#and some sort of old tes forum

[zanmor]

This post led me to find out that AIM and MySpace are still functional. Or like at least googling them brought up seemingly functional links.

But if Tumblr kicks it I'm going back to a half dozen specialty forums that no longer exist.

[kagrenacs]

Explaining the Iceberg #5

*Not everything is covered, take note of trigger warnings before the links

Altmeri Poetic-Architecture: Referencing a response by Lawrence Shick to a question about Alinor buildings resembling insect wings and glass. There was a lot of criticism directed towards the appearance of Altmeri buildings in ESO when it first debuted, and then again when Summerset launched. Shick commented that, despite fanciful descriptions, their materials are still practical, and that architects can’t create buildings from poetry.

Megalomoths: Similar to the Sunbirds of Alinor, Megalomoths are spaceships that look like moths.

Dreugh Undersea Cities: From Mankar Cameron’s and Vivec’s writings. Both indicate the dreugh have (or had) their own empire, or other sorts of colonies that exist underwater.

Possi/impossipoint: Some more MK jargon, an impossipoint is a point in time where nothing suddenly becomes something. Likewise, a possipoint is where something that exists, can become something else. Essentially moments in time where something changes.

Night Mother is Mephala: A well known theory by this point. An in-universe and out of universe theory that Mephala is actually the Night Mother, and that the animosity between the DB and Morag Tong is her own creation.

The Oghma: Presuming this references to the Oghma Infinium. A book created by the wizard Xarxes, he named it after his wife, Oghma, who he made from his favorite moments in history. In general, an Oghma seems to refer to a journal or a recorded history.

Sovngarde on the moon: Shor/Lorkhan is the ruler of Sovngarde. His corpse is also said to be the two moons. This theory ties the two together and proposes Sovngarde is/is on the moons.

Misanthropic Space: Not much on this one. Taken together, Misanthropic means dislike of humanity. The book Sithis mentions that Sithis the god is sometimes thought of as misanthropic. Considering he’s also considered the void itself, Misanthropic space may refer to this.

Tharnatos: The Cyrodillic sect of the Mythic Dawn, mentioned in the Redguard forums. As a side note, tharn-atos probably refers to the Tharn family, of which Jagar Tharn had ties to Mehrunes Dagon

Continental Time: This draws from MK’s C0da and other threads. At the end of c0da a new universe is born, in a later thread (since deleted, it was a jab at the Otherkin community), MK states that this universe is Akavir, and that Yokuda (misspoken as Hammerfell) was the past (this might be a reference to timezones in the real world, but judging from previous comments from MK regarding his writing on the Redguard history I doubt this). This would mean the Redguards are from an entirely different universe and not related to the other humans, which is racist! This lore has since been disowned by MK and LadyN, but fans still perpetuate this theory. This post discusses racism within the writing. (PLEASE NOTE, that if you click the final link or search for MK’s statements on the Redguard lore, there are some anti-indigenous statements by him) https://betterbemeta.tumblr.com/post/190628347692/corsairesix-fallout-new-vegas-2010

The Marukhaki Selective: A sect of the Alessian Order that was named after the First Era prophet Markuh. They caused the Middle Dawn, an especially long Dragon Break, by trying to remove Auri-El from Akatosh.

The Prime Gesalt: Another name for the Numidium. Gestalt comes from the german word for shape, and refers to a school of psychology that essentially looks at behavior and consciousness as a whole. Essentially this is probably referencing the theory that the souls of the Dwemer became the ‘skin’ of the Numidium, like cells in a body.

The Jills: Described as ‘female dragons’ (why they’re female when dragons traditionally have no gender, and not just a subset of dragons/Aka, is an unfortunate product of cis writers). They’re agents of Akatosh(more attributed to Alkosh, the dragon-cat) who mend tears in time. They’re described sometimes as sub-gradients which essentially means they’re small shards of Akatosh’s soul.

Versidue-Shaie still alive: Not much was found on this, but i don’t think much is needed. Probably a theory that the Tsaesci Potenate of the 1st Era wasn’t assassinated and is alive.

Molag Bal Destroyed Tamriel: Not much found on this either, I didn’t look particularly hard however, because there’s a lot of nasty shit people write about Molag Bal! If I had to take a stab at it, I'd assume it looks at the fragments of Nirn in Coldharbour and theorizes these may be from previous Kalpas. Possibly from Kalpas Molag Bal himself destroyed.

Seekers and Ascended Seekers: A possible (if flimsy) connection between Hermaeus Mora’s Seekers (seen in Dragonborn) and the Ascended Seekers of Morrowind. The book, Sithis has a line that states ‘Come unto the Sharmat Dagoth Ur as a friend AE HERMA MORA ALTADOON PADHOME LRKHAN AE AI’   This thread discusses this theory and why there’s probably no connection better than I can.

Ordinated Receptile: Possibly another name for the Eye of Magnus. The King of the Kamal from Akavir landed at Winterhold stating he was searching for the ordinated receptacle 

Varlinance+ No results from any site, there seems to be a typo in this entry

Rorikstead: A theory stating that Rorikstead is actually a cultist hotspot. Based on the fact that one of the characters seen in Skyrim, Rorik, states he founded the town. Previously in this area there was a town named Rorik’s Steading, founded by a man named Rorik. There are other key points, Rorikstead having good crop production and soul gems found in every house.

Sovengarde Shor’s Kalpic Army: Sovengarde is described as a hall where the spirits of Nords wait until the ‘final reckoning’ If taken with the obscure text ‘Shor, son of Shor.’ This is explained by the Kalpa cycle, where the universe is reborn and the Ehlnofey wars begin again. Also, this resembles the Norse mythology of Ragnarok.

World-Refusals/Anti-Creation: A primarily Dwemeri school of thought. Basically the denial of the world and existence, either to return to the state prior to the creation of Mundus (godhood essentially) or the nothingness/collective unity of souls before things learned to be separate. 

Mathematical Atheism: In the context of tes, this is probably another Dwemer belief. Mathematical Atheism is used to describe a couple different things over the years, but taken in context, I’m guessing it’s comparable to the irl philosophy that math isn’t something fundamentally woven into the universe. It’s more like a language humans have came up with to describe what we see, and aliens may have a totally different language of math than us.

Many Ysgramors: As if one wasn’t enough, a theory based on the fact that Ysgramor exists as a Draugr, and as a Soul in Sovengarde. Either the deeds of multiple people got attributed to his name, or there were multiple people named Ysgramor.

The Crux of Transcendence: another name for the Mantella (the big old soul gem that powers the Numidium when the heart doesn’t)

(D)aedric artifacts sentient: Fairly straightforward, artifacts are the essence of a d/aedra, condensed into an object, they also change hands fairly often, appearing in random locations, possibly by a mechanism inherent to the artifacts themselves. Excluding special cases like Umbra, this theory proposes the artifacts may make conscious choices to jump around.

Paleonumerology: A field of study within tes. Numbers carry significant symbolic value (the sharmat, 1+1, the tower being a 1, ect). Paleonumerology is studying these numbers, their historic basis, and their relation to the physical world. Remember when I said math is the language of the universe? Well this would be it.

Jagar Tharn was good: An argument supporting Jagar Tharn. If he was such a powerful mage, there’s a chance he knew Uriel Septim would be the last heir, and imprisoned him to keep the dragonfires lit. There’s more to it than that, here’s the full thread if you’re interested.

Aldmeris was real (in my mind): The ingame theory that Aldmeris is nothing more than a myth, acting as a setting for ancient stories, or a previous name for the Summerset Isles and/or Tamriel.

Vivec killed Moraelyn: Moraelyn, a member of the Ra’athim clan, was called the witch-king of Ebonheart, during the first era. He has no notable connection to Vivec, so i’m a little confused at this one. My best guess is Moraelyn was likely a proto-version of Nerevar, therefore this might be a roundabout statement regarding Foul Murder

Divine Skin/Dwemer Numidium Skin: A noncanonical statement by MK saying he believes the Dwemer’s souls were collectively absorbed, becoming the Numidium’s ‘skin’ 

The Dream: The thought that the entirety of the TES universe is either metaphorically, or literally, a dream. Metaphorically speaking, it’s a way to conceptualize the universe, everyone is a character playing a part in the dream, an individual in their own right, but ultimately a part of a greater whole. Literally speaking, the universe may be the Dream of Anu, who is using the universe to comprehend his grief at the loss of Nir and Padomay. It may also be the dream of an entity higher than Anu, called The Godhead. And even beyond this, the Godhead might be a metaphor for the creators of The Elder Scrolls, the world being their creation/drea

True Nords are all Bandits: The observation that bandits within Skyrim often call the gods by their Nordic names, rather than acknowledging their imperialized counterparts. 

Sotha Sil’s Last words: An obscure text written BEFORE the release of Morrowind. The author is anonymous, but many speculate that a dev wrote this.

Deep ones: In oblivion, in the town of Hackdirt there are books mentioning the worship of ‘The Deep Ones’ as you descend into the town you can see where the townsfolk worship these entities. There are a good deal of theories about what the Deep ones are, but they’re probably taken from the Cthulhu Mythos, specifically the Shadow over Innsmouth and the short story ‘Dagon’. 

Nirnroot tiny towers: https://www.reddit.com/r/teslore/comments/4qdw78/tiny_towers_a_nirnroot_theory/ A half-serious theory that states Nirnroots are created by the Hist to reinforce the towers and prevent them from ‘erroding’ 

The Loveletter from the Fifth-Era: A noncanonical MK text that acts as the precursor to C0da. A letter sent from the future discussing Landfall and the events afterwards.

Kagrenac possessed Dagoth Ur/Sharmat: Dagoth Ur was said to hold the same motivations as Kagrenac, ie: remove colonizers from their home. Going a step further to look at non canonical sources, specifically the Dwemer Numidium Skin statement, Kagrenac was attempting to share godhood among the Dwemer, and may have succeeded. Morrowind shows us that Dagoth Ur was attempting to do the same. The main theory here is that Kagrenac’s spirit may have possessed Dagoth Ur and was the source of his motivations, or that an entity more powerful than both of them, the Sharmat, possessed them/took them over. The Sharmat may be metaphorical or literal, either a desire for power, a hunger for something more (which is comparable to Lorkhan creating Nirn, in an effort to find something more/enlighten everyone, or to his darker manifestations, the Greedy man, the thief, ect.)

Cuhlecain Reman Bloodline: In universe speculation that Emperor Cuhlecain (the ‘emperor’ before Tiber) and Reman are related.

Cyrodiil Spread to the Stars: Found within ‘Where were you when the Dragon Broke?” Empress Hestra of the Alessian Order, who ruled during the Middle Dawn, stated that the Cyrodiil empire spread to the stars. This could refer to the goals of the Marukhati Selectives in ‘removing Auri-el from Akatosh’, effectively exerting will upon the gods(stars) themselves. Or more likely, a reference to the out of game texts discussing space travel during the Middle Dawn.

Anti-CHIM: Separate from Zero-Summing (having an existential crisis so hard you disappear) although the two are sometimes used synonymously. While CHIM is realizing you’re just one part of a larger whole, while retaining individuality, and Zero-Summing is realizing you’re one part of a whole, but unable to accept that, Anti-CHIM is a person realizing their part in the universe, but refusing to accept it, instead gaining the ability to manipulate the universe but essentially seeing themselves as the center of it, instead of another part. https://teslore.fandom.com/wiki/Anti-CHIM:_A_Concept_and_Theory

Thalmor and Jygalagg: A theory that states that the Thalmor worship Jygalagg due to his nature as the prince of ‘order’

Dibella=Y’ffre: A thought that these two deities of nature and beauty are the same entity. This theory is mostly hinged on the (very cishet) thought that mer are feminine and have the masculine god Y’ffre (who is described as female in lore occasionally), and men are masculine and have Dibella who is feminine.

The Void Ghost: Described as the lost spirit of Lorkhan, who remains because his work isn’t done. 

House cats are Khajiit spies: Referring to the Afliq, a form of Khajiit that resembles a housecat. Because of this they’re often used as spies.

TEM (Warspore Tiberia): From the text Cyrus vs.Tiber Septim, either a battleship or battlespire.

The Athedorix Conundrums: A book that is never actually seen in game, and only mentioned briefly. Said to contain 9 riddles that drive people mad.

Aetherius Dream Visitation: Pretty much what it sounds like. The ability to travel to one another’s dreams (probably through the Dreamsleeve)

Revelation at the Death of Alesh: While this doesn’t directly refer to anything I've found, I'm guessing it’s discussing Marukh the Prophet, who in a state of near death was visited by Alessia’s spirit.

Empire ended in 3E 417: This year could be seen as a beginning to an end. The warp in the west occurred, allowing the Underking to die, keening and sunder were lost to Dagoth Ur, which eventually lead to the empire taking an interest in Morrowind and the Heart being ‘destroyed’ leading up to the events of Morrowind and Oblivion and the end of the Septims. As a side note, this seems to be an original theory by the original author of the iceberg, as i can only find it in association with discussions like these.

Coldharbour is the remains of Lyg: The only discussion on this is on 4pleb, while I don’t give enough shits to read that thread, if I had to guess this would be a theory connecting Coldharbours mimicry of Tamriel, to Lyg being a parallel to Tamriel

Falmer White souls: An observation that in Skyrim, the Falmer souls fit into white soul gems, instead of black soul gems. Some theorize this is a result of the Dwemer’s curse upon them, shrinking their souls.

[irandrura]

The Elder Scrolls - a disclaimer and rant

I am going to make some posts about The Elder Scrolls, and in particular, its background, setting, and characters. That means that a disclaimer is probably necessary.

Here’s the tl;dr version: yes, I know about the lore. Please trust me when I say that I was really super into it about a decade and a half ago, and I’ve kept an eye on it since. I have read the Michael Kirkbride forum posts. I have read C0DA, The Seven Fights of the Aldudagga, Sermon Zero, the Loveletter from the Fifth Era, and so on. I know the forum roleplays like The Trial of Vivec. I know that Ayrenn is really a time-travelling mining robot from outer space. I think all the stuff I just referenced varies widely in quality, opinions quite reasonably differ on it, and it’s frequently at odds with what’s actually depicted in the games, but at any rate, I promise that I know it.

So when I go on and talk about Psijics – I know, all right? I know. I am choosing to engage with the setting on a level that focuses more on characters, human stories, and, well, the narratives of the games. The TES apocrypha is interesting, but of limited relevance to the things I’m interested in. There are many valid ways to enjoy TES. Okay?

Now, the longer part:

If you haven’t played TES, and… actually, scratch that, for like 90% of people who’ve played TES, none of the above needed to be said. The thing is, when you play a TES game, it is a fairly straightforward elves-and-wizards-and-dragons fantasy setting in the D&D mould. Indeed, the earliest versions of it, back in the 90s, were based on a D&D campaign. So there’s relatively little surprising about it, and “it’s like D&D” will carry you most of the way towards understanding it.

However, TES games are also renowned for containing lots of in-game books you can read, which are often some of the most striking and evocative parts of the games. These are supplemented by a large library of apocrypha: often unofficial material, posted by developers (and ex-developers) on the internet. The most infamous of these writers is Michael Kirkbride, who has some… very unusual tastes and interests, but there are a range of other names as well. In any case, the result is that TES has an ‘expanded universe’ composed of these non-canonical writings. Often canonical texts in-game hint at some of this vast, unofficial hinterland, and sometimes ideas invented in the apocrypha sneak back into the games themselves.

Further, the apocrypha often hints at what seems to be a very different setting to the one directly experienced in the games: one that’s less about warriors and wizards and adventure and more one about divine magic, transcendence, myth, and meaning. The descriptions often seem to be somewhat at odds. This can best be demonstrated with some examples.

For instance, here is Michael Kirkbride’s description of a High Elf warship, written before any game had depicted the High Elf homeland:

Made of crystal and solidified sunlight, with wings though they do not fly, and prows that elongate into swirling Sun-Birds, and gem-encrusted mini-trebuchets fit for sailing which fire pure aetheric fire, and banners, banners, banners, listing their ancestors all the way back to the Dawn.

This is Old Mary at Water.

 You will immediately notice two things. The first is that this sounds really cool. Some of it you need some context to parse (the old elven homeland is called ‘Aldmeris’, hence ‘Old Mary’ as a mocking nickname given by its foes; the High Elves believe that they are literally, genealogically descended from the spirits that created the world at the Dawn), but even so, man, that warship sounds awesome. This Kirkbride guy can write. The second thing, though, is that it is extremely unclear what any of this even means. Given that descriptions… what does this ship look like? Try to picture it! What the heck does ‘crystal and solidified sunlight’ look like? How exactly does a trebuchet throw fire? What?

You might then go on to play a video game where the High Elves are taking part in a war to conquer the continent. If you’re like me, you’re probably keen to see one of these fabled warships. But then it turns out that in-game, High Elf ships look… like this. Or like this.

(Indeed, the High Elves are often a good example of this. An earlier written text, in a pamphlet enclosed with the video game Redguard, described the elven capital of Alinor as “made from glass or insect wings” or “a hypnotic swirl of ramparts and impossibly high towers, designed to catch the light of the sun and break it into its component colours”. Needless to say, should you visit it in a game, it does not look like that.)

After a while, you start to notice that there is very little connection between the world implied by the apocrypha and the world experienced in the games. Kirkbride says that the “closest mythical model” for the ancient knight Pelinal “would be Gilgamesh, with a dash of T-800 thrown in, and a full-serving of brain-fracture slaughterhouse antinomial Kill(3) functions stuck in his hand or head”, and says “Pelinal was and is an insane collective swarmfoam war-fractal from the future”. Indeed in Kirkbride’s descriptions Pelinal seems to have been an ultraviolent schizophrenic who led a wild, genocidal band of anti-elven warriors, was very definitely gay, and who had only a red, gaping hole where his heart ought to be (which in turn is a reference to the missing heart of the creator-trickster deity Lorkhan, whom Pelinal was in part a mortal incarnation of). You might find that really cool or you might find it banal, but there’s no denying that it’s extremely different to the Pelinal whose ghost you can meet in-game. The apocryphal Pelinal is a mad butcher whose closest mythic model, contra Kirkbride, actually seems to be Achilles; the game Pelinal is a straightforwardly sympathetic chivalric knight. This is complicated somewhat by the in-game books being written by Kirkbride and therefore being gonzo bananas insane, so the ‘canon’, such as it is, is unclear – but at any rate it is impossible to deny that there’s an incongruity.

I could go on with examples for a long time. I haven’t even mentioned the most famous – the 1st edition PGE description of Cyrodiil compared to what it actually looks like in Oblivion – or more recent ones, like the gulf between Alduin the mythic dragon who will consume the world and indeed time itself in its terrible jaws and the frankly quite underwhelming beastie you fight in Skyrim. The point I’m making is that there are effectively two TES settings: one relatively down-to-earth, immersive, and depicted in great detail in the video games, and one that’s this absurd mash-up of magic and science fiction and whatever psychedelics Michael Kirkbride has been taking this week.

I write this long disclaimer because it has been my experience discussing TES in the past that people who are mostly interested in the former – in the relatively grounded setting experience in the games – sometimes run into an elitist attitude from people who are interested in the latter. Sometimes fans of the apocrypha can come on much too strong, or gatekeep the idea of being a fan of ‘TES lore’. Any sentence that starts with “actually, in the lore…” is practically guaranteed to go on to be awful.

My point is not that the apocryphal TES is bad. As I hinted above, in my opinion its quality varies extremely widely: there are things that Kirkbride has written that I think are pretty cool (I unironically love the Aldudagga) and there are things he’s written that I think are indulgent tripe (C0DA stands out). Ultimately it’s all about what you enjoy, and I would never try to tell anyone that they shouldn’t have fun reading or speculating about or debating the zaniness of some of these texts. Indeed, as far as online fandoms and video game fan fiction goes, TES probably has the most fruitful ‘expanded universe’ that I’ve ever seen, and I think that’s wonderful. Kirkbride himself has said that “it’s really all interactive fiction, and that should mean something to everyone” and “TES should be Open Source”, which is a position I wholeheartedly endorse – and does a lot to take the edges off some of the worse things he’s said.

Rather, my point is that everyone should enjoy what they feel most interested in, or most able to enjoy. Further, I argue that there is absolutely nothing wrong – and for that matter absolutely nothing less intelligent or less intellectual – about a person preferring to engage with the version of TES most clearly depicted in the video games. Part of this might be defensiveness on my part, because in my opinion what TES has always done best is a nuanced depiction of cultural conflict: this is particularly the case in Morrowind and Skyrim, and ESO’s better expansions tend to deal in this area as well. As such I take relatively little interest in the metaphysical content of much of the apocrypha. For me, Shor, say, is most interesting as the protagonist of several conflicting cultural narratives, rather than as a metaphysical essence.

I would also argue that the most recent game content has taken a good approach by going out of its way to legitimise a range of possible approaches to the setting. The latest chapter of ESO, Greymoor, includes a system where the player can dig up ancient artifacts, and a number of NPC scholars will comment on them for you. This allows the game to indicate in-character scholarly disagreement over issues fans have previously debated. One item shows disagreement over whether the mythical character Morihaus was literally a bull, or a minotaur, or whether he was a human allegorically referred to as a bull. Another one points to disagreement over the possibility of magical spaceships: apocryphal materials have referred to ‘Sunbirds of Alinor’, ‘Reman Mananauts’, etc., as sorts of magical astronauts, but that seems so ridiculous given what we’ve seen in the games as to be easily discounted. I like items like this in-game because they seem to say to players, “It’s okay to disagree over questions like this – no one is doing TES wrong.”

That said, I am reasonably positive that I’m in the minority here, because I am in the camp that usually says that legends exaggerate, and so Morihaus probably wasn’t a bull and magical spaceships don’t exist. This is not a popular position. My reason, of course, is that I think tales are more likely to grow in the telling rather than shrink, and I have a dozen of what I think are hard-to-deny examples of this happening in TES (e.g. heroic narratives of the War of Betony are very different to the grubby reality you uncover in Daggerfall, or Tiber Septim is almost certainly from Alcaire rather than Atmora). However, this means that I openly take an opposite methodology to Michael Kirkbride. Kirkbride was once asked by a forum poster whether some in-game writings are exaggerated. His reply was: “I prefer, "It is very possible, as is the case throughout this magical world, that some of the exaggerated claims made about some subjects pale in comparison to the Monkey Truth. ZOMGWTFGIANTFEATHEREDFLUTYRANTS."”

Needless to say, I find this implausible, and it means that, for example, I interpret the Remanada as an obvious piece of propaganda, inventing a story about Alessia’s ghost in order to retroactively explain why Reman, probably born the son of a hill chieftain with zero connection to the previous dynasty, really has imperial blood. This is a very different but in my opinion more historically plausible take than Kirkbride’s, who has a naked thirteen year old Reman standing atop his harem and slaughtering recalcitrant followers.

I’m not saying that my approach is objectively correct. It’s all fiction – and as Kirkbride said, TES is open source. The only thing that matters is what you the reader, player, or interpreter find the most interesting. For me, that means generally favouring what is seen in the games over the developer apocrypha, which I can take or leave.

At any rate.

I’m going to go on and make some more fannish posts about stuff in ESO that I liked.

Just… if it’s relevant, be aware that I am familiar with the zany stuff. Some of it I like, a lot of it I don’t like, and I feel no obligation to use it if I don’t like it.

There. Disclaimer over.

[aethuviel]

TES Elves lifespan and fertility

I’ve been playing Skyrim for four years, and am fairly new to TES lore. One of the things I wonder, like many others, is how long do the races of mer (talking the three now, falmer and orcs don’t count) live, and how do they avoid overpopulation with their obviously lengthy lifespans (and as horny as they seem to be)?

I’ve read around on various discussion forums where people ask these same questions, but never found a satisfying answer.

The common answers to the lifespan questions are “up to 1000″, sourced from The Real Barenziah, but this was just written in an in-universe book, which makes it unreliable at best, and the second common answer is “max ~300, unless they’re using magic to extend their lives”, because an official quote from Bethesda goes like this:

"Elves live two to three times as long as humans and the “beast-races” (Orcs, Khajiiti, Argonians). A 200-year-old Elf is old; a 300-year-old Elf is very, very old indeed. Anyone older than that has prolonged his or her lifespan through powerful magic."

But I call BS on this, because it’s broken by the world itself.

Examples (all powerful mages and wizards are excluded, for obvious reasons):

- Avrusa and Aduri Sarethi are Dunmer farmer in the Rift, and according to Avrusa, she used to have a shop (meaning she was an adult) in Morrowind before the eruption of the Red Mountain, 196 years ago. That puts her and her sister at well over 200 years old, and Aduri gives the impression of being young (her girly voice). - Lleril Morvayn and Adril Arano (and add to that Adril’s wife Cindiri) have ruled Solstheim together for 136 years, Lleril taking over after his mother’s death, and they show no sign of being particularly old. - Legate Fasendil is an Altmer soldier who was “stationed in Hammerfell” (meaning, an adult) 159 years ago, and he does not appear old.

- The only one I can find to sort of confirm the Bethesda quote is Elynea Mothren, mycologist at Tel Mithryn, who says she remembers the eruption of Red Mountain as a “little girl”, and that she’s “an old woman now”, which she certainly looks like. She would be perhaps in her early 200s.

The third common claim about mer lifespan is from a quote that follows like this:

Well, I'm fifty, done my twenty years in the Service, and I'm in the prime of life. I expect another fifty good years, and then I'll be old, and slow, chatting with gaffers around the hearth for another twenty, thirty years. I've known mer still mind-sharp in their late hundreds, and heard of folk 200 and older. My family usually makes it to 120-130, providing we don't get sick or poked in the eye.

But this brings us back to The Real Barenziah. Many claims are made in it, such as...

"I think Straw will be a very old man before 'someday' comes, Berry. Elves live for a very long time." Katisha's face briefly wore the envious, wistful look humans got when contemplating the thousand-year lifespan Elves had been granted by the gods. True, few ever actually lived that long as disease and violence took their respective tolls. But they could. And one or two of them actually did. 

Now, this book was approved by Barenziah herself, but that does not assure us of its accuracy, only that she liked it.

But I think this is still closer to the truth than “a 300 year old elf is very, very old indeed”, because of all the things that are unreliable in TRB, what is set in stone is the birth year of Barenziah and her children.

Barenziah and Symmachus had Helseth (now one can doubt whether Symmachus is actually Helseth’s father, but that is for another time) in 3E 376, when Barenziah was a whopping 379 years old. She then had two more children in the next couple of decades, her third and last child born when she was 394 or 395 years old.

There is to my knowledge no claim at all that Barenziah was using magic to extend her life (nor Symmachus for that matter, and he was three decades older than her, slain in battle at the age of 422). And it is confirmed by the lore that she became a mother of three at nearly four centuries old. So this wipes that quote by Bethesda completely, in my opinion.

TRB quotes on elven fertility:

"You ought to meet some nice Elven boys, though. If you go on keeping company with Khajiits and humans and what have you, you'll find yourself pregnant in next to no time."

Barenziah smiled involuntarily at the thought. "I'd like that. I think. But it would be inconvenient, wouldn't it? Babies are a lot of trouble, and I don't even have my own house yet."

"How old are you, Berry? Seventeen? Well, you've a year or two yet before you're fertile, unless you're very unlucky. Elves don't have children readily with other Elves after that, even, so you'll be all right if you stick with them."

And later, after banging Talos for a time...

"You appear to be with child, young as you are. Constant pairing with a human has brought you to early fertility.”

Barenziah then marries Symmachus immediately following Tiber Septim’s death. This is said to be “half a century” later, which would put Barenziah at almost 70 years old, but the actual year Tiber Septim died was in 3E 38, when she was ~41 years old. Anyhow. (Goes back to how unreliable the books are.)

The years passed swiftly, with crises to be dealt with, and storms and famines and failures to be weath­ered, and plots to be foiled, and conspirators to be executed. Mournhold prospered steadily. Her people were secure and fed, her mines and farms productive. All was well -- save that the royal marriage had pro­duced no children. No heirs.

Elven children are slow to come, and most demanding of their welcome -- and noble children more so than others. Thus many decades had come to pass before they grew concerned.

Some three centuries later...

Directly after the Nightingale's theft of the Staff of Chaos, Symmachus had sent urgent secret communiques to Uriel Septim. He had not gone himself, as he would normally have, choosing instead to stay with Barenziah during her fertile period to father a son upon her.

Speaking about the Nightingale some time later, when Barenziah was pregnant...

"Dark Elf in part, perhaps," said Barenziah, "but part human too, I think, in disguise. Else would I not have come so quickly to fertility."

From this we can draw that, 1) Elven women become fertile around the age of 18-20 2) They conceive easier with other races, rather than with male elves (implying that both sexes have low fertility), and can even be brought to fertility faster by sleeping around a lot with other races 3) And by her eventual pregnancy leading to the birth of Helseth, we are to believe that the Nightingale didn’t touch her, but that simply the passion she felt for him made her fertile, after centuries of no results.

----------

And when Tiber “Talos” Septim forces a child (as he viewed her) to have an abortion (I am forever disgusted with Talos for this), the Altmer healer says:

"Sire. It is her child. Children are few among the Elves. No Elven woman conceives more than four times, and that is very rare. Two is the usual number. Some bear none, even, and some only one. If I take this one from her, Sire, she may not conceive again."

It is widely quoted but again, a book in-game is not a reliable source, and while looking around Dunmer names in ESO, I found a fellow named Quell Andas, who has four siblings.

Unless, for some reason, they are called siblings but there are at least two mothers involved (i.e. half-siblings), or they’re lying, this is a case of an elf woman bearing five children. I’m sure there could be more cases among any of the mer if I looked further.

So that healer was at least not being entirely truthful.

But it does make sense that the mer would have much lower fertility, on both sides (males and females), simply as a price to pay for their long lifespans.

Humans live for about seventy years. Women are fertile from about 15-45, a 30 year “baby bearing window”, if you will.

The fact that Barenziah was pregnant three times in her late 300s, says not just that they live that long, but that she had not entered menopause - if elves even have that.

Her first pregnancy was when she was 17-18. Her last, at 394-395. That is, for her, a “baby bearing window” of at least 376 years. And there is nothing, I might add, in the books to imply surprise or shock that Barenziah bore children at that age.

With a human’s 30 year fertility window, in a world of no contraception, some rare women can have 20 or more children.

Now increase that to 300+ years, and if elves were as fertile as humans, an elf woman could birth a hundred children in her life, as easily as a human could birth ten. This would lead to an insanely unsustainable population growth, as elves are people(!) and we cannot compare them to animals that have that many offspring (since those are typically unintelligent animals where almost all die soon after birth).

Since they live for centuries but can have children at twenty, this also means children can be surrounded by a long line of ancestors. Not just grandparents, but great-great-great grandparents, and so on, people living on and using up resources for much longer. This means population growth has to be slow.

So, to keep a normal population growth at 2-4 children for most people (with some having more and some having none), elves naturally have to be much less fertile to “pay” for their lenghty lifespans.

We don’t know why, if it’s by some divine power, nature, or whathaveyou, but I imagine (absolutely no source on this, just my imagination) mer women might have much rarer ovulations, like once a year instead of once a month (imagine only some 3 fertile days per year instead of some 36 days), or requiring some special “event” to ovulate (as TRB implies), and that male mer have heavily reduced sperm counts compared to other races.

That would make sense, but is only my personal speculation.

And as for lifespan, I still choose to believe TRB, as while statements in it are unreliable, we know a woman had multiple children near her 400th birthday, with no known magical intervention to slow down her aging. That couldn’t have happened unless all elves could live to a thousand, but most die during the centuries from injury or disease.

[ayemsehtvehk]

Okay here’s how Thistle Flower became Everyone but also specifically All My Characters and All The Trees.

I mean how she became a tree is easy, because all Argonians are tree-adjacent, the Hist needed some helpers with eyes and hands and the like and they grew in the swamp and what do swamps have a ton of that are easy to catch if you’re a tree? Lizards, apparently. Take the lizards, they drink the sap, their genetic code is rewritten and now they’re Argonians and they have everything that you need in a helper when you’re a sentient godlike tree who exists out of time. There’s an alternate Tamriel where Argonians are insects and I wish I were there because then I’d look less like a scaley and more like the freak I am.

(This is also why in the DS9 TES AU, the Bajorans are Argonian, the Prophets are Hist, the Dunmer are the Cardassians, Sisko is an Imperial Commander who discovered some big magic thing in Black Marsh and now runs a settlement around it, and everything else is off topic because I didn’t set out to talk about DS9 so much as everything I talk about eventually ends up either in TES or DS9 and it was inevitable that the streams would cross.)

ANYWAY

So yeah all Argonians are so intimately related to their Hist that they could be called part-tree. In fact, they do call themselves People of the Root and they mean that literally. Thistle Flower was even studying to be a treeminder before a roving pack of Daedra that some Dunmer sorcerer sicced on her tribe to take vengeance for their especially brutal resistance to the Dunmer during the Arnesian War. After that she swore that she would take vengeance against whoever did it and whoever enabled whoever was responsible and she went out and killed just a ton of people who might have done it before she was arrested and sent to the Imperial Prison as an extremely dangerous criminal who should be kept in maximum security lest she kill again.

Caius Cosades lost his shit when the Emperor sent him this Argonian who was known for killing a ton of Dunmer and Imperials to Morrowind to fulfil the Nerevarine prophecies because that sounded to him like a recipe for disaster. If people found out that the Blades were responsible for unleashing her onto Morrowind, assuming she didn’t do anything stupid and get herself killed, then that’s it for the last shred of legitimacy that the Empire has in Morrowind.

Anyway to literally everyone’s surprise it actually went pretty well and she came to sort of like the Dunmer. (Well, to care deeply about the Ashlanders and the Morag Tong and be able to mostly deal with everyone else.) She fulfilled the prophecies, saved the world, had a weird crush on Almalexia that may have been Nerevar and may have just been her being real gay and then it all ended with the Tribunal mostly dead.

But she knew that something terrible was coming and that for all of the Tribunal’s flaws, they were keeping some horrible things at bay and with them dead and dying, someone needed to take their place. That person was going to have to be her because she had the tools, she had the knowledge and she didn’t trust anyone else not to set themselves up as godkings the way ALMSIVI had and she told herself she wasn’t going to. The one missing ingredient was the Heart of Lorkhan, which she had to destroy or else Dagoth Ur would destroy Tamriel. It was fine. She only needed a little power. So she went off across the world to search. In this search she Zero Summed.

Now, you might have heard of CHIM, that state of enlightened lucid dreaming where you transcend the false world around you and in it, you can impose your will upon it. But if those who achieve CHIM look at the spokes of the wheel of the world and see themselves, those who Zero Sum look at the wheel and see that the whole world was them and lose their individuality to become part of it. Thistle Flower looked at the boundaries of reality and gazed through the other side of the monitor and saw me.

I first played Morrowind when I was about 12 years old. I made Thistle Flower when I was 13, since the save file I was using got corrupted and I had heard of “roleplaying” from forums that I was frankly too young to be on. She was almost the archetypical Mary Sue, at least for a young, isolated autistic kid who didn’t care for boys the way the other girls did and who found escape through this badass assassin who everyone loved and was afraid of who loved reading books about ancient civilizations and who traveled around looking at neat new critters. And as I grew up, I never let her go, she just grew with me. “Daemon Huntress”, the cool edgy sounding custom class I gave her became “Daedra Hunter” as I came up with a background for that that made any sense at all in the lore. She was never super gender conforming but she became less so as I became less so. I kept her close to my heart as I made other characters to play Morrowind the way she wouldn’t, like become a vampire or join a Great House or anything and those characters joined her in an increasingly elaborate little shared universe that only got bigger and more elaborate over the 17-some years I’ve been playing these dumb games.

And in that way, we recognized each other. That we were never really apart. That she’s a part of me, and as such, she’s a part of everything else I make. She had set out to stop the gates of Oblivion from opening and spilling into Nirn and when a Nord Battlemage with pretty boy good looks and memories that he didn’t realize were manifesting and changing over time was born in a prison cell, he went on to save the world, just the way she had hoped to do.

And so on and so forth. She fought Dragons as the Dragonborn, stood against Molag Bal eleven times and stood by him once, has been the Speaker of the Dark Brotherhood twice, once as a top young Dunmer girl who hated her for killing her family, another time as an Altmer deserter who just wanted to use the weapon they had made him into for himself instead of the people who used him, had fought on both sides of the Skyrim Civil War, has been everyone you have ever imagined and is now distributed in the very soul of the world.

The Hist remembers her and the Hist honors her. The People know that she is the root, for better or for worse. They’ve taken on some of her peculiarities: when the Argonians invaded Morrowind they made peace with the Ashlanders, they scoured Dwemer ruins in a meticulous way that a trained archaeologist would, they left key infrastructure intact and even rebuilt a number of cities before retreating back into the swamps, all because the Hist was subconsciously driving their Argonians towards that, and the Hist in turn were driven by Thistle Flower, who only wanted justice both for her people and her adopted homeland. It’s unclear to anyone whether or not the Hist know this has happened, since they’ve never been clear in ways that bipeds understand. But she shows up in the sap, and has always shown up in the sap, from the Dawn Era to the inevitable end of all things