nerevar-near-and-far

[nerevar-near-and-far]

[nerevar-near-and-far]

i am recently moved to a place where i can do this legally! i will have to try

i am never going to experience morrowind for the first time again and i'm just supposed to deal with it?

[nerevar-near-and-far]

i am never going to experience morrowind for the first time again and i'm just supposed to deal with it?

[nerevar-near-and-far]

There was a mention in my recent fic about Nerevar and Voryn growing beards for Dumac's end-of-year feast. Beardevar is something I've thought about here and there, so it had to be seen in sketch form (and of his outfit... Maybe in Dwemereth he would've sometimes worn a little less religious symbols, yes, no, yes, no?)

[nerevar-near-and-far]

Cunk on Nirn Part 8: A Foul Murder Will Be Televised

[nerevar-near-and-far]

[nerevar-near-and-far]

Stages of Morrowind fast travel awareness :

1. Oh god the rumors were true, there's no fast travel

2. Oh the Silt Striders

3. Huh, there's also boats and the guild guides and intervention spells

4. Where the fucking hell did intervention send me this time. Why is it Ald'ruhn when I was almost on top of Gnisis

5. Mark and Recall HELL YEAH

6. I can barely contain this spaghetti bowl of possible connections in my brain. I have a London taxi cab driver's knowledge of Vvardenfell at this point but I still always end up passing through Ald'ruhn somehow. Vivec City can cry about how important they are all they want. Ald'ruhn is Grand Central Station of this island

7. CHIM

[nerevar-near-and-far]

In Oblivion and Skyrim, the provinces of Cyrodiil and Skyrim feel like settings. Beautiful, fun settings, places and towns, settings that answer the question of "how do you fill dozens of hours of gameplay?" Settings that can be used in story analyses and video game textbooks of how to decorate and fill and immerse.

But in Morrowind, the island of Vvardenfell is just as much a character as a setting. Something about it bites back. It requires research and waiting and planning as much as blind exploration. You need to speak to people and understand mechanics in order to even begin to explore Vvardenfell.

This is related to the "Man vs. X" idea of how fiction can be organized into various conflicts, under the conflict "Man vs. Nature." But it's also broader than just conflict. In narrative theory, a character doesn't have to be a human being, or talk, or move. A character is something that interacts and responds, and can "fight" back. A character is able to prompt others to action.

Some popular examples: In LOTR, the One Ring and Middle-earth are able to be analysed as characters if you chose to. The wizarding school in the series by the TERF Who Must Not Be Named is a character, and the seventh book suffered when they had to leave. Major series that require huge wikis to understand and professional continuity guardians in the writing team, such as Star Trek, have important settings that are also characters. They're not my wheelhouse, but in a lot of romantic fiction, and in genre-shifting classics like Jane Austen's books, the ideal of "love" can be analyzed as a character - people chase it, reflect their own wants and needs off it, discover it's not what it seems at first, outright deny it, fight against it.

Let's talk about other video games. Hyrule is a setting in most Zelda games but it became a character in Breath of the Wild. The farm in Stardew Valley and, I think, the towns in Animal Crossing are kind of characters. Planescape Torment's Sigil is a character, so much so that you help it give birth and when you briefly leave it, it feels like leaving a friend. Never played them, but Lordran and Yharnam are definitely characters in the From software games. Do you have any favorite stories that have a setting-as-character? Maybe you can recognize them as sometimes the stories that have "worlds people love to get lost in."

Vvardenfell is a central character in Morrowind. It takes patience and effort to understand, and when you do, you are rewarded with more story. I don't think it's productive to criticise Cyrodiil or Skyrim for not having the same level of characterization. Those games wanted to do something different with the map. But knowing that Vvardenfell isn't just a setting does help explain why older Elder Scrolls fans and 2000s RPG fans often feel like something is missing in Cyrodiil and Skyrim that they had grown to expect. Thank you for indulging one such fan in reading this mini essay.

[nerevar-near-and-far]

i am unreasonably happy with being a cantakerous wisewoman jarl

I need to know what you got

[nerevar-near-and-far]

[nerevar-near-and-far]

is it because they messed up the texture (which, going for a corpse tone, actually very understandable), or had they not yet decided sotha sil took dunmer skin after the curse?

The Battle of Red Mountain doesn't say sotha sil chose to be dunmer, but. morrowind big. game big. huge game. lots of words. i may have missed it

Morrowind microfiction:

Almalexia stands over the corpse of Sotha Sil.

He - it - he is still deteminedly ash-blue. He is still Dunmer.

She hisses through her teeth, a sound she knows is unhinged, but cannot stop it escaping her notice, spittle gathering on the inside of her snake-face mask.

"Not for Us," she says. "Not even for the weakest."

She waves a hand and turns what remains of his cooling skin to Chimer-gold.

No one will ever find his body anyway.

"Never say I didn't love You," she says.

[nerevar-near-and-far]

Sotha Sil

[nerevar-near-and-far]

in-game, he goes from this:

to this:

and i just want to know why!!!

Morrowind microfiction:

Almalexia stands over the corpse of Sotha Sil.

He - it - he is still deteminedly ash-blue. He is still Dunmer.

She hisses through her teeth, a sound she knows is unhinged, but cannot stop it escaping her notice, spittle gathering on the inside of her snake-face mask.

"Not for Us," she says. "Not even for the weakest."

She waves a hand and turns what remains of his cooling skin to Chimer-gold.

No one will ever find his body anyway.

"Never say I didn't love You," she says.

[nerevar-near-and-far]

Morrowind microfiction:

Almalexia stands over the corpse of Sotha Sil.

He - it - he is still deteminedly ash-blue. He is still Dunmer.

She hisses through her teeth, a sound she knows is unhinged, but cannot stop it escaping her notice, spittle gathering on the inside of her snake-face mask.

"Not for Us," she says. "Not even for the weakest."

She waves a hand and turns what remains of his cooling skin to Chimer-gold.

No one will ever find his body anyway.

"Never say I didn't love You," she says.

[nerevar-near-and-far]

mk's latest doodle has inspired me a lot!

[nerevar-near-and-far]

"let's kill his twink"

Nerevar! Nooo!

[nerevar-near-and-far]

So, why was Dagoth Ur only wearing a loincloth? Wrong answers only.

his other outfit was at the dry cleaners

its really warm being inside of a volcano okay he was getting sweaty

he thought he could seduce nerevar by showing up in nothing but a mask and his underwear to get wraithguard

he expected the nerevarine to take longer so he put off actually getting dressed and he's just playing it off cool hoping nerevar doesn't question why he's greeting him in his undies

a stray splash of lava burned the rest of his clothes off

the developers actually wanted him to be full dick out naked but todd coward said no and the loincloth was the compromise

he got rly excited about finally getting top surgery and wanted to show off his new bod to nerevar

i could do this literally all day