accurate would it be?
"There is someone still carrying the dragon blood on Nirn!" or "The dragon heir mortal is in Kvatch, reading in the chapel library, in the comfy old chair with the stuffing poking out of one corner of the cushion." or somewhere in between?


Previous history between Dagon and Kvatch and/or Dagon and Akatosh seems a more likely explanation.

Hows about the guys who were supposed to close the little Gate all got wiped and none of the guys from the big gates knew this? Detail overlooked on the battlefield.

As for the recognition thing I think that is down to intel - Dagon has better torturers than Guantanamo. And he has cultists who feed him info. Once he knows about things then he knows where to look. But mortals are like mayflies - they can easily die before he spies them himself. For confirmation play Battlespire - you get recognised there because you are the only human around - little notes and such not withstanding. Even so you can cast a shadow of doubt into the tiny minds of some NPCs through conversation.

edit
Haymon was a bit of a rebel - Mankar was Dagon's from the womb - though others may dispute this - but that is what I see in The Refugees.

Yes, Dagon destroyed Kvatch because of Martin, or at least that's Martin's impression.

Given all in this thread that suggests Dagon is prescient - and likely was creating the conditions to fulfil a prophesy of his own defeat.

The gates in the wild are probably randomly opened to ensure maximum destruction of the land. Gates near towns are opened to destroy the towns by agents. Just like Kvatch. Bruma although Talos plays some part it is said somewhere actually in the game that the 3 gates are opened to destroy Bruma but also to invade Cloud Ruler Temple. Three Birds with one stone. Another city destroyed, Cloud Ruler Temple gone along with all of its blades and hopefully the heir to the throne dead along with the "Imperial Agent" mentioned in that note.

~Regards, Wolf-Lord

Completely random gates don't make sense from a lore wise perspective.

http://www.imperial-library.info/obbooks/liminal_bridges.shtml details (it's a bit of a thesaurus job) how you can only open portals to Oblivion from the inside but that these aren't very stable. Though not mentioned in the book, this is obviously because of the Dragon Fires. Now that those are gone, the portals can remain open longer.

To open a portal you need a Sigil stone. Presumably the same Sigil stone you can find on top of an Oblivion tower. Because there is no realm or tower without a Sigil Stone, this implies that there is no such thing as a random gate. Every one of them has been opened manually.

So I'd chalk it up to gameplay that there were so many gates. They're basically just another type of dungeon to go through.

You're absolutely right that the number of gates is just a game-play thing.

Speaking from a lore perspective, though, the fact that every single gate has to be opened manually doesn't necessarily mean there's no randomness involved - although it depends on what you mean by randomness. If by random you mean the gates opened completely inexplicably, then no, it wasn't random. However, if by random you mean the location (and possibly number) of the gates wasn't based explicit planning, then yes, many of the gates were random. It's an issue of random as opposed to manual verses random as opposed to planned-out-in-detail.

Interestingly, the Daedra relied on mortals to open the gates up until the barriers were completely shattered at the end. I wonder why.

Umm, that does look a bit awkward:

Clearly has to be done on Nirn if this is how it was done .



These seem to be the bits - morpholith being rock or stone of change or potential I suppose. And it seems that Mankar had to travel to where Dagoth was to get each of his stones inscribed.

However I favour the chaos theory re the choices of locations. See, Dagon had this very popular lieutenant who annoyed him - so he called the lieutenant and all of that lieutenant's supporters to him and told him he was going to honor him greatly by allowing him to find the locations of the places where random gates were to be opened. And the multitude of supporters were very pleased with this.

Before him on a vast table covered with a map of Tamriel Dagon had piled 99 grains of rock. Dagon bangs his fist down on the table and the grains of rock scatter and then asks his lieutenant: "How long do you think it will take you to locate those grains of rock on the map?"

The lieutenant takes a look and says: "about two hands sire".

"Very well", Dagon says, "I trust your judgement, that's why i chose you for the task, and just to make this interesting I am going to reward you handsomely if you complete the job in under two hands, but I will execute one of those gathered here and just to be fair subject you to numerous unspeakably violent tortures for every hand that you take over that time".

"Thank you sire", says the lieutenant, "but how will we know when I have located them all"?

"Oh, that's easy," smirks Dagon, "just make a mark on the map for each one and bring me all one hundred of them".

Even with the Dragonfires and Red Mountain offline, the Mythic Dawn still had to open up the random gates to puncture holes in the barriers to allow Dagon to cross over.

"Oh look there's the last son of Uriel"
"Yes, i know but that's not why we came, we came to destroy the chapel of akatosh"
"Yeah, but wouldn't we get a reward fpr destroying the only living son?"
"Look we are dremora, we are supposed to be single-minded on the task we have, and it's not killing martin, so just forget about him"
"But he is only a few feet away, a single shot in the head should get him...:
"Just blow the bloomin' chapel! We're supposed to make flames that last forever after this remember?!"


Long-story short, devs worked bad on the project thus creating a paradox, they came for him even-though they didn't know he existed.

that has nothing to do with it....

They attacked Bruman because of Cloud Ruler Temple... (remember the spies?)

I actually think it's more coincidence that Martin was in Kvatch, there would be no way to know it... and IF Cameron find it out he would have sent assasins like the Emperor and his three sons..

I guess Dagon doesn't care about destroying chapels... that's more Umaril like...

i think it was just that the desiners desided to i dont think that it had to do with the lore in any way but it could be cause merunes dagon is a god and can do pretty much any thing and can hear anything but who knows