What are you doing? I'll tell you what you're doing. You're listening to the Elder Scrolls, the Lorecast! Either you are, or I'll be skipping rope with your entrance.
Ta-ta! This is the Elder Scrolls Lorecast. Your source for lore and so much more. So things are heating up for the Oblivion remake, and we decided that we're gonna do lore episodes on Oblivion stuff, and this episode is very specifically designed for people who are just getting into Oblivion, but also people who haven't really thought about it much in the last, how long do we say it was gonna be, or is it 18 years now, 19 years?
19 years, not mistaken, 20, it's 2006, yeah, so we're in year 19, getting all in, hopefully, under the 20th anniversary of the remake. Oh my gosh, yes, so here's the fun thing, is that I thought it would be important to cover something that a lot of people would want to know about and have questions about, but also in doing this, I, you know how I do sometimes, I came up with a new crazy theory that I don't think is actually that crazy because there seems to be a lot of evidence. I don't think this one's super crazy, and this isn't gonna be one where I'm like, Tom, I don't know if I know where you're going with this. This is what I'm actually more on board with you after we discussed.
Right, so anybody diving into Oblivion will remember that a large premise of the story is based on the idea that there are dragonborn emperors on the throne, they have the amulet of kings, and those two elements come together with lighting the dragon fires and how all that stuff works. So I thought we would cover that stuff, and for the majority of this episode, we're not gonna do any spoilers about the way the story actually plays out during and after the events, except for like just at the beginning of the game, which is like tutorial stuff, so it's seriously like the first 30 minutes of the game. So we're gonna cover most of that stuff at the end when we get to spoilers, I'll let everybody know, so if you wanna just dip out for that, you'll know where to do that. So, notice, let's get this started.
So the amulet of kings, dragonborn emperors, how does all that work? Like what's the generally understood premise for all of that? So basically due to this, extenuating circumstances from the Cold Harbor Compact, we can't just have day differences barging into Nernon ruining everything, that's just a no-no. Nobody likes that, nobody's happy about that.
But as a kind of aside, if officially stated, as long as there is a dragonborn emperor on the throne, and they are in possession of the amulet of kings, we can keep the dragon fires lit, which keeps invasions of Nernet Bay. Right, so, nice and straightforward. Nice and straightforward, and this was a pact that began with Queen Alessia, who was the first of the human, like, Manish emperors of the Seeridil, and she's the one who rebelled against the aliens, who all worshipped all these Daedric princes, and with the help of Akatosh, Akatosh looks down, this is at least how the story goes, looks down and had pity on the humans and decided, you know what, I'll help you out. And too many gut gardens, we're gonna put it up.
Too many gut gardens, too many terrible things, we're gonna help the humans out. And somehow imbued the amulet of kings or created it himself or put his blood in it, something like that, and then gave it to Alessia, who was somehow now a dragonborn, which we'll get to in a minute, and due to that connection, she could then light the dragon fires, which would then create a protective field around Nern, which would keep Daedric princes from invading. It doesn't keep all Daedra out, but it keeps major invasions from happening. That's the general concept, and ever since then, there has been, or at least there should be, a dragonborn emperor on the throne, and they do the ceremonies, and they keep the fires lit, and everything's okay.
That's the general premise, and it's been like that for ages of the world, let's just say. Right, and I guess there's a short side too, just where we're not gonna dive into that, because this isn't really a Bolivian-style thing, but the cold, hard, or compact that I mentioned is also basically Silta-Sill doing for the Dunmer another version of this, because again, everything is always from the perspective of their culture. So Dunmer very isolationist in many ways. They kind of have their own way of trying to reinforce this, but what with the imperials kind of being at the heart of Cyrodiil and Tamriel in general, this is kind of the overarching, here's how we keep everybody safe.
Right, and that's a really good point, is the reason why we know about this story is from the Elder Scrolls for Oblivion, which seems to be getting remaked and releasing any day now, and that is from the perspective of the Empire. So of course, they're gonna have a specific view of this. They're going to venerate their own history and the importance of them being on the throne and all that, but we'll get to a little bit more later. So let's go back in time.
People who may not be familiar with Oblivion are probably familiar with Skyrim, and in Skyrim, you're the dragon, you're the last dragonborn, but you're not the emperor, and you meet Mirac, who is the first dragonborn who is brought through time, and will actually send to the realm of Hermeas Mora, and then comes back from that realm, and you have to deal with them and all of that stuff, and we learned from that connection that he's from the Murrithic Era, and he predates Queen Alessia, so Queen Alessia is not the first dragonborn. And so let's get into it. So what does that even mean? What does it mean to be a dragonborn?
Well, there are some requirements. So we learn a lot about these in Skyrim. First, you have to, supposedly you have a soul of a dragon in a mortal body, but you are a dragon embodied in one of the races of Tamriel, right? Secondly, you can absorb dragon souls.
Third, you can speak the Thum, which is a very Nordic Skyrim sort of thing. Doesn't really show up in Oblivion, interesting. Third, like fourth, you're favored by Akatosh, supposedly, at least as the assumption, because there's that connection to Akatosh there, and you also might be of the royal bloodline, but that doesn't seem to apply to everybody, like Mirac or the last dragonborn, right? Right, just, again, you don't, it's one of these situations where one is not synonymous with the other.
You can have overlap, but it's like that Venn diagram thing where sometimes you get dragon blood, so you're a dragonborn, and you're of the royal bloodline, but it's that little centerpiece that kind of happens, where it's like, that's not always what's happening. It just can be. In fact, it almost seems like there are two separate circles, because if you think about it this way, can you verify that somebody can absorb dragon souls? Yes, you do that in Skyrim.
Can you verify that somebody can speak the Thoom? Yes, you do that in Skyrim, but not everybody who speaks the Thoom is dragonborn. Like the old guys up on the mountain. All the great beards, yeah.
Like they can speak the Thoom. It seems like anybody, or at least anybody who has the capability to can learn to do it with training and just kinda like cast some magic. Everybody can cast some magic, it seems like. That may not actually be more accurate, but in every game you have the ability to do.
Most people have the ability to, yeah. They may have some magical aptitude. Right, they may not feel a master everything, but at least it seems like there's aptitude there, right? So those things you can test for, can you actually test if somebody has the soul of a dragon, or dragon blood?
Not really, I don't think there's a way to verify that. Can you call it the ideal masters? Right, can you test if somebody is of the lineage of emperors? Well, sort of, you can look at their parentage, but a lot of that is obscured.
And if you look at the actual line of emperors, even just from type or septum, there's all sorts of weirdness in there. Like, there's all sorts of weirdness. Like type or something's children didn't inherit throne. It was his grandson.
And then you go down the line, and all of a sudden it's like this person descended from the wife of somebody. And it's like, well, where they already part of that lineage, how does that work? And then you have this whole notion of being of the dragonborn emperor bloodline. That's not really something you can verify.
So it seems to me that maybe you've got dragonborn, who are natural dragonborn, who actually have the abilities of dragonborn, but then you also have the line of emperors. And sometimes those things may not even be the same thing. Yes, and that's something that we kind of wanted to just touch on briefly is this part of the lore kind of expanded later on in the series. I always like to bring back some of the things that have been so long standing or things that we see a game after game after game and how Arena really was its own beast, but it had the bones of stuff that was really kind of expanded upon later in the series.
This is something that really didn't come about too much until much later in the series. Right. Right. Prior to oblivion, this really wasn't that much of a thing.
So it kind of makes sense that they have these different sections of the lore that they now are connecting more as this is being expanded out. But this is not one of the OG things. So it also explains why it gets a little dicey. Right.
And there's going to be original concepts. If they're not there at the start, you can see them slowly working it in more than it's like, oh, yeah, that's an obvious fit. Right. And is that because they're adding more as the series goes on?
And they're like, oh, we never said this was the thing, but now it is. So they're retconning things. Or is it that as the world moves on, they come up with different justifications for their own history, which happens in the real world? Yeah, I was going to say propaganda is a thing.
And it's written into the series constantly. So the fact that it's like them trying to play up this requirement has a lot of political value to different parties. It's basically vying for control of the throne. Right.
And so by the third era, by the events of the Oblivion Crisis, it seems like this is just common knowledge. This is how everybody views everything. But that doesn't mean that was always the case. If we go back, we can look at certain emperors, and we can see that, for example, Reem and Cyrodiil, in the first era, to 270.03, lit the dragon fires with his voice.
That sounds like a Thume sort of thing. It doesn't sound like just he held up the amulet and was able to light the fires. That sounds more like, OK, I'm actually like a proof of dragon-bordness, which means I get to be the next emperor, which seems to have a parlor trick where you have that thing where you breathe on a lighter and you can make it go forward. I feel like he's not doing that with the amulet of kings himself.
Right. And that feels like it would have inspired somebody like Veren Aquilarius in the second age during the events of Elder Scrolls Online to decide that he needed to be dragon-born in order to justify his lineage. But he wasn't. And if you look at his lineage, many of his ancestors also weren't, or at least don't seem to be.
And then you get to, after his time, you have Tiber Septim within a few hundred years of his reign. And Tiber Septim absolutely seems like a dragon-born. And if you want any clarity, and there's very little clarity about Tiber Septim, go back and listen to our episodes about that, because he may have been more than one person. He may have man-sold-lork on.
There's a whole bunch of wackiness around Tiber Septim. But let's just go with the fact that he at least was some sort of powerful being, or multiple beings in one, who seemed to be actual dragon-born and created the Septim line. Then that goes. It's richly multiple.
One of them is going to be a dragon-born is much higher. Maybe so. Yeah. And then the Septim line goes up to the Uriel Septim, the seventh, who is, I think it's the seventh, right, who is oblivion and the events of oblivion.
So we have this hodge podge of stuff. But yet by the time of Uriel Septim, the seventh in oblivion, the justification is that he needs to have descendants to make sure that they keep the dragon fires lit. Otherwise, uh-oh, that guy's, you know, like, they get invaded. Oh, all oblivion portals.
All oblivion portals everywhere. So that's kind of where we are. But in my understanding of this, there's a lot of holes in this. And so I kept digging.
I got a little bit further into this, a little bit further into this. And it turns out that there absolutely are periods of time without dragon-born emperors, or no emperor at all. And yet, no oblivion crisis, or, you know, Mairus Deagon, Mollig Ball, Mollig Ball, who evades during the plain meld in the events of oblivion online. The whole time of the interregnum, which we're dealing with a lot around the time of the Eldish Scrolls online.
Part of the story is the fact that there's no solid emperor, which is how the PvP aspect plays in because they're at least fighting for the throne and getting drowned and then murdered briefly thereafter. And it's like, OK, well, we just have a hodgepodge of people basically claiming emperorship. And either getting it, not getting it, or getting it immediately getting executed. Right.
Right. And so at least during those events, you have some invasion of Nern, which tracks. No emperor on the throne, no, you know, fires, no dragon fires. So therefore, an invasion can occur.
So that makes sense. Other periods in history where that doesn't add up. So for example, the War of the Red Diamond, you've probably heard somebody sing the song Red Diamond, right? The War of the Red Diamond coincides.
You can read some of the books about it. And the context here is that Empress Kintira, Kintira II, there's two emperor, Kintira and emperors, whose cousin of your, her cousin, Uriel III, usurped the throne and led this to like a civil war between septum heirs, right? This whole idea of like, who really is the real line? Right.
And Uriel is the third who was born Uriel, Manti Arco, not Manti Arco, Manti Arco, interesting name, son of Potemma, known as the Wolf Queen, Wolf Queen, another book you've probably seen in the games. His claim to the septum bloodline was contested during this. What happened with the dragon fires? Well, because of this disputed legitimacy, it's uncertain if the dragon fires remained lit during their reign.
So they had this moment where nobody was really emperor, there was a dispute, and yet the dragon fires remained lit maybe, but there was no invasion. Yeah. Or it's one of these weird things is, you know, was it pure luck that there wasn't an invasion because nobody was tenting this situation. Right.
Like we talked about it, one doesn't necessarily be get the other all the time. You can also fall into this convenience situation. I was like, well, if nobody's trying to invade at the moment that this is out, you still won't get an invasion. Right.
So yeah, so there are some other justifications where like maybe they're nobody was invaded. Why wouldn't they just take the opportunity to invade the danger princess? They're going to take whatever opportunity they can get. So why wouldn't that occur?
And so one of the theories is that even when the dragon fires go out for a period of time, Akotosh still maintains his protection and it just kind of depletes over time. And this can mean lots of different things. Daedric invasions sometimes are physical invasions, like portals coming out with danger coming out. Sometimes it's just more bad dreams and the perception of reality gets changed because the danger princess can mess with people's minds and like there's all this weirdness about it.
So maybe some of that stuff went on and we just don't have it documented. So this moves on. So we get to the Imperial Simlachram, which we talked about, Jake Artharn, Uriel Septum, the seventh is go to a pocket realm and is impersonated. This is at least the events of like Arena.
Arena. And also just for clarity's sake, just because I do like to point out the fact that like, you know, it's fun. They do a really good job of making things ambiguous and giving us lots of room for discussion where, you know, we can actually come up with logical reasons to have different thoughts on something and have a play out in this series. The intro to Arena, your septum is actually a typo.
I believe he's the fourth in that one. He's the fourth. That's right. Seven shows up in the text.
I pulled the wrong text. That's the fourth septum. That's his first. I think it's one of these things.
We know it's the fourth is a typo. The seventh is real. Correct. Yes.
The seventh is real. The fourth is like it's listed as the fourth in that game, but then that doesn't match continuity wise. So just for anybody that's interesting, that's kind of a little fun retcon that I didn't remember until I originally played Arena. I was like, wait a minute.
The number is he is infected. Only says it in the text at the beginning during the little intro video and then after that, it's all seventh. I believe it's corrected later on at Fire. It's been a little while since I played Arena, but yes, it's basically the intro video is got a type has a type.
Right. And during this event, your septum is in a pocket realm of oblivion and J.R. Tharn is pretending to be him and J.R. Tharn is not a dragonborn could not have lived the fires and yet there's a lot of turmoil, but there's no daydream invasion that happened during this time.
No, he's just in fact, there's barely any reference to day, day, day during this time because David Prince's really worked that much of a concept yet during the real-life game time that Arena was released. Right. And so we have to put the dates in context here. This is the third era of 389 to 399, which is hundreds of years after the events of Elder Scrolls Online and in Elder Scrolls Online, we have kind of a pre-oblivion crisis and we also have the playing mill.
We have two different invasion attempts at least during that time, hundreds of years later. And yet if the dragon fires during this time wouldn't have been protecting everybody, then those major princes would have been ready. It was a number of hundred years later. They were already prepped.
They were almost out of the ability to do this. So why didn't they end right then? And on top of that, the events of the Oblivion Crisis are in 433, which is like 30 years later. So all of a sudden, Mayrins-Dagon is now ready to do this.
And of course, and this is where we can get a little bit more spoiler-y things, Uriel 7, the very beginning of the game is killed. It doesn't seem like he has an heir and the mythic dawn do their thing and then things happen and it seems like whatever they're doing, believes the invasion to be possible or does Mayrins-Dagon do something in particular that allows the invasion to be possible and it has little to do with the dragon fires, which I'll get to in a minute. Then we have the Storm Crown Interregnum. This is the fourth era of 15 to 22.
So after Martin Septon's death, the end of the Septon Dynasty, which as I said before, we're getting to spoiler territory, but if you've played Skyrim, you have a sense of this, there was not a clear successor to the throne and yet no invasion. Right. So scenario where it's like all right. So nothing must be.
So let's go through the variables. Does the dragonborn on the throne matter at all? It doesn't seem like it does. Do the fires being lit actually matter or are they just symbolic?
Well, it seems like they might just be symbolic. What about this? Was being a dragonborn ever a requirement for being emperor or was it just politics? Because it wasn't really anything you could, they would test.
It wasn't like they'd be like, all right, do your thoom and absorb a dragon soul because we're dragons flying around. Right. There's very rare scenarios throughout the series where dragons are active that much. I mean, there's, it was implied there's, you know, less activity with the times of Skyrim, but you know, there has been dragons, you know, whether you want to acknowledge it or not, it's part of the series.
So, you know, they've got that little thing in the whole elsewhere region that happens where it's kind of confined to that region. And then also for any of the seven of you who have played the Elder Scrolls Redguard with me, you actually encounter a dragon in the emperors like army at that point. That's actually how he sees just one of the bays. He just flies in on a dragon.
Just looks every place like, well, okay, that seems pretty good. But yeah. So it seems like there's dragons that are at least around a little bit, but not regularly enough for people to be like, oh, dragons are common. We see them all the time.
Right. Let's drag them in here and see if you can eat it soul real quick. Right. So there's really no way to test that.
So it seems like it's a politically advantageous thing to say I am dragonborn and the people just have to believe you, right? Like otherwise, how do they even know? Because we mentioned before. I'm trying to pretend it's a dragon.
Right. Because if the test was, can you use the film? Well, lots of people can use the film or at least can learn how to do it. So that's not a very good test.
So let's move this on and go, okay, well, if it has nothing to do or has very little at least to do with being dragonborn lighting the fires, then what else could there be? Well, during the events of the Elder Scrolls Online Crisis, Manny Marco causes the soul burst. The soul burst was an event where he tricked Varen, what's his last name? It just fell into my brain.
Aquillarius. Aquillarius. And giving him the amulet of kings in order to turn him into a dragonborn and of course Manny Marco used that against him and created the soul burst immediately after that. And the soul burst is described as like messing up mages, big explosion comes out of the capital, people get all messed up and immediately after that, all of a sudden, mullig ball can stop dropping anchors and start trying to pull Nern into oblivion.
Invasion begins, right? Right. Soul burst. Notice that.
Similarly, you have the events of the oblivion crisis and the events of the Mythic Dawn, abducting the amulet of kings and taking it out of Nern into a pocket dimension, another event that takes it out and puts it in a pocket dimension, basically neutralizing it and allowing the oblivion crisis to happen. Both of those events have very little to do with an emperor being on the throne or the fires being lit, although those things are coincidentally happening at the same time. Right. It's very interesting because again, it does seem a bit more coincidental than anything else currently happening, which is what makes this an interesting idea.
And to your point on the oblivion crisis, one thing that's worth noting is another thing that happens during the event of the Elder Scrolls Online is you basically have on many oblivion crisis at one point. It's not quite the same or it's not nearly on the same scale, but it's interesting because it almost feels like Meruun's day been doing like a test run like, Hey, does this work? I'm granted you, you shut it down provided you, you know, complete that storyline and everything like that. But it seems like his first trial run that was like, Okay, this can work fundamentally, but you put a stop to it before it gets to extreme.
And then he goes a little more all in during the events of the Elder Scrolls IV. Right. So why was he able to test that out during the events of Elder Scrolls Online in the second era and Maron's day or Mullig Ball was able to try to invade at the same time. And then Maron's day on try this again during the events of Elder Scrolls oblivion.
Well, both things coincide with the amulet either being manipulated by Manny Marco or being removed from Nern by Menkar Cameron. So that seems to be the connective tissue because as I stated before, invasions didn't happen if the fires went out or a dragon where ember wasn't on the throne. But as soon as you start manipulating the amulet, they do. So it seems like there's a combination of manipulating the amulet and suddenly are taking it out of Nern and the Daedric Prince is having some method with which to initiate an invasion, which would be the Solburst or the idea that the gates of oblivion can be created through sigil stones.
And that's a big premise in Elder Scrolls oblivion is this idea that the sigil stones, every time you enter a portal, you have to go find the sigil stone and you have to take it out. And so that closes the portal. So it seems like in both cases, the Daedric Prince has had to be prepped and have the means to create an invasion at the same time that the amulet was being manipulated. Does that track?
Does that make sense? Yes, I'm on board with you with this. So, yes. It's an ex to me.
Like, I, that's no no, it's that north. Well, I would add to that. Right. Right.
So, so if you actually look at the events of oblivion, the extinguishing of the line of emperors was just extra. It didn't need to happen for the invasion. It weakened the empire and it allowed for unrest to happen, but it wasn't necessary for the invasion because it had nothing to do with the line of kings and the dragonfires. Right.
So, so how does this actually work then? And I think what this actually comes down to that at least we have rumor that the amulet of kings itself was is directly connected to Akotosh. It seems to be the case that if that is not functioning correctly or is not currently in Nern, then Akotosh does not have a part of his physical being, like the blood of Akotosh is in the gem, kind of like the heart of Lorcan is in the Red Mountain. And if that is not physically in Nern doing what it's supposed to do, then Akotosh cannot maintain connection and protection over the realm.
Right. You basically need a foot in the pool to go swimming. You can't just, yeah. So, yeah, it's, it's, it's weird because it adds this element of credibility that gives all of this like credence, but at the same time, how much of it is real, I guess, you know what I mean?
Like with the way it's presented because clearly there is something blocking these invasions and it's, well, again, without overtly spoiling the Elder Scrolls IV. I'm living in for anybody. You definitely get some very concrete interactions with gods to end that game. Right.
Right. And so you know there's something to this. There's something to it. Yeah.
And so here, some absolute, like, you know, there were little bit spoilers already. Big spoiler. I don't want to just ruin the end. Well, for people who are excited about this.
Right. So, I'm just going to say here that the amulet of things. Yeah. I'll just say this.
Does not survive the events of oblivion. We'll just say that. It doesn't fully spoil it. The amulet of things does not survive.
By the end of the story, it is broken. It is done. But we have events in Skyrim that take place after the events of oblivion. And yet we don't have an invasion during that time.
So there must still be some element that keeps the invasion from happening. Maybe that's the fact that there hasn't been a soul burst or there isn't the ability to create more sigil stones or something like that. Or maybe an invasion is happening. And the perception of everybody in the world is being manipulated by Daedra.
And maybe because Akatosh doesn't have full control over a connection to Nern anymore, that's what allows Anduin in the return of the dragons. Does that make sense? They're not Daedra. But So, Anduin is not in line with Akatosh's will when it comes to the- Give me Alduin.
I can already tell you people are going to go and not talk. Sorry. I'm sorry. Alduin.
It comes back. Right. And it seems to be that the will of Akatosh is not that Alduin ends the world. Right.
It seems to be against that, but maybe isn't. This is where things get really foggy. So, it does get weird because, again, we won't go off on another tangent about Kalpas, but, like, is it time for things to reset? And by basically preventing the end of the world quote unquote, are we dragging on this cycle past where it should be and we've screwed things up?
It's hard to say. Right. But it's a lot of variables. Right.
But if the case is that dragonborns are connected directly to Akatosh through their bloodline and through the ability to manipulate souls and all of that, like historically, dragonborns have been associated with Akatosh and you are the avatar of the dragonborn, the last dragonborn, and you are against Alduin, then it seems to imply that Akatosh, that Alduin, and I think the story kind of reinforces this, that Alduin is doing his own thing and it's not necessarily in line with Akatosh. Correct. It's kind of almost independent of each other. There's just these weird overlaps that get into the questions of, like I said, like, is one of them trying to end time and restart it is one of them trying to maintain the status quo and keep it as is.
Like, what does that mean going forward if this couple were to end? Is this like dragonfire thing supposed to be like a running theme through other... I don't know. We've never dealt with other talents in the series.
Who knows? And it's kind of interesting because you had mentioned the situation with not really innovation, but there's sort of things happening at the same time around the situation where... The big rock of a bike, I can think of it. There's so many weird words.
Thank you. I don't know why I was getting tongue tied on that so badly, but yeah, when that basically slams in and nukes Morrowind, like, Varden fell itself. So then we've got this whole situation where there's Daedra pouring out and it ties into the books and I agree that the two novels where they actually do explore this area and now it's just this wasteland of horrible monsters and creatures. There's all these like, not subtle because blowing up an island isn't subtle, but like lesser invasions?
Lesser invasions, yeah. So you consider Mirac's return a type of invasion? Like dragons returning a type of invasion? Like, these all see, they may not be Daedric princes with their own specific Daedric armies, but their invasions, like, maybe Nern is no longer protected and that's why these things can happen.
So it's not so much that like invasions aren't happening. It's that no they are. They just aren't the same kind of invasions that have happened in the past. Yeah, maybe just also not to the same scale.
Right. Well, with Baldu and it's a pretty big scale. It's pretty big scale. He's the world then.
That's what he's supposed to do. That's what he does, right? So what this means then is for the Elder Scrolls VI, there will probably be an invasion because there's no safeguard. There's nothing stopping that from happening.
It's just a matter of time. Yeah, it's free game. Right. Open borders.
Open borders. It's kind of like saying, okay, there's no international laws that you can't visit, but you still need a boat to get here. Right. They have to build a boat.
Exactly. Right. So I don't know. I think that's maybe where we are.
I hope that I know this is all my theories. It's all just a bunch of information. So maybe this is the way things work out. So I hope that made sense.
If you have other thoughts on this, please kindly comment on this episode. Let us know your thoughts. We'll take those into consideration. And like a lot of this stuff, there's no definitive answer, but there's definitely a lot of holes.
So my attempt is how do you fill those holes? How do you justify all those holes? Yeah. I'm going to simply read the text and be like, well, this answers everything because it just doesn't.
No, the series is notorious for asking more questions and providing answers. So yeah, yeah. So that's where we are. And if you are diving into, if you believe in Remake comes out sometime around this episode is up, maybe early next week or whatever.
I hope you're enjoying it. We have a patron chat coming up with our patrons next week. We'll see if the game's out and we're all playing it. I'm feeling we know we're going to talk about this.
I was going to say I officially don't have time for it. And I'm also very okay with it if it doesn't. I'll just figure it out. I mean, sleep, right?
Who needs sleep. All right. Well, we're going to take a quick break. We are patrons, but we also have a new voicemail that came in.
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But we've got the S-Vitec, the APN-TEC, I don't know how to pronounce your name. Thank you for joining us. Jay Dumpling I can pronounce that name. Jay Dumpling is a sign name.
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You can add free episodes, patreon.com slash, Elder Scrolls Lorecast. I'm most of the other shows that I do. I do too many shows. But you can add free episodes, you can get t-shirts and stickers, you can join us for Patreon chats.
The next one is coming up in a week because the 24th is the last Thursday of the month. So it's just a week away. You've got time to sign up still if you want to join us for next week's episode. And heck, if a believe in Rema comes out and you want to talk with us on the podcast about it, this is the little week to sign up.
So consider that. Go check that out on Patreon also. We have to shout out our Daedric Brincy to get shout outs every week blinding vision, Hercine, Kerasine and Peter R. Thank you so much for your support.
We really do appreciate it. Also, if you'd like to help out in other ways, you can leave a review on Apple Podcast. We can see the ones in the US, but all of that helps. And this one is showed up on the third, but just now I'm seeing it.
Lotus, this one says, this is from C.C. French who writes five stars. Good work, fellas. Cheese in all caps.
But well, one, I like cheese and I'm going to assume, you know what? Actually, no, I'm going to say I like cheese. I am not going to assume this is a share-core reference at all. It's just a cheese reference.
It's just a cheese reference. All right, I'm going to do the opposite. And assume C.C. French is actually a share-core.
Leaving us a review. Okay, that's good enough. So there you go. You got both ends of the spectrum there.
So thank you for taking the time to do that. That actually helps a ton. We really do appreciate that. It keeps us up in the rankings and all of that.
Yeah, we're actually, again, we can only respond to stuff that has words. But again, I always say I appreciate anybody who takes the time to leave us stars, because that helps. You don't need to leave us words. We can just thank you because we see your name, if that's the case.
We're almost to 1000 reviews on the US version of Spotify, which is pretty wild. That's pretty wild. Yeah, 319 on Apple, at least the US part of Apple so far. Yeah.
And it's like, we're about 900, which is a lot of reviews. So thank you all for taking the time to do that for us. It's greatly appreciated. Very, very much so.
Thank you, everybody. Also, I say we have another voicemail this week. This one, this was a really cool idea. It's almost four minutes long.
So I'm going to summarize it. I really do this from follower apocalypse who talks about everybody on the Discord all the time has a really cool idea here. But just because I'd rather keep things at around a minute, maybe two, most, but four minutes is a little long. So I can summarize this pretty quick because follower has a really fun idea about Holojak.
Remember the episode we did it all long time ago about Holojak and how Holojak feeds off the fear of other people and those sort of things. So, followers says, if you have a dead Holojak who fears off the fears of mortals whilst they pray to the gods. So I have this idea for how to create a weakness and manipulate them first. You basically get two potions, one potion that helps restore your health, another person that helps restore your magic so that you maintain so that if you get your life were sucked from you, you basically maintain and like you can survive that.
And then on top of that, you figure out, let me get to the part. You get health absorption from when you get hurt using those potions and then I'm scrolling down. You find a way to where did it go? I'm missing it.
So you use the illusion school of magic in order to make Holojak appear pitiable rather than scary. So the idea would be you basically turn Holojak into a wimp who barely gets out of bed in the morning and seems to be a pitiable character. So therefore, you can't use the fear against you. So you use the combination of potions and then illusion magic in order to basically disarm Holojak and then Holojak's no longer scary.
I like the idea of because they messaged me after the site because you know, shut up followers actually is a pretty neat idea just in relation to Holojak. They had messed me up to the site. It's kind of interesting just on the idea of it's like, okay, well, by essentially like making Holojak kind of lame, you're taking away one of his benefits of like, okay, well, I'm scary, but it's like, well, no, you're not. So you don't have the fear effect.
And then you just look at that. Right. And then as he attempts any type of physical damage to you, it would be just as detrimental in this scenario because it would just kind of be like flip-flopping what he's taking from you, but it's regenerating your health in terms of, you know, the gameplay mechanic to it. So it's just kind of funny that him basically engaging with you would be his own downfall, his best scenario.
It's honestly like the ultimate tanking move. If you just ignore the tank, then you can probably get by way better than if you actually engage with a tank, especially in like, you know, for anybody who plays the PvP side of Elder Scrolls Online, a lot of times people just get obsessed with like, well, I have to try to kill this person because they're there. Well, the answer is actually to just go around them because they're probably not doing anything to you unless you do something to them. Right.
Yeah. So avoid the tank, attack the DPS and the healer. Yes. Correct.
And then this is kind of like a lore practical way of kind of explaining away a demi-prince, which I thought was kind of funny. I thought it was an interesting idea. Yeah. Yeah.
So a very cool idea. Thank you for dropping that idea in the voice mail. If you would like to send us another voice mail, voiceline.app.slash Elder Scrolls is where do it. And there's a link in the description of the show and all that stuff and get to that stuff.
And I apologize, I'm sure you probably were hoping we play it, but four minutes is a little long. But if any of you would like to leave us another message, keep it to about a minute. And if it was a little bit longer, I can summarize it for you. Like the terrible, I did hear for a follower, but I think again, the point got across and then load stuff.
Yeah. I had to DM up on my other stream to where they clarified it a little bit. So again, like I thought it was a neat idea for just like it's almost using a gameplay. One of the things I really like is when you can apply gameplay mechanics to the like the lore of the series.
Yeah. Like it's just kind of, I don't know, I find that very amusing where it's like, oh yeah, the lore reason for this is actually a gameplay mechanic in the series. I find that fun when those tie in with each other. Absolutely.
Yeah. That is a fun idea. It would be really cool if future games gave you the ability to do stuff like this. Like imagine Hollerjack showing up in Elder Scrolls 6, and then we take followers idea and we're like, what if we, what if we maintain our health, we maintain our magic, we use these spells or these potions, we do this thing, and then all of a sudden we use illusion magic and Hollerjack doesn't look scary anymore.
They were like, yeah, the more he, the more he messes with you, the more he drains himself, the more you end up benefiting from the scenario. It's like, great, cool. Love this. Yeah.
Like again, it's just, it's neat because there's always those things in the series. And I know it seems like Bethesda might not particularly like you finding these weird loopholes. And that's actually one of my favorite things about the series. But like, all the way back, you know, to some of the beginning ones where it's just like, yeah, I, I made a spell that damages this skill and then I went little to scale up.
So now I can level up forever. It's just like, okay, I just came up with a magical reason to explain why I can basically train myself in perpetuity. And this stuff is more common in the older games. The game's like more away in the living and you could, you could really like leverage more windows and mess.
Yeah, they love it for it. Yeah, no, it's good stuff. It's good stuff. So yeah, this totally fits the whole like historical aesthetic of how you could kind of break things in the lore of the game mechanics game.
The game, the kind of glory we should do an episode on that. So thanks again, follow the very, very cool stuff. We've got one more thing to do. We've got the random page before we call it a show this week.
We have, all right, let's, we've got another Elder Scrolls online thing. This is, uh, he's always a mixed bag. This, yeah, so the Elder Scrolls online places Stormhaven buildings, the Dockwarehouse. What?
Why didn't we get like, we could have gotten something like, you know, the Mythic Dawn or, you know, like, Stormhaven building? The living in portals. Now, the Dockwarehouse is a large building at the docks of Wayrest. A letter can be found under the stairs.
That's the description. It has residents. It has residents. You want to get the residents start?
There's Annabelle might as well Annabelle Jirenis, Arthur Garic and Gweneweunas. What? Classic. How do you even pronounce the name?
Gweneweunas is a wood elf drunkard who can be found in the Dockwarehouse. All right. Also, there's a related quest, a gang of thugs. You help the Captain of the Wayrest guard with the city of the Gang of Bullies.
During the quest, you must come here to kill Andre the grinder. That sounds like somebody's terrible nickname and call it. Yeah, that's, nope, that's an internet website. I don't want anything to do with it.
Don't go there. Don't go to the grinder.com. That is not safe for all the scrolls working. Yeah, so there you go.
It's our random page of the week. Thank you, everybody, for tuning in and listening to my nonsense theories. I hope you are having a great time if Oblivion is out. In fact, you know what, let's join our Discord.
Let us know your thoughts. I would love to hear everybody's thoughts about that game or this theory. If you've got some counterpoints to the theory, please do not. Sometimes I like to be able to throw counterpoints at you and I actually kind of am on board with this one.
So I didn't have many good counterpoints because I kind of share a lot of the sentiments you had. And, you know, a lot of this discussion is related to kind of luck that we sort of just started talking about Oblivion some ways, kind of in your suggestion. And then it seemed like all of the leak hype has kind of spiraled in all sorts of directions. So, you know, we know people have been interested in this, but either way, whether it seems like it's real, but whether or not it is real, do yourself a favor and play Oblivion however you can.
I mean, ideally we'll be getting this later on this year. We'll be finally getting to see Skyblivion, which looks incredible. Shout out to Rebels and the whole team over there with that amazing fan project that's finally getting close to completion. And, you know, it's not the easiest thing to hook up because it's definitely, as we said, it's 19 years old, but you can still play it on several different platforms.
It's backwards compatible. If you have an Xbox, it's, you know, I think it's on Steam. Yeah, it's on Steam. Yeah, it's on Steam.
It's still worth playing. It's a little dated in some ways, but it's still totally playable. In fact, it's more playable to many than I would say more Windows and more ones like one of my favorite games are. It might be really cool to jump into the old version before the new versions drop.
See what the differences are. And then see what the differences are and be like, oh, yeah, this really does feel different. Because we all remember things better than they were, you know, like there's the like, you know, Saldra goggles. Yeah, and Saldra, you're like, oh, that game looks awesome.
And then you load it back up and you're like, oh, yeah, I remember this. Yeah. Yeah. So I really like some of the well done, without going on a total engineer.
That's why I do enjoy some of the well crafted remakes or remasters. Often time remasters because one studio that I have no affiliation with, I just think they're great. Night dive studios, they do a whole bunch of boomer shooter things. So I work with them.
Yeah, I know you love those. I love those things. You know, Quake, Turok, Doom, all these games, stuff like System Shock. It's just interesting because when I play them, it looks and plays like I remember playing on the M64.
But it's not. And then I remember I fired up my M64 and played Turok too. And I was like, this runs at four frames a second. Yeah.
Yeah. When I was much younger, this was all I had. So it was fine. But now that we've been spoiled with like modern technology and games, it's the same.
Also real quick, on the lore and the ideas of like coming up with these theories and things like that, I want to promote the idea of like counterpoints without being rude, you know, like we've got to the point on the internet where as soon as especially as a content creator, as soon as you say something in a video and somebody disagrees with you, they call you an idiot and they're like, well, that's totally wrong because of this and this. And that's super counter like productive. Like that doesn't actually help anybody. If you could poke a hole in the argument, please do.
I love stuff like that. That's always usually pretty entertaining. And if you're weird, I just don't talk to you. Right.
Let's be like scientists about this. And like, here's my theory, you know, and then you go, okay, well, let's check the theory with this information. And then maybe between the two of us or three of us, wherever else is coming commenting, we can get closer and closer to the truth about it because we all have different ideas and we all respect each other. So well, if you're a fan of this series, it sort of seems like you would want to do that because it's basically ingrained into the series to want to do that.
So like, yeah, that's all just part of it. That's all part of it. Work on your creative thinking because it's super fun if you can come up with good counterpoints to any of the stuff. Because again, a lot of this is sort of just how we all interpret it.
And it's all theories. I encourage alternate theories to some of the stuff we throw out there. I'm entertained by those almost as much as coming up with my own theory sometimes. Yep.
Yeah. And real quick, before we end it, and somebody commented on one of the Fallout workhouse videos recently about like, it's about the enclave and how they're going to come. I have a theory that they're not gone. They're going to come back and fall out five.
This was before the TV show came out that I posted all of this. Anyway, somebody responded and was like, oh, this is all just speculation garbage. Like, you get a life, that sort of thing. And I was like, what?
This speculation is fun. Why don't we do it? I was saying, well, Lord, show what? Right.
Like, speculation is fun. So maybe just enjoy speculating. And also we won't have any definitive answers about Elder Scrolls Five for years. So if you clicked on the video expecting the nice somehow had insider knowledge about what's actually going on at Elder Scrolls Five and hasn't even begun developing yet, then who's the idiot?
Six. Because I was going to say five. Five. I mean, Fallout Five.
Not Elder Scrolls Fallout Five. Sorry. That makes sense. It's Fallout Five.
I was like, come on. You're clicking on videos like this expecting hard facts. Who's the idiot? Anyway, I'll get off my soap box.
Thank you for tuning in, everybody. Oh, we appreciate you checking out the show and hanging out with us. And we'll be back next week to maybe we'll be talking about patrons, maybe talking about believing in rainbows. We'll have to see.
And until then, oh, and wait, notice you probably have stuff to pitch. I forgot. I mean, sort of kind of like we kind of crossed with the feeds for the last show because we have a whole big Elder Scrolls online reveal on that me and Ark did. We had it on both feeds so that, you know, I know we have a lot of overlap on show, but just for people who prefer one show or the other, the other one doesn't really work for them.
But then we did a follow up episode because I actually hyperpixie for the show, former co-host of the show, and still, you know, when she's available guest, got to play it hands on as kind of a way to like see people who have kind of fallen away from Elder Scrolls online to see how they like to the new system. If it made sense, you know, being separated from the game, not being quite as frequently, like does it work for them? And she did have a lot of fun with it. She's got obviously some stuff that she was concerned about, some stuff that you really like.
So if you're interested in that type of Elder Scrolls online specific side of things and then some side discussion on the potential oblivion leaks, that was the most recent show of Tells Itamriel. But other than that, yeah, what with Easter coming up? I don't think we're going to have time to do another show this week. So you got two shows last week and we're going to probably go back to our bi-weekly show.
Yeah, well, cool. You got two Tales Itamriel. You got one of our shows and then you got another show. We're still on the regular schedule.
So there you go. Cool. Go check out Lotus' stuff. And if you want any other of my stuff, robots are going to do a net.
There's lots of me. Something like four or five new shows have joined the network in the last few months. So the network is growing. There are some really cool shows that are joining up.
And a big announcement that's going to be rolled out in the next few weeks, an existing show that I think is super cool, is coming to the network. So lots of stuff going on there. And otherwise, just thanks for being here, and we'll see you next week. And until then, keep the dragon fires lit unless it doesn't actually matter in which case.
Yeah, screw it. Yeah, exactly. Light it or don't, whatever. Whatever.
All right. We'll see you guys next time. Bye everybody.