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RBA Starblade
Apr 28, 2008

Going Home.

Games Idiot Court Jester

quote:

I'd like a Kirkbride please, shaken not stirred, hold the Vivec.

My favorite part of Morrowind lore is the part where Vivec saw the Morrowind cd.

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Shoehead
Sep 28, 2005

Wassup, Choom?
Ya need sumthin'?

RBA Starblade posted:

My favorite part of Morrowind lore is the part where Vivec saw the Morrowind cd.

I loving love that the I in CHIM is a Tower and also a sideways CD.


e: Or...at least I think it was?

Shoehead fucked around with this message at 14:55 on Jun 21, 2016

Philippe
Aug 9, 2013

(she/her)
I'd actually like it if MK got to write another Elder Scrolls game, New Vegas-style.

RBA Starblade
Apr 28, 2008

Going Home.

Games Idiot Court Jester

Shoehead posted:

I loving love that the I in CHIM is a Tower and also a sideways CD.


e: Or...at least I think it was?

Yeah it was something like that, and he saw the grooves on the disc and the label and all that. The stuff like that is why in Skyrim I love that when asked by Alduin why you even want to stop the world from being remade, you can just answer "I like this one, I don't want it to end". It felt pretty meta to me. The new background lore stuff needs to get wild again in 6.

i am tim!
Jan 5, 2005

God damn it, where are my ant keys?! I'm gonna miss my flight!
Oh man, the best part about that thing is that it works so well and Mike Kirkbride hates that interpretation SOOO dang much. I wouldn't be surprised if he had a shitfit when the Metaphysics of Morrowind blog went up, guy has a lot of those.

i am tim! fucked around with this message at 15:18 on Jun 21, 2016

mbt
Aug 13, 2012

Node posted:

That's incredibly impressive. I'm going to play it, eventually. Is there a way to tell which areas are fleshed out, and which just have the terrain done?

when you download it it comes with TR_Mainland which is 100% finished areas. TR_Preview is everything else in varying states of done. Some areas in Preview are finished but have unfinished areas around them so they aren't released yet.

Node posted:

Also, do you have any idea if there a mod for Morrowind that makes Daedric equipment harder to get? In my opinion, it appeared way too early on the leveled lists, and there were some pieces you could get it way too easily. Like the Daedric Dai-katana on the Dren Plantation

lol uh

maybe BTBs mod

but that mod is so anti fun

Captain Scandinaiva posted:

Whoa, I've never noticed that. Though I did notice, when mucking around in the CS, that a lot of buildings don't match up with their interiors.

Also, I didn't even know they had quests implemented for some areas already. Sounds like the project has reached some kind of tipping point where you can actually see the end of it and it won't just run out of steam?

it's been restarted 3 times at this point, but this incarnation seems like the most stable and dedicated to not releasing garbage. the first release up north is garbage please don't go there. Go east from sadrith mora and never go north of there.

Ynglaur
Oct 9, 2013

The Malta Conference, anyone?
Are there actual quests and such in Tamriel Rebuilt?

Sky Shadowing
Feb 13, 2012

At least we're not the Thalmor (yet)

Ynglaur posted:

Are there actual quests and such in Tamriel Rebuilt?

Yes, there are. IC, FG, TG, MG, and (to a far lesser extent) the Temple have some guild quests. House Telvanni has basically their Mouth quests done and a long storyline with Master Mithras in Ranyon-Ruhn (you do not actually have to be in Telvanni for that one). There are also a good number of miscellaneous quests.

Archonex
May 2, 2012

MY OPINION IS SEERS OF THE THRONE PROPAGANDA IGNORE MY GNOSIS-IMPAIRED RAMBLINGS

Chief Savage Man posted:

The best part about Dawnguard is that the whole point of the good choices is to prevent a guy from blotting out the sun because it would be the most disastrous thing to ever happen then when it's done you can ask the lady for arrows that will blot out the sun and she's more than happy to make them for you. Then you blot out the sun, and it's spooky and people comment that it seems bad, then it goes back to normal and everything is fine.

It's a bit old, but to be fair, you are one of the nastier types of vampires out there. Dawnguard is great like that.

Your first impression of these guys is them literally messily dining on the still-living bodies (Look at them carefully when you first show up! :stare:) of some captives. By default, choosing to join them is basically saying you're at least a notch under "blot out the sun and cackle maniacally as the mortal herd withers and dies under your iron grip". It's just that it's an Elder Scroll game, so it doesn't comment on you being a bastard.

Edit: I mean what's trespassing into a hellscape dimension and hacking off eldritch abominations, committing what's essentially patricide on both your parts, murdering the next to last member of an ancient species, possibly soul trapping the crap out of people after you learn what happens to them, and all the other crap you can possibly get up too compared to throwing up some shade for an hour or two?

Archonex fucked around with this message at 17:12 on Jun 21, 2016

RBA Starblade
Apr 28, 2008

Going Home.

Games Idiot Court Jester

I still want to know which of the two dozen space satans I sold my soul to gets first crack at it.

mbt
Aug 13, 2012

is there really no Hlaalu mod that makes these quests not terrible

I'm going to make one

as soon as I finish my adamantium armor mod. I'm still looking for HQ adamantium textures as a base to do some simple edits to, darknut is probably dead so he isn't responding

Sky Shadowing
Feb 13, 2012

At least we're not the Thalmor (yet)

RBA Starblade posted:

I still want to know which of the two dozen space satans I sold my soul to gets first crack at it.

The joke may be on them, none of them. You're Dragonborn. As is demonstrated only a dragon can take your soul.

Philippe
Aug 9, 2013

(she/her)
So... Since the Dragonborn canonically killed Alduin and Miraak, and were probably running around afterwards killing all of the other dragons that Alduin raised, who gets their soul when they finally keel over? Akatosh?

Or is the Dovahkiin immortal?

i am tim!
Jan 5, 2005

God damn it, where are my ant keys?! I'm gonna miss my flight!
I figure that it's the PC's choice when the time comes by virtue of being a Capital H Hero or Dragonborn. You can meet other Dragonborns in Sovngard so I doubt Akatosh has a valid claim or even cares. Since all the Daedric Princes are fine with you pledging your already-pledged-soul to get their artifact, we can reason that they might just be gambling for the chance to get your big hero dragon soul for bragging rights or something.

Besides, there's a whole quest that amounts to scamming Hircine out of a pledged soul and sending it to Sovngard, so they probably don't have as much power in the matter than they care to admit.

Ojjeorago
Sep 21, 2008

I had a dream, too. It wasn't pleasant, though ... I dreamt I was a moron...
Gary’s Answer
The LDB is a Shezzarine so if/when they die it goes back to Lorkhan.

TresTristesTigres
Feb 14, 2013

Posts from UnDeR9R0Und

Shbobdb posted:

Is this a joke?

That got me too dude. Node was that you that had the Purple Link avatar or am I confusing you with another curmudgeon

i am tim! posted:

I figure that it's the PC's choice when the time comes by virtue of being a Capital H Hero or Dragonborn. You can meet other Dragonborns in Sovngard so I doubt Akatosh has a valid claim or even cares. Since all the Daedric Princes are fine with you pledging your already-pledged-soul to get their artifact, we can reason that they might just be gambling for the chance to get your big hero dragon soul for bragging rights or something.

Besides, there's a whole quest that amounts to scamming Hircine out of a pledged soul and sending it to Sovngard, so they probably don't have as much power in the matter than they care to admit.

Yeah this. Plus Skyrim Guy is a shezzarine for sure. So you're probably going to go chill on that big throne in Sovngard that was suspiciously empty when you went there in the main quest.

e:f,b sort of

i am tim!
Jan 5, 2005

God damn it, where are my ant keys?! I'm gonna miss my flight!
I don't get why people say he's a Shezzarine for sure. There's next to nothing that indicates as such except for a half baked "You can't see Shor because YOU ARE SHOR!" And even that requires you to ignore the dude RIGHT THERE that says it's because you're not ready to be accepted into Sovngard yet. Because you're not dead.

It's not like anyone is calling you The Fox or any of the other given signs. Heck, the fact that you can be an Elf is a pretty big exclusionary factor given the four major examples of a Shezzarine we can reference.

raminasi
Jan 25, 2005

a last drink with no ice
I love all the goofy lore that has come about to reconcile canonical inconsistencies that are clearly just the result of writers neglecting to make sure that their poo poo actually fit together. "Well, in this one book this one guy is the Underking, but in this other book it's a different guy, so clearly one of them was wrong their souls got merged somehow."

And there's even a book pointing this out, which is utterly delightful, especially because it's inconsistent itself.

Sky Shadowing
Feb 13, 2012

At least we're not the Thalmor (yet)
Those inconsistencies are not entirely unintentional. Todd Howard has always stated he loves not having questions for every answer- every theory is presented in-universe.

It's why there is no canonical true answer to what happened to the Dwemer. They vanished, but no single answer has been deemed True. That's a bit what MK was trying to get by with C0DA- canon is, to a degree, what you make of it. Belief powers all religions in TES- most powerfully, the belief of the player himself.

Archonex
May 2, 2012

MY OPINION IS SEERS OF THE THRONE PROPAGANDA IGNORE MY GNOSIS-IMPAIRED RAMBLINGS

RBA Starblade posted:

I still want to know which of the two dozen space satans I sold my soul to gets first crack at it.

Even if one of them manages to beat the others and goes to grab it you've kinda got a gently caress ton of souls to spare by the end of the game.

There's nothing saying that the Dragonborn can't just irritably wave them off and say "Here, take a dragon soul and leave me the hell alone." before getting back to slitting throats with Mehrune's Razor.


Edit: Also there's some lore that implies that the Dragonborn is about as powerful as one of the weaker daedric gods at the time of the game. Clavicus only had access to half his power too. One can only imagine what an entire lifetime of eating dragon souls without any other dragonborn to compete with is going to make them be like.

At that point it's less a matter of whether they can get his soul and more an issue of whether they even have the strength to take it.

Archonex fucked around with this message at 00:40 on Jun 22, 2016

A.o.D.
Jan 15, 2006

Archonex posted:

Even if one of them manages to beat the others and goes to grab it you've kinda got a gently caress ton of souls to spare by the end of the game.

There's nothing saying that the Dragonborn can't just irritably wave them off and say "Here, take a dragon soul and leave me the hell alone." before getting back to slitting throats with Mehrune's Razor.


Edit: Also there's some lore that implies that the Dragonborn is about as powerful as one of the weaker daedric gods at the time of the game. Clavicus only had access to half his power too. One can only imagine what an entire lifetime of eating dragon souls without any other dragonborn to compete with is going to make them be like.

At that point it's less a matter of whether they can get his soul and more an issue of whether they even have the strength to take it.

having a poo poo ton of dragon souls didn't even slow down Hermaeus Mora.

Sky Shadowing
Feb 13, 2012

At least we're not the Thalmor (yet)
Mora wasn't after Miraak's soul- he was after a living, breathing champion. Miraak grew weary and disloyal, and Mora replaced him with you (or tried to).

As for my part, I want the theory of 'sell your soul all you want, it's not actually yours to sell' to be true, but that said I doubt the Daedric Princes would be so foolish.

Archonex
May 2, 2012

MY OPINION IS SEERS OF THE THRONE PROPAGANDA IGNORE MY GNOSIS-IMPAIRED RAMBLINGS

A.o.D. posted:

having a poo poo ton of dragon souls didn't even slow down Hermaeus Mora.

You beat the gently caress out of Miraak first, that's why. He was literally huffing nearby dragon souls to keep fighting you by the end. It was pretty obvious that he was on his last legs by the time Mora showed up. He basically had you do the work of killing the guy only to show up and gank the kill at the last second so he could try to bluff you on how powerful he is.

There's all sorts of implications all over the game that the Daedric gods aren't really as powerful compared to the Dragonborn as they claim to be. Mora needs you to do the grunt work on a few jobs and it becomes apparent that he isn't always the all knowing seer-god he claims to be. Meridia needs you to kick a "mere mortal" out of her own temple, despite her imperious and condescending nature. Hircine may basically be a god of predatory hunters but he can't keep some of the souls he took for himself. Clavicus might be the god of bad wishes and two-faced schemes but he gets screwed over by his own hand. Etc, etc, etc.

Meanwhile the last Dragonborn's theme songs kind of sum up his overall theme. One of the lines points out that he has power to "rival the sun". A point which is backed up by how he starts out his career by taking down what in the Nord's belief system is an undying god of destruction.

Archonex fucked around with this message at 01:04 on Jun 22, 2016

i am tim!
Jan 5, 2005

God damn it, where are my ant keys?! I'm gonna miss my flight!
There's a lot in his dialogue that also implies he's waiting for you to show that you'd actually be a more capable servant than Miraak. Sure he was working to break free of Mora's grasp when you come along, but given that you have every option to tell Mora "gently caress off I'm not working for you" and how he just brushes that off I don't think he takes these kind of gestures terribly seriously. After all, Mora holds the key to defeating Miraak, and he won't hand it over until you give him something he's been after for thousands of years no matter how "unwilling" you profess to be.

Miraak's use is waning, but Mora's not going to throw him out until he finds a suitable replacement.

EDIT: The fact that you're both Miraak's ticket out of that place AND the most suitable replacement makes me think this is something he had planned from the get-go. "Yeah I'll take this uppity jerk as my champion, cuz he'll need to lead his replacement right into my hands when he tries to get out"

i am tim! fucked around with this message at 01:28 on Jun 22, 2016

K8.0
Feb 26, 2004

Her Majesty's 56th Regiment of Foot
So I'm probably going to reinstall Oblivion soon. I'm just shooting for a small number of simple mods that fix bugs and do QOL poo poo. The unofficial Oblivion/DLC/SI patches, the mod that lets you get +5 from a single skillup, the mercantile levels off gold value mod, DarnUI...

There are a few things I'm looking for that I haven't found though. One would be a mod that makes you always get the max leveled item from quests, although Quest Award Leveller does a decent job I don't like having to remember which quest items can actually level and anything scripted + Oblivion can always lead to tragedy. Another would be the mod that shows item weights to a decimal place rather than an integer, which may just be part of DarnUI. I'm also looking for the best way to run the game full screen windowed and in general make it less buggy, less crash prone, and more livable from a technical standpoint.

Nasgate
Jun 7, 2011
Dragonborn is Talos. After being mostly killed off because of reduced faith thanks to the elves he jumped into a mortal avatar to renew his power and renew faith in him.

The main character of Oblivion was an avatar of Akatosh, in Morrowind your either the Nerevarine or just Azuras chosen. You're always the tool of an Aedra or Daedra in these games.

A.o.D.
Jan 15, 2006

Nasgate posted:

Dragonborn is Talos. After being mostly killed off because of reduced faith thanks to the elves he jumped into a mortal avatar to renew his power and renew faith in him.

The main character of Oblivion was an avatar of Akatosh, in Morrowind your either the Nerevarine or just Azuras chosen. You're always the tool of an Aedra or Daedra in these games.

Um, you don't play as Martin in Oblivion, and you're not so much a tool of a daedra as an actual daedra, but otherwise you're right about the main character of Oblivion being an avatar of Akatosh.

Jeff Goldblum
Dec 3, 2009

Maybe Mora sees the Dragonborn as being an abuse of forbidden knowledge within Mundus, which is why he tempted Miraak into Apocrypha to begin with, so there wouldn't be one living being in control of all dragons, and may come back for the Dragonborn later, perhaps in some attempt to dispose of all the dragons ressurected by Alduin so that later he may dispose of all knowledge of dragon worship and shouting altogether.

e. I sometimes suspect Hermaeus Mora of having a hand/tentacle in all things of that matter, where world conquering powers become destroyed or disappear altogether.

Jeff Goldblum fucked around with this message at 02:04 on Jun 22, 2016

Berke Negri
Feb 15, 2012

Les Ricains tuent et moi je mue
Mao Mao
Les fous sont rois et moi je bois
Mao Mao
Les bombes tonnent et moi je sonne
Mao Mao
Les bebes fuient et moi je fuis
Mao Mao


Archonex posted:

There's all sorts of implications all over the game that the Daedric gods aren't really as powerful compared to the Dragonborn as they claim to be. Mora needs you to do the grunt work on a few jobs and it becomes apparent that he isn't always the all knowing seer-god he claims to be. Meridia needs you to kick a "mere mortal" out of her own temple, despite her imperious and condescending nature. Hircine may basically be a god of predatory hunters but he can't keep some of the souls he took for himself. Clavicus might be the god of bad wishes and two-faced schemes but he gets screwed over by his own hand. Etc, etc, etc.

Daedric Princes have always had certains restrictions on being able to do anything on Tamriel, and after Oblivon they can't step foot on it at all. That's why they're always having dimwitted adventurers go do their bidding for them, and also because for most of them just loving with people is how they get their kicks.

i am tim!
Jan 5, 2005

God damn it, where are my ant keys?! I'm gonna miss my flight!

Nasgate posted:

Dragonborn is Talos. After being mostly killed off because of reduced faith thanks to the elves he jumped into a mortal avatar to renew his power and renew faith in him.

The main character of Oblivion was an avatar of Akatosh, in Morrowind your either the Nerevarine or just Azuras chosen. You're always the tool of an Aedra or Daedra in these games.

Where do the Agent and the Eternal Champion fit in this theory, if you don't mind me asking?

Archonex
May 2, 2012

MY OPINION IS SEERS OF THE THRONE PROPAGANDA IGNORE MY GNOSIS-IMPAIRED RAMBLINGS

quote:

Dragonborn is Talos. After being mostly killed off because of reduced faith thanks to the elves he jumped into a mortal avatar to renew his power and renew faith in him.

I always thought it was obvious that the Dragonborn is a straight up god (That was possibly reborn. That's a bit more iffy.). Albeit one that's just finding their feet. I always thought the subtle implication that you were more than just a man or woman was there. The songs and a lot of the harder to find lore all but confirms this.

I mean look at what you're playing as. You're playing the last of the dragon blooded, the first of a new rightful line of Tamrielic emperor's, a being capable of devouring and forever destroying the souls of beings that treat mortal concepts like death like an aggravation and nuisance, an entity that treats with and slays beings that are considered by the inhabitants of the setting to be of literally god like power, all before demanding the loyalty of some of their former subjects.

I mean, what the gently caress else do you call that within the confines of the setting? If you walk the walk, talk the talk, but just haven't hit your stride yet that doesn't mean you aren't a thing. There are things that are worshiped as gods in the Elder Scrolls series that are far less powerful and awe inspiring than that. The Elder Scrolls series even has a term for the concept that's touched on in Morrowind and outright shown in Oblivion's expansion. It's called "Mantling".

A really nerdy wiki posted:

Mantling is a process in the Elder Scrolls universe by which one entity becomes another entity by impersonating it. In most known or speculated instances of this process, the entity being mantled is a deity, while the person mantling is a mortal.

Merely impersonating someone publicly is not enough to mantle them. To mantle someone, you must become so like them that there ceases to be a functional difference between the two entities; it seems that at this point the universe itself ceases to distinguish between the two, and they become one entity.

It seems that while mantling does involve, to some extent, assuming some other entity's identity, this does not appear to necessarily involve giving up the mantler's own identity, at least in full.

There's a reason some of the more knowledgeable characters are in awe of you and trying to get you on their side. Just as their's a reason why the last of the Blades swear themselves to you. You're basically the freaking messiah to a good chunk of the world, just like you (possibly --- again, just like in Morrowind it's left with a few interpretations) were in Morrowind. It's just that outside of Skyrim it's not being advertised that heavily yet.

Jeff Goldblum posted:

e. Honestly, I sometimes suspect Hermaeus Mora of having a hand/tentacle in all things of that matter, where world conquering powers become destroyed or disappear altogether.

Hermaeus is definitely not that smart. He makes a lot of lofty claims about knowing things, but despite all the justifications and weaseling around it the fact is that more than a few times he has to sacrifice his servants or personally get his hands dirty to get his hands on more secrets and get the job done. And other times he turns out to be flat out wrong. None of the Daedric gods are flat out omnipotent entities, even within their sphere.

Hell, what Hermaeus does is arguably another example of Mantling. If he convinces everyone he meets that he's this all knowing, all seeing, omni-potent Machiavellian being, does that not qualify him as being treated as such? Of course, the problem comes around when someone with the power to stand up to him starts calling him out on his bullshit.


Edit: To expand on the Mantling thing, Morrowind has some insight into the whole "the Skyrim PC is a god" fan theory. If you tell Dagoth Ur that you don't care about the prophecy but are going to become one by fulfilling it/kick his rear end he actually is impressed with you. The concept of becoming a god by fulfilling a set of beliefs or requirements is touched on in as being a thing in the setting in that game. It's called Mantling and it's about as crazy as some of the other older lore.

TL;DR: To quote Morrowind on the issue of Elder Scrolls godhood: "...walk like them until they must walk like you"". It doesn't really matter if you are or aren't if you can act like it.

Archonex fucked around with this message at 02:35 on Jun 22, 2016

Ojjeorago
Sep 21, 2008

I had a dream, too. It wasn't pleasant, though ... I dreamt I was a moron...
Gary’s Answer

Nasgate posted:

Dragonborn is Talos. After being mostly killed off because of reduced faith thanks to the elves he jumped into a mortal avatar to renew his power and renew faith in him.

The main character of Oblivion was an avatar of Akatosh, in Morrowind your either the Nerevarine or just Azuras chosen. You're always the tool of an Aedra or Daedra in these games.

Talos isn't a he, it's 3 people mixed together.

Archonex posted:

the first of a new rightful line of Tamrielic emperor's

Being Dragonborn doesn't make you a rightful emperor, it's just that the Emperors also happened to be Dragonborn.

Archonex posted:

Hell, what Hermaeus does is arguably another example of Mantling. If he convinces everyone he meets that he's this all knowing, all seeing, omni-potent Machiavellian being, does that not qualify him as being treated as such? Of course, the problem comes around when someone with the power to stand up to him starts calling him out on his bullshit.

That's not at all how mantling works. You don't make anything new when you mantle, you specifically act like something else that isn't around anymore until it becomes you. It's filling a metaphysical hole.

Ojjeorago fucked around with this message at 02:39 on Jun 22, 2016

Archonex
May 2, 2012

MY OPINION IS SEERS OF THE THRONE PROPAGANDA IGNORE MY GNOSIS-IMPAIRED RAMBLINGS

Whizbang posted:

Talos isn't a he, it's 3 people mixed together.


Being Dragonborn doesn't make you a rightful emperor, it's just that the Emperors also happened to be Dragonborn.

As far as the remaining old guard like the Blades that are left are concerned it probably does. And given that you can literally murder the Emperor in the game and send the Imperials packing at the head of an army it's kind of questionable whether the player character does have a claim or not.

There's no "dragonborn" bloodline that inherently rules since the lore mentions that it's just a common misconception. But that doesn't mean that some people in the setting don't perceive the rightful emperor's as being dragonborn. It's literally one of the plot points used to help explain why poo poo starts to fall apart after Oblivion.


quote:

That's not at all how mantling works. You don't make anything new when you mantle, you specifically act like something else that isn't around anymore until it becomes you. It's filling a metaphysical hole.

I didn't mean that he was actively using it to try to Mantle something. Just exploiting some of the concepts behind the idea of Mantling itself. Mantling is basically the idea that you can trick the world into thinking you're a thing so well that you effectively become that thing in the eyes of the world.

It's basically being such a good liar that the lie becomes the truth. And if you pay attention to the differences between what Hermaeus Mora is saying and what he and others are doing it starts to become apparent that he's a very good liar.



Edit: But all that doesn't mean he's the omniscient being he claims to be. Hell, by the rules of the setting he literally can't be. Other, far more intrinsic elements of the setting (Like the Elder Scrolls.) directly contradict a lot of his claims. Though it's not immediately evident if you're not the type to sperg out on the lore and chew through the in-game books and conversations across many of the games.

Much as I hate to quote the place TVtropes had a good explanation of one of the reasons why Mora is full of poo poo. And since it doesn't require me to type up another essay:

quote:

While it is not certain, there is strong evidence to believe that Hermaeus Mora is not omniscient, or that fate is definite in TES. For one, a dragon and a powerful vampire state that the Elder Scrolls (pretty much the closest thing to absolute truthful records) only predict what may be, not what will be. Furthermore, the scrolls themselves may change until the events predicted at a given time come to pass, at which point the words are absolutely fixed forevermore.

So, what does this have to do with Hermaeus Mora? It undermines his claim to know all things, a claim implicitly undermined when he needs the player's help to obtain the knowledge of the Skaal. Why would an omniscient being need help to obtain knowledge? The answer: he only wants you to think he is omniscient. Mora is capable of lying, or at the very least, misleading people. He led Septimus to think the Heart of Lorkhan was behind that locked door (it was actually holding the Oghma Infinium), so his claims to knowing all could be part of a similar deception.

Archonex fucked around with this message at 03:08 on Jun 22, 2016

MinistryofLard
Mar 22, 2013


Goblin babies did nothing wrong.


Hermaeus Mora sort of says or implies he could beat Miraak if he wants to; he's just not going to do it because he's got a plan to get something out of it, and he knows that you care enough about playing the game not letting Miraak win to fight him yourself. He's got you by the balls and he knows it.

Whether he really is that powerful isn't really explained. After all, the Skaal have been dicking him around for thousands of years. On the other hand he gets what he wants eventually so its ambiguous.

Its kind of implied that Daedra get mortals to do stuff for them not so much because they need it as because they get off on making mortals jump through hoops. Then again, there's quests that run counter to that in Skyrim so who knows.

Also with regards to who gets your soul my favourite theory is that the LDB parcels out a dragon soul to each Daedra and then moves on with his day. "I promised you a soul buddy." After all, Serana's mother punks ethereal entities and lives. Or he just huffs soals like Miraak to live forever.

I'll be interested to see what happens to the LDB in TES VI. He's too powerful to keep around but at the same time he's too powerful to just disappear like Nerevar does; there's stuff for him to do like killing Thalmor.

MinistryofLard fucked around with this message at 03:02 on Jun 22, 2016

i am tim!
Jan 5, 2005

God damn it, where are my ant keys?! I'm gonna miss my flight!
Mora's nature is something of a contradiction. He's a Hoarder of Secrets, but it's tricky to maintain that status if there aren't secrets for him to grasp at with his many, many tentacles. I definitely think him claiming that he knows all things is something of a dog-and-pony show to maintain face, but I also think we'd be wrong to say he's not the closest thing to an All-Knowing-Being in the TES universe. That said, I don't think him maintaining the charade is is related to or depends on Mantling. Part of that "Walk like them until they walk like you" deal carries the implication that whomever you were BEFORE you mantled Soandso, for all intents and purposes, ceases to exist. IE The Champion of Cyrodiil becoming Sheogorath, all that's left is a few tidbits of knowledge.

And regarding the Dragonborn Emperor and if the LDB will become one, he really can't. The whole reason you needed a Dragonborn Emperor was because only a Dragonborn can use the Amulet of Kings to fulfill Alessia's Covenant with Akatosh. But the Amulet of Kings was smashed and Akatosh's Covenant was whole-sale replaced with Martin's sacrifice. Dragonborns are neat and all, but anybody can be an Emperor.

EDIT: re: The Last Dragonborn in the next game, it's very possible they'll set it far enough out that they'd die of natural causes. They're still mortal, after all.

Ojjeorago
Sep 21, 2008

I had a dream, too. It wasn't pleasant, though ... I dreamt I was a moron...
Gary’s Answer

Archonex posted:

I didn't mean that he was actively using it to try to Mantle something. Just exploiting some of the concepts behind the idea of Mantling itself. Mantling is basically the idea that you can trick the world into thinking you're a thing so well that you effectively become that thing in the eyes of the world.

It's basically being such a good liar that the lie becomes the truth. And if you pay attention to the differences between what Hermaeus Mora is saying and what he and others are doing it starts to become apparent that he's a very good liar.

No, it's a bad example because none of that is at all related to Mantling. What you're talking about is the First Walking Way, The Prolix Tower.

To put it simply, Mantling is walking the walk of a god, Prolix Tower is talking the talk of a god.

Ojjeorago fucked around with this message at 04:30 on Jun 22, 2016

Cat Mattress
Jul 14, 2012

by Cyrano4747
Mantling is possible in the Elder Scrolls because everyone actually is the same. The entire universe is all the fractured mind of a single God with a severe case of split personalities. Since everyone and everything actually share their soul with everyone and everything else, it's possible to get your soul to be someone else's soul, since it's still the same soul after all.

That's also why fully understanding the true nature of the universe results in dissipation (or "zero sum" in lore terms). People cease to exist when they realize that they don't actually exist. But if you manage to maintain existence in spite of that, congratulation, you are now a god. You get to change the mad-god's thoughts, which is the same as changing the world, since the world is a thought. If you're killed, you can just think yourself back to life. That's called CHIM; or at least the non-video game interpretation of CHIM. Basically, think of it as lucid dreaming: upon discovering that they're dreaming, most people will just wake up (and so their dream-self ceases to exist, at least until the next time they sleep) but others will keep dreaming, but can now take control of the dream and make it go the way they want to. (The video game interpretation of it being, of course, that you can cheat and mod the game and reload saves etc.; which functionally grant you pretty much the same powers.)

Agents are GO!
Dec 29, 2004

K8.0 posted:

So I'm probably going to reinstall Oblivion soon. I'm just shooting for a small number of simple mods that fix bugs and do QOL poo poo. The unofficial Oblivion/DLC/SI patches, the mod that lets you get +5 from a single skillup, the mercantile levels off gold value mod, DarnUI...

There are a few things I'm looking for that I haven't found though. One would be a mod that makes you always get the max leveled item from quests, although Quest Award Leveller does a decent job I don't like having to remember which quest items can actually level and anything scripted + Oblivion can always lead to tragedy. Another would be the mod that shows item weights to a decimal place rather than an integer, which may just be part of DarnUI. I'm also looking for the best way to run the game full screen windowed and in general make it less buggy, less crash prone, and more livable from a technical standpoint.

For the borderless windowed mode, both ENBoost (which I reccomend) and the OBSE plugin OneTweak have borderless windowed mode.
Oblivion Reloaded works wonders, and has built-in performance enhancement functions.

One thing to keep in mind is that even with all the performance enhancement you can get, Oblivion still runs worse than Skyrim.

Man Whore
Jan 6, 2012

ASK ME ABOUT SPHERICAL CATS
=3



Agents are GO! posted:

Oblivion still runs worse than Skyrim.
I literally crack up about this every time I go back to play oblivion with a new computer.

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Freakazoid_
Jul 5, 2013


Buglord
I liked the idea of the CoC becoming sheogorath, so in the new tradition of assuming the fate of the protagonist based on their last expansion, the LDB is stuck being hermie's gofer.

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