< The Elder Scrolls

The Elder Scrolls/Headscratchers


  • How are there so many Divine beings in the Elder Scrolls verse? Could the Aedra and Daedra actually count as race of people since they're so numerous?
    • Why not? Anyway, the Altmer actually believe that they're descended from lesser Aedra. That's why the Thalmor hate Talos, he represents Man, who is local to Nirn, and Lorkhan, the trickster-god who trapped them and bound their power to Nirn.
    • Did you know that Hinduism has over 300 million deities in it, total? Classical mythology has dozens, Norse mythology has dozens. It's not that unusual.
    • In terms of active major gods, the elder scrolls universe only seems to have the daedra (17 since the events of oblivion), the nine divines (9 in total), light and logic (2), Magnus, Ebonarm and mannimarco. That's only 30 major gods, which, as the above poster pointed out, is very little compared to many real life polytheistic religions
  • The legal system bugs me. You can go on a killing spree and then simply pay a fine! How the smeg does that work in terms of justice? Its basically enforced anarchy in a system that favors the rich!
    • Murder is a fine, but if you steal the original manuscript of the Bible (i forgot what its actually called, its been a while since i played. the native book of sermons thing that has copies all over the place. the original manuscript, worth 5000 gold is in a shack guarded by a monk guy) the penalty is instantly death.
      • It's the original manuscript of Saryoni's Sermons.
    • The rich would not have a problem with that, and the poor don't get a choice.
    • Why does it only apply to you? How can it be "Realistic" and "Immersive" if I can't watch other people resist arrest or get arrested because they are asleep on the roads and the guards tell me, "Move along citizen" when there's an enraged elf trying to punch me to death? That's just nitpicking though but I would love to see random events where guards have to break up a bar fight or street brawl, or part of a story-quest where one could to start a riot and then steal stuff for the Thieves' Guild while the guards are asking for everyone to pay fines or go to jail for a couple days.
      • Apparently ideas like this were considered but the AI, when made so "dynamic", encountered all sorts of bugs. Judging by how badly the AI handles in the vanilla game, even when going through preset motions... it's probably just as well. Also while it may have been more "immersive", it would be frustrating if you could not start or progress in a quest because a crucial NPC was in jail due to events beyond your control.
    • If I recall correctly, the actual legal system employed by the Norse worked something like that - one found guilty of murder was obliged to pay a fine to the deceased's kin, and if they couldn't pay they were jailed or exiled.
      • Yes, the Westrogothic Law had a fine for murder set at 21 marks--equivalent to the value of a small farm plus serfs and livestock.
    • I'm going to presume the OP lives in a Common Law Country- The most ancient law of the Common Law is that killing a man requires a Weregild of two cows to the victim's family or gold or goods of equivalent value in compensation. That rule still exists (obviously with more contemporary payouts), and it's the Tort of Wrongful Death (The one they got OJ Simpson on.)
  • Why does the "detect life" spell cause golems and undead to light up? They're not alive.
    • I assume it detects a soul present in a creature. Undead are souls bound to a corpse, and golems are souls bound to a structure. So, it does make sense. Of course, with this, maybe you should be able to detect filled soul gems with detect life. Maybe the nature of the soul gem makes the soul inactive or something, unlike when it is bound to a corpse or something like that.
    • That doesn't explain why it works on the robots in Morrowind.
    • Life refers to animation.
    • Skyrim has now separated "detect life" and "detect dead" spells, neither of which detect constructs. There is a nebulous concept of "Aura" in the form of a shout which detects both though.
  • HOW CAN A BOW MADE OUT OF METAL POSSIBLY BE FUNCTIONAL. IT CAN'T, BETHESDA. IT CAN'T.
    • If I recall correctly, the bows' cores are made of metal and are thin enough to be flexible. The surrounding material is still wood. Which doesn't seem to make much sense for glass, but... Yeah.
    • Actually they can. They are very different from wooden bows (generally the shoot "straighter" but they drop off faster), but a metal bow is just as feasible as a wooden bow. You'd be better off complaining about how a glass bow works.
      • "Glass" is actually rare metals studded with glass made from volcanic ash.
  • If the Cammona Tong are a xenophobic Dumner nationalist/supremesist criminal group, why do they not have a Nord in their ranks, but also have that same Nord in charge of one of their biggest operations?
    • The enforcement of equal-opportunity law is just as strict as enforcement of anti-theft law, and they figure acting otherwise is more trouble than its worth and they can kill the Nord later on?
    • Possibly Morrowind's history as part of the First Empire of the Nords, and its border with Skyrim, means the emnity towards Nords is a little different to that felt to the other races. Dagon Fel, of course, is mostly Nords, so it's possible he isn't an 'outlander' per se. One could argue that the dislike should be stronger, seeing as a war was fought to kick them out, but as that was a very long time ago, any descendents of those Nords or those now associated with that ethnos may be accepted as natives, moreso at least than the resented Imperials and those associated with them.
    • The Camonna Tong's policies extend beyond being racist - there are real-life anti-immigration groups which have members from ethnic minorities. The Cammona Tong do not like foreigners but, while most of their members may be racist, "officially" they "only" want an outlander-free Morrowind. It could be that they hired a Nord and promoted him to a notable position to combat allegations of racism in the past and to possibly garner more sympathy for their cause... they're bigoted, but they're not stupid, and they know that they're campaigning for an unpopular cause.
  • So...How would they have an Elder Scrolls without Uriel Septim?
    • Easily. Since the Elder Scrolls actually have nothing to do with the Emperor.
      • It's a joke..but seriously, have you ever noticed how the emperor is practically involved with either starting the "main quest" or ordering you to do something that leads you to the main quest, somehow? He's more or less the reason you're even doing stuff in Arena, sends you to start the quest in Daggerfall, pardons you and sends you to Morrowind, then pretty much starts the quest in Oblivion.
        • Guess TES 5 will involve finding (or maybe becoming?) the Emperor - perhaps in Akavir where there is an emperor unaccounted for that may have had descendants? Or, perhaps, the Nevarine who was also suspected of going there? Good job for a prisoner as well ... "Go to this continent that eats people and find someone that may or may not exist."
      • Skyrim is actually about the fact that the Empire (and thus Skyrim) is tearing apart with the end of the Septim dynasty at the end of Oblivion. So even 200 years later, Uriel is still making prisoners escape into the outside world to smack some bandits' faces in.
  • In Morrowind, the Daedric Face of Inspiration (daedric_fountain_helm) looks like a leering demonic face, while the Daedric Face of Terror (daedric_terrifying_helm) looks like a fountain. Did the graphics files get switched?
    • Taking a second's look at the filenames you have posted there I can say, yes, the names were switched for some reason, probably accidentally. Why is that an issue?
  • Where the hell was Peryite during TES 4? You'd think that if he was concerned with some random worshipers in his own realm he'd be worried about the very walls between Oblivion and Nirn being breached .
    • Who says he's not influencing the events of Oblivion? He's a Deadra just because you don't see him doesn't mean he's not involved.
    • Another thing, it is actually very easy for mortals to enter the daedric realms, but very hard for daedra to enter Nirn. In fact, Daedra have to be let in by conjurers, while a mortal can enter a daedric realm without invitation. See "The Doors of oblivion" [dead link] and "Liminal Bridges" So, in short, Peryite's only problem was his worshipers being stupid.
  • To all those people who condemn the Necromancers' nature in Oblivion...you are aware that at the time of Oblivion, the Necromancers were being lead by Mannimarco, right?
    • However, it is hinted and believed by some of the fandom that the Mannimarco in Oblivion is not the same as the historical one. Rather, the theory holds that he was just an extremist Necromancer who rallied the other Necromancers to his cause by impersonating Mannimarco. This theory is there to explain his Character Derailment, but it can also explain why their views seem particularly extreme in Oblivion.
    • There is also the lack of any approachable necromancer (note lower-case n), when the fact is that Morrowind, where necromancy is illegal on pain of death, had several. Exactly how did Mannimarco get so much influence as to become an automatic choice even for mages that just want to animate the dead, and had no previous tendencies towards blatant evil, especially when it isn't actually illegal to raise the dead?
      • There probably are necromancers who aren't evil and it's just that they keep quiet about their necromancy. One the loading screens even says that even though necromancy is perfectly legal few admit to it since it's been banned by the Mages Guild.
  • If Sheogorath can instantly kill anyone who lays hands on him, why doesn't Jyggalag do the same? They're the same guy.
    • Maybe that specific power is unique to Sheogorath?
    • If you mean during the final battle of Shivering Isles, because at that point, YOU are Sheogorath. You and Jyggalag are on similar levels of strength. That strength doesn't carry over to normal gameplay, though, since it wouldn't just break the game, it would shatter it into so many pieces that they could legitimately have a fetch quest in a later game about fixing it. Adventuring gods and the mortal world wouldn't mix well.
    • This is also because it happen in Sheogorath's REALM. In there, Sheogorath is litterally a livng god ( you can even manipulate the weather and auto-teleport to the castle when near death after becoming Sheogorath yourself), and Jyggalag is not. If he could do that, it would be the same as someone walking into another persons house, and legally throwing them out.
  • Your demotion after the Troll quest in Oblivion's Fighters Guild. I can understand the guildmaster being upset since she just found out her son is dead, but she seems to consider it your fault despite the fact that her son was long dead by the time you found him.
    • It was partially that she found out that you and whatshisname had been taking him on quests to get him ready to take over the guild. She didn't want him to go ANYWHERE and blamed you for getting him started.
  • Wait, how exactly is the fact that the PC of Morrowind is The Chosen One ambiguous? Throughout the main quest, you are plagued by nightmares, all concerning the Blight Storms, House Dagoth, etc, and last time I checked, dreams weren't part of Azura's portfolio. Not to mention that many of Dagoth Ur's servant's including his right-hand man, all refer to you as Lord Nerevar.
    • Just because Dagoth Ur thinks you are does not make it true. Remember, Dagoth Ur is the man who thinks that you'd appreciate being infected with painfully disfiguring doom-disease and has been living alone in a Volcano for the last few centuries brooding over how his mates betrayed him (and Nerevar).
    • Also, don't forget, the wise woman of the nomadic Ashlanders said that you were not physically Nerevar reincarnated, but she went on to say that that couldn't stop you from collecting Neravar's artifacts and claiming his title through skill, rather than birth. Also, the dreams were the effect of Dagoth Ur's blight: the sleepers and dreamers were all people who got these dreams, but were either corrupted by it, or saw a chance for a new beginning in them and joined Dagoth Ur's cause. You, obviously, were not a weak-minded commoner.
    • A LOT of people were thought to be the Nerevarine, and displayed different signs of this. It is possible that Azura just kept sending dreams and prophecies to people until SOMEONE pulled through. And Dagoth Ur got into the habit of infecting everyone who might pose a threat with the Corprus Disease; meaning that either his enemies would become horrible, brainless bloated monsters that everyone would either run away screaming from or kill on sight, or their brains would be warped enough for him to take over so he could turn them into Ascended Sleepers. Or Ash Vampires...
  • If they remembered to have the Shivering Isles expansion overwrite Sheogorath's original voice files with the SI version for the Sheogorath daedric quest in Oblivion, and even remembered to have Haskill be the voice-over if you waited until after you had become Sheogorath to start that quest, then why couldn't they remember to also patch the main quest line when you needed the blood of a daedra lord? Couldn't you have just told Martin "Blood of a daedra lord? Sure, no problem, just let me open a vein. I'm Sheogorath you know."
    • well, you're not really Sheogorath, or a deadra lord. You have power over a deadric sphere, yes, but that doesn't change the fact that you're a mortal from mundas, and mortals aren't deadra... unless, of course, you buy the Mythic Dawn's theory that mundas is simply Akhulakan's sphere and mortals are actually the equivalent of dremora, in which case you are a deadra lord, and this is still a plot hole. Either you just don't think of it, or your inability to use your own blood objectively proves that the Mythic Dawn was mistaken-- whichever answer you prefer. Elder Scrolls games like being ambiguous.
      • The Mythic Dawn theory is based off of the knowledge that a Daedric Realm exists WITHIN the Prince. How could the Shivering Isles even exist if you Weren't actually a DAEDRIC PRINCE!? That's why you can control the weather (and should be able to dojust about anything), you ARE the Shivering Isles!! Besides, it's made clear that Jyggalag would keep his realm, well...Orderly, so it can't exist within himself. And a Daedric Plane CAN'T exist outside a Prince (been stated in-game and in game literature, one of the few things that the lore seems 100% sure on), which is why the Mythic Dawn suspect Mundus is a Deadris Realm.
      • The Mythic Dawn theory makes humans minor daedra, not Princes whose blood would suffice for the ritual, otherwise you could have just found a daedra heart/elemental salts/scamp skin.
    • Actually.. You do get mantled into Sheogorath. It's heavily implied this happens every 1,000 years, plus... it says on the box in addition to Haskill's dialogue if you happen to do the quest for Wabbajack after you complete Shivering Isles.
      • No it's not, it's only said after the thousand years Jyggalag takes over Sheogorath, and then he turns back. It's never even a tad implied that a mortal takes the mantle every thousand years.
      • And even if you did attempt to give him your blood with the "I'm a Daedric Lord!" excuse, he'd think you were a nutjob.
        • If you honestly tell someone that you're Sheogorath, you're a nutjob whether it's true or not. If Martin is savvy enough, he may just discount the relevance of your sanity.
      • Plus, it'd make for the lamest quest ever if all you did was travel to the nearest city and asked the city's doctor (Let's pretend its the person selling potions) to bleed you, then go back to Martin with a small cup of your own blood. I'd much rather do it the game's way.
        • Except it can already be literally that easy already. If you do one of the daedric shrine quests before this point int he main quest, it's basically "Oh, hey Martin, I sort of already have this thing...". Considering you'd have to have completed all of Shivering Isles before the hypothetical presented here is an option, it would actually require considerably more effort.
      • Even if you aren't a Daedric Lord or you couldn't tell Martin about it, a cup filled from the Font of Madness should have done fine.
        • Having just replayed that section, I can tell you all to pay more attention. You need a) a Daedric artifact, and b) the blood of a God. Not the blood of a Daedric prince, the blood of one of the Nine. Unless Sheogorath was recently canonized by the Empire, you would not be able to bypass that quest. You might be able to bypass the "Daedric Artifact" quest, but the only artifact would be Sheogorath's staff.
        • You're missing the point . Yes, the mission was to get a daedric artifact in-game, but that wasn't the point. The explicit purpose driving the magic behind the ritual was to get the blood of a daedric lord, AND the blood of a divine/God. That was the point, getting a piece of the essence from one member of each opposing pantheon, the daedra and the divines. The reason you were sent after a daedric artifact is because an artifact of a daedric prince is formed from their essence, and is the only thing in Nirn that could qualify as the "blood" of a daedra prince. Sure, you wouldn't have been able to complete the "blood of the divines" requirement with anything from Sheogorath's power, but anything from Sheogorath's essence, or the Font of Madness, the heart of the realm, should have completed the "blood of the daedra" requirement.
  • If Jyggalag is the Daedric Prince of Order, where does that leave Peryite?
    • Jyggalag is, essentially, the Void of change. He is immobile, dead, order. Peryite is just orderly order, similar to a hive mind or somesuch.
    • Peryite has also been attributed to "pestilence" and the "commanding of the lowest orders of Oblivion as the Taskmaster."
    • So, Peryite's really just a classic reference to Middle Managment and Lawyers.
  • Anthony Alexander finds it hard to believe that there is only one bookstore in the whole Imperial City. I would chalk it up to Space Compression, but NPC's comment about how they miss the "personal feel of the smaller bookstores," so it's apparently intentional. Given how big the Imperial City supposedly is, and given that it's the Empire's center of learning, this seems really improbable. Even then, the First Edition Bookstore doesn't exactly seem like a huge megacorporation driving out all the competition; it seems like a small shop run by one friendly man.
    • All of the stores in the Market District seem to be monitored by a committee (the Society of Concerned Merchants) of some kind, to ensure that there is little competition - it may be that there is an enforced monopoly on bookstores. Bear in mind that while it may not be enormous, the First Edition has its proximity to the Arcane University in its favour, and it apparently has the capacity to procure rarer books like the Mythic Dawn Commentaries for its clients.
  • If nobody knows who the Grey Fox is, how can his list of crimes include tax evasion? You can't tax somebody when you don't know who they are.
    • Perhaps it's based off of the fact that no one has reported the massive, inexplicable surges in income the Grey Fox would logically have?
    • Knowing him he's probably BOASTED about it at some point. Besides He's the damn Grey Fox. If you hit him with something other than murder chances are he or his predecessors and the newest Fox has.
    • Given that we've seen Hieronymous Lex arrest his own informant for allegedly performing the crime she informed him was going to be committed, I think we can safely say that he issues arrest warrants on a seriously woolly definition of 'probable cause'.
  • Oblivion, Sheogorath's Quest: when you cook the supernaturally-pungent cheese to bring in the "plague of rats", why didn't any of the Khajiit in Border Watch smell it?
    • Since Sheogorath was running the show, maybe he used his powers to pull the wool over their eyes (noses?) and keep them from detecting. Or maybe cheese cooking is a regular occurance in Border Watch and they didn't think anything of an especially strong smelling example. Or maybe they did smell it, but they were too concerned with the rats and the prophecy to think about who put the cheese in the pot . . .
    • Given how strong-smelling the stuff is supposed to be, maybe the scent has just permeated the local atmosphere so much that they don't notice it anymore? The shaman does mention how the smell of their cooking "travels for miles," so apparently stinky food is just a staple of Khajiit culture.
      • But then why is the village not absolutely full of rats in the first place?
  • No one has bothered to clean up abandoned forts that are in plain sight of the Imperial City in Oblivion (you would think the Empire would try to clean up the countryside in its capital province). And how is Mankar Camoran wearing the Amulet of Kings?
    • The Camoran line shares descent with the Septims, going back to the first half of the Third Era. It's All There in the Manual.
      • Considering how utterly crappy the imperial guard is and how stretched thin it is, it's no wonder that they don't bother cleaning up the forts. Besides, they just lost their emperor, and some unholy thing is running around the country gaining control of all the guilds, the city guard, and is probably the most loved thing in the country and could most likely take over the country with a word. Oh, and there's a demonic invasion from Oblivion that was spearheaded by killing their emperor. They simply have more important crap to worry about.
    • Most of the forts are not particularly ugly and are off the beaten trail, so I doubt there is any huge incentive by the public to tidy them up. Like a real-life government the Council only has limited funds collected through taxes - maintaining a continent-spanning Empire is not cheap - and there are presumably more pressing uses for taxpayers' money.
      • If the forts were just out in the back-country, I would agree, however this is just ridiculous. A number of bandit/goblin/undead infested ruins are right next to roads, with Fort Ash being right on top of a road. And judging by the states of those fortresses, they have been abandoned for a loooong time. It's just weird that this empire, whose entire shtick is having the most powerful, organized military in the world, has apparently not held a single location for a hundred years or more. For that mattter, where was this army during the oblivion crisis? Sure, there were the city guards, but that can't be the only members of the army, right?
        • Actually, this is something I have asked myself before and came up with a bit of Fridge Brilliance. Yes, the Empire DOES have an expansive army; we've seen them. However, we have NOT seen them in Cyrodiil, we've seen them in Morrowind. In Morrowind and the other provinces, according to in-game books, especially the "wild" provinces such as Morrowind, Black Marsh, and Elsweyr, there is a strong Imperial presence because these discontent and untamed border provinces are where the Imeperial Legion is needed; NOT in the centrally located, relatively peaceful home province of the Imperials. The Legion we see in Oblivion is a skeleton crew; a very minimal force for the few internal affairs that would pop up. The forts that dot Cyrodiil are relics from bygone eras when the Imperials where beset by enemies on all sides and needed those forts just to hold their own borders. By the time of the Oblivion Crisis, the only major threat is the internal one of the provinces. Any remote chance of an outside invasion, say by the Akaviri, would also be better repelled by forces in the provinces as well, rather than in centrally located Cyrodiil. The reason there are so many long abandoned forts, unoccupied forts is the same reason why the heartland of the greatest empire in Tamriel had to resort to militia to fend off an invasion of demons. Cyrodiil HAS no army any longer. The Legion is in the Empire's provinces, not its capitol.
  • The Gray Prince is the son of an orc and a human vampire. However, vampirism is a disease in this game, so there is no reason why he should even have the pale skin inherited from his father.
    • Well, maybe vampirism is just an (partially?) inheritable disease? Plus, unless you heal yourself via that hard-to-find potion, it does cause permanent bodily changes in the infected, so maybe it also somehow alters their genetic seed or something. Either way, it's a stable rule in fiction that, unless vampires are sterile, their offspring are also partially vampiric.
      • What bothers me is that after he learns he's part-vampire, he gets all angsty and lets you kill him dead in the battle for the title of Grand Champion. Yes, to everyone else, vampires are Complete Monsters, but he's proven himself to be the greatest fighter ever. Surely if they learnt that HE was part-vampire, they wouldn't do a Heel Face Turn and order his immediate death. They'd probably go "Well, as long as he's not killing folks and/or sucking their blood, he's ok in our book." Also, why did it take a complete stranger handing over his father's journal to learn that he was part-vampire? He never had any desire to suck blood out of people?
        • Become a vampire. Now go for a while without sucking blood. People try to kill you. And they know you're a vampire who DOESN'T suck blood. Now then, if people figured out he was part vampire but didn't know he had no desire to suck blood, then they would probably kill him because they think he NIGHTLY sucks blood.
      • Well, I don't think he inherited much from his vampire dad other than the paleness. As was stated above, vampirism is a disease in the Elder Scrolls-verse, but the Grey Prince was conceived sexually. So he probably is even less than a half-vampire. It's unlikely he ever even had the urge to drink blood or suffered under the sun. But yeah, vampires are generally considered Complete Monsters, so I believe he thought himself incurably tainted by his heritage, that he practically inherited the sins of his father, or something. Also, he said that he was always bragging about his noble heritage and fighting for glory because he wanted to be acknowledged properly as a person of valor, whom he believed himself to be due to his noble heritage alone. So in a way, it was what gave him hope and a reason to fight. So finding out that what he had been so proud of earlier actually had a dark secret behind it probably was a big shock.
    • Exactly. It was the shock. It's like if all you knew was that your dad fought in WWII and that he was a great fighter, a hero to his country, blahblahblah....only to discover that he was also part of the Gestapo agency and really admired Hitler. One doesn't recover from something like that without a lot of help.
      • Except Lovidicus was a GOOD man and NOT a Complete Monster. The journal basically shows he was a decent fellow, if vampiric, and only became a ravenous monster when his bigoted mistress cut him off from sustenance.
        • True enough, but still, bigotry runs wild in Cyrodiil - the general population won't care whether Lovidicus was a good man, he was a vampire and that's as much as they care to know. Think of it how, years ago, any esteemed member of the aristocracy may have found themselves shunned and stripped of their power if they were discovered to be an illegitimate child - there's no logical reason behind it, but that prejudice runs deep. The Gray Prince, having based his entire persona on his "noble" lineage, can't face the shame that comes from being the son of a vampire - the prejudice seems common, it's probable that Agronok himself shared this bias.
          • Assuming we can trust his journal, Lovidicus did seem to be a genuinely good person despite his disease. However, judging by the fact that virtually every other vampire you ever meet or hear about is an evil, sadistic and conniving psychopath or a ravenous, feral beast, he may have been unique in this manner. The extreme reactions of his mistress and son upon learning of his condition support this conclusion. In addition, vampirism in the Elder Scrolls universe is ridiculously easy to diagnose and prevent (got vampire blood in an open wound and now you're suffering from horrible nightmares? Get yourself to a church and pray within 3 days. Bam, cured.), so only the most depraved of people would allow themselves to turn. Basically, vampirism doesn't turn you evil, but people who are willing to become vampires generally are evil already, so their reputation is deserved and his families responses are understandable.
      • Understandable my ass. The Prince's mother turned Lovidicus from a decent, if ailed, man into a ravenous beast whose home fell into disrepair, later being infested by bandits and vampires. And then there's also the chance that Lovidicus simply didn't realize he had the disease. You don't start receiving your vampire nightmares until after you turn, anyway...
  • Okay, end game spoilers: Why do we not get credit? We busted our ass from literal hell and back trying to save the world and all we get is a statue in a city and a lousy set of armor. Martin, on the other hand, has done nothing up to the Battle of Bruma but sit in Cloud Ruler Temple reading a book. I'm not saying make the PC an emperor, but at least make it so that he/she isn't playing second fiddle to Martin!
    • But you ARE Martin's second fiddle. Without him reading that book, you would have NO chance of succeeding at all. He was the emperor, you were his Knight.
  • A later quest in the main storyline, blood of the Divines. Jauffree says to get blood that's on the armor of Tiber Septim who became the god Talos. Question is, how long could bloood last on armor? It makes no sense for blood to still be on the armor CENTURIES after the owner died!
    • The owner became a god, retroactively making anything with his blood a holy relic, and thus magic.
  • Okay, complete the Arena and become Grand Champion. Then go talk to the Blue Team Gladiator and he'll be very sad/disappointed that the Grey Prince is dead and bitterly tells you "Congratulations, Grand Champion. Hope it was worth it!" Um, excuse me? He should've known that sooner or later, someone was going to kill his friend in battle, and if he progressed far enough, he'd have to end up killing his buddy himself. What, they were going to talk to the Bladesmaster and say "I don't want the Grand Champion to fight anymore." and Owyn just says "sure"? It's the bleeding ARENA, you stupid Gladiator! Sorry I killed the man. Should've told me before I challenged him!
    • Sure, he almost certainly knew someone would eventually kill his friend, but that doesn't mean he has to be happy about it...
      • It still doesn't make sense. OK, so you're Champion, right? The only way anyone's getting that title is if they killed you. Agronak is the unbeatable Grand Champion, meaning no one else but you were able to kill him. With this in mind, if anyone wanted to become the Grand Champion, they had to a) Kill you, then b) Kill the Grand Champion. Agronak's pretty much safe now since there's no way in hell you're gonna be killed by some lowlife Hero (and you're the PC).
      • Okay, well, when you become the Champion, just leave it as that. Some actually do want to kill the orc and become Grand Champion.
      • Firstly, no, it isn't something to take for granted that someone would eventually kill his friend. No one had had the courage to actually challenge the Prince for the title in years; whenever he preformed it was against monsters for exhibition. Its perfectly reasonable to assume that the Prince would one day simply retire. He's not a slave; he's there by his own choice. And he could leave by his own choice. Secondly, just to repeat the point, he doesn't have to be happy about the fact someone killed his friend. He had apparently gotten so used to the idea that no one had the balls to challenge the Prince, let alone the skill to do it. That reality being shattered likely shocked him.
  • How is an axe a blunt weapon? It's got a big honking blade!
    • They had too many bladed weapons to begin with, and not enough blunt. Needed to balance it a bit.
    • Well, couldn't they have just added some pickaxe weapons? Maybe a sjambok?
    • I can't recall where, but I saw it explained as a matter of similar weight balance. Axes and maces both have heavier heads, while Blade weapons are balanced closer to the middle or hilt. Forgot the exact details though.
    • The main point is in the way they do damage; you don't simply hit things with a sword; when you make contact you pull the blade along the surface so it can cut/carve through. With an ax, you don't do that. You simply crush through, using the blade as a focus point for the pressure. Swords carve and axes crush, which is the same as a hammer or club, just that the damage is more focused.
  • The assassination of Uriel Septim in Oblivion bugs me for one reason: you, the player, are the sole survivor of said assassination--barring one Blade who does not leave the scene--but once you leave the sewers, you can travel anywhere in Tamriel, including right there in the Imperial City, and discover that the news of the Emperor's death has preceded you. How hard would it have been to script in a little delay? Taking the Amulet of Kings to Weynon Priory would have felt more realistic if you'd been given a line like, "Hey, the Emperor's dead. Here's his necklace."
    • The assassin's put word out for some reason?
    • I imagined that someone from the blades walked out and then walekd back in.
    • Remember that this is a fantasy setting - assuming Baurus (or even the Emperor himself) didn't use some kind of spell to alert the Council, the Dragonfires extinguising certainly would. Also, Space Compression - just because you can travel from the sewer exit to the Imperial City in a matter of minutes, in-universe the trip might take at least an hour (looking at the supposed size of the Imperial City isle) - plenty of time for word to spread. As a Council-funded endeavour, the Black Horse Courier would be able to publish any details almost as soon as the Council knew.
    • The fact that the Emperor's sons are dead and that Blades were escorting the Emperor from Palace to Prison suggests that Mythic Dawn was attacking for quite some time, so Elder Council knew his life is at risk. And when the Emperor dies, the Dragonfires extinguish. Knowing that the Emperor's life is at risk, Elder Council, or Okato alone probably have spent some time in Temple of the One and when the Dragonfires extinguished, he, as the head of the Elder Council, ordered Black Horse Courier to print the "Emperor's Dead" issue.
    • This is an RPG - news travels at the speed of light. This is a setting where I accidentally steal a bowl trying to talk to someone and my crime is reported to the guards three towns over.
  • Why is there a giant sized chair, club, hourglass and crystal ball in the basement of the imperial palace? They're at least 20x normal size and under guard by the imperial watch in a restricted area, which would lead one to think they're some kind of special artifacts, but I can't find any explanation for them in the game or on the internet. This is really bugging me!
    • I would probably say they were just Easter Eggs. Or, if you wanna stretch it, the giant chair is the Throne of the Emperor himself...
      • I would agree that they're probably just silly eater eggs, were it not for the fact that the giant hourglass is integral to the final thieves guild quest, and thus you must visit and interact with these strange and unexplained gigantic items to finish that quest.
  • It always bothered me how some people believe you never did anything to deserve the title of Champion of Cyrodiil and that Martin did all the work. This is simply not true. You liberated Kvatch and made recovery a possiblity. You destroyed one of the Mythic Dawn's main strongholds. You stymied the invasion by destroying hundreds of Oblivion Gates. You saved Bruma from a Daedra attack before it even occurred. You destroyed Dagon's best weapon (the Siege Engine). You killed Mankar Camoran and wiped out the Mythic Dawn once and for all. You retrieved the Amulet of Kings. Yes, Martin's ultimately the one who saves the day, but none of it would have been possible without your efforts.
    • Probably because it's easier for the writers to just say "Martin saved the day" since there is no list of names to choose from and there is a shitton of possible combinations that might all conflict each other - you'll notice that they actually tried to make it seem like a bunch of Daggerfall's endings were canonical and that Uriel has never mentioned that he was trapped in Oblivion for awhile during the events of Arena.
    • Nah, a couple years after the events of Oblivion, you killed a religious figure who turned into a demon and was declared a heretic and likewise was erased from history.
  • Does anyone else notice that the games are just really really glitchy? Numerous times I've accidentally done something like gotten stuck in a wall, somehow got killed by rats attacking me from across the room (Rats shooting arrows?) or made the main quest unwinnable in Daggerfall, and have managed to somehow glitch myself up to getting practically free training points in Morrowind. The only thing I noticed was just that the glitches in the later two games were more towards the player's favour rather than breaking the main quest.
    • One could say that about many, many A-grade cRPGs. Looking through my collection I think there was one game that I didn't have some major issues, and there's at least two here that can't be finished without first being patched.
  • Thieves Guild Spoilers!! It is revealed in a very late TG quest that anyone who reads the Elder Scrolls start to progressivley go blind. So when your character sees this scroll, reads it (as you do before you take it, like with any book/scroll), why is he/she not stricken with blindness? Does it require that one continually read the scroll, not just scan it like your character seemed to do?
    • Pretty much. Seeing an Elder Scroll and reading an Elder Scroll are two different things. Your character most likely saw the scroll and had the same reaction you probably did: "WTF is this squiggly writing? I can't read it, but whatever it is this sucker's mine now. YOINK!"
    • Considering the quest you're talking about, your character also doesn't have time to waste trying to read the scroll. They're in the Imperial Palace surrounded by guards and blind priests who would not hesitate to kill him/her upon discovery. It's get in, grab the thing and get the hell out.
    • From Skyrim, a book explaining the Scrolls claims that there are different types of Elder Scroll readers depending on how well the reader understands the Scrolls' nature. The character doesn't understand what they are, so only sees meaningless symbols. The priests have some understanding, which is why they get driven blind.
  • Why do Peryite and Boethiah's planes of Oblivion look identical to Mehrunes Dagon's?
    • Well, Boethia(h) apparently has influence over several planes of Oblivion; he says in his quest dialogue that "I shall open a portal for you to one of my realms," implying that he controls more than one. As for Peryite, you just get told that his followers are trapped in a plane of Oblivion, not necessarily his plane of Oblivion.
    • If you cheeck the quest markers, the location is actually called the Realm of Peryite. It raises strange questions:

1) Why does Peryite has Dremora-styled towers in his plane?
2) Why are there Dremoras walking around his plane?
3) Why, being the Daedric Prince and serving as the embodiment of his own plane, can't Peryite kick the souls of his followers out of his plane AND kill Dremoras who aren't happy to see neither you, nor the souls of worshippers. In fact, he acts very happy and relieved when you find his shrine. Can't he control his plane?

    • Taking a Wild Mass Guessing route, I'd say that Dagon tried to get other Daedric lords follow his dark crusade against Nirn. Peryite refused and Dagon's forces invaded his plane to the point of changing it's general view to that of the Dagon's (like Jyggalag and his Forces of Order change the aspects of Sheogorath's realm). That's why dremoras want to kill you and torture souls, and Peryite is hardly holding his realm in one piece to actively help you.
    • Because the level devs didn't care anything about the lore. You may as well ask why Cyrodiil wasn't a temperate rain forest and Imperial City didn't fill the entire island.
      • But, believe it or not, Cyrodiil is a Temperate Rain Forest outside of Colovia (Long-established as plains anyway). While there is some deforestation around the cities, most of the landmass is rather heavily forested, and it rains extremely frequently. What it isn't, though, is a tropical rainforest. What Just Bugs Me is people don't know the difference between temperate and tropical rainforests.
      • Actually, there are a number of sources that refer to it as a jungle as well (like before the ages of men( which, oddly enough, first appeared in oblivion)
    • To repeat, Peryite never says his followers are in his plane of oblivion, and makes a point of saying "I will transport you to the plane of oblivion where their souls are trapped". It's possible that because they did the ritual during Dagon's invasion, the Deadlands were simply "closer" to Tamriel than the Quagmire, so that's where their souls landed.
  • Oblivion: How is it possible to poison your weapon when you're underwater?
    • It's a non-washable paste. It only emulsifies in blood.
  • The bizarre chop suey culture. It looks like it takes renaissance Europe, tosses in a little bit of Feudal Japan, and dumps in a metric crapton of magic. Does it even remotely make sense? NO, NO IT DOESN'T. the story is good, but the stitched-together culture ruins it for me.
    • It didn't ruin it for me. It made sense why the Blades look like European versions of the Japanese samurai. They're old, the history going back into time immemorial. Same with the Samurais. They are an old ideal, going back hundreds of years.
    • Um... if you paid attention to the history of Tamriel it would all make sense. The "Feudal Japan" bits were imported from the other side of the world, and preserved solely through isolated tradition. And if you think having Akavir be a Feudal Japan while Tamriel's Rennaissance Europe is wierd, then how do you justify the difference in real life? They're both on opposite sides of their respective worlds.
  • How was Lord Lovidicus locked away for so long? The only thing trapping him for those several decades was a locked wooden door. A thick wooden door admittedly, but you'd thick with his vampiric enhanced strength and nothing else to do with his time he'd have eventually broken it down. And didn't he have any other servants who could have let him out? His mistress locks him in his bedroom, and no one else ever thinks to come check on him, despite him being, ya know, a noble?
    • Given that he was a vampire having an interspecies relationship with an Orc, I don't think it would be too much of a stretch to believe he doesn't have any other servants. I imagine he needed privacy. The door itself was half a foot think and showed no signs of decay. No man could break that down, no matter how strong.
    • I got the impression that the specific place you find him wasn't actually his main manor; that wasn't where he tended the nobles and held court. That was his little spot out in the country he'd take his she-orc for their alone time. I mean, the door leads directly into the crypt; the place is literally a tomb. It is somewhat strange that he didn't get through the door as he did have items inside that he could have broken apart and used to chisels his way through given enough time, but in all likelihood after so long without blood he was too feral to even register that the door was his way out, instead just blindly wandering around searching for blood.
  • The Khajiit forms being related to the phase of the moon when they're born thing doesn't make a lot of sense. The child has been developing, growing inside the womb for a number of months, one assumes it is going to have a predefined body shape before it actually comes out. What happens if labor's induced or the child is cut out before the full term? Would make more sense if it were determined by the phase of the moon during conception rather than birth.
    • Maybe it is determined by conception, but everyone calculates it wrong and the actual dates are nine months earlier. Say, for example, a Kahjiit Ohmes-Raht during one moon phase, and they call that phase the Ohmes-Raht phase, but the actual Ohme-Raht cycle really happened nine months earlier. They don't notice the inconsistency because all of their calculations are off by the length of the average pregnancy.
    • It's mentioned that when Khajiit are born, they are much smaller and less developed than the children of other species, but have a growth spurt afterwards. Presumably, its only during the growth spurt that they take their final form.
  • How exactly does the fighter's guild operate? I'm picking up contracts in Cheydinhal that take me down south of Bravil, and even towards Leyawinn. I'm being called to go down to Bravil from Chorral to fix up Maglir's mess. You can write it off with the Bravil guild either being too busy/stretched too thin to take care of it, but it's a plot point that the guild as a whole and Leyawiin especially is losing work to the Blackwood company; wouldn't it make sense for them to get the contracts down there, or at least for the player to pick up contracts from those halls instead of having to go to Cheydinhal or Anvil?
    • The way it appears to me is that somebody with a contract brings it to a guildhall. If everybody there passes on the contract for whatever reason, then it gets sent along to another city. Repeat until the contract is withdrawn or somebody does the job.
      • Still, a lot of it makes less than sense. When Maglir defaults the second time, Oryen knows about it in Chorral while he's down in Bravil. Ok, fine, except the lady hiring for the job never reported that Maglir didn't make contact, she makes it fairly clear that she's been waiting for the first guy to show up and doesn't realize you're a replacement. The last contract you get, in Anvil, to go retrieve the Stone of Alessia, is worse. The guy incharge in Anvil says that it's been on the books for a little while. When you get to Bruma, which is no short distance away, the priest acts as if it has been stolen maybe a night ago, and that there's still a good chance of catching the bandits out on the road(which you do, the lone survivor is insanely close to the city gates). It boggles the mind why I'm getting this quest in Anvil as opposed to Bruma, and indeed, you don't have to go into or interact with any guildhall except for Anvil, Cheydinhal, and Chorral. Maybe this was done to contrast with the Mage's Guild questline that requires you interact with every single one, but that does make sense. The end result is you taking control of the guild. Would make sense for you to have a working history and relationship with the people under you.
  • Was Reynald Jemane the only resident of Chorral that wasn't in Cheydenhal last week?
    • Moreover, it wasn't exactly secret that Papa Jemane had twin boys and that one was believed dead. Seems somewhat odd that no one thought the town drunk randomly being in another town for no apparent reason, without at all smelling of booze or talking with the slightest slur, might actually be the long lost kid.
      • Well, everybody else from Chorral was there, no reason for them to think Reynald wasn't there too.
  • Was your character just recently tossed in the IC jail? In the beginning of the game, Valen Dreth's dialogue implies that this is the first time he's seen you in his eleven years of being in jail (Got that from a certain quest). If you play as a male Dumner, he implies it when he says he hasn't seen "another Dunmer in here in I don't know how long". But if you're roleplaying that your character was in jail for a long time, wouldn't it clash with Valen's dialogue?
    • Your character might have just been transferred to the Imperial City's specific dungeon from another dungeon-there's one in every major city in Cyrodiil, after all. When Captain Renault questions why there's a prisoner in the cell, Glenroy says that it was probably due to a "usual mixup at the watch." Uriel Septim implies that you might have ended up in this specific cell due to direct intervention from the Nine Divines. Point is, you could have been in prison for a long time before the game started without necessarily having been in this specific prison all the while.
  • Going off of the Fighter's Guild question above, I have two specific things about the questline that leave me scratching my head.
    • First is the Stone of Saint Alessia contract. Now, ignoring the things about it that don't make sense as mentioned above (Anvil to Bruma, and the quest's timeline), what exactly where the ogres doing with the stone? It's mentioned they steal it because they like shiny things...then they place it carefully on a pedestal, behind a carefully locked gate, with carefully placed traps, and general behavior that seems very un-ogre like. Were they worshiping the stone? Was there some darker purpose that just went unresolved? Was this an aborted arch that was supposed to go somewhere and got lost in the shuffle?
    • Second is Maglir. I'm not getting why he defected and defaulted beyond being the token traitor. The first job, ok, that was fairly dangerous. Zombies were involved and I can't fault anyone for not wanting to get involved with zombies. The second one however was as bare simple a job as a member of the fighter's guild can get...and he runs to Blackwood Company, citing more work and more pay...but if his problem was danger, cowardice, and what not, wouldn't the idea of more serious, dangerous work be a turn-off for him? Hist-sap not withstanding? Also felt like it was a waste of a perfectly good plot; Maglir turning traitor had no emotional value at all. From the beginning you know this is a character with no redeeming qualities who's going to jump ship. No one can be surprised by this except by simply not caring enough about the character to notice the signs flashing. There's no emotional weight to it, and even when you kill him it's not so much kick the son of a bitch as it's...well, no different from swatting another bug.
      • I got the feeling that was the point. He's kind of The Scrappy of the Fighters Guild missions. There's not supposed to be any emotional weight there, he exists just to be another pest you get to swat (except you've probably wanted to swat this one since you met him but weren't allowed to by guild law). As for why he kept blowing off his missions, he was probably too much of a coward to do them, but used the "I don't get paid enough to do this" excuse. His greed probably lead him to join Blackwood, ignoring the likely danger (assuming they don't just abandon all their dangerous missions like they did with Azani Blackheart). It's likely Blackwood Company would've scrapped him (or worse) before long (assuming the Hist-sap wasn't actually making him useful).
  • What happened to the guy who voiced the Dunmer characters in Morrowind? His voice was heard in one of Oblivion's developer diaries but in the actual game all male elves use the same voice-actor. (Then again, considering all the other things that were shown in the developer diaries only to be left out...)
  • Why do people hate the Adoring Fan so much? He's a hilariously useless joke character! I might understand the hatred if he were the subject of an Escort Mission but as is you can just ignore him and never have him follow you. If nothing else, people seem to enjoy using him as an expendable punching bag who never calls the guards or fights back, so he does add some entertainment value to the game.
    • They 'hate' him for the same reason that they 'hate' Fargoth. It's more Memetic Mutation than actual hate.
  • Why doesn't finishing the Fighter's Guild quest provide you with a follower? Both the Dark Brotherhood and the Mage's Guild have followers available after completion. I'm mainly bringing this up because in the Allies For Bruma/Defense of Bruma quests, I'm not seeing a logical reason why as Guildmaster I can't just go and order all the Guild Halls to reinforce Bruma. The only answer I can think of being you can't do that for the others, but at least you can get followers from the other factions to act as backup.
    • Most Fighters Guild members are not there out of loyalty to the guild; they're mercenaries, they fight for gold. And the average Fighters Guild jobs pay about 600 gold per job at the highest levels, plus more than has to go to the Guild itself. (For things such as the Master's cut of the profits.) You'd have to pay each fighter you recruited to help, probably extra, considering that journeying with the PC or standing with an army to face an impending invasion of numberless demons are probably more difficult and dangerous than clearing rats out of somebody's basement or hunting down a couple of ogres. Still, I have to agree that you should be able to hire Fighters Guild members, even if it costed money.
  • So the entire plot for oblivion centers around the barriers of oblivion fading because there is no heir to the empire who wields the amulet of kings. According to pretty much every NPC in the game, this is the first time this has happened. My problem being that it has happened before. During the rule of the akaviri potentates, there was no emperor, and during the interregnum, the amulet of kings was in sancre tor. That's 900 years of history in which the dragonfires would not be lit, the entirety of the second era. So, was ol' Mehrunes just sleeping during this period? Am I missing some explanation? Also, note that during the time of oblivion, this was about 500 years ago, so why does no one know about it? There would be elves that lived through the entire period!
    • You know, I was just wondering the same thing. Even within the third era there were periods of several weeks between the death of an emperor and the coronation of an heir. Since Dagon can invade even though Martin's alive, he should have been able to do so during those periods as well.
    • It's possible that the Akaviri potentates were Dragonborn like the Septims and thus could light the Dragonfires. No idea about the Interregnum.
    • It's not that White-Gold Tower and the Amulet of Kings were the only things keeping the Daedra out. They're simply the last, and perhaps the best known. The towers and the stones, of which there are many, were constructed to allow the world to exist without a god having to stick around every but as a side effect served as a barrier to daedric intrusion. As interpreted from Word of Dante text, Nu-Mantia Intercept.
      • But those things are still as intact as they were in the interregnum, so the total level of protection should be the same.
        • Ah, but not all those are still intact: Red Mountain was shut-down in Morrowind and Walk-Brass (Numidium, that is) may have been 'destroyed' in Daggerfall.
        • Actually, looking back through history, the first time Mehrunes Dagon invaded was at the end of the first era, at the start of the interregnum, when, you guessed it, there was no dragonborn emperor (but an akaviri potentate). However, this raises another question: Why was Mehrunes Dagon the only daedric prince to invade during the interregnum? Most daedric lords don't seem to have any interest in mortal affairs, but there are a few who it seems would relish at the opportunity. Azura could finally face the tribunal. Hircine would dig a chance to hunt people. Molag Bal would love to do some unspeakable things to the locals. Meridia could get a chance to finally destroy all the undead. Namira would love to om-nom-nom some mortals.
          • Given that Mehrunes Dagon is associated with Destruction, Ambition and Change, it may be that his invasions are the most ambitious and extensive ones - the other mortal affairs-interested lords may well have done things... but because Mehrunes Dagon was doing this loud, noisy thing, the histories of the time failed to record them. Azura and Hircine might also have other reasons for being more low-key - openly facing her enemies isn't really Azura's style, she's more of a manipulator, and while Hircine does love himself some mortal-hunting, he relishes the sport of the thing - if the prey has no chance, where's the fun? - so limiting himself to restricted avatars and nabbing the Big Guys of the age (as he did in Bloodmoon) is perfectly in character even if he theoretically could go for a more extensive presence on Mundus.
  • Here's a major one for Oblivion- the PC starts out in the imperial prison, presumably locked up for a crime(anything from murder to picking up some random object- Cyrodill's justice system is pretty strict) and almost promptly escapes when the emperor opens the hidden passage. How come no one is looking for this escaped prisoner? Given that every crime you commit, even with no witnesses, is immediately reported to every guard in the game, it seems funny that your prior crime and subsequent escape are practically written off by the legal system. Were you assumed dead? Did Baurus tell everyone the emperor chose you for a task? Or are crimes automatically pardoned through an "escape prison" loophole?
    • Well, there's a certain degree of gameplay and story segregation there with how instantly your crimes are reported, but yea, that kind of struck me as odd that your past criminal record, whatever it may have been, is completely unknown/ignored. For a fantastic explanation, Uriel could have been right about the gods placing you in that cell(it was supposed to stay empty, after all). Alternatively, the presumed dead thing is viable. Baurus might have reported you as dead or the cell as empty or had records falsified to cover your mission. Then again, as I write that I seem to recall a Dark Brotherhood mission that states the prisoner escape is known, and hints that the questgiver(the vampire who's name escapes me) knows you're the escaped prisoner.
    • I agree. Vincente implies that he knew you were the one who escaped as he discusses with you the contract to eliminate Valen Dreth. This is confirmed with the two guards that have a conversation, particularly the line, "...Since that other one [you] got away, he's the only one rotting down here."
    • It might have been something really minor - heck, you could have been put in for sleeping in the streets of the imperial city, yet fate put you in there. Or maybe Azura put you there and wiped everyone's memories about you.
    • There's an in-game book in Skyrim about the Oblivion Crisis that states that Uriel pardoned the player character for their crimes. While we know that didn't explicitly happen, it could be that by allowing the Prisoner to follow him and his guard, Uriel was implicitly pardoning them for whatever they did, so Baurus relayed that to the authorities when he reported in. Or it could be conjecture on the part of whoever wrote the book in universe.
  • Another one- I somehow racked up 3 murders during the Shivering Isles main quest series(I think that fighting any of the Apostles counts as murder if you're wearing their robes) and got a visit from Lucien. I didn't want to do the DB quests(my character resurrected the Knights Of The Nine and defeated Umaril, rose to the rank of Fighter's Guild master, and became Sheogorath in a heroic victory, so was more or less noble) but since it can't be turned down, I cheated by attacking him. I was in the Fighter's Guild main hall in Chorrol so 3 FG members ended up wiping the floor with him. Now then, here's what I don't get- the DB supposedly sees you when you first commit murder but if you choose to end the DB quest by killing Lucien, then they... do nothing. Don't they notice you offing one of their higher-ranking men if they can see any murder? I would've thought they'd retaliate but in the game, killing Lucien ends the DB quest and no more is heard. Attacking him isn't even considered assault by the game's crime system. It just seems odd to me that the DB literally just doesn't care if you kill one of their speakers when he offers you a place in their group.
    • ...Good question.
    • It's possible that getting murdered by potential recruits is simply considered an occupational hazard for Speakers. They're sent after sociopaths all the time, it's probable that they're attacked as often as not.
    • Alternatively, Lucien was the one watching you in the first place. So when you kill him, the Dark Brotherhood is not observing you, and you get away scot-free.
    • Even if the Dark Brotherhood was aware of you, do you really think that they're going to keep messing with someone who was so insulted by an invitation to join them that he or she slaughtered a Speaker, one of their most elite members, in response? Honestly, if I was on the Black Hand at that point, I would have told everyone else in the Brotherhood to stay away from that person so we wouldn't lose any more perfectly good assassins!
  • Glass weaponry. Wouldn't a glass sword shatter if you hit it against something?
    • Sigh. Once again, in the world of Elder Scrolls, the material 'Glass', does not refer to the same glass-made-of-sand. It's a volcanic material, similar to Ebony. It's used to make weapons and armor due to its flexability, durability, and lightness.
      • You mean, similar to 'Ebony' (scare-quotes required). Because real-world ebony is a type of wood, whereas in-game 'ebony' is a kind of volcanic glass that looks like obsidian but behaves entirely differently.
      • Bleh, I was hoping someone would catch this now that Skyrim is out. Now that you have the ability to make weapons and armor yourself, you actually see that 'glass' is a colloquialism for weapons/armor forged using a form a malachite. 'Ebony' is still used in a manner inconsistent with our own real-world ebony, but I suppose artistic licensing can let them do that.
          • I think you're confusing real world "ebony" with real world obsidian. Ebony is, as mentioned, wood, and obsidian is volcanic glass. That being said, the ingame material malachite is apparently very different from real world obsidian, which while exceptionally sharp is also extremely brittle. The aztecs used clubs lined with obsidian blades that were largely one use only weapons as the blades would shatter on impact.
        • For the record, it was clear since Morrowind that glass was some form of mineral rather than glass as such. There were glass mines in that game, remember? We just didn't know the proper name of the mineral.
  • Help me with this. When you do the "Breaking the Seige of Kvatch", it's either made clear or implied that the Kvatch guards you see are the only ones remaining after the initial attack. So...where does Mattius manage to get two extra guards to send to Bruma later in the game when you're gathering up troops for its defense? They don't look like the civillians in the camp or the ones you rescued from the chapel. Where did these two extra guards come from?
    • Perhaps he recruited them. Personally, Oblivion being Oblivion, I wouldn't look too much into why people look, well, different.

Martin: ...Unlike Daedric lords, the gods don't manifest themselves into our world. How then, to obtain the blood of the gods? But Jauffre solved it. The blood of Tiber Septim himself, who became one of the Divines. This is a secret passed down only by the blades from one Grandmaster to the next.

My issue is the last line. Basically, according to lore, the first emperor ascended and became the god Talos. Now, Martin is a priest. He obviously worshipped the Nine. So how could he not have figured it out for himself? It would take only two minutes at best: "Hey, we need the blood of the Divines. Now, out of all the gods, which one used to be a living person? Ah! Of course! Tiber! I wonder if his armor is still around, and if there's some of his blood left on it?" I swear, I think Martin was being unusually stupid there... Don't tell me 'Martin may well have done that' because Martin's dialogue implies he knew next to nothing about Tiber becoming Talos.

  • The intended implication was probably that the secret passed down was that Tiber Septim's armor is still around, and they know exactly where it is, so Jauffre's solution is providing the second part of your proposed reasoning - Martin doesn't have that much of a reason to think Tiber's armor is still around and still has his blood on it. The dialogue doesn't really make that clear, though, so...
    • (OP here) Ah, so basically the implication is that Martin did ask himself "Which god was once a human being?", then went to Jaufre and asked, "Hey, um, is there any relics of Tiber Septim lying around per chance, still?"
      • That's the idea. Mind, the game doesn't give one much to work with, but at least it is a better implication than 'Martin is either unusually stupid at the time or doesn't even have a basic knowledge of the faith he is a priest of', so...
  • Okay, so in terms of game world size, how big is Skyrim compared to Morrowind and Oblivion?
    • Roughly the same size as in Oblivion, but with fewer empty areas.
  • So what's the average lifespan of someone living in Tamriel? Do people in this world live about as long as we would have in a similair setting? Do all races live for about the same length of time? Do all Elves live to be 200 or more? What about Khajiit and Argonians?
    • I don't think definite numbers have ever been set down; Uriel was pretty spry for an 87 year old but didn't look like he had much left in him, so I'd put humans down for real world lifespans adjusted for region and access to restoration magic. You do meet at least one elf in Skyrim, a dunmer, who mentions that she's been around for over two hundred years and most elves imply they live considerably longer than humans. Orcs are implied to have somewhat shorter life spans than humans (a very likely allegorical ingame book says that all humans once lived as long as elves, that they were cursed with accelerated aging by one of the gods, and that another god took the bulk of that curse and slapped it on the orcs, drastically reducing their own lifespan).
    • Dunno about the beast races, but Dunmer are known to be quite long-lived (no word on the other elf races that I'm aware of). Queen Mother Barenziah was born during the reign of Tiber Septim, and looks to be in her mid-forties (in human terms) in Tribunal, several hundred years later. Then there's Divayth Fyr, that Telvanni wizard in eastern Vvardenfell who runs the Corprusarium. His Opposite Gender Clone Alfe Fyr says that he's over four thousand years old, which unless I'm very much mistaken would make him a contemporary of Nerevar.
      • He was a contemporary (he was born before Nerevar, actually), but Telvanni wizard-lords are not the most reliable way to decide lifespans - they explicitly have access to and use life-lengthening magic of sorts that goes beyond the pale for ordinary people (and powerful wizards tends to live longer in general). A problem is that we do have words on the lifespan of the other Mer (at least, the Altmer)... but those words are connected to an average lifespan for the Dunmer that Skyrim repeatedly contradicts as being too low.
  • Why is it that people will use the strongest locks available to safeguard used paintbrushes, worthless earthernware, and spools of yarn?
  • AM I the only one who thinks this would pretty much be a direct violation of the spirit of The Elder Scrolls? Especially since it's only helping to prove the industry right that every game has to have mediocre multiplayer and online capabilities to be noticed?
    • While I'd like to point out that "anonymous industry insider" is hardly a reliable source, I will say that I'm cautiously optimistic about the prospect of an Elder Scrolls mmo. I think it's the best chance we'd have to see the whole continent of Tamriel and possibly beyond. Also, elder scrolls has always been a more story/roleplay driven game, and making that a social experience could prove beneficial.
  • In Oblivion, how the hell does the Mages' Guild get away with using the protagonist as a mercenary to hunt down all the necromancers? Their rules forbid necromancy, yes, but they explicitly mention that Imperial Law doesn't. It's like if the Fighter's Guild made a law against using poisoned arrows, and so they sent you to kill all the people who use them in spite of its legality.
    • They don't. You join the Mages' Guild, so you aren't a mercenary, and the Mages' Guild doesn't send you to hunt down all the necromancers. They send you to attack the Order of the Black Worm, who (beyond the Guild's banning of necromancy by Guild members, which, while misguided, was within the rights of the Council of Mages) had struck first and are led by a known criminal.
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