>Arcana and Metaphysics
>Culture and Tradition
>>Symbols
>>Transportation
>Law and Politics
>Rituals and Prophecies
Pick one and discuss.

Where does tonal architecture fall into?

>>96503354
TES is shit lmao

>>96505848
Geocentric fiction is rare.

>>96503414
>Arcana and Metaphysics
Vivec is a liar and a bitch, and his official origin story is provably at odds with what actually happened. So why the FUCK did we take his word for anything relating to higher metaphysics?

>>96504509
I have by chance found three words:
Woe tune form.

>>96506827
>As a Psijic of the New Ways, the Dwemer appear to have been most successful in the Endeavor than any mortal. Their Endeavor is not the shared Endeavor of the Old Way. The New Way, so I speak with no REAL title, is the Way in which I have devoted my research to. I find this New Way to be most delightful a study. The Dwemer have taught me more about the "ideals" of the Endeavor than any Psijic could have in 1,000 years. So many questions, so little time. Finding answers appears to be the primary purpose of mortal existence.
Source: Sotha Sil last words
Hot take: Vivec repackaged Dwemer axioms in poetry.

>>96506827
what other sources do we have?

>>96508265
Right, I keep forgetting that Bethesda Forums ERP is the final arbiter of canon.

More to the point, my specific gripe is with CHIM. So, here's my most basic premise: the Tribunal stopped being gods when the Heart was destroyed. We don't just have Vivec's word on this, we also have Almalexia going bugfuck insane and Asura's proclamation of "the false gods freed".

Here's the problem: that's not CHIM. CHIM is an enlightenment borne within the self, not reliant on outside sources. It also purports that the CHIM state precludes the acceptance of another as an equal, despite, you know, the Tribunal existing. We DO know that fucking with the Heart can grant godhood, as we have two other direct examples of this: the Dwarves and Mannimarco. CHIM is supposed to be an equivalent to this, and yet Vivec shows no sign of possessing it: his dreaming half goes away with his godhood. Vivec never attained CHIM, and so we must ask if it even exists in the first place.

>>96508839
And that's my gripe. Kirkbride is charismatic, prolific, and way too into Vivec and his narrative for his own good, and he has aggressively pushed extensions to the Sermons at every opportunity. And everyone just kinda went with it because it was cool, to the point where it has become the accepted canon. And I think that sucks, because it turns the deliberately obtuse autobiography of a known historical revisionist into the most reliable source available on the greater mysteries of Elder Scrolls, despite its claims being in conflict with evidence presented in the events of its own origin game.

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>>96503354
Has anyone actually run any edition of UESRPG here? I tried to get a couple people to play it a while ago but it just didn't materialize.

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>>96508265
>elder scrolls lore discussion
>look inside
>fanfiction (developer)

>>96503414
Calendar. Lunar mansions. Individual stars.

>>96509268
Then there's that c0da mess.

>>96514093
And, again, that's largely my point. Kirkbride is THE writer for the esoteric schizo shit, and he REALLY likes this particular model of esoteric schizo shit. The result is that everything he adds to the conversation adds credibility to a work so deep into the weeds that the fact it declares itself to be a lie is not the biggest problem with its reliability. Since he's been at this for so long, with nobody else stepping up to muddy the waters, it has become the default assumption, devoid of the contradiction and confusion that defines so much of the rest of TES' mythic lore, and I fear that it's long past the point where someone could meaningfully undo that. In my opinion, it's the second greatest tragedy to befall Elder Scrolls, right after Todd.

>>96503414
Cold take: In our post-Christian West, our notion of "gods" is entirely shaped by the Christian relationship with God. Every non-European race has preserved their gods too, but those relationships are so wildly alien, we can't see their aftermath right before our eyes. Even semi-accurate depictions of Greek or Roman life capture the essence of the problem. They had gods with myths, domains, and rites. But the key distinction was the utterly transactional nature of the relationship between god and supplicant. They didn't love their gods in any sense we appreciate today. They knew the gods controlled the harvest & fertility & the outcomes of war, so they prayed and sacrificed for their own advantage. "Worship" was negotiation and fulfillment of contracts. Utterly alien to the West. And what we lost sight of in transitioning to worship of the true God was that any transactional god who can be manipulated with offerings, words, or tricks naturally inspires an active sense of contempt. The Roman gods were fickle bitches they had to deal with, or else.
Mild take: The snake is a symbol of Saturn. So is the sickle. Baal, the "god" of "time" is over Satan. Sorry, I mean Saturn. Time represents death. This helps tie things in such as medusa or hourglass symbols for example. Baal is also over war, sun worship and storms as well. Random stuff to help you identify certain stuff. Zeus is directly connected to such. 5 is a sickle and is of the fifth planet Jupiter. Zeus is another form that baal takes. Their symbols are tied. The hexagon on top of Saturn makes me laugh with the photoshop that Nasa has done. Loki was a "trickster" that shape shifts and takes on many forms. April fools day ties into this as well. 41 is the 13th prime. 13 is known as death. Cronus is another name. Many clock in and out of this to "work for a living". The hourglass looks like an X, so to speak. If you look at a cube from the corner facing you.
Hot take: MK is Lorkhan and Todd is Akatosh.

>>96508839
Didn't Kirk-bride give his kirk-bride a flash drive she subsequently lost?

TES is a setting that ideally should have gotten its own RPG 20+ years ago but now its probably too late.

>>96509309
Ran a 6 player, 8 session game over summer break for some uni friends. Half had never played an elder scrolls game. Took a few sessions until they reallt started getting into it.

Its fine, not a perfect system but it simulates Morrowind combat and magic pretty well.

>>96514136
I just don't take anything Kirkbride says as canon.
Unironically, that solves 99% of all lore retardation.
Every time someone is spouting complete BS, it's because they read something on reddit about Kirkbride lore that was written in 2016 or some shit.
It's not canon.
It may as well be a different fucking universe entirely.
>Well, it's actually fine, because he said it's le lie, and we can come up with our own canon!
It's cope. May as well take what *I* say as word of God about the setting, because he's not an employee and doesn't have any authority or legitimacy anymore. He hasn't had any since Morrowind, and even if he's contributed a book or two since Oblivion, it's as little more than an arms-length contractor.
I'm not taking his post-Morrowind garbage seriously, full stop, end of story. If it's not in one of the games, it's not relevant. I feel like that should be a pretty easy bar.

>>96519209
What would you say was the most clunky part of the system or caused the most friction for your group? Also where and when did you set it? Ironically I was having issues coming up with a good starting hook.

>>96520035
Biggest issues were all about communication, not the system. I'd not played or ran a game for 4/6 of them before so people went in with jokey, fuck around expectations and I wanted to run dungeon crawls.

Systemwise: Combat is slow, especially in the early levels, getting through even 5 AR, which isnt much, can be
time consuming. Eventually they figured out good strategies, casting blindness on an enemy so both stealth archers could get sneak attacks on every shot was a really smart move.

>Setting
Anvil/The Gold Coast, I'd been playing a lot of the morrowind Project Tamriel mod and took that as a baseline. Ayleid ruins to explore and ruins full of undead leftover from the Cameron usurper

>>96506685
Post some.

>>96519320
>I'm not taking his post-Morrowind garbage seriously, full stop, end of story. If it's not in one of the games, it's not relevant. I feel like that should be a pretty easy bar.
Common sense.
1. main series
2. official releases for main series like books and dev explaining immediately on release
3. spin off and dev expounding years after
4. fandom dogma like towers&thalmor

>>96504509
Cymatics.

>>96515668
hmm I rate it a strong 7 to a light 8 of a schizopost

>>96518812
I'm surprised that no companies have put a bid in for it. It would still do relatively well in the current market if it released say, 2-3 years from now. Currently there's a lot of releases happening in the next year or two that are fallout from the WotC OGL fuck-up from years past, but once that dies down there would probably be a window that might also build hype for TES6 when it releases 8 years after.

Unironically I also think that a TES RPG would be the only way to experience true TES these days in an official format, as lord knows Bethesda is going to shit the bed the second they revisit it.

What isn't in the post filter?

>>96528140
We all know by now we're dealing with a death cult and inversion, so bear with me.
Kirk isn't just a surname. The word-trail runs like this: Kyriakon ~ Cirice ~ Circe ~ Church / Kurk / Kirk. Even today the Greek name Kyriakos is translated as Kirk.
What we call church today carries the echo of Kirke, the enchantress. Even the word itself is spellbound. And here's the key: in Greek, pharmakon = drug, poison, spell. The very tools of her craft. Circe, the witch-goddess of Homer.
She didn't kill men with swords, she humiliated them, fed them pharmaka, intoxicating brews that made them forget who they were. Then, stripped of reason, they became swine at her feet.
But Circe also held knowledge: she could heal, initiate, and teach Odysseus the path to Hades. A guide as much as a sorceress.
The positive: transformation and initiation.
The inversion: degradation and enslavement.
And her niece? Medea. The name that echoes as media.
Medea too was mistress of pharmaka. She was healer as well as poisoner. She restored Jason's father to youth, knew the secrets of resurrection and renewal.
The positive: renewal, wisdom, and cunning.
The inversion: betrayal, propaganda, narrative sorcery. Turning perception into chains.
So look closer:
Originally meant to initiate, guide, and transform inverted into seduction and enslavement.
Medea = the Media. Originally healer and wise sorceress inverted into propaganda, manipulation, pharmakon-as-poison.
Twin sorceries. Both Inducers.
And who do they serve?
The Queen of Babylon whose cup makes nations drunk,
whose pharmakon enslaves the world with poison and spell alike.
The timing is not accident it’s ritual overlap. One trauma stitched to another. Used as a catalyst, a spell, to enchant us with something new.
Chaos magick 101: bind minds through shock, prime them in grief, and seize them in the lull. Every ritual feeds the next.
And now they’re readying us for the next enchantment.

>>96534677
An interest in a borderline dead series that last had interesting lore 23 years ago that subsequent entries failed to improve and expand upon sustained by a community treating fanfiction as official lore in a attempt to obscure the lack of depth in the series.

>>96503414
Linguistics.

>>96503354
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UdQmg-vJUGE

>>96511989
>Merethic: 2500 years
>First Era: 2920
>Second E.: 896
>Third Era: 433
>Fourth Era: 401 is when the Dragonborn arrives in Skyrim
Correct me if I'm wrong but is Nirn roughly 7150 years old?
>>96506827
>reconstruct ES mythology without, or antagonistic to, Vivec
Imagine.

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Would you group together Orsimeris and Dwemeris based on the label Dwarf-Orc? I'm working on a family tree for the languages of the playable races and necessary strata.

>>96546632
>Fourth Era
201 years.
Also the Dawn Era fucks up everything because what even is linear time.

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What I have:
Ehlnofex
Man <> Mer
>Man
Yoku <> common ancestor of the others I tentatively named Atmoran
>Mer
Ta'agra <> common ancestor of the others I tentatively named Ald-Aldmeris
>>Atmoran
Old Cyrodiilic, Old Bretic, and Old Nord, they form a long-standing sprachbund while ancestral Redguards were far away on another continent.
>>Ald-Aldmeris
Aldmeris <> Dwarf-Orc
>>Old Bretic
This one is the ancestor of Breton and Reach-tongue.
>>Cyrodiilic
This is the idiom that gave rise to Tamrielic better known as Imperial, like English a sociolect with a non-trivial percentage of inherited foreign borrowings.
>>Nord
Nord.
>>>Aldmeris
Ald-Altmeris <> Mer common
>>>Dwarf-Orc
Dwemer disappeared over 2000 years before the 2nd Era began thus it's to no-one's surprise that modern Orcish can't be used to learn Dwarf-tongue.
I really wanted to make Dwemer something like Arabic-Akkadian.
>>>common Meris
Here we find the common ancestor of Bosmeris, Ayleidoon, and Dunmer in a descending order of similarity to Altmeris.
>>>>Altmeris
Altmer is like Sanskrit both a highly conserving but also strictly guided and in effect an artificial language, a conlang within a fictional world.
>>>>Dunmeris
While Chimeris was still close to the other koine Mer dialects, Dunmeris quickly diverged and Ashlanderis descended from the tribes in close contact with Dwemers.
>Jel
I can't decide whether to make it function like a North American language or give it Semitic grammar, both incredibly rare in conlanging scenery.

>Altmer are weak to magic
>Bretons, supposedly related to them, are strong against magic
I always had an issue with this

>>96550572
Hot take: Bretons are immediate descendants of the Ehlnofex between sessile and wandering, making claims of interbreeding nothing more than political legitimation of the dynasty.

>>96550597
If there's anything to support this take in the games even ESO I'll adopt it as my own, otherwise I'll still gladly take any explanation better than the current popular one

>>96550646
When I plan out constructed languages I treat them like real languages which requires timelines very different from the one we're given to be canon. 2000 years? Back then English, Norse, and German were one. Then again a 1000 year old Tartarian carving is somewhat understandable to modern Hungarians. I can only rely on the unreliable narrator to make claims.

Man:Woman::Mer:???

>>96550572
Whether you take Notes on Racial Phylogeny for fact or use Pocket Guide to the Empire against its unquestionable veracity?
>>96552331
Woman derives from Man which derives from earth.

>>96550572
Bretons are a Elven eugenics program to fight other elves in their creators stead and stonewall Alessian-Nordic invasions that got out of hand and proved unexpectedly useful against the redguard invasions

>>96552331
Merde

>>96546632
It scares me that the eras are trending towards shorter lengths.

>>96553297
>Whether you take Notes on Racial Phylogeny for fact or use Pocket Guide to the Empire against its unquestionable veracity?
Yeah, it makes no sense with their racial magic resistance and was tacked on after Morrowind

Fucking Kalpas, how do they work?
A lot of the tamriel cultures have myths like alduin eating the world every do often, or sep shedding his skins, is that what they're supposed to be? Ever since I read about Molag Bal lording over Lyg this question has vexed me

>>96558896
Nobody fucking knows. The best guess we've got is that it's not a full-blown perfect cycle, because the Redguard might have managed to slip from the previous one to the current. Other than that, the only thing we know for certain is that all characters that have spoken on the matter believe in some form of Orobouric cycle. Then again, going through direct sources on the matter, we have Vivec (Kirkbride), the Song of Pellinal (Kirkbride), a one-liner from Parthunax, and then ESO going batshit on everybody having the same kind of story because nobody on that team has had an original thought in their lives.

I've started a GURPS TES game, set in Morrowind 5 years before the eponymous game, because I'm a Morrowboomer. I've been busying myself making TES armors, weapons, spells, diseases, and monsters, as well templates for races and birthsigns.
If I wanted to make things more comprehensive than just Morrowind, and include content from other games, what would I be looking at besides additional monsters and diseases?

>>96556945
>the blood moon was supposed to happen once every era
>also once every 1000 years
Remember?
>>96546632
>>96549940
>conlang family tree I'm working up has seven to eight "generations", respectively excluding or including the very first earth bone tongue
>on average one such generation lasts 881.25 +/- 12.5 years, not unreasonable
>however Dwemer is in the 5th generation, and 7th gen is the state of affairs as of Morrowind and Oblivion termed "early modern"
8th gen, by Skyrim's time, is called "modern"; Subtracting 1008 years from the 1st Era brings it much clloser to natural flourishing timelines in a messy chronology.
>>96558896
>>96559104
I read it's a Sanskrit word equivalent to the Greek aion.

>>96509268
>CHIM
Kutastha Chaitanya*

>>96519320
>>96524118
Is there a list of new releases excluding ESO material? Forum roleplays? Blogposts? Tumblr q&a, Reddit ama, Twitter replies, we'll take anything at this point.

>>96564352
This is a big thing for me. When you're looking for information in a fandom generally from before a "new" thing came out. But said thing has been out so long now and become part of accepted canon it's difficult to parse info from before it.
Although in my case it's halo and pre 4 stuff.

>>96514136
>Kirkbride is THE writer

Wrong

>>96565570
Read on.

bump

>>96558896
My great take away is that nobody actually knows (or could ever know) for certain.
I think it is pretty easy to forget that legends like The World-Eater and the Yokudan Far Shores myth were written by people who… lived in this “current kalpa” and nowhere else.
The ultimate redpill of TES is that Akatosh is a retard who can sometimes be tricked into thinking retarded shit is actually true. The Dwemer were so annoyed by this they tried to school shoot the universe.

>>96576226
>The Dwemer were so annoyed by this they tried to school shoot the universe.
?

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>>96503414
>Arcana and Metaphysics
Malacath and Meridia have always been Daedra.
While I had the idea a bit longer ago there's a longer written elaboration by analogy with Molag Bal having been a deceiving nice guy archetype:
https://www.reddit.com/r/teslore/comments/6s6sr8/theory_molag_bal_is_in_love_with_meridia/

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>>96581919
Within conventional Godhead Theory (also known as "Kirkbride copeposting for a decade about how Oblivion and Skyrim totally aren't watered-down slop"), the most vital decision and individual can ever make is how he reacts to achieving absolute, definitive knowledge that he is a figment of someone else's imagination. The most famous of these is CHIM, a state of cognitive dissonance wherein you manage to hold both states in your mind and gain access to the dev console. But perhaps the most impressive is being able to muster up the sheer force of ego to reject it wholesale, that you are more real than Dream and Dreamer, the only thing that truly exists, and you'll burn down the whole damned Aubris to prove it. This path is known as NUMIDIUM, the absolute rejection of reality.

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>>96514136
>>96565570
If TES is anything it's the only mainstream franchise in which fans can share literal schizophrenia without fearing about losing good normie points and M.K. played no little part.

>>96590769
>root
Earth bones? Hist?
>snake
Lorkhan/Sep as the snake or Akatosh as the dragon.
>man
Vivec? Prisoner?
>cage
Wheel.
>bird
Alduin as the phoenix.
>shell
Vivec's conch? No innuendo intended.
>fruit
Pomegranate banquet?
>history
Dragon break?
>creativity
Vivec's sermons.

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Why is magic so undercooked and retardedly inconsistent bros...

>>96596101
because bethesda hates internal consistency in their settings

>>96506827
Congrats, you have learned the first lesson: Vivec is a fucking liar.
Now work on the next lesson: Lying is how it all happens.

Out of everything Kirkbride ever wrote, there is nothing more cope-poisoned than the idea that elves would outlast men.
Elves are of the immaterial past, men are of the material present. If you can figure out which race belongs to the future, be my guest, but it’s not elves.

>>96596553
Elves are smarter, know their shit when it comes to magic and how the world works. Men were just stumbling into sucess for a couple eras and conquering land for no reason at all. Or rather, men were useful for humbling elves into propper conduct.

But i bet it's just doing the opposite thing that Tolkien did and trying to justify it.

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>>96596553
Originally in LotR, elves left, it was dwarves who "failed" to use Tolkien's words, orcs failed to reproduce on their own, and men remained only because The One i.e. God with a capital G wanted them to.
Elder Scrolls have elves outlast men by a change of heart: they don't leave.
>>96596669
Practically every post-Tolkien fantasy misses the point of magnanimy.

TES is in many ways reversed to LotR.

>>96599906
What does this mean?

>>96602452
In LotR central themes are of Christianity, such as temptation and inevitability, and especially Catholicism believes in a gradual decline of humanity, and with it the world, while spiritualism believes in growth and improvement over conscious effort.
Unlike most fantasy setting post-JRRT, Elder Scrolls' writers actually tried not to trace over his works in resemblance only.
LotR to use his own coined word exemplifies eucatastrophe, the things lost in preparation for improvement, while TES has captives seeking a permanent solution to a continuing imposed state of affairs.
LotR ends with the promise of Eru entering Ea; ES doesn't end, or it ends with "Amaranth", the New Man a creation of one's own will, exiting.

>>96503414
>no red-skinned Black Marsh elves myth about feathered snake Tlorchan-teponaztli getting his heart ritually cut out by his feathered dragon half-brother Achatlox on top of a stepped pyramid tower and his black blood turn into obsidian

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In GURPS, there's a skill called Hidden Lore, pic related is its description. I'm trying to come up with a comprehensive list of Elder Scrolls versions. So far, I have
>Akavir
>Ayleid
>Daedra
>Dwemer
>Magic Items
>Magic Writings
>Undead

What am I missing?

>>96605900
Vivek a chud a mani. One word.

>>96605774
Post pdf.

>>96611069
pdf of what?
Also, pdfs can't be posted anymore.
If you want the source of the pic, head over to /GURPSgen/ to get the Basic Set.

>>96612631
>Also, pdfs can't be posted anymore.
Since when?

>>96613245
Since a posted pdf brought down 4chan for about 2 weeks back in April

>>96607581
>Shankaracharya

>>96503354
Nice. It's been a long time since I've been to a tgesg thread.

>>96509410
You know what?

We should do the same. Post geological maps, dialect maps, botanical treatises and cooking recipes, and infrastructure.

>>96613536
Oh right.

>>96605900
Really appreciate the list, but I don't think anything here should be added to the list of Hidden Lore skills. Doesn’t seem particularly relevant to players. Regardless, thanks anon.

>>96623734
Yeah, you could probably blanket most of that into "higher mysteries/Walking Ways/Psijic Endeavor". But given that there's probably only a few hundred people on Nirn at a time that spend real thought on it, I can understand cutting it.

>>96625875
Ended up adding one for Higher Mysteries. Generic enough to include all sorts of things. Could you think of a specialization for things related to the Heart of Lorkhan? If it's not too much of a stretch, Higher Mysteries could maybe do.

>>96626959
All this shit is heavily inter-related, especially with the Walking Ways and Psijic Endeavor, since we have seven distinct, unambiguous cases of some form of apotheosis tied directly to a Stone. One skill is probably best for covering all of your things relating to Towers, CAPITAL WORDS and other things more involved than The Monomyth. Even seemingly mundane stuff like "What happened to the Dwemer?" leads to the Heart, which leads to the Tribunal, which leads to turning the Wheel on its side, and finally to Amaranth. It all keeps pointing upward in a way that doesn't really lend itself well to specializations.

>>96605774
Alessian/Marukhati lore
Hist
Ansei/Yokudan
Dragon maybe?
Daedric is probably a more broad source of Hidden Lore than the other topics

>>96632680
Great suggestions, thanks anon.
You're right that Daedric is probably the broadest, but a GM can always apply a penalty to the roll if something is very specific or particular.
What kind of stuff would be covered by Alessian/Marukhati, and the same for Ansei/Yokudan?
For example, Dwemer lore would cover some history and theories of their disappearance but also cover what traps and treasures are in their ruins. Similarly, a Hidden Lore (Daedric) roll might tell you that the items left on altars in Daedric ruins are often cursed.

bump

>>96605774
>good daedra
>bad daedra
>acceptable blaphemies; according to Imperial Census of Daedra Lords, Hircine, Namira, and Sheogorath are closed off
One wonders whether there's a system.

>>96641811
>One wonders whether there's a system
I don't get what you mean

>>96565525
What I meant take everything but if TIL and UESP have ESO as its only source - discard it.