Previously on the Elder Lore Podcast, we began our examination of CODA. If we go back to the beginning of our story, we're fast-forwarding about 900 years into the Fifth Era. Our protagonist is a Dunmer named Jubal Lun-Sul. Nurn has long since died, and civilization flourishes, if that's what you want to call it, on Nurn's red moon, Masr, or beneath the surface of Nurn's red moon, I should say.
Jubal meets with his friend Halalu here, and tells him some momentous news. The permission has been granted for Jubal Lun-Sul to marry the High Alma-Jarun's daughter. Though they come from very different castes, all he must do to secure the Union is hunt the Numidium. The eve of the wedding day comes, and Jubal gets drunk and wanders the surface of the moon with Talos, and sits and meditates.
And soon, the Numidium is upon him. He speaks to the Numidium for a while, though the Numidium does not communicate with words. He convinces the giant brass construct to shrink to a size comparable to his own, which it slowly does. And once Jubal and Numidium stand eye to eye, Jubal speaks, saying, According to the codes of Mephala, there is no difference between the theorist and the terrorist.
Even the most cherished desire disappears in their hands. This is why Mephala has black hands. Bring both of yours to every argument. The one-handed king finds no remedy.
When you approach God, however, cut them both off. God has no need of theory, and he is armored head to toe in terror. End quote. And so we see the reason that Jubal, which we learned about in our previous episode, calls his friend Halalukir, who brings over Khajiti's sugar surgeons, who drug Jubal and remove both of his hands.
From his conversation with the Numidium, we learn that everybody escapes Nirn to the moon to get away from the rampaging Numidium, which puts the brass golem in the category of what Jubal calls the entitled teenager. He then asks the Numidium to remove his breather scarves, which he does, and Jubal's face is exposed. Jubal speaks through the Numidium to the Dwemer, saying that once their people were allied. Together they drove away invading forces of men.
But afterwards, as people sometimes do, they turned on each other. Eventually, as history taught us, it was the Dunmer who prevailed. And so, as to the winter go the spoils of war, the Numidium came to the Dunmer. Then men came back, and the only way the Dunmer could protect themselves was to give them the Numidium, as the spoils of war.
But there was one question that had not yet been answered, which had been tickling the back of Jubal's mind for some time. And that was, Why does the Numidium keep coming back? Is there some kind of unfinished business? The Numidium replies, maybe.
But when Jubal becomes upset with the non-answer, the Numidium says instead, Gray area. Gray, maybe. Which, if we'll remember, when translated into Elnifex, is Nirn. And so there it is.
Numidium just wanted to win. The Dwemer just wanted to win. Numidium cocks it set to the side, and is destroyed. We next see Jubal preparing for the wedding.
He wears the brass shell of the Numidium. His hair is long and braided. He has a hawk on one arm and a spear on the other. But suddenly, the room is flooded with assassins from the Moraghtan.
Behind them, walks in Jubal's oldest friend, Halalu Hir. Jubal reflects momentarily that the sugar surgeons would likely have cut someone's hands off for free. And so all that money Hir said that he had spent on them must have instead gone to the Moraghtan. One interpretation of Hir's betrayal may be that in Jubal attempting to marry out of his caste, he is destroying the system that a house like Halalu would benefit from upholding.
Halalu's crests are scales, and Hir is always very well dressed. In short, House Halalu is very rich. In a whirlwind of action and movement, Hir's assassins are one by one subdued by Jubal and the Digitals. Jubal closes on Halalu Hir and chokes him to death.
And so Jubal is married to High Alma Jarun's daughter, who turns out to be Vivek in woman form. The priest is Lorcan, with heart hole exposed. Inside the hole is a cage. Inside the cage is a dragon, Akatosh.
Slowly, as they recite their vows, Akatosh begins to devour his own tale. The wedding is finished, and Lorcan's chest is healed. Coda ends with the same passage you began with, but this time, it is redacted. And now it reads, new language, continued meaning, string strand of both, meaning remains.
Welcome to the house of we. So what exactly is Coda? Well, let's start very basic and get more specific as we go. Coda is a comic of sorts, written by Michael Kirkbride and illustrated by a variety of different artists.
The script has been released. The art will come out at some point in the future. Coda is strange, but if we think about Michael Kirkbride and recognize that he is also responsible for the 36 lessons of Vivek, most of the lore involved with the time-traveling robot known as Pelina Weistrake, the fact that Coda is weird probably shouldn't be that surprising. But what exactly does it all mean?
What exactly is Landfall? We first heard it before Coda was even released, the love letter from the Fifth Era, which is, in many ways, deeply connected with Coda. So let's break this down into some basic elements. Landfall seems to represent the return of New Medium to rampage and eventually break Nirn.
Jabal tells us in the love letter to know love to avoid Landfall. Let's remember that this is love with a capital L. This is the love that Vivek speaks of throughout the 36 lessons. This is a metaphysical love.
So possibly this means that had the Dwemer known love when they fused themselves with New Medium, they would not have vanished in the fashion that they did. Perhaps that could have prevented the destruction of the world and would have prevented the need for everybody to escape to the moon. We are in a place now where time is broken. At the end of Coda, we witness Akatosh beginning to eat his own tail, possibly signifying the start of a new and never-ending dragon break.
The greater ideas at work here are the concepts of what is canon and what is not are no longer applicable. Anything and nothing is canon at the same time. As players and appreciators of the Elder Scrolls universe, all things are possible at all times. When asked, Michael Kirkbride once said, think of it as a sequel to the Elder Scrolls universe.
But at the same time, Jubal tells us to know love to avoid Landfall. So if all of this is avoidable, it could simultaneously be possible that his missive from the future the love letter from the fifth era reaches us in time and none of this ever happens. Coda has polarized the lore community for a number of reasons. Some people rejoice that the idea of canon has been destroyed as it seems to be a constantly recurring question as time goes on.
What is canon? What is not? Others, on the other hand, see no need to have interesting discussions about existing Elder Scrolls lore as long as there is no canon. What's to say what did or did not happen when we can all have our own Elder Scrolls canon in our heads?
But I would be very interested to find out what all the listeners think. So feel free, jump on our site, comment, drop us a line, let us know how you feel about Coda, whether or not you've had a chance to read it. Thanks for listening to the Elder Lord podcast. We'll see you next season.
We'll see you next season. We'll see you next season. We'll see you next season.