I don't understand what Zurin wanted to do with Numidium. It's said that he differed in opinion on how Tiber was using it, and... you know the rest.

What did Zurin want to do? I mean, it's the Numidium, it's can do just about anything. The combined souls of a entire race, star trek style time-[censored], the whole shebang, but any allusion to what he wanted to do? I don't see why he got so angry. Tiber was using Big Stompy to stomp on his rivals...

The Numidium was powered by the Mantella and the Mantella was Arctus' soul. I'd be pissed off too if someone used my soul to kill innocent people.

I'm pretty sure he means pre-Underking-ness.

Perhaps I'm just forgetting some stuff or misunderstanding it, but I didn't even know Arctus wanted it for himself OR wanted it to be used differently. I'll do a bit more reading on it in a second.

edit: I don't see that, Hyamentar. Where did you get that from?

Pre-Underking-ness, Zurin disagreed with Tiber over the use of the Numidium. I thought it was always the case; how come they fall out? Where does the conflict come in? I can't remember where I read it...

http://www.imperial-library.info/tsod/numidium.shtml



Basically, after the Dominion fell, why was Zurin angry over Tiber using Numidium against neutral families other other enemies? You're allowed to crush your enemies... but, not all your enemies?

NEUTRAL Royal Families.

And this story is one of the orthodox versions that I like alot, even though it directly conflicts with the Heresy.

Edit: Hold the phone, no it doesn't. Oh Tibby, you sneaky, sneaky dog.

I was starting to suspect it had something to do with the basic "I hate you now for killing innocents-you've gone too far" mumbo jumbo. Makes sense, I guess.

In my opinion what Zurin didn't approve was that Tiber septim did use the Numidium to crush peoples who were already part of the empire (as whn the clash happened Tiber was actually emperor of all Tamriel) to replace them.

Basically turning upon his own wassals when they weren't deemed supportive enough of his rule.

He crushed neutral royal families, not exterminated them. I suspect that most of the damage involved smashing their holdings and wealth. Just to clarify.

But if Zurin's soul powered the Numidium, could you use any mortal soul to power it?

Gentlemen, you can't fight in here, this is the war room!

Who said it was Zurin's? Why isn't it Wulfharth's?

To be honest, given Wulfharth's connection to Lorkhan, and the Heart's role in Numidium's creation, he seems the more likely candidate for Numidium's power source.

That's what I was gettng at; makes the most sense to me, at least. While Zurin was Imperial Battlemage, I'm not too sure how much magickal prowess relates to soul potency.

Zurin was no more a normal Imperial Battlemage as Tiber Septim was normal royal. He was part of the enatiomorph and the mythos as any of the other of them. I kind of assume it's Zurin Arctus' heart because the Underking actually says he is Zurin Arctus. But I've always thought that Zurin and Wulfarth got kind of warped together in the struggle.

I personally like the Zurin story more that the Arcturian Heresy though. I kind of feel the Heresy just kind of takes accomplishments that I would rather see attributed to great individuals to a mysterious third party. Instead of two impressive characters, it creates three less than impressive characters. But the Heresy is there, so I can't ignore it. Just my two cents.

That's so amusing. Do you really think that this man can do no wrong?

And no, that's almost certainly not what he did. Since the families were neutral to begin with, they bore him no malice. Crushing their lands but leaving them alive would suddenly populate the continent with dynastic enemies. No, he killed them. Just like in the middle ages, you have to completely exterminate a family group, or at least it's heads and reproducing members, then you seize its holdings.

And this is one place where I think the Heresy is 100% correct. You can't power that thing with just ANY old soul. You need Lorkhan's heart... or the soul of his avatar. It was Ysmir's in the Mantella.

Do you really think that you can judge the actions of a man acting off a vision from a god? He had a vision from Akatosh.


Last time I checked, royal families were nothing without their holdings and wealth; they're just upstuck paupers. And if you smash their stuff with the stompy robot, nobody's going to oppose you, lest the stompy robot comes after them. And to crush a kingdom, you don't kill off everyone in it. The Romanovs were killed some time after they were deposed, by a group seperate from those that initially deposed them. And if Tiber Septim had killed all of them off, then Bethesda would have used a more harsh term than "crushed" in Daggerfall.

Okay. Being argumentative aside, do you believe that a man of Hjalti's caliber would have made himself the sworn enemy of every powerful family in Tamriel just for yucks? Straight-up question, does it really seem likely to you?

And there is a lot of influence in bloodlines. Look at history and you will see that nobles are rarely just deposed without extravagant assurances that they will remain in exile... or dead. Any eight-year-old who has read http://suzyred.com/2004crispin.html knows this.

With Numidium at his side, in addition to the fact that he conquered Tamriel (minus Morrowind), almost nobody is going to try and become an enemy of him. Or even neutral. And RL-history has no bearing on TES history, given that the people in TES have no knowledge or ability to know anything regarding the former.

You didn't answer my question.

In this case, it's hard to tell what is and what isn't likely. But given the results, I say that it was likely. I think that completely killing them off would create a lot more sentiment against him, and would have shown after Numidium was destroyed.

Hmm, interesting thought.

Perhaps he didn't OBLITERATE ALL of the neutral families, but just SOME that he felt were potential threats that didn't show themselves as real threats yet, but still had the capacity to do so.

Sentiment?!?
What about the sentiment of an entire ruling class who wield massive power regardless of whether their castles have four walls? Don't you think that's more significant then the objections of a few peasants who are lucky to have been spared?

And you say we can't be sure. So how about the entire far-fetched event never occurred at all (because Talos would be remembered as a culture-cleansing butcher otherwise) and that it was a cover story created to cover up the Arctus affair, and explain why a wizard destroyed Numdium?

If they wanted that, then The Arcturian Heresey wouldn't be for sale at local bookstores.

The royal families don't wield much power without their wealth; they still got to pay their followers, one way or another. This isn't feudal Europe. Not to mention that he used Numidium, as opposed to assassins, such was the case of the end of the Reman Dynasty, the end of the Potenate and his heirs, and the end of the Septim Dynasty (which had not happened it, but it reinforced the point). Numidium is much more suited to destroying their holdings, but not so great for killing off a bloodline, as it cannot track them all down so easily.

Numidium can do a lot of damage, to everything, everywhere really.

Zurin originally brokered for Numidium to be able to break the Dominion. Got many mirror-logicians in that Imperial Army of yours? Didn't think so.

But when a few "innocents" get squished, he's throws a hissy fit?

What the hell do you mean this isn't medieval Europe? Of course it is! Are you suggesting that the societies of Nirn operate off some completely alien rule of sociology and power? You know damn well which Empire, which culture and which ethnicity every province and race in the game is primarily based off. Arguing a point with you is like a non-stop tutorial or Intellectual Dishonesty.

The rule of common sense still applies in this magical universe that's completely unrelated to our own (snort) and that law dictates that a competent statesman (and Talos was a prodigious one!) does not needlessly and spontaneously make enemies... unless you have a big stompy robot to destroy them. Making yourself the sworn foe of an entire generation of rulers worldwide is monumentally foolhardy, and only remotely a good plan unless you can kill them all simultaneously.
"Men take revenge for small injuries. For large ones they cannot."

Whoa, I touched a nerve there.

There's more than one way to eliminate potential enemies. Without their wealth, the royal families would have no chance at all, even with their loyal peasants, at matching the Imperial Legion. And killing them off would hardly be a much better course of action, given the trouble of getting rid of all of them. If you use Numidium, you'd probably overlook someone in the family, a mistake that highly skilled assassins would not likely make make. Not to mention it would've been a lot more subtle.

EDIT: Had to change it to match your edit.