TR For the Lore Grognard

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To be released in an attempt to reach out to other TES communities (notable: the ESO RP community as per Kevaar).
Will need some editing, as the longer my texts are the worse they become.
 

A handful of history

In the beginning was Redguard.

Shipping the First Edition Pocket Guide to the Empire, The Elder Scrolls: Redguard continued the soft reboot of Julian LeFay’s Elder Scrolls that began with Battlespire’s Deadric politics and culminated in Morrowind’s alien, haunting athmosphere.

Tamriel Rebuilt began development deep in that time period, shortly before the release of Morrowind. The mods which are unified under the ”Project Tamriel” name are, while younger, still 10 years old or older. It was a different time because Bethesda itself was a different company: lore discussions and role plays were largely confined to a handful of websites, with the official Bethesda Lore forum as the hub of out of-game lore development and official forum RPs (often held or participated in by Bethesda developers).

However, The Elder Scrolls games, and with them the lore have moved on, in multiple directions, and Tamriel Rebuilt/Project Tamriel moved in their own unique direction as well. Charitably, the projects are building on what we think made Morrowind great. Uncharitably, we are isolationist grognards stuck in their outdated playground. We mostly focus on the lore created by the developer teams that created Battlespire, Redguard, and Morrowind, participated in the forum RPs, and wrote what the Imperial Library lovingly calls "Obscure Texts".

We codified our development from this basis in five principles (and three sub-principles) of Lore:

  1. Principle of Alienity - What is boring and mundane is wrong; what is interesting and alien is right.
    • Alien in excess is mundane.
  2. Principle of Interpretation - Lore is nothing but interpretation.
    • Lore is 90% the reader's interpretation.
    • The remainder is the interpretation of the author.
  3. Principle of Contradiction - Contradiction is not invalidation, and, in a way, is confirmation.
  4. Principle of Mythopoeia - Belief makes truth.
  5. Principle of Inception – Every book has an author, but that author has one as well.

Outside of our bubble, there are currently three mainstream "recognized" strains of lore: the main line games (with Skyrim representing a visible soft reboot of the setting), The Elder Scrolls Online (taking place more than seven centuries earlier(, and Cosmic TES (secret lore, based either on obscure meanings behind mundane or religious occurences or focused on the post-Nirn world depicted in c0da and set in the post-Landfall 5th era and later).

While the lore differences do not matter at a casual glance, Tamriel Rebuilt/Project Tamriel are by their reliance on “old” lore odd and quaint to outsiders. More importantly, Project Tamriel have ongoing projects rebuilding Cyrodiil and Skyrim based on the same “old” lore basis in cooperation with Tamriel Rebuilt, actively and radically different from the setting development of later game.

So, what are the most glaring and obvious differences between Tamriel Rebuilt lore...

... as compared to main line games (Oblivion/Skyrim)?

Starting with Oblivion, the Elder Scrolls games have deemphasized politics and religion in favour of epic struggles. Their focus are on individual characters, either paupers or princes. Tamriel Rebuilt in contrast focuses on the middle managers and the macropolitics.

A lot of lore was developed (both in-game and out of game) to explain the differences between the First Pocket Guide and the settings in Oblivion and Skyrim. Most well known is the “Many-Headed Talos” which was posted by MK in the Bethesda lore forums shortly after the release of Oblivion and tried to reconcile the description of Cyrodiil in the First Pocket Guide and Morrowind’s dialogue with the pastoral landscapes of Oblivion. It was made official as part of Heimskr’s preaching in Skyrim’s Whiterun.

This lore does not apply to Tamriel Rebuilt/Project Tamriel. We built our mods on the older lore and our Tamriel looks wildly different.

The Thousand-and-Eight Nibenese cults still exist, as do the Nordic totemic tradition and their Old Gods. Cyrodiil is still largely a jungle where few Elves go, and Skyrim an icy wasteland littered with Direnni ruins near the Reach in the west and Dwemer ruins among the Velothi mountains in the east (the Falmer were by modern knowledge nomadic and didn't really leave anything behind).

The Thu'um is not nearly forgotten, but a craft taught in the Imperial College of the Voice (alongside family traditions and the Greybeards' monkish teachings) and is sometimes misidentified as another take on magic. Necromancy is legal and accepted in the Empire, and communication at the highest level of the Curia are conducted via Dreamsleeve memospores, as they have been since Reman's times. River dragons still bathe themselves in the Niben and the Order of the Blades are just a fancy name for the Imperial Secret Service.

Politics diverge as well. The Nord kingdom of Haafingar, exploiting prolongued Imperial weakness, has only recently occupied the Imperial territory of Roscrea and is now stretching its greedy fingers towards Solstheim. The Oblivion crisis, hinted at in Morrowind's dialogue, is the result of prolonged unrest in the Imperial Province, as people fear the heirs of Uriel Septim VII are just Daedric doppelgangers placed to create disorder and ruin.

... as compared to Cosmic TES?

Cosmic TES is built largely around the lore championed and written by Michael Kirkbride.

Responsible for creating the metaphysics of the The Elder Scrolls, MK was busy creating lore to reconcile the difference between Morrowind and Oblivion out of a labor of love for the series and setting. From this spiralled ever more complex and hidden plots, metaphysics, and divine politics, attracting people by the mental exercise and colourful imagination.

As far as Tamriel Rebuilt/Project Tamriel are concerned, MK was a developer among others and the gnostic and secret lore he created is lore among other. As a game mod depicting people living in a fictional setting, we are first and foremost concerned about Tamriel’s mundane reality.
At a fundamental level, history in The Elder Scrolls is different. Magic is a fact of life and just another craft. History is indistinguishable from religion. Souls are born, die, and are born again, and wizards who have lived long enough know this for a fact.

Most people Tamriel Rebuilt/Project Tamriel depict could never conceive of the esoteric truth Cosmic TES is concerned with, and so we must keep it confined and at an arm’s length as well and remember that it is secret knowledge for a reason. While daily life in Tamriel might be more magical than our reality, the world and its conventions are normal for its inhabitants and this is the reality we want to display.

Cults have their places on the fringes of polite society, and Imperial Clerks are trained to communicate via Dreamsleeve – just the mechanics are not talked about or named to outsider, as guild protect their secrets. At the same time, Yokunda and Akavir are just far-away places that people can and have travelled to and from, Atmora is known to be frozen in snow and ice (if there’s something else going on there, nobody has come back to talk about it), the Hist are known to just be trees (no matter what those crazy religious natives believe). Magnus might be the sun and the Magna-Ge might be unstars, but they are just nameless holes to Aetherius and their intricant relationship to each other and their names and ideology simply do not matter as far as Tamriel is concerned.

The knowledge about Anu-in-the-Sun is restricted to a handful of people in the entire world. CHIM, comparatively cosmology 101 for Cosmic TES is obscure enough that it drives maybe two dozen people’s lives.

At the same time, these people with esoteric knowledge are among the movers and shakers or the hidden monsters of a large continental empire. In this context, Tamriel Rebuilt/Project Tamriel serve as a practical implication of esoteric knowledge, as we are focused on implementation.

... as compared to Elder Scrolls Online?

ESO is a clear departure from the Elder Scrolls lore presented before its release – especially since its plot development is ongoing. Its position in the (not-quite ancient) past makes most of its plot developments unpreditable for a mod set in the late 3rd era. Even outside of Tamriel Rebuilt/Project Tamriel, ESO is sometimes assumed to take place within a Dragon Break to reconcile the larger setting. As far as our mods are concerned, this might as well be true.

The Second (“Common”) Era was a long time ago, as obscure and strange to the citizens of Uriel Septim VII’s universal Empire as the middle ages are to us. The Interregnum especially was a terrible time, of which few accounts remain. Some accounts of this time may cycle down as legends and unverified myths, but details have to be kept intentionally vague, especially since the plot of ESO is still moving forwards.

More important to Tamriel Rebuilt and Project Tamriel is the stage set by this time period. Emperor Cuhlecain, Tiber Septim, and Zurin Arctus were products of the warn-torn Interregnum. For Morrowind, these players ended the last calm years before the reawakening of Dagoth Ur, the last twitches of the Tribunal’s Morrowind before its calcification. For most of Tamriel, they kick-started modern politics and ended centuries of disunity and disinterest. 

Why participate in such an odd setting?

Morrowind (and Tamriel Rebuilt/Project Tamriel) depict the end of a dreamless, hopeless era. The continent-spanning empire a regicidal warlord forged four centuries ago with the help of a god-robot of a dead race has been in terminal decline for half its existance, the reigning Emperor broken by years spent in hell at the behest of one of his closest advisors. Pietism, corruption, and adventurism are on the rise as civil order slowly but irrevocably crumbles. Petty nobles are jockeying for positions on top of the wasteyard that will follow the Empire’s inevitable collapse, heretical sects preying on the desperate are on the rise, and the Lords of Oblivion are drawn to mortal affairs ever more, sensing the onset of necrosis.

Later games have gone in a different direction entirely and the secret, hidden lore of Cosmic TES barely relates to it at all. If it does, it merely laughs at it knowingly, as Jesus did to Judas.

Much more than just building a bigger version of Vvardenfell on the mainland or rebuilding different TES games in an older engine, we are committed to creating that hits the same sweet spot that Morrowind did. Something with the same alien feeling, the same political development, the same internal coherency, the same feeling of history, while at the same time bringing new, non-derivative, interesting locales, people, and events into the game.

We are building a setting where magic is mundane, common descent from the Gods is a plain fact, and history and religion are inescapable synonyms. Sure, we are quaint to the other lore strains. Outdated even. But Tamriel Rebuilt and Project Tamriel are building a civilisation, just as the Bethesda team that made Morrowind would have done. Are you interested? Come join us!

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The text looks good, I only would change or remove the second to last paragraph, I would go a bit milder, as you are trying to appeal to these groups, ridiculing these games might upset a part of them, seeing TR more negatively than needed, but do try to say something in the lines of; that this is a serious undertaking and investment. 

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Good first pass! Though I’d agree on keeping a less condescending tone.

I’m debating if we need something a little more specific, perhaps in a FAQ format, to deal with commonly asked lore discrepancies. Things like:

*Skyrim dragons and Shouts
*where are all the land dreugh?
*Falmer? y/n
*TESO Deshaan vs. TR Deshaan (including House Dres depiction)
*Where did TESO’s Stonefalls/Bal Foyen go? (including the Brothers of Strife plot arc)
*TESO’s notable events of the Second Era: namely Molag Bal’s invasion, and the Three Banners War
*TESO’s three Alliances, i.e. why are Argonians back to being Dunmer slaves?
*Cyrodiil’s climate
*TESO books and TES3 books—were they all really written that long ago or do we care?
*TESO critters—scuttlers and bantam guar in particular
*horses

Others would have to add more, as I didn’t look into Oblivion or Skyrim lore very deeply. TESO I can provide more nitpicks on, but these are the ones I get the most lore nerd twitching from.
 

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I don’t know how to rephrase that paragraph without making it less clear that Morrowind is absolutely distinct and we see it as the definitie version of Tamriel. I did try, though.

A list of things can be done further down if necessary – it was a list in the beginning and as I just kept adding more and more points it’s pretty clear that trying to explain them all basically just leads to the text I ended up with.

It’s basically always the same explanation (except for the Deshaan) – later games changed it for reasons and we’re not using it because we can’t constantly retcon Morrowind’s setting to account for all the newly-made, disjointed and ill-thought out cruft.

I mean, let me try this:

Kevaar

Good first pass! Though I’d agree on keeping a less condescending tone.

I’m debating if we need something a little more specific, perhaps in a FAQ format, to deal with commonly asked lore discrepancies. Things like:

*Skyrim dragons and Shouts Skyrim retcon, PGE/Redguard counts
*where are all the land dreugh? They only go on land once in their lives, they are far more likely to be encountered in the water. Better question: why do Oblivion and later games have no underwater content anymore, removing non-Land Dreugh from the setting?
*Falmer? y/n Skyrim retcon, PGE/Bloodmoon/ShotN counts (that means no Falmer)
*TESO Deshaan vs. TR Deshaan (including House Dres depiction) TR retcon
*Where did TESO’s Stonefalls/Bal Foyen go? (including the Brothers of Strife plot arc) They don’t exist (especially the Brothers of Strife). I mean, Dunmer are not Bosmer.
*TESO’s notable events of the Second Era: namely Molag Bal’s invasion, and the Three Banners War They probably never happened in linear time . If they did, nobody remembers them because the fallout would have been astronomical and lasting. Best not to mention them.
*TESO’s three Alliances, i.e. why are Argonians back to being Dunmer slaves? These are notorious for not making sense at all. The Aldmeri Dominon is an ESO retcon. Best not to mention them.
*Cyrodiil’s climate Oblivion retcon, PGE counts
*TESO books and TES3 books—were they all really written that long ago or do we care? Case by case basis. Most of it doesn’t align with Morrowind’s history.
*TESO critters—scuttlers and bantam guar in particular ESO retcon – they are apparently designed to be cute first instead of alien
*horses Dunmer are notorious for eating horses, there are no horses in Morrowind. It’s one of the best known “Dog ate my homework” dev replies from after Morrowind.

Others would have to add more, as I didn’t look into Oblivion or Skyrim lore very deeply. TESO I can provide more nitpicks on, but these are the ones I get the most lore nerd twitching from.

It’s basically always the same answer.

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Depending on the interest we get from ESO folks, I'm debating if we should give a nod at least to the Three Banners War. (minus the wacko stuff like historical enemies allying...) Aka, this time would be characterized as a ton of fighting among the various provinces, with alliances of opportunity being made and broken all the time. Records of the era are scarce, due to the war itself. It's even possible one of the later rulers came through and burned all the records, to blot out the uncomfortable time from the memories of their people. (proganda move, yanno)

that would allow any ESO-based devs to play with the general idea, but with enough wiggle room to get rid of the truly wacky stuff.

 We could do the same with the Molag Bal plot, keeping it to a vague “problems with Daedric meddling on top of everything else” As correct me if I'm wrong, but this time period had no Dragonborn Emperor, meaning the Daedra could’ve crossed the gap between worlds more frequently?

I actually thought Brothers of Stife was one of the better plot lines in ESO, though putting it in TR would take some doing. Since by this time they've been imprisoned for thousands of years and even in ESO were not well known, they would just be these two inactive volcanoes… More of an Easter Egg than something we could turn into an actual plot/point of interest.

Im on my iPad which is a pain in the butt for dedicated writing, but I can try to give the paragraph a try when I get home.
 

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Kevaar

Depending on the interest we get from ESO folks, I'm debating if we should give a nod at least to the Three Banners War. (minus the wacko stuff like historical enemies allying...) Aka, this time would be characterized as a ton of fighting among the various provinces, with alliances of opportunity being made and broken all the time. Records of the era are scarce, due to the war itself. It's even possible one of the later rulers came through and burned all the records, to blot out the uncomfortable time from the memories of their people. (proganda move, yanno)

that would allow any ESO-based devs to play with the general idea, but with enough wiggle room to get rid of the truly wacky stuff.

 We could do the same with the Molag Bal plot, keeping it to a vague “problems with Daedric meddling on top of everything else” As correct me if I'm wrong, but this time period had no Dragonborn Emperor, meaning the Daedra could’ve crossed the gap between worlds more frequently?

Well, that’s certainly what I would recommend on mentioning about the Interregnum – keep it local and only vaguely refer to bigger conflicts. But if there’s conflict, ESO has to give, there’s just no way to keep up with its ongoing storyline and vague and compressed political development.

The whole Dragonborn thing is a Skyrim retcon though (along with the Blades, who are a different organisation in each game). It means something different in Skyrim (literal dragon-blood) from Oblivion (pact with Akatosh) to Morrowind (born in the empire).

I actually thought Brothers of Stife was one of the better plot lines in ESO, though putting it in TR would take some doing. Since by this time they've been imprisoned for thousands of years and even in ESO were not well known, they would just be these two inactive volcanoes… More of an Easter Egg than something we could turn into an actual plot/point of interest.

 

Im on my iPad which is a pain in the butt for dedicated writing, but I can try to give the paragraph a try when I get home.

By all mean, please do. I’m probably very negative about this.

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I, personally, would love to have someone write up FAQ lore questions/answers that could go in our FAQ, especially as we will be getting more and more of them as time goes on. Generically speaking, this looks good, I don’t see typos. You may wish to say in there somewhere, more distinctly, that the lore base we’re working from is pretty much exclusively lore released before the game Oblivion was announced. (So that people who are curious about our lore but don’t know all those other terms can at least get that baseline.)

Does: concepts, textures, youtube vids, admin stuff e.g. PR, handbook, assets, small website things. Activity level: wildly unpredictable. Still active. Find me on Discord.

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Here’s what I worked out for the “...as compared to ESO?” section. Still debating on the last few paragraphs of the Lore Grognard, so more on that later.

ESO is a clear departure from the Elder Scrolls lore presented before its release. Some have suggested that ESO take part in a Dragonbreak in order for its many lore changes to be considered canon. As far as Tamriel Rebuilt is concerned, this may  as well be true. The Second Era was a long time off, as important to TESIII’s modern day citizens as the events in the Middle Ages are important to us. Though some tales of this time may cycle down as legends and myth, details are intentionally kept obscure so as to avoid the more glaringly out-of-place retcons found in ESO.

Instead, of more import to Tamriel Rebuilt and Project Tamriel is the stage set by this time period. Emperor Cuhlecain, Tiber Septim, and Zurin Arctus were all products of the war-torn Interregnum. For Morrowind, these players brought on the last calm years before the reawakening of Dagoth Ur, and the last twitches of a Tribunal-dominated Morrowind as the Three slid closer to their own downfall. For the rest of Tamriel, they kick-started modern politics and ended centuries of disunity and disinterest.

As I go through some of the changes made by later games and how our plotlines and history could tie into them, I do still think it’d be to our benefit to put together a loose TR canon for how these events should be presented. Especially as new mods are very likely to have only played the newer games--us folks who began work on this project out of Morrowind love are starting to become a rare breed.

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And sorry, double-post, did not think that one through...

Now to the “Why participate…?” section. I’m actually considering a totally different argument here, based on these points:

1) We mod from the game Morrowind, so if we have to pick and choose what lore to remain faithful for, it should be the lore presented within this game first and foremost.

2) We started work before Oblivion (and Skyrim, and ESO, and c0da, and blah blah...) was released, with some of our most pivotal ideas already in place. The mod may take a couple more releases of Elder Scrolls games to finish entirely, and it would never get finished at all if we had to redo the lore with every new game that came out. We are not adverse to including later lore additions, but they would need to be thoroughly examined for compatibility.

3) For aesthetics, and the amount of ground we need to cover. We are working with a landmass 2-3 times the size of Vvardenfell in Tamriel Rebuilt, and much more in Project Tamriel. As an example, if we made all of the Morrowind mainland to be jungle from the Inner Sea coast down to Black Marsh (as it is presented in the much down-sized TESO zones ), our players would get very very bored of the landscape, and so would we. Similarly, lore for factions and quests need to be much more involved and fleshed out to suit the scope of our projects.

4) Because it’s not our role to be providing spoilers for games that chronologically took place later on in the Elder Scrolls timeline. We know what happened to Morrowind via Oblivion and Skyrim, but making more than a light reference to these events would kill the suspense in both TES3 and TES4+5 plotlines.

5) While we all know Reason 5 is because some of the later retcons are just plain stupid, we probably shouldn’t include that as part of the argument, unless we can do so in a humorous way. wink

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There are Direnni ruins in S:HotN, but only in the very west of the province. It’s just that that bit is the first to be worked on. 

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Corrected – also put in something about Dragons and Blades which I’m not quite sure about (I don’t think we really have any useable dragon models for Morrowind that aren’t plastered with copyright issues, do we?)

Edit: I only now realized I completely missed Kevaar’s feedback. Will look at it asap.

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I did implement some of your changes into the ESO section, but I’m having a problem here.

Kevaar

3) For aesthetics, and the amount of ground we need to cover. We are working with a landmass 2-3 times the size of Vvardenfell in Tamriel Rebuilt, and much more in Project Tamriel. As an example, if we made all of the Morrowind mainland to be jungle from the Inner Sea coast down to Black Marsh (as it is presented in the much down-sized TESO zones ), our players would get very very bored of the landscape, and so would we. Similarly, lore for factions and quests need to be much more involved and fleshed out to suit the scope of our projects.

Part of the problem that Oblivion and Skyrim simply do not reflect the same setting as Morrowind. Project Tamriel supercedes the official games for us.

4) Because it’s not our role to be providing spoilers for games that chronologically took place later on in the Elder Scrolls timeline. We know what happened to Morrowind via Oblivion and Skyrim, but making more than a light reference to these events would kill the suspense in both TES3 and TES4+5 plotlines.

5) While we all know Reason 5 is because some of the later retcons are just plain stupid, we probably shouldn’t include that as part of the argument, unless we can do so in a humorous way. wink

It’s not humorous and trying to make it humorous is a mistake. Oblivion and Skyrim’s storylines are largely disconnected from Morrowind, as all plot development was tossed out in favor of a sanitized Middle Earth setting with no politics and a soft reboot and a centuries-long timeskip.
Even if Morrowind’s story were to continue on, the kind of Oblivion crisis (if any) it would not be Oblivion’s. It would be centered around the Doppelgangers and an Imperial civil war most likely (with Dagon lurking, ready to strike).

It would be a continuation of politics and historical forces as established since Daggerfall, not the disconnected games that we got. We can not spoil those games because they will not, can not happen. That is pretty much the fundamental disconnect with the main line games I’m trying to put into words.
 

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I think I understand your argument; I just don’t agree with how that means we should handle the inconsistencies between games and settings. I also think taking a condescending tone to it is a huge mistake.

It may not be what we prefer, but unfortunately, the newer games ARE what is considered canon to the TES world. And if we’re not working to remain true to TES lore, what are we working to remain true to? There are retcons between games we have to account for, but most of it is stuff that could be carried over, though the details may need to be tweaked here and there to make it logically feasible. (TESO...more than a little tweaking.)

For instance--Dwemer ruins in Skyrim? They were unearthed by the earthquakes caused by Red Mountain exploding. They come from an older Dwemer sect who used different magic in their constructs to account for that Dwemer-stuff-not-working-too-far-from-Red-Mountain tidbit. Simple, explains why PT has no Dwemer ruins up there, and most importantly not poo-pooing the Skyrim game.

The problem is the attitude in which its done, not the fact we point out the inconsistencies. Most new devs coming in will be coming in from a background of Skyrim (most likely) or Oblivion or TESO. It is very unlikely we will meet any new devs who have played Daggerfall and Arena, even if they know those exist. (I haven’t played them. Don’t really intend to.) Many TES fans these days haven’t even played Morrowind for that matter! Saying to them that all their lore know-how and the things they loved in the newer games means diddly squat to TR is a big turnoff, one we don’t exactly need if we want to get this project moving again. It’d be like me coming in and saying you’re a stupid Morrowind fanboy who’s in love with plastic graphics, and therefore doesn’t have the caliber to work on much-needed assets of Skywind, so shut up and go back to playing your loser 1990’s games, you flarky. Unnecessary, off-putting. This document is to explain the differences, not prolesityze.

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I got in a little bit of a “metaphorical” rant, about the differences between opinions, don't take this in a bad way: 

I understand the need to stay to a true Tamriel that which should have been, a world most foreign to ours, with other ethics, political systems, set in a time long ago with a world of truly unknown capabilities and fascinations. I respect your view and your steadfastness, but this is not about the world you envisioned, it's about the people that embark to this world. See these people as creatures from another plane; they do not have the knowledge you possess, they do not see this as you do, they have other customs, what they see is a new world. A Kingdom has Rules and Laws, that keep welfare and order, they do not know these laws and our customs, that is what this document is trying to explain, but also be aware for their customs, who wants to live in a world that disowns them. 

I do not say that all these people are suitable for TR, or that they hold strong reminisence for things that they loved, and want it to be more like their place in a series of events that we do not see or do not cover, but that does not mean these things are necessarily bad, Morrowind was built on foreign influences, it is why we discuss and interchange ideas, to make Morrowind and TR a better place.
 

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Kevaar

I think I understand your argument; I just don’t agree with how that means we should handle the inconsistencies between games and settings. I also think taking a condescending tone to it is a huge mistake.

I’m trying to get my personal condescension out of that text (I’m more frank than condescending now I hope), so I appreciate the discussion. I know I’m a lore extremist to some degree, just not a mainstream one.

It may not be what we prefer, but unfortunately, the newer games ARE what is considered canon to the TES world. And if we’re not working to remain true to TES lore, what are we working to remain true to? There are retcons between games we have to account for, but most of it is stuff that could be carried over, though the details may need to be tweaked here and there to make it logically feasible. (TESO...more than a little tweaking.)

For instance--Dwemer ruins in Skyrim? They were unearthed by the earthquakes caused by Red Mountain exploding. They come from an older Dwemer sect who used different magic in their constructs to account for that Dwemer-stuff-not-working-too-far-from-Red-Mountain tidbit. Simple, explains why PT has no Dwemer ruins up there, and most importantly not poo-pooing the Skyrim game.

The very same earthquake that swallowed up the Direnni ruins, placed Markarth in a different part of the map, made Cyrodiil a jungle again, changed Blacklight to Baan Malur, put Sutch back on the map, invented the salty Deshaan Plains, created a drowned valley in Black Marsh, and ungenocided the dragons?

Those are issues that wouldn’t even come up in the mods. People would not notice it, or just accept it as different. Just making an article about it, pointing out the issues point blank, that’s like putting the finger on an open, bleeding wound.

I mean, I know what you want, but it just isn’t possible – TES lore post-Morrowind is several moving targets we will never be able to catch up to. I mean, do you want to toss out all the worldbuilding and implementation that irreconceivably differs from the later games? TR/PT too has created things that drastically differ, it’s not just Oblivion/Skyrim that have moved away from Morrowind.
We have been divergent since Tribunal was released to some degree or another and we just can’t explain all differences away in-setting. Every discussion about it must be made on a meta level. We are discussing the setting(s), not from inside the settings(s). We simply ran away into different directions. ESO by reason of its time skip (and implied Dragon Break) honestly is the less problematic game here.

The problem is the attitude in which its done, not the fact we point out the inconsistencies. Most new devs coming in will be coming in from a background of Skyrim (most likely) or Oblivion or TESO. It is very unlikely we will meet any new devs who have played Daggerfall and Arena, even if they know those exist. (I haven’t played them. Don’t really intend to.) Many TES fans these days haven’t even played Morrowind for that matter! Saying to them that all their lore know-how and the things they loved in the newer games means diddly squat to TR is a big turnoff, one we don’t exactly need if we want to get this project moving again. It’d be like me coming in and saying you’re a stupid Morrowind fanboy who’s in love with plastic graphics, and therefore doesn’t have the caliber to work on much-needed assets of Skywind, so shut up and go back to playing your loser 1990’s games, you flarky. Unnecessary, off-putting. This document is to explain the differences, not prolesityze.

My personal biases aside, if trying to point out irreconceivable differences in lore due to a decade of divergent worldbuilding is hostile, then TR is by its nature inherently hostile to modern day TES fans and there’s nothing we can do about it save scrapping it and starting over.

How would you propose we make TR and PT less hostile without starting over? It doesn’t seem like simply changing the text of the draft is enough to do it.

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My personal biases aside, if trying to point out irreconceivable differences in lore due to a decade of divergent worldbuilding is hostile, then TR is by its nature inherently hostile to modern day TES fans and there’s nothing we can do about it save scrapping it and starting over.

How would you propose we make TR and PT less hostile without starting over? It doesn’t seem like simply changing the text of the draft is enough to do it.

As TES IV, V and TESO should also have been inherently hostile to their predecessors, as they also diverged from what the next conceptually should have been.
There will always be conflicts in lore, but these differences make TR and PT also very intruiging, because these projects show a new world to explore, different, yet something Bethesda could have done.

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Lore is a complicated thing, and each retcon will probably need to be treated differently. Like this:

Markarth, and Black Light/Baan Malur: place names change and move IRL too, as the groups of people inhabiting them move, or miscommunications (across language barriers, or natives not being entirely honest to new settlers) happens. We already have an instance of this in Ebonheart vs. Old Ebonheart. Perhaps Dunmer this did this rather a lot out of spite for Imperial settlers and map-makers.

Dragon genocide: it’s hard to wipe out a single species, and in other fantasy genres that have pulled this one, sometimes remnants of the species can be found hiding out in the boonies. If Paarthunax (sp) could survive, why not others? Depending on the timeline of Daggerfall (which if I remember right is the youngest TES game to have dragons?), the dragons found there could be their last bastion in a non-Skyrim province. AKA, the Skyrim genocide has already taken place, the dragons fled to High Rock, in which they are still being pushed closer to extinction.

Direnni: it’s possible a later political upheaval occurred that meant many of the Direnni ruins were torn down. Think Berlin wall, or that one Egyptian pharoah I’m forgetting the name of, in which every stone statue bearing his name or likeness has been destroyed due to how much the Egyptian people hated him. Or perhaps Direnni ruins were just not very durable due to details of architecture, especially not when the Red Mountain earthquake ripped through.

And so on and so forth. And really, not all or even most of the discrepancies need to be addressed! We’re looking at recruiting here, so the ones that most players double-take at and go “wait a second...” or “but I wanna include it...” are the ones I’m concerned with.  Jungle Cyrodiil. Dragons. Falmer. TESO zones not matching up to TR zones. Argonians temporarily being emancipated. Horses. (I know, Dunmer eat them, but if we’re going to be part of Project Tamriel, what then?) Stuff like that.

As a complete aside, these couple of lines don’t make sense to me in the TESO section:

For Morrowind, these players ended the last calm years before the reawakening of Dagoth Ur, the last twitches of the Tribunal’s Morrowind before its calcification. For most of Tamriel, they kick-started modern politics and ended centuries of disunity and disinterest.

They ended the calm years that we already have said were terrible, and then ended centuries of disunity? I think maybe the first “ended” is supposed be a different word? Calcification I’m also not understanding. Calcification is the process of bones hardening. This would suggest the Tribunal are getting stronger? Perhaps a word like erosion or decay is closer the mark.

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ThomasRuz
As TES IV, V and TESO should also have been inherently hostile to their predecessors, as they also diverged from what the next conceptually should have been.
There will always be conflicts in lore, but these differences make TR and PT also very intruiging, because these projects show a new world to explore, different, yet something Bethesda could have done.

Agreed, that’s pretty much how I see it. Having been around when most of modern TES' retcons were thought up to explain away Oblivion's (and to a lesser degree Skyrim's) blunders, I'm considerably more acidic towards them.
It should never be forgotten that I'm also only one person and my opinion is mine alone and not infallible (my badges and roles on the site don’t make me a better person). I’ll freely admit that I’m still driven by the resentment towards the posters who got to post about Moronwind and the Morrowhiners on the Bethsoft forums when Oblivion was released, and the people who disagreed and were purged from sight.
If there was a ever a statement by a company that it didn’t want to have its former playerbase around, Oblivion’s Bethesda made sure it commited it to memory in triplicate.

 

Kevaar

And so on and so forth. And really, not all or even most of the discrepancies need to be addressed! We’re looking at recruiting here, so the ones that most players double-take at and go “wait a second...” or “but I wanna include it...” are the ones I’m concerned with.  Jungle Cyrodiil. Dragons. Falmer. TESO zones not matching up to TR zones. Argonians temporarily being emancipated. Horses. (I know, Dunmer eat them, but if we’re going to be part of Project Tamriel, what then?) Stuff like that.

I’m cutting out most of your reply because we are in agreement about this. And where we disagree are the implications.

It does not need to be addressed as far as modding and using TR is concerned – there is always a fundamental disconnet between individual games in a game series. Doubly so for TES, where every game kinda shits over its predecessors.

But this text specifically is intended to point out why these discrepancies exist. Reconciling them is not something it can do, it’s not something TR, Oblivion, Skyrim, ESO, or /r/teslore can do. They just sort of happen because we are all doing our own thing, but it’s supposed to point out where we differ and why, and to show that we at TR and PT have reasons to do things differently and that maybe things are interesting here too.

As a complete aside, these couple of lines don’t make sense to me in the TESO section:

For Morrowind, these players ended the last calm years before the reawakening of Dagoth Ur, the last twitches of the Tribunal’s Morrowind before its calcification. For most of Tamriel, they kick-started modern politics and ended centuries of disunity and disinterest.

They ended the calm years that we already have said were terrible, and then ended centuries of disunity? I think maybe the first “ended” is supposed be a different word? Calcification I’m also not understanding. Calcification is the process of bones hardening. This would suggest the Tribunal are getting stronger? Perhaps a word like erosion or decay is closer the mark.

Maybe I should just buckle down and use “fossilized”?

Point is that Chimer society was built on Mephala (beginnings and endings/sex and murder), Azura (the rim of all holes/dawn and dusk), and Boethiah (this one is dead because I am alive/a dangerous dog), a dynamic, tribal society aimed at personal growth and overcoming Lorkhan’s trials. The Tribunal turned it into a conglomerate, static, brittle society entirely dependant on them. It had started to crumble when Dagoth Ur – the Tribunal’s original sin – resurfaced and made the Tribunal unwilling or impossible to give necessary impulses to Dunmer society.

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A few notes:

1) Calcified literally means to become hardened with minerals. Used metaphorically it means to harden up and become brittle, immobile, overgrown (negative connotations). It’s a good description of the Tribunal Temple.

2) Condescention should be removed, this is an academic discussion about lore differences. Humor is hard to translate online and should probably also be avoided.

3) Lore differences should be discussed from a meta standpoint; we work mainly from the lore of Morrowind, plus tidbits we like from newer games, and our own imaginations and recreations. Therefore, we have a different “canon” to modern TES games. This isn’t a value judgement, just a statement that our lore diverged 14 years ago and hasn’t looked back. I think people can understand that TES has retcons all over the place and that we’re just working from a different starting place than Oblivion, Skyrim, and ESO are.

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Extensively rewrote the OP as per Kevaar’s feedback.

Please reread. I hope it’s more positive now.

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The text is more positive and is also very clear laugh
I did notice some sentences that looked grammatically odd, I'll try to post them so you can correct them. 

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It was a different time because Bethesda itself was a different company – I would use: situation back then, or something similair instead of time.
Tamriel Rebuilt/Project Tamriel are by their reliance on “old” lore odd and quaint to outsiders – would add a comma between lore and odd.
actively and radically different from the setting development of later game. – replace game with games.
So, what are the most glaring and obvious differences between Tamriel Rebuilt lore… – I would use only one adjective, makes reading easier.

That's it for now wink

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Tone is much better. I think the issue I’m having with the “Why..?” section is it’s less a why and more a restatement of what our setting is.  Maybe just needs the question changed? But my critiques may not make sense right now--head is pounding so I’m a bit hurr durr.

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I would say the reason why is to finish the story Bethesda Games started. I want to know what happened to the Morrowind and the Empire of the First Edition PGE. I can’t be the only one who remembers Oddfrid’s prophecy, the firmament’s omens of Change, and the social revolt over the ascension. That’s why I want to help.

Really, did the commoner ever believe the Simulacrum was over? No, they feared Tharn’s doppelgangers, because ten years of continental devestation still burns through their collective memory. The people talk about those days, as if they were yesterday; what happened in ESO can’t even cross their minds. They fear the simulacra are still out there, waiting to complete their master’s vile works. At least to my way of thinking, the Simulacrum was Tamriel’s French Revolution.

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Suggestions:

“Shipping with the Pocket Guide to the Empire, First Edition

“ lore have moved on, in multiple directions, “

Otherwise, I like the tone, and everything basically looks good. When this is officially pronounced done I’d like to see it put somewhere on the site so it can be linked to. Maybe under About.

 

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Okay, last attempt – included the old four principles of Lore (there should be a fifth one, though, “There is always an author and a reason” in there, I think), and spent an hour mulling over one sentence.

Both are in green. If that’s okay there, I think we can put it on the main site.

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I have a few tiny typo/grammar quibbles but otherwise this looks good to me. We should possibly have it looked at in the meeting for confirmation.

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Snuck in a fifth lore principle which is more relevant to the entire thing – lore has an author and a reason for being written as well, otherwise we would not be so sceptical of the post-Morrowind lore.

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If no one has any objections I’m going to post this under our About section in the main menu.

EDIT: No objections listed; therefore this has been added to the main menu under “About Our Lore”
 

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