What do you demand he explain to you?

I would produce a hard copy of 36 Lessons, drop them on his lap, and say,

"Start talking."

25 hours later, as we finally got past Sermon 25 which took 12 hours by itself, and I produced the knife to cut him free, I'd give him a big smile and unfold the Loveletter from my pocket.

"Nuh uh uh... don't even think you're done yet."

You have MK at gunpoint and you aren't making him dance for you?

CHIM CHIMiney
CHIM CHIMiney
CHIM CHIM cher-ee!
A Vehk is as lucky
As lucky can be

CHIM CHIMiney
CHIM CHIMiney
CHIM CHIM cher-oo!
God luck will rub off when
I use tools on you -
Or blow me a kiss
And that's lucky too

Am I allowed to invade the hypothetical by swinging in through the window, rescuing MK heroically, and then receiving my own answer(s) as reward (knowing Heroes traditionally receive [sixual favours or ancient forbidden wisdom] from the Rescued)?

He's tied to a chair. I wouldn't risk letting him be up and about. I've seen a picture of him with the rest of the Bethesda crew, and he's crouched down on his haunches. I bet he moves like a damn spider monkey.

Did Bal really...Pff. Forget it.

Why did the devs troll us with the hidden Vivec voice files? Srsly, that's not Vivec, that's the devil himself.

What exactly is Landfall?

This thread is fun

From the index, the title of this thread is "You have MK tied to a chair." I thought this was going to be a different kind of thread

Well after I got my answers, I'd be sure to leave the door open for you and anyone else...

Think of his feelings, would you like to be tied to a chair with a gun to your head? I. Think. Not.

Empathy is for the people who are not me.

Assuming that, before tying him up, I lost all my morality and decency: I'd preserve the mysteries of TES, and make him co-GM and co-write things with me.

Assuming otherwise: I'd let him go and get myself placed in a mental institution.

"Everything. Start talking. Good bits of information are rewarded with food and the occasional toilet break."

Where is the Elder Scroll's writers' guide, with the complete history of Tamriel and the outline of the plot arc? Is it true that I will go blind if I read it? And can you mark it on my [Google] map, so I can follow the quest pointer [on my phone]?

One last thing, and I'll let you go: promise to collaborate with China Mieville on an Elder Scrolls game set in the Fifth Era.

"Hrol/Red Mountain slash-fics, or you die!"

Birds, which is impossible to explain, because they make no sense anyway.

I'd most certainly demand he stop with the [Excerpt Deleted] brackets!

But in all honesty, I'd hang him from the Lunar Latices and make him explain what the hell it is, and its effects on / is effected by the Heart of Lorkhan.

And then I'd make him be my personal D&D Dungeon Master....

Why would any of you ask him questions about TES lore? He supplies questions, you supply answers. Something you can and should ask him about would be the art of sandwich eating.

There is a time and place for Socrates, and it's called College. In the real world cold hard answers are more gratifying and lead to less cases of insanity.

And in the lore forum, cold hard answers tend to be cold, hard, and boring.

Who goes insane over video game lore? Although I have to say, the small insanity is what makes it so enjoyable. For me, gratification in these matters doesn't come from being given the cold hard facts of the case. What's rewarding is the joy of ambiguous discovery, piecing together a mystery, speculating on wild possibilities and reveling in crazy results. ya know, fantasizing.
It's fiction, not a court trial or math equation.

First I like to build a foundation of basic knowledge made with facts, the colder and harder the more stable. Next I'll move up and tackle things with different interpretations. With cold hard facts under them, you can make your own assumptions without believing one particular thing over another as long as you understand the cold hard framework of it all. Finally there are the asymmetrical, non-euclidean vagaries that can be debated and debated and debated. That's all well and good, but as long as a person creates it, it will always be finite with the illusion of infinitude. The best we can do is pretend that it's real life.

I like facts. I like solving a puzzle and patting myself on the back after understanding something. If no one on this forum who considers him or herself an expert on TES lore could say that they built that knowledge base on facts, than every thread would be a constantly repeating cycle of sophomoric questions while everyone else refrained from posting for fear of looking stupid with ignorance.

You know a ton about TES lore, Lady N. I'm guessing you also know a ton about other things. If you found out that everything you knew could be debated endlessly to the point where nothing could ever be settled upon you'd go crazy or be driven into a self-made philosophical hole from whence you wouldn't emerge until you had created your own framework for what was real and what wasn't.

Moral of my rant: There has to at least be a a foundation of cold hard facts, and in my opinion, sometimes it's nice to just have an answer.

I do. I go insane over video game lore. It bothers me to not know something. I can take not understanding math or religion. That stuff is deep and complicated, but contemporary things like TES lore? I owe it to myself to know what makes the world in my TV go round.

I've known that for a long, long time. Whether I'm crazy or not is arguable (I certainly don't fit ones idea of an average American, but neither am I anywhere near clinically insane), but I don't find the idea of an unstable, unknowable, unpredictable world all that strange. Perhaps it is my embrace of this that makes me love TES lore.

Thing is, we have plenty of facts, far more than in the real world. These facts are sometimes reinterpreted in light of new ideas, or reinvented in new games, but they're there none the less. But the Sermons and the Loveletter are just as much about literary theory (interpretation, metaphor, examination with other texts, comparison to influences, etc.) as they are about hard facts. We speak so much of Vivec because he is a "letter written in uncertainty," something that we can't ever know for certain and can therefore impose our ideas and theories upon, something that we can anolyze and debate for ages. We never talk of the War of the Red Diamond because it is written in stone, a fact about which no more can be know. I doubt that MK could explain every bit of the Sermons to you, and even if he did, I almost guarantee you that it would no longer interest you. For instance, I recall CHIM being named in honor of a girlfriend of his.

That's just a difference of opinions I guess. But you are right in the fact that mystery is much more fun that everything being explained. I could rant for hours about Lost and Heroes, but I won't.

There's just something about TES lore that makes me want to understand all of it. I just love it that much, and I like to understand things that I love. See: My life and high school physics. Jump cut to mega sad face.

It's often the case that I will follow a narrative, with plot twists and surprises, and enjoy the experience of trying to understand what is going on. Upon reaching the end, and learning the basic secrets, I will enjoy starting over from the beginning, and seeing all the hints that I didn't notice the first time through. I like to feel clever, so I particularly like it when I feel like there was a real puzzle, and that I have worked it out before the authors expected me to, and I still have the suspense of not being quite sure I was right until the end, when my theory is confirmed -- or I get a real surprise that provokes some genuine thought.

Conversely, there are narratives in which the authors cheat: they give the impression that there is a mystery, a puzzle to be understood, but there really isn't; they were just winging it, and didn't really think ahead. A lot of people have told me they had the same experience I had of The Blair Witch Project, in which it was compelling in the first viewing, but completely ludicrous on the second. My theory is that the tension in the movie is built upon the questions of what is happening to the characters and why, but the ending of the The Blair Witch Project made it clear that we would never learn what really happened or why, that the writers hadn't even bothered to think of an explanation, and therefore, the entire narrative collapses into meaninglessness. (I could give other examples, but I've ranted enough about them elsewhere, and so have most of you, I expect.)

But I am not worried that we are being cheated here. From what I've seen of the Elder Scrolls series, there seems to be a fundamental continuity to the plot arc of the series. Sure, we all can, and do, pick out continuity errors, but there's an incredible amount of detail, and for the most part, the degree of continuity is impressive to me. But most important is that I feel like there are some central mysteries, and that the writers know what, in general, the "cold hard facts" are. What the "cold hard facts" mean, is another question. While MK is the most (in)famous for ringing the changes on the ambiguities of subjectivity and meaning, they all play with this. These people are good writers, and I believe they know what they're doing.

So someday, I expect there will be a final chapter of The Elder Scrolls, and we will be gobsmacked when we learn what Tiber Septim really did, what Lorkhan's intentions are, what the fate of Tamriel will be, and so on, even if we never learn everything written in Hermaeus Mora's library.

How come you guys didn't take into account that his explanations could potentially Mind Spork you and make you vulnerable to his suggestions afterwards?